maybe we have license plate recognition where every curb space is considered metered though there's not a meter and we just charge, you know, for the time that people are parked there. something like that. i just feel like it's become enshrined in san francisco, even though it doesn't really help and it doesn't really work that well. >> yes, so the factor that makes it illegal for us to make net revenue off of residential parking permits is the residential restrictive component of that. so if we remove the residential restriction, we can follow the same process that f.r. park does, which is to charge the lowest price for parking that ensures one or two parking spaces are available on every block. so in the more urban neighborhoods, parking on a residential street would be more expensive. in our more suburban neighborhoods, parking would continue to be free where there's still abundant parking availability. but that would mean that, you

know, people from that other neighborhood over there could park in front of my house. which, again, triggers our reptillian cortext of the brain and our sense of territoriality over the street in front of our homes. >> commissioner brinkman: we would certainly have a lot of people clearing out their garages so they could park their cars in them, instead of just storing things in them. yeah, it's definitely worth considering. you know, if we could actually charge sort of fair market value based on where you live for storing your car on the street. >> to that point is it possible to charge a street license? so, say, you wanted -- some people want to park in front of their house. could you charge a specific license or fee or permit that you got the spot in front of your house, right? it would be a significant upcharge, because you're basically renting the street on an annual basis kind of thing.

but i how does that work in the context of the current law? >> so i would -- i would ask the city attorney to look again about whether we can actually rent chawrchgs o chunks of streo specific individuals. >> do that in white zones and -- >> but the white zones are available to all people dropping off passengers. it's not just, you know, who can afford is the only person allowed to park there at the curb. >> hi. >> we can hear you fine though. it's weird but you don't look frozen to us. >> but now you're muted. >> can you hear me now?

>> yes. >> i'm sorry, my computer is glitching on me. these are very interesting ideas and i would think that our office can work with the staff to develop them further. there are certain state laws within the vehicle code that prohibit for charging for the use of the street in certain ways and other local laws that we need to look at. so i'm happy to take these really interesting questions back and to talk to the director and the appropriate staff and come back with you with this proposals. >> great. and i know that we have other directors who have comments. director heminger? >> commissioner heminger: thank you. so we're -- [broken audio] can

you hear me? >> now we can. >> commissioner heminger: i think that we have a system-wide problem. well, just to chip into this part of the conversation first -- one thing that struck me, jonathan, about your slide about new funding, right, it was sort of the usual suspects -- the geobond, the sales tax, they're all big fat two-thirds votes. and one thing that this agency has going for it, we have more than one, but one thing that we have going for it and we've got some feedback going for it now too, right? >> echo, yeah. >> commissioner heminger: is that we have some of our own dedicated sources of revenue. transit fares are the ones that are taking it in the shorts right now, but our parking program i think that needs sort of a comprehensive top-to-bottom review. and that's the garages, that is the meters and that's residential parking and it's the use of the garages in terms of

development. and that's not going to happen overnight. but i think that, which is building on a source of revenue and a jurisdiction that we already have, that we don't have to ask the voters permission to use, that we can operate in sort of a rational fee-based structure, i think that is where we ought to be putting our energy and attention. i had a couple of other ones, jonathan, that i was hoping that you could just consider leads as you get ready for our workshop. so i'm not asking for your reaction today. in fact, i don't want your reaction today. i want you to think about them. on preventative maintenance, i do understand your point that we've got some big projects that we really can't afford to side swipe. i will say that there's an extra year of life out of themselves because they're not getting

anywhere right now. but my hope would be that there is some amount of room to squeeze out there, because as you know that capital money is a lot easier to find than operating money. and the operating money is where we have the problem. the second idea is do we have any special reserves, like the debt service reserve, the catastrophic loss reserve, that are -- what i would call overfunded, that are funded more than we have promised the boys at standard & poors? if that's the case that may be something where we could sweep some of that out. third, i wanted to make sure that you're aware of and to take a little credit for the fact that as of f.y.2022, the cal train operating subsidy doesn't have to happen anymore. and if you're including that in your estimates, i think that it would be worth just culling that out. because it's not a ton of money,

i think $10 million or so. and i'm hopeful that m.t.a. can keep making a capital contribution to the cal train. but that's a piece of funding that is off of our plate and we could use for our own system. the fourth idea -- and there may not be anything here, but what i'm wondering, jeff, and it goes back to your point that we've -- we've got a -- a 95% revenue loss and a 70% passenger loss. are there ways to catch that up a little bit with the price that we charge for products like the fast pass? because the great thing about the fast pass is that they pay you the money at the first of the month and you don't have to chase them down every ride on the bus. so i don't know if there is a price point that we haven't reached yet, where if there were

a greater discount for the fast pass, could we make that up in volume with additional ridership? just something to think about. the last one that i wanted to get out on the table -- and it's the most painful one to talk about -- is this question of layoffs. and what i wanted to talk about is the question of whether it ought to be layoffs or whether it ought to be furloughs. now my understanding is that under our labor agreements that we cannot impose furloughs on the employees, but we can impose layoffs, is that correct? >> that's right. >> commissioner heminger: commenting on why that was the negotiating posture or not, that still doesn't mean that we can't negotiate for furloughs.

but we would have to negotiate for them. the reason that i think that we ought to think very seriously about that approach is that i think that our objective ought to be on the labor side of this discussion to try to keep as many folks working as we can while achieving the cost saves that we need. i think that furloughs, the idea of furloughs, meaning, you know, people getting an unpaid day per week or whatever it is, but still on the payroll, and getting paid for most of the week, that it seems to me that is well suited to the circumstance we're in where we have a temporary drop in demand. it's not going to be brief but it's going to be temporary and i think we're going to get most of our riders back after the vaccine is widely available. so what i was hoping that staff could do is to bring back some scenarios that would compare the approach that you've laid out

with the mete acts, right, which is the layoff approach with a furlough approach. and, you know, the simple math, if i've got it right, is that the layoffs that you have laid out in your presentation, jonathan, are about 20% of the workforce. well, if you applied that 20% savings to the whole workforce, it's about a day a week. and is that a better approach then taking a thousand people off our payroll per se instead of spreading that pain and having a furlough day per week or two per pay period, whatever the way that you work it out is, it seems to me that would lessen the burden. and to keep more of our employees on the payroll and working. now, obviously, it would implicate more people too

because you're talking about the broader base of employees versus just a narrow section of them. but 20% is not so narrow. and so i wanted to encourage you to think along those lines and to bring us some ideas about how we might achieve the same objective in a different way. >> i think that you'll be hearing more about all of those ideas at our next budget workshop. we have a lot of homework to do, however, with the rest of the city government who need to be involved in any reopening of labor contracts. and, of course, we need to be very collaborative, open and transparent with our partners in our labor union leadership. which started those conversations, and are putting time on our calendars in order to walk all of our union leadership through the details of our financials so that we can work together collaboratively in

order to figure out where all we can save money and where can we bring in new revenue and what are all of the things that we can do to eliminate the possibility of layoffs because we can all agree that it is the last thing that we want to be doing in a pandemic is taking away the paychecks and the health care from people who have been showing up to work every single day in this health crisis, delivering essential workers to work and keeping the city running. our workers are heroes. >> i want to just add to that, what you just said, because i had brought it up to you, and to t.w.u. about the deferred retirement contribution to see if that would be a solution that we could defer for a year. and have asked them to noodle on it as a group to see if that's something -- but i think we could achieve great savings if we could put off our pension contribution by a year or 18 months. so that's another thing that i hope that you will consider. director lai, you had additional

questionsquestions? >> commissioner lai: thank you. so a couple of mine overlap with a lot of what was said. so i will keep it rather brief. the discussion around the residential parking permit -- i would support the exploration, but i would just maybe extend that to a broader curb management exploration. because, obviously, the limitation that we had in generating a revenue or profit really applies to also the shuttles, permits and other things that i think that are very important as part of that conversation as well. and trying to read my own handwriting here. i think that the other thing that we need to really maybe just to better understand in moving forward in fiscal year 2020 with regards to the parking

revenue -- first of all, very much appreciate and agree on a lot of what director heminger has already said, but particularly with the comment about parking revenues. there's a lot of support in extending it and perhaps making it permanent so i'd like to, you know, in the future budget workshops for us to understand what that cost would be to us. and to make that -- to basically to permanently make those parking spaces inactive. and sorry, my handwriting is so bad today. oh, the existing contracts. so as i understand it, you know, we have a lot of active

contracts, contracts that we have maybe started years and years ago with a very different social economic outlook than we do now. i understand that a lot of times when we make a contract commitment and breaking those would cost us something, perhaps even more than the remaining contract itself, but i would just ask that we take a look at that nonetheless to see if there are any opportunities where we could realign some of our commitments. and i can't read the last one so i'm going to leave it at that. thank you. >> chair borden: and director eaken. you're on mute. >> vice-chair eaken: i can save my questions until after public comment. >> chair borden: okay. all right, then with that we will open this up to public comment. this is public comment on the sfmta's budget and fiscal status. item number 11 n