>> president moran: meeting of the san francisco public utilities commission to order. please call the roll. [ roll call ] vice president ajami is excused. we have a quorum. this meeting is held in person at the san francisco hall room 400 authorized by the california government code and mayor breed's 45th supplement to february 25, 2020 emergency proclamation. i like to remind individuals present and attending in person today, all health and safety protocols and building rules must be adhered to. hand sanitizer stations are

available throughout the building and masks are available upon request at any of the city hall entrances. i like to ask please silence any electronic devices. we welcome the public participation during public comment period. for each item, you will take two minutes of public comment first. members of the public may provide remote public comment by dialing (415)655-0001. meeting i.d.. you must limit your comments to the topic of the agenda item being discussed. remind you stay on -- if public comment be made in respectful manner and you address the remarks to the commission as a whole not no individual commissioners or staff.

been he of the commission -- on behalf of the commission i like to extend thank you to sfgov tv staff for their assistance during this meeting. >> president moran: before calling the first item, i like to announce that the san francisco public utility commission acknowledged unceded land of historic territory. every citizen residing within the greater bay area has and continues to benefit from if the land since before and after the san francisco public utilities commission founded in 1932. it's important that we not only recognize the history of the tribal land but also we acknowledge and honor the fact

established a working partnership with sfpuc. please call the first item. >> clerk: adopt renewed findings under the state urgency legislation to allow hybrid person meeting during the covid-19 emergency and direct the commission to the next 30 days. have there any members of the public present in the room who wish to provide comment on this item? seeing none. do we have any callers with their hands raised? this is on item number 3.

public comment is closed. >> president moran: thank you. commissioners any comments? seeing none. can i have a motion and a second. >> move. >> second. >> president moran: roll call please. [roll call vote] you have three ayes. >> president moran: item 3 passes. item 4 is approval of minutes from april 26th. any additions or corrections? seeing none. please open up for public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make public comment on the items approval of the minutes please press star 3 to speak. any members of the public present who wish to provide public comment on this item?

public comment on item 4 is closed. >> president moran: any comments on the minutes? seeing none. motion and second. >> move to approve. >> second. >> president moran: roll call please. [roll call vote]. you have three ayes. >> president moran: the minutes are approved. >> clerk: item 5, general public comment. members of the public who wish to make two minutes of remote general public comment on matters within the commission's jurisdiction and not on agenda please press star 3 to speak. any members of the public present in the room who wish to provide general public comment?

seeing none. >> we have three callers in the queue. >> caller: at the rules committee on april 11th, regarding the appointment of gm herrera as director of the s.f. bay water assistance financing authority and at the rules committee regarding the appointment to the p.u.c. commission, i made comments about the transfer from p.u.c. to the city administrator. i stated how a loss of transfer from the fire department to the p.u.c. in 2010 put a sole purpose of balancing the city's budget. that since 2010, the p.u.c. has implemented a number of misguided policy decisions how the p.u.c. is using a lot as a

mechanism to replace water main using easter bond which is inconsistent with prop 218 and creating a potential legal exposure. these comments were made to the capital planning committee on april 4th. there was also a reference to the hearing on issues with supervisor peskin stating that if pg&e took the city offer $2.5 billion for its infrastructure, the pg&e wouldn't have to deal with this. following that same logic, if the p.u.c. transfer to the c.a.o. then the p.u.c. wouldn't have to deal with this.

>> thank you for your comments. next caller. you have two minutes. >> caller: hi. i'm a whitewater kayaker that travel the tuolumne river. it's been defining my paddling career. as a river that runs, it's an ideal ground for paddlers. several years ago, thanks to a scary incident in tuolumne river and flow, i was able to raft on a friday and then again on a saturday before making my trip down that sunday in my kayak. the reliability of the run made it a perfect step up. since then i experienced the maritimes with far more and far less water.

each trip down this river is joyful and valuable. there are few rivers in the world that compares to paddling with your friends, camping on the river bed and marveling at the beauty contained. i hope you can keep these experiences in mind now and in the future as you balance the needs of san francisco's utility users and the ways in which they react. thank you for opportunity to comment. >> caller: good afternoon. this is peter policy director for the tuolumne river. you might remember we submitted a proposal that the sfpuc could meet its share of the flows for at least two years if those

years were dry, you would go back to flow and still make it through the 8.5 year design drought. that's a real win-win. you have your very conservative design drought that's being met and the river for at least two years is getting substantially higher flows. there were some interest in that. the comments were like, well, we're not quite ready to make a decision. we got things coming up that will help us get more information. nothing happened. we have lost another year now. it's been almost seven months since the final of the workshops. we heard nothing. the whole idea was you have the information you can make some critical conditions. last we heard there was a request that staff come up with a timeline back-end of february. we heard nothing. information requests go unanswered including yours. i like to know what's the plan? when are we going to start

talking about improving the conditions on the tuolumne? it's san francisco's responsibility to be a good steward. if we can get an update today, i appreciate it. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next caller. >> caller: i want to bring up few issues to your attention. some of the callers have stated again and again you commissioners are not paying attention to accountability and transparency. on the marine street a facility that will be costing $400 million.

this matter came before the audit committee. you had some issues. how did it get past you commissioners? some of you do not -- i would say are not very well versed with the elements. $400 million. then we have a lot of money being spent on a trail. which is good. whenever we have something that is spending lot of money that's going to be used by the public, we need to have a visitor

center. the corruption is still there. thank you very much. >> thank you for your comments. >> caller: thank you again. chair anson. good to be back with you. i was in san francisco again since your last meeting. i didn't get to attend that meeting. sfpuc all around me. whenever i see electricity i see

cleanpowersf. because the water as well. how can you get that number penetration higher? a big draw back to hydro is dropped.

how can we increase percentages and at the same time cleanpowersf less expensive and the alternative. we have lot more work to do. i enjoy seeing san francisco and cleanpowersf. thank you. >> there are no other callers in the queue. >> clerk: public comment is closed. >> president moran: next item is communications. any questions or comments about

communication? seeing none. let's open this for public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes on item 6 communications, please press star 3 to raise your hand to speak. do we have a member of the public who wish to make public comment? seeing none, do we have any callers with their hands raised? public comment on item 6 is closed. >> president moran: any other discussion? seeing none. next item is report of the general manager. >> item 7a is drought condition update.

>> good afternoon commissioners. steve richie general manager of water. this is the drought updates for this period of time. little bit different this time. some things have been added in. hopefully this will be of interest to the commissioners. first, one of the routine things the drought monitor which shows california largely in droughts mostly severe drought but large swath central valley in california. we are still in drought.

most importantly, it's allowed in the press different ways that the two largest reservoirs in california. you'll note that hetch hetchy stands as of may 2nd, 332,000-acre feet.

overall, our storage is in good condition. you will see that water bank has been coming down. that helped to contribute to our ability to keep water stored up country. water bank because the curtailments have been suspended by the state and they are still suspended allows us to actually utilize water bank as it was intended with the districts taking water out while we're diverting water up hetch hetchy. looking at the cumulative precipitation at hetch hetchy. we saw big end of october, big end of december. then kind of being flat basically for january, february and march. april was actually averaged for the hetch hetchy watershed. we did get little shot in the arm there this last month. on the snow pack side, again, you'll see bumped up there

little bit in april with snow coming in which is contributed to the conditions that we are experiencing in our watershed. this slide is one that's different than anything else i showed here. this shows the storage in hetch hetchy reservoir in two water years. the black dash line that kind of dips down is last year, water year 2021. the blue dashed line at the top is water year 2022. this is a slide that staff hetch hetchy put together because the total amount of snow in these two years was not extremely different. it was different but varied somewhat. but the amount of water put in storage is different for four reasons that i can come up with. i been through this before. the october storm that was atmospheric river provided enough water to basically wet

the entire watershed and dampen the soil everywhere. that's because we had a hetch hetchy shut down for those two month this year. hetch hetchy wasn't contributing to the water supply directly in terms of day-to-day use. it was actually just cut off from the rest of the system. throughout this period there was cool water that existed as

opposed to last year. it's been cool all the time. the reservoir will fill and spill. i will talk later in the presentation about what we'll do about that spill. it's interesting to note that this year that blue line is actually impaired flow this year. the lighter gray colors with the

black line in the middle is the historic median. you see that except for that big spike at the beginning of hetch hetchy has roughly tracked median flow on the tuolumne river. we'll see how the rest of the year goes but certainly well been the bounds of what historic water available will be at hetch hetchy. which is not the worst drought on record. but it is dry this year. this is a reasonable amount of water that we're seeing this year as compared to other systems. speaking of water available to the city, we're at 178,000-acre feet. that bumped up little bit to 184,000-acre feet as we start to get in this spill, that number should increase some more. we will get certainly more water

available to the city but certainly not enough to fill the system, which is really our defining point about that. next slide shows the precipitation by month. you see big october, big december and at least a median april whereas the other months were dry. those three months did a lot for our water supply. in the bay area shows the same picture. big october, big december and actually above median in april. again, it was good test there in the month of april. the precipitation forecast, the upper shows little bit of precipitation up country which we have seen in the last week. it does show dry after that.

if we can keep our demands at the 2015 levels, that basically matches up with the 10% reduction that we've been looking for from our customers. this last week, demand bumped up little bit. if you look at the chart, you see that it does bump up little bit because you are getting into warmer weather in 2015 as well. it's getting to that point of being able to keep demand at or below about 200 million gallons a day in total. it's going to be our real goal. it's what we do with the excess

water as we deal with our water supply, we look at the upper tuolumne river say what can we do beneficial for that water? we've been working on the upper tuolumne river ecosystem program. that is a program whereby we're looking at utilizing water in different ways than we have historically. historically we had a steady flow throughout the year which is good for trout but it doesn't do much for the rest of the environment. what we tried to do in the upper tuolumne program to come up with a way which we call spill in a way that is more consistent with the overall hydrology and produce multiple beneficial effects in the area. this is important to us, this is our chance to actually manage the river that we have control of down stream. it's different from down pedro.

this is an important program for us. this just shows a photo of the face leasing. what we'll see is not all that water coming out. they are all running here. it will be about half to two thirds of that. which is still lot of water coming down the stream. this slide shows what's going to happen starting in the next couple of days. what you see there is the blue line in effect is the hydrograph to a peak of about 4100 cubic feet per second. big push of water coming out of our system, out of our dam to go down stream. the whole point of that is going to be in the first instance to flood areas of the poopnon valley. then we'll start to tail it off.

you see multiple lines there. those are ones we'll try to operate within that zone because there are different beneficial effects that we can provide for the environment. some of which are relative to frogs. recently listed endangered species. they are also native trout. there's also a whole slew of other species that are down there. it's a big deal to try to help that system behave if it wants to. the big slug out and we tail off how it comes out, trying to provide as much benefit each way. some cases, those benefits are competitive between different

species. some like higher flows and some lower flows. we try to come up with a balance that will work for the best that it can. that leads me to my last slide which certainly is artistic with the color scheme. but the colors here are what the poopnon valley would look like. that top is the big orange blob. that will fill up. if you get up there this year, you will see a very wet pond there that will take most of the summer to actually dry out. the green and blue areas, they flood lower flows. the red areas flow at higher flows.

this is our plan over the next few weeks. we need to move it through the reservoir. there is a lot of water coming down that will help feed the water bank and help feed the upper tuolumne river. we think it's a good example how we try to manage the system for benefit of water supply as well as the environment. actually, one of the next presentations probably we can come back and say this is what we did. not what we planned but what we did and start to look at results. i'll be happy to answer any questions. >> president moran: thank you. >> commissioner maxwell: i was going to ask about monitoring. >> we have monitoring programs ongoing up there. together with us and the national park service.

it's part of our overall program of work with the national park. yes, we've been doing that for years. we will continue doing it for years. that's the way you understand what's going on with the long-term monitoring. >> commissioner maxwell: have we done this program before in this particular valley? >> yes. we've been working on this for more than 10 years now. actually in the budget, you approved money to actually start to pay for the environmental document working with the national park service where they can do an e.i.r. we can talk at great length about those, may be set up a briefing on it. every year is different. there's a process whereby we go through working with staff on the water supply side and the environmental side to come up

with the best release pattern that we can to achieve better benefits than we have with our historical flow releases. the park has been leary getting it in another e.i.r. the park is willing to do it now. we're willing to put the money into it so we can get to a formal change of our release requirements that allow us this kind of flexibility to do the best thing. >> commissioner maxwell: is this a valley we see going up the hetch hetchy? >> big one immediately down stream from hetch hetchy. nice little overlook spot with you can look at it. it's beautiful. >> commissioner maxwell: i thought we've been doing that all the time. >> we've been doing it longer you have been a commissioner. it's all been practice. we had really big year. i think it was 2017 or 2019 where one of the things you find

out if you release lot of water, how much gravel gets moved by that. you actually cheat little bit and you paint some rocks and you throw them in and you look for the layer. the flow so big we never find the rocks. sometimes the experiments don't work out like you expect. >> commissioner maxwell: what you doing is formalizing it now? >> yes. our requirement right now going back to the '70s is in the summer, for example. 75 cubic feet per second every day. just all the time. we think something that has more of a curve to it is a much better way to release water. >> commissioner maxwell: thank you. >> president moran: commissioner paulson? >> commissioner paulson: thank you for that presentation. it's these types of details and showing what you are monitoring, what you are doing that is really helpful to us and the

general public. i want to thank you for this particular -- in particular the ending piece of the presentation regarding the valley. thank you. >> president moran: very interesting and love your new graphs. two comments on unimpaired flow graph. one comment, i think it will be good if you can find a less techy term than the quartile range. >> i was hoping nobody would ask that. [ laughter ] >> president moran: the line below that gives you 2575. the more important comment is, i think this is going to be a very interesting graph to look at at

the end of the year. it seems to be foreshadowing some of what our life might be like with global warming. we have the early atmospheric river with huge flows but overall the average will probably be under a year. it starts to give us a hint i think is the role we'll be living in and the challenge we have managing that system. >> i read a headline today that january through april -- the headline was the driest year ever in california. didn't count october, november and december. for the water year, below average but it's not awful. these first four months except for april we did pretty well. it has been a tough year.

so yeah, lots of changes. >> president moran: we have in the past few months, we had the exceptional flow study that we talked about over the last meeting for atmospheric rivers. some time before that, we had the study on the analysis and what long-term projections is about average water available that the city would be. this graph starts to bring those two studies together as to what they're combined effect is. very interesting and i appreciate the presentation. commissioners, any other comments or questions? thank you let's open for public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes on the drought conditions update press star 3 to raise your hand

to speak. any members of the public present to make public comment? seeing none. do we have anyone with their hands raised? >> we have two callers in the queue. >> caller: thank you. i sent you a letter yesterday about the drought conditions update and all the promising news in it. i hope you get a chance to look at that. i do want to say that i'm very pleased that there's going to be this release to fill the poopnaut valley pond. i've been involved since the beginning. it's a very good program. it's based on science.

the science really points to the importance of mimicking unimpaired flows which is what you, sfpuc and environmental stewardship policy have embraced for the upper tuolumne. that's what we call functional flows. for some reason, sfpuc has a different definition of functional flows below the pedro dam. has opposed the state water board an attempt to do a similar thing which is to mimic unimpaired flow. percentages will be similar throughout the year. in the lower tuolumne, the river has only received 14% of its unimpaired flow. you can see why the population is on the brink of collapse.

what's going to happen this year might be terrible like that again and some time in the next few years, you'll have to dump water. that's not the way to manage the river. one response to president moran's comment about earlier storms and atmospheric rivers. that's going to benefit the sfpuc's water rights. we sent letters and we never get a response. >> clerk: your time expired. >> caller: you have three or four --

[ indiscernible ] you need to give three minutes. peter has nice amount information. to cut him off every time when he's giving us real information based on data -- [ indiscernible ] having said that, i answered the question many times who will speak for the salmon? we need to save the salmon.

we continue in our evil ways. thank you very much. >> we have one more caller. >> caller: i don't know -- i speak to you with the basics. i'm not an expert on these

things. i am encouraged that we have more water in the reservoir to hold. i will let you know how the sfpuc becomes real to me. i ask that you remember this. what i'm looking for most is when i'm in san francisco, i want a glass of water. i fill my water bottle to the top and it's going to flow. especially when i need to use the bathroom, there's going to be water for me to do my

business. i bring this to you because i ask that you not forget about those of us who live and also visit san francisco. we need water for most basic needs. i'm doing what i can to conserve. i'm encouraged. let's not spend the money and run the bank account down before the month is over. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. >> clerk: public comment on item 7a is closed.

>> that concludes my report. >> president moran: thank you. next item. >> clerk: item 8, new commission business. >> president moran: do we have any new business commissioners? seeing none. next item. >> clerk: item 9, the consent calendar. >> commissioner maxwell: i like to remove d and e. >> president moran: anything else? please open for public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of

remote public comment on item 9, the consent calendar, please press star 3 to raise your hand to speak. >> president moran: thank you commissioners. we have before us a consent item minus items d and e. any discussion? i have a motion and second please. >> so move. >> second. >> president moran: roll call. [roll call vote] you have three items. >> president moran: consent items less d and e passes.

call item d. >> clerk: approve san francisco unified school district work-based learning program rules for grant amount of $6000 and duration of one year. >> commissioner maxwell: i don't know if anyone here for that. my question is how did we arrive at $6000 for the grant? we just have two people? it sounds like a great program. certainly one that is very needed. i was just talking to a friend and they were saying how they had the water running. the kid said, oh no, don't do that. we're in a drought. the kid extremely important that we do this. i was wondering why only $6000

and why only two people? >> good afternoon commissioners. while there's only $6000 is because we typically support san francisco unified district for their program. this one is tied to the mayor's job plus program. opportunity for all. in addition to that, we have project pool, city works and another other opportunities. this one in particular focused on having youth work at our college learning garden. that garden can accommodate around two youth to support the garden. $6000 actually supports them for their stipend and shoes and maintenance. >> commissioner maxwell: thank you. >> president moran: commissioner

paulson? >> commissioner paulson: i had the same question. i was going to phrase it different way. that got answered. this is the $6000 -- it stuck out small little sum. am i correct you saying this is just one of the many different outreaches that you have? >> president moran: any other questions or comments? let's open up for public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make public comment on 9d, raise your hand press star 3 to speak. do we have any callers on 9d?

public comment comment on 9d is closed. >> president moran: can i have a motion and a second? >> move to approve. >> second. >> president moran: roll call. [roll call vote] >> president moran: item 9 dynamics passes. >> clerk: 9e, approve selection of kennedy jenkins, atsjv, aecom, woodward curran, jv and brown caldwell, lotus, jv award not to exceed $5 million with five years subject to board of supervisors approval under charter section 9.118.

>> commissioner maxwell: my question is around the evaluation and selection. the evaluation, we have 1000 points, we have 895 points for the written proposal a hundred points for the overhead schedule and five points for the diversity. my question is, it says we have the panel reviewed and rank the consultant teams during the proposal. a separate panel of diversity, equity and inclusion experts. i wanted to know who are the experts on the diversity equity and inclusion experts and regarding the evaluation points. is that something we've done before? is it something new? how do we determine what values we put on certain things?

>> actually there are two staff here better suited to answer that question. >> good afternoon commissioners. to partly respond to your question, this contract was initially delayed as we were looking at how to include the social impact partnership program. eventually, when it seemed clear that we had to move forward with the contracts because of the timeliness of the matters that are going to be contracted under them. we decided to include a racial equity component in order to at least have signal to the

companies that were bidding that we hold racial equity value for sfpuc and like to be working with companies that are also similarly reflecting those values within their companies. i'll have kendra talk about how that evaluation was performed. >> thank you. this is a new program that we're instituting to try to promote focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. i apologize there are some confusion around the panel that evaluates it is not a panel it's a pass-fail evaluation. >> commissioner maxwell: why would you say a separate panel of diversity, equity and inclusion experts evaluated the diversity, equity and inclusion submittal? why would you say that if that's not the case?

>> i apologize, i believe that was incorrect error and the way that the agenda item was drafted. we need to readdress -- >> commissioner maxwell: if it's not true. what do you mean maybe? if it's not the case you definitely should do that. >> that is the case. we could ratify this agenda item so it's accurate. >> commissioner maxwell: you said that you could not put in the -- you substituted racial equity and inclusion for what now? >> i want to clarify that wasn't a substitution. this is a new addition to our evaluation that we are including on all evaluations moving forward. >> commissioner maxwell: you said you can no longer put -- >> we were not to include it in

this solicitation because it couldn't be held for that. those are two separate issues that came up under this agreement. >> commissioner maxwell: that's huge for me. there might be a law, maybe lawfully. then it comes to our -- what we value as a commission and what we are -- i'm expecting that to go forward. that's a policy that we made. lawyers -- i guess they not supposed to do policy. they supposed it tell us how we are doing our policy. i'm not understanding this. i don't get it. it almost seems like i understand but to be honest, it almost seems like a lie. this second thing is almost a lie. if i hadn't read it and asked

about it, i would have assumed that this great panel of experts that were looking at and evaluating something. which was not the case. when i look at what i consider policy important and there's five points for diversity, equity and inclusion, that doesn't show to me what we value. it doesn't show me what the commission has value and what we've said. i'm not understanding this. i cannot support this at this time. you need to tell the truth, get it the way it supposed to be. i want to know about this evaluation, how all of a sudden, we have five points for diversity, equity and inclusion and we say it's important. our policy says that. i know if the lawyer can help. i need to know how she can help

us to make our policies evident in our contracts. >> i think it will be best if we pull this item and we will clarify that piece. i'm thinking off the top of my head. i would imagine there are some items that are going at the board of supervisors right now which will hopefully -- i don't want to speak for our counsel -- clarify this. this is what commissioner was an attempt in light of the law that was passed to still say that diversity, equity and inclusion are important to us and to move forward on it. there are some other laws that are going that you aware of which might deal with the social impact partnership in a different way. not necessitate having another statement. why don't we pull this item.

we'll draft it the proper way. obviously that was a mistake we made. we apologize for that. we'll clarify how the law is developing and we'll make sure that what we have coming forward is in line with what the policy of this commission. >> commissioner maxwell: five points, i understand, that's almost embarrassing. it's almost a slap in the face. >> thank you commissioner maxwell for bringing up this issue. we do want to be clear about what this means in terms of

giving out contracts. i do have a ancillary piece. i assume we can just pull this which sounds like we're ready to do. i'm not going to ask about that. just in terms of getting something done, what is the urgency to make sure that -- unfortunately there was a mistake to use probably the wrong word in putting this together. what is the urgency of expediting this piece even with the error? expediting this piece even with the error? it wasn't done the way we expect. >> i think to respond to your

question, it seems appropriate to pull it from the agenda and address the commissioner's concerns. these are as needed contracts that we use for whole host of activities. they are urgent and the other ones have expired. there a lot of work that's working on the contract across the water enterprise. we use them for professional services for water quality and for water treatment and natural resources. >> commissioner paulson: was there stuff not getting done because of the contract? >> there are delays as a result of these contracts not currently being in place. those delays will continue. i don't believe that a delay of another commission meeting would result in any tangible impact to

operations. >> we'll make sure we get this and i'll be able to answer more questions for you. thank you commissioners. >> president moran: any public comment? we will proceed to the next item. >> clerk: item 10, consider and adopt a proposal wholesale water rates for fiscal year 2022-2023.

>> hello. i'm erin franks i'm your rate administrator and finance. i'm here today to talk about the fiscal year 2022, 2023 wholesale water rate proposal. we'll start out by talking about the drivers of the proposed wholesale rate increase. we'll walk through what the rate increase actually is. then kind of close out with hick and project -- historic and projected look at wholesale rates been. our wholesale water rates are set based on the water supply agreement which is contract we have with our chile sail custom. we set the rate based on our budget and our forecast for water projections for the next fiscal year. then once the year is over, we

go back and look at what the wholesale customer actual share of cost were. we do an audit and reviewed by our wholesale customers. if there was a difference between the revenue we collected versus their share of costs that goes into the balancing account. if we collected more revenue than their share of cost, we owe them money. we use that balancing account over time to smooth out the needs for a big rate adjustment.

we're in a drought, we asked our wholesale customers to conserve water. their volumes are lower. it's that denominator in that division is a lower number, then your rates have to go up. that's one of the big factors in play in next year's rates. finally, the denominator, we also have the numerator. our costs are going up. one of the biggest ones is debt service. we issued lot of water bonds recently. the debt service is coming online which is driving up the cost. our budget is higher next year. we got new costs coming into our budget to take care of all of those new assets we built out.

i mentioned that we're forecasting the wholesale volumes will be lower than they've been. these rates are based on the assumption that we have 113.7 million gallons in wholesale water sales. i mentioned the increase in the expenses and the balancing account and without going into

too many formulas, we got a simplified version. you can see that we're showing the estimated wholesale share of expenses about $302 million. then we're using $44 million of that account to reduce their share of costs. we're paying it back to them. you divide that by the volumes and it gets you to your rate of $4.75 per hundred cubic feet. the second thing that's in this agenda item is the untreated water rate discount. this is for one of our wholesale customers. they receive a discount on that water because it's not as valuable as nice treated water. the cost of that discount is based on the costs to operate the harry tracy water treatment plant. that untreated water rate is also going up to 43 cents cents per ccf.

this last slide here showing little bit of a history where we're going. a few things i want to point out on this slide. you can see that we are coming off that big flat spot in the middle there on the orange line. that's the actual wholesale rate where the rates have been at $4.10 for quite some time. this increase to $4.75, it is a large increase. it's coming in light of quite long period of stability. the other thing i want to point out, you can see this in the blue bars which are showing the percentage change. for many years we have lot of volatility in our wholesale rates. we have big ups followed by big downs. we know that's challenging for them and challenging for their budgets. one the big priorities of the finance team is to make sure that we try as we can within the terms of the contract and the balance the account to use the levers to smooth out that

volatility and prevent big swings like that. you can see right now, there's a lot of unknowns as far as water volumes what our sales will be with the drought now. we're forecasting couple of years of increases followed by another period of relative stability. that's my last slide. i'm happy to take any questions. >> commissioner paulson: just a quick question, remind us why the five years was at zero? >> once again, it ties back to drought. when we had our last drought around 2013. volumes went down. we raised rates quite a bit. when the wholesale volumes came back up again, that meant that they were now paying too much essentially. we started building up that balancing account. that's why we are where we are

today. they were buying more water from us. we've been managing our costs. interest rates were extremely low. our capital financing team has done an amazing job refinancing our debt. that saves the wholesale customers money. that brought costs down. which meant that we were over collecting. >> commissioner paulson: there was a good idea you believe? >> to refinance our debt or to keep their costs -- >> commissioner paulson: to keep the cost consistent for five years? >> it let us manage things. it let us be able to control whether there's increases or decreases. we are limited by the terms of the contract. we can't just go out and raise rates because we feel like it. we have to make sure there's a good reason for it.

>> commissioner paulson: when i see -- when you lead with 15.9%, then you say, what happened before hand and there's many narratives and lots of paragraphs to explain all of that 15.9%, that can be a big font in publications. thank you. >> president moran: commissioner maxwell? >> commissioner maxwell: thank you. my question was along the same line. is that what you mean by smoothing out and not having big ups and downs that you would not necessarily do that again? you would rethink that? >> i think maybe couple of things. we consult very closely with our wholesale customer and bawsca.

we had that big drop in volume. we didn't think it will be prudent. when you plug that math in, there's really only so much we can do. we've had several meetings with the wholesale customers. we are required. we've been trying to do our best to make sure everyone is aware what's coming. the idea that there was going to be an increase in the coming year has been known for a while. it was just a magnitude that was

in question. >> commissioner maxwell: i was going to ask if you reminded them if they didn't have any increases for a while. obviously you're talking with them. what do the people do with untreated water? >> they treat it themselves. they have their own facilities. >> commissioner maxwell: all right. thank you. >> president moran: any other questions? seeing none. public comment please? >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make public comment on item 10, please star 3 to raise your hand to speak. do we have any members of the public present who wish to make public comment? moderator, do we have any callers with their hands raised? >> we have three callers.

>> caller: you said that the bawsca rates expected to go up 15% and again the following year. according to the formula at the july 16th workshop on water demand that will result in a 3% decline in demand next year in another 3% the following year. this is why the demand projections in your open water management plan will be wrong. once again. there's different information presented different audiences. january 7th which was your first budget meeting, there was the graph presented by the finance team showing that demand is expected to remain flat. sales is expected to remain flat for the next 10 years. we've been waiting for this graph to compare finances with water supply projections

historically versus actuals and lot of months passed. we haven't seen that. it's going to be comparisonning -- embarrassing to your staff. because of that conversation, a similar graph was presented a month later to you and this time it had sensitivity analysis. in mid-february, there was another graph presented to the bawsca agencies that showed that sensitivity analysis expending up to the urban water management plan numbers, then slighting lower. in 40 days, there were three different graphs depending on the audits. this is going to be a real issue. there's a lot of debt service. it's not going away. we can help you out. you got to ask us and you got to

listen. you can't just be sending letters. >> next caller. you have two minutes. >> caller: commissioners. what i want to state to you clearly that we have to be very careful how we create those -- treat those that give public comment. you seem to be in a zone as if you're liberated. what is the history of bawsca? if you read the record -- did

bawsca get an opportunity to become a permanent member early on and why did it not? you know how to do a needs assessment. again and again, you trying to hoodwink us. this is despicable. >> next caller.

you have two minutes. >> caller: good afternoon president moran and members of the commission. i'm pleased to speak on behalf of your largest customer group that in last fiscal year sent you nearly $300 million for the price of water. i'm pleased to speak on behalf support this wholesale rate increase that your staff just discussed. we have been in active conversations with ms. franks and members of the finance team as we anticipated this difficult time. i understand the need for the rate increase. most importantly, i agree that is in compliance with the water supply agreement and with the status of your wholesale customers and their long-term contract with you paying for the water that they use in accordance with the amount they

use and rates. i support it. thank you very much. >> clerk: public comment on item 10 is closed. >> president moran: any further discussion by the commission? i have a motion and a second. >> move to approve. >> second. >> president moran: roll call please. [roll call vote] you have three ayes. >> president moran: item 10 passes. there's no further business before this commission. this meeting is adjourned.

>> restaurants will be open for take out only, but nonessential stores, like bars and gyms, will close effective midnight tonight. [♪♪♪] >> my name is sharky laguana. i am a small business owner. i own a company called vandigo van rentals.

it rents vans to the music industry. i am also a member of the small business commission as appointed by mayor breed in 2019. i am a musician and have worked as a professional musician and recording artist in the 90s. [♪♪♪] >> we came up in san francisco, so i've played at most of the live venues as a performer, and, of course, i've seen hundreds of shows over the years, and i care very, very deeply about live entertainment. in fact, when i joined the commission, i said that i was going to make a particular effort to pay attention to the arts and entertainment and make sure that those small businesses receive the level of attention that i think they deserve. >> this is a constantly and rapidly changing situation, and

we are working hard to be aggressive to flatten the curve to disrupt the spread of covid-19. >> when the pandemic hit, it was crystal clear to me that this was devastating to the music industry because live venues had to completely shutdown. there was no way for them to open for even a single day or in limited capacity. that hit me emotionally as an artist and hit me professionally, as well as a small business that caters to artists, so i was very deeply concerned about what the city could do to help the entertainment committee. we knew we needed somebody to introduce some kind of legislation to get the ball rolling, and so we just started texting supervisor haney, just harassing him, saying we need to do something, we need to do something. he said i know we need to do

something, but what do we do? we eventually settled on this idea that there would be an independent venue recovery fund. >> clerk: there are 11 ayes. >> president walton: thank you. without objection, this resolution is passed unanimously. >> and we were concerned for these small mom-and-pop businesses that contribute so much to our arts community. >> we are an extremely small venue that has the capacity to do extremely small shows. most of our staff has been working for us for over ten years. there's very little turnover in the staff, so it felt like family. sharky with the small business commission was crucial in pestering supervisor haney and

others to really keep our industry top of mind. we closed down on march 13 of 2020 when we heard that there was an order to do so by the mayor, and we had to call that show in the middle of the night. they were in the middle of their sound check, and i had to call the venue and say, we need to cancel the show tonight. >> the fund is for our live music and entertainment venues, and in its first round, it will offer grants of at least $10,000 to qualifying venues. these are venues that offer a signature amount of live entertainment programming before the pandemic and are committed to reopening and offering live entertainment spaces after the pandemic.

>> it's going to, you know, just stave off the bleeding for a moment. it's the city contributing to helping make sure these venues are around, to continue to be part of the economic recovery for our city. >> when you think about the venues for events in the city, we're talking about all of them. some have been able to come back adaptively over the last year and have been able to be shape shifters in this pandemic, and that's exciting to see, but i'm really looking forward to the day when events and venues can reopen and help drive the recovery here in san francisco. >> they have done a study that says for every dollar of ticket sales done in this city, $12 goes to neighboring businesses. from all of our vendors to the

restaurants that are next to our ven sues and just so many other things that you can think of, all of which have been so negatively affected by covid. for this industry to fail is unthinkable on so many levels. it's unheard of, like, san francisco without its music scene would be a terribly dismal place. >> i don't know that this needs to be arrest -- that there needs to be art welfare for artists. we just need to live and pay for our food, and things will take care of themselves. i think that that's not the given situation. what san francisco could do that they don't seem to do very much is really do something to support these clubs and venues that have all of these different artists performing in them. actually, i think precovid, it was, you know, don't have a

warehouse party and don't do a gig. don't go outside, and don't do this. there was a lot of don't, don't, don't, and after the pandemic, they realized we're a big industry, and we bring a lot of money into this city, so they need to encourage and hope these venues. and then, you know, as far as people like me, it would be nice if you didn't only get encouraged for only singing opera or playing violin. [♪♪♪] >> entertainment is a huge part of what is going to make this city bounce back, and we're going to need to have live music coming back, and comedy, and drag shows and everything under the sun that is fun and creative in order to get smiles back on our faces and in order to get the city moving again. [♪♪♪]

>> venues serve a really vital function in society. there aren't many places where people from any walk of life, race, religion, sexuality can come together in the same room and experience joy, right? experience love, experience anything that what makes us human, community, our connective tissues between different souls. if we were to lose this, lose this situation, you're going to lose this very vital piece of society, and just coming out of the pandemic, you know, it's going to help us recover socially? well, yeah, because we need to be in the same room with a bunch of people, and then help people across the country recover financially. >> san francisco art recovery fund, amazing. it opened yesterday on april

21. applications are open through may 5. we're encouraging everyone in the coalition to apply. there's very clear information on what's eligible, but that's basically been what our coalition has been advocating for from the beginning. you know, everyone's been supportive, and they've all been hugely integral to this program getting off the ground. you know, we found our champion with supervisor matt haney from district six who introduced this legislation and pushed this into law. mayor breed dedicated $1.5 million this fund, and then supervisor haney matched that, so there's $3 million in this fund. this is a huge moment for our coalition. it's what we've been fighting for all along. >> one of the challenges of our business is staying on top of

all the opportunities as they come back. at the office of oewd, office of economic and workforce development, if you need to speak to somebody, you can find people who can help you navigate any of the available programs and resources. >> a lot of blind optimism has kept us afloat, you know, and there's been a lot of reason for despair, but this is what keeps me in the business, and this is what keeps me fighting, you know, and continuing to advocate, is that we need this and this is part of our life's blood as much as oxygen and food is. don't lose heart. look at there for all the various grants that are available to you. some of them might be very slow to unrao, and it might seem like too -- unroll, and it might seem like it's too late, but people are going to fight

to keep their beloved venues open, and as a band, you're going to be okay. [♪♪♪] they are participating in the as if they were present. public comment available for each item on the agenda for members who wish to make comment. our members use is