callers hear silence when waiting to speak. operator will unmute you, when prompted, callers will have the standard three minutes to provide public comment. you may also watch live at www.sfgovtv.org. item 1. roll call. [roll call] >> vice president morgan will now read the land acknowledgment. >> i sure will. thank you, madam secretary. ramaytush oholone land acknowledgment.

the san francisco fire commission acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush ohlone who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula. as the indigenous stewards of this land, and in accordance with their traditions, the ramaytush ohlone have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. as guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the ramaytush ohlone community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. >> thank you very much. item 2, general public comment.

members of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes on any matter within the commission's jurisdiction that does not appear on the agenda. speakers shall address their remarks to the commission as a whole and not to individual commissioners or department personnel. commissioners are not to enter into debate or discussion with a speaker. the lack of response by the commissioners or department personal eldoes not necessarily aconstitute agreement with or support of statements made during public comment. i don't see anybody approaching the podium is there is nobody on the public comment line. >> thank you madam secretary. approval of the minutes. are there any questions or discussion for march 8 last regular meeting from the other commissioners? >> there is nobody on the public comment line and nobody approaching the podium. >> i'm sorry. i jumped the gun. approval of the minutes. any questions? >> (indiscernible) >> that's right. okay. noted. commissioner

feinstein will abstain. any other questions or discussion? >> (indiscernible) >> yes. anybody here? okay. alright. >> we won't have a quorum. >> we can't vote on it. can't approve it. >> i believe if they were read-if they read the minutes they are allowed to vote. >> uh-huh. >> on the substinence- >> i hear you. >> right. >> (indiscernible) >> yes, ma'am. >> [unable to hear speaker. microphone isn't on] >> okay, that should suffice. >> i think you are still allowed to vote on the minutes. >> okay. is there a motion? >> (indiscernible) >> i'll second. >> [roll call]

>> motion passes. okay, item 4. chief of department's report. report from chief of department jeanine nicholson oncurrent issues activities and events in the department since the fire commission march 8, 2023 including budget academy special events communications and outreach to other government agencies in the public. report from administration deputy chief tom o'connor on the administrative divisions, fleet and facility status and updates, finance, support services, home land security, and an update from assistant deputy chief shon buford of diversity equity inclusion division, and we will start with chief of department's report. the floor is yours, chief. >> greetings, vice

president morgan, commissioner feinstein, commissioner frazier, commissioner collins, maureen, command staff. chief of department jeanine nicholson. this is my report of the last two weeks. a initiative-legislation passed at the board of supervisors called housing for all, and there is a directive in place as well, 23-01, that our fire marshal is working on basically the city is trying to lessen the permitting time for housing by 50 percent, so it is a bold move, but they are trying to really get rid of a bunch of bureaucratic obstacles. all the while knowing we still need to do our job for the safety of everyone. fire marshal kaufman has folks working on that. there are over 52 ,000

units apparently approved, but stick in the pipeline so they want to get that moving. working on a outline and a final draft for the mayor's office. i think it is due the end of this month, so lots of work on that. we have a large role to play in new housing, and i think i told you last time that, the city is looking to do 10,000 units a year and typically we do between 2 and 3. and they want to do those 10,000 a year and half the permitting time. met with the chair of the budget committee, supervisor connie chan from district 1. she had some good questions for us and we had a good meeting

with her, so she understands our needs and our challenges and we talked about how we will not be able to make the cuts that have been requested of us, and in fact our budget will increase most likely-it has to increase this year, so she understands that and appreciates that, so that was a good meeting. now i met with all the supervisors that are-well,b -i met with all the supervisors about budget stuff so that's good. we had a labor management meeting yesterday, and that went well. i know that 798 is in negotiations with the city, with dhr and i have chief darcie sitting in with them on that, but they are headed to mediation on monday. they havet not been able

to reach agreement. mediation is not binding so it may go to arbitration, but the same person that does the mediation will be doing the arbitration and it is someone from southern california that worked within the city before and worked on the contract last year and other seiu stuff. so, that is probably going to happen over the next hopefully be finalized over the next month. on saturday i went to treasure island, united fire service women put on a boot camp for young women that are interested in becoming firefighters, and our united fire service women, i know julie maland battalion chief in dei has been

super instrumental putting those together, and it really gives us a good look at sort of who is applying and what they're capable of and it allows the women from usfw a opportunity to mentor these young women, so it was fun to be there. i have started the meet and greets with possible folks for the 132 firefighter academy, and basically candidates go through a process with our members first, where they have a interview panel of three of our members, diverse crew of people, and they recommend or don't recommend people up the chain to us and then so i take a look at their

recommendations and we pull people in for interviews so interviewing 130 people. we had two days of interviews,er and it has been good. and then, just want to give you a little bit of a sort of city wide situation status or sit stat as they call it. as we know yesterday was a crazy crazy storm, and it wasn't that there was-there was steady rain but it was really the winds that were challenging, and frankly the storm impacts are cumulative and that's what we are seeing in terms of the ground just being so saturated that the trees can't take it anymore and add a little wind-actually, a lot of wind. we got data citing up to 80 miles a hour at pier 1 yesterday, and

at sfo it was about 65 miles a hour. over 700 locations were called in for trees down, so that i think is a record, and again, there is no major flooding, but power outages, wires down, all the stuff we respond to. we also had you know, a notable power outage was san francisco general hospital. while they do have backup generators, the only backup the critical services, such as the emergency room and other hospital residential hospital stuff, but they dont do regular appointments or dialysis, so the city has been trying to get pg&e to step up to the plate and do the job they need to do. it has been challenging, but power is supposed to be on this evening there. there were a

ton of other power outages, treasure island, the va, et cetera, et cetera. there was a bunch of glass that fell from high-rise building. you may have seen that. one at 45 lancing and another at 50 california which is a commercial building and millennial tower. if it were isolated to the tower, but it was more then that. there were rornts sales force tower was impacted. it was not. it was a building that was sales force east that is not run by sales force that had damage to windows but they did not break out, so we were down there, dbi was down there. across the city there were at least 5 injuries related to falling trees including two fatalities,b one 23

lincoln and one at polk. we also had a san francisco police officer seriously injured, brother hood and lake merced. had a tree fall on the car and the car caught fire, which you just dont see. so, he is currently in the icu, so just think good thought for him and his family. he sustained significant injuries, all though he was conscious and talking to us, he sustained significant injuries but our folks did really good work getting to him and getting him out before the fire overtook the entire vehicle. and just really proud of all the work that our people did. the dem had apparently over 900 calls came in to them. we had approximately 730 calls for fire department. we

typically do maybe 400, maybe 450 a day, so it was a big day and part of the challenge was that all the calls came in in a very short period of time. there ended up being a 6 minute delay for folks calling 911, and there were over 130 calls waiting in the queue for us. trees down, wires down, and the like. we just didn't have enough resources to get to, so they did their best to triage at department of emergency management and get to the ones we needed to be at first. our folks did a outstanding job, really proud of all the work that we did out there. you may have also seen the third street bridge was hit by three barges and fortunately the bridge is open, just the pedestrian part

is not, so it was not-the damage was just to the pedestrian part, it was not structural in nature. and you know, traffic was crazy. we had the accident on the bridge that closed stuff down so, it was really really challenging for our rigs, frankly to get around the city as well. but, just kudos to everyone out there. and, obviously sfo had over 500 storm related delays, and yeah-again, the storm impacts are cumulative and the story is that we are going to continue to see storms through mid-april, so we just hope that the wind wont be as significant as it was yesterday. yesterday it was this bomb that broke into two. it was supposed to head to monterey but

one part headed to monterey and one part here and that is what made the winds worse is having both of the storms. again, our people are just doing wonderful work out there, and our ambulance folks and our suppression people, and you know, our medics and emt's had to take terrible calls for injuries yesterday. i look forward to answering any questions you may have, and look forward to hearing chief o'connor and chief buford. thank you. >> thank you for your report chief nicholson. anyone have any questions? any other commissioners like to go? >> yes, please. thank you. chief, thank you for your report. and congratulations to everybody who did everything that you did

yesterday. it was impressive, the whole day. separate from the response time of yesterday, i wondered and we talked about it and it might be too soon but this was brought up at the last meeting, changes, effects rather, on response time due to other issues. not storm related. and maybe this is too soon, but i like us to talk about it when it is time, whether it is tonight or another time or ongoing. thanks. >> yes, happy to talk about it any time. i think some of what we saw yesterday was some of the changes on the streets that have either taken away lanes for vehicle traffic, including bike lanes so you get cars stacked up and there is no where for them to pull. you get the delivery trucks and so there is no way to go around, and so we really have

some significant challenges getting around, but again, just really proud of the work our folks did. >> thanks chief. anyone else? any other commissioners? i want to say thank you for your report and how did our-i had one question. how did our new fire boat station 35 hold up in the storm? i have seen it going up and down on the news. [laughter] >> it took a beating. >> it looked like it! >> it took a beating. >> that is amazing how that barge can go so far in between. >> our fire boats did as well. yeah, it was crazy. enough to make the hundred ton barges- >> no damages no, right? >> i think there were leaks and the like, but i don't

know of any other damage then that. >> did a lot better then the bridge. is that still shut down, do you know? okay. >> it's not. >> alright. alright. thank you for your report. i guess we'll move on. >> check for public comment. >> oh, yeah. >> there is nobody on the public comment line and nobody approaching the podium to make public comment. >> okay. chief o'connor, ready for your report. the floor is yours, sir. >> i am ready. good evening vice president, commissioners. tom o'connor deputy chief of administration and this is my report for february, 2023. under home land security with assistant deputy chief brown. we had the planning execution of the chinese new

years parade february 4. great turn out by the public and great turn out by command staff as well. see all the happy faces there. we also had on february 23 the bay x hazmat exercisefelt it is a annual training exercise that allows different organizations do multi-jurisdictional drill. they had the decan tamination stage there. (indiscernible) establishing command. members suiting for entry. then making entry in the suits. under diversity equity inclusion office with the assistant deputy chief brew ford, we had the fire ems at the community center. station 31 gives a feel what happens in the fire service. we had a meeting at city hall with chief

nicholson and mayor office with the emt program. through this program as i talked we get training for kids in not in need, but disadvantage neighborhoods and get the experience and skills necessary to-and wrap around service with the public safety training to pay them while getting experience so the chief can speak more to that later. it is fantastic program. also have the flame baseball opening day and rumor has it chief nicholson had a strike over the plate. we reviewed and about to purchase a power air purifyed respirator. it is a smaller compact filtration system for our investigators because as i totd told you in the past we had a problem with cancer in the fire service. the biggest is arson

investigators in the fire service, have the highest rate of cancer because they are in that environment for like a hour or 2 after a fire doing the investigation and smelling accelerants so trying to get a air filtration system to conduct the investigation without hurting their back so have that going forward . we had behavioral health unit creating resource guide to give to active and retires members with available resources we have for our members. we had request for chief al ba speak to at santa rosa junior college. we are working on a program called cancer champions to try to get a volunteer from every station to be the advocate for the members to preach about good practice and early testing and have a bottom up approach to make sure we get cultural change in the fire service. what we are preaching at the top and

implemented in the field. we also hired captain burin to be our bhu captain of the unit and two more navigators, a total of three on the stress team helping members so building out that program. under the office of employee health (indiscernible) stephanie-hired a civil employee. a medical evaluation assistant and helping our under-staffed department of employee health. we had 37 promotional and probation examines. 9 return to duty and 22 new screening exams in february. we had today 1246 of members had hearing tested and tested for tb so nearing full testing of the population so fantastic work. under

investigative service captain (indiscernible) as i spoke last month we had the testing under our random testing program instead of the more expensive testing program because we found we had to follow the maritime guidelines because it wasn't deployment out to sea. drug test and results negative and (indiscernible) continuing to do large vessel operator classes and hazmat refresher class and working with department of equity inclusion and city attorney's office to bulk up our screening of candidates to make sure we are a more thorough review of everybody so credit checks and where police records to vet our candidate priors to getting on board so working on that with the city attorney office. under support services we had another busy month. 129 request for service. 124 were completed and primarily focus on the hvac issue at staegz 9, 13, 14 and paramedicine facility and heater issues at

fire station 23, 26 and 28. and our beautiful art gate at station 49 while nice to look at is causing us some problems. it turns out all the art work is very heavy and taking a toll on the motor. holding off on the ribbon cutting. emergency response bond, we had completion replacement of the equipment cabinets. the upper hose cabinets. this may seem a small development, these cabinets are critical for fire fighting. you can see in the cabinet all the firefighter supplies next to a high pressure hydrant. we can operate off the hydrants and both sit in the middle of the gardens so had to be careful to work on them at the correct time because we dont want to ruin a hundred year old garden so that was a series

of meetings with supervisor peskin and garden committee. also, installed new hydrant and sand pipes on the bay bridge. had a fire boat drill, this is the backup to the backup to the back up to pump from the fire boat. meetings with the port to address requirements maintaining and replacing these. we had (indiscernible) maintaining over the years and the port and fire department came to agreement on regular scheduled maintenance to make sure we don't have clogged man ifolds. i included this photo because i want to say hydrant swatchs. we found the new color. we are painting the body yellow and the top will be painted different colors depending which reservoir is feeding the hydrant so we know what to operate and if we find there is a problem at university mound and that hydrant is there we will go to

another and try to operate off that. we are integrating the new water system into the operations. under our feel good section the rotary club honored chief canon and paramedic (indiscernible) 2023 award ceremony. paramedm works for that every day of the year but a magnet for really tough calls and had a few pediatric resuscitations which if you are unlucky you get one or 2 and he had 5. matt is a all star fixing our previous radius system and helping integrate and get ready for the new dist patch system. he is an incredible valuable asset. we had take your supervisor to work day. newly elected district 4 supervisor engardio visit the sunset. you see from engine 18 and 23. the fire house pole shot and

half ladder photo, so he had a great time. got to meet a lot of our men and women in the sunset and turns out we have a high ratio of people who live in the district who work out there so great to meet constituents that work in the district. we had the caffeinated kids february 19-26. we had 70 volunteers including people from station 49-[calling out names] saw more then 2800 patients over 5 days so terrific demonstration utwhawe can do for others around the world. chief nicholson reading at the mission dolores academy. this is where community leaders read to the students. there is no book in the chief's hand so think she was free-lancing or telling fire stories. not sure. we had great turn out from command staff and members in the 2023 saint

patrick's day parade march 11. as chief spoke about the united fire service women held boot camp march 18, great turn out and representation of our female firefighters. we had international women day city hall march 8 with many most notable female leaders. mayor london breed, carol (indiscernible) [calling names] we have a video since february was black history month. sfgovtv produced videos of 3 members. we'll hit play and show you a video of one of our newer members. [music] >> my name is tiffany cobb and work for san francisco fire department. grew up in east bay. (indiscernible) spent a lot of time

with grand parents because my mother was a single parent and had to work. my father is a blue caller man in the south. i grew up with a strong work ethic mentalities. i was around all my aunt and one was dispatch supervisor (indiscernible) that got me my taste of ems fire and made me go in the direction after high school. i like to compare to being a bar back in a bar. you are assisting your bartender and anticipate the needs. if you run the call it is up to you to provide whatever the patient may need and write the narrative, make sure you are (indiscernible) and you complete the call. favorite part of the job is when i can connect with the patient and utilize people skills with a human being. sometimes a patient doesn't necessarily need a

medical need, they just want someone to talk to, someone to listen to. they want to be seen as a person. they want someone that recognizes them and see them as they are and i feel those are my favorite calls. it is important for me to show up because i remember being a 7 year old or 9 year old girl and never seen anyone that looked like me in a ambulance or fire injure engine and it gave me hope. on a level up just being a woman, sometimes people need to feel nurtured and they are safe and feeling nurtured makes you feel safe so i feel i can bring that to my calls with my patients. maybe feel like you are scared of blood or whatever it is that you may be afraid of, just give yourself a chance, try it out, try out as a volunteer first, see if you like it, that is how i started, and never give up. i have been told. i failed the fire academy and still here

and didn't quit so if you are told no, keep going and prove and learn from mistakes and never give up and believe in yourself. now i'm a emt out of station 49. i like to move to suppression and become a firefighter paramedm and hopefully a officer some day. with san francisco i said in my interview when i got hired. it is like the new york of the west coast. everything i want to be a part of. ems and suppression. the city is very diverse and rich history and rich blue collar history which i love and i want to be a part of that. [music]

>> that commissioners is my report for february 2023. >> okay, thank you for your report, chief o'connor, great report. great video. i like the video. any of the other commissioners have any questions for chief? commissioner feinstein. >> public comment. there is nobody on the public comment line, and nobody approaching the podium. we can close public comment. >> thank you. really it seems like a very busy couple of months that you had, and if that is to be

commended. i had a couple miscellaneous questions and a couple questions that sort of go down a theme, and since i'm not as good a picture as i understand that our chief is, and i don't have a wicked slide ball, if you need time to respond to these questions, that's just fine, but ypt to put them out there. easy question is, i read on page 12 about the dei program at mission high school. the fire and ems program, which i think is a terrific idea. my question is, what if you don't know to mission high? what if you really want to do this program and you go to galileo or burton or some other school?

>> well, currently you are out of luck but we entered into discussions with city college and sf unified school district and looking to grow the program and create a funnel between high school and city college to us. we just started those conversations two ago with the chancellor so we are beginning that process. >> it is really a great idea and it just should be available it seems to me at more schools. thank you for answering that. now, moving on to the slightly tougher questions i think here. let me start if i might- (indiscernible) you lucky deputy chief. i'm looking at page 43 and the fact that station 14, i

don't need to read the scope of work, it is on the agenda, has been put on hold to accommodate potential cost at fire boat station 35. every since i joined this commission, which i guess is now three years ago, everything was differed to station 35, and there was one problem after another problem after another problem and largely attributed to pg&e and to the department of public works, and as i understand it and please correct me if i misunderstand, as i understand it, money from a bond can only be used for the project designated in the bond. so, if you-not you, but if too much

money is used on station 35 and the bond is also supposed to take care of needs at station 14, and there is not enough money left, it is like you can go into the next bond and use money from that bond to take care of what wasn't covered at station 14. am i correct about that? >> you are correct. >> okay. is there at some point are we going to reach the end of cost for station 35? >> i would like to say yes, but it is a boat and apparently the phrase-the best two days you own the boat is the day you buy and day you sell it so think it might fall under the category where it is a lot of maintenance. >> but does maintenance come out of bond money? isn't bond money for construction? >> no, there is some money from the bond that goes towards maintenance and upkeep, but it is just an expensive

prospect to keep 35 up and going. >> so, will the whole bond go to 35? >> no. we spent most of the bond on the other projectss and running out of money to finish that so moving and closing out that bond and moving to the 2020 bond. if it eats up more then we might have to ask capital planning for additional funding for the generator 14. there are other strategies to get the money, but it is challenging. we are running into the problem now with 2020 bond, because cost accelerated over the past few years and having a hard time funding all the projects the voters voted for. >> i see that-also -station 19, station 14 are losing out on needs that they had approved, because of all this bond money

going to 35. at some point isn't there a balance that can be made here? >> left over balance? >> no, i mean--it says here financial close-out phase is still ongoing. that is all most impossible to me that can still be ongoing. it has been ongoing for-close to two years, it is ongoing, and it is just very frustrating and must be for the people stationed at these other fire houses who aren't getting what they should be getting and probably deserve, because we keep going back with this bond money to station 35. i think it is a beautiful station and important station. it was

superbly designed, but it seems to be a little problematic economically. >> if i may get chief (indiscernible) to klaess your question. >> i will be delighted. >> thank you, the monies for 14 are not flowing to the station 35. station 35 is at the end of warranty period so it isn't further encumbering money. the conversations about generators are ongoing, and in the process of closing out back to the 2010 bond, and moving monies to the 14 and the 20 bond. the generator projects are moving forward (indiscernible) 14 is going to go out to bid according to public works in the next quarter. there is currently a 68 week lead time on generators, in the united states. the project will come in. the money is still in the bond, so 14 will be

gettingints its generator. it is just can going to be a couple years. >> a couple years, okay. i appreciate your being so forthcoming. 58 months is 58 weeks is 58 weeks. i appreciate that. my other question had to do with the 2020 bond, which is dedicated to our fire training facility, and i know it has a $275 million budget as i see from the materials that we were provided, and what i'm curious about is how much of that money has dpw already spent? >> i can get you the answer to that. we do have monthly financial's. i believe we are in the neighborhood of $12 million at this point for as far as we have gotten in design phase. the picture on

screen with us closeing out our program scope, so we agreed upon the total price of the project with a estimated budget that falls within the bond size. >> does that estimated budget still leave room for station 7 as is specified in the 2020 bond? >> it does not. >> so, station 7 just gets wiped? >> at this time. we are currently in the process of trying to free up funds from the bond and other sources, so we can apply them to the training center and then they can be applied to station 7. >> okay. thank you. i think that completes my questions. thank you. and thank you chief for your report. >> thank you commissioner.

>> thank you commissioner feinstein. commissioner fraser. >> thank you for your report chief o'connor. many good things in your report. i have a couple questions for my own understanding. you talked about cancer champions. what does a cancer champion do? >> we will bring-it is like a station steward. they are the representative that reaches out and contacts our health and safety chief matt alba and give a guide of the services available for the members, reiterate the testing they should get done, as well as give training and best practices. for example making sure the turn out equipment is washed every fire, make sure they don't bring the equipment in the dorm and put the (indiscernible) just trying to ingrain with the best habits we have

possible. the thought is we'll get the firefighter or paramedic or lieutenant in the station to be the advocate not somebody from headquarters. we want it to be a bottom up culture change in the fire department. >> great idea. the trip to el salvador were our members there? >> yes. >> great service. love to hear what they did on the ground at some point. what care they delivered. there was a lot of patient visits, but not sure what they were doing. sure they were doing something important. i dont mean to say that, but i love to hear about the specifics. i like the new color of the fire hydrants. >> thank you. >> that is a winner. and also still would hope that we want to encourage the behavioral health unit to keep track of the number of visits that they are conducting every month. i just think that is a important data point for us

going forward, so over time is it more or less, what resources to be directed, but if we dont know, then we can't address it in a way that's a little more specific. yeah. >> we'll get that-with the addition of captain burin and two more navigators i think we will have a better picture in the next month or 2 what is happening so heather is really big on data and collection, so she's fantastic addition to the unit. >> wonderful. my last question, the pio report mentions media clips. lots of media clips. where are those available? on you tube? >> i guess i'll contact to see where he keep them. we are also putting together a cupendium of the fire from citizen and the news and making little montages to bring that to you as well. >> think it is great to look at those media clips on the e

whole and see the impression one would come away with if if you are looking at it without a understanding. i'm still learning, but i think it would be important and love to look and view them. thanks. >> many are on social media. >> social media? >> mr. collins. >> once a project is completed, is there a audit of how funds were spent? >> a post project audit. not sure. the budget legislative analyst does a quarterly report. not sure how deep a dive they do into the audit of dpw. i can provide you with those reports from the previous. >> no, i'm--i think it is so simple to say costs went up, the project was over budget. i know a lot of work is

done by you and your staff to keep projects on budget to the extent that scrutiny is made over cost that can be controlled and then there is other set of costs not controlled by the fire department. i understand where costs can go up. so, the two things i'm trying to-in order to get to the facts, post project audit. we say it was going to cost-what were the categories and what actually happened. might be useful to understand and this might be more tricky, but something that would compare this project market price for construction, versus this project as managed within the city

system, because if we live in a city looking for money, and voters have said we'll pass these bonds because we think the purpose is a good purpose, we are all fiduciary to make sure that happens and that includes those in the city who are managing the projects. just trying to think of ways that we can point out the leaky sieve. >> we have established a financial subcommittee composed of chief (indiscernible) captain mike day and mark coursey -we are in live time keeping much closer eye on dpw and the cost, but i think agree that a post-bond audit would also be appropriate as well as comparison to market rate prices so perhaps we can bring that back to the team and see about doing that. >> thank you. >> thank you.

>> thank you commissioner collins. i don't have any questions chief o'connor, but thank you for the great report. but i do like the earn while you learn for the kids in school. good way to recruit great new talent and your video was great too. see you are doing a great job recruiting young folks and getting them in the fire deerment pa. >> thank you. one final note. to your point about the fire program at mission high, it is a wildly successful program so chief and i went to the end of the year presentation for the kids and it was fantastic and they had them all speak out at the end and say what they were doing after graduation. their college placement rate was amazing. cal, ucla, davis. it was a t every kid was going to a great college. it

might be too good a program. they are leap-frogging over us to bigger and better things but we are working with city college and i'll get back once we submit that. we are putting curriculum together and reach out to sf unified so reach back hopefully next month about that. >> thank you for your great report. >> will you please introduce chief buford? >> now ladies and gentlemen, chief buford. >> good evening vice president morgan, commissioner collins, fraser, commissioner feinstein, chief nicholson. i'm shon buford and with me is battalion chief miles. chief o'connor did a great job highlighted things we did last month and we want to talk about a few of goals and priorities with 2023 with you. before i start with that, i like to acknowledge lieutenant anderson out of

office who has been here a very long time. really been a solid member of the team as well as other members who have come and volunteered with us. i like to acknowledge their work as well. in 2023, some of our goals and objectives for the office are to identify and meet with various take stakeholders to gain better understand of the needs of the community and work towards providing more equitable entry levels to entry level positions like h2, h3 level, 1 and 2. we also want to identify the strength and weaknesses in the current system and move towards being more compliant with the city ordinance 188-19. another thing we will be doing soon is reconvening the racial equity advisory committee. we paused because we wanted to

make sure we spoke to chief nicholson, had the priorities that she wanted us to move withs a well as director davis with human rights commission who said we want to be more focused and move forward with very concrete and tangible goals so we are working to bring our greater racial equity action plan to something we can see more tangible and faster successes so working on that as well. part of it is to develop educational communication plan for our current and future workforce so they can understand what the priorities and goals of the department, helping to be more inclusive as well as to give them a better understanding of different opportunities. and then last and not least in our goals is to explore more collaborative partnerships with sit (indiscernible) chief o'connor brought

about the (indiscernible) with the human rights commission,b and workforce development. higher education, learning education where we can recruit athletes and other students who may beert interested in the work. (indiscernible) so we can really start to bring more attention and have more people come back to this career path. some of the accomplishments i like to talk about as well as the current program and goals, we made a attention-more intentional. we decided outreach was more to the high schools, to other community organizations so they know about what we do. our recruitment was targeted to people who met or exceeded the minimum qualifications and wanted to make sure we could get to them, get them through the process sooner, get them on the track and into the pipeline so they are able to

come to career, versus just talking to people about the job. we want to get them employed so the efforts are divided to outreach as well as recruitm. we also wanted to focus on member services for our members supporting them in other areas to help them here with-what their experiences are. we have a large department. not only with suspression. prevention, arson, ems and training division and administrative so we want to give people opportunity to learn what are the opportunities both vertical and horizontal. horizontal for example, if you are h2, h3 you may want to do surf rescue, hazmat. go to the airport. vertical, h10, lieutenant all the way up and want people to know the minimum qualifications to meet expectations

and also desire qualifications so when someone comes into the department they can start planning their career track based off their interest so that is what we are also working on. part of that is part of our collaboration with community organizations, with both public and private industry and city hall as well and that is to create the supportive pipelines into our industry. with that, i like to talk about we have a few programs we are currently working with the city. (indiscernible) flame is more of a outreach program to get to the youth. as well as prevention. work with the community education program. with that, i am going to bring up battalion chief mile to talk about a few more other things we have been doing. thank you.

>> good evening vice president morgan, commissioner collins, fraser, feinstein, chief nicholson, members of the command staff. i'm battalion chief julie miles. going through some of the activities we have been involved with. regionally again, shout out to lieutenant anderson for his support with outreach recruitment and development. working to improve the structure and consistency for the hiring process. making sure the process is transparent, fair and consistent. we have been going through the hiring cycles, and working on calendars to make sure that not only our office and ems and suppression are all on the same page but going forward giving the information to the candidates so they are aware of the timelines and all their deadlines they

need to meet in order to be successful. we have a calendar on the website which we updated and made clear so candidates can navigate through that and we have been more active-our social media postings and getting information and deadlines out there for candidates. we recently went through our job announcements for h2 and h3 with a fine tooth comb making sure they are up to date with the requirements. developing a candidate tracking system with the help of lieutenant lester and conducted presentations to recruit academies including the h2 and h3 academies. the h2 interview panels were conducted over 5 days in february and march. there were a total of 351

interviews. of that, 130 of them are moving forward with the chief interviews as chief nicholson mentioned earlier. for the h3 test that was conducted on march 2 and the 7. there were three sessions total. out of that, 170 took the exam. those who will have a card will sit for the next h3-l2 exam for that group. 142 e-mail said went out and 114 candidates so far have signed up for the physical ability test, which is scheduled for march 28 and march 29. for the upcoming h2 testing, we will be moving-we use the national testing network test, we are moving into the fctc test, which we have been working on really since 2020 to on-board them. we are part of

cal jack which is the california joint apprenticeship committee. this is test through them and we will be on-boarding this test coming up in june, which is our next deadline for the testing cycle. this test here on june 30 will be a hybrid of the (indiscernible) so we want to make sure candidates going forward know that the deadline is coming up and that they can take either test for this hybrid. we are expecting more candidates to come through the interview panels because we will be drawing on two different tests. what we like about the fctc is that they really do help candidates through. they are in line with our racial equity action plan. they provide wrap around services, they provide grant opportunities for folks,

so we like all the services that they offer. they help different agencies with outreach and recruitment and they help bring the word and help recruitment for under served and under represented communities. san francisco we can move forward in being a testing host site, which we like. people don't have to drive to livermore or pleasanton. they can take the test and have a prep session here in san francisco, so we already scheduled that with the prep session for may 21, and a test session for june 17. currently, we are in partnership with cal jac for their emt academy in livermore pleasantten and that kicked off the end of january. for that we have san francisco fire members former members retired battalion chief wong, retiring battalion chief hoge,

rc andrew (indiscernible) [calling out names] to help train this group of future emt and they are scheduled to graduate in june. continue on with march, march like the chief said earlier is women's history month. we have done our dei office worked with sfgovtv to produce different videos throughout the year, specifically for march. we focused on (indiscernible) who is a paramedic at station 49. she is the recipient of recent meritorious award. she identifies as black mexican american from mixed heritage and she is the only black female paramedic at station 49 currently. the second person that we focused on is

mary c. the assistant fire marshal at the bureau of fire prevention, also representing the asian community. (indiscernible) video should be out this week and mary see video should be out next week for distribution. and as chief nicholson mentioned, united fire service women had a boot camp this weekday, this past saturday on the 18 at treasure island. had about 40 participants. the boot camps are twice a year and it really is a model of mentorship empowerment assisting candidates through the hiring process and getting ready and prepared for the rigors of a fire academy and in order to be successful. we are using this going forward with the division of training working with them using this boot camp model and we have a date for potential

candidates coming through the 132 closs class to be part of boot camp april 22. i is a short video of the past weekday boot camp. [music]

>> lot of sweat and a lot of fun. the united fire service women i like to take a minute to thank all the volunteers who helped make our boot camp so successful for all the candidates. thank you. >> thank you commissioners. any questions? >> thank you for your report, both of you. how long did they stay at the boot camp? >> we check in just before 9 and we have a workout for about good 2, 2 and a half hours. it is a solid work out. >> look like you have a lot of talent there. good

recruit said there. >> yes. we want them to be prepare frd the rigors not only of the academy but for the job. it is a very physical job. >> they will run circles around me, that's for sure. [laughter] commissioner collins. >> before i saw the video, i was going to ask if commissioners were allowed at boot camp, but i'm not asking that now. [laughter] i also understand when the body parts injury report why backs were the most frequent. i just wanted to say that is such a impressive report and i think the parts that struck me most clearly were in your strategy. the approach that you describe as holistic that helps members throughout their careers. so key. not enough to just get people in the door.

and then also, that you collaborate with other key stakeholders in the city. all the points are important, but i think i wanted to congratulate you on those. it makes a lot of sense. >> thank you commissioner. >> commissioner fraser. >> thank you both so much. i'm definitely going to be at the next boot camp. i want to reserve my sledge hammer and tire for a little minute or two. [laughter] i am also really excited about the recruitment efforts that you've reported in here about going into the high schools. i assuming that is san francisco, other places as well. i think that is great, because as my commissioner to my right pointed out, developing a career track is what this is about and then having the support from the get-go which is what you identified. from my own career, that

was very important. having peers, having support from higher up, knowing who they were, what they did and just support learning the job and staying on top of it over the years. anyway, this was a great report. congratulations, both of you. >> commissioner feinstein. >> i'm going to be with my fellow commissioners. i don't think we will be applying to come to boot camp. at least in this lifetime. maybe the next. i really want to comment in general, the degree to which you have taken the office. your duties comprise and really moved it forward into new directions, and different directions and you are trying things that some will

be tremendously successful and some may not be, and that's okay. it very much what commissioner collins said, it is showing really creative outreach and i think that's very important, so i wanted to thank you for-you made a lot of progress in a short amount of time. thank you. >> thank you commissioners and thank you chief nicholson. >> thank you both for your reports. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> item 5, public comment on item 6. public comment on all matters pertaining to item below including public comment whether to hold item 6b in closed session. there is nobody on the public comment line and nobody approaching the podium, so we'll close public comment. possible closed session regarding existing litigation. vote on whether to conduct item 6b in closed session. the commission may

hear items 6b in closed session pursuant to government code section 5495 sex b and administrative code section 67.10d. do we have a motion to go into closed session? >> rb i would so move. >> second? >> second that. [roll call] >> motion [closed sessi [meeting reconvened] >> okay, we are back in open session on march 22. the time is 643, and there is nothing to report on any action taken. item 8, vote to elect whether to disclose any or all

discussion held in closed session. is there a motion? >> i like to make a motion. >> not disclose? >> not disclose. >> i second. >> [roll call] motion is unanimous not to discuss closed session. item 9. adjournment. >> i move that we adjourn. >> i second. >> all in favor say aye. >> aye. >> the motion issuenanimous, we are adjourning at 644. [meeting adjourned]

>> if you want to take this out of practice, i should. >> good evening. [gavel] i call this meeting to order. >> good evening, this is meeting of san francisco commission on the environment. the date is tuesday, 3-28. the chair may order the removal of anybody using a similar device. the ringing of