does this feel like this is outside of the scope to talk about the sfmta broadly working on maximizing options? did you mean to say in the vicinity of the project, for example? i don't understand the scope of your amendments. >> my interpretation of this phrasing is i expect m.t.a. to work with our sister agencies to come up with those options. i'm not saying that it is on m.t.a.'s soldiers -- shoulders to come up with this. if they come back and say, you know, we are the appropriate agency to address this into -- dress this issue, and we are encouraging them and doing our best to make efforts to support them coming up with maximize solutions, i would be okay with that. >> to support their efforts to maximize options. >> that is great.

>> perhaps what we should -- for the folks that we are referring to, they are the ones who would be directly impacted by this project. is that correct? perhaps that is the definition we need to add so it is not so broad. >> there you go. >> so maybe you just need to read back that motion so we all know what we are voting on. >> the board direct staff to use the quick build and limitation as an opportunity due to continue and expand outreach to stakeholders and to use best efforts to work with and coordinate with sister agencies to support their efforts to maximize options for people who are housed in a vehicle and will be directly impacted by this project. does that get us there? >> i think so, yeah. >> thank you. >> great.

i am going to call the question, unless there is any additional discussion. all right. can you please call roll call on the amended amendment. and once we vote on the amendment, we will vote on the main motion. >> sure. on the motion -- sorry. on the motion to amend the resolution, and i will ask dr. eakin to read number 2 again. the sfmta board to direct staff to use evidence street quick build project and process to iterate towards the board's goal of 100% safe protected design on the corridor, and if you could reread into the record, director eakin. >> just pulling up the right one. the board direct staff to use the quick build implantation as an opportunity to continue and expand outreach to key stakeholders and to use best efforts to work with and

coordinate sister agencies to support their efforts to maximize options for the vehicle housed population who will be impacted by this project. >> chairman brinkman: thank you, on that motion... [ roll call ] that motion passes 6-1. >> and now the main motion for the amended. >> we need a motion to approve as amended. >> i will move to approve as amended. >> second. >> please call roll call on that. [ roll call ]

thank you. that motion passes 6-1. >> that brings us to our next item. thankfully. >> twelve is visitation and discussion on fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2024 operating and capital budget and fiscal year 2023 through 2027 capital improvement program, including proposals unfair policy and pricing, review of new and existing fees and fines and use of one-time funds for priority and strategic needs. >> okay. [ laughter ] >> that is quite something to follow up on. good afternoon, almost evening. i am the acting chief financial officer. today we are going to go through and update the base budget. i have quite a few things to cover with you, but as i said

during the board workshop in early february, the budget this cycle will be an iterative process. i will cover where we are with the process today and give you additional information and take some feedback. we will have the full budget, including expenditures to you on april 5th. first, we want to cover the outreach process that we have completed to date and the feedback we have received. again, to remind you did not come to you with a full big project and propose program to get a sense from the public whether or not they do. and the proposals we will see today are mostly on the revenue side and policy side are reflective of what we have heard from the public. expenditures will be reflective of what we heard from the public in april. i will also give you an update on the five-year capital improvement program, and

questions and updates that you requested on the february 15th board meeting. we'll discuss revenue updates and changes. we will focus on park and policy fees and we will also discuss the staff recommendations around the fair policy for the next two fiscal years. with that, i will give an update on the five-year plan as a result of these proposed changes to the baseline budget. first, let me cover the outreach process and the sessions that we have completed to date. to give you a sense, we have done our public budget workshop. we did a survey of priorities similar to the scientific surveys that we did last spring. we completed a number of public listing sessions. we went out to 3,000 stakeholders and said, would you

like us to present to you, would you like us to give you information? we completed a digital town hall last week. from the online survey, we got 700 responses. we collected 690 individual comments that were all categorized, which i will share with you. we collected over 100 comments from you and for the -- from the public during the board workshops. we are still collecting paper surveys and any changes will be presented to you at the april 5th meeting. just to give you a sense of the first priority coming out of the survey and what we have heard, it is not a surprise. the number 1 priority for the public was improving the speed frequency and reliability of muni, focusing on equity, and for the first time, talking to the public, personal safety has come upon us. it is not something we have consistently heard over the past year. but in this survey we are seeing

this show up. increases in traffic congestion are starting to show up. this has to do with increased economic activity. people are used to moving around the city quickly. we are seeing that congestion come back. the priorities that we would expect to see from a community. we are also asking people to get their second priority. here it is a really high priority for the public it is extremely and very important. click and in just quick and convenient access. you will see a reduced in delays. nearly 90% of a priority. you will see personal safety there is at 45%. extremely important.

so again something we want to focus on and take note of throughout the process. improving the floor -- the flow of traffic. nothing out of the ordinary, beginning a sense for the public feels. in addition, something we haven't done in the past, we had a phone number with a human being behind it that people could call in and provide a comment. we had open questions on all of the surveys. and at every meeting we were act, staff took open comments. it wasn't a survey and wasn't a priority. staff what through the process to categorize all these. you will see them again in priority order. the top priority was getting safety on the streets. individual comments are consistent with what we are seeing in those surveys.

it gave people a menu of choices. this is reflective of their independent comments. and some things on the left that showed up over and over, safety for all. more frequent service. please do not raise affairs and look to expand the discount program. and transit only lanes to deal with the congestion. bus shelters showed up and stations. so just to give you -- taking all that data and synthesizing it, we have prepared the synthesis for you. a personal safety on transit and streets and we talk about safety and we talk about showing up. equity in the delivery of all of the service and focusing on state of repair, quick and convenient access and discount

programs. traffic congestion and overall the customer experience. a lot of these things are interacting with the system. we need to take that into consideration because we want to be the organization of choices people start making their way back to work. >> a lot of information. it will be like a completely different pivot. so here, just to remind the board, the first two years sure -- serves our appropriate budget. we have made some updates since the february board workshops. we introduce the ip plus, which is something new that i will talk about today. so just to give the public and the board a sense of how we have responded to the feedback that we have heard, they do find

critical investment in speed and reliability, with a significant investment in state of repair. in over a decade in the m.t.a., i have never seen our top four projects be exclusively state of repair. second from the board and from the public and from advocate groups, there was a lot of focus on the streets capital program. we were able to increase revenue in the program by 29% from what you saw in the baseline in early february. it is also one of the highest priorities. upcoming federal grants and the infrastructure bill will be a high priority. simply put for those watching on television, the capital improvement program is physically constrained. meaning the projects --

[ indiscernible ] -- the final which will come in april will include a hundred 58 projects. we will get it up to 2.6 billion. anything that was unfunded, we were unable to fund construction or complete projects that cannot be funded removed. the largest forces are federal grants, state grants, local transportation bill tax and the revenue bond that you approved last year are the largest sources. you will see the largest projects that are in the replacement phase. the prior project was expansion and now we will be replacing our fleet. you just approved the vehicle which is a hundred million dollar project. and i think the board has spent

plenty of time on the modernization project. that is also in there. the one risk i would give to the board in this point is it is higher risk than it has been in the past. we have a whole cash and reserve. a lot of it is dependent on some grants. we intend on getting them from the state. we do have some projects that are dependent on that source and we will have to meet cash flow if that court case is not resolved based on the schedule of that project. this is what you saw on february 3rd. you will see the new version here. you will see streets that went from $186 million to $240 million. again, when we talked on february 15th about how we designate priorities and how we

tried to add revenues, we always try to add revenues in the areas where we have the most significant gaps. let me get to this. we talk about the range from the sources that are available. for the people at home, the general obligation bond are all or nothing. we can put in a competitive grant for 100 million and get 50, but with those two sources, if they failed, they get zero. we did talk to about priorities for those sources. these are ones that we got general consensus from the board. we actually got into million-dollar earmark. there is a two million-dollar earmark for us to advance to the environmental phase. that was some near-term

success. based on the feedback we got on february 15th, we sharpened our pencil and we looked at the vase grant programs. we looked at all the opportunities and all the geo bond programs and we take the capital program. we estimated how much we think we can get. what do you we think we could get? it is not bad in a competitive environment. you will see where we think those funds are designated based on the geo bond program and where the federal government is prioritizing these dollars. they are the first two things that would theoretically get the most money if we were successful at getting those dollars. this is the cash flow and year-by-year need. it is about $1.2 billion in

projects. the good news about that, i'm just going to stick with this slide for a minute, with the reason why this is good because it sets us up unlike any other transportation and organization in the country. we have 90 projects ready to advance and advocate for with schedules and scopes and costs. we are in a very big position. so on february 15th, we also cover the weather map with our prioritization methodology. this is what we showed you on february 15th. we will show you the various areas of gaps. you will see the areas streets facilities and traffic signals and areas where it is harder for us where we have a significant need of where we can fund it with the revenues in place. you will see we are able to get those up in certain areas.

it actually went down and there are some reasons for that that i will talk about. here is where it comes in. the director had asked for this at the last meeting. what if we got all the revenues, all the grants and the geo bond past? you will see in those streets double. we will get to half of our need with traffic signals doubling from 12% to 24%. communication and it are seeing elements from our control system and other critical infrastructure. overall we get to 40% of our capital need. so i will move on to the updated base budget. this is an operating budget with extended revenues and we'll get to a parking policy and the fair policy for the chair budget cycle. being directly responsive to what we heard from our community outreach, the staff

recommendation, and this is assumed in the updated baseline, it doesn't mean it is what we're going with, but it assumes there will be no fair increase in the next two years. that you, the board, direct us, the staff, does skip fair. we have pilot programs that i will talk about. diana is here to talk about the fair policy around the past and fair capping. we will provide you with options to expand other programs and something that we got a lot of feedback on. the federal relief will restore full agency operations. again, this is investment in hiring and others.

the general fund will stay essentially the same. we are still assuming a six% growth in parking revenues. this is just consistent growth due to the city returning to some normalcy. $15million in the fiscal -- 15 million from the physical 2022 baseline and increasing on top of that another 16 million. here's some revenues that were reduced. currently we get, in a good year prior to the pandemic, we would get about 14-$15 million.

the current five year option assumed numbers well over $20 million. those are unrealistic. we have updated the revenue estimate on advertising revenues knowing that we will likely negotiate with a clear channel and brief what is the minimum guarantee. we are working with them to increase services. so instead of cash, the agency will get additional services. they are considering increasing shelter maintenance by 50%. they do two cleanings per week. they are going up to three cleanings per week and give us ability to work with the department of public works to do additional maintenance. that is under negotiation. we will update the board in the spring on the results of that specifically. secondly, based on the recommendation not to index the transit fare revenues, it is a

value of $10 million, and another 12 million in fiscal year 2024. what did increase is the use of federal release. the remainder, as was always planned, offsets the plan deficits in 2025. we are recommending, and will have savings in 2022 move it was reduced over time and some due to our service levels. we are pretty confident that this will be saved in this year. we are confident now in the $53 million that will be appropriated into fiscal year 2023 for expenditures. and my old boss knew i would do something like this. to note there will be changes in parking policy in year two of

the budget will increase revenues by $5 million. the board has given us a lot of leeway. we still need to do some significant outreach, but, in the second year, we will up the ante on revenues. there will also be similar resetting as shared spaces starts to settle and our rates start to self correct on the streets. hopefully we will be able to hit those targets. on the expenditure side, salary and benefits and work orders with the city just assume a pending conclusion of contract negotiations. funding levels return to baseline operation. what i mean by that is just before the pandemic, at the board workshop in january of 2020, we gave you an estimate in the five year financial plan of what these fiscal years would look like. the updated base budget is within 1.6% of what we told you

it would be two years ago. i was going to say two%, but it is actually 1.6%. had the pandemic not happened and we just escalated costs and everything stayed the same, this is pretty much where we had -- where we would have been. the m.t.a. would have the dollars to do the services it has within that specific number. divisional augmentations are included. some of that is restoring positions that have been placed on budget hold over the course of the pandemic. some of that is implementing recommendations from the reliability working group around transit recovery. [please standby]

>> the criteria rice -- rising cost of labor. we will charge to cover the full cost of the operation. we do a full evaluation of staff cost for those program and our fees and charges are set. there are state law especially on some of our parking and our fines that are capped by state law. we can't go any higher. those are the three things that we use. i do want to talk about parking revenue. we have the january and february data. we're seeing parking revenue is

flat. that's why we have little bit of incentive on parking meter revenues in year two. i think the general consensus is until the downtown and tourist activity returns to the city, these are the general levels of parking -- it is so consistent. we do see seasonality and it's a little bit lower. that's not unusual. you'll see the trends. you'll see pretty consistent, kind of that point we were looking when vaccines were reading available. that one month, i think was a bunch of r.p.p. permits in which people renewed that period of time. revenues were a bit higher in that area. here we go with the parking meter and garages. we're assuming bump up.

$15 million from the current base in fiscal year '23, another $16 million in fiscal year '24. i'm recommending we increase that another $5 million on top of it. our parking meter rates based on s.f. parks. we always want to make sure there's space available. we want to use the price to control the use. only 1% of meters who hit the maximum rates. you'll see what the proposed max is. we'll begin the process of doing those adjustments. which is we're still confident about the growth. it will self-correct as things get to more operation within the city and hopefully -- we should look at parking meters and see if we can gain more revenue. there was a lot of commentary from it c.a.c. around that and from the public throughout our outreach process. you'll see our citation and fine

adjustments in the last budget. we did have a more policy changes in this budget. it's essentially status quo. we're increasing with state law or automatic indexing where that's appropriate. cost recovery fees -- diane, can can you cover this one for me? i'm coughing at this point. >> good evening board of directors. i'm senior revenue manager for the m.t.a. we highlighting few cost recovery fees which are usual the most interest to the public and to the board. for residential parking permit, contractor permits, those are really increased by the indexing plan and evaluating our labor costs and revenue. slight increase in those.

the removal fee we taking a look at our deployment plan and actually we're able to achieve some saving based on the policy to try to reduce the number of vehicles that are towed and move towards booting. we're recommending a reduction in that fee, $55 for the next year. tow fee going up to maintain certain level of recovery that we have had in the past and maintaining our discounts for low income at $100. and our waiver for people experiencing homelessness. we wanted to go over little bit about what the discount programs look like in terms of how successful they've been.

we've had low income fee for couple of years. you'll see in the chart on the right in terms of how many vehicles that are towed are actually obtaining these discounts. you'll see that the number of -- it's hard to see this here -- overwhelming majority actually close to three quarters little over three quarters receiving some sort of discount and for people experiencing homelessness and with low incomes is about 22% of the number of discounts for value of approximately $4.5 million. we wanted to go over the slide. we talked a lot about strict cost recovery for this program. the total program cost at the top about $28 million. the fees and revenue that we receive from storage and tow

fees is $23 million. we're short in that recovery by $4.9 million. we wanted to also show here that really that under recovery is really almost 100% based on the waiver in the discount values. really, if you factor those policy decisions that we've made to reduce the impact people with low incomes, the shortfall is about $370,000. >> let's move on to transit fares. just again to remind the board and the public typically we would adjust transit fares with our automatic indexing implementation plan. again, what we've tried to do at the m.t.a. is the fares are

indexed with the cost of labor or c.i.p. in years where there are no increases we do not increase fares. what's important to understand, we look at boarding and fare revenue. almost consistently for 10 years, we try to collect 80-cents to 90 cents per boarding. you'll see how that changed overtime. when it goes down, you'll see the years where we indexed up correct to that. you'll see what the cost of boarding right now is around 30 cents per boarding. normallyit's anywhere in the range of 87 to 90 cents per boarding what we collect in fares. here's fare revenue. we've added january and february data. i think the board will remember that when talking about fare revenues i had noted a huge part of increase was cable car and other impact was the

institutional passes. you will see that ridership has stayed the same but fare revenues are down. people at home can do the arithmetic. you'll see the trend. our director of transit reported we're with 50% ridership. you're see where our fare revenueses are compared to that. we acknowledged the nature of the ridership has changed. our essential workers need a ride. lot of people on the discount or free program, we did go forward with free muni for all youth. ridership went up and lot of students and youth across san francisco are riding for free. it makes it hard. i'm comfortable reducing the fare revenue. i think i got feedback from the

board that we were too aggressive anywhere. we're nowhere near where we were prior to the pandemic. based on the feedback we received from the public, getting that $115 million in additional federal leavell, the updated base assumes no fare increase during the budget period. fare policy that will add two new products that i will talk about. i want to be very clear because i will be irresponsible acting c.f.o. if i did not tell you there's a short-term strategy using one time fund at a cost of $22 million. this will increase in the structural deficit to $77 million in fiscal year '25 we are going to show you some other strategies that could be some incremental increases to specific fare products. in all of the options we're

showing you today, we do not intend on increasing the cash fare beyond $3. just to give you a sense of the ridership and the use of our products. you'll see the adult single ride and cash fare is the area where we intend on making no change is largely persons of color and largely people of low income. we are hoping that the accumulated pass is solution for the rider. we'll create an opportunity, create access by allowing them through muni mobile to buy up to a muni fast pass for the remainder of the month. those that use adult single ride or pay through clipper are not majority people of color and not nowhere near majority low income riders. you'll see those that use and purchase a monthly pass, areas where we're still having issues, largely persons of color but not

necessarily those who are low income. people essentially don't get the discount, they are stuck. they don't get the discount of the fast pass because they don't have the cash to pay for it. they are paying it $3 per ride when they can. again, i think for many years, the board has asked to move towards accumulator pass. the technology is now in place. 75% of single ride trips were taken on clipper or muni mobile. people are moving to the electronic. 50% of customers are papering a- paying as they go. the other reason we're adding the second product, the 10 trip pass, allows people who might be returning to work and don't want to pay for a full muni fast pass, only need to go two days a

week to buy 10 trip and use throughout the mop here's some options open to the board. we're happy to take any feedback or direction today. this is part of today's conversation. we could apply just our automatic indexing policy to all fares, excluding -- remember i told you with $10 million. everything excluding cash fare. that's $4.4 million in additional revenue. if we apply the indexing policy strictly to monthly paces that's $1.6 million. if we apply it to just the clipper and mobile fares, that's $1.3 million. if we absolutely -- we kind of bump off the automatic indexing policy just make the decision to increase the clipper single ride fare by a quarter and up to 50%. that would remove the current discount and match it to the

cash fare that has value $6.7 million over two years. we can get into further discussion. this is the layout of what the fare policy would look like under those current situations. you can see what the current is, what the board approved last time. you'll see just the indexing option. you'll see the clipper discount reduction the third option on the right. the reason we brought this up is again, to be responsive to what we heard from the public during our outreach sessions and our listening session. people want us to expand these programs. the problem is we don't have the revenue to expand the program. we gave the board some options how to get revenue within the fare policy in order to pay for these program. free muni for all youth for two years has a value $4.1 million. may be they'll continue to pay for it, may be they won't.

we would like to expand free muni. in the last budget, we did create free muni for those experiencing homelessness. we're talking about expanding that to 125% of federal poverty that's about $12,500. that would be annual cost of $11.4 million. we actually want to move more towards median to measure need within san francisco. to expand the lifeline pass eligibility which is 50% discount on our monthly fast pass around $40. that will be a cost of $19.8 million. if we wanted to get to expanding the lifeline pass to 80% of area median income that's about $71,400. the agency would lose

$38 million a year if we did that. we would open up lot of access to people to get thats. we wanted to throw those out there. the -- you can choose to make changes within the fare policy. we're happy to report back on that when we get to that part of the show. lastly, are the two pilot products. what we'll ask you to do, you approve lot of policies as part of the budget resolution. one is the experimental fare policy. we're going to make it little more specific and clear. we had. free muni for vaccinations and other things. the other thing is we like to create a program around parking. we had some recent situations where we got ask to be creative and quick. we will can for some authorization and flexibility for the director of

transportation around that. these are two products that we like authorization to move forward with we will not implement it until fiscal year '23. muni mobile will be available in the fall. we have to do lot of outreach to the public to introduce the product and get them to transition. we like to start making these products available in calendar year 2023. just projection. what is this all do? i think it's good that we're doing this now. we're monitoring it. meaning what are the results of the decisions we make in short and long-term? if the base budget -- the fiscal year '25 deficit will be about $77 million. but, that said, i will say personally, i have struggled

with this, as a c.f.o., why would i want to increase the structural deficit of the agency. i think the board has been struggling with this for a year. we've been so from time to timened about revenue recovery that we been structure and conservative. now the city is reopening. i think the -- the board wanted to use our reserves. which i would not recommend. the board has wanted to invest in the system so get people back. i think the data is showing they want a clean shelter. they want to see safe system. they want safe street. they are making choices right now about how to get back to work, how to get their kids to school.

this also director item plin -- tumlin noted, buys us enough time period to find another source. the 1999 structure of the m.t.a. financially does not work in 2022. another source is required. if we want to advance the progressive transportation policies that we have, parking is a declining source. we don't want people to drive. we want to create more access to the transit system. we do not want to raise fares. this again gives us the time to do that, make the investment to get the riders back, stabilize our own revenue source and work towards a third one. on february 3rd, i showed you this scenario which models this out with different revenue measures showing up. you will see the base resulted

in five-year financial plan where the agency had a deficit of $53 million. this updated base adjusts to this, the revenue measures moved out little bit. assuming in the 2023, 2024 revenue. whatly tell the board, if you went back to the board meeting january 28, 2020, these results were almost the same. the structural deficit is 13% less than what i showed you before the pandemic ever happened. what this is telling you, we're just moving the pre-pandemic m.t.a. into the current. this is what the situation is. heros our -- here's our 30-year. it's clear what the structural

gap is. to remind the board and public, the blue line was our 2009 projections for expenditures of the m.t.a. remember at the meeting on february 3rd, the reduction in the purple expenditure line was due to the savings we'll realize from pension savings. our expenditures on that side will be greatly reduced. you'll see the revenue line there. the results of adopting the budget in this way is this. you'll see essentially those savings we received from the pension reduction. we go right back to pre-pandemic m.t.a. that purple expenditure line goes back to the 2009 projection. the impact of not indexing of fares does result in the gold line going down. because the agency will have death spiral, the compounding

interester. that's the compounding interest of not indexing of fares. this is what the future looks like and the gap through transportation 2050, we'll work to close. on april 5th, we'll start with the books and the third page calendar item that goes with the budget on this. you'll see that for the first time. that will be the required public hearing on the budget on the fees, fares and fines. you'll have april 19th to adopt. i assume you'll make changes or ask for adjustments. we'll move those to the april 19th meeting. if you like additional changes,

i believe the board secretary is prepared and started talking to you about having a special meeting, last week of paralyze. -- april. that is the are the which aer -r deadline. that was a ton of information. thank you for hearing it. i'm surprised i'm still conscious. >> chair borden: we'll move to public first. we will start with the people in the room.

>> caller: hi. good evening board members. sorry i didn't fill out a speaker card. i'm very happy to see the proposals for continuing free muni for youth. that's been a very beneficial program for me and my classmates. really getting on the bus to school but activities outside of school on the weekends going to like sports game and stuff after school. that's an a beneficial program. i'm interested to see the new program like fare capping and the ten ride discount pass. i think it's important to promote these. something i noticed with the $5 day pass that's been implemented on the fare box is many riders aren't aware of it. they'll get on and they'll pay two single ride $3 fare. they are missing out on that

discount every single day. i hope we'll see revenue measure. it sounds like there's plans on the outreach for that. i'm also excited to see more cleaning of the shelters. some of them are really in disrepair. that's good. there's a lot of good stuff in here. i'm really happy. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: hi. i'm flo kelly. i really appreciate the conversation regarding the vehicular dwellings. i'm here to speak about stop poverty. the candlestick vehicle triage center is only for 50 or 60

vehicles. there's 200 vehicles in the bayview. the last time i personally counted in november. that's not counting all the vehicles in other parts of the city. to allow the vehicular dwellings more options, one of things that the m.t.a. can do is change signage and enforcement. for example, if the sign say no parking any time, that's a problem. no matter midnight to 6:00 a.m. street cleaning, one, two, or three times a week. i want to point out, there's a collaborative group that already

met. we worked with financial justice project, lccr. we met with m.t.a. staff and some of you board members one at a time. that collaboration is really powerful. i wanted to say, thank you so much for m.t.a. coming up with some discounts. we need to not do any poverty toast. >> caller: this is susan again. i wanted to point out how for a

lot of homeless people living in their vehicles, it's their interaction with sfmta that throws them over the edge. man named james wanted to be here today. he's in a wheelchair. his tires were stolen and license platefuls stolen. his vehicle was towed. in order to get his vehicle back, which was his only asset in the world, he has to pay thousands of dollars that they did not have. he lost what was his only possibility of may be clawing himself out of homelessness. now, not only does he not have a home, but he doesn't have transportation and he doesn't have a home either. i would urge you to consider towing forgiveness for people

who live in their vehicle. we are a very wealthy city. we can afford to do that. sfmta should not pushing people over the edge. currently it is. i seen lots people they have hundreds of dollars of working of parking tickets. then their car is registered so they'll get vehicle towed and then they lose their vehicle. i like you to pay attention and allow lot more flexibility in towing charges. it's really pushing people over the edge. >> caller: hi, my name is

melody. thank you for your time today. i had my vehicle towed. i want to you imagine everything that's invaluable in your home, your wall either, your money, your important papers, your legal documents p your food and water. those are the things that get towed. you don't have access to everything that you need in order to function. i want to press home the idea that if you're homeless, it is impossible to keep your

valuables on you 24 hours a day. it's impossible. even if you go camping, you don't take your water with you. you go on a hike, you take some water. if punishing people were effective, they then we would have no homeless people at all. people homeless people are frequently punished. i have more to say, i can't think of now. >> chair borden: are there any additional commenters in the audience. we'll move to online. if you like to speak, press star 3. >> clerk: we have seven callers.

>> caller: hello. wesley favors social security policy manager. it's later in the day and several members won't be able to call in. i will submit those comments. our coalition made a recommendation to the sfmta to improve equity in regards to fines, fees and fares. a recent letter did include ways to move these two program.

during the may 21, 2022 m.t.a. board item, all five items items were related to poverty. finally, we are requesting that sfmta staff provide the board with poverty tows. that's because court have recognized the towing for unpaid debt is unlawful. in san francisco too was the lith allegation. we can make great strides to

equity. thank you. >> caller: hello. i'm a manager -- in a recent article, m.t.a. stated we do not de-- [ indiscernible ]

>> we recommend sfmta for people with low incomes -- [ indiscernible ]

please eliminate property tows. >> chair borden: are there additional callers on the line? >> caller: hello, sfmta directors, it's been a long meeting. good evening i will make this quick. san francisco transit riders support pausing cash fare indexing.

while we are open to indexing monthly passes and increasing clipper fares to fund these programs, we would like to see these programs funded out of the city budget. we look forward to working closely with sfmta, the mayor and board of supervisors to identify the programs prior to increasing fares. two other quick things. we do support expanded parking metering. we like to see this enacted in a way that doesn't hurt residents that who are poorly served by transit. finally, we need to reduce and prevent gender, racial and discriminatory harassment on transit and transit stops. feel like every day, we see another horrific incident online. i know sfmta working to address this issue. it's top of mind for riders that

we're seeing in the survey and must remain a top priority for sfmta. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: hello. we're asking to end poverty tows and support low income san franciscans by expanding free access to muni. we ask the sfmta board expand free muni to adults 125% or below the poverty line.

our coalition has heard from people who live in affordable housing and shelter that they cannot find affordable place to park. which puts them at risk. this is true for people who live in areas that have metered parking. please end policy tows. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: thank you chair borden and board members. this is very important. i come to you simply ordinary user of muni. i have reduced fare. i'm a service disabled veteran. i advocate that there should be

no fare increase of any kind. the current differential -- [ indiscernible ] we want to help people to use clicker. fare capping is not new. happens on a c transit. just at the end of last month, new york city transit, which runs a system that you may have all heard of, called a subway. they have fare tapping. everything after 12 fared in a calendar week is a price.

i look forward to us getting a budget passed. >> caller: good evening board.

i want to point out that the outreach sfmta has done in the community is not enough. sfmta came to bart stations and called that community outreach. system -- sfmta can use google translate and call it -- we want

to say that we want no fare increase on all pavement options. >> caller: one thing that's missing in all of this is -- the fleet has not been expanded. you need more vehicles in the fleet. you need a greater number of vehicles in the fleet. because the -- population of the city has increased and so is the need. with more vehicles being added to the fleet there will be greater treatment -- frequency

of service. that's very important solution there. not enough vehicles to meet the increasing needs. secondly is, some of the bus stops will have to be restored. this is very important. as for the increase in fares, no. it will result in greater service if you have more buses to meet the growing need. thank you.

>> caller: i had to mute that. i can barely hear you. >> chair borden: we can hear you clearly actually. >> caller: on the budget, i'm sorry i misthe part of the presentation. i spoke earlier about my frustration with the public outreach on the budget thus far. i did not considered it meaningful. bart talks a lot about state of good repair but then pursue visions zero. there's no way m.t.a. can hire all those positions.

i will be -- the presentation still that is different categories in the campaign budget and the c.i.p. and c.i.p. plus. there's to way to tell how much is going in the state of good repair. if all parts of m.t.a. are at or closer state of good repair in two years, then i consider enhance and expand project with new money. transit fares have become more

challenging. in my view, there far too many distracting issues. i would focus on back to basics providing transit doing traffic engineering. >> caller: good afternoon directors. i'm the executive director of liveable city i want to thank staff for the presentation. we're looking at this budget. it's pretty high level. we're talking about that service restoration. this really needs to be a transformative budget. one example is moe chips if in

this budget, c.i.p., you don't make a significant investment that will get us part of the way there. we're not going to get there. same thing with vision zero. we have a goal reaching vision zero in the next few years. in this budget, all the funding that we need to have all the investments, all the time to implement vision zero aren't made. we won't get there. we really hope that be ambitious with this budget in terms of services you want to provide to vision zero. we have some ideas how you might get there, revenue ideas and all the few changes. we'll share those with you. other is streets budget. we have a very fragment government system. we look at the m.t.a. budget.

we urge you to work with other agencies create a strategy for this. we can't go at this speed if we're going to have the streets back. we need more. thank you very much. >> chair borden: are there additional call early on the line? we will close public comment. directors, do we have any -- director lai? >> director lai: thank you. i will try my best to go in order. really interesting to see that safety is definitely rising to the top. topic i spoken with a lot. just curious in particular around the personal safety.

glad to see that being acknowledged at this point. given the survey results listing it as a priority, i'm seeing that in the overall budget, currently we're seeing that we will be providing 4% of the scheduled means around safety. can you speak about that? i think it went from -- it went up by $.1 million. at the current proposal it's still only 4% of the projected need. >> i think are you referring to the c.i.p.?

>> director lai: yes. >> the security c.i.p. is something that shows up and always been kind of lower on the funding level. what that means we get very specific designated federal grants where we're required to spend certain percentage on security improvements to the system. we also get an ongoing grant from fema that kind of supports our k9 unit in the police department. that line item in the c.i.p. kind of reflects those designated revenues. it does not reflect our operating budget commitment to system safety. i want to be clear, the security capital improvement program is for very specific designated grants. typically projects in that category have to do with camera systems we put on vehicles or subway stations. we funded the toll program.

those are capital and physical improvements with very specifically designated federal revenue sources. >> director lai: i'm going to -- i think what you're saying, we are only able to identify about 4% of the budget because of the funding source? we don't have access to additional dollars? >> in the capital reimbursment program. -- in in the capital improvement program, yes. the c.i.p. program can give yous the direction you like us to invest more capital dollars. >> director lai: thank you. why are we not proposing a higher allocation to address security if this is a high priority? >> there things in the capital plan related to additional camera, video systems.

one of the highest priorities in that program in the past has been intrusion system >> director lai: south the percentage be capturing the story, somehow the logic you're sharing? i don't quite understand how this is reflecting our progress. may be this is a follow-up question i want to understand how far we are of our ideal goal

of our need around security. you brought up a really good point. i was asking about the capital budget. on the operation side, what are we allocating towards adjusting security. >> there are couple of -- these are high level line items. we're talking about $10 million in investments across numerous divisions and customer experience. part of that is the improvements i'm talking about around shelters, making them clean and accessible, maybe that accessible. there are programs, tom mcguire can talk about it with our security investigations and enforcement unit that are proposed in the budget to advance. rethinking our police department work order and the dollars

associated with that are also part of the overall program. that's just one element. within the transit division, we want to focus system safety and rule compliance. there's staffing and training around that, around $3 million proposed in the budget. those are -- that's about 13 to $15 million of investment in staff and one time resources to -- we want people to come back to muni. we want it to be system of choice. there are lot of proposals around that. >> only thing i would add to that excellent summary is the funding that we're identifying for the gender equity work particularly around increasing

the awareness and reducing gender-based assessment on our facility. >> director lai: say that's additional funding? >> it's additional dollars beyond what jonathan just told you in the budget. >> i believe it's about three quarters. >> she's pretty close to right. >> director lai: i really like the framing in your presentation around the capital budget where you show us what is the need and how are we measuring up to the percentage of the mean. will you be doing a similar format for the operating budget? >> we can. we have a very sophisticated capital budgeting model. it took us to a decade between the state of good reparroter you

see, the capital plan. one of the things you received at the board workshop was all in ask session. >> director lai: my ask there, is like a follow-up action just a much more clear plan of how we are addressing security including personal safety. it sounds like you will be addressing that in april. great. could you go over the $150 million of additional federal funding. what the high level percentage breakdown is. >> a component of that -- just to remind the board -- the purpose of the federal relief is to offset revenue losses.

those revenue restructures both in advertising and fare revenue will be immediately off that with the component of the $115 million. that's roughly $55 million. we're proposing about $30 million of augmentation. sole of those numbers i gave you about customer experience, improving the safety of the system both in staffing a inmaterials and supplies and special services cost. we're going to use our one time fund balance. which is why it is important in the year three the next time you go through this exercise we have some revenue source to cover those expenditures if they are expected to be ongoing after that. >> director lai: you said the 115 is to cover year two.

>> it will cover the expenditures of the proposed augmentation in year two. >> director lai: i need a reminder what the percentage look like. how we're spending the augmentation. >> sorry, i did miss one thing. it also offset, which always has a component of your fiscal year '25 deficit. when we ask the federal government for additional funds we showed losses over multiple fiscal years.

>> we will run out of federal relief in fiscal year '25. >> director lai: i'm glad to see we are all in agreement. we're willing to not continue to index fare for two years. i am hesitant to explore. i would say if we were to look at, i would need a little bit more information and thank you to staff for sending me the basic level of demographic on the split between low income and minority fares in each category. i think, though, unfortunately that doesn't really tell me enough information. if we can provide a little bit more color in the next hearing as to -- how are we defining that data set what is full

income. within the low income categories, how does that measure up to our city wide numbers and then most importantly, one of the things that i was able to glean from that data set, the category of fairs is the what monthly price. i think you know where i'm going with this. i want to understand the decreases. who's going to be impacted if we do look at fare indexing. clarification, you said you will independently fund the youth peer program? what does that mean?

>> as a matter of policy, in our fare policy as a product, you will adopt that we will continue to implement that program. again, it is paid for by others. we'll be grateful for additional continued support at a certain point in time, we would have to make a choice if we're not clear in the support will materialize. the pricing and policy of the towing -- let me go back -- the staff address when we'll be seeing the tow contract? yes. staff is approaching to address

that question. >> currently we're actually exercising an additional year of the contract which will be done between now and the end of that contract extension. we will be bringing it back. >> director lai: we're not able to look at the cost structure of the towing fees. it's tied to the contract cost. >> about 50% of the tow program is contract. >> director lai: there was a number of -- there was a member

of the audience that asked about tow forgiveness. if i remember correctly, i think we do have some programs that forgive tows in its entirety.

what will be the procedure in that example talking about really unique situation where you -- is there some sort of -- appeals process for the entire duration towing is forgiven? >> we have a hearing section who actually is currently -- [ indiscernible ] regarding the storage fees. >> director lai: i do recognize we are going to be hearing the towing policy at a future point before the next contract is in place. i'll defer some of those

comments. i do want to say, i'm hope ing for some additional information through the budget exercise just in terms of the percentage of the types of tow related activity. we are subsidizing. i shared that with staff already. i think as a board and agency, we have made the policy choice to essentially pay out of pocket for every single tow. we believe in essentially offsetting the impact on receiving end of this. i think that's great.

>> director hinze: thank you for the presentation. ly try -- i will try to be brief and try to go in order. on the c.i.p. in general, i like the c.i.p. i hope that staff try to stretch

every dollar. i would hope that after seeing c.i.p. funds, it's a signal of how much the importance is. on the fares, i'm curious if you knew offhand, some of the --

[ indiscernible ] >> we did calculate that how many would qualify for 125%. as soon as we get it, i will read it in the record. >> director hinze: that will be great. i will be supportive of looking at generating revenue specifically for expanding 145%.

i had a few questions how the program was going. i forget the name offhand. i'm also in favor looking at the policy. i do recognize that while towing

creating -- [ indiscernible ] towing is a tool that we have to use.

i will be interested to know how those programs will be and that will be a follow-up action for me. >> chair borden: thank you. director heminger? >> director heminger: thank you. jonathan, i got one general question and then i wanted to give you some feedback on fares. i believe the number that sticks in my mind, between the base budget and the augmented budget, you added about $140 million,

part of that federal money and part of that salary savings. you indicated earlier, i think the director lai, that we're going to be running out of the federal money in '25. that's when this $140 million will run out too. what's the plan for '26? >> revenue measure. >> director heminger: if we don't get the revenue measure -- >> this board will have to make some difficult decisions. >> director heminger: it's little bit like the rule, first rule is stop digging if you're in one. we're in this sort of magical space. thanks to federal funds. we're in the hole but it doesn't quite feel like it. we're there. i do worry about that.

>> director tumlin: one of the things that the $115 million gives us is an off ramp. one the things i've been insisting, we're willing to take some significant risk to spend this money now and worsen our structural deficit under the belief that will help us when all new funding base that would have been necessary pre-covid. but at the same time, if we're unsuccessful in '24 finding new revenue base, we have just enough money with this funding plus reserves to take an off ramp where we go into a hiring freeze. it doesn't force us into massive layoffs. it will force us into significant service cuts across the board. >> director heminger: i don't know if it's like a off ramp.

$140 million is not put in one time thing. >> that is correct. i will say this much, very much like the budget you adopted last time. historically, we've run the m.t.a. on better than expected revenues. we will have expenditure controls that we will talk about the board about where we will give you updates on where we are with revenues. if revenues are not hitting the points that we expected in the projection, we will not turn on some of those new expenditures. we will recommend when we come back to you on the 5th, pending parking hitting this point, pending a review, mid year fiscal year '23 we'll stagger some expenditures and hold the line until we're sure we can sustain them.

>> director heminger: that is your plan? >> yes. what we did when board adopted the budget for the current two years. right in the middle of covid. you adopted something in march and things got worse and we started cutting back. last thing we did -- we did include about $30 million in new expenditures in the budget related to the muni reliability working group. the decision was, if revenues decline even further than what was adopted, those expenditures go on complete hold. that's a lot of the things we held in the last budget and were never filled. the difference this time is, got to get the system kick started to get those people who bought a car or something different or only going to go to work two or three days a week. they need to choose muni.

>> director heminger: for fares, let's start with how many riders do you think we'll have. bart just presented a similar report to their board a few weeks ago. they are projecting their ridership stabilizing at 60% to 80% of pre-pandemic. they are using 70 as their baseline. what's yours? >> we did provide a chart like that in the last budget. we can do that again. i would agree -- i wouldn't put us in the 60 to 80, i probably put us in the 70 to may be 83, 85. i think our ridership has been recovering. i think lot of the data has shown over time people are using muni for day-to-day trips to get around the city. like we've seen weekend ridership stabilize. i think the largest question is

the peak is changing. the whole system is built around computer peaks. i think making adjustments around that is what's going to be difficult for transit divisions but the number of hours required by the systems users are still going on there. it might be different days and different periods of time. >> director heminger: turning to the fare policy. it really does seems a bit of a mess. part of that, i think was imposed on us by various arrangements we made with the board of supervisors and others. may be you can check my math just for starters. pausing the index is $22 million cost? >> over the two years. >> director heminger: understand the item we did in -- i'm

blanking on the name. consent calendar. that was a $17 million -- >> that's assumed in the revenue on these charts under operating grant. we've been getting that grant for fiver years. it's designated either for expansion which everybody saying is not necessarily m.t.a.'s priority or programmatic offset. the offsets have been our existing reduced fare program. >> director heminger: we couldn't use that money for rehab? >> no. >> director heminger: what is the youth discount cost us? >> i think the youth discount is now nonexistent with free muni for all youth. the cost is roughly about $2 million a year. >> director heminger: we're talking $40 million just right there. it does strike me.

we've always been a bit of hybrid with both general fund and enterprise funds. where that enterprise agency that spends lot of time giving away the revenue -- >> i like calling us a quasi enterprise agency. we get as much general fund from the complete general fund compartment. >> director heminger: the general fund has been growing like a banjii. thank god for it. that's one the things that concerns me. why do we offer discounts to

riders who don't need them? i'll be a senior. i don't need the disdoubt. my wife is a senior, they doesn't need the discount. there are hundreds of thousands of people in this city who get this discount who don't need it. only recently we got adult low income individuals into the discount pool. they are the folks that needed a lot more than bunch of seniors living on knob hill. the question about the clipper fare is tough. why are we raising a fare when we want to increase the use of the product? bart is almost at 100% market

share now with clipper. ac transit is 40%. we're lagging behind at 25%. i know part of that is our demographics of our ridership changed during the pandemic. that was true of everybody else as well. that one does trouble me in terms of options on the table. the options seem to be let's jack up the fare on pass holders and clipper riders and give everybody else a break. i'm not sure that gets the equities lined up right. the third question is does waiving indexing twice in a row essentially create new policy. if you do it once, it's an exception. you're creating an expectation we'll be giving that up. i think that's a very serious

conversation for this board to have. it was one of the great things that you did before i got here. i would hate to see it go. even -- i wonder whether now is the right time to be offering out more free goodies to folks when we're going to be down that much money at least. when we'll face the fact that it federal money will run out. how well we do in a ballot measure election is anybody's

guess. we certainly all want to do well. given the fact that is such a risk and the sensation of the federal funding is almost a certainty. i'm not sure i like our odds. your off ramps and your quarterly or whatever ends up being reporting about how we're tracking and may be making mid-course corrections, i think does sound like the right strategy to me. >> quickly, i think director lai's request on kind of let's just call it the who benefits analysis from the fare products. i think we can put that together. it will give this board some context on that. on the indexing two in a row, i think we agree. honestly, had we not gotten the $115 million, i think the conversation today would have

been very different. i think again, those dollars were meant to offset revenue losses. i think there is a policy discussion about incentivizing people to come back when we need them to come back most. >> director heminger: that is a tricky one. jonathan, the congressional response was about mitigating revenue loss from the pandemic. it wasn't about mitigating revenue loss that you yourself create by changing your policies. the original intent was not to bail us out from change of the fare revenue. it was about the pandemic.

>> director tumlin: i don't disagree with you. san francisco is the slowest performer for return to office. we have a unique problem here in the san francisco bay area about transit recovery. what we're trying to do with the federal money is actually get to transit recovery not just pay for two years worth of direct financial losses. we're being very strategic with this money. we are intentionally setting ourselves up for some risks here. we are not increasing phearse. we need to bring riders back. we are accelerating the use of this money in order to restore service and to continue to invest in the muni speed, reliability and safety improvements that we know. our effort here to demonstrate

what we're capable of. we can rebuild ridership and identify a new base of funding in 2024. if we're not able to do that, we have many breaks and levers along the way. if we're not, if we're getting less confident about being able to get a new revenue measure, we can hit the breaks. if we identify new measure but the voters don't go if it, we have held on to all of our reserves very rare among transit agencies. my goal has been to create the financial base that this agency has not had in over a decade. >> director heminger: thank you, jeff. >> chair borden: director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: thank you so much. my first question is why are you still acting c.f.o.? you don't have to answer that?

[ laughter ] first supportive of free muni for youth. i think that should be made permanent. lot of people think it's already permanent. let's just go ahead and make that permanent. i really like the creativity the pass and the goal is to get at the fact that 50% of the people paying one ride at a time are low income. we were advising how to take muni. my daughter says muni cost $3.

if you look on the app, it's $2.50. why we giving discounts to those who may be have indicator of more income? this feels like the office of equity and practice. i do think that $22 million, this is significant enough amount of money that we might lose. i would want to apply that policy. are there certain subsets that might make a little more sense for who can't afford to pay while honoring those data showing us are lowest income and frees fares more surgically.

my questions are, in terms of that cap where you just pay and pay and you hit a limit, how does that work logistically? you have to use electronic fare media to track that? how can we know those paying cash would have hit that cap? >> it's built in our new muni mobile which is part of the customer information service. you would have to have muni mobile app to do that. diana you want to talk about the logistics? >> initially because this is

something that we can't implement on clipper today, we want to do this six month pilot project to try to get some information and analyze what the impact would be, what will be the best pricing, the price point to be able to do that. we understand there are issues with muni mobile. the goal is to move towards clipper and expand network of vendors with the requirement that they focus lower income neighborhoods to ensure they have that access. >> vice chair eaken: what will

the max dollar amount per month will be? >> it will be hard. we have to work on the technology. we'll stick it in the fare policy and implement next year. one will be up to the lifeline pass and second up to the full muni pass, which is $81. we'll have to figure that out. that's a little technical. we want to make those available to the public. >> vice chair eaken: especially we know those paying cash for ride are some of the lowest income raid -- riders. if the goal is to you pay up to certain amount and then you don't pay more for that month, is there some way to extend that benefit, that will create a solution. >> director tumlin: one of the things we've been working with the california integrated travel project on is try to identify means by which people who are unbanked can use their california or san francisco i.d. card as a debit card that's an

identification card that highlights their eligibility for age ability or income discount program. you will use your city i.d. card for your transit pass. it can work as a debit card or as your free muni card because you're enrolled in a homeless services program. that was something we were working on pre-covid a that we like to start up again soon. we feel strongly that the people who need these programs the most are the one who has least access to conventional financial products. there was an interesting comment during fare program. that suggested that the deeper discounts by income are raising the income threshold for the lifeline pass, should be something that should be paid for out of the general fund

rather than the m.t.a. budget. >> vice chair eaken: we're already receiving substantial infusion. we've been trying to find ways to be more self-sufficient. feels like we're relying on that particular revenue source. i wanted to hear you, jonathan, share some thoughts in term of the c.i.p. i wanted to hear what were the hearth breakers in term -- heart breakers? >> i'll go step-by-step what happened with the c.i.p.

we got asked over $3 billion. we ask project manager and c.i.p. managers to ask for about 20% more than revenues so it's not unusual. our capital revenues are way down. we shifted prop b to operating budget. development impact fees are low and general fund of 2014 geobond is done. it resulted in a significant drop in our c.i.p. revenues. we're at $2.4 billion. our solution typically that we look to in that situation is especially with c.i.p. plus is to fund -- at least start projects. get environmental started. start the planning or legislative work with m.t.a. board. like a major street project can be $10 million on the construction side but to get the legislation done, environmental review outreach can be couple

hundred thousand dollar. we stepped back to cash flow and get as much as we can started with c.i.p. plus. we've already done the outreach. ceqa and nepa is done. we were able to keep the projects in and moving. we could not get enough construction money in the window required. we're trying to get as far as we can with what we want to fund. i think there were couple of technology projects where we just don't have the revenue. i feel good that we started a lot. we made it shovel ready.

we're at high risk that we'll hit money dead end when we need to build the project. lot of good stuff. you'll see the details but high risk. which is my answer to the question. >> vice chair eaken: last question on slide 39. the headline is that we are reaching cost recovery for the program. but the program costs exceed our revenues close to $5 million. i wonder you can explain how going with cost recover we? >> essentially the revenues that are lost, like the $4 million is a result to allow for discounts. it's a policy decision for you to essentially subsidize and provide those discounts. if we take those discounts off the table, we collect everything we need minus $300,000 to run the program. if we were to take those

discounts away, the program would be self-sufficient. the answer is, over a number of -- essentially, to policy decisions of this board to provide those discounts were subsidized those. >> vice chair eaken: we are subsidizing around $5 million? >> correct through the discount that this board has directed us to give overtime. we use the operating budget. >> chair borden: director yekutiel? >> director yekutiel: thank you, chair. . >> thank you, director yekutiel. >> thank you, chair. hello. >> good evening. i think i've gotten a blood clot in my leg. okay. let's start with the bus

shelters. very important to me, from that perspective, so thank you for bringing that up. i'm glad that you're in conversations with clearchannel. even though they're a multibillion dollar company, we want to make sure that we get the best deal. is it possible to get a one-time face lift for the bus shelters? i think the deal that we're giving them is probably good, given what they're doing, but i'd like to see them get rid of all the stickers, all the bolts, make sure that they get

rid of all the acid washed graffiti. do you think that's possible? >> i think they're hearing what you're saying. it's making more improvements on the digital advertising side, but i think we can have that conversation, i think based on feedback from this board and, over time, we are asking clear channel to take care of the bus shelter itself and other areas like the street and the pavement around the shelter itself, so yes, that is something that we can discuss with them. >> i was at one of the cleaners at a bus shelter, and basically, what they do it they take window cleaner and paper towels and wiping it down. if we're going to renegotiate this contract, we ask them for a real change.

maybe a face lift is an offensive way to call it, maybe it's an improvement. >> in the past, what was done was an appraisal of the shelters. essentially, the department lost the value of the bus shelters themselves. instead, what we're asking is for the ownership of the shelters at the end of the contract and have the ability to work in or clean around the shelters if approximate necessary. >> i think it would be bad if they made us pay for the shelters given the shape that some of them are in. i know there was a conversation about going around to some of these bus shelters and fixing them. is that in this budget?

>> it is not specifically, although i have asked staff to price out staff of that type, a couple of custodians and some laborers for that shift -- >> jonathan? >> oh, yes. >> sorry, this is julie. i think that you will be able to flush out better the details of the customer experience, but the contract does include the details just described. >> oh. >> this is a cost multiplier. if we fix the front door of our service, all the new people that are moving to san francisco and asking themselves how they will choose to get around, they sit for ten minutes in a destroyed bus shelter, they're not going to choose that service. it's my understanding, to give the venues, there are about 20

or 30 of them in the city, a one-time waiver of the bagging cost, that's $10,000 to $20,000. even though they have loading zones, i guess their loading zones vary. these venues have been closed for two years. they're just trying to get back. i don't know what the rest of the board thinks, but i know we're in the middle of this crisis and i'm going to talk about how i feel about it, but it seems like that money could go a long way to helping the vendors recover. i think we could look into a waiver of that cost, and to pay for that, we allow them to bag their own loading zones in certain areas.

we let other people in the city bag their own loading zone bags. i'm saying we do less and then charge them less, so that's something i'd like to consider. parking fees and fines, wow. a sign that went down. are we thinking of replacing some of our towing with boots? oh, hi. >> you just give me an opportunity to say my mantra for 2022, which is boot more, tow less. >> he's been saying that for three days. >> i'm so glad. obviously, booting a car doesn't get it away from places where they need to be away from, but it could help in other places. glad to see that. the $633 for towing, that doesn't include the citation,

so really, it would be close to $750 with the 100 citation? >> yes. >> so that's $750 to get your car towed. my colleagues have talked about poverty tows and all of that, so it doesn't surprise you that i'm going to say charging san franciscans $750 to tow their car is so much money. it's -- their ire is not directed at m.t.a. so much at the city. i know we really don't even make money off of these fines, and when i tell my colleagues that, my friends, and my employees, they say, how is that possible? how is it possible that it's going to cost me $90 for a ticket, and you don't make money? my reaction is incredulity.

we have some of the highest rates in the country, and we still don't make money. >> the screen, it was kind of fuzzy, and they went through the figures very quickly. in 2017, our payroll was $207

million. five years later, it's 650 million. our revenue from transit fares, it's a 100% decrease. parking transit fees and fines, even though we're increasing it by more than 100%, we made 317.

i want the public to understand, i want us to know, keep in mind, that was a time when we were in the middle of a strong economy. i know this is a meeting where you're looking to hear how we feel about the budget and specific items, and in two weeks, you're going to come back to us with some of those figures, and we continue fix the budget hole -- we cannot fix the budget hole that we're in in this crisis. we just can't, but looking at this revenue side, i don't see

how we fix it. a 15% expenditure efficiency would save us $50 million a year. at this juncture, all i can point out is in five to six years, our costs have gone up 50% to 100%, and our fares have gone down 50% to 100%. are their opportunities to renegotiate the cost of the $90 million work orders that we've got with the city? >> i think the answer is yes. i think what's most important with the stats you laid out was the labor costs. city work orders pay the costs of city workers in other

departments. we will be talking with the mayor's budget office about some of the costs in those city work orders. we always consider, and i think we're going to be more strict about whether the agency is receiving the services that it is actually paying for. i can tell you that we get semi sort of billings from the city departments, and then, the fiscal budgets show up, and all of a sudden, i need my $8 million for the year, so i think we're going to be more strict about the services that we're serving, and if not, we're not going to pay for them. at a time when the budget is at a surplus, and ours is bailed out by the federal government, it's a question to ask. >> where is the operating of the central subway in the van ness in this budget? where is that? >> the cost of operating van

ness and the central subway were in the prior budget. those were the positions that were frozen through the budget because clearly those did not open over the past two years, so the positions associated with that are included. julie might want to speak to that, but there are additional maintenance of way that are included in this budget as augmentations and we included in that two years ago. >> how much would we get if we implemented sunday parking throughout the day and parking until 10:00 p.m.? >> we did do sunday meters in 2013 and part of 2014, and we generated about $6 million in meter revenues as i recall and

about $5 million in citation revenue. for the extended metering, conservatively, we ran these numbers a couple of years ago, and this is extending our meters into the evening hours and the six days of the week that we already operate, so approximately 24 hours of meter operation, around $20 million in meter revenue, and possibly as much as $15 million in citation revenue. >> okay. talk to me about this because i haven't been here. we have the ability to implement it, but we haven't done so. why is that? >> it's something that we're going to, i believe, coming back soon as we do some robust outreach to the neighborhoods

and thoughtfully roll it out. >> okay. so it's expected to bring in $25 million a year. is that projected in your budget, jonathan? >> it is not, but i did include $5 million of meter incentive. i think this board needs to get an update throughout the year, and i think our expectation is that meter revenues will increase. i think i did tell the board on february 2 -- again, based on current parking practice because it's going up from normal activity plus additional

activity. >> okay. i think i've made my priorities clear, and i was kept up at night. i literally lost sleep because of this. we're trying to make decisions for the next five years so when people look back at this meeting and they look at what we're talking about, they wanted to make sure that we asked the right questions and we're properly informed. i'm scared because if i ran a business like this -- i know this is not a business, but i'm confident as we continue these conversations that we also

aren't afraid to think about all the different ways that we can be more fiscally responsible and plug our holes. i know i will do all that i can to advocate for us, but thank you for all that you do. appreciate it. >> thank you. i don't see any other names at the moment. >> so i would like to add one thing, and i think i have the direction that i need to get back to you on the 5, like, this is what you need to finalize, and this is the final detail. i agree with director yekutiel. i stay up late at night trying to figure this out. we are an enterprise agency, and we are at a period where

we're trying to get our customers out, so i want to go back to that fare indexing and fare collecting. right now, we're getting 30 cents per boarding in the customers that we have, and with the ridership increase and the fare increase, remember, the people we start off with are the transit dependent, who have no choice, qualify for the option because it's low, so there's a part of our ridership that pays for that, and they can afford to have other options. i want you to keep in mind, like director yekutiel said, if we're trying to attract those

people back, where they can afford the full monthly fares and they can afford to make other choices, do we need to make a policy choice to entice them to come back? thinking about a pure enterprise, if you're a business, and you're trying to attract those customers back, what actions does your agency need to take in this small window before we lose those people? i think on the fare side, we'll provide you a couple of options and choices, like, a, b, and c,

and here's what happens if we lose that. and we'll give you the full policy list and everything to look at on april 5. >> great. i do want to say, i don't think we should look at increasing fares, but i think we should be looking at increasing the level of service that we're providing. until we get to the place where we're making most of our service routes, and i think that's how we tie it to the indexing. i do think we need to figure out how to incentivize people. i remember there was a promotion that the other transit agencies were doing where they were offering a free weekend, sort of, like, transit celebration. it was one of those things that they were doing to get back to come back to transit back in the fall, and so we should

think about promotions right now that we can do. there's the bloomsf, something like that that they can do, and unfortunately, they partnered with a rideshare program. i love the capping of the fare as people get on. the one thing i'm just not sure on, i take the bus every day, and i'm on is several times a day, and there are lots of people who don't appear to pay.

i know that not many people have passes right now, right? and people literally text me. i'm on the bus, lots of good-looking people that are not paying, and i don't know what that means. i don't know if they're not paying, if they think it's free or if there's something -- we have issues with the fare inspectors and who they were targeting, but i think we could have the fare inspectors be a little more intentional, maybe look at specific lines, beefed up -- maybe even presence of people. people pay attention when they know that people are paying attention. people pay their fare if they know that someone cares that they pay their fare. people with means will see people without means not paying fares, and they'll say, well,

if they don't have to pay, i don't have to pay. obviously, this budget has to prioritize state of good repair and the things running smoothly, so that is going to be the biggest asset to bring people back. we've talked about the sunday meters, and that's critical. we have to bring those on-line. i think we can do more with our meters and setting pricing because people are still driving around and umm canning back, so we have to be more creative in thinking about that. isn't it true that the budget is also technically funding a lot of positions that we may not fill? we have all of those classifications that we won't fill in a year or even two years. >> yeah, so we'll show you that. what we call that is the

attrition percentage. we'll show you, just for purposes of, like, discussion, the budget supports, you know, 4700 f.t.e., but the actual f.t.e. is 5300. we keep levels at, like, between 9% and 11% so it reduced our expenditures in the final budget. there have been two areas. one, we've been exceeding the attrition rate, and that will he be adjusted next year, but the board may remember that we right sided overtime two years ago. we were, like, blowing it every year, and so we adjusted the overtime budget in the 50s,

like $58 million, to hold us more accountable. >> isn't that also because people have been willing to not take overtime? >> yes, that's another issue, that's right. that will be in the budget. you will see our attrition assumption, but that's correct. we will always have a part of f.t.e. attrition, that's right. >> i'd love to figure out how we can more surgically figure out those people who need more help. i feel like it's a future we

want to get to, where we're helping to subsidize both, like, ride sharing and muni. i think we should think about, is there some sort of program, some sort of bundle, pay muni $100 a year, but is there an

innovative way where people would get their names on a sign or something? we're not going to sell people's data. we don't even have really good data to sell, but maybe we should think about our future trajectory. i think achieving efficiency, we're not going to find a solution for that. i feel like we lose a lot of money on the h.r. hiring process, taking so long, so if

we could reform that, that could actually save us a bunch of money and a bunch of time. those areas, unfortunately, we don't get to deal with as much in the budget, but i think if we can make changes in those other areas, that would be great. this is what it is, and we don't have a lot of room to move within it. >> one thing that i can tell you that will cover that's in the expenditures is it's $1 million for technology infrastructure. on my team, i have an amazing chief technology officer, lisa wolton, and i think a lot of the things that you're talking about are technology infrastructure, and we're catching up things and putting it in place. i think some of the things you're talking about between

our new meters and some of the infrastructure we're putting in place will set the foundation for some of those things in the future. you know, between our customer information system and our new mobile app, like, the physical technology and network infrastructure we need to put in place. you know, like, wifi, cellular in the subway, all of those elements, i think we're finally getting there, and i would love to have lisa come in and talk about all of those things and customer amenities that we're planning for the future. >> are you still getting to where you can pay things on-line or you have to send a check to the city and verify that they got a check -- that's absolutely mind blowing. >> can you ask that again? >> so the issue for white zones and yellow zones -- >> oh, white zones and yellow zones. >> people would actually have

to write a check, and they would have to verify, and once a third party verified it. >> yes, we have a third party app to handle those things. >> okay. that's great. but i mean that publicizing those sorts of thing -- i mean, just like the changes to our tow program, i just think we need to let the public know when it's easier to access the services that we offer. we do a great job of covering our buses and we put out public service announcements, but i don't think we think about marketing ourselves. >> that is fantastic. another one of the augmentations, i know i didn't give you a script, but another one of the augmentations, a lot of the projects are outreach based, so a lot of our amazing

staff in our external communications division is charged against projects, so a lot -- one of the augmentations on the budget is we have to be more mobile. we have to use our own partners to get out messaging about our products, how we agree to use the models. some of that funded by the model because we don't have that in the operating budget. i think the payoff we got from a very small investment would be quite large. >> like an open table, people make reservations. if you use the app, you get dropped off at this door.

we have expedia and all these other places like people are searching, and all you have to do is set up ads so when people are searching for a destination that san francisco comes up and muni comes up. i know that people who visit here think our system is great. it's just the people who live here who think it sucks. i think we need to do a better job of selling ourselves and i think that's an area that government doesn't do a very good job in, and i think it's an investment where we can get a good return. i don't have anything else to add. i think my colleagues have covered it, but i think investing in ourselves and getting it out there is really an underrated focus. >> thank you. >> so with that, any other

comments on this item before we go into closed session? did we take public comment? 100 years ago, it sounds like. did that happen? it happened. okay. so we'll close that item, and that brings us to our next item. >> clerk: directors, that places you on item 13, discussion and vote pursuant to admin 67.10-d, vote whether to conduct closed session with legal counsel. >> we have to [indiscernible]. >> so, chair borden, because this is a labor negotiation, you do not need to vote into closed session. you can just adjourn into closed session with a roll call vote. >> okay. thank you. so sfgov, we'll see you later anybody wants to go on a biobreak, now is the time. >> we're back, and the m.t.a.

board is returning from its closed session. is there a motion -- >> i make a motion. >> sorry, item 14. announcement of closed session. the board discussed item 4, and no direction was taken. >> i need a motion not to disclose. >> motion not to disclose. [roll call] >> clerk: thank you. that motion passes 6-0 and concludes the business before you today. >> we are adjourned. our next meeting is april 5, and i won't see you guys, but have fun. >> bye.

>> mayor breed: i am san francisco mayor london breed. welcome to the state of the city address. [applause] >> mayor breed: i am happy to have all of you here today. it is really great to be outdoors in person. the mask mandates, vaccine mandates are all gone. if you take pictures answer post. make sure you put disclaimer we removed it in san francisco so i don't get beat up by folk on the internet. thank you and welcome. i want to start by thanking all workers who helped us navigate the latest surge. nurses, police officers, paramedics, educators, all incredible people who kept this city