>> i'm calling the commission on the environment to order. thank you all for being here. >> good evening, this is the meeting of the san francisco environment. the time is 5:03 p.m. a net that the ringing of cell phones, pagers and similar devices are prohibited. please turn your devices off. there will be public comment, as well as comment for items not on

the agenda and this is item number 4. we ask that you fill out a speaker card at the table and hand them to me and i'll hand them to the president and the president will call folks in the order we receive them. we will call up folks after they receive the cards if you would like to speak anonymously. (role call). call (commissioner chu is(role. >> we have a quorum. >> great. good evening and thank you for coming out to this very important meeting of the commission on the environment. as is normal for our january meeting, we do more administrative items like reviewing and approving the department budget, reviewing and

approving the annual report and officer elections. before i get started, i wanted to say what a busy and productive year 2019 was for the commission. we joined supervisor mendlemam in tea clearin declaring a climy and seems like the world mobilized under the leadership of greta thunberg. i was fortunate enough to participate and attend the women for climate conference in paris and speaking of conference, in one of the panels, it had to do what cities are doing along witn because the others were mayor emanuel, the lord mayor of sydney and we were all introduced by mayor annie doggo, the chair of women for climate change and there was the also the opportunity to attend.

world mayor's summit in copenhang and mayor garcetti was voted in. our commissioners were certainly in the community and all of us were out there representing the department for the sanfrancisco month of action. i was fortunate to participate in one of those. it wa very gratifying but pourig rain and managed to get there. while the challeng changing clie continues to manifest, it should give us hope. i want to say how proud i am of the work we do and what an extraordinary staff we have at the department and that all of us are looking forward to a year

as continued progress. with that, is there any public comment on the president's welcome remarks? hearing none, charles, next item? >> sure, next item, item 3, approval of the minutes of november 5th of the environmental special meeting, it's the 2019 draft minutes, for discussion and action. >> do i have a motion to approve the draft minutes of the meeting of november 25th? >> i'll move approval. >> second. >> commissioner sullivan has moved and commissioner stevenson has seconded. is there any discussion or changes, commissioners? >> is there any public comment on this item? hearing no public comment or discussion, all those in favour of apprising the minutes,

signify by aye and one and sentence and commission yan was not present. motion passes. inext item, general public comment, members may address the commission on matters that are within the commission's jurisdiction and not on today's agenda. is there anyone who would like to make a public comment on a topic on today's agenda? hearing none, next item, please? >> number 5, commission of the environment, environmental service award to sf market for food recovery efforts and this is for discussion. >> thank you. commissioner stevenson will be presenting this award. >> would the san francisco market folks like to come up and stand at the podium, please?

and before i get started, carol lincarolyn can you tell me how o frowns youpronounce your first . >> lizare. >> here to accept the word is the food market coordinator, carolyn lizar and janet coorera and i want to recognise janice. carolyn's efforts to ensure the recovered food from sf market goes to communities throughout the bay area. naturally to amplify her great work her commission and department are supporting sf market with a zero waste grant and you often hear if you come to our meetings, you hear about

the great grant programs and we're pleased to be giving that to you. since receiving that funding from department of environment in 2018-2019, sf market donated 127,000-tons of food and more than doubled their original goal of 606. in addition, i would like to acknowledge jenna who was worked tirelessly who has worked to support staffing and improvements to recover fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy and prepared meals for use by thougthose who need it most. i do want to note the sf markets from the merchant businesses operating in california's local food economy. with that, i'm pleased to join my colleagues in expressing

gratitude to the sf market for your commitment to reducings food waste and serving our community. [cheers and applause] >> do any of my colleagues want to add anything? >> thank you. well, i don't think you have to sit down yet. you have more accolades coming, michael. i just have to say that the three people standing before you today very much embody the best of san francisco because they don't have to do this. they could operate a wonderful produce market that serves great, fresh produce to all of the restaurants and the retailers and call it a day. but instead, what they do is they take that opportunity to

give back even in a more deep way and that is to say, what we don't sell shouldn't end up in the green bin, even though it would be great if it was in the green bin in some cities. in our city, we don't want it in the green bin. we want it in people's mounts. . to me, they representative environment and humanity, environment and community. you didn't have to do that, michael. you have a lot on her plate and janet has a lot to be fundraising for and carolyn has a lot on her plate and you not only rescued the food but found it a home and made sure people who can use it know about it and there's a lot of levels to this work and i think that's why we don't see it as commonly in other places. but i hope they will share some of their thoughts about it. it warms my heart to go there in action.

i would say that they may invite you and if they do, take them up on it. [ laughter ] >> i don't know the hours of what time you're supposed be there, but if you all started at 4:00 in the morning, you're in great shape. >> no, we did not. [ laughter ] >> it's wonderful and it's a san francisco value thing. it's our san francisco value so thank you for your service. >> thank you. >> i wanted to say if we did want to take a tour and learn more, how can we do that? where would we go? that sounds like a wonderful thing in san francisco where we make sure people aren't left behind and we make the most out of the things we have. >> we would love to have you

come tour the market. last year we had over 20 tours of the market, over 175 people came and every one from culinary students at city college and culinary students from treasure island, job core programs, as well as the city planning department came and puc staff and so it's really wonderful to have people join us. usually, the tours are 7:30, 8:00 in the morning, so not too early. but it is the end of the day for our merchant businesses, many of whom work through the night. they're getting there at midnight and working and even earlier some of them. so we would love to have the commission come. so we just need to arrange it. it's always great to see things live and in action and there's a lot going on in the market. a lot of interesting characters,

too, and a lot of wonderful food to try. >> there's an incentive, thank you. [ laughter ] >> thank you so much for honoring our work. it means a lot to us. carolyn gets up every morning. really, she's th the star of the show. she gets there more like 6:30 and walks the market and talks to all of our merchants, find out what they have available to donate that day and everyday it's different. she never knows what she will get. it could be two pallets of green greens obeans or a box of mangod then she catalogs everything she has and contacts our community partners. we work with over 20 organizations. some are small, grass root's groups, serving neighbors in public housing in the bayview and all of the way up to two

food banks we work with. and some of the programs are culinary training programs and we like to support those, as well as pantries, food pharmacy at the southeast health clinic and the navigation center that's close to us and we're able to donate, as you heard, quite a bit of food. to date, since we started, since carolyn started in 2016, 2.8 million pounds of food. in san francisco, the compost isn't good enough. we want all of the food good for use to go to people the most. so she works really hard and we really appreciate the partnerships and the relationships that are built. this program really is about

connections, community connections and relationships. it has the environmental benefits, the health benefits and benefits our merchants because it gives them space in their warehouses that they can use for other things because space is always a priority. so everybody wins and that's what's great about this. so carolyn, do you want to say something? >> my name has been singled out too many times. it's definitely a group effort and michael had the original vision and has championed it all along the way from just an idea to three and a half years of the program now. and our merchants have, on their own, since the beginning of the market have always been very generous with sharing any kind of surplus produce they had. but what we did was create a structure and a formal process

by which to make things easier and that has certainly helped to increase the amount of food that we've been able to capture and one thing that we offer is fruits and vegetables which are so lacking in so many people's diets. and so any organization, i think, we're especially valuable that regard, but we really think the departmenreally thankthe dee environment for their support from the early days. >> thithe first grant was from e zero waste grant. >> exactly. so let's keep it going. [ laughter ] >> thank you. >> oh, i also want to say, we have a volunteer here. julia, and we have a volunteer market around the food program and we have a lot of volunteers to help us with our board, but,

yeah. >> thank you, julie. >> thank you. and before were do the photo, should we have any public comment first? any public comment on this item? and if not, we'll take a photo. ses is

>> ok, we're ready for the next item. >> item number 6, the has scared and climate resilience plan and sea level rise vulner bability and consequences assessments. the sponsor is deborah rafeld and there's assistant director and prin brian strong and elizah stelser and this item is for discussion.

>> director? >> you are aware of the change we're feeling and the work the department has been doing to focus on mitigation because we're never going to be able to survive this if we don't pull more coup co2 out of the air. i think of this as two sides of the coin. you have the mitigation side which is making sure we don't emit co2 or pull co2 out and the adaptation side given we have the impacts of climate change through heat, through air quality and fires, through drought, through flooding and the list goes on, we need to make sure that the city is set up to be able to deal with those kinds of impacts. noand as a city engages in these

big questions of mitigation and adaptation, it false to different entities to sort of own the task of hurting the cats and putting things together and creating plans. and so the department of the environment own the climate action plan, which is a mitigation plan. and you'll be hearing a lot more of that in the coming months because it's the end of the calendar year where we'll be need to adopt the new 2020 climate action plan. when it comes to ha hazard mitigation, that has been centred in a different department. it's mostly with the office with brian strong's office of orcp, resilience and capital planning and with the planning department. so you have two wonderful speakers tonight that will talk about their work around setting up the city and hurting the cats

and bringing everybody together to take a look at what does the city need to do to be prepared for climate change and to make sure that once we are feeling the impacts, that we are resilient and can survive in that setting. it was a huge undertaking and i want to just thank brian strong for his leadership and adam and his team at the planning department for their vision and their determination. on our end, cindy comoford was very, very involved, as her colleague, elizabeth felter who has done yoman's work pulling this report together. it's a team effort and all good teams have excellent leadership and you'll be hearing from two of the leaders tonight. so with that, i'll turn it over to brian and adam. >> thank you, debbie. my name is brian strong, the chief resilience officer and director of officer and capital planning for the city and i

really appreciate -- i've worked with the city for a number of years but never had the opportunity to address this commission. so i appreciate the opportunity to do it. and big fans of the produce market and michael and his team. so it's nice to be able to watch to get that award, having tracked their projects for many years. and really, as debbie mentioned, it's about herding cats, around infrastructure projects and found most of her work was found with resilience and a lot of it was earthquake resilience but it's turning into climate resilience as debbie mentioned and the other erbs in the planse city is responsible for providing. so i have a presentation i'll try to go through fairly quickly. elizabeth will follow up because she really was a critical partner. this was a team effort, very much so. you know, it was department of

emergency management which typically has produced the city's hazard mitigation plans. this will replace the hazard mitigation plan. it was the planning department which does planning safety element and has been involved in the land use developments. the department of environment clearly for all of the policies you're responsible for overseeing and other departments from the public utility's commission to public works to the police department and all of these departments have a role to play when it comes to resilience and climate resilience, both. so the plan is required by fe ma. every five years we have to submit a hazard mitigation plan or we're not eligible for fema funding and that could be massive amounts of funding after a big event and that includes the state will cover the matching requirement for cities, therwhich is 7% and you can imae

hurricane super storm sandy in new york was over $100 billion with a 7% matching fund required for that and that can be significant dollars. and then it enables us to be eligible for hazard mitigation grants and the city receives a lot of grant funding, especially with the fires happening as of late. there's a lot of money available there and you have to have one of the plans in place and it's approved to move forward. in addition, the state of california, we want to add on to some of the federal regulation and we want to make sure you're thinking about climate and not making hazard decisions without climate in mind. we're updating or plan but we have to incorporate climate as per sb379 and it ties into the work around climate that's happening. that effort is now moving forward and we recently

submitted the plan to fema and just very quickly, the picture on here is portsmith square, chinatown is one of the more vulnerable communities, identified as the most vulnerable city because of the residents that get there and the income levels there. and this is a vital part to that community and it's a community that is susceptible to heat and high temperatures and a lot of thests of how to fix up this park, we're hoping to address the heat issues at the same time. so important project that's coming in the next couple of years. this shows the schedule that we went through is a little bit more than a year and a half and again, the idea is the fema and the state wanted to have a formal way we're addressing these issues. it's not just coming up with a bunch of strategies or pulling different things from different plans. it's doing an assessment of all of the different hazards that

sanfrancisco faces. it's identifying who is vulnerle and thvulnerable and understandg what to do as a city and how we can impact the ability to move forward and it's putting together goals and strategies and then sharing it and there's an important function here which is also sharing with the community and doing public and state engagement before the plan is approved and then after we hear back from fema and after the board approves it as it moves forward. just walking through, here are the goals of the plan, the new things we've added. we've been concerned with reducing risk and now we're focusing a little more on building capacity and collaborations and it's no longer the idea that you address one has without thinking about other hazards. so if we retrofit a building, we think not just from an earthquake perspective but from

the perspective incorporat abils or sea-level rise perspective. for the first time, we identified a specific goal around addressing equitable impacts and then increasing public awareness. and by the way, this is a picture here of the first floating fire station in the country, one of the first in the world and it's constructed out of treasure island. this is the benefit of having to do the capital plan and do the resilience stuff. i know about these projects and that will be floated over to peer 2pier 22 and a half and thw fire boat, fire station willing be. station will be. very resilient to sea-level rise. it's a multi-hazard plan, 13 hazards that are affecting san francisco that we cover in this report in a lot of detail for many of them and you can see a lot of them are ge geologic.

thtwo or three years ago, we wee not considering heat as a major hazard in san francisco or air quality. so things have changed. we know the impacts are happening really quickly, same with sea-level rise. we're seeing the impacts at the embarcadaro and seeing flooding there. large urban fires, wildfires, certainly that's certainly on earn's mind but we're concerned by fires following earthquakes and the news lately with china, the pandemic and there's the hazardous material issues, as well. part of the concern with hazardous materials in some of these things, you have an earthquake and it stirs these things up. you think about multi-hazards and how you impact -- how one can impact another, right? we can have soil that is fine, so long as it doesn't move but

an earthquake happens or you have water intrusion and that can change the entire perspective. the assets we're looking at are. listed here. listed here. very quickly, just to mention, this is a hazard profile and for all of the different hazards we do this analysis and look at what the impact would be with the history of it in san francisco, where it's likely to happen, the severity, likelihood of future events and this shows the 100-year storm map which is one of the hazards we've been following closely. and these are the different assets. the asset that we added this time is the first one there, is people. and we typically have not really thought and kind of a shame to say this but when we did the plan in 2014 and in 2009, we were not thinking about people as an asset in the same way as we are today. so we want to recognise the vulnerable populations and the

importance of people and how they fit into these other sort of more physical assets that the city has and is responsible for. again, from taking the hazards and looking at the assets, you're able to come up with the vulnerability and consequence profiles. this map shows liqui faction which is where the soil can liquify after an earthquake and shows critical response facilities and you can see the ones located in the liquifaction zones. this is how we do these profiles and identify where we need strategies in the plan. the next slide is some of the stakeholder etc engagement, worg with over 70 organizations that represent a range of different people, people with access and functional needs across the city. and here are some of the themes that we heard from them, which

is -- part of it, they do want to learn and understand the hazards in our communities and their biggest concerns around earthquake and air quality, a lot of people feel like they can manage heat but unhealthy air is a real structure people to wrap their arms around and understand what to do, do i go to work, stay in the house? is it ok to be in my house? those types of questions. and improving resilience for key city assets whether it's respite centers or retrofitting buildings, we have an enlightened community in san francisco in that respect. the importance of community cohesion, the concern that after it a disaster, it will exacerbate some of the outmigration or housing costs or income inequality we're seeing and how can we make sure that they don't see that. they're conscience of what happened in katrina and some

places where we saw large amounts of the population leave and be able to come back and that's a big concern. and the information on emergency preparedness again, wanting to know as much information as they can as soon as they can and what they should do. and that's where a lot of our partners with department of emergency management came into place. so over there, about 97 strategies in the plan and it's two big documents right here. it's online and available and we really broke the strategies into three different categories, resilient people, resilient communities and infrastructure and looked at how we impact those things around being an asset owner, delivering services, certainly the core of what we do. we do a lot of research and planning and providing research to people and hopefully it's people like policymakers like yourself and we adapt.

here are the different lists and what they look like in the plan. the first one here, the desire to siz seismically retrofit buildings. the city owns about 300 or so buildings which are critical of the general fund buildings. we've does hazard assessments of the buildings and we know a number need to be retrofit and are part of the ten-year capital plan. that's a strategy identified here, certainly, and if go to the next strategy, it's around infrastructure and that's thinking about the stuff under the ground, primarily, but that infrastructure, our transportation network and other things that are also critical to ensure that you have those types of things that often provide lifelines for people. so after an event, if you don't have those things, it's hard to

come back and be able to get on with your normal life or to move forward with that. so this is addressing flooding around the creek, two of the lower-lying areas around the waterfront that the city has been focusing on. and then finally one of the ones that the department of environment has been involved this is this identifying clean air, cooling hubs and public respite facilities around the city. it's been city-owned facilities so the leaders on this have been our office of resilience and capital planning but it's to identify places we can, for the first time have hvac systems ind libraries and rec centers to serve as clean air centers as well to provide the core functions. and having said that, there are a number of other strategies

where the department of environment is the lead-on or partners on. i was going to ask elizabeth to come up and describe some of those to you and then take some of your questions before letting adam talk to you all about sea level rise. >> hi, my name is elizabeth faluter, i'm out of sfe and i worked with capital planning in developing this plan and i will cover the strategies where sfe has a key role in this plan. sfe is a lead on five strategies. two are related to buildingings and that's why the have the handy b at the identifying numerical part and two are related to buildings and what is about weatherration, improving insulation and ceiling which is very important sfe and san

francisco in general, as a strategy to reduce greens house gas emissions and a lot of resilience benefits when there's an extreme heat event or poor air quality, trying to highlight the co-benefits between resilience, adaptation and greenhouse gas emission's reductions. the other building strategy is relating to electrification and, again, another important strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but there are some resilience benefits and one of them is that following an earthquake or another large event, the return-to-service time for electricity is much faster than gas. i hear quoted days compared to weeks and that's a big difference following a big disaster. and also natural gas is prone to explosions, both electrical systems and gas systems have

fire risks, though, in an urban environment. and the next strategy that sfe is leading on relates to biodiversity and looking at nature and natural infrastructure and its benefits to resilience. so biodiversity and natural infrastructure can help with water quality, water conservation and they can help with flood mitigation and there are all sorts of benefits. so taking the work that is happening with the inner-agency, biodiversity working group and the priorities to advance one of the worker group's goals is specifically about resilience. the last two strategies that sfe has a lead on in this plan relate to household was hazardous waste and hazardous materials. and the strategy is looking to

make a connection between household hazardous waste and overall hazard preparedness. so making the connection of not only is it good for you to remove hazardous materials from your home on a day-to-day basis but in event of large earthquake and that could mean you will be in far worse shape had you just disposed of them. the team that works on the household hazardous waste program has been attending events like the earthquake fair to make that connection more clear and increase the use of that program. and there are a few strategies where sfe will play a supporting role. two of them relate to the solar plus storage research sfe did over a couple of years. certain facilities are now looking into installing the systems.

so sfe may be pulled into help with some technical support and those strategies are lead by public works and could happen -- they could be implemented in a variety of different places, schools, some maintenance facilities and yards looking into instoring these storage systems. other strategies where sfe is playing a supporting role relate to a new group with a city lead by capital planning, a coordinated city-wide resilience planning group. and there are many things that this group works on and some of those include looking into doing some coordinated code amendments for resilience, coming up with a communication's strategy and identifying research opportunities or planning

opportunities for the different departments who work on resilience in different ways to work together. this group is also going to be working on better integrating climate adaptation, resilience and climate mitigation, as well. and then the last group of strategies where sfe is playing a supporting role mainly have to follow up with mayor breed's directive on air quality and extreme heat, in supporting public health and management and implementing some of the strategies to deal with future air quality and extreme heat events. thank you. >> thank you, elizabeth. i think that's the conclusion of our presentation and i don't know, debbie, do you want us to have adam and we'll do questions afterwards?

ok, go ahead, adam. >> good evening, commissioners and again, i want to thank debbie for her introduction in the beginning. i'm with the planning division which is a part of the planning department and a quick overview of what we do. we are the city's comprehensive and long range policy function and in that role, we deal with a lot of different topics and you can see some of them here and i think unique to our office, we're thinking about how all of the topics interact in the immediate term and long-term and all underpinned by the general plan and it's our responsibility to maintain and update that plan as a represents o representatioe city's policy. that's a little bit about who we are. i'll talk about the sea-level rise vulnerability assessment which is a multiagency effort to assess the city's vulnerability

to sea-level rise and what would be the impact on people and the environment. and i'm going to talk a little bit about the background of how that report came to be and what our current projections for sea-level rise are, the method we used in the report which largely compares to the method which brian compared to the resilience plan and some of the key findings and then, what are we doing now and what are we doing next? before i do, thi, elizabeth mend this and it's important to reiterate, we're thinking about climate resilience in totality, both the mitigation side and we work closely with debbie and her staff on the climate action strategy and other mitigation me strategies and we're thinking about how the city can adapt to not just sea-level rise but climb hazards in general and places where those overlap or where they may come into

conflict and really try to coordinate that so that we can address both of those issues together. in 2015, the then mayor convened the coordinating committee made up of a group of agencies that plan and own property or regulate property or infrastructure or buildings as brian mentioned that could be affected by sea-level rise. and that group has met since then on a monthly basis. and the first that group did was develop the citigrou city groupn plan and a vision to make san francisco a more resilient city in the face of sea-level rise

the plan set out a roadmap, a series of steps to address the vulnerability to sea-level rise and the first step was to understand and review the science of sea-level rise and what to expect for the city and the next couple of steps had to do with the vulnerability and risk to sea-level rise and that's where we are on the wheel today. that's is this report which i'll present today which isn't in your final state right now. and then, moving on, i'll talk about those coming steps which we sort of bundled into a general climate resilience framework brian mentioned. so the first step, as i mentioned, was to understandings the science behind sea-level rise. this is a report from 2012, from the natural resource council in the near, mid and long-term to the end of the century, about

three to five to six feet of sea-level rise and we ended another three and a half feet on top of that. , which represents kind of storm surge and kind tides if those events happened in combination with sea-level rise. the outer limit in this report was 108-inches. and so, since we started that work, state has come out with more recent guidance which revises those numbers to create a wider range of potential outcomes. particularly on the high-end and there's a higher scenario above that called the h + + scenario. these have been incorporated into the sea-level guidance for capital projects which brian's office oversees. we were pretty far along and it doesn't change significantly the area of the city that is

impacted and inundated and the cities were already captured. so i just wanted to show one other slide, showing the same thing, the range of potential outcomes and as you can see, as you get further towards the end of century and beyond, you know, the curves diverge. first of all, it's how much we can mitigate our carbon emissions over the coming years and how well we do at meeting climate emission's target but how the earth responds to climate change over time and the feedback. as you go further out, the curbs get wider and wider. that's an important point when we plan to adapt is city that we do it in a sort of flexible, adoptable way over time. we don't just start with the highest amount. we're trying to look at strategies to build in that

resilience to sea-level rise and coastal flooding over time. so for the report itself, we looked, first of all, at what areas the city would be exposed to sea-level rise and that was based on the numbers i just showed you and i'll show you a map on the following slide. the next thing, we looked at all of the publically owned assets within that zone and we said, how vulnerable are the assets to sea-level rise and it was how sensitive, so electrical equipment is sensitive to flooding. and parking garages or busing or flooding. the adaptive capacity and there may be an innate ability of a piece of infrastructure or building to adapt, and a bus yard is a good example because you can move buses during an

event and other types of infrastructure with more fixed infrastructure, et cetera, have less adapted capacity. so we looked across the range of those and assigned all of the city's assets a eventuall vulney rates. if this particular asset or combination of infrastructure or building assets were to be flooded and were to fail, either temporarily or more long-term, what would be the consequences? what would it mean for the economy and the government responses necessary in order to deal with those consequences? as i mentioned, this is the map of what we were considering sea-level vulnerability zone. this is taking that 108-inch number through the end of the century and looking at what would happen if the sea level rise happened with projection

but with no city actio action. we are approving plans and building projects that actually will be elevating shoreline and doing other strategies for sea-level rise. so this is a little bit of an extreme map but it does show with no city action, here is the area of the city that would be un-nonun-undated by sea-level r. there are strategies to address sea-level rise and those aren't shown but being considered as part of the assessment. when i talk about the different types of assets, we're talking about the city's infrastructure

is building assets, water, sewer, power infrastructure, both pg & e and puc power infrastructure, public safety facility, police stations, the hall of justice and transportation facilities and parks and new shoreline development and then the facilities, the port, piers, buildings and the open spaces the pier has. finally, we looked at not just those infrastructure categories in isolation, but how they interact with each other at the neighborhood level and the case if multiple of these types ofs pieces of infrastructure were to be flooded and affected by sea-level rise or a storm. what would be the impact for the neighborhood level? we think this is the part of the assessment that might be of most interest to the public. how would our neighborhood be affected by sea-level rise over time? this table again is sort of just

a table form of that map that i showed, but it shows the numbers in a the century you could have over 35,000 residents affected, over 170,000 jobs and 75 acres of parks and it's a significant area and represents a lot of area particularly on southeast of the city where there's a lot of vulnerable populations. and then we identified some key impact or key findings that kind of cut across the report. and i'll go through these quickly. the first is that the transportation system has the potential to be significantly impacted and this is both local and regional trapping transportd the bart and muni station is in a low-lying area and could be impacted and bart is also wrapping up a sea-level rise vulnerablability and that includes stations within san

francisco and embarcadaro and there's a constellation of the transportation impact along southeast part of the city where a lot of the yards and facilities and the cal-train and all fall within the vulnerability zone. there would be a significant loss of open space and the shoreline open spaces would, you know, kind of slowly disappear over time and this is particularly acute in kind of the eastern and southeastern parts of the city where there aren't necessarily major open spaces and the shoreline open space represents a portion of the open space n for those neighborhoods. where working closely with new developments and building in strategies for those developments to build up to sea-level rise projects. projec. over time the projections may change, so we're working to build in ongoing funding streams through districts or other

measures than can lead to future adaptation. and the last two are kind of more studies that we need and one this report is looking at the impacts of coastal flooding and it's not looking also at the impacts of overland flooding from rain storms. the puc is looking at that and the two are not talking yet and we do talk to them but we don't have the modeling yet and that's sort of a next step we need to do is to understand how these systems work together, particularly as storms get more severe, more frequent over time. and then lastly, as sea levels rise, it can also lead to rising ground water and where will that ground water extrued from the from the surface?

this is the type of information contained in the report and this is the map of the financial district and there's no action by the city and kind of what would be inundated, the different dots and colors represent the infrastructure categories and for each of the dots, there's information about what that is, how it would be affected and how vulnerable is it, et cetera. this just shows the creek area and this was the subject of the resilience-by-design to adapt to sea-level rise and following on that, we were successful in getting a grant to study adaptation strategies for this area and look at how the shoreline could be adapted over time. both at the individual asset level for, like, transportation assets, but at the shoreline level so it's protecting the whole area.

so finally, what are we doing as i mentioned? working with major development projects and they're all building in sea-level rise into the sites by elevating sites, having shorelined bermed parks and other strategies. the cranco park is currently under construction where they have an historic slipway that can basically take up the sea over time and the rest of the park is elevated next to it. and kind of a cool representation and then we're looking, also, at the district scale. i mentioned the work at the creek, that the city has a beach climate change that is dealing with coastal erosion on the oceanside and then we are working closely with the part of san francisco and they're working with the army corps of engineer to do a study of the port jurisdiction from

fisherman's wharf and how they can protect that from coastal gooding. lastlyflash flooding. we're working closely with capital planning in building the next steps for this work into the climate resilience program overall, how to make climate resilience buildings, through codes, through infrastructure, funding strategies, legislative strategies and all of those things that kind of build at the policy level a more resilient city to sea-level rise. and so with that, i think i'll conclude and we can open up for public comment or questions. >> thank you for that sobering report. [ laughter ] >> commissioners, questions?

commissioners stevenson? >> i think the question might be for adam but maybe for everyone. it's not a rhetorical question at all. do you feel hopeful? and i don't mean do you feel hopeful about climate change, but do you feel like the work that we're doing now is the right work and it's the enough work that if we implement everything out of this to get the job done so this is a resilient city so when 2100 comes around, we're doing ok? >> i can take a stab at answering that and i think brian should give his answer, too. i don't know if hopeful is the right word but it's good the city is aware of this and i think sea-level rise in contrast to other hazards is a slow-moving threat and we're doing the work to plan. and i think this plan is not a policy document. it's not a plan or a project but

an assessment and information and prior to it, we didn't have this information. so the next step is making sure that particularly the agencies that own and manage and regulate these infrastructure assets understand the vulnerabilities and then start building that thinking into their capital programs, capital projects and the programs that they run and the regulations that -- i work for planning and we regulate land-use development, you know, that this becomes a part of our mindset. and i think with the projects coming through, it is happening and the challenges, a lot of overlapping jurisdiction with a lot of this work and ultimately funding and really trying to develop a plan that, like i said, can adapt over time and there isn't a final state vision that this all happens -- one day you're not ree reresiliant and e

next day you're not. sea-level rise, we have time to go through those steps but we have to keep up the import of this is happening no matter how much we mitigate or carbon emissions. some level of searise will be happening and in some ways we don't have a choice. hopefully we'll understand the need and what needs to happen so it's those steps along the way. >> just quickly, by the way, chair, i agree it's sobering. i have been referred to as the chief calamity officer. [ laughter ] >> so not something that i enjoy. but i think there's a lot of reason to be hopeful and i mean, i certainly share a lot of your concerns, like how are we going to dig ourselves ou out of this?

just thinking about market street and getting cars off market street, ten years ago talking about the early days about what we would do with market street? getting cars off market street, it was sort of like the third rail, proposition 13. you weren't supposed to mention it or talk about it and i think there's off kinds of concerns. and now it's happening with very little opposition to it. i think people are recognising the importance of this work and i think the younger generations are pushing it very hard and i think and so that gives me a lot of hope in that we have to do this. the other thing i would say, even around sea-level rise, part of it is the value we have in san francisco, we were one of two cities across the country to get a start with the army corps of engineers and a lot has to do with the property value in sanfrancisco but the willingness

to meet the matching requirements. people are looking at us and watching us and feeling this is a place to exhibit leadership and people will recognise it and follow you. the other thing we've seen with the businesses here, as well, we did the sea-level rise guidance in 2014, thinking about the numbers and how we could fix our own infrastructure and the giants in doing the ballpark at lot 337. they took our guidance and said we'll follow it because there was nothing else out there. they said it's there, we know we have to do something. the financing people are looking for them to do something. so they're following that guidance and we're seeing it more and more with different projects that adam's team or the planning department is reviewing or the mj is reviewing on in that we can no longer push the buck down the road to let it get

fixed by someone. i'm excited that -- i'm not super excited to track 97 strategies but i'm excited that each department is working on these things and now it's really about trying to pull us together but i'm excited there's this enthusiasm and there's these strategies and these actions people want to do. >> commissioner sullivan. >> sobering is right. so i think this is a question for adam. so if we're talking about 83-inches of sea-level rise, is that what we're planning for? >> the report looked at 66, but the area of the city is similar. >> so let's just kind of look at pier 70 around to per circumstancsidio.what would we o defend that?

>> the subject of the port and army corps flood study and so, you know, they have started by looking at they call lines of defense being the army corps. you know, where you could basically say we want to stop the flooding here or here or here, inland of current, at current. if you include the piers or do not include the piers and do you go outboard. and then the next step is, you know, kind of development of alternatives. so they haven't gotten to that step yet. what does it mean? what are the different kinds of strategies? i think there's a number of different strategies that you can use that exist, whether they're seawalls or berms or horizonal levels or more ecological strategies or less ecological strategies. the institute published what they called the adaptation at last anatlasand i don't though u

have seen that, but they looked at the entire bay area and they divided that into operational landscape units. , which is a funny term, but areas that sort of function as a single area and what are the different types of strategies to use there? most of san francisco was in one of them skid and it's a hard-edo the south bay. the strategies are more limited where we are, but, you know, you can look at changing where the shoreline is. you can look at building up. you can look at adding, you know, wetlands or things like that. so those are the types of strategies but they haven't gotten to the point of identifying what strategies work well where. i think in the new developments, a lot of them are elevating their particular site which helps the site. it doesn't necessarily help the infrastructure or the communities around it.

but as they start getting built out over time, that can help. they looked at shoreline open spaces that ramp up and get fully taken up by sea-level rise over time and that works to a point, but at some point, you lose a significant portion of the open space and they've done it with certain slopes to understand how much of the space will still be there by the end of the century or estimate that. they've elevated streets and utility infrastructure and there's a lot you can do. those are areas where there's a significant investment going into rebuilding a whole site and i think it's more challenging when you go so, like, specific neighborhoods. what do you do? how do you make the choice? if you are rebuilding a capital asset, do you sit it on top of a ten-foot pillar or do you assume the city will do a shoreline improvement and those are the

questions we're grappling with. >> got it. one more question on how to pay for those potential things. i assume it's a combination of sources, federal, state and local, but some of it has to be kind of bonds, i assume, local bonds? >> let me leave that to brian who manages our capital plan, as well. >> these are the easy questions here. we did a whole study, actually, looking at how to finance the seawall, the seawall replacement project and looked at 48 revenue sources and we came away with, i think, four, five sort of major things that we can do and then a number of smaller things. but it will be a combination of federal and state dollars. so that's why we're working close with the army corps of engineers because they can bring in a significant amount of money. we're looking at community facility districts, which are also related to what they call mellow roose bonds which often

you see these used for a new development is we're using it for treasure island flight where you have a community that will be in place for 50 years for the current infrastructure and then it saves, i think, $260 million to address sea-level rise there and then it turns into a long-term, like, maintenance facility district. so i think it goes out, like, 299 years which is crazy to think about. but we're starting to do some of the ways to finance it and now, again, adam mentioned that it's in the new development areas, the challenges on the existing developments or existing infrastructure. but we have a geobond we passed recently for the seawall. another one in the capital plan. it's planned for i want to say 2023 or 2024 to address sealevel. sea level it's waterfront resilience.

it's about sea-level rise and flooding. so bonds, we expect to be a part of it, but it will have to be regional and federal, too. our city is really serving the entire region and so it can't be borne on us or on the people that happen to be be along the shorefront either. that's the benefit of a community facility district to spread out the costs. >> thank you. >> thank you. commissioner? >> thanks for asking, commissioner sullivan on funding. a followup question to brian inn particular. i noticed in the plan, the draft, it talked about community cohesion and one of the things drawn out was only half surveyed participants know their neighbors to help each other in an event of an emergency. can you talk about things to do to address that across the city? yes, that's right. it's a really big issue and san

francisco, it's almost more prevalent here, i think, than other places because of the transient -- the more transient nature of the city. where i think we're growing by 10,000 people a year and adam can correct me if i'm wrong and basically 60,000 move in and 50,000 people move out. so it's a churn. a lot is working with department community organizations and we're doing work and actually wan is involved with the cyc and the work that they're doing with our neighborhood empowerment network and with the department of emergency management around working with communities to be able to protect themselves to stay in their homes and to get to know their neighbors, to get to know the people around them. we do a neighbor-fest program where we're waiving the fees so the people can have block parties and during the block

parties, we can inform them, a lot of this is around the risk of earthquake but department of environment, and other departments come and talk about their programs as well. so i don't want to say that we have it figured out as to how we're going to address this community cohesion issue. but the idea of building up community leaders and focusing at the community level and not sort of having this top-down approach, which i think is traditionally come from deposit, we'lgovernment. we'll tell you what you need and provide you with everything to make it safer for you. it's really now becoming much more like -- the communities need to be communicating with us and we need to empower them to do that. >> any further questions? any public comment? hearing none, thank you so much for that presentation and we

clearly have a lot of work to do and certainly we can start by getting to know who our neighbors are. next item? >> next item is item number 7, review and vote on whether to approve the department of the environment's fiscal year 2021 and 20/21-21 budget. the speaker is program manager and the draft development of 2021-2022 budget and this is for discussion and a possible vote on whether to approve. >> welcome. director. >> thank you, president. on ward for more sobering presentations. it is that time of year again and we will be presenting our budget to the mayor's office who will do what they do before it goes to the board of supervisors. but this is the meeting, the

public meeting where the full commission hears from joe salem, what we are doing didn't how we are manager. iyou may have read in the chronicle, there's a big deficit in the fund in the next two years and while we are not a general-fund department, what that means is any likelihood to become a general fund department is pretty small at this point and getting smaller as that deficit increases. so we are on our own, and the landscape is changing around us. you will see that and you will see some of these numbers reflected in the fact that we do have such a high percentage of our budget that is funded by grants. so when grants go and grants come, you see wild fluctuations and joe will explain some of that. , what you're seeing. he will take us for the ride.

>> good evening, commissioners. my name is joe salem. i am the fiscal manager for the department of environments and tonight, i'll be giving a brief presentation of the fiscal 2020-2021 draft budget. a couple quick things before we get started. the first is that this is, in fact, a draft budget. and as such, we expect there will be a lot of changes between now and when we submit this budget to the mayor's office on february 21st. second, we're not going to be reviewing the fiscal 2021-2022 budget in this presentation. while we are mandated to submit a two-year budget, it really is impossible for us to know this far out what our grant funding situation is going to look like for fiscal 2022. so we really don't feel like we can give an accurate assessment of that fiscal year at this time.

so the city is currently projecting a $195 million deficit for 2021 with a $400 million for 2022. as a result of this $419 million deficit, the mayor's office is requiring all general fund departments to reduce their ongoing expense durings by 3.5% for fiscal 2021 with an additional 20% for 2022 for a total ongoing reduction of 7% over the next two fiscal years. while the department of environment does not receive any general fund supports, we do face some impacts as non-general fund departments are expected to absorb any increases in our direct costs without requesting any additional funds via work orders with other city

departments. finally, the mayor has mandated there be no new positions added to the departmental budget submissions and this won't affect our department as we don't currently have plans to increase our total position count for next fiscal year. so for fiscal 2021, our current operating expenditure budget stands at approximately 22.3 million. and it's important to note here that this figure represents our operating budget and what this means is that this includes both funds that will be requested through the annual appropriation ordinance or aao budget process and funds that have been previously approved and utilized in the next fiscal year. these are typically things like grants that are awarded outside of the budget process, the budget cycle and mid-year, inner

department work orders and, you know, multiyear grants, things of that nature. and these funds are considered previously appropriated and thus will not be a part of the aao submission to the mayor's office, nor reflected in our approved aao budget presentation to the commission in july. so at present, we are showing a $865,000 revenue shortfall, which is largely related to the loss of the energy efficiency audits or energy watch grant and the inability of the solid waste impounded fund to keep up with increases in the city's cost of living adjustments or colas in the outlying years between the refuse rate processes. the pie chart to the left is the

funding make-up. so as you can see, our revenue make-up for next year is 56% impounded, 28% grants and 15% city departments. we have fees related to the safe medicine in the disposal program. our grant revenue makes up a significantly percentage of our operating budget than it has in previous years for reasons i will discuss in the next slide. so this slide shows the year-over-year changes in the budget from the current fiscal year to next fiscal year. as you can see, there's a substantial revenue decrease in the operating budget from approximately 27.3 million to $21.4 million. and this decrease is almost

entirely due to the elimination of two large grants. the $6 million energy watch grants and the $2.7 million california air resource's board or carb electrical vehicle grant. i should stress that while these decreases are large, most of the funding was related to project implementation and professional services and was not appropriatateappropriated to tht for any informational use. while it looks like a big decrease in funds to the department, almost all of this would have been passed through to a third party. one bright spot is a large increase in our services to other city departments and these are work orders tha for services that we provide to other city departments. this is due to our ability to provide new and expanded services to other departments within the city family. on the expenditure side, we see

a year-over-year decrease of 18% from 27.3 million to $22.3 million. this reduction is manifested through the large budget decreases we see here in the areas of nonprofessional -- excuse me, non-personnel services and materials and supplies. and this is because, as i mentioned earlier, most of the budget for energy watch and the carb grants were for professional services and electric vehicle purchase pass-throughs. taken together, what this is showing is that, you know, while expenditures are addressing by 18%, revenue is decreasing by 21 2%, leaving a shortfall of $685,000. and this is historically high variance in funding for the department and would almost

certainly require some belt tightening and strategic decision-making. we will be working hard over the next month to balance this shortfall, examining all of our expenditures and pursuing potential sources of additional water to close the gap. and while we do not anticipate any cuts to service levels with the exception of energy efficiencies services related to the ending of the energy watch grant, we will be taking a hard look at our budget department wide, identifying required expenses and potential areas where we can reduce costs, mainly in the areas of professional services and materials and supplies. and we are also continuing to aggressively pursue new sources of revenue, applying for grants and seeking partnerships where the potential exists.

so here we have a list of our work orders with other city departments and program partnerships. as you can see, we work closely with many city departments. these work orders are a vital part of our department's funding and we greatly value our interdepartmental relationships. our staff worked hard to maintain these positive relationships and to provide exceptional services to other city departments and i would really like to, again, acknowledge their role in making these work orders come to fruition. the key dates, these are the key dates for the fiscal 2021-2022 budget process. you will see here the next big deadline is a smirk submission a balanced budget to the mayor's office on february 21st. may will mark the board of

hearings. hearings are held in may and june with the department of environment historically being heard in the may group. the fiscal 2021-2022 budget is adopted on july 31st and by august 22nd, we, along with other city departments will submit a letter to the mayor's office, certifying the budget is adequate and no general funding will be required. so that actually concludes prepared remarks and i'm happy to take any questions that you might have on this. >> and yet more sobering information. commissioners, questions?

>> commissioner stephenson? >> every year when we do this, this is the ninth budget i've gotten to see at the operation's committee and i think as we mentioned in the committee meeting, it's the worst one in terms of being a delta between revenues and expenses. but it's kind of the nature of our very strange department that we come to this meeting specifically without everything ironed out yet, because it has to go through all of the rest of the process. at the operation's committee, we asked a lot of questions about what was up with the budget by department level -- not department level but program area. so we got a lot of reassurance about that. the big thing that came across to us and commissioner juan can chime this is the fact that the two big grants that were lost really impact the overall numbers and the one thing that i would like to say is i really,

especially around the energy watch, that's work we still need to do as a city and i want to make sure that we find ways generate more revenue from different sources and i think there's options out there and i'm glad shawn is out there, too, to go out there and make sure we do that work again. that is not in any way saying that anyone here has dropped the ball but another opportunity for us to go out and do that. at the operation's committee we felt very confident that we'll figure out how to fill the gaps as much as possible. >> commission juan? >> so a quick question. so by february, when you submit a budget to the mayor's office, how likely this budget will be balanced, will you submit the budget with the deficit? >> so we will submit a balanced budget to the mayor's office on

february 21st. because of the name of the budget, the operating budget contains both new requested which is the annual appropriation ordinance portion of our budget which is what gets submitted to the mayor and that is the portion that needs to be balanced by february 21st. and there are other portions of our budget that are made up of multiyear grants, mid-year grants, things that aren't part of the annual appropriation ordinance and those, while we will need to balance those against the expenditures, those are not a part of the submission to the mayor's office on the 21st. so we have the capacity to submit and will submit a balanced budget to the mayor's

office and -- obviously, hopefully, have this entirely resolved by that time, but there are certain aspects or elements of this that we have a little more time to resolve because of the nature of how they're funded. >> thank you. >> do we have any public comment? >> i would just like to point out this that is -- thank you, joe, and i first want to say just a big thank you, joe. you have been working so hard on this and i know with our move and all of the preparation and gyrations that we're doing for that, that's on top of the budget and jennifer cass also, her steady hand and questioning

mind always helps us make sure that we have looking ahead strategically and there's a lot of work behind this and i want to thank you. >> i would like to take a moment to thank jennifer. she is obviously an integral part of this di this is a huge r and mark brown in helping me mind solutions and pathways. you can make a decision or decide to make this an

information item. i. so it is up to you.

>> welcome. >> thank you. i think the first thing you will notice when you look out, commissioners is there are a lot of staff in the room right now

and i would hazard a guess that the reason they are here is not so much for the climate resilience and adaptation, before this particular agenda item. they have not heard this presentation. they are interested in hearing what your thoughts are and they care deeply about the subject. as you know, the department has spent the last 20 years of its existence working to bring the idea of racial equity into the forefront. we had an environmental justice program when we were just a dozen people big with annie wong and her leadership that she brought to this. we have been working with communities of color, focusing on the bayview and expanding for the full 20 years of our existence. back in march of 2018, you adopted a resolution codifying our commitment to racial equity

and formally announcing our racial equity initiative. when you took that vote in 2,000 -- 2018, you asked us to come back with a more formal way of explaining what that meant to us and what we would do with your recommendation. great minds think alike because, at the same time you were asking that of us, the board of supervisors was asking that of all city departments. in july of 2019, a year later after we passed our resolution, the board of supervisors unanimously passed an ordinance amending the administrative code to provide an office of racial equity. part of that ordinance was not only creating the office but also mandating that departments do their own planning around a short -- racial equity and that we would have to submit that plan to the board of supervisors by the end of the year. you will hear more of the detailed context in the presentation, but i wanted to give you that sense, the story

arc of how the work we have been doing for 20 years then came to you and came to the board of supervisors. we are all thinking how we take these ideas and make them much more formalized within the work of our department internally and externally focused. we know through this process and we have known this as we have done the work that it's very difficult to confront racial differences. this is not easy for the people doing the confrontation. it is not easy for the communities engaging in the dialogue with us, but we know that it is our responsibility to do so because anything less less than this effort does not do justice to the people that we care most about. i want to think some particular staff are their commitment.

i want to call out annie wong in particular. she is not here, but some of you know her. she founded our environmental justice program. elizabeth felt her, has been working on this initiative as well and especially i want to thank these two women in front of you for their tremendous commitment, passion, and professionalism. i thank you will see that in the presentation. you know them already. you will not be surprised by it. i am inspired by them and deeply grateful for the work that they will present to you. take away. >> thank you. i will try to make this not sobering. [laughter] good evening, commissioners. thank you for having us here to provide an update on our

department's racial equity initiative. i'm with the environmental justice program which is part of our climate team. >> i am with the zero waste team >> we were the racial equity leaders at the department. i wanted to start off by giving you a snapshot of what we wanted to talk about today in our presentation. we will start off by giving you some background and an overview of the racial equity initiatives and then we will go into some of the accomplishments that we have had to date and then talk about our racial equity action plan. the plan is being developed in two phases. phase i really focuses on the internal operation, will face two focuses on external facing racial equity impacts of our policy's programs and procedures today we are going to talk exclusively about our phase i

recommendations, which is our internal phasing actions that we are recommending. it's really exciting that on october 1st the mayor signed an ordinance creating the city's first office of racial equity. this office, which will be housed under the human rights commission is intended to create a citywide plan to close the gap on existing racial equities found in all the sectors of the city's work and to look at our policies through a racial equity lens. the office will also hold city departments accountable by requiring racial equity action plans with measurable outcomes. as debbie alluded to, fortunately this is not something that is new for our department. one of our core values at the department of the environment, as stated in our strategic plan is around equity.

it reads, our programs benefit all residents and businesses in san francisco and focus on supporting those communities most in need. all our initiatives are underpinned by commitment to close -- inclusiveness and accessibility. the department has had an environmental justice program for nearly two decades. that has worked with low income communities of color to mitigate environmental burdens, increased access to our environment of programs and services and engage the community and improve health outcomes. despite ongoing work in the area , we recognize that racial inequities are deep and pervasive and persistent and racial equity means closing the gaps so that race does not predict one success, will also including -- improving outcomes for all. you might be wondering, we have discussed this a previous commission presentations, but

you might be wondering why we are leading with race when there are so many different forms of marginalization. this is not to pitch different forms of marginalization against each other. we chose to lead with race because race is consistently a primary indicator of a person's success and wellness, and whether you are considering housing or education or employment or environment or any other social indicator, race indicates how well you will do. there is also, even when you hold other factors constant, for example, two people with the same education and income level but different races will can -- experience different outcomes. there is an intersectionality between race and other forms of marginalization. for example,, a transgender person of color will experience greater disparities than their white counterpart. leading with race gives us an opportunity to bring people

together so we can organize for change and it introduces a framework, tools and resources that can be applied to other areas of marginalization. as you heard in the previous presentation, we know that racial inequities have gotten worse as the impact of climate change has unfolded and while climate change impacts everyone, low income residents and people of color are hit the hardest. it has the least amount of resources to adopt. these inequities are well documented. an example is in a report called the climate gap which was published in 2009. our department's racial inequity -- equity initiative helps us move from theory to practice an advantage in -- advancing racial equity. today we are focusing on phase i which looks at our internal operations. face two will focus on the externally facing programs and policies which includes climate

work. i will turn it over to my colleague and she will walk us through some of our accomplishments today. >> thank you. now i get the exciting task of sharing what we have done today starting with our resolution. the commission adopted the department's commitment and requiring that we put together a racial equity action plan with measurable outcomes. please note that we did this before we were required to do so by the office of racial equity. we are ahead of the curve. >> over the past three years, we have begun building internal capacity by participating in a training program led by the government alliance of racial inequity. we are part of the cohort that includes over 25 different city departments and is led by the human rights commission.

we continue to be active members working with other city agencies to address racial inequities and citywide policies, practices, and procedures, and working together to develop best practices. our racial equity initiative is following best practices of other departments like s.f. planning, public utilities commission, as well as cities like seattle, but -- portland and madison who are doing this work. we have convened with the eight -- racial equity committee comprised of a staff person from each program area to guide the work and develop the racial equity action plan with measurable outcomes. we took a team by team approach to educate staff to become -- to begin normalizing compensation about race and developing a shared understanding of institutional and structural racism. we have developed tools to

assist staff in assessing departmental programs and policies. one racial equity is not explicitly brought into operations and decisions, racial inequities are often perpetuated next our assessments. we analysed quantitative and qualitative data from comprehensive stop surveys and a

workforce assessment as well as reviewing literature and best practices for racial equity. i will start with the survey. the survey was anonymous and it helped us set a baseline of where people are at in their understanding of institutional racism. there were some key takeaways identified from the survey including experiences and perceptions of varied by professional differences and societal status. for example,, supervisory staff assessed their comprehension proficiency and efficacy regarding racial equity more favourably. there are differences in responses from staff of color compared to white staff. while 99% of staff indicated the importance of prioritizing

racial equity, only a third indicated that s.f. environment 's policies and procedures consider an address institutional racism. staff who had received training feel better equipped to address racial inequities than those who have not. staff field they could use more time and resources to address racial inequities in staff don't feel comfortable or supported talking about race with their supervisors and managers. finally, there is a need to address workforce inequities. the second analysis we did used s.f. environment's employment data from october 2019 along with two years of poll data. there's a lack of diversity in management classification and corresponding pay inequity, racial diversity of job

applicants decreases as job seniority increases, and then data tracking of staff retention , growth and advancement is not readily available. i will now turn it back to her and we'd talk about how these assessments have led to the development of the recommendations. >> to address the findings from the workforce assessment and the staff survey that was described, the racial equity core team proposed 16 recommendations. the team lead a workshop where approximately 45 staff attended to review the proposed recommendations and gather feedback. staff also assessed priority, impact, and level of difficulty of each recommendation as you see in the slide. staff also helped identify metrics to measure progress.

the recommendations -- and then beyond s.f. environment's purview. the second opportunity area is work environment and staff knowledge, skills, an understanding of racial equity. and then finally, the third opportunity area focuses on recommendations related to staff growth and advancement. to summarize, this is a timeline that highlights the main components of our initiative which we went over. as you can see, as we have

accomplished many things, we still have some major milestones ahead of us. and of course, this timeline will continue to be under the completion of the racial equity program. our next steps include working with debbie and jennifer to develop implementation plans for the phase i recommendation, identifying and prioritizing action for face two which focuses on our external facing policies and we look forward to presenting the draft final plan to the commission for your feedback. this will be phase i and two combined. then we will present it to the office of racial equity and the board of supervisors at the end of the year. with that, thank you for your time. we are happy to take questions. >> any questions?

commissioner wong. >> thank you for the great work. this is a great report. quick question. this is a recommendation plan, right? is there an implementation plan to follow up on to mandate the department to follow the steps, and this might be a question to the director, are the resources allocated to this plan? >> yes. we are planning to work with debbie and jennifer to determine which action items we can start prioritizing on and which ones we will need additional resources on. there are 16, but some of them are beyond the department's purview to work on by ourselves. we will be working on the implementation plan. >> i wanted to add, the racial equity action plan that will be

submitted by december 2022 the office of racial equity will include a timeline and metric to track progress. what you will see in the fall will include some of the use -- those implementation measures. >> if you look not in the presentation, but in the packet that you got, if you look at the table that has the 16, you will see that it is organized. there are three columns. there are four. the action itself, the priority, and that is a priority to staff. that is staff saying this is a high priority action. and then the potential impact the staff believes it has and the difficulty the staff might have. some things could be high-priority, high-impact in high difficulty, so while those are very important, they may need, you know, significant

resources as well as partnership beyond our department. what i have asked the team to do is start to take a look at those 16 and figure out what are the actions that need -- that we need to take? do we have the resources to do it? do we have the expertise. which one will require outside and who. once we get a little bit more clarity on each of the 16, what is meant by it, what success looks like, and what would be needed, then we will sit down with the staff and jennifer and i and start to prioritize and say, all right, this calendar year we can bite off these three , and next calendar year we will revisit or we will project which five we do. i am making numbers up at this point, but it has been really helpful to me to see how staff view them as a priority. some of them we are already

working on. those will be no-brainers. other ones, maybe we haven't started yet and we need to plan for the resources if we are going to actually do them. >> throughout that process, is it a transparent process where the committee will keep informing the staff or the process is and what has been happening, and is it on the right track? >> we will help regular updates with the committee. they will also be involved with helping the implementation plan. i should have added that we are part of the citywide racial equity workgroup, so a lot of these difficult and challenging actions that were identified are really citywide issues that are common to all city departments. so at these meetings we

discussed as a group how we can tackle these issues together so we are coming up with citywide solutions, not just for our department. >> i appreciate your point about the importance of transparency and communication so it doesn't look like it's a black hole. i think one of the challenges for us will be to figure out the most effective way of communicating. we have a committee that meets once a month and we have monthly staff meetings figuring out how to share that level of information will be a continual process to get it right. >> i want to echo the point on transparency. if there is a point -- a way that commissioners can be helpful on this, whether it's through the committee structure or even in convening in the fall , a very much welcome it.

i think a lot about diversity and the environment and particularly because i am in environmental law which is an even more exclusive sphere. this has troubled me -- what time they could use to address racial equity? >> some of the resources that were identified relate to trading and how to be a white ally, just expanding how to use the racial equity tool for technical work that our staff do and so in the staff survey there was an opportunity for staff to identify specific resources that

they were requesting. >> another question is, there was a distinction made between hiring within the purview and hiring outside. could you go into that in more detail? >> there are some decisions that can be made within the department and there are other decisions that are made.

>> we have gotten to see it evolve and it is exciting see it at this stage. i also look forward to face two. i think the work you're doing is incredibly and packed full and you should feel very proud of it >> thank you. >> i was going to say that we value all the work and we know it's not easy but we are here and value transparency especially when the leadership level seemed to be ruining that little by little. we appreciate the work that is going on. we want to make sure we are involved and informed. we want to be helpful. we are very interested in continuing this.

>> i also want to personally commit to helping out on this. i think looking deeply at what position needs in terms of qualification and making sure that we have long-term career pathways for people of color in particular in our department is personal importance to me and this is a moment where i am grateful for supervisor viewer's leadership in creating the office of racial equity. the department supported it to begin with, but we have a lot of work to do. i look forward to working with you over 2020 on this initiative >> thank you. >> thank you. is there any public comment?

>> hello. thank you so much for having me and for addressing this issue. i am on the school education team at the department of the environment. i also have a seat on the committee for the racial equity. i would like to thank you for all the work you've done as well as elizabeth and the members of the committee that put their time in this. and everybody that has been openly honest. we know it's often hard to be so openly honest about your lived experiences as a person of color , especially in spaces that are often occupied and held by white folks. i appreciate the honesty of the department at large of being so from words about those experiences to allow us to come forward. i want to present an issue that might be -- might seem separate,

but might be available in some way and that is highlighted within the report. i am a 99 student department of the environment and it is a great position to have. it is an opportunity for folks to are coming at an entry-level point within the report. it is noted that 10 to 20 of these 99 classification spots are housed within the department at a time. 80% of those folks identified people of color. one key component is that it is an at will, nonpermanent position and it is the classification -- the lowest classification. i want to bring this to your attention because that piece level of creating long-term positions within our department that not only start at the entry level, would lead a long-term career at large.

i just wanted to bring this forward. due to do something i have been trying to do not within the department, but within the city wide stretch at large. the 99 classifications represented by the local 1021, we reached our contract negotiation in the summer of 2019 and one of the key clauses within our contract was a 100 day, 20 day period that was supposed to be a citywide department audit to identify whether the classification is meeting requirements and moving employees upwards to the next job classification. it has been hard to find the personnel that are actually able to get audits done, as well as finding resources within the union.

>> i'm doubling my roles today. >> multitasking. >> i looked at the end of report from last year and i want to know something the commissioner said. in addition to being an important look back on the accomplishments of the commission, the major initiatives of the commission, we are mandated to do an annual report by city regulation. so many commissions also have the same mandate and so you will see them doing an annual report. i just wanted to point that out that in addition to trying to document the great work of the commission, we are come --

required to do this. this is the 2019 annual report. a couple of things are in order. thank you to the project manager of this and did most of the writing here. i also want to think our artist in residence. he is an environmentalist, a social justice advocate and also a commissioner on the department of the environment. thank you for your work. and everyone else who did some of the graphic design. thank you for that as well. is a team effort for our commission here. i will just go through it really quickly. it is fairly self-explanatory. the first page is fairly straightforward. it is our mission. the second and third pages are the letter from the commission president.

his what this letter is intended to do. and then, of course, the next series of pages always introduce our new commissioners. this year, or last year i should say we had one commissioner and then we had three commissioner reappointments that are noted, but it's always the new commissioner that gets the spotlight. and then, of course, the next series talks about the major new initiatives and the major events for the year and that was mayor breed's month of climate action. mayor breed was the new mayor and she, in concert with the department, in concert with the commission wanted to maximize the potential for earth day, which is in april. it turned into the month of climate action of the month of activity that the commission was present at culminating in our reception at the end of the month.

and then, of course, we talked about the highlights for the commission. starting with the climate emergency. declaring a climate emergency. that is what we are in. and then, of course, there was a women's summit celebrating power , strength, and resilience. and, of course, leading up to our earth month, we had the annual green business award ceremony which we will have again this year as well. and then later on in the year, the commission joined us for the battle for the bay. it was a unique across bay, south bay, east bay san francisco partnership that i thank you will see increasingly as we move forward. the climate emergency was also multicity efforts. it is good that not only san francisco, but other cities around the bay, around the country, and around the world

are joining together to help effect change for the betterment of our climate. then we also, through commissioner stevenson, participated in the spirit of collaboration, a collaborative conference featuring folks all the way from vancouver down to southern california, including san francisco in an effort to reduce food waste through grocers, produce market, and that culminated in a conference here that commissioner stevenson participated in. this is a fairly straightforward overview of what our policy and operations do, and then, of course,, capturing the environmental service award from the community here in san francisco that help us increase our reach, that support us in our mission, that make sure that we have partners out there working for the betterment of

the environment. and then, finally, wrapping up as a legislative summary. all of the resolutions, the ports, initiatives, everything that was passed and acted upon by the commission and with that that is the draft annual report. it is for discussion and action. >> questions, commissioners? commissioner sullivan? >> i have some proposed amendments to suggest that have been recommended by staff. in part because of the lack of artwork at the time it was circulated for the commission. so i will just go over each of those. the first one is on page four. up at the top where there is reference to mayor breed, members of the board of supervisors, friends and colleagues for place to come --

i guess that is an oxford. and on page 12, three lines up from the bottom on the right is the 200,000 pounds of trash in merely one morning. we replace the word nearly with the word just. then on the back of page 14, it shows an image of -- >> i have it on the overhead slide. there we go. perfect. >> we will replace some wonderful artwork for our artist in residence. >> we will just switch out those photos.

>> we will take -- that was a motion. we need a second. motion has been made to accept four amendments by commissioner sullivan. do i have a second? seconded. we need public comment? public comment on this item for the amendments. hearing then, we will go for the vote. all in favor signified by saying aye. any opposed? motion carries. thank you very much. >> next item is item 10. presentation on the outreach multi- media of your campaign, get gassy. this item is for discussion. >> hello, commissioners. thank you for having me here

tonight. i am with the department of the environment. i am really excited to share this campaign with you and hopefully you didn't click on the link before we came to this meeting because i wanted it to to be -- to be a surprise. it's actually called feeling gassy s.f. hit is also known internally as operation fart at the department of the environment. the goal of the campaign is to encourage residents specifically living in apartment buildings to start composting in their kitchen. as part of a previous campaign, and some of you are familiar with the mailer that we sent out , we learned a large number of folks are not composting. we launch this campaign just before thanksgiving.

we also see an increase in food waste. and i won't talk anymore about it. i would love to just play it for you. and then if we have comments, i will answer your questions. [♪] just that. [laughter] hopefully you enjoyed it. we will be following up with -- this is a digital campaign. i will be following up with a more comprehensive report back on how will the campaign did.

it runs through the end of this month. it will wrap up then. thank you. >> thank you for that very informative and entertaining way to compost. any questions or comments, commissioners? >> i suppose we should wait. how did you target it? >> it was targeted -- now it is really advanced the way they target audiences. we have a media planner who does a lot of that targeting. we figure out specific channels for the people that we want to reach. also as part of the multifamily mailer campaign, we have the list of addresses that we actually sent the mailer to and we know that it was to 200,000 units in san francisco. over 400,000 folks living in apartment buildings. we used the same list to do

specific targeting to do those folks as well. >> so this is mainly for folks who live in apartment buildings? >> around citywide but we did additional targeting specifically to folks in apartment buildings. we started with the multifamily mailer, mailing it out to residents and then we wanted to build on that. that mailer was explaining what to do where your recycling goes and where your compost goes. we wanted to take it a step further knowing that folks don't seem to be compelled to take that extra step to compost in their kitchens. that's why we did that specific targeting to residents. >> i think it has been very memorable, the idea of seeing that video and what your garbage truck and the noises it will emit is a really good way for people to remember to compost.

>> i agree. i am hoping that it motivates some folks here in san francisco to do that. and infusing humour and something that is really heavy like climate change. i have not seen that done so far so how do we motivate people to care about climate change? that was the goal. i am glad you enjoyed it. >> i did. thanks. >> any public comment? next item. >> this is number 11, director's report. >> this is not mine night for being 100% accurate. i just want to apologize. i got confused with the names of people that i was thinking and i was so into annie yang that we have in any long in this office who was working on the

environmental justice and the equity work. i just want to correct the record for that. i will apologize to her when i see her back. they get gassy video is an example of how we're trying not to be sobering and trying to have a sense of humour in the time where things can be pretty intense. i want to say about that campaign the thing that was my favorite aspect of it is it's one of the first times we are being very intentional about bringing zero waste and climate together. we normally talk about composting and a zero waste about taking care of resources and we introduce the idea of methane and that the gas is a problem for climate change. so it is just a fun way of introducing -- of starting to talk about the intersection.

we also have versions in other languages, so that translates pretty well, it turns out in chinese and spanish. it works well. we have found this and all sorts of our residents here in san francisco. it's really emblematic of our larger effort to dive deep into community and work with our diverse san franciscans. for example,, the environment now team joined the chinese newcomers for the annual food drive in the square and they had about 440 conversations in cantonese specifically about zero waste. we are deep in community and we are committed to making sure that language is not a barrier. also, our toxins reduction team got a grant through the environment of justice program and we are partnering with the

children services to educate childcare providers about green cleaning products and about flame retardants that are in foam. our grant is paying to give out free nap mats to the daycare centres as well. education in language as well as bringing resources to bear. we have spent a lot of last year talking about getting ready for decarbonized thing and getting off of natural gas in our buildings. 2020 started with a bang because in 2020, it has only been a few weeks, we are -- we have natural gas bad for municipal buildings. it was passed unanimously by the board of supervisors and our reach code, which will be electric preferred, and make it more onerous to put in natural gas, also was passed out of the board of supervisors unanimously that ordinance has to go to state for final approval.

clearly these are critical first steps in figuring out how we do the larger getting off of natural gas. and to help us figure out how to adopt those ordinances, we are engaging in a number of community organizing events and discussions. we are having, the policy committee heard a look a lot about this, but having this initiative led by community groups as the leaders on those discussions so it's not just us. i would also want to just mark your calendar.

but on february 25th, the department of the environment and the san francisco commission are partnering on an electrification expo for residents and businesses at the county fairgrounds building in golden gate park. the event runs from 3:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. and the purpose of this event is to answer questions and make people comfortable with getting off of natural gas in their homes right now so that if a water heater goes out and the contractor who comes says here is another natural gas water heater, just put it in, the residents will be able to ask questions i will get them the ability to put in an all electric water heater, or if people have heartburn about getting rid of their gas range, we will have a cooking demonstration on induction cooking cookers. it's a great way. other cities have done these and have had really high turnout. we are excited for hours as well march 4th will be our annual

green business awards held at the academy again. it is at 6:30 p.m. until 930. i would love for commissioners to be there. is a nah -- a great way for you to talk with the community and help celebrate with them. we may put you to work if you come. please see if you can come this year. we will be recognizing over 80 businesses and we will also be focusing on legacy businesses. these are businesses that have been here over 30 years and have been designated legacy businesses by the board of supervisors and there is an interesting intersection between the businesses and our green businesses. we want to highlight that. i would just say that 2020 will be a really great here. it will be an amazing year for us. it is a year of perfect vision, let's hope. it is also the 50th anniversary of earth day.

lots of things to celebrate and lots of excuses to take a look at how -- where we have been and where we want to go. i'm hoping the commission will be a big part for that retrospect and that prospect on how we want to get a resilient and environmentally sensitive city moving forward, electric city for all and a city that honours their diversity and its focus on equity. that is my report. >> thank you. commissioners, any questions? >> do we have any new employees that have not been to a commission meeting before? please come forward and introduce yourself if this is your first commission meeting as an employee.

even if you have been at the department for a little while. >> this is my first commission meeting. thank you to the chair and commissioners. my name is joseph. i will be working in the policy department replacing peter, "i'm sure many of you know and remember well. big shoes to fill. happy to be working and supporting charles who is our wonderful commission secretary today. i have been a public servant most of my career as far back as my very first internship in the mayor's communications communications office downstairs for the late mayor. more recently i worked in the coming occasions department for the san francisco public utilities commission and served as the lead communication and special projects for congressman -- congresswoman waters in d.c. and l.a. where we worked on racial equity issues, which is timely, financial services

regulation, gang mediation, you name it and a lot of other complex issues. i am a u.c. berkeley and georgetown alone. i am excited to serve the department as we reinforce san francisco's leadership as a global environmental leader and helping push the envelope as what it means to be a city that is sustainable and healthy for everybody who lives here. i'm happy to answer any questions. thank you all for your time. >> welcome. >> thank you so much. >> any questions? any public comment? we have much to look forward to in 2020. thank you. >> next item. >> next item is item number 12. the nomination and election of commission on the environment president and vice president. this item is for discussion and action.

>> i was looking at this item and thinking of who would be best to lead our commission into 2020 and very much appreciated your services for the last few years. you have been a steady and strong hand in making sure this commission and department is doing what it needs to do for the city and county. i would like to move to nominate a fellow commissioner, commissioner stevenson, who has served alongside in several committees now and i have always appreciated your thoughtfulness, your ability to assess complex situations and sort out what is needed and what is unnecessary to address in the moment. i would very much like to move to make sure you lead our commission into 2020.

>> is the next question, are there any other nominations for president? >> do you accept? great. would you move forward? and we vote one at a time. >> do you want to do public comment? >> i was going to go public comment and then we will go from there. is there any public comment on this item? >> i want to say one thing. i accept gratefully and i'm very honored to be nominated, but i just want to say that if you weren't as busy as you are and were willing to step in again, i have been thrilled with you as our leader here. i appreciate all the service you have given us. >> any comments? we will go over the vote. all those in favor say r? -- say aye -- thank you.

we have a motion and we have a second. commissioner selman seconded the motion. all in favorite signal by saying aye. >> aye. >> any opposed? motion carried unanimously. thank you. [applause] moving on to the vice president. i would like to nominate commissioner eddie all to be the vice president of the commission i have had the honour of working with him and his commitment and passion to the issues that we are talking about these days, especially as we move into the racial equity and the committees and the great work. i think he has been a great leader in that. so i nominate you, to be the vice president of the commission for the year 2020.

i have to ask if you will accept , first of all. >> i accept. thank you. >> great. i have made a motion. we need a second. seconded. do we have any comments or any public comment on this item? >> i really want to personally thank you for all your great work and your leadership and your guidance. you really opened my eyes and a lot of different opportunities. thank you so much. same as the vice chair. she has also been a long-term community member to serve the commission. >> thank you. >> no public comment. we will take the vote. all those in favor say aye. >> aye. >> any opposed? motion carries.

thank you. congratulations. [applause] >> we are in excellent hands. next item. >> next item is item 13, committee reports. this item is for discussion. >> do you want to go first? >> i will try to be as brief as possible. on november 13th, 2019, the policy committee did a special meeting at climate -- and the climate manager gave a presentation on the support of climate related ordinances sponsored by the department including the ordinance and the board of supervisors file. concerning municipal dissipation as well as the ordinance concerning electric preferred buildings. there was also a presentation by the california air resources board on rechargeable landscaping equipment. we discussed his impacts to

worker health. and finally, there was a presentation with the chair of the san francisco urban forestry council who share the urban forest or council's recently streaked -- completed strategic planning process. we also discussed tools for planting new trees. we also heard from the senior environmental specialist about the decarbonization partnership between the department in zero emission task force with our anchor partners, as well as -- we also finally heard a presentation from the zero waste specialist about the implementation and pilot projects of kitchen zero s.f., which is a realtime tool using to track food purchasing and scaling wasted food. i conclude my report. >> commissioner stevenson? >> i have a note from staff that i should talk about the october

meeting, but i think we probably covered that in the november meeting, or did we miss it? >> we can do -- >> we had several presentations at the operations committee. one was a presentation on stakeholder engagement on our climate action update. we had a racial equity initiative presentation which we had a further discussion of today and we had our fiscal year 2019-2020 budget update, which then turned into the 2021 budget update that we had today. we also heard from cara who gives the presentation on the gassy video tonight. she gave us an update on the multifamily dwelling mailer and walked us through a lot of the analytics. we're really focusing on the metrics of the initiative that they are doing in operations. we really appreciate that.

our meeting a bit ago, we dove deep into the budget as we talked about earlier tonight. kevin who is the green business court nature of the department also came in and discussed with us some new initiatives with the san francisco green business. we heard a dynamic presentation about the oil programs. this is reaching out to people are recycling their own motor oil. they have recycled many gallons of used oil. that was it for our meeting.

>> any questions on these proposed committee reports? any public comment? next item. >> next item is item 14, announcements. announcements, commissioners? any public comment next item. >> next item is 15. new business or future agenda items. there is no action being given so i will just discussed. >> discuss along. [laughter] the next policy committee meeting is february 10th. the next commission meeting is march 24th and the next

operation committee is april 15 th. since we are at the start of the year, we're looking at a number of agenda items for full commission meetings, were coming up in particular we will review the commuter survey that we recently undertook and gotten results back from. since it is the beginning of the year, there will be a number of initiatives, ordinances that will make its way to the board of supervisors and i'm sure they will also be brought to the policy committee and the commission for recommendation whether the board should take action. a busy year looking ahead. >> i can't believe the next commission meeting is in march. it was just new year. [laughter] any questions on the report? any public comment? next item. >> next item is adjournment. the time is 7:34 p.m.

>> thank you and we are adjourned.

>> good morning, everyone, to

opening day of san francisco better market street. it is my great honor to introduce the mayor of san francisco, ms. london breed. mayor breed. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: well, well, well. this has been really a long time coming. there are so many people that made this possible. you know, we are really excited about what today means, and i know this will prove very challenging for a lot of people in the city, but our city is changing. when we think about the past and when market street was actually built over 150 years ago, the folks who had the vision for what market street could be stood right here at this very area and pointed west towards twin peaks with a

vision to make market street possible to extend to the hills of san francisco in twin peaks, and look at where we are today. in that time, they made it 120 feet wide, which was large back then, just knowing that market street would be a significant street and a significant street for san francisco and its future. and at that time, of course, over 150 years ago, the population was over -- a little bit over 50,000 people. and today, we have more than 800,000 people in san francisco. our city, at a time when i was growing up, you didn't see a lot of bicycles. you didn't see a lot of folks who were walking along market street other than mostly the downtown area at 5th and market. and now when you look at how much san francisco has grown, when you look at how many more buses, you see how many more cars and scooters and different modes of transportation and

people getting around, we know that there has to be something that changes in order to ensure not only the ability for people to get around more efficiently but to ensure safety. and, you know, sadly, we've had more than our fair share of collisions that have occurred along market street, and we know that there is a need to do something different, and we've already moved in that direction. the red bus lanes have been helpful, but it's not enough. we want to be able to get people to where they need to go in an efficient way, but this also is a way to support and protect our environment by increasing the ability to make muni more reliable, more people will use it, making trips 25 -- making trips