>> welcome to the sfmta online budget open house top to ask a question about the key transportation decisions to be made for fiscal years 2021, 2022. call (415)646-2222

[speaking foreign language]

>> good evening i'm jeffrey tumlin san francisco director of transportation. welcome to the sfmta budget online open house. i know that this is very difficult time for all of us as the coronavirus situation unfolds. we're all thinking about how we keep ourselves and family safe, how we deal with our children at home and how to prepare for the financial consequences unfolding all around the world. i'm grateful that you joined us at this time. we understand the challenge of having budget conversation given everything else that is going on. yet, in order for government services to continue, government agencies need to have a budget. we're mandated by the san francisco charter to submit a

budget to the mayor of san francisco and the board of supervisors by may 1st. a budget that is rooted in this agency's value. we understand that even if the mayor decides to use the emergency declaration to extend the deadline of our budget, we still need an adopted budget as a reference point for making the necessary service and financial cuts that will have to happen as the global financial disaster unfolds. we need a starting place for this conversation and that starting place needs to be rooted in our values. on the one hand, the details of our budget may seem unimportant. but at the same time, public transit is continuing to play an essential role and will so for months. it is on public transport that our essential workers get to work, that our residents get access to essential services.

it's also our parking systems and bike way system and other programs that allow essential work to continue even as we deal with this significant public health and financial crises. tonight, what we're trying to do is to take our public engagement process online so that we can hear from you, understand your concern and your questions. over the last three months, we completed hundreds of community engagements and we still know that we need additional engagement in order to finalize our budget even though public comments so far has resulted in significant changes to our original proposals. i like to continue that dialogue. first i want to introduce my colleague, victoria wise who will help me facilitate this meeting. you want to go over some of the details we established to help people engage online? >> thank you. good evening everybody. thank you so much for joining us today.

this open house is being broadcast on our website. you can find it on our twitter page on our facebook page as well as our youtube channel and you can also watch it on channel 26 and sfgov tv as well. the links to all these social media channels can be found on sfmta's website, sfmta.com/budget. also just to share with everybody, the recording of this hour and a half will be available on our website. if you weren't able to join us, you will be able to view the video later and can continue to submit your comments. just to show with you, the way we're going to do this is for the next 13 minutes, we're going to share with you a rerecorded video jeffrey recorded custom

days ago, share with you the challenges the agency is facing and dive into couple of details that ewith heard a lot about as it relates to fares. we'll play the video. once you have an overview, we'll come back live and work through some of the comments and questions that we'll be getting from you on various social media channel. while you're watching the video, please share your thoughts with us. you can leave us a voice mail at 646-2222. you can tweet us sfmta underscore muni. you can email us. sfmtabucket@.com. you can leave a comment on our facebook page. lots of different venues for us to engage. we appreciate you bearing with us as we try something totally

different in terms of public participation. other thing i want to share, please feel free to share your comments in chinese and or spanish. we have translators standing by. they translate your comments or questions. we unfortunately can't answer in chinese or spanish, staff will be getting back to you via email or voice and the language that you leave the question in with specific answers. let's watch the video. [video] >> i'm jeff tumlin san francisco director of transportation. our agency is working on our next two-year budget. ultimate reflection of our

agency's value. [inaudible]. tric[technical difficulties]

>> one question that i have for the crew, is it possible to show any of the slides that were embedded in the video? there's huge amount of data. for those listening at home, the entire content of this powerpoint presentation in we're going to show you, those details are all available at www.sfmta.com/budget. if you go and look at the materials there, somebody can tell me where to look, all of

the material that we're referencing including the details around our different proposals for fares as well as detailed proposals for cuts as well as detailed proposals for new services. can be found there. i will try to walk you through some of the highlights of this program. please bear with me. this is live tv and we were not prepared to do this. one of the first things that i want to say, the most powerful statement of any agency's value is its budget. the budget is a reflection of how we spend our money. it's about making decisions about what gets funded and what does not get funded. the budget must contend with incredibly difficult tradeoffs. one of the things we tried to do in creating this budget is to be very clear about what our agency's values in order to help

us address those inevitable tradeoffs. the most difficult trade-off we're facing given our serious financial constraints, is tradeoff between do we reduce or keep fares constant or do we improve service. or phrased different way, do we cut fares or do we cut service? do we keep the fares the same or cut service given the reality of our budget. i want to talk about our values. one of the things we value a great deal is system safety. here in san francisco, there are about 30 people who are killed result of traffic violence of ey year and 3000 are injured. we want to focus more on social equity. this means something very different than providing equal service to all sa san franciscas

it means prioritizing better choices for people who have the fewest cloyses. many ways for us this means prioritizing the delivery of public transit service particularly to the neighborhoods where people either face poor access to employment or inadequate access to schools or other critical services. this particularly means prioritizing access to neighborhoods that have been historically underserved. like neighborhoods in districts 10 and 11. particularly districts where we see high levels of residents of people of colour and also people living in poverty. another core value of ours is decarbonation of the transportation of the economy. transportation is well over half of the city's carbon dioxide. many you know as the economy has

improved up until last month, the congestion and vehicle miles traveled as well as the rate of driving have increased. all of that has resulted in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. another core factor that we're contending with in our budget, as congestion rises and as the rate of driving rises, as more people drive, our streets move fewer and fewer people in a given year. it's not that i'm necessarily a better person when i ride my bike or take the bus. i do take up one tenth of a space when i drive a car or ride in the back of lyft. in order to accommodate san francisco's significantly growing population and job space, it's very important that we manage our streets for the

movement of people rather than the movement of vehicles. this means prioritizing the most space efficient forms of transportation which incidentally are forms of transportation that are most used by low income people and most environmentally friendly. another key factor that we face, if you can go to the next slide, is the reality of our structural deficit. in san francisco, like in almost all municipalities in california, our expense rise with the cost of living but our revenue rises basically with inflation. in an up economy, the sfmta faces a widening structural deficit. there are many complex reasons in the tax code about why this is true. it's the reality of our agency. we faced a $66 million structural deficit as of a month ago. a deficit that is significantly widening in the face of the

current economic crises. in order to be able to deliver the existing service that we provide, we need more revenue in order to deal with our financial reality, we either need to find a means bringing in new revenue or we face service cuts. if you can go to the next slide, you can see how our revenues are tracking year over year for different sources of revenue. as a result, partly of uber and lyft are parking fee and fine revenues have been declining over the years, as parking demand declines. similarly as we've expanded our free and discount fare programs for muni, our fare revenue is in

slight decline. all of this is meant that san francisco mta is dependent upon general fund revenue. which is very susceptible to changes in the economy. the general fund is very susceptible to changes in the sales tax rate and for revenues like the hotel tax, all of which are rapidly declining in these economic times. all of this is covered. these core issues were covered by group of san franciscans and experts in transit from all over the country. that convened over the last six months, called the muni reliability working group. this group gave a rather brutal audit of the muni service. gave us very specific recommendations about how to improve the efficiency of the system and put the agency on a

stable financial footing in order to allow us to deliver on the transit service that san francisco needs as it continues to grow in its economy and its population. these recommendations are more important than ever given the current economic and public health situation. however, our budget does not include any of the recommendations for expanding service. instead, despite the financial catastrophe that is upon us, we do want to implement the recommendations that's the muni reliability working group, around stabilizing service and improving on the reliability, allowing us to become more efficient. the muni reliability working group recommendations were bold and specific and targeted improvements around the transit lines that needed it the most. many of which in the outer neighborhoods of south africa, n

francisco. which serves over 17 schools and other educational institutions. it is a workhorse route of the southern and western neighborhoods. our representation was to invest in rapid improvements on this line in order to meet the increasing demand for service and all those neighborhoods. we will not be able to move forward with any of the service improvement or equity recommendations even in our original state of a budget without a new source of revenue. which we require of the public. we also know that where we have invested in better safety improvements, we've seen significant positive outcomes. where we've invested in muni reliability improvements.

we've invested in safety improvements like the platforms on turk street and other corridors. we've seen dramatic reductions in crashes including the complete elimination of injury related crashes on places where we've made improvements on terra ball streets. we are capable of making dramatic improvements in the quality of service that all san franciscans experience in the transportation system. our budget included a 5-year capital program. that focused on hundred, really thousand small improvements or many higher ridership muni lines. for more detail on all of those projects, you can google

muni/sfmta for great deal of information. or see the detailed capital budget program at sfmta.com/bucket of budget. you'll see the details of our vision zero and major streetscape projects. cars versus pedestrian fatalities continue to be the highest cause of fatalities transportation related fatalities in san francisco. it requires significant investment in order to improve the reliability of the system including ongoing upgrades in the subway tunnel. finally, our capital program

includes significant improvements to our light rail system, completing the purchase of new light rail vehicles that would expand the reliability of our subway system and continue advancing the major improvements that we've made in speed, reliability and comfort on the bus system. we have even in this current financial crises, we will likely continue to have access to a significant amount of capital funding. we are not able to use this money for transit service operations. we can use it to advance our core priorities like social equity and safety. we're targeting those investments to the neighborhoods that have been most neglected. includes advancing our vision zero network, focusing the prop d tax on uber and lyft to advance quick build program that focuses on safety outcomes,

along with advancing educational campaign to improve safety outcomes. the most controversial topic that we have to contend with in in budget is our bus fares. muni fares. as many of you know, the sfmta has a policy called indexing. what this means is that every year, we raise fares by a specific percentage. that percentage is basically the average of the cost of living and inflation. so that our fares rise with the cost of delivering service. if we didn't increase fares with the cost delivering service, we would need to cut service in order to accommodate fares being the same. we would end up in a service and financial crises that we would require us to periodically implement a huge increase in fares that would be very painful

for all customers. in order to avoid both the service crises as well as the every 5-year huge increase in fares, we've decided instead to impose relatively modest increases in fares each year. we've heard a lot on this topic. including many calls for free muni for everyone or free muni for certain classes of people or to cap all our fares given the reality of the financial crises that all our riders are facing. there are some challenges, however, to stopping a fare increase. that it impacts our ability to deliver service. one of the things that is quite clear about the san francisco system is that even though there's what we call a price elasticity of demand for fare. ridership declines as we increase fares. the elasticity demand is far greater. if we cut service in order to

keep fares the same, that the impact on ridership loss will be greater. ridership loss will be primarily for higher income people who would simply flee to uber and lyft. lower income will be burdened by less frequent and more crowded service. in listening carefully to the public, we've proposed some different approaches. one of the things that we've discovered is that the demographics of who rides muni varies a lot depending on what fare product they use. [please stand by]

o

>> it attracts young people in san francisco. it also means that kids who forget their card no longer have to contend with fare inspectors. there are a lot of good reasons to extend free muni to youth. this doesn't cost us all that much money. similarly we are recommending that individuals who experience homelessness also get access to free muni. we expect that these people need to get to their appointments and social services and they require

public transit in order to get there. this is a program that we feel very confident that we can afford. we're also proposing that for that fare median that our lowest-income people use the most, the single-ride fare, that we cap it at $3 for both the next year and the following year. we've heard fairly loudly from our customers that that is important. that is our recommendation in the green as well as the pink column. in order to pay for that capping, we have two choices. we can either in the green column raise the clipper pass rate slightly. or in the pink column, we can narrow the discount that discount clipper users get to pay their fare. as you can see below the monthly

pass would rise to $81 and similarly the $2.75 individual clipper fare would rise to $2.80 instead. we think this is a much more efficient way of allowing us to get the revenue we need in order to retain service, while at the same time being very conscious of our neediest customers. we'll look forward to additional feedback from all of you on that proposal. next slide, please. we're also making a lot of adjustments in our fine policies. hearing from, again, a lot of people on this topic. we know that our fine policies should be guided by our desire to get compliance in our rules

to make the systems fair and efficient. it should not be guided by punitive objectives and should also be equitable across modes of transportation. we're constrained in how we manage our fines, but what we are trying to do is increase fines that are rooted in safety and decrease fines that are rooted in getting compliance particularly for people who are suffering from financial distress. we also want to be aware that, for example, the fine for riding transit and taking up 3 square feet of space should be less than the fine for not paying at your parking meter for taking up 200 square meters of space on a

san francisco street. you can find all of the detail in our budget proposal, but we're trying to maximize the possible fine given state restrictions for issues like parking in a bike lane or riding a scooter on the sidewalk, while reducing fines for things like not paying your muni fair, to the extent that that is allowable according to the state law. that is on the next slide as well. another area that is included in our budget is rethinking our approach to parking meters. as many of you know, in san francisco the reason we charge for parking is to make sure motorists can find an available parking space, creating availability of one or two parking spaces on any block or in any garage or parking lot.

we are trying to find the lowest rate that achieves that outcome. if we charge too high a rate, merchants would complain and customers and we would get less revenue. if we charge a rate that is too low, all the spots would be fill, merchants would complain, motorists would have to circle around the block, and we would get less revenue. we want our policy to be about customer availability and small business success. the reality is we bring in revenue from our parking meters. so as a result we're proposing two significant changes. one is extending the hours of enforcement in neighborhood commercial districts, particularly those where there is a lot of restaurant and entertainment uses, we want to

extend the hours to the extent that spaces are full. in order for people to drive to go to a restaurant in a neighborhood commercial district. this would apply only to places that demand is high. the second thing we want to do is look at sunday meter enforcement, at least on sunday afternoons. as many of you know, our sunday meter restrictions are rooted in an era where businesses were closed on sunday. now businesses are all open on sunday and we want to make sure we're supporting those businesses, while at the same time being very aware of the needs of the community. we're proposing to partner with neighborhood commercial districts and faith communities in order to roll that out in a way that is conscious of everyone's needs. with that, i think we should probably -- are we ready to go to questions now? >> we're ready to roll. >> thank you for accommodating

our on-the-fly response to our technology difficulties. we're happy now to take questions. once again, i would like to remind all of you that there is a tremendous amount of detail that is available at www.sfmta.com/budget. >> just thinking about what's going on with the coronavirus right now, jeff, our economic prospect team and obviously the city's budget and sfmta budget is going to be significantly affected. could you talk to us how we are handling the situation in this asylum of uncertainty. we're working on a budget and we don't know how our budget is going to be affected. how are we dealing with that. >> this is the craziest time to be developing a two-year budget, given the massive oment of economic uncertainty.

the only certainty we have is that our economic budget is uncertain. that is reason we are moving forward with the budget. we need a reference point for making decisions about what needs to be cut. we know significant budget and service cuts are coming and we need to be prepared for that. that's why we started this conversation about the budget with our values. it is only by having clarity about this agency's values that we will need to be able to make solid decisions about how to make cuts in a way that minimizes damage to the agency and minimizes the effects on the san franciscans we serve and those most vulnerable. i am not pretending that we are going to implement this budget on july 1. we will not have the resources to do so. all of the improvements that we're planning in here, none of

them are we going to be able to simply fund on july 1. what we need is the starting place for making the decisions about what we fund and don't fund and, particularly, how we make those cuts. this is a very challenging time for all of us, including the budget and policy things in every government agency. all of whom need to have a budget set of balances. >> very good. thank you. one of the things you talked about in this slide is the fact that this agency has a structural deficit. what i often hear from different sources is that sfmta has a deficit. can you break it down. >> i have spent my entire career in the private sector.

i understand how private companies operate and i've served a lot of public agencies. so i understand the -- how budgets work, particularly budgets that are oriented around providing the greatest amount of service at the least cost. one of the things that i've found is that with a few very specific exceptions, sfmta is a remarkably efficient agency. i have not found waste. to the extent that there is waste and we found some, about $5 million worth and this budget includes cuts to those waste categories, that's about it. my predecessors weathered the

last storms. it takes a lot of people to run an agency of this side, particularly people like bus operators. they are our biggest single class of personnel and they cost a lot of money in part because we have to pay them a living wage. most of the greatest service challenges that we've experienced at the sfmta are rooted in our thousand vacancies, to the extent that we have any financial flexibility here at the sfmta is because of the vacancies. vacancies that exist because we have not been as competitive with the private sector at being able to attract and retain talent as we need to be. we have to provide our workforce a living wage, and that's also something i know from the private sector. delivering any service-oriented organization is about attracting and retaining talent.

so our costs are driven by wages. that also means that our cost increases are driven by wages. in order to attract and retain talent, we have to increase wages with the cost of living in this region. all of you know what it is like to live in this region and face rising rents. we have to pay our workforce a living wage, which is not an exorbitant wage. at the same time, our revenues do not increase with cost of living. our revenues increase with inflation. so in a boom economic cycle, that gap between inflation and cost of living rises, exacerbating our structural deficit. this is a problem that basically every government agency in california faces and it's one of the things that we are absolutely going to have to be contending with, given the likely financial impact of global pandemic. a third factor also is that we

need to contend with growth. even though we've had -- we're in an economic crisis right now. over the last decade, san francisco has added about 30,000 housing units and about 220,000 jobs. those 220,000 jobs and 30,000 housing units have increased the need for us to deliver transportation services. and because our streets are of a fixed dimension, as the city grows, our cost per person actually increases because the work that we have to do is about making the transportation system more efficient. we can't just make the transportation system wider. i know all of this is rather complicated, but it's really clear to me coming from the private sector that there is not a lot of waste in this pie. it is a pretty efficient pie and that we need to find a way of

growing the pie in order to deliver the service that particularly our neediest san franciscans need. >> very good. thank you. now that we've covered the basics of structural deficit and why we have it. at the end of the day, our agency needs to have a balanced budget. so you and i know that in order to have that balanced budget, we are going to need to use some of our fund balance. can you explain what fund balance is and really talk a little bit about whether it's appropriate to use the funds right now in this particular economic circumstance that we find ourselves in. >> yeah. so public agencies basically have a savings account. it's our rainy day fund. it's a pot of money that we use when we're dependant on revenue sources that go up and down. it's the thing that allows us to flatten out our budget so we

don't have to do layoffs if one of our services is delayed or experiences a downturn. we have fund balance that is there to deal with cost overruns on our capital projects and to get us through rainy days. guess what, it is not just raining, but hailing and storming outside. so now is the time to actually use our fund balance. we've got to get through not just the next couple of months, but what is likely the next couple of years, depending on how the pandemic impacts the global economy and all of the sources of revenue that we rely on. one of the challenges we're facing using the fund balance is how much do we spread that out just to keep treading water or to slow down the pace by which we need to make major service cuts. do we do that or do we accelerate spending in our fund balance in order to generate

trust with the electorate in order to go after a new funding source. something that becomes particularly challenging, depending on the overall state of the san francisco economy. that's one of the core questions we're going to be facing over the next couple of months, what should our rate of draw down be on our fund balance, knowing that our total fund balance is about two months of payroll. >> thank you. now i want to dive into the questions that we are getting online and through e-mail. we have an e-mail asking that we prioritize new lrv-4 in our budget. can you share what we're going to do about that and share with folks if we will continue to be sliding in the chair. >> thanks to the board of supervisors last week, we now have approval to move forward with purchasing the next round of lrv-4s, the new red siemens

cars. we're getting 63 of them to replace the breda cars that have the problems with the doors getting stuck and delaying the subway system. shifting to the new light rail vehicles will be a significant benefit of resolving some of the delays that all of us face practically every morning, given the poor reliability from our older cars. we've heard a great deal of feedback from our cars. we're changing a couple of the passenger details on those cars, including adding butt divets in the perimeter seating. those of us who ride the j church when there's significant grade on the train, we get to know each other much more than we should and that's particularly problematic. i shouldn't joke about this, but

given social distancing. having little scoops in the seats will allow people to have great greater distancing. with people with spinal difficulties, having a few forward. facing and rear-facing seats allows them to have a ride with significantly less spine or bone or muscle or neck pain. so we've done some of those changes as well as some changes to the handle bars and the grips in order to be able to accommodate a whole variety of requests. we're lowering the seats by 2 inches to help some of our shorter riders. we've gotten some complaints from our taller riders so we will retain some of the higher seats over the wheel wells.

i think what we're going to do is to maximize happiness, knowing that it's not possible to make all of our customers happy. one other comment that we've also heard is complaints about the perimeter seating in general. one of the reasons why we've switched to perimeter seating, like most urban operators around the world is it allows us to fit more people on the trains and allows better circulation on the trains so that standees or people sitting allows people to get out to the doors. this makes more room for people and maneuverability. one of the biggest problems that muni currently faces and likely will for some time is crowding on our buses and trains. as the economy changes, we expect crowding will continue. >> very good. part of this budget i know that

we are doing just a tiny bit, but a tiny bit of service cuts. we are eliminating the 83x express bus. and sunny jolly e-mailed us opposing this change. she felt that the riders need this change and that the 47 would have a hard time picking up the slack and that the commute times would be longer. can you talk to us about the rationale of eliminating the 83x. >> if you have no idea what that is, this was in the press a couple of years ago called the twitter express from the cal train station over to basically the twitter building in midmarket back and forth. it's a short line. it runs at peak only and gets about 300 riders a day. i don't know if it's the lowest ridership lines, but one of the

lowest. among the ridership lines it has redundant service on the 47 as well as other lines, the t and the n lines. people can take the train and the subway. this is an opportunity that we have to get rid of a line that is low ridership and serving primarily an affluent clientele and a line that has abundant other choices, including taking advantage of the new protected bike lanes that we have installed on townsend street, 5th, market, as well as the scooter lanes. there are abundant other alternatives available for the 83x. >> excellent. so we talked a lot about fares during your presentation. i have to say that we heard from so many organizations, transit riders union about fares and we

listened and addressed some of their concerns. now i do want to spend a little bit of time talking about fees. so we have an e-mail asking what changes are being proposed to the towing fees. this writer is wondering how are we addressing the challenges around towing folks during these hard times. we talked about towing quite a bit with the public already. so if you can share some of the changes we're making as a result of that feedback. >> that's right. we've got hundreds of letters and e-mails on the topic of towing and we've heard some very passionate testimony at our board and many of the community workshops that we did before the coronavirus started. towing is a difficult topic, particularly for people who are most vulnerable, and especially people who are forced to live in

their cars and who have no other place to live. so we took a really close look at our overall towing program, all of the reasons we tow, as well as what are the costs and revenues that we get from the program. to my surprised, we lose money on the towing program. our tow fees are very high and on every tow, we lose a huge amount of money. one of the things we're looking at is to the extent practicable, where it's not needed for safety or accessibility reasons, simply reducing the amount of towing we're doing. on streets like pine and bush where the parking lane is tow-away at peak, do we really need that, particularly with traffic levels so low, given that that is going to continue for some time. why don't we just eliminate that and save some money.

similarly, for people who are living in their cars, certainly for the time being, we are eliminating towing for people who are housed in their vehicles during the current health crisis. and for our proposed budget, once we're out of the health crisis and into a better economy. we still need a mechanism to get rid of abandoned vehicles or for dealing with people who are creating actual social problems on the street as a result of car encampments. that said, we want to be compassionate to people and identify locations where they can avoid having to live on the street, by instead making do in their vehicles. so we're proposing a couple of changes. one of those is creating a new

one-time zero-dollar fee for people who are homeless who have had their vehicles towed. this is important frankly because we're not making any money off this program. there may be times we inadvertently tow somebody's car who is living in that car. we don't need to punish them more. they don't have the resources to pay. we might as well make that free. we have had a program for a discount tow fee for people who are low income. the current fee is $238. we want to reduce that to $100. we want there to still be -- we don't want people to block driveways or curb cuts. we want there to be a disincentive, but we want that to be merely a disincentive and

not a way to make money, reducing it from 238 to 100. we're reducing the low-income boot fee from $100 to $75. similarly, we're proposing for other folks to make some slight adjustments to the first-time tow fee to 524. and raising the repeat tow fee to 524. treating typical income people the same but putting in a reduction for low-income people. and at the same time trying to reduce towing across the board except for reasons related to health and access to property. >> very good. i want to stay with the topic of fees a little bit longer and

make sure that we cover and talk about taxis. there's lots of things going on with taxis. folks are struggling with the industry. a couple of people have written to us. one person asks, why are there no funds indeed the fiscal year 2021-22 budget for taxiing. another person says what are we doing to support the taxi drivers generally and particularly right now in particular given the coronavirus. >> yeah, this is, as many of you know, a very, very difficult for our taxi operators. i feel strongly that san francisco needs to maintain a strong, publicly regulated taxi industry that is positioned to compete well against ride hail companies like uber and lift. we have to recognize the

challenges moving forward and setting it up for long-term financial success and for a whole host of reasons. one is for how much our taxi drivers have invested in the program but how dependant they are for their livelihood. we are really dedicated to doing what we can in order to ensure their success and reasonable livelihood for the operators. our budget as it currently stands contains a couple of items related to taxis. in the five-year improvement item, there is a small bit around taxis that includes $30,000 each year for advertising. we're in coordination for the advocates for taxi operators are

looking at using their remaining funds to support advertising, to promote the use of taxis in -- as a more labor-friendly way of getting around the city. certainly there's something that i choose when i need a rise is our taxi service. so right now the funds that we have are nearly depleted within but we've got about $300,000 remaining in that fund and trying to find out a way of funding if we spread it out too thinly, but which could support advertising if our board approves. in the short run, we are making sure that we are eliminating driver renewal fees for the extent of the health emergency. drivers can continue working out on the street without paying their renewal fees while we're

in this health emergency. it's the least that we can do in order to support our operators. we're also thinking about if we can waive the taxi fees for the next two fiscal years, given the huge impacts being felt by our taxi operators. those are things under discussion outside of our budget but which we would likely do. >> i'm going to shift my bicycle gear and move on and talk a little bit about the golden state warriors. during this last fiscal year the chase arena was open and we were successful in that opening because this agency partnered with the golden state warriors and provided excellent transit and parking management and curb management. one of the most innovative and really exciting things that we did was that the muni ticket is

included in ticket of your event or golden state warrior game. that's an exciting development and i think it has facilitated folks riding transit to the events or to the basketball games. so how do you envasing maybe expanding that program? in particular, are you envisioning partnering with the giants to do something similar? >> i think the m.t.a. should be so proud of the work that you did. all that happened before i arrived, i had nothing to do with it. i sat back and watched and was braced for a disaster and instead it was a phenomenal success. you should be proud of that success. sfmta charges $1.50 on services

on those nights and makes it possible for the arena to function with people coming in and out and without a lot of gridlock. this is an amazing success. so i would love to expand on the success of that program. if anyone from the san francisco giants is listening, call me. we're ready to expand the success of a program like that. similarly, if and when our convention center is open again for business, and it will be, i would love to have every conventioneer badge be a muni fast pass. i would love all the hotels plastic card keys to be a muni fast pass. for all major employers in san francisco to chip in to help us deliver the transit system that

we need, particularly given the economic crisis, while at the same time having us deliver free transit to their employees. as an agency, we're really eager to make some savvy deals in order to be able to maintain service in these times. and it's going to require really, really active participation from the private sector in order to allow us to do that. >> very good. one question that we get from time to time is about our crossing guard program. in particular one person asked can we increase the number of hours that crossing guards work. for example, the way it is today, we have crossing guards in the morning for an hour and a half making sure our kids get to school safely and a shift in the afternoon when everyone is leaving school. it's not a long day. a person or two are curious can we give the crossing guards more

hours. what do you think about that? >> i love our crossing guards. they help me cross the street at harvey milk school. they provide a phenomenal amount of service and keep our kids safe. in our budget, he had a choice to make about whether we expand the program to more schools or expand the hours to individual crossing guards. if we add more hours, we serve fewer schools. if we add for guards, we can serve more schools and enhance safety. we have chosen the latter and have allocated additional budget to hire 20 new crossing guards, but not expanded their hours. in fact, in talking to many of the guards, including the ones i have seen, most of them live in the community.

many of them are older adults. all of them are interested not so much in more hours, but are happy to get out in the community every day. we feel more safety for more schools is going to serve san francisco better than more hours for fewer guards. >> very good. live from twitter, what is the planned schedule for sfmta to hire more supervisors in 2020? >> yes, this is a hugely important question and one of the questions that comes straight out of the muni reliability working group recommendation. if you want a lot of detail on that topic, search for muni reliability working group and also look into the detail of our budget. so in order to -- so back in the last recession, back in 2008, in

order to hold onto our core service, the previous administration widely chose to slash line supervision, the people who are in charge of making sure that buses are evenly spaced out, that operators leave their terminals on time, when there is a problem there are many places in the system that we have recurring problems. that there is a supervisor there with operational experience that knows how to sort out those problems. in order to improve reliability and to have steadier service, we need to staff up with those supervisors. those supervisors can also take advantage of the investments that we've made in technology. years ago people thought that all of the global positioning satellite trackers on the buses would allow us to automate supervisor. in reality, what we find is that that data requires a detailed understanding of what's

happening out on the street and what buses can and cannot actually do. so what we're finding is that having a new array of supervisors allows them to get the data that we're getting, which basically is a force multiplier on the supervisors and where we're applying the supervisors, we're getting huge increase in reliability as well as headway maintenance. this is a question of whether we will actually be able to hire the new supervisors. >> i'm getting a question. any job opportunities offered to recent college graduates at the sfmta. i'll pipe in and say that we of course have an internship program that is amazing at sfmta, truly a training-ground.

many people who have gone through our internship program end up working at sfmta. and really people should be looking on our linkedin website and the city website. we post a diverse range of positions. it's important to retain and attract talent. >> if you google jobs with the sfmta, the jobs portal will come up. another position that just opened up just today is our transit ambassador program, which is a really fascinating job. it's for entry-level people, particularly san franciscans,

who live in the southeastern neighborhoods to ride our school tripper services in order to help ensure that muni is civil. it's our alternative to having a police force ride muni. instead we train people in the community who understand the kids in their neighborhoods and can engage with riders in order to support civil behavior and that we all need to get to what we are getting to. >> there are 13 of those that we're advertising today. another person from twitter says why is the fine for fare evasion in some cases more expensive than a parking violation ticket? can sfmta look into the

aggressive action that requires payment for fare. >> this is important to me. it was one that would take too long for our budget conversations, but we are going to take a longer program that may require advocacy at the state level that restrict our ability to manage fares. it is very important to me that we look at our fare evasion program not as a way of making revenue off citations, but as a way of encouraging people to pay their fair share. rather than charging people fines, i would so much rather people who haven't paid their fare, instead be required to buy a clipper card that would be the value of that fine, but instead gets them into the business of actually -- of paying their fare. or instead of asking them to pay

a fine, that it allows them to contribute their time to a community service function. the thing that irritates me is the fine for not paying your $3 bus fare for taking up 3 feet on the bus is greater than paying your parking fine for 300 square meters on the street. we need to equalize the fares for the impact they have on the system. there is too much complexity or resolving all of that in this particular budget, but that is something we are absolutely committed to coming back to and revisiting in several phases over the coming year, particularly relative to the legislative effort we want to have at the state with the

equity question as well. >> very good. staying with fares, we have a question, do parking permits go up by the same amount as the muni fares. why is parking so much cheaper than a muni pass if we are transit first? >> speaking of things that drive me nuts and require legislative change. our residential parking fees are currently $144 a year. we're raising them by some tiny amount. a residential parking permit is basically $0.30 a day to store your car on public property in our neighborhood or at least have a license to do so. the reason it is only $144 a year is that it is illegal for us to charge more for the residential parking permit than it costs us to administer that parking program.

so this is really frustrating. unlike parking meters, which we have a great deal of flexibility in terms of how we set the rate, the residential parking permit program is fundamentally broken. a result of that is in our urban communities, it is a hunting license. it is not a tool for making sure that residents coming home at night can find a parking space near their homes. changing that requires significant changes to state law as well as changes to a court decision called richardson v.arlington. we need to figure out what's the optimal way for managing parking in our residential neighborhoods that provides some reasonable assurance that our residents can

find a parking spaces near their home, at night, in the rain, makes it difficult for commuters to the financial district to park their car in the neighborhood to avoid paying in the garage and at the same time make it is it possible for the employees in our neighborhood commercial districts to find a place that they need to park that's not just in front of the business across the street. it's part of the complete madness of the rules governing that looked only at a single mode at a time. we want to think comprehensively across all modes of transportation and have the tools to manage the entire right of way in san francisco for the public good. again, would love to take care of that in this budget, but we really can't. i should add as well, on the parking meter side, again, it is

our policy that the parking meter rates achieve a good rate in the communities. if we doubled the parking meter rates, we don't double revenue. our rates for parking have a much greater impact on the demand for parking than our muni fares. so we're trying to have a parking meter rate that optimizes revenue and accessibility to the commercial districts at the same time. these are some of the many things we struggle with as we're trying to put together this budget that brings together the budget that we need and that does so in an equitable way for those who travel to san francisco, whether by foot or bus or skateboard. >> moving on to an e-mail. what low-cost measures will muni

undertake to improve service. for example, providing faster service to make the service cheaper to provide. is muni willing to give more priority to buses through signal priority as an option or to eliminate bus stops that are spaced too closely together, i would add to that maybe doing transit-only lanes, and so on. >> this is a program that i'm so excited to move forward with. most of that was developed before i arrived, but that we have new tools to move forward really quickly. this is called the muni forward program. you can google that on our website. but just last month, our m.t.a. board of directors gave us authority to implement our muni forward program so much faster than before. as some of you will know, we have this thing called the quick build program.

we applied it to bike lanes where we go in and engage with a community in the corridor and do some pilot implementation with some cheap and easily reversible materials with paint and plastic posts. you've seen it and some of it looks ugly and slash dash in part because we wanted it to that way. we wanted to get data and make adjustments as we go along. in the corridors where we've made these bike lanes, we've seen huge increases in bike ridership. we've also been able to generate trust with the businesses and residents in those corridors. we've also been able to make adjustments in realtime based on

the data. we then make a report and decide to make the changes permanent. then there will be a separate project that uses concrete and trees and nice materials. we want to take all of that success and apply it to muni. we've already seen the muni forward projects, where we did a thousand small projects, including implementing the five rapid. the result of that was a 60% increase of ridership and a 40% decrease in collisions on the street. this was a success for a relatively low-cost project. that project took us a couple of years to implement. we can now do many of these projects more quickly. we've been experiments with that

on the nine. we want to move faster than in the past. the muni forward program and the new projects that were just approved by the m.t.a. board on tuesday allow us to move forward. if we have any capital money and can maintain our current staffing levels, we are ready to move forward with dramatic improvements on the muni lines that our riders use the most. >> i have a specific question asking us when will the fare increases start. >> so if we get approval in april for the fare changes, those would be in effect on july 1 -- i'm sorry, i'm being corrected. if we get approval in our budget

in april, the fare changes would go into effect on september 1. this is going to give us time to actually understand what are the implications of the financial impacts of the global pandemic. so again, i want to emphasize why we're wanting to approve this budget now. we need a budget that is clear about its values and we need a reference point for making changes. our current budget is not very rooted in values. it's pretty strict and rooted in values.

. >> one very important question that's not related to the budget that we're getting, but it's absolutely critical is from a youtube user asking are we cleaning our buses. >> yes. this is definitely a question we've been getting almost every day. we're doing a couple of things. every night when the buses and trains go to sleep at night, they are thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed and completed desanitized. we're fortunate, given all the guidance from disease control and global authorities is that the virus itself is fairly delicate. it's easy to kill the virus with straightforward materials. we're making sure we're doing a thorough cleaning and similarly we're doing a wipe down using simple chemicals four times a

day. as the epidemic has gone on, we're also gone on to activate what are disaster service workers. all of us who work for the city, one of the things we signed is that in the event of an emergency, we can become endeared to serve essential functions. one of those functions is increasing the sterilization of our vehicles during the middle of the day when operators are taking a break. i am doing my car cleaner trainer duty this friday morning. we feel -- sorry. we feel very strongly that all of us here at the sfmta are in the service of the public and that we're not just going to ask our maintenance crews to step it up even more than they have. in fact, the thing that is making me most proud of serving this agency right now is the way

our but operators, maintenance crews, communication teams, station agents, they are all here at basically a 100% level. they understand that they are in service to the public. it is my job and the job of the professionals to serve our operators and other frontline workers, which means we need to step it up to protect our operators and protect our riding public. so i will be serving my shift on cleaning down the vehicles in the coming vehicles and i'm expecting the same from my other managers. this is the time this agency has to come together and to remind our service mission to the public and to our frontline workers. >> excellent. >> as you can see, i feel a little strongly about that. >> yes, and i'm glad that you do. we will be working together and

we will get through this very challenging time. once we do and looking a little bit into the future, i want to talk to you about -- and bring you back to the budget. we talked about the structural budget and the fact that it's going to grow over time. in the long term, we're going to need to think about ongoing new revenue sources. can you talk about what work has been done to identify new revenue sources, what they look like, and what are your thoughts on that. >> it was about a year ago, the 2045 work, it's not like our structural deficit is a new problem, but an ongoing problem that all transportation agencies in california face. this program investigated all of the various ways that sfmta could either temporarily or, better yet, permanently create a

revenue program that would close the gap and deliver the service that san franciscans need. there is a long list of those measures. san francisco now has the authority to create a special vehicle license fee that would go to transportation. that is a possibility that has not polled well. here in california the things that tend to poll the best are sales tax measures for transportation. we could consider doing a special election at any time to put a sales tax measure on the ballot. it is too late for the november 2020 election. putting something on the ballot requires a huge amount of work and will compete with other priorities.

we could go to the voters for a general obligation bond that would be particularly useful for capital money, but could also for a certain degree be used for operating support. one mechanism we're particularly interested in is a community benefits district. this is a district where individual property owners vote to tax themselves on their property value in exchange for specific community benefits programs which could include a expansion of the transit service. it is one of the easier taxes to talk about administratively that doesn't have to be tied to a major election. we're not going to be having a major election for a while after november 2020. another thing that has been talked about as well is changes to the ride-hailing tax.

voters approved last november which is bringing in a fair amount of money, but not a lot given our needs. there are different ways of taxes ride hail. this is a fee on using ride hail. so it doesn't tax the way in which ride hail operators drive around empty, which is a significant portion of their time. another really, really important revenue measure that is currently under study and is arguably, if it is done appropriately, the most equitable and sustainable way of closing our revenue gap, is congestion pricing. this is similar to what milan and london and singapore and stockholm have done, which is to say that for every commodity in

our society, we use price to balance supply and demand. in mobility we use time to balance supply and demand. so congestion is simply what happens when the demand for mobility equals the supply. and rather than using price to balance supply and demand, we asked people to queue and this reduces the amount of people our transportation system can serve. it is a huge problem. in 2013, the san francisco transportation authority, which is our sister authority, did a downtown congestion study that looked at how much revenue could be raised by charging a fee to drive in and out of downtown san francisco during the peak time. it was focused on revenue and it resulted in many concerns by people who said that this is just a way of taxing the poor in

order to allow rich people to drive more easily downtown. that was not implemented. this time around we're asking a different question, which is how can we use systematic mobility pricing in order to advance mobility and to allow our streets to move more people. what if we looked more holistically about this pricing and looked at it as rent. i charge $3 on the bus, but it's free to drive down the boulevard to get downtown if your office gives you free parking. why am i charging someone to use our roadways efficiently and making it free for the most inefficient use of our mobility space? similarly, for example, for a

shift worker who works in a restaurant downtown who starts their shift at 5:00 p.m. and has to drive downtown at 5:00 p.m. because when they get off work at 2:30 in the morning there's no transit service. it's cheaper for me to subsidize their drive trip or uber or lyft trip than to invest in better transit service at 2:30 in the morning. how can we think about advancing the he could by basically stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor, rather than stealing from everyone to advance the poor. these are complicated questions and i would encourage all of you to follow the sfmta downtown congestion study and get involved in that, particularly as economic conditions are changing, to make sure as we think about mobility pricing

that we're using it in a way that advances equity and makes it easier for everyone to move around san francisco and that values people's time, including low-income people who have the greatest time burdens. low-income people are more likely to work multiple and shift jobs. i'm not fired when i'm late for a meeting. shift workers are fired if they're 10 minutes late too often for their jobs. this is a way longer answer than you wanted, but it's a question that's super important to me. >> we are at time, but i wanted to wrap up. >> i went over time. >> these are important topics, but i wanted to thank everyone for joining us and appreciate the time that you were taking to write and to engage with us. these are important questions so we're grateful for everyone's engagement.

do you want to offer any closing remarks? >> the engagement that we're doing is substantive. we've got thousands of e-mails, comment cards, letters, all kind of contributions. i want you to know that we take these comments seriously. our staff have read every single one of those comments, and i have read most of them themselves, including all of the comments i get on the twitter feed, which is hundreds and hundreds. i'm sorry i don't respond personally. again, i want to emphasize that there is no greater statement of an agency's values than our budget, and that's why we're trying to build values into this budget, while being aware that we are in very, very economic times, our balance must balance, and we have deal with tradeoffs, these tradeoffs of fares versus service. we have hard choices to make as

i know all of you do. i wish you all the best in these difficult times and that you stay safe and your family stays safe. thank you so much for listening. [♪] i'd to call to or the meeting of the public utilities commission.

today is tuesday, march 10. if we could have the roll call. president ann moller caen is expected shortly. the vietor here. moran here. maxwell here. paulson here. >> the next item is the approval of the minutes. any public comments on the minutes? hearing none, all those in favor? opposed? motion carried. next item. >> item 4 is general public comment, members of the public may address the commission on matters that are within the commissioner's jurisdiction and are not on today's agenda. >> i have three speaker cards here. the first is eileen. good afternoon. >> eileen, coalition for san

francisco neighborhoods on my own behalf. i live two blocks from sunset reservoir. i attended the community meetings before the retro fit of north basin. when asked why south basin was not being receipt -- retrofitt d retrofitted, it made no reference to north basin. in the puc report from 2018, the report states that both basins have been retrofitted. in the current 10-year capital plan, the plan does refer to south basin. currently there is an $8 million allocation in fiscal years 28-30. the line item is line 109 in the

water enterprise spreadsheet. the item description is to update the 1996 risk assessment report, the project justification states, i quote, sun set south basin is critical to the water supply distribution and will be need to be repaired. if not made, the long-term repairs will be significantly more costly and the collapse of the roof could result in a major interruption of water service". the project plan fails to mention the loss of life or property in the surrounding neighborhood. yesterday i was at the capital planning committee asking that the puc item be continued and the puc plan amended. i'm circling back to "the chronicle" article. it's on the side of the hill, naturally, and as such is

classified as a dam. the main concern for the reservoir in the case of a large quake is the roof. without seismic improvements, the roof could sway laterally with the movement of the earth. it could collapse and possibly damage the pipe that brings clean water from hetch hetchy. in that case, the supply of drinking water to much of the city could be cut off. even if the roof stays intact -- [bell ringing] -- enough damage could be done so contaminants on top of the roof, mostly bird droppings could get into the water supply and cause health concerns. >> thank you. >> did you say there was information? okay, good, thank you. francis is next. good afternoon. >> good afternoon.

so, commissioners, when the advocates for our citizens come here and talk to you all about something, it's because they're concerned about what is happening in the community. and i think we got to take -- make note of it and give some feedback. what is happening is the corruption in the city has reached saturation point. so much so that in the marina times you can read all of it. not only that, this information goes all over the world and many of them send me an e-mail asking me whether it's right, wrong or whatever. and this is a shame that has been brought to our city. i mention to you, commissioners,

that you allow brought to the fore, either by the mayor or the board of supervisors, and it's a very difficult job to represent the taxpayers and the citizens. but it is not right for us, the taxpayers, those who are doing due diligence, to read that thousands and millions of dollars are wasted. i mean it's shocking. and some of the commissioners -- i won't say everybody -- but some of them think it's okay. it's not okay to waste taxpayer's money. now, we are trying -- if you

look at the sfpuc and all the projects, there is a lot of improvement to be made. why are we trying to buy things from pg&e? why? why? on one hand, people are saying i don't have money, on the other hand they're ready to spend billions of dollars to play -- [bell ringing] -- to dance the tango with pg&e. there are san franciscans who are monitoring all this thing. there are many san franciscans who are interested in ethics, in morals, standards. so i'm just bringing to your attention that this city needs a lot to do and move in the right direction. thank you very much. >> thank you. i'm going to hand the chair back to the chair.

>> thank you. ann clark. my name is ann clark, i wanted to let you know we had a wonderful women's meeting at the club and the two people we were honoring is ann and francesca. it was a tremendously interesting program. this is our third and now we're beginning to have younger women, middle-aged women, older women all together talking about what we see and think is important. but ann and francesca really came forward and talked to us and let us know -- we also had gloria duffy, the president of the commonwealth club.

you can see there were a lot of women there. there were men. i want the men to come to. we will invite you, tell you come in. but once again, we want to thank you from the commonwealth club for ann and francesca and for the lunch and the fact that we all got together and had talking at our tables, and talking to each other. and bringing forward a lot of wonderful cooperative information. so thank you, thank you, thank you. and i will give these to donna. they have their names on them. and we'll plan again for next year. there certainly will be a next year. ann, thank you very much. i hope you like the cup. i found it by accident. >> president caen: well, first of all, i have to tell you about the cup. the cup is a herb king cup that i use every morning with my tea.

my morning tea. and i think about you. and i'm certain that francesca would like to speak, too, but the two of us were so honored to be recognized by the commonwealth club. and we had a great time. in fact, i think we're a great horse and pony show [laughter]. in terms of talking about the public utilities commission. and also, you know, our life and what has happened. so again, thank you so much. we'll always remember this honor that you've bestowed upon us. >> you all were wonderful and it was wonderful to have that kind of conversation going back and forth. and, ann, the interesting thing is, i found that cup by accident and i decided that we had three people who were talking and i

couldn't give it to just one person, so francesca got the cup. >> i did and i've been using mine for morning coffee as well. thank you so much. it really was a lovely luncheon. what a great setting with the bridge as the backdrop and the ferry building. i think everybody enjoyed themselves and learned a lot. i want to thank you. >> we'll do something again and oh, you had your silver dollars. >> absolutely. >> waiting for the gold rush. >> waiting for my daughter's tooth to fall out for that. >> your daughter doesn't have a tooth that has fallen out yet? >> they've all fallen out. you never know. >> silver dollar, i'm going to shine it up and it's going to my granddaughter's christmas stocking this year. she'll be thrilled.

so, back to business here. communications. i should ask, any more public comment? all right, moving on. communications. commissioners? any comments? seeing none -- mr. kelly. >> report of the general manager. so the first item is a bay delta water control plan, steve ritchie with update. >> assistant general manager for water. there is very little to update on this. the main activity has been -- continues to be the state of california suing the department of interior about the biological

opinion that was released on february 19 in the state suit on february 20. we've been at least tracking who is suing whom and who is joining in the suits. the most recent information was that several environmental groups sued the department of interior and the state water contractors have joined that suit on the side of the bureau of reclamation. so there are reportedly conversations going on between the state and federal government that we're not a party to at this point, so we don't know where this will end up. if it will end up in a potential settlement or just be pursued in litigation. we're all -- all the parties of the voluntary agreements are watching with interest at this point, because that effort is on hold until there is resolution or direction given on behalf of the state and federal water projects. that's it.

>> president caen: we talked about a couple of resolutions in support of the lawsuit, so that is still in progress, right? >> yeah, and i believe also we looked to scheduling this matter for consideration potentially in closed session at the next meeting involving our litigation. >> president caen: thank you. >> any other comments? any public comment? seeing none, kelly. >> the next item is update on pg&e bankruptcy and city acquisition offer. barbara hill. >> good afternoon. assistant general manager for power. i'm here to provide a brief update on the pg&e bankruptcy and the city acquisition offer. i'll provide an update on three topics today. the bankruptcy case in federal court, the california puc bankruptcy activities and our education efforts. first off, the case in the federal bankruptcy court.

yesterday, pg&e filed additional revisions to its plan of reorganization and the disclosure statement. the hearings in the federal case on the disclosure statement are under way and projected to conclude march 16. it's unclear how the filing of revisions will affect the plan and the overall schedule. we call that pg&e settled with many parties and capped the wildfire-related claims, however, the state and federal governments were not a party to the settlement and they have outstanding claims. the federal emergency management agency and california state agencies participating together have filed objections to the treatment of their claims. the bankruptcy court has ordered mediation to address these state and federal government claims. one of the parties that is a key participant in the settlement of claims is the tort claimants committee.

they represent many wildfire victims. they have filed a motion expressing concerns that the pg&e's plan is too leveraged to support pg&e stock prices. under the plan, wildfire victims compensation will be funded in part from the sale of pg&e stock managed by the fire victim's trust. those sales would occur over time after pg&e emerges from bankruptcy. so they will have a vested interest in the financial health of pg&e. the city also expressed concern about how leveraged pg&e will be under its plan. and that kind of brings us to the second item i wanted to talk about, the california puc bankruptcy plan. our testimony at the california pub puc made it clear that pg&e's plan increases by 65% the utilities borrowing. that it creates an unwieldy level of indebtedness that will

hamper pg&e's ability to operate as a viable entity and that will substantive substanti s increase the costs. it will raise the likelihood of default. the likelihood of failure to fund capital needs. it will force pg&e to raise rates. rates that are already among the highest in the nation. the evidencery hearing is being conducted by the california puc on the bankruptcy plan have concluded. the briefs in the case are due friday, also due friday are responses to ruling from the commission president. that ruling asked parties to address a number of issues that pg&e did not adequately address in its direct testimony. things like safety and organizational structure. so there is a lot going on at the california puc and the

federal case and we'll continue to brief you on that as we appear every two weeks. finally, our education efforts, we've enhanced our education efforts through the website i've been telling you about, public power s.f..org. it's where residents and stakeholders can go to help themselves to information about the acquisition efforts. we can report as of march 10th, we've had 2665 unique visitors to the website. that's about a thousand more than i reported two weeks ago. about 175,000 people have been reached by our pushing that content out on social media. 77 unique individuals have signed up to receive e-mails and updates from us. we issued our first e-mail this week that summarized the five things you should know about the bankruptcy case. and a majority of the traffic to

the website has come from social media. and from people who are stopping and directly typing in the url to their computer. so we have active listeners and learners out there. we're working with neighborhood newspapers on print advertising. that was a question, you had asked, commissioner maxwell, so we're working with the local neighborhood newspapers to increase the education. so the website will continue to educate people about our efforts and the benefits of our power work. again, that is public power sf.org. encourage you to check it out. happy to take questions. >> president caen: commissioners? what is the nature of the response that you're getting? >> so to the education campaign? so we're not getting information back in at this point. we haven't really gotten many notes, but what we're doing is

pushing out the information and we can see that people are actively engaged with it. and so that is -- that's what i'm reporting today. we have not asked questions and solicited responses. that may be part of the future. i'll find out from the communication folks. >> president caen: that's interesting to know. >> thank you. >> president caen: any public comment? >> all right, next item is the sewer system improvement program quarterly report. stephen robinson. >> afternoon. director of wastewater programs, to respect time, i have a slimmed down version of the quarterly update and then i'll go over the wastewater quarterly report as well you have in your

packet. just a few slides to talk about ssip first. used to seeing this chart. it looks different than last time. for the program status of the 70 projects in phase one of ssip representing $2.9 billion, currently 37.1% complete with $950 million expended at the close of december. last quarter for reference we closed at 34.7, so making progress. specifically in this quarter, we were able to get the poje to a bid -- project to a bid and award phase. this chart looks very green. representing construction compared to what it was in the last report. so we have 18 projects in pre-construction in the blue color. 16 projects in green. and 36 projects now in the gray

colors. so just a few highlights of the projects. the baker beach green street was referred to as the richmond green infrastructure project. there are three specific locations in the project. during this quarter, the contractor opened the road to traffic during the nonworking hours in the work site. on slope stabilization on the south side commenced with the planning. the paving of the parking strip was installed, so the project is moving well ahead. issues and challenges reflected in the quarterly report mention the shallow pg&e lines. new delay to the substantial completion is forecasted. we can absorb that in the

schedule. specific one you've heard of, the new head works facility. some of you had the ability to see this live. the construction photos you may not have seen demonstrating how complex and big an operation this is. we did cover the biosolid project in some detail two weeks ago. on head works, it's facing similar challenges, same delivery method, working in the same constrained site. and there are currently five scopes of work in construction. that separates the two projects because head works is very much in construction. clearing the completion on usage of the rerouted pipes on evans avenue, and scope 2, bruceman

pump station upgrades and construction continues, is nearing completion, though. and completed installation of sump number one, knife gate on order control with new pumps and bar screens going in as well. scope 2b is the influent sewer. bid and award started with the contract of advertising. this work into three work packages. scope 2c is the lift station, 100% design of that. and then scope 3 is the main head works. around the 3rd, bidding for construction packages. 12 packages advertised this quarter. so heavily into construction, now moving forward with the project. similar challenges with biosolid and the concern of the scope. and respect to the budget as well. similar to the last, i highlighted a few other

projects. i'm noting with the red line reflecting the end of the quarter e down 2019 is delineating what is moving through planning and heavily into construction now. i wanted to point out that some projects are under way on the seismic improvement projects. we finished up the pump station. we're planning to issue the r.f.p. for the sewer project. 8 diameter tunnel to alleviate flooding. and the pump station project just began construction to rebuild the station to serve the mission bay area, including the new golden gate warriors arena. construction for that will last a few years. photo one in the left features the oceanside fixture

replacement project. this is before and after. it's an enterprise arrangement to offset the purchase of l.e.d. lighting. it shows the lighting before the replacements, remembering that the majority of this facility is underground. and the bottom is the improvement to the lighting. so simple project, but high impact in terms of creating that soft working environment for the team. the second photo in the middle is mariposa. the third photo is the bruce flynn upgrades. just to draw attention to this photo and who highlight it, the photographer received an award from the engineering news record capturing a union welder in the

access barricades welding a frame in the bruce flynn pump station. celebrating that moment with an award-winning photo. next slide, program updates, non-project related. but in november, we participated in the 6th annual expo. november 1, we're being more engaged there. in december, we participated in the winter wonderland event in the bayview district. concludes my ssip report. any questions? >> president caen: i have a question. could we go back to slide 5? so, what is this telling us

about our timing? are we on schedule? >> yes, but of course, within the program there are a number of projects that have slipped and have concerns, similar to what we presented last meeting. on case by case basis, they identify the projects that have slipped from the baseline, either on cost or schedule. the majority of those projects on that slide are positive. >> president caen: you're saying they're positive, meaning what? >> i can't remember off the top of my head which ones there are variances on. i'm going to highlight that now as i move into the next item to look at the quarterly report update. >> president caen: okay. so we'll have the answer soon. >> yes. >> president caen: okay. any public comment? seeing none, could you please

continue. >> thank you. just briefly, no slides, but to highlight some projects to help answer the question. we're going to review projects since last quarter are now forecasting schedules that extend beyond their approved schedule by 6 months or more. or cost variances of more than 10%. our standard process is reflected in the report you have. ssip, the new head works project i mentioned is forecasting a cost variance. and that is reflected and already included in the 10-year cip we projected back in january. this is presented and for the quarter ending december. similar to the biosolid update. the project forecast costs reflects latest construction efforts and real understanding of what is happening at the facility. scope 2a for the bruce flynn and

scope 3 for the main head works facility itself. at the time of reporting, scopes were being considered to help mitigate. the present team is evaluating construction costs. and what is happening in reality now that the project is live and in construction and we'll explore the approaches to mitigate the impact. finally, cost variance, compared to the original baseline, claim tracking and negotiates related to schedule delays and differing conditions continue between sfmta who is the project lead and contracting authority and the contractor. final resolution of those claims will impact project budget and milestones and the cost variance is due to the anticipated contractor self-costs for at the resolving claims.

similarly, market street improvements phase one is forecasting a schedule and cost variance. they're progressing toward the 99% milestone in a few months. the advertisement is still targeted for the summer of 2020, however, the full corridor has been deferred to pending design negotiations between public works and sfmta. public works is the lead for the project and they need to resolve cost-sharing with partner departments. the cost variance is due to cost sharing amounts for construction litigation, traffic control rerouting, bus stations, et cetera. -- bus substitutions, excuse me. and it was made to add a block in 5th street and 6th street and three-year construction duration. those are larger scope adjustments to the project. >> we just had a meeting with

the supervisor haney's office and peskin and they're very concerned about the impact to the merchants. so we may work with mta and public works to reevaluate the projects and work more with the merchants to see how we can minimize impact. that could mean that we phase it out of those maybe longer. the impact that we would have on the merchants won't be so severe where we just drive folks out of business. so we're going to make, you know, based on what we experienced at van ness and central subway, we're going to bring those experiences in and see how we can deliver the project in a way that we can minimize impact. >> next project is the fifth

north and sixth division streets. forecasting delay. the completion delayed for structure al repair in the dry season. just a couple more. wastewater storm is in a planning only project and forecasting a variance of cost in this quarter. that is just about adding more work. the project team provided support for the 100-year map, data sharing. activities include working groups, development of flood elevations, and implementation options for partials with 100-year storm flood risk map. development of residential disconnect grant programs and the cost reflects higher than anticipated costs in the 10 year cip. the 10-year cip already captures

this. large sewer condition assessment reports a cost variance and schedule variance. initiated with a kickoff meeting in december of 2019. projects entered into the design phase and the variance in the project and schedule is due to additions of scope of work as reflected also in the 10-year capital plan already included presented in january. to help improve the long-term plan for how we tackle those. that includes the ssip part. but there is around the infrastructure, the ocean beach project is forecasting a cost variance. some of the work is short-term improvements, replacing sand, working with the army corpse of engineers and then long-term improvements. like in the previous quarter,

puc continues discussion with the san francisco zoo regarding impacts to the parking lot, develop of the engineering phase resulted in increased forecast budget. additionally refined site has resulted in higher cost and longer construction duration to stabilize site soil conditions. you can see a theme. the budget team will continue to evaluate during design development to mitigate those potential impacts to overall project costs and completion date. that concludes a summary of what you have in the quartly report. >> could you give an update on the two alemany project which is a project that we've been working with the supervisor ronen because it impacts the farmers market, but also it helps with cayugaa .

that is a project with a variance. do you have an update where that is at? >> the alternative analysis for the project looking at alleviating the flooding conditions in that neighborhood, that area, has been completed, enough to release an r.f.p. which helped to get a design team on board, to develop the conceptual engineering report. there are still a number of options on the table, like a tunnel and that avoids conflict with the community. or open cut type construction that interfaces with cal tran in the future for the farmers market. so we're still looking at a couple of options, but the project is advancing. >> i have a question about that project and would like to get a little more information. i understand there was an alternative that has more green

it and this is gray. and the modelling that was done around the green option showed some additional benefits. so i'd like -- i don't know if it's more appropriate offline -- but i'm curious why we couldn't or wouldn't issue an r.f.p. in addition to the gray that had more green because of the promising alternatives analysis? >> well, first of all, we have folks public works that helps with the green infrastructure, but i think the volume of water that we have to move, you need a gray solution. and you actually -- this project, you have to bring it all the way out to -- where? >> connecting to the large sewer for the down stream. >> we have to, there is so much water during flood. so we talked about the advantages of green, but when you're trying to move this much

water from alemany, from cayuga all the way from the larger pipes and as you remember, alemany just floods. you have to move the water. >> i understand. >> so all the water comes from the watershed, so that is the challenge that we have with just moving that amount of water. >> i understand. i just want -- i don't think there is very many green components left at all as far as i can tell in the r.s.p., right? is there a design requested to help limit? i feel like, maybe i just need an offline update and i'd love to better understand what the alternatives were that were reviewed, what the benefits were, and if there is any opportunity before we move forward. >> so remember, we talked about we shift green infrastructure and had a strategy for green infrastructure which was different on dealing with

projects as we relate to like central bayside. these projects where you have to move a large volume of water, we had green infrastructure on performance-based and we place it whenever we can where it works. we're trying to remove a billion gallons from the system, that is the goal. we're trying to reduce the amount of water going to the treatment plants in general, but when you talk about flooding, when you have intense rain events, that exceeds our level of service, those are the water that you need to move immediately. typically green infrastructure, you know, won't really help because the ground is oversaturated quickly. it helps when you have a light rain for a long period of time. that's when green infrastructure works well. >> i want to see the alternatives analysis on this one in particular, because my

understanding is there is components that could help with the end goals. i understand the metrics of flooding, but i think there are additional metrics we can talk about. >> i looked up the hydraulic and the impact of what happens in the events. it's two different problems. but there may be overlap. i know we looked at local green infrastructure at that area, that local community, impacted and what happens when you apply green infrastructure across the whole watershed? how does that impact the flow? that is something we can talk about. >> that is great, i'd like to set up a separate meeting offline if we could and we can have it here if need be. >> thank you. >> president caen: comments, questions? to the public? any questions, comments? mr. kelly, i