>> >> good evening, this is the san francisco commission on environment. >> please do not use any devices. >> please note that using of cell phones and pagers and similar devices, please note that the ringing of cell phones

and electronic device are still prohibited. >> commissioners and department staff are still meeting remotely pursuant to the state and federal orders declaration and directive. >> commissioners may attend meetings in conference and participate as if they were physically present. public comment will be available on each item on the agenda. for matters not on the agenda, there will be an opportunity for general public comment. >> those present wishing to comment on an item can come up one by one and will have given three minutes to speak. members of the public may attend the meeting to observe and provide public comment at the

physical meeting location listed above or online at www.sfgovtv.org. instructions for providing remote public comment can be viewed on pages 3-4 of this meeting agenda. public comment call-in 1-415-655-0001 • access code: 2491 932 0468 >> i will now call the roll. >> [roll call] >> commissioner sullivan, commissioner ahn, commissioner

hunter, commissioner stephenson, commissioner wald, commissioner wan. >> review and vote on whether to approve resolution file 2022-04-coe, resolution making findings to allow teleconferenced meetings under california government code section 54953(e). (explanatory document: resolution file 2022-04-coe) (discussion and action) the commission will discuss and consider adoption of a resolution making findings that government code section 54953(e) requires in order to allow the commission to hold meetings remotely, as currently required under local law, without complying with certain brown act requirements. >> is there any discussion on

that? >> seeing none. >> we'll go to public comment. >> are there any members of the public who are present who wish to speak, if so, please come forward one by one and speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment. >> just a moment please.

>> >> okay, i will just pause for the public comment. the access code is displayed on the screen. members of the public wishing to add public comment, you will be added to the queue. please wait for your turn to speak. >> we do have a caller in the queue. >> hello, caller. you are unmuted. please begin your public comment now.

public speaker: can you hear me? >> we can hear you but not too well. >> is that better? can you hear me? >> yes. we can hear you. >> i have no issue with item q, but initially wasn't getting any video on webex. now i'm getting a feed from control room f. i'm not getting any other video. is it possible to get other commissioners stevenson or anyway. i'm getting video here because i have an open window. it's a lot of doubling here. i'm good with item 2. please proceed. thank you very much. >> thank you for your comment.

>> seeing no additional callers in the queue, public comment is now closed. >> thank you. >> roll call, please. >> [roll call] # >> the motion passes. next item. >> president's welcome. (discussion) >> good evening, everyone. the commission on environment is that we occupy the homeland for the original has been tenant of the san francisco peninsula. we recognize that it understand the interconnectness to all things and remain harmony. we honor the people for their commitment to

mother earth as indigenous protectors of this land and in accordance to their tradition have never ceded nor forgotten their place and for all those that reside in this territory. we benefit and recognize that we live in their homeland. we wish to pay our respect to the ancestors, relatives to the community. as environmentalist, we recognize that must embrace indigenous knowledge and for all people of san francisco. thank you for this important acknowledgment. now for the president's welcome. welcome back. it seems like two months. but we have seen federal inaction and hampering

environmental efforts related to the supreme court decisions as well and not being able to control it, i do understand that state and local efforts will persevere and i will be able to exercise essentially important climate action in the year ahead. the agenda today is to tackle important policy items such as reviewing our 2021 climate action plan and policy as well. also you will hear later on from staff about safety and update to resilience and general plan and to be sure that we are greening our city. and the more substantive part of our agenda commissioners, is to make sure that we continue our public integrity review of our

department and also making sure that we carry on our most important function of our commission which is selecting the next department director and we'll spend a good amount of our time in this commission meeting discussing that later on. at this time, are there any questions that you might have? >> recap? >> well, seeing none, maybe we'll open up for public comment on this item. >> we will open to public comment in this room and once public comment has completed, we will go to remote public comment. please come forward one by one and speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment. >> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item please dial 3 to be

added to the queue. please wait for your turn to speak. >> seeing no callers in the queue, public comment for this item is closed. >> thank you, kyle. we need to move on to the next item. >> >>clerk: the next item 4. >> approval of minutes of the may 24, 2022, commission on the environment meeting. (explanatory document: may 24, 2022, draft minutes) (discussion and action) >> any discussion or changes? >> move approval. >> commissioner sullivan moves approval. second from mr.

hunter. having no more discussion by commissioners, let's open this up for public comment. >> we will begin public comment in the room. are there any members of the public present in the room today wishing to speak, if so, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment. >> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item shall now dial star 3 to be added to the queue. for those on hold in the queue, please wait until it's your turn to speak. >> okay, we have a caller in the queue. >> hello, caller, you are

unmuted. your three minutes begins now. public speaker: again on the minutes from page 3, i only have one suggestion under item 9, the meeting adjourned at 6:09. i would say the meeting was adjourned at 6:09. other than that, i think kyle did a fine job and i had a suggestion yesterday that is already being implemented. congratulations to kyle and charles for taking my thoughts. there you go. thanks very much. >> thank you for your comment. >> seeing no further callers in the queue, public comment for this item is now closed. >> thanks, kyle.

>> roll call, please. >>clerk: [roll call] >> the motion passes. next item, please. >> next item 5. general public comment. members of the public may address the commission on matters that are within the commission's jurisdiction and are not on today's agenda. we will begin with public comment here in the room. once public comment is completed, we will go to remote public comment. are there any members of the public wishing to speak, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment. >> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on

this item please press star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold in the queue, please wait until it is your turn to speak. >> >> i'm seeing no callers in the queue. public comment is closed. >> thank you. next item. >> presentation of the commission on the environment - environmental service award to chris geiger. (discussion)

>> thank you, i am delighted to present the award to chris. chris has been the most recently department integrated program manager. during his time with the department, chris has had a huge impact on the city, the department and a host of people, places and things. he came to san francisco department of the environment from the state department of pesticide regulations where he came to regulate itn in schools and other settings and he faced a brick wall and then he brought

his expertise and team to san francisco and his department where he provided a template for the rigorous science based decision making for the use around toxic chemicals with a special focus on protecting the most vulnerable species whether they be humans, animals, insects or plants. today chris geiger has reduced the amount of most pesticides from 1997 to 2021. chris never shyed away from taking on this business through his development

of the city's world renown green purchasing program and things like carpet and janitorial and many companies to reform late their products. time and again, chris demonstrated the power of the city using his purchase power to move the mark. chris used the work that he tried to make a champion to reduce the exposure of toxic chemicals in the maintenance of public housing took on a new field that is done by design. now these concepts have been adopted by entities like the u.s. building to ensure that buildings are constructed in ways that avoid the need to use toxic chemicals to newer

operations and maintenance. san franciscans from all walks of life are better off because of chris geiger's decision to work with this department. children playing in parks, families living in public housing, athletes playing on fields and golf courses and workers and visitors spending time in city-owned buildings. all these people including all of us live, work and play in environments that are healthier for them. chris is committed, smart and kind. this is a rare combination these days. we are so lucky to have had him as a colleague and as a friend for all of these years and we are so grateful for everything that he has done. >> thank you, commissioner wald.

i want to recognize commissioner for any comment? >> we have a long agenda and we have people presenting. as an employee and friend, i just want to congratulate you for your service and wish you the best. i'm going to let everyone else give their testimony to speak about how great you are. >> at this time, we should probably have department staff speak as well. >> >> hi, i'm the program manager and i have had the lucky pleasure of working with chris for seven 1/2 years. i am extremely grateful for that time and i have learned so much from

you, chris, perhaps more about rats a and other pests in the city. when i heard you were leaving, i asked the staff to come up with a one word description. sense of humor, humble, collaborative, nice, fair, brilliant, easygoing, bug man and thoughtful. so i just want to say that chris, i think you should know that everybody misses you. we are so grateful for your time in the department and we are all better for having known you and work with you. thank you so much.

>> >> any other staffers? if not, maybe it will be appropriate, chris, to say a few words before we move on to public comment? >> i want to thank you so much for this honor. i'm not used to being up here without a big powerpoint. [ laughter ] that's a little unusual. i want to say what an honor it's been over the years to work with such an amazing staff and department. i have never seen a government department like this. i have worked at other ones, and we are unique. we've gotten a lot of things done and i'm hoping you will continue to get things done. i will leave it at that. it's such an honor, thank you so

much. >> thank you, chris. >> we'll also reserve this at the very end of the time for other commissioners. we will go to public comment now. kyle, go ahead. >> are there any members of the public wishing to speak, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment. >> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item please press star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold in the queue, please wait until it is your turn to speak.

we do have at least one caller in the queue. >> hello, caller, you are unmuted. your three minutes begins now. >> public speaker: david chapel, there is very little that i can add to the content that commissioner wald just stated. chris is great and fantastic. i did not know much about glyphosate and anything that i have learned about glyphosate and the reduced risk pesticide list is only because of his work and not eliminating but reducing

pesticide in city facilities, properties, golf courses, everything, and dealing with rats, and dealing with the occasional human. i can't say enough. those are big and small and will be tough but we'll figure it out. once again, thank you. that's it. it's been great, thank you. >> thank you for your comment. >> seeing no other callers in the queue, public comment is now closed. >> thank you. >> you are either too young,

chris, to retire, or you look too young. as you know there is a lot of work to do in the environment and we will hope that you will serve in another capacity. at this point we will take a photo. if you can move down the stairs.

>> >> all right, as we settle in, next item, please. >> the next item 7. update on 2021 climate action plan implementation and building decarbonization policy. speakers: cyndy comerford, climate program manager, and richard chien, senior environmental specialist (discussion) >> good evening, commissioners. nice to see you again. it feels likes years since i have been to a meeting like this. i think it has been years. nice to see you all. rich chen, department of environment. i'm going to be providing an update on the 2020

climate action plan, implementation, process and progress. >> this is our agenda. just to give you a quick overview of what's been going on in most 2022 since we launched the plan in december. i will do a little bit on concurrent efforts we are undertaking right now to do sort of a broad base messaging and outreach campaign to continue bringing people into the climate action plan and all we are trying to do. i will give you some high level data showing some of the findings that we have uncovered from our working with city departments on getting updates from their actions. dive into a couple sector highlights, touch on challenges and next steps and after you

know after this presentation, i will give it to cindy who will be diving into the deeper operations. >> so basically the year started, there has been really a process to develop the process, to collect the information, to set up routines with departments and how we are going to be collecting the information and hopefully displaying it. so it's going to be an iterative process. we held initial meetings with all the city departments who worked on it. we came in february to meet on the policy and gave you tools for the documentation that we are using to collect the information, then we conducted more meetings with

departments to get feedback, lots of one on one meetings and basically the last few months have been slowly but surely getting information from the departments on the progress of their actions, and again, it's a work in progress, but i think the departments are all on board right now and working with us in a good way, and that brings us to june where we presented everything back out to city departments, summarized information, collected more feedback and that's going back into our development process on what this ultimately looks like when we start sharing this with other city leadership and the public. real quick, i mentioned this outreach and marketing campaign. if this is going to be augmented greatly by the funding.

we are going to be able to expand our scope and do a lot more things that we were challenged to do with our regional budget and that's been fantastic. basically we are going to be doing a digital and marketing campaign for the climate action plan. with the new funding, we are actually able to get the message out into the public. we want to build awareness on the climate action plan and getting them to do what they can to support this change and help us meet our commitment. part of that is going to be revamping the climate action network website which will become the one stop shop for information. we'll drive people to the site so they can learn

about events and other resources. there will be a strong focus on providing in -- further in person language in spanish and chinese. there will be a campaign that will last about 12 months, few months per sector and we are starting with the building and environment. we have some ideas that we are going to be implementing in the next couple months. one of them is called energy fair in a box. as you remember in 2019, before the covid lock down, we did have a successful fair at the fair county building. we are really a mobile induction cooking set up that we are bringing to the farmer's market in the city. it's a great way to engage with people about the technology, but also opens up a lot of opportunities to talk about getting rid of fossil gas in

your homes, and providing resources to help make those changes. on top of that, we will be replicating a couple of webinars that were conducted during climate action month and building electrification. >> i can't read your screen from here. this process is really about highlighting the good work that the departments are already doing in support of what's been laid out in the climate action plan. we do really want to focus on the successes and highlight the good work that the departments are doing. so, on the screen, you have a snippet of the new construction

ordinance that is being implemented at the department of building inspection now related to land use, brt, open and operating and new ridership related to the healthy eco system and consumption and highlighting the success of kitchen zero sf program that would have otherwise gone to waste into meals. that is just a snapshot of some of the successes and highlights so far. so this is the high level overview of where we are with implementing the various action and climate action plans. you can see about 40% of the total actions are on track.

a good number has not started, a small number is experiencing some delays. it's a little bit hard to be precise about this process. some of it is long-term. ownership action, we still have to dial in on a few of them. particularly land use. we are going to work on these as separate projects. and this summary of implementation progress, it's doing very well. building on climate action and getting started on some very ambitious things we needed to, policy development and engagement and staffing issues

at the department. but it's very much going to help with this effort. transportation and land use. you know, evenly split between those that are progressing and those that have yet to be started. responsible production is doing very well. healthy eco system is also looking for support and who is going to do these actions and work on them. on housing, very important section of the cap. the housing element of the general plan has been released. so there is some alignment around what was in the housing element of the general plan, what's in the climate action plan to really kind of determine how these things in the cap are being implemented. so we are in touch with the planning department on this.

real quick on responsible production and consumption. i'm not going to read through everything. again to highlight the recovery food program and working to set up ways to find surplus building materials that can be instead of going to waste or landfill for repurposing. so, on implementation challenges, again staffing shortages and finding the capacity and building the momentum to get some of these projects going. doing inclusive outreach and engagement is critically important but also takes time and you have to be patient with

that. balancing between this and plowing ahead is really a balancing act. the failure of the property to meet the voter threshold is going to impair facilities to follow through with the transit action in the plan. for building decarbonization, while the state is doing a great job of putting out new financial incentives for projects in that sector in the state, we need a lot more funding to meet the ambitious goals that we have for buildings in san francisco. and again, the funding that we got is fantastic, but long-term thinking about how to fund all the action and implement them successfully and getting the funding to do it is going to be very challenging.

so, upcoming priorities are to internal within the city. we are going to be sending an update to the mayor's office. we need to resolve the reporting question and when there are multi-actions examples. we need to update and refine the strategy level metric which is something that we spend a good amount of time on, but there are the ones that we need to revisit and sort of dial in a little bit more, and then we want to convene quarterly meetings with technical working groups, possibly in more labor reporting because it's more work to do the reporting and different actions and time is tricky. we think in

person updates is useful. externally, we are going to develop and deliver the cap messaging projects through increased awareness of the cap. we'll launch that marketing campaign starting with building operations. we are going to complete the long-term funding study that the department is doing with the consultant team, and then hopefully by the end of the year, we'll be moving towards developing the public facing online reporting dashboard to be sure that we are updating the public. so with that, i'm going to turn it over to cindy. okay. thank you.

>> good evening, commissioners. i'm going to take a quick dive. >> if you wouldn't mind speaking into the mic a little bit more. >> is that better? >> can you hear me? >> is it picking up? >> i have to be this close? >> yes. >> all right. i got it now. apologies. i will reintroduce myself. good evening commissioners, my name is cindy, the program manager. i'm going to take a little bit of a deeper dive into our decarbonization policy. last week i gave a presentation at the request of supervisor mar at the land use committee

meeting. this is going to cover some of those key points. just to give you a recap of our greenhouse gas targets and building operation goals. last july about a year ago, we codified chapter nine of the environment code, and this established our greenhouse gas reduction target of 61% by 2030, and to be net zero by 2040. for each sector in the climate action plan, we also established climate action goals and for building operations sector, we established for all newly construction buildings to be net zero by 2031 and all buildings

by 2035. we established that all climate targets and we are seeing especially around reducing emissions in buildings. for example, if you look at public health, if we quantify the reduced mortality from electrifying existing buildings, that's $9 billion. if we look at the same strategies of electrifying existing buildings, there is real economic opportunity there. we can see between 2000-3000 full-time career jobs in the range. lastly, there is also many benefits to resilience and i

will save that discussion to the next presentation. so i'm going through our four key focus areas around building decarbonization and the policies that we need to implement over the next four years. first starting with new construction and rich already touched on that. we started this ordinance in 2020 in november and has been in effect for a year. all new construction needs to be net zero and we need to update that policy to include new major renovation. that is an area that we did not address in this ordinance and something we hope to move forward on this fall. so next is existing residential buildings. the transition to existing residential buildings to get off of natural gas and be all

electric is going to be very challenging. it's really going to require inclusive engagement with a broad range of people to make sure that we can cocreate the policies necessary and make sure we support this transition. there is two main policies that we are going to need to pass. one is called a timer replacement policy and this means when your natural gas appliance is at the end of its useful life, that is to replace with all electrical appliance and this is the start with the new system. san francisco has a residential energy conservation ordinance and this is an opportunity to rebuild that title and policy.

as we update this policy, we need to be sure that we are providing the education to the residents. things to work on internally to make sure we streamline the permitting process and also look for efficiencies through the district sale of electrification. the last thing we have been working on is called an equity hub. this idea originated from an outpouring of community stakeholders and this is a one stop shop for electrification and will be presenting to the policy committee in august 8th. so the next sector is around existing commercial buildings. for very small existing buildings that have typology

similar to residential buildings, similar replacements will be key. fuel for most larger technical buildings there is complex financial considerations. using something called a building performance standard will set a date in which the natural gas should be eliminated from the structures would be more appropriate. this way commercial buildings could align it with their planning process. as i mentioned earlier in san francisco, that date is 2035. with the data performance standard we can establish some goals on greenhouse gas standards. there are six other cities that have implemented this. new york city and boston. mayor breed signed on to the national building standard coalition. this coalition will help cities with this transition and help us implement the

prerequisite before we go into the policy section. last but not least, our existing municipal buildings. although municipal buildings represent a small fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions and it's really important that we lead by example and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from older buildings. this really does support economic development and sends the signal to the marketplace. through our municipal building task force, we are in the process of updating the environment to the chapter code and this aligns with our capital plan that we are in the process of covering.

>> so in addition to the policies and programs that i mentioned, there is a host of actions that will support the overall success. this concludes things like workforce development. we need to make sure that just transition principles which really prioritize opportunities with those leaving carbon incentive industries and for disadvantaged workers going into a low carbon economy that we use these examples to guide this transition. we also need to make sure that any policies or programs that we put in place, don't displace renters and don't overly burden homeowners. so i give you a very accelerated version of our building

decarbonization policies and putting us on a pathway forward. we know there is going to be significant challenges for this transformation and we can't do it alone. we need to engage communities and businesses and professional organizations for the evaluation and implementation of these policies around electrification. we need to create more equitable and acceptable engagement throughout the city through grand making and last but not least we are going to need a commission that is very robust with economic studies and work with our commission and stakeholders to be sure we are designing an efficient and effective program. with that, we are available to answer questions on the first and second presentation around decarbonization. thank you. >> questions? >> commissioner sullivan?

>> great presentation, cindy. i appreciate it. i want to ask about heat pumps as a way to achieve this with san francisco residents. i'm hearing about it nationally but not much around san francisco. for that portion of the strategy around decarbonization in san francisco. what are we thinking about that in san francisco? >> that's a great question. heat pumps are a key strategy to electrification. it can be used for water heating, we can have heat pump water heaters and for both heating and really great thing if you install a heat pump, you can also use it for air-conditioning. it's really an effective way to provide cooling in a very warming climate. so there are several rebates that are available through regional organizations for heat

pumps, and one thing we want to do is do more outreach on heat pumps and streamline the permitting process to make it easier for residents to get. >> i think education is key and there is still a lot of education that i need to get and that would benefit folks with learning more about this. >> there is more information on the appliances and how they work and to be installed. >> thank you. >> other questions? >> commissioner hunter? >> great presentation. thank you for coming today. i have a question for you and then i will have another question. if hypothetically in a magic world we have a magic wonder and implement these policies when the board of supervisors get back. would that be enough for us to have completed this part of the

climate action plan, to put it another way, what policies are we lacking for this. >> that's a great question. we think we have all the solutions for the climate action plan. that's not to say there will not be considerable and financial challenges that we need to work through. we did a lot of outreach around the building decarbonization policies and the net 0 building task force and the climate action plan to be sure that we were able to set the target. i think we know what the solutions are and there are going to be a lot of bumps in

the road. >> this is an incredibly difficult job, and i applaud you for your efforts. i don't think many people can do what you have set out and imagine what you have executed. thank you for your hard work. >> richard, a quick question for you. i noticed in your slide on summary on the implementation progress, there is action has not been started. i think there is a staffing shortage, or a lead has not been assigned. what you note isn't rare. but what you have is lead did not report back. there has been a few staff reports in the past where it's been hard to get information from other departments. i know you mentioned having this quarterly meeting as a way to

get information from other city departments, but i find this actually to be the most concerning note as the department mandate to get that. is there any other strategy that could be implemented in order to make sure that reporting is done? >> thanks for the question, commissioner. i think i tried to talk about this in my opening comments that there is a progress report we are trying to develop, but there is also a process we are trying to develop from scratch for how to do that. and it's taking some time and we are obviously dealing with a lot of other challenges. so i think our approach has really been that this needs to be a partnership between the department of the environment and all the other key agencies. i think we developed some very good will and great working relationships with all of them.

it just, i think we like to say it's planning is one thing and implementation can be a bit challenging. i think we are still experiencing some of those challenges first hand now, and i think as we just continue to build those relationships, have those conversations, trying to figure out something that works for all of the parties involved. i think we can get there, and if we need help, we'll definitely let you know. >> again, the commission is here to help. please let us know. i'm happy to help. the second question i had was on the help for the public. can you give us a time line?

>> i think next month we'll be ready to go. we are working on our message and outreach project because of the new funding we have and we can go much bigger and broader now. but we need to take some time to figure out what that's going to look like. then we are also developing some of the building operations outreach. with commissioner sullivan's questions on heat pumps, and we need to do that a lot. getting this together and having the cooking induction at the farmer's market and having the website ready so when people ask questions, we can say go to the website and you will find other resources and rebates and options. we are trying to orchestrate things so by september, all

things are ready to go. >> this is the building the plane while you are flying it situation. that makes cindy's job easier in terms of residential and getting information out to the been regarding decarbonization. those are all my questions. thank you. >> thank you. >> other thoughts, questions? >> i have a question, commissioner? >> vice-president stephenson, go ahead. >> thank you for the presentation. i think this question is more for you cindy. i'm curious about what electrification means and i'm one of those homeowners who is trying to put a heat pump in my house because mine is at the end of life and anecdotally, i'm a person educated about this and i

don't have enough electricity in my house. the way i understand is that pg & e will have to come to my house to electrify it. what are the leverage we have as a pull as a city to help move that forward. i'm a true believer and hold out hope that i'm going to get to be next winter warm up. but what do i have to do to get this electrification. >> yes, that's what it applies to. can we see some sort of efficiencies by electrifying a group of homes in a neighborhood to split the costs of upgrading the electrical capacity. that's kind of what we are looking to. instead of doing this house by house, could we do it neighborhood by neighborhood or

census tract. that's the first answer to the first part of your question. the second part to the issues that you are experiencing, you are not alone and something we need to work to address with other city departments and with pg & e. we are initiating conversations with all city departments on how we can expedite this process and to be sure that people can get the necessary permits within the next couple months or weeks instead of years. that's something that tyrone and i have worked on for months and something we hope to take action on very soon. >> is that on the building department needs that we need to work through? it's actually a host of other departments but to enact this through pg & e and public works and some may involve the planning department too. >> do you feel like we are at the department resource well

enough to keep up with the climate action enough to be able to push these things through? >> that's a great question. i think that many of the departments we spoke to are really passionate about our climate action goals, and that we have a great starting point to engage in this conversation, and i think for example, public works, is tasked with the right-of-way and electrification in other cities and we have to figure out how to move forward with the right pathways for our residents. >> thanks, appreciate it. >> i also want to recognize that this is mentioned briefly in the climate action plan presentation by rich which was the general fund budget amount of $2.6 million that of course was championed by supervisors gore

and mar. thanks to the department for securing that money and hoping we can leverage for future funding effort. as a matter of equity funding, that slide did really interest me on the idea of low decarbonization. if you can basically speak to the type of funding that you are hoping to secure at the state, federal, how much are we talking in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars? >> thanks for the question. we will go into more detail. last year supervisor mar did commission a cla report and i believe the cost of electrifying our building is $500 million. it's quite an expensive endeavor. right now we are looking at

doing a technical study to look at different packages and the different types of subsidies we'll need at different income levels. in a couple months we'll be better suited to answer that question for how much money we'll need for those incentives and how we'll move forward with them. the long-term study is going to provide a large amount of information that we'll need for the incentive but i think it's going to be a mix of funding strategies. the state is providing funding. there is hinges on a rebellingal level that -- regional level and $500 billion. >> 500 billion is more than i expected. >> other questions or comments? >> seeing none -- did you have

something else? >> i was going to say to go to the next item. >> sounds good, we'll go to public comment now. >> are there any members of the public wishing to speak, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed >> good evening, commissioners, i'm speaking today because we need to see a time line, a layout, how we are going to actually accomplish this to decarbonize our environment.

about four years ago i began to do this in my home and at the time, it was very difficult because there was so little information out there, but i had solar installed in my house in 2006 and i knew i needed to upgraded and i told the contractor that i wanted to be able to fully power my home and they did that. my electricity was upgraded, the box was upgraded. and so today, my pg & e bill is $10 a month and that's the cost to keep a wire hooked to the grid. if pg & e decides they are going to charge some enormous monthly fee, well i'm going to get a battery and disconnect from the grid. it's entirely feasible. i'm generating a surplus of energy every year. my upgrade, to basically a new

solar system that provides three times the amount of energy than the one that i installed, that was $19,000. the total cost for converting my home was under $50,000. there is questions that need to come up here that were three different options for heat pumps that were offered to me. and the person said, the least expensive one. that will do the job for you. it probably would have, but it was also the least efficient model. the most expensive one and there is only about $7,000 between the three was the most efficient. up to a third or even 50% more efficient, and wider. this is a bigger issue because now we are going to be putting these devices in our backyard,

very similar to air-conditioning units that are everywhere in the east bay, everywhere else, and now we are introducing a new sound into our neighborhood. so i bought the mid-range one. i wish i had spent about $3,000 more and bought the most expensive one because it would be quieter. the first morning after this went on, my neighbor called me and said, dude, what's that noise. it doesn't bother him today after he got over the fact. once i got over that, i realized it was running a lot and bought one of these laser censors. it was 56 degrees and of course my heat was coming on

>> i decided have a great day. . how can i insulate my home. now you have to take all that out before they can put itten. # that was a fire hazard. that was expensive. it was $5.9 million. everybody is currently paying pg & e, if we do solar, it will wipe out all of those. so for financing, please consider that.

>> thank you for your comment. >> >> good evening, commissioners, my name is paul warner. i want to pick up on where he started with the heat pumps and the noise. heat pumps are a wonderful technology but their efficiency varies widely. also some heat pumps are very quiet, some are not. if we adopt the model with the dense unit in san francisco and in chinatown, tenderloin, we are putting equipment into very small units where we are aligning construction and we can't put it outside and we have

a lot of questions about the electrical supply to these units. the heat pump per resident is a wonderful idea in the conventional version of single family housing. in a densed packed neighborhood such as the northeast side of san francisco, maybe there may be a better solution. if you do an analysis looking at district thermal energy may provide significant advantages including helping address a lot of the issues of the incentives and the cost to the landlord tenant problem with these upgrades. so i would urge that there be

more work done to assess these things. i would say with respect to the capacity of individual buildings, commissioners, you might look at something called the -- wall diet, and sean armstrong has this panel where you can flip the energy and start off something when the demand comes and you provide what you need at the existing level. i encourage you to do that and that might be faster and cheaper for pg & e when doing their upgrade. there are a lot of opportunities here but we face a lot of challenges. where do we put compress ors and

vibrations to buildings. if we have a lot of heat pumps in one building, you've got the amplification of sound potential, you've got the possess essential of sound waves and heat frequencies, all the rest of it. we don't know how that's going to play out and those are risks we are taking. where we are in the less dense sections of town, i'm in the less dense section of town by my lot is 18 foot. i'm not sure that i can put this electrification outside. we need to know what the electrification and the building codes are saying and the planning codes for how these can be located and this is a major undertaking and i want to raise that this is something very important that the city look at before saying we've got a clean

solution path. i have already talked to people who have run into those barriers. >> your time has expired. thank you for your comment. >> i'm aaron, resident of san francisco. i have a couple of questions that can be answered now or later primarily about data. first of all do we have data on where the actual emissions are coming from at the super granular level in housing and to get the momentum going. the second is data about why people are actually not making the upgrade. is it cost, permitting, just to be able to focus on the right problems to solve because there is a lot of

problems to solve but likely that all the problems are of the exact same weight and building around decarbonization and the third is around data around how much progress we are making. is there a way that publically is accessible and reportable and what types of building at the district level and how many are being decarbonized to get a sense of how the city is handling it. thank you. >> seeing no additional commenters in the room. comment in the room is closed and we will proceed to remote public comment. >> >> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item please press star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold in the queue, please wait until it is your

turn to speak. >> as we wait, to answer the last comment. typically is a protocol not to respond to public comment, but i do think those questions were very good and would be nice for staff to follow up either outside of this meeting and also want to follow up with it would be ideal as well. thank you. any remote public commenters? >> yes, commissioner, we have one caller in the queue. >> hello, caller, you are unmuted and your three minutes begins now. >> public speaker: thank you very much president and commissioners and greetings to director. my name is a jim, a long time resident of the city and great

to see the work that's been done already on the climate action plan and really appreciate the transparency also on what is on track and what is delayed which i think is a great way to build trust with the public. one comment that i had on the presentation was that i think the public outreach concept should definitely include outreach to other public entities and agencies, other cities, counties, groups of cities, such as -- which san francisco is a member. ultimately at these levels is the only way the us is going to make progress around greenhouse gasses and setting this concept here, will get the greenhouse gas reduction over this expenditure and i do hope that you can increase your funding. one other comment on heat pump,

i think contractor byron is key and people are very careful and most are done on an as needed basis. you need to have contractors that have these units on hand so they can put something in the wall while you are taking care of the preliminary work until you get to the sourcing and the installation of the heat pump. i'm not sure that you are tied into the program but hoping that you can start on that work. the second thing is that it's going to cost a lot of people and i encourage you to discuss with other public entities and

pg & e to get that ball rolling because ultimately more leadership is better. and that gas meter maybe as high as 10%. the quicker we can switch on that distribution, the better. lastly, to president comments at the beginning, the federal government has really stymied and the regional government on legislation and now carbon removal than actual control regulation. so your work is really critical to getting us to any kind of progress. thanks a lot for your work.

>> >> thank you for your comment. seeing no other public commenters on the queue, this # public comment is now closed. >> next item. >> update on 2021 climate action plan implementation and building decarbonization policy. speakers: cyndy comerford, climate program manager, and richard chien, senior environmental specialist (discussion) presentation on the safety and resilience element update to the san francisco general plan. speaker: anmarie rodgers, citywide division director, and danielle ngo, senior planner for resilience and sustainability, san francisco planning department (explanatory document: san francisco planning department memo) (discussion) >> hello commissioners. thanks

everyone for chiming in as well. my name is danielle, a senior planner at the planning department. i'm joined by ms. rodgers. for this informational hearing, i'm really excited to share back about our team process on long range policies for safety and resilience in the city's general plan. this has been done over the past couple years and this couldn't have been done without the department of environmental staff. thanks to cindy, rich and melissa and all of their time and effort and patience. we'll start at the top with the context setting of the general plan, starting with an marie rodgers who will describe how

this general plan amendment sits with this effort and modernize the amendment. and then we'll talk about what has led to today's hearing and draw your case packet today and finally adoption. now i will pass to an marie with the next slide. >> thank you. an marie rodgers. i was last here with this commission in the fall talking about the again plan update. before we get into this project, let's talk a little bit about the context which falls within. the general plan is san francisco's primary document and the state law and the charter gives the planning commission a unique responsibility for it and provides public action and sets forward a vision for the future.

so today's proposed changes to the safety element are happening not alone but in this larger context mentioned. let's take a look for all the work that we are doing to update the general plan. these are the components of the san francisco's general plan and the safety elements before you are recommended by the state and the others like the design elements are our own creations and some design elements have been implemented recently and some are outdated. the safety element is one of four active general plan updates. we are in close coordination between this project and the other parts of the general plan being updated right now. you heard earlier

about the housing element and the transportation element and the new environmental justice framework which we presented last fall. paired with that, we are working on an update to the general plan introduction. so the safety element however is first in line in consideration of adoption. in january, the housing element, the ej framework and the introduction of the general plan will be before the planning commission. in total, we have a sequence of plans and if adopted, it will be in the plan by january 2030. we have this unique authority for this document. they recommend changes to the board of supervisors.

>> now i'm back to talk about the safety elements. the first new concept involves the name of the document itself. currently it's a 2012 community safety element, and with our proposal, we propose changing it to the safety and resilient element moving forward. resilience is key to enhancing the city's capacity to survive, adopt and grow from all hazards. it extends beyond the disasters and climate effort to the climate crisis, urbanization and to the daily lives. with the plan of this safety element we are strengthening this policy with this slide. this figure is pulled from the hazard resilient plan and the top biological and weather

related that the city must prepare for. the city acknowledges that the weather hazard in blue is being exacerbated by the climate crisis and as well as the climate plan and these are in reference to the safety element and they are much more detailed and considered to be implementation documents of the safety element policy. they are typically updated more frequently and agile process and this plan will strengthen these problems especially the ones depicted in blue. so we already have a strong foundation for tackling hazards in san francisco with the 2012 community safety element.

this proposal builds on top of these policies for resilient planning. it started with mitigation, emergency preparedness and response and finally recovery and reconstruction. the policy is not just on itself, there is many reimburse # -- reasons for this action and a street program for socially distant in this pandemic and emergency. it's wonderful that we have this strong foundation to build upon for this past decade of work. so given that, this proposal is given by several factors. we'll start with the left-hand column that has two state laws, s. b. 379 and s. b. 1000 that requires city to include their general plan and safety elements

with safety elements. moving to the center column, the hazard and climate resilient plan and the climate action plan as the city has recently completed these two major documents. it's now time for us to incorporate this knowledge not general plan. so that's new knowledge about sea level rise and flooding, pandemic and environment and poor air quality and how the city can become net 0. all of these distinct details holding that into the general plan. finally with the right hand column, we are pointing away forward with new policy to increase focus on racial and social equity and lessons learned from the covid-19 pandemic. last summer the planning commission and historic preservation commission passed a resolution by empowering the development to incorporate populations with specific benefit for the indian community

and african american community and communities of color and how to incorporate racial and social equity policies into the general plan. and to provide another implementing document for recovery. from the state and local levels, these are all opportunities that our team is playing with these proposed updates to the safety element. i wanted to illustrate one specific example for how we are incorporating racial and social equity into this environment. with this general plan community's map it uses state

and local data to identify neighborhoods that top 30% of environmental justice in the city. the area is in red and when it uses this policy in a language that allows us to prioritize communities and resources to communities that need the most help, the communities of color, the communities that shoulder the disproportionate of experience of environmental injustices and often experience the climate crisis from the rest in the city. from the work of the general plan and the safety element, we hope that using this designation of communities is one step further towards racial and social equity.

>> now i will zero in our plan. this exhibit a is after the work of a lot of collaboration with city staff throughout san francisco. >> our teams conducted virtual outreach and engagement over the year and we heard from thousands and hundreds of community members and many agency experts and we incorporated this feedback in the initiation draft. accordingly, we coordinating with the initiate draft on this project on long range comprehensive policies, strategies, that type of thing so we can minimize participation in san francisco communities and really align san francisco's efforts around mitigation. all

the work that we have done around outreach and engagement is building on these sf environmental teams among other colleagues. so what did we hear? here are some of the trends that we pulled out from safety elements and coordinating the work throughout the city of the cap and the safety element and incorporating the map to advance racial and social equity. new learning in the city from d.e.m. actual work and using cultural preservation and sea level rise science and adding justice in our policies so individuals spermsing homelessness can recover from these activities.

so with that all that in consideration, here is the proposal of the safety element moving forward. it's organized in six goals on the left hand side. each goal has its objectives and policies and all the feedback we have gathered and where they are putting this information front and center. the remaining goals have been from the 2012 safety elements and they have been updated and honed and brushed up along the way. i want to dive in specifically of how the climate action plan shows up in the safety element and how we have all of this energy between adaptation, mitigation and resilience.

the next goal is brand new dedicated to deal with all hazard approach and knowing they are occurring more frequently and simultaneously. in this goal, the safety element incorporated the climate action plan by reference as well as hdr, emergency response plan and the safety implementation plan and documents updated more frequently. and to really bolster the citywide climate action goals. the third mitigation going is the largest that we are placing in the safety element to address the climate crisis. these are referred to the cap in the goal and there is a large mention in the environmental communities for programs throughout the city like building retrofit,

electrification and things that can tangibly benefit. thank you for in corporating the cap throughout many departments. this is my last section of the presentation and next steps. in addition to this informational hearing, we visited capital planning commission a few weeks ago and in a few weeks we'll also visit historic preservation commission with similar information tying these issues with the safety element. last week, we went to the planning commission to initiate our general plan amendment. i'm very happy that it passed unanimously. so it's scheduled for late august. we'll return to the planning commission to adopt our general plan amendment and discuss the content in detail.

as this timeline goes, this work will be before the board of supervisors in september. we hope that you, environment commission, are supportive of this process today. there is no specific action today. this is meant to be a presentation, but i'm grateful to see how much our department staff has partnered with the team. we are available for comment. thank you. >> >> questions and comments. >> i will kick it off. this map that you presented on and as you withel know, it's important to define communities appropriately in order to be able to serve them with policies and this is an issue that i have cared for in a long time. i will probably

ask how you construct this map. i will take this off line because i want to focus on at a glance on what each communities are in san francisco including chinatown, parts of the mission district and some of the tenderloin and bayview and hunters point and what has really struggled to capture san francisco. have you covered in this map what has already been implemented because that does help whether there is funding and additionally if the county can craft a letter into the all the work that you have put into this to say we find the community in a way that actually reflects our own history. i

don't want to get too much into this, but essentially a quirk of this biotool. if we show how this process is defining this community, that would make it more presentable. >> we have the environmental screen as the base and in addition we have the local data about income and other race and ethnicities and we plan to present that to the planning commission at the start of next year. right now it's going through lots of engagement and research to validate our understanding of environmental justice in communities and how you mentioned about how this isn't the most high resolution for the neighborhoods in san francisco. so we are really excited for the environmental justice framework

to present the map to the commission next year for the safety element to incorporate it already as a head start for delineating expenses and resources and we have not yet communities those definitions to the state yet, but when we were going to the 3.0 and 4.0, we have worked with the assessment staff. so it's great to sues # -- use this data. >> other comments or questions? >> i want to make a brief comment. thank you for the great work. amazing presentation, and just a brief question on whether you anticipate any push back either from the planning commission or the board of supervisors for the adoption of the plan? >> thank you.

last thursday, we visited the planning commission for our initiation hearing and commissioner moore kicked things off stating he was enthusiastic about our work. i think something that rang true was how much our team coordination throughout the city focused on social equity and environmental justice and working on community outreach and engagement and how those issues relate to protection from all fabrics. so that's been very positive for us. we also had an informational hearing with them last fall and that was kind of context setting and through the element of the same issues of the housing element and other aspects of the

general plan and being coordinated and clear about all the updates we have about the general plan moving forward. >> thank you. that seems like a really great way to educate the public on the general plan. thank you. >> again, thank you for all of your hard work. this is more for my own curiosity. part of the end of the report, the last three pages are items to be removed from the plan. i think the details in here for some of them make complete sense. i expect the 6,000 units that are currently filled on treasure island, you don't need to monitor that anymore but the database for the buildings still under evaluation still seem somewhat and i imagine that is

lesson your plate. just for curiosity, how did you decide what to remove from -- >> thank you. that's a really sharp eye and i really appreciate you going to the end of the document over many many pages. first off, there is 6-8 policies that we are proposing to be removed. some of these policies already mentioned have already been completed and we have removed these policies because the work is already done, for example the work on treasure island. some of the policies we felt were not in the purview of the general plan given that the last time we updated it was in 2012. that was 10 years ago, and our perspective of modernizing the general plan moving forward and validated and for removing these policies knowing that they are more at the agency level sense

most of it is implemented at the planning department. for example these are being served by the building code or planning code, that type of thing. to your specific example about retrofits, we do have a policy about all hazard research, all hazard amendments and consequences and staying on top of the latest scientific information. we felt we updated some of the nuance of the policy and we drafted and rewrote whole ones. there are many from 2012 and we felt it was comfortable to keep it that way and we felt the original intention of the what the seismic data was serving, not just building retrofits but thinking about all

of our data development. >> that was an incredible thorough answer. thank you. you don't have to take this in anyway, but putting it # in here so folks recognize the labor of love will let you say this has been already handled and make it more of a thorough report. >> you are not off the hook yet. we have public comment to do.

>> are there any members of the public wishing to speak, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment. >> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item please press star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold in the queue, please wait until it is your turn to speak. seeing no callers in the queue, this item public comment is closed. >> next item.

>> the commission may create a search committee to coordinate tasks related to the executive director recruitment process, or delegate these duties to one member of the commission. the commission may also select an executive recruitment firm to support the recruitment process or delegate this task to either a search committee or one member of the commission. >> commissioners, i will be recusing myself from this agenda. item. >> thank you. >> >> this item as it sounds is about the commission essentially creating a search committee and

there are various permutations we can discuss at the committee. there can be several members of the commission doing it but additional staff as well. i'm open to your thoughts. i really want this to be a transparent discussion. i think the biggest thing to consider this is to probably using the search committee to essentially accelerate the timeline to some degree in other words so it's not a year or two year long process that would not be good. ideally, as we heard from our laws commission meeting, six months, maybe a year, but we'll try to keep it trim. so thoughts on this now. >> just some clarification, is this about a search committee as opposed to hiring a search firm?

>> yes, thank you for clarifying. this would not replace the recruiting firm process itself. the search committee would work alongside the firm and hopefully again support the recruitment process overall. my understanding is that itself still has to occur. it may be a question for staff. do we have information on the process as well? >> no, but i believe we have deputy director howard and deputy city attorney crowley participating through webex available to answer any questions to this matter. >> >> good afternoon, members of the commission. kate howard, department of human resources. per your last meeting, we did make inquiries as our preexisting prequalified

recruitment firm and we did get a firm that was interested with your recruitment. i'm happy to share more information at this time or answer any questions. >> i think commissioner. >> of course. as i mentioned to you at the last meeting, we have a prequalified group, a recruitment firm and we requested to hear back from them and asked to submit a proposal with timeline, their approach and the overall cost of the recruitment. as i mentioned, one firm did respond.

they are a firm with about 20 years of public sector experience and conducting these kinds of recruitment. they proposed a 14-16 recruitment process. this is typical for these kinds of recruitments from the time they begin working with you, the commission. and basically a three phase approach working with the search committee to build-out a recruitment profile, and define who you are looking for for the job. moving to phase 2 which is active recruitment and outreach, as well as the initial screening process to determine working with the commission, which is the qualified candidates does the commission wish to interview and moving to a third phase

which includes the interview process of the commission and make a recommendation of the candidate to the mayor for consideration. this was a fixed cost of $25,000 with an additional $5,000 for possess technology travel expenses and reimbursement for those. >> does the recruitment profile -- >> specifically the brochure, commissioner. the job description describes the roll, the characteristics of the person that the commission thinks will be the best fit for

the role and provides information of san francisco, the salary, benefits, those sorts of things. >> just two follow up questions from me, i would love your personal opinion on the effectiveness or if this firm has worked with other departments in sourcing senior level staff. i know you mentioned that we have a prequalified group, but i'm wondering if there are other present positions that we would be aware of? >> i have to get that list for you. i can provide that to you after the meeting. >> thank you. is 25k typical for a recruitment process with the city? i just want to get a sense for it, or is that

egregiously out of scope? >> thanks for the question, through the chair, the price of recruitment tends to vary, but i would say this is well within a range. most of the recruitment at the executive level we have seen over the last 2 years has been $25-50,000. >> maybe it would be also good to provide some historical context from the search committee as it went on with the recruiting process as well. that committee had two commissioners on it and one staff member and two advisory members. we don't have to constitute the search committee in the exact same way as stated in the item. if you want to make one commissioner or

to three commissioners, ideally not four because that would include the entire body again. the whole purpose of this committee is to hopefully move along the process and we are not waiting two months for the again body meeting to review the candidate. >> i will propose that we advocate the search committee to be composed of two commissioners, and one staff member, and i would be interested if you can say a little bit more about who, i wasn't on the committee that had the advisory members, who they were and what their role was and how it was filled.

>> i have their job titles. it was a former department director who was not applying for the job. and also a senior environmental policy advisor to the mayor's office. in the past it has included staff at different levels. i think a basic requirement is that you should not be applying for the job, to this committee as well. >> the insight to this position and to find the person that would be appropriate. >> yes, ideally. >> i will amend the proposal and that we should have two commission members, one staff members and two potentially at least two advisory members who would advise the commission. >> also, i appreciate that flexibility because it is possible we may not find the

right advisory members. other thoughts or questions, and maybe to confirm with our deputy, we can pick any commissioners and don't have to worry about any intentional commissioners. >> that's right. that would be different and wouldn't be a problem. >> i had a question based on your very comprehensive memo. thank you for preparing it for us. my question was, do the meetings of this subcommittee have to be noted? >> and are they public? >> yes. so this would be a policy, the search committee itself would be a policy body subject to the

brown act. the meetings would need to be publicly noticed. >> you can go into an executive session during this, right? >> do you mean a closed session, commissioner? >> yes. >> so the same sort of criteria for going into a closed session would apply for the hiring committee. here it would be the relevant criteria would be the personnel exemption. so whenever the committee is discussing individual applicants or sort of developing a specific criteria to use for selecting an ed, those would be sort of the types of discussions that could be had in closed session. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. >> commissioner sullivan? >> thanks. there was a reference to flexibility and one thing that

occurs to me is we may not want to set in stone the number of advisory to this committee because we don't know who they are and we don't know who we will find, and it may be that we want one or don't want any. i don't know that we would require a certain number of advisory numbers. maybe the way to go would be to let the two members, if it is two of the committee to determine who to bring on. i would like that flexibility. that's one idea. and having gone through this process with non-profits, i really like the idea of the search firm. i'm glad that we will use a search firm to potentially go through lots of resume and narrow it down as an example by the search committee. a third thought, i think it would be a good idea and i don't know if other commissioners share this view and i'm open to

your thoughts, but for all of us to have an opportunity to review the final set of potential candidates, and not have that be determined by a couple members of the group. >> i believe that happened another time as well. that said, just to confirm with staff, are we looking to appoint commissioners today or to take action or just creating those listed in the item. if you want to have commissioners volunteering today and being appointed? >> thank you, the commission can take several actions tonight. the commission can accept the proposals for the search

committee. the commission can make a decision about which commissioners can serve on the search committee. we don't have mr. wan with us tonight. that's to be mindful as well. there are possible actions to be taken with this item. >> what i will suggest is we create the search committee with this in mind and hopefully not ham strength ourselves in this process, and then figure out who is going to serve on it perhaps at a later date. if it doesn't require, if it can be, just to confirm maybe the appointment or voluntary can happen outside of the committee. >> much like the president

confirm other committee members. >> deputy, can you comment on that? >> yes, if he wants to have a vote to create the committee and have president ahn to take action, that can work or the committee can come back and ratify the committee membership at a subsequent meeting, but i don't think that's required. i think president ahn's proposal is fine. >> through the chair, the policy and public affairs, that's actually how we do it for our own policy committee. that is the chair that takes the members of the committee. our deputy city attorney said we would be following a similar process for this new committee that you would vote to create and the president would populate the way he does for operations and our policy committee. >> i have great confidence in our chair's ability in that

regard. i think it also depends who is willing and make this on the fly, it's better for the chair to select who will be on that commitment. >> this is to set this up so far and to build the guidelines around it. the search committee can constitute up to three commissioners, potentially one staff member from the building environment and advisory member from outside the department. then the search committee would delegate responsibilities in terms of selecting an executive recruiting firm, vetting candidates and of course conferring with the body what is

narrowed down. i would add the words "up to two advisory". >> i would like to say that i think we are going to need a -- who is going to -- >> [ laughter ] >> thank you. >> i don't know how it actually happened on the search committees that i was on, but i will just say that it was the deputy director who was the staff person on.

>> yes, that's right. >> he made those as opposed to the people on the district. >> president ahn, i would like to suggest a deadline or a date by which we want to create this committee, and maybe, i don't know if we want to put dates again to anything else right now, but it was 104 degrees in london last week, and i feel like time is not on our side on any of this and i want to be thorough and we should put some pressure behind getting the ball rolling. >> i'm okay with that too. one 2 or 3 weeks? it looks like

it's unfortunately going to fall on me. >> i'm on vacation starting tomorrow. >> we can say three weeks. >> three weeks. >> i don't have to take the full three weeks as well. thank you. >> so that said, this is a possible action item. >> so is someone willing -- >> just for clarification, i really like commissioner wald's idea that we require a staff person. the volunteer members of the committee would do their jobs without that. i think your original proposal was possibly a staff person. >> yes, i will repeat out the

hashed language which is commission on the environment is creating a search committee of up to three commissioners, and requiring one staffer, and potentially up to two advisory members to select an executive recruitment firm to vet candidates and generally work through the recruiting process, and this process should take no more than three -- >> i'm sorry. i noticed cate howard had her hand up. i wonder if you want to vote now for the search firm since there is one recommendation on the table or do you want to delegate that to the as yet to be formed committee. >> the thing that i missed is it

doesn't seem like there is another recruiting firm, it's just the one? >> that's correct, president ahn. we got one response. there were several firms that were interested but too busy at this time. this is the one that we are able to retain on your behalf if that is something you would like to do. >> one piece of clarification, thank you mr. president. there was one last piece, do we have to use someone who is already prevetted? >> no. >> let's say we chose somebody else from a different firm, i imagine something would come through like an official city provider. how long would that be?

>> that's hard for me to make a guess about. it would be essentially you conducting your own rfp process to identify firms that would like to work with the commission to identify a new director, and that can take as long as an rfp would. >> it's likely 3-6 months. >> okay. for my fellow commissioners, i kind of hate having one to choose from. it seems to me that this is pretty important and having worked with a lot of executive recruiting firms throughout my career, it's a very different experience. i'm comfortable personally being

if the members of the search committee would the body make the decision ably. i appreciate you getting more information on who they are and have they worked in the city in the past. that would be great to share with the committee. >> >> having that proposal, having that vetted, i don't think we can vote on it. [inaudible] >> i agree. >> any other discussion on that? >> i'm thinking back to commissioner stephenson's 100 degree in london. i'm not against this, but i think it's

unlikely now that we have gone through this process, the city has gone through the process of the firms and there was one available that we would end up with anybody else. >> maybe another clarification. are we in danger of losing this firm that has indicated interest if we take too long? >> thank you for the question, president ahn. no, i don't think you are at risk of losing them by waiting for a subcommittee to convene, review their materials, if there is a question that it would present a problem. >> one thing that would be very helpful if you can do this to help the committee make-up their

minds is if the material is about this firm that you forward to the members included some kind of testimonial from other city commissions who work with them and who actually sat down at the table and what they had to say about their experience, how responsive they were, and tuned in to the quality of the candidate that they were looking for, just sort of any information that would help reassure people of any competitor whether or not that is a regular part of what you would add. snowily #

>> is that possible? >> of course. we can get the examples and that material is included in their proposal and ask for information in advance of a subcommittee meeting. >> to start adding the time period we are talking about, three weeks for selection of the committee, then the committee needs to meet after considering this firm and potentially others that feels like another 3-4 weeks. we are talking about a two month delay if we take this approach.

>> >> this is not an easy process and labor intensive. >> what i will say is i'm going to work on the search committee process in the next week. i do think it's that important. in fact i will have plenty of vacation time to think about it. >> i think it's got to be weekly once we disclose to start looking at people that they are recommending because then it's going to take time to set up, although with zoom, it will be

easier. because they won't have to come. >> is there anyone else? >> i would like to move to establish this committee and just to make sure we have that process underway. to commissioner sullivan's point, i will commit to constitute this search as soon as possible. i think there is some delay but i want to be sure we are not voting blind for this search firm too. >> may i ask one clarifying question? >> yes, please. the question is regarding the role of the staff committee whether they are a member of the committee and whether this commission is requesting staff support for the committee in

terms of scheduling meetings and doing those sorts of things. >> i think my interpretation of the process is that person was an active member of the committee, not just staffing and pushing out notices. i'm open to other thoughts and that will be different this time around. >> it feels to me like the commissioners ought to have a vote. if the commissioners come to a decision, that should not be the staff or advisory member. >> i think the staff person on committee who is basically representing the department

interim helping the other members identify a suite of potential candidates who will be the best possible candidate we can possibly find who will take on this position, and that person who is representing the department have a much better or best possible understanding for the department that we will be asking for. >> maybe i'm wearing my hat of attorney that represent boards where it's actually not legal for a non-ordinary member to be a committee of a corporation. maybe i can just ask our guest if it's possible for a voting

member of a committee of this body to vote on that committee. >> i can speak to that. so i first want to just emphasize that it's the commission itself that has the authority and responsibility to select three candidates or however many candidates to recommend to the mayor. so, in creating a search committee, you are not necessarily in most cases you wouldn't be delegating that responsibility to the committee. you would be simply creating a committee to make the recommendation to the entire commission. a search committee could include non-commissioners, it could even include people outside the city. although that brings additional complexities because they would

then be part of the policy body. but there is no problem with someone outside the commission being a voting member of the committee, but the committee itself would not have the authority to make the selection. they would just be making a recommendation to the full commission, and then the commission would be the body to vote on the selection to the mayor. the committee would potentially be composed of three commissioners and non-commissioners to the recruiting firm, for example. >> correct. if it does give it that power. >> just a comment. in many cases commissions that are interested in bringing in staff or other stakeholder input in their recruitment process will conduct

surveys, focus groups or work with the recruitment firm to incorporate that input and feedback into the process as another alternative. >> i hope that takes care of commissioner sullivan's concerns. i would love to see the criteria that they use for the selection. generally, that's not something we need to mandate but rather the commission on that to fill that. on the issue of the subcommittee for the search firm, it's something that we empower them

to do and just carte blanche for that committee. i also see the potential interviewee that will come to us and not be -- >> that's the way it has been done in the past where people are referred by the committee where each number of people were interviewed by the subcommittee and each went before the commission. >> okay. so at this point, is there a motion to constitute the search committee? >> yes, commissioner? >> i move that we constitute a

search committee as described by president ahn. >> again, up to three commissioners, requiring one staffer, up to three advisory members and empowering them to select a recruiting firm and generally assess the commission on the environment and moving on this process and again up to three weeks to select these members but hopefully a lot. and the selection of the committee to be determined by the chair and all members to be appointed by the chair. thank you. >> i have a motion from commissioner wald and commissioner bermejo. >> before we go to a vote, do we -- we will do public comment, kyle.

>> are there any members of the public wishing to speak, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment. >> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item please press star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold in the queue, please wait until it is your turn to speak. >> we have one caller in the queue. >> hello caller, you are unmuted. public speaker: david propel, whether you choose a committee, i'm not for creating another committee because of the notice

requirements and posting and 72 hours and 15 days and the open and closed session and going in and out of a meeting whatnot. anyway, it's just a lot of hassle for the benefit. your blares article 7 section 9 speaks to other committees. the commission and/or president may establish other committees or a task force on an ad hoc basis to perform as necessary and there was contemplation of creating committees in the bylaws. i think the most important thing whether there is a committee or not is to dwindle down the number of candidates that the commission would consider. you may want to have somebody check in with the mayor and if the mayor wants to weigh in on this, the public utilities

commission went fairly far down the road for the search process for a general manager and then decided she wanted -- and that pretty much cut short that entire process. if the mayor has a thought at this point, that might obviate or change the direction. as i said, if you do create a committee, the president appoints the members. ultimately the commission has the final interview and you already went over that. i think it's important to keep the public an apprised of the status. i'm not interested in names but interested in knowing how many applicants and that you considered four. if there is a memo, i have not seen that. if there is a public memo, i would

love to see where it is, if not, i would like to see it crafted to see the memo and it would be good to have some of that advice in writing and not have commissions recreate this. i'm not crazy about the three weeks to form the committee and the process. as from the director, i think it's entirely appropriate for an open session. let's get this moving so it doesn't take 6-9 months, but in fact you have the candidates sooner and the director in place as soon as possible. there you go. thanks for listening. >> thank you for your comment.

>> >> i see no additional callers in the queue. >> public comment is now closed. >> one more question for staff. we don't have to clarify anything like criteria that the search committee will use as a body? >> that's ultimately hopefully implicit with the search committee and by the committee itself. that's probably a question for cate? >> that's correct. commissioner, the committee can do much of that work to determine criteria, develop lead characteristics and certain things and with the partnership search team will help you with developing those and with that vetting. >> great. thanks for the clarification. if commissioners are okay with it, >> roll call, please.

>>clerk: [roll call] >> this motion passes. >> prepare to hear from me in the following days about this. >> with that said, i'm going to exercise my discretion as president to essentially move items out of order right now. i think it's getting later and of course we have quite a bit more to do. but maybe as we call acting director back, we can call up item 10, the director's report. is that item 10, that's item 12 on the agenda right now. >>

>> as we wait for the acting director to return, item 12. >> update on the department of the environment budget. speaker: cyndy comerford, climate program manager. new staff introductions. speaker: tyrone jue, acting director. >> commissioner, we will start with the new staff announcement and then we'll go to the budget. >> so, we heard about chris geiger retiring, and we are happy to announce that we have new people coming into the department. this is the wonderful part of the agenda where we get to introduce those

individuals. we will introduce them and allow them to say a few words if they are interested. in person, i have dr. silva >> good evening. i'm the senior production coordinator, the role that chris geiger previously held. my background is in toxicology. before coming i worked with the health hazard environment. it's great to meet all of you. >> thank you. >> next steps we have diana

mineta. >> hi, diana mineta, i started in the building operations my climate is in energy policy and worked at the energy commission a number of years ago and worked in the state of montana on a number of issues before i returned to san francisco. >> >> i think we have michael hughes. >> i don't think he is here. i will go to the next person. >> jesus lozano.

>> good evening, commissioners, i'm jesus lozano. i recently joined environment as a coordinator. i got really interested and really focused in on geography and since then working on community engagement and other implementation and practices within san francisco with peter -- intern, working on biodiversity project. now i'm working on the council and on

climate action plan work. great to be here. thank you. >> last we have -- >> good evening commissioners. i'm the energy specialist focusing on multifamily housing program. i'm a registered architect in ohio and working in the building industry for 25 years. i started a non-profit focusing on green building education in the community of ohio, in columbus ohio. thank you. >> thank you. >> then we have two individuals remotely. >> first we have jack macy who is our new 0 waste -- staff.

>> good evening, commissioners. it's really my honor and pleasure to take the role of zero waste program manager. i have been working in zero waste for about three 1/2 decades, and been with the department since we started with the zero waste program, and before that and led many of our policy efforts, and so i got a chance to interact with many of you and before that, as a recycling coordinator. i have a long history and happy about the opportunity about the zero waste programs and looking for opportunities to advance zero waste and climate and meet our ambitious goals going forward. i look forward to interacting with

you in the future. >> lastly, we have steven wilson. >> hi there. can you hear me? >> yes. >> my daughter is talking in the background. i'm steven wilson and strategy coordinator on the energy team and i started in june. my background is, i'm comingen from the aclu as a digital campaigner there for about six years. and yeah, i'm really happy to be here, i will be a liaison with program staff and our contract web developers. yeah, there is lots of work to do and i'm excited to be here and nice to meet you all.

>> thank you. that wraps up our staff and production. we are so excited to have so many wonderful people with a variety of experiences and background. so for all of you that are here just waiting for that, feel free to leave. we still have a little bit of an agenda ahead of us. don't feel bad, just walk out. [ laughter ] i joke around because i know that one of our commissioners lost a bet on how long this meeting would take. now back to the first item as part of the director's report. >> good evening, i'm the program manager and i have had the opportunity to work with a team of people for developing a

budget. so i'm going through a really brief presentation of the money that we received for the board of supervisors and how we are planning to spend it and get any feedback throughout that process. as you know we received $2.6 million for one year through the board of supervisors process. this is the single largest general fund that we have ever received, and also this year there was many many competing interests through the city budget process and this was the largest allocation for the board of supervisors. i think this really speaks to the importance of the department's work and the urgency that we see around climate change. this process would not have been possible without our many many advocates who supported this effort. so, we owe them a debt

of gratitude for the work they did to ensure that this department received this funding. there is the sixth bucket area that we are planning to spend the money in, and the first one is around eliminating fossil fuels from all the building, second is inclusive and additional outreach around our climate plan. third, is around healthy eco systems to advance climate sequestration and augmenting our initiative and making sure we have the administrative support to scale all of these everts.

in the next slide i will go into each one in more detail. the first one around eliminating fossil fuels in every building. the goal is to use the money for staffing to implement the policies and programs that i actually spoke about earlier. we have a lot of work to do in that sector. we are going to focus on the residential sector and expand more work from the traditional sector. we also want to make sure that we are providing environmental justice grants around decarbonization to the community, and lastly making sure that we are able to do the technical analysis and the other types of data collection to implement this successful policy. the second area around our inclusive outreach for our

climate. i think rich talked about earlier. we have funding to do a very robust climate marketing campaign and working with businesses and organizations around the implementation and also hoping to have some public spacing dashboard, so members of the public can track our progress and see metrics around carbon sequestration. we are hoping to have some healthy eco system demonstration projects, additionally making sure that we are working on some additional analysis around carbon sequestration for the future. so around eliminating fossil fuels from the transportation sector, this mainly focused on implementing our ev road maps. making sure that we are putting in place the necessary charging

infrastructure for the city, and then also focusing on some targeted areas around -- >> the next one is around our racial equity initiative. we'll be hiring racial coordinator who will really have a full-time person to focus on racial equities. we'll have some funding around professional services to be sure that we are able to have the necessary training and coaching for all of our staff. last but not least around scaling and administrative support. we are hoping a lot of the funding will go out to the community through professional services and that will be increasing our grant making and our fees and make sure we have the dedicated staff to implement what we talked about. so what this slideshows a

summary of the budget. so you can see it's one year budget and led between personnel and professional services. so it's approximately seven full-time staff. part of it is to fund existing position and new position. the first one shows 5.29 fte's and the second one around professional services. a lot of this we are hoping to give back to the community around environmental and justice grant and working with community partners to really build that capacity for the future. as you can see this is only a one year budget. to continue, to keep the staff

that we hire, we will need an additional $9 million and that doesn't include any of the professional services. so there is some administrative functions that we'll need to implement to make sure that we successfully spend the money. one is around tracking that is going to be key. we need to be sure we are tracking this money efficiently and that we are also showcasing what we are doing. i think that is something we really want to work on and not only that we are implementing these policies but we are showing the fruits of our labor and not something -- that's what we do really well. we have currently a staff shortage and a high vacancy rate

right now and making sure that we are setting expectations to hire staff and that we communicate to the public and we are very happy that we have this money but we have to be sure we are putting processes in place for the future and not able to spend it the first couple months. >> last but not least, this is going to increase the work load of our existing staff. so we are trying to implement programs and create this pathway. >> and this slide just shows what our department outcome priorities are. internally we want to focus on racial equity and work on this fiscal year and next fiscal year.

we also want to make sure we are honing in on some administrative processes to be sure we are being efficient and effective in all the programs, lastly, like i said, we need to focus on hiring and recruitment. as we move forward and looking externally, we are really hoping to focus on residents. so resident decarbonization is a big priority. we want to be sure that we are providing the infrastructure for people to buy electric vehicles and get rid of their gas guzzlers. healthy eco systems and making sure that we are providing and demonstration projects and last that we are giving residents the information they need to make decisions for the future, so

around outreach. this concludes my presentation. i'm available for questions. about the budget. >> any comments, commissioners? >> commissioner wan? >> two things. that is another great presentation. thank you for this program. i would like to suggest that we send those champions a letter from the commission expressing our gratitude to them for this. the really hard work that they did to make this for us unless we have already done that.

>> i sent the letter on behalf of the department that we are happy to draft the letter on behalf of the commission if that's the commission's desire. >> you can't thank people enough. >> i agree and this is only the start and we are going to need their continued support. >> right. >> we'll review that. >> thank you. >> and then i couldn't agree more about your point that tracking these expenditures will be really really important. and i wanted to suggest if i may that you think the policy committee could help you with that effort, that you might come one day to talk because i do think that is most of it and other than doing the work and showing that you are doing the work.

>> thank you, commissioner wald. >> commissioner wald, it was also mentioned during the operations meeting as well and one idea was to provide this item in the director's report with where we are with hiring and the grant. >> great. >> other questions or comments? commissioner hunter? >> we love you. when debbie was here, we wanted to test out with things like the bla report and how much it was going to cost >> i know the department already supports future budget cycle which is great, however, i feel like we are really running out of time with agendaizing and

estimate with how much staff we need and where that staff needs to go to implement the path forward. so i was attributing this presentation to include some of that budget to go towards assessing how much path to the implementation would actually cost. the other reason why i am a little bit concerned because the ballot on this cycle there is a concern to move this selection to a year. it will be two 1/2 years before we can have a ballot measure to move this. and that really changes my mind significantly. what is the department doing right now with past funding estimates and are we doing this effort from this funding? >> last year, we received $1 million from the board of supervisors. part of that allocation was to do a long-term study to understand the different financing and funding

strategies we'll need for the future, and as part of that initiative we are working with the project and working with the center for law and environment and energy and environment, and also -- and we'll have a final report out at the end of september and we will look at some of the items that you discussed. it's basically an estimation of the cost an a plan moving forward for potential ballot measures for other funding items. so that is something on the horizon and we hope to come back to this commission sometime this fall. >> i think i'm a little bit nervous because we now have this pot of money and if this report

doesn't come down in september -- >> i'm chime in. with this review process, we did make do with what this is and with the positions we are talking about here and the programs are one year and there is the starting point and then we can revise this further. and we added additional resources and we think we can handle more with this two year timeframe. i think connecting the long-term sustainable revenue source and funding that is going to be

needed for cap with the data that we are going to be getting, that is all coming into alignment within this next year >> and look at what does this look like , and something the city has not tackled because it's such a massive project and involves stakeholders from the department and with all the other agencies that rich talked about earlier and seeing what is stable and the process for the next year. as long as we have the financials that will be an

-- indication of what the projections are. >> will you have the recommendation for this? >> the recommendation will be for staffing. we are laying a good foundation. we are going to need to offset in many many areas to implement that climate action. so i think hopefully the report that is out in september, will lay a pathway for doing that. >> >> seeing none, at this point do we move to public comment or does the director's report >> it's been a very long

meeting. i will waive my part of the update. >> thank you. >> kyle, public comment, please. >> are there any members of the public wishing to speak, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment. >> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item please press star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold in the queue, please wait until it is your turn to speak. >> we have one caller in the queue. >> hello, caller. you have three

minutes now. public speaker: this is on 12 and 12a. i agree with all of what cindy and tyrone said. i have one issue with slide no. 9 that i don't think was displayed in the category of expenditures. i'm just concerned about the distribution of the new staff position that there is yet another position and i'm in favor of not having that but perhaps having that breakdown into at least one and possibly 2 in 638 and there are two, 42 and

second 40. well at work breakdown, anyway, it doesn't create much of a career path and i'm concerned that because these are only one year positions, even if they are category 18 positions, could result in lay offs, and i'm not supportive of that. i think we should be very careful about new staff position using the money. i'm in favor of new staff, but they need to be definitely thought for and that will be more detail for the department leadership. i'm excited and hoping that results in more action sooner on climate because as we all know we can't wait. as for the rest of the director suppor -- report, as usual very

comprehensive. >> that's all from me. >> thank you for your comment. >> i see no additional callers in the queue. public comment for this item is closed. >> thank you, kyle. we'll move to item 10.

>> update on implementation of public integrity review preliminary assessment recommendations. speaker: tyrone jue, acting director (explanatory document: public integrity review preliminary assessment, san francisco department of the environment's relationship with recology and lack of compliance with ethics rules) presentation on grants and contracts process. speaker: david kashani, contracts and grants manager. >> we'll go over the status and where we are. and we brought this in for discussion and we'll take that feedback and it -- iterate the process going forward.

i'm not going over all of them because we did the last time. the first one is very quick. this item, the proposed reform did pass the ballot. there are currently discussions right now to reform the rating process led by the office of the come # -- comptroller. >> what is basically completed from our standpoint, there is nothing left for us to do with that information. recommendation 3 around the organization. we'll go over the resolution and today you will

have a policy to consider to codify the mayor's directive and make the decision for the department and for the organization to be desired by this department in the future, they would have to undergo the processes as a matter of policy. we'll get to that. >> recommendation 4, this is really concerning about making sure we have an open and transparent with the city attorney's office and ethics commission and to take their advice whenever there is an ethics concern. we have regular meetings with our city attorney. we started a dialogue of our staff. they are very proactive in terms of approaching and myself on questions which is exactly the kind of relationship and dialogue that we want to have and we bring questions to

our city attorney. that's something that is going to be on going. we did do a senior staff training this summer particularly on rules as well as thick -- ethics rules. >> >> we did complete the city attorney and there was no additional money for attorney time. we will address that issue. but there is no other action to take. the last item which was brought up by commissioner stephenson in

that meeting was the scheduled annual ethics meeting before earth month and that is for requirements and sponsorship. this will align with the new reporting requirement that we are going to have on staff with form 700 and annual meeting with staff that align that february march timeframe. we haven't started it yet because we haven't reached that month. this one straight forward to comply with the mayor's directive. this is about complying with the mayor's executive directive and memorandum of understanding and

framework of the organization. this has been dissolved. we did want to share information that president ahn mentioned that where that $25,000 would remain. so the organization disbursed them and we don't have the exact amount. it went to the city, draft and urban environmental and justice alliance. and we had no involvement at all in the selection or how they allocated those main funds. >> the recommendation 7 was really about designating and making sure the appropriate employee was contacting for the appropriate responsibilities had the adequate training.

what we have done here is again, actually done the training as part of the new employee orientation. and doing an all staff training with the city attorney's office and additional training demand 2023, we are adding additional filer and requirements for category 1 and in line with communicating with that schedule. the second one was the request that we had made through the budget process to hopefully get a cfo to work in our department. there is no follow up action on there. next item on recommendation 7. we have already reviewed the job responsibility. so as i -- the form 700 requirement around filing and we have staff that do need to disclose their financial interest. so it covers everyone from not just the commission but

executive director now for category 1 for disclosure requirements. now it stems down to our mid-level management within the department also required to file form 700 as well as position related to contracting grants. so there is a heightened level of disclosures and meet that request of the city attorney's office for the reporting process. and so we didn't really need to provide a job description for the ethics officer because we didn't get the position. this one is state from the standpoint that we are not looking at any fee based board at all. if we wanted to, we

would have to go through the appropriate process which would require to go through the appropriate process with the mission and through the board. if there is a future fee based activity, that would have to be brought up with the commission through that process. and so a prohibition like because we will follow that process is not necessarily for staff. it will go for guidance and approval. this is related to interview panelist and conflict of interest. we did send and email last week to our human resources analyst and staff that any analyst may not have a financial interest and may not be a contractor for a grant recipient for anything involving the environment. that's basically been done. we

checked off that box. the last time responding to commissioner stephenson's question about the hiring panel. it was january 2021. with this new policy, that's no longer allowed. so we are done with recommendation 9. then following back up to recommendation no. 1, we have obviously made changes to the director's report and updating on grant and audit. we will continue to engage with you on these major ethics update and i included those as part of the director report. you will have that update. finally we have the recommendation on the grant and the mission on the policy. i know i have covered a lot in a

very short timeframe. please let me know if you have any questions. that was a lot to cover and we have done a lot of work since the may 10 meeting to now. one of the questions commissioner hunter raised was could we achieve all of these goals that we wanted to hit and the answer was yes and we have a great team that worked within the department. we are happy with where we are and we have a couple of discussions. >> thank you. very thorough work and very good accounting so far. >> questions or comments from other commissioners. >> yes, commissioner wald? >> so, i think it's very very impressive, and all the progress that you've made. i know i'm the only one of a bunch of people who are grateful to you and everybody else who worked on this. i just have to say i'm a little concerned about the use of the

word completed in this document. there are a number of instances which where i think the word on going would better capture what you said, and what i think your intent is, and i know this is only a document for us, but if you have somewhere, your own little list that you are working from and that you are tracking, i would look for places where you can substitute something for the word completed, because it's not what we are talking about here in many -- >> thank you for that feedback. it definitely was the balance for doing the presentation thing. we got to this point but there was a lot and we talked about this and giving this direction that the ethics board is never done and all of this

training are really just systems for setting up going forward in the future. >> yes, commissioner. >> i build on commissioner wald's point of thank you for getting the work done in a timely manner. it was an urgent priority in my mind. it was not easy to do so genuinely thank you. >> any other comment? >> all right. next up we have david, our grants and contract manager. >> thank you, commissioners, president ahn. my name is david -- the contracting grant coordinator or manager now of

san francisco environment department. there was a report to the recommendation with a strong ethical tone, the modeling compliant with ethics law. i'm here today to represent the landscaping of incoming and outgoing funding component to help the commission with the materials to address that recommendation. there are three areas that i will cover, mou's, incoming funds and outgoing funds within the department. mou's are process agreement between the department and environment and other parties including other city departments. for clarity, i would like to differentiate mou's from internal to external. internal mou's include the department which are called inter

departmental service agreements that may include additional documents that are covered under the comptroller's office for procedures and there is the internal agreement that involves non-city department, there are no mou's but could involve staff time and no internal mou's are brought before this commission. >> in regards to incoming funding, i would like to differentiate those between budgeted and unfunded. budgeted reviews are reviewed by this normal process. unbudgeted, and unanticipated funds are funds that were not included in the formal budget approval process. the city does have policies in

place for approving the budget and funding. and awards in excess of $100,000 must be approved by the board of supervisors for the department to be able to utilize. now i will focus more on outgoing money. >> incoming funding agreement the commission often has oversight in the form of contracts and grants. outgoing department grants of department awarded funds typically a non-profit for a public purpose for the san francisco community or the good of the people of san francisco. environment staff present these grants to the commission, but there currently isn't a requirement before execution of that grant. contracts on the other hand are mostly professional services and for information technology in

support of the department's work. this is often professional services in the area of environmental based consulting like 0 waste, green building, toxics, agency and advertising, outreach for those program areas and other department wide support for equity inclusion training, all professional contracts are reviewed by the civil service administration and compliance. to provide an overview of the contracts and grants process to help the commission understand the timeline and the work the department does, if you draw your attention to the top of the page, there are five main paths for contracts and two grants and

mainly on the size of the commitment. the matrix is on the left hand side that shows compliance mandate as they appear on the threshold. so in the three budgets you have procurement selection activities which is the development of the solicitation to the award and the internal approvals which are the post award negotiation, the agreement duration and the performance approval and final performance approval which can be in the form of the board of supervisors and ota. as you can see the steps for creating and performing solicitations have the relatively the same time expectation across the board as well as to award negotiations and agreement initiation. this comes in the compliance mandate and civil service commission,

the certification of contracts and approval. >> to summarize the times noted at the table, for $100,000 or less, they require no solicitation. the time is the shortest around two months, contracts around 10,000 to $100,000 add 3 months to the process, about five months. contracts between $100,000 to $200,000, require this business contract and could be pushed out for two weeks to five months. >> contracts with $200,000 to 10

million, can push the process to about six months in total. finally contracts over 10 million, require the board of supervisors approval and that is a three month process which makes the certification happen in about nine months. >> grants are a little bit more straight forward. all grants $1 to $10 million require solicitation and evaluation with a process taking about six months and additional three months for the board of supervisors approval needed because it was over $10 million. it doesn't happen very often. >> the table before you shows that over the past five years the amount of contracts and grants executed by the department. there have been spikes in work load mid-to high 30s in fiscal year 17 and 18 with a couple single digits in between. the low is due to staff

shortages at the time and two new agreements. which is with historical representation and expected to increase with additional funding coming to the department. during the last five years, there has been an average of about 13 grants and nine contracts annually, but as stated, we have experienced spikes as high as 21 grants in the last fiscal year. during the fiscal year, there may be monthly spikes of agreements that can potentially be brought before this commission, some have no agreements brought before it in a 14 in a single month and solicitation for multiple awardees and solicitation for a period of time.

to better frame the landscape of outgoing agreements the chart before you shows the agreement by relative threshold. over the year, the department has awarded 900 contracts in total. on average the departments agreements are fairly spread throughout the amount for levels of work and unto $100,000 which represent 46% or nearly half of the departments agreement. >> if you recall for the may presentation, presented the commission oversight at the sf environment and relation to other commissions. as you can see from the table there is no real standardization across this city for commission approvals. each commission decides the threshold for material for oversight and therefore required to be brought before it.

the decision on commission oversight boils down to a choice of three options. commission approvals required for certain components, commissioner approval not required and commissioners approval to meet the required threshold. thank you for the opportunity to provide you the background and detail to help the development process and i'm here to help with discussions or answer any questions you may have. >> and commissioners, i might add, i know that was a lot of information. part of the purpose of it was to show you the volume, basically to show you the number of grants and contracts that are typically awarded through this department. the size of those contracting grants so you can see how much value there is, and then the third is really to kind of give you options on where you want to explore. we talked about it at the last

meeting. it can range from providing you information to what we already do now as a director's report as a standing item all the way to the actual vote and approval and we would take that feedback and what level of approval, the dollar threshold that you want to get involved in grants or contracts. really we are here to just listen and answer questions and get feedback and proposal for the next meeting. >> so i have two very specific questions, the land and extended agreement, do you happen to know where those contracts are? >> those are the contracts that the department director assigned to ecology. do you happen to

know those contracts? >> i have seen the contracts but i don't know the actual numbers right now. they were created in 2017. i can get you that information for those. >> knowing that in the future, maybe to signal to the commission, it would help in determining a threshold. i am of the personal idea that we don't have to know every contract. >> we will bring back the exact dollar amount for that contract. that contract definitely exceeds anything we would normally do within the department based on the time involved in it. i would say a 15 year contract. a nine year contract with an option for a six year extension in 2016. so

it's definitely in the tens of millions because it's based on how much we are disposing in the landfill. we'll bring back the dollar amount for that, but it's way outside the scope of what's here today. >> question? >> just a quick clarification question compared to commission authority, all the other commission that review contracts, when we write yes, does that mean they approve every single contract, every single mou? >> are you referring to the environment or others? >> for instance the human rights commission, yes, under contract. and no dollar amount is listed. does that mean they approve every single contract at the

commission level? >> thank you for the question, commissioner. for commissions that do have a strict threshold and abide by that threshold it's in the charter for that type of commission. i will have to get that information for you regarding whether they have the authority to do that or something consistent in practice. i will get with you involving that issue. >> i will just agree with president ahn, i don't think we need to be surveying every single grant and every single contract. one, it slows down very important work and no. 2, we won't be able to see every contract and personally would probably be somewhere around-- as of september and we get more

information, i think that falls -- how many grants we are seeing and how many contracts were seeing. i'm happy that we are going ready in september and other commissioners if they think we should be focusing on contracts for grants. >> [inaudible] >> i just want to say that i agree with the fact that the sentiment that we don't have to review or approve every single grant, but i do think we need more information in terms of what other commissions are doing, and is the threshold, otherwise we are going to be in the business of just approving grants for the commission and the environment and the department. >> my thought is the important

work is to ensure there isn't a conflict of interest in contracting and a lot has been accomplished with what we heard today. that really needs to be where the focus is. having this commission approve lots of contracts, as long as we have done our # work in making sure that # conflict of interest don't exist. i would lean towards the smaller contract with a very high dollar amount. >> >> that said, i think it's a two part, one the amount of the contract and who the contract is with. recology again because of our prior public integrity review, i want to be sure that

recology is analyzed in the contract with recology. if there is another entity that you feel should be in there, i think it should be brought for future discussion. >> >> i think somebody that i may be missing here is that for recology, we didn't have that role. we had a review role of the department had a review role. if we want to put some stakes in the ground around the role that the commission takes in approving contracts, if we are specifically talking about the public integrity review, that was around a contract that the department and the environment didn't actually have a stage authority over. if we want to make sure those are reviewed, we need to be brought

in an articulation of what is reviewed. >> there are two different contracts for processes in place and what was meant for the public integrity report related to the rate setting process. the landfill contract wasn't directly addressed as much. the landfill contract is under the purview of the department of the environment. currently as it's structured as what happened the last time around the director signed the agreement with recology for that 15 year and a contract for the landfill disposal. we did have to go before the board and did go through a process there, but it is for this department, specific to the landfill contract and we'll get to the dollar amount. so what i'm hearing, i can summarize is there is an enter by not offering the work for

reviewing contracts, you are not interested in reviewing every single contract but definitely reviewing for ecology and a certain threshold and bring those two options back and for dollar threshold setting to be honest. so we set a fair enough dollar threshold because it might not be actually with recology but with another -- that's one way. >> yes, commissioner wald? >> i would like a little bit more clarification about what is meant by grant. i might have missed it. is a grant something we apply for, or is it somebody walking in the door and say here is $10,000 to do x? >> the grant is used in two ways

in incoming funding and outgoing funding. when the department applies for an internal source, when we receive it, it's like from cal recycle. >> we already review a bunch of grants that are outsource. >> yes, whenever we receive something put into the budget, we are reviewing them for approval for the budget process from an external source for budgeted funding. the other source of grants when we are giving money away to a non-profit in support of a public benefit. that's when we are giving outgoing grants. >> the commission does review those. the one gray area are grants that weren't approved

that is sort of the budget process that the commission did not approve that are under 100,000. so that is the one gray area. anything over $100,000 would have to go before the board. and anything under $100,000, they would be reported on with our new director report but that would be an area if you want to comment on that. >> that's actually better. if i don't speak into it and speak into it more. >> one of the things to think about when identities receive funding, a lot of them are more able to forecast their funding

because it's established and they have a better chance to use those funds. sometimes when it's more -- unanticipated funding, we have to turn it over and create grants and contracts. even though it has that review process in there, it might cause delays. that's all i wanted too bring up. >> one more request for information so i can make a more informed decision. for the current budget cycle, the 21/22 data cycle that created that draft to see how many and what approval process they went through to better see where the landscape is rather than just --

>> would it be acceptable to have all of our current agreements? >> beautiful. >> to be continued. thanks to staff. we are looking forward to thinking this through more. this concludes item no. 10. if there is no other commissioner comment, we will go to public comment. >> are there any members of the public wishing to speak, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment.

>> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item please press star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold in the queue, please wait until it is your turn to speak. >> we do have two callers in the queue. >> hello, caller, you are unmuted. >> public speaker: francisco acosta. following the department of environment since its inception. the first director janette bloomfield, and maybe for the first time we have fire walls in place so the department of environment can gain some goals.

and we need the right resources. we can talk the talk, but to walk the walk we need the resources to address climate change, the carbon footprint, and also be ready for the infrastructure bill. when i was listening to the budget sessions, you don't seem to have the resources to do anything i stated. you will be getting grants and the commission must make an effort to review the grants very carefully. and one way you do

that is by going to the list. the department has had a habit of having the same people get the grant, not opening it up to other entities who can do a better job. i'm very happy that you have a director that is an abilitying -- an acting director and he is very smart and what i like is that he goes straight to the point. when i was watching the other meetings, the parks director, she was beating around the mull berry bush. we don't need that. we don't have time to waste. you do have the talent. you will to set your

goals, short-term and long-term goals. with accountability and transparency. thank you very much. >> thank you for your comment. >> >> hello caller, you are unmuted. public speaker: can you hear me? >> yes. >> i had to call on the phone. on this question of contracts and grants and i very much appreciate the work that's been done in the department by all involved including david. i think at this point i'm leaning towards a $50,000 threshold of approval at the

commission and reporting requirement anything between $10,000 and under $50,000, and i would be interested in what the count is to be captured by those thresholds and how the reporting occurs in the director's report by way of chart is important, what's the entity, what's the purpose, what's the status, various fields or columns in that chart, and for contracting grant approvals before the commission having a template for a staff report that summarizes what the proposed activity is in around how much, etc. this commission over time has intended to get a lot of information by way of presentation and fewer things by

way of memo. moving into contracts and grants, i think leans towards memo of 1, # 2 or 3 page with the proposed contract language if that's something that the commission want to take the time to review. i agree that the commission should not be in the business of reviewing everything. you can pretty much get bogged down in detail of grants and i don't think that's where the commission should be, but i think having a macro level of understanding of all of the activities of the department, and getting into a little of the micro where it makes sense and is targeted is appropriate. i can certainly point out to staff and a couple of other places where there is reporting or thresholds at other city and other public agencies that may

lend themselves to the useful for all of you, and just finally, i think whether or not you adopt this by way of policy in the next few months, ultimately, i think it would be good to incorporate this into the bylaws probably next year when you come down on thresholds and the type of reporting so that it's not just in a policy that is sitting out somewhere but that it is in fact memorialized in the bylaws as the will of the commission to review and approve a certain types and amounts of contracts and grants. i hope that's helpful. i hope to talk more on this as it comes back in the future. thanks. >> thank you for your comment. >> i see no other public callers in the queue. public comment for this item is closed. >> thank you, kyle. next item. >> the next item 11.

>> review and vote on whether to approve resolution file 2022-05-coe, resolution directing the department of the environment to comply with gift regulations and to ensure transparency of relationships with non-city organizations. (explanatory documents: resolution file 2022-05-coe, resolution directing the department of the environment to comply with gift regulations and to ensure transparency of relationships with non-city organizations, and executive directive 20-02) (discussion and action) the commission will discuss and consider adoption of a resolution concerning department of the environment's compliance with executive directive 20-02. >> commissioners, the item before you is codifying and memorializing the mayor's executive directive with this policy and includes a memorandum of understanding reviewed by this commission, the city

attorney's office or our new friends organization and this makes this formal policy for your consideration. >> any questions or comment? if not, do i have a motion? >> moved by commissioner sullivan and second by commissioner bermejo. >> we are open for public comment >> >> are there any members of the public wishing to speak, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment. >> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item please press star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold in the queue, please wait until it is your

turn to speak. >> we do have one caller in the queue. >> hello, caller, you are unmuted. your three minutes begins now. >> great. david prop pell. i read the resolution and i have no objection to it. i think it's fine to pass this tonight. all it does is simply memorialize the mayor's directive from a year 1/2 from almost two years ago. the compliance with the administrative code is kind of required anyway. how you go about it, i suppose has some

element of discretion, and once again, the question of whether the department approves an mou to formalize a relationship with other entities is up to the department, but whether or not the commission wants to exercise authority to approve an mou by way of which is essentially a type of contract is back to the question on the previous item. so, and again, i would formalize that not just by way of this type of resolution, but actually in the commission bylaws. so i think this is fine for tonight, but there is more work to do to make this an on going thing and not just a stand-alone

resolution and connect this to the previous item about contracts and grants, and what limits and thresholds and reporting requirements the commission wants to set as policy for the department. thanks for listening. >> >> thank you for your comment. >> there being no additional callers in the queue, public comment for this item is closed. >> >> roll call, please. >>clerk: [roll call] >> so that item is now done. that motion passes. >> now to item 13, commissioner

report. >> commissioner sullivan, report. >> for the policy committee met june 3rd for food and # edible food recovery and organic waste ordinance and from the zero waste coordinator and a report on zero sf, and the committee for july 11th was scheduled and the next meeting is scheduled for monday august 8th. >> thank you, normally we have commissioner wan reporting on operations. is there someone else? >> the operations committee met july 20th. >> there is an update on the current budget and reduction program pilot and finally we had

an essay on the use and a last point on the slightly usables, i encourage my fellow commissioners to review the presentation done by staff as it really outlines how we can get to zero waste and policy implementation. we will hear from other members. the next committee meeting is scheduled for wednesday october 10th. >> thank you. >> any other commissioner comment? seeing none, we will go to public comment. are there any members of the public wishing to speak, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic. >> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment.

>> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item please press star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold in the queue, please wait until it is your turn to speak. seeing no callers in the queue, public comment on this item is closed. >> the next to final item. >> i believe -- new business/future agenda items. speaker: charles sheehan, chief policy and public affairs officer (discussion) >> good evening, department of environment. policy meeting coming august 8th, august 12th, and committee meeting coming up the 27 of september. for the

upcoming policy meeting for presentation on reduce risk pesticide and climate equity hub presentation. for the full commission coming up, again ipm and potentially update on racial and equity program and progress report and updates on ev's and green update and grants update. a large meeting potentially again in september for the commission. i will take any questions if you have any? >> what was the date of that meeting? >> september 27th. >> thank you. >> any commissioner comments or questions? >> seeing none, let's go to public comment. >> are there any members of the public wishing to speak, please come up one by one and please speak clearly into the mic.

>> seeing none, we will proceed to remote public comment. >> members of the public who wish to make a public comment on this item please press star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold in the queue, please wait until it is your turn to speak. >> you have one caller in the queue. >> hello, caller, you are unmuted. your three minutes begins now. public speaker: david propel, i wanted to point out that the next scheduled meeting for the full commission is september 27th, that is the second day of rashasha ina and i

would miss most of it and ask if you can reschedule or have it moved because that would probably eliminate my participation. there you go. other than that, i am excited about the work that's upcoming at the committee and full commission. there is a lot more work to be done. thanks for your work tonight. that's all. >> thank you for your comment. >> seeing no additional callers in the queue, public comment on this item is closed. >> next item, please.

>> >> the next item is adjournment. the meeting is adjourned. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> today's special guest

michelle ginsberg. >> i'm chris and you are watching san francisco riegz the show that focused on reguilding and reimagining our city our guest is the general manager of the san francisco rec and parks, with us to talk about new parks, music and other developments. mr. ginsberg, welcome. >> thank you a pleasure to be here >> nice to see you again. >> last time was during the pandemic and virtual. so it is good to be back here. >> indeed. before we get in specifics, let's start with a broad question, how can will park's system play a part in the economic recovery? >> well, our parks system playing an important role throughout the pandemic. parks were here when people in san francisco needed them the most. a place where people could

gather and could care for mentality health and fizz cat health and have a sense of community and a sense of place during a really weird time. and now that things are reopening and figure out how to recover, parks are going to continue to play a significant role >> people are out and having a good time. there are special events happening in parks. concerts and the weather is good. the best way parks play a role in our economic recovery is to motivate -- people to come to our city from other places and to motivate our residents to get out and enjoy themselves >> exciting to her we opened a new park and there is another. what is special about the 2 new projects? >> sure. san francisco is going through, i think, a park renaissance. we opened the francisco park,

which is just magnificent property that sits on top of an old reservoir dating back to the gold rush and has tremendous views of the golden gate bridge and bay and a place where you can bring kids. a cool play ground to bring dogs an amazing dog park. a meadow to watch the fireworks. fog willing. fleet week, community gardens, it is just such an incredible unique space. we are proud of it. >> and then right down the road in a few years, we will be pleased to welcome everybody to india basin in the bay view in the southeast part along the southern water front. 1.7 miles of waterfront that until recently has been under utilized and under fulfill in the a community this needs it

the most. india basin is really a feel moment for the bay view and southeastern part of san francisco. it is going to be san francisco's next great and one of the most important parks >> that's fantastic. now, we have a great history of having conference in parks. can you touch on the year's highlights? >> upcoming and on going. this is something i'm particularly excited about. i don't think there is ever have been more music in san francisco parks than there is right now >> so, let's go around the city and talk about music. stern grove, is in the 85th concert season. back after the pandemic. in this just fabulously treasured meadow. free concerts all summer long. in golden gate park, at the man shell not guilty music concourse

free concerts 4 days a week. wednesday, friday, saturday and sundays. we have sing are song writer wednesday. jazz and seoul on friday. communities performances on saturdays of different kindses and sundays reggae it is extraordinary. and of course, later this summer we are pleased to welcome back outside lands for an exciting 3 days and 3 nights of incredible concerts and food and community. as we go across the city, we got wonderful performances in the jerry theatre in mc clarnin park a special jerry day coming back to the theatre. on june 21st we had make music day appearing all over the city in park in civic center. on the marina green. again in golden gate park.

it has been a great time for music and ties into the recovery and the tremendous energy where we are feeling and -- you know anybody who says san francisco is struggling needs to hang out in the park system. where well is joy and beaut and he inspiration every day. >> so, the san francisco board of supervisors passed legislation to make jfk drive in will golden gate park car free. how have residents responds. >> the san francisco residents responds positive. families. bicyclists, joggers, people with dogs and people from every corner of san francisco have discovered that jfk promenade is a treasure. it enhances the parks so much. imagine a beautiful day in the park and weather on foot or on bike you are strolling down jfk,

you pass sixth avenue and head to the music concourse for a concert or the museum; it is joyous and made golden gate park sproord. i have been hering about disk golf and pickle ball. can you tell us about and where people can practice and play. >> i knew you were going. pickle ball the fastest growing sports. you know across between 10 and is ping pong and may be with a whiffle ball. ping pong on a life sized course it is easy to learn about skill based people who are good are irrelevant good and it is easy to play. it is fun and accessible. we are trying to accommodate sport. we have over 55 courts around san francisco. 11 dedicated just for pickle

balt others per pickle ball and tennis. we have 5 or 10 space you can play pickle ball indoors and keeping up with the tremendous popularity of the sport. disk golf has a loyal following it is also going to continue to growch we opened our first disk golf course in golden gate park in 2005. and you know, whether you are an expert at disk golf or beginner, the idea of chucking a frisbee through the beautiful park and. it does not matter what you score t. is just a good excuse to be outside and enjoy a beautiful day in nature. >> exactly. well, thank you. i really appreciate you coming on the show, thank you for the time you have given us tuesday. >> thank you, i hope everybody enjoys summer. get out and play in san

francisco's parks. >> thanks again. that's it for this episode we will back with another shortly you have been watching san francisco rising i'm chris manners, thanks forrrrrrrrrrrrrr >> commissioners affairs manager for the public works commission. welcome to this commission's first standalone meeting. i will facilitate this meeting until a commission chair is elected as scheduled in item four, i'll call the roll of the commission. oh, please, i will unmute the mics. when i call your name, please say present.