>> this neating will in to order. good morning and welcome to the monday, may 8. 2023 meeting of the rules commit east san francisco board of supervisors. i'm supervisor matt dorse and he joined by my colleague, vice

chair walton and in the short time we'll be joined by committee member safai >> on behalf of my colleagues our gratitude to the clerk. and facilitating and broadcasting today's meeting. i want to thank our producer jason goldhammer. >> mr. clerk. >> board and the committee are convening hybrid meetings in person attendance and public comment and remote access and comment via phone. >> those in person speak first and then those on the phone lineful public comment call in number is strolling. when connected you will hear the discussion but mou exclude in listening mode only. when your item come and up comment is called those in person line up to speak. and those on the phone dial star

3. . turn down your tv and listening devices you may be using. you may submit ment in writing in the following ways. e mail them to myself rules clerk victor. young sfgov.org orus male city hall 1 dr. carlton b. goodlett place room 244, san francisco, california 94102. items will appear on the agenda on may 16th unless otherwise state. >> great. thank you, mr. clerk. call item one. >>. s item one hear to consider a member term ending february first to the ethic's commission. >> >> great. thank you. i want to express my apologies for needed to continue this left

week. we have needed to continue this item for a few different reasons for a few times. i mentioned the ethic's commission is an important body within our city government and vested with unique powerhouse under the city charter. appointments to the seats are very important and i'm glad the committee made an additional week to do our due diligence and consider everyone. and i think we have 3 excellent candidates one of the applicants david tsai last friday communicateed me his decision to with draw his application for the seat. i express whatted i always do of mr. tsai's caliber. don't give up on us there are many public service roles that would benefit the leadership like david tsai and others in rules we are in a situation it

is discourage to say, no to qualified people this is the reality we have a limited number of seats. but there are other opportunity to serve. i hope it see mr. tsai and others who don't make the cut the first time back. that leaves us with a tough choice with two candidates today and today's hearing we hear from 2 applicants larry bush andia man salahi. see if mr. bush is on the line. mr. bush you should be able to speak at this time. ia can you hear me? >> hi. thank you, >> thank you for the opportunitiful thank you.

to apply for a full appointmentful at the ethic's mission. i have been serving the last 2 years on interim appointment. and this is in line with my previous experience. working on ethic's, helping to found the friends of ethics which i did more than 10 years ago. serving on the civil grand jury. which then -- landmarked research. and report on steps this are needed to improve commission's performance. as well as having serves a special assistant to the mayor of san francisco and a number of other positions. in both the federal and state and city government of my

experience covers pretty much all the functions of g. what that has exposed me to is way in which we can improve of our performance notablely improving in our relationship with the public. i have been dismayed at this sharp drop off in public participation in the ethic's commission hearing. in which sometimes there will be nobody. who shows up or offers comments. . at the end of a commission meeting. and that along cry from the way it was initial low. i think part of that is the fact that mr does in the feel commission is as fully engaged on the issue this is matter to

the public. as the public is. in other words there , is a disconnect between hat public thinks are important expect what the how the commission establishes its own sense of priorities. i think we can take a closer look at that. one of the things that is trough for the city charter is all city commissions are to appoint a commission secretary. and that secretary would serve as a liaison between the commission and the public. on matters that needs to be more greatly elaborated. as you are aware, san francisco ethic's commission does not have a commission secretary. has someone who fills in on an interim bases and aretating

basis. not a consistent commission secretary. so that's one factor. another factor is the commission has voted in the past to under take a certain actions. for example. hearingos slate mailers. which are a form of influence ing voters in advance of elections. but while the commission itself voted as far as 2015. to begin having hearings and pick up issues of slate mailers, that vote was never implemented at ethics. so, now currently, if you want information on what is being spent on slate mailers you have

to go to the election's department. and ask them for a record. and they don't keep it electronically or alphabetically or any other easily researched way. that's another example of what the public and he was what we don't disclose fully to the public. commission secretary and then having be ability to hear what is gog with slate mailers is the second thing. and the third thing i think that we might want to look at is how the election's department. operates, which is they have advisory groups. people who are not actual appointees on the election's commissions but serve as

advisors. i look at the quality of the people who applied in the past and served in the past. ethic's commission including mr. tsai who was with drawn. as a candidate in this round. and think would be great if we had an advisory panel that would offer a resource of what the commission could be doing what other commissions are doing. within san francisco and -- outside of san francisco. had we might adopt from that to improve our performance. to some extent thoons asking of

us of staff. we always have been short of staff am if we had the ability to establish ourselves with advisory panels, then i think we would have a benefit of especially drawing on former commissioners. who are willing to continue providing service to the community and to the commission. while not voting members of the commission. those are some of the things i look at as we move forward to the next set of circumstances. of course, the top of this list will be soliciting and accepting an appointment of a new executive director. we have been fortunate top have pelum as an executive director. the last 6 or so years.

she helped the commission move forward in staffing and the range of activities surround it. there are still a lot to be done. and so this is an opportunity for us to take a deemer look where we are and where we need to go. i thank you is the opportunity we should take now. as we move into 2023. i will be happy to take questions you have. and explain further details on my own experience and my own issues. as i see the work ahead for the commissioners. >> great. >> thank you mr. bush. i appreciate your service and especially overnight years friends of ethics. the things i know we have known each other for many years i appreciate. i was going to ask a question

about your thoughts on the appointment of executive director but you answered that. thank you very much. seeing no questions from my colleagues. let's hear from yaman salahi joining us in personful welcome to rules the floor is yours. >> thank you. chair dorse. good morning supervisors walton and safai. i'm yaman salahi it is a privilege to are here has an applicant for a seat on ethics. this role carries responsibilities to the public. the duty of bolstering public's trust in city government ensure compliance with laws for good governors including but not limit to campaign finance and financial disclosure. lob and he public if anies the commission plays a watchdog

roll. reviewed reports by the commission. recorded meetings and sum rows. the legal authorities defining the commission's jurisdiction, i believe my experience and strengths are suited fulfilling the respondents of this role. i hope to sailor about myself to demonstrate why. the past 11 years of my willing career i representeded vs plaintiff in litigation. the work of affirmative lit gays assessing whether a violation of law and if so determining what remedy to seek. requires careful factual investigation, legal analysis and judicious prop to how one allocated limited resource whether the commitment of time, finances or otherwise. >> as i explain in the my application materials i'm fortunate to had the pleasure of representing client in many s.

from communities broodly representative of the people of this staechl as a staff attorney at asian law caucus i worked with san francisco community to address the state of [inaudible] by the state department of the i successfully sued the state department on behalf of omar a grand father passport revoked making impossible to see his family. and representing members of san francisco lbgtq+ community. a challenge against work place sexual whatacement and a trust broken by a partner recording meetings. i'm cocouncil with veteran research clinic in a suit the denial of benefits for african-american veterans disproportionate to how white applicants are treat. i'm working with the san francisco widow who served with the tuskegee airplane men my

goal is to bring my lessons to the rule [reading fast]. i'm suited for. one of my most fluential career experience serving as a law clerk for edward chen in the northern district of california in the city. much like the rebeing strikzs alie to commissioners assuming the law clerk required giving up rights for purpose of preserving public trust. that include foregoing political activities as well as public comment on matters before the court or other controversies. to avoid an appearance of inproprietor. importantly, the role required a commitment to giving every party the consideration, fairness they deserved based on the facts and s specific to their case. if i have the town to serve on this commission i will bring imapartment and attention to

detail i learn in the my prior roles when i recalled to exercise in that function. i believe an prop is required maintain the public's trust in the special role the ethic a commission in city government. based on my review of the past work, materials and conversations with supervisors, i have a sense of priority areas i would like to work with commission staff, commissioners and other stake holders to address if elected. the areas include the commission goal completing a review. every complaint within 90 days and clearing investigation backlog. outids timely. identifying the causes of noncompliance and taking a judicious approach to policy making fungsz. photocopy i have the privilege of serve nothing this will role i will dedicate myself to the charge commission mandate to protect public interests and preserve the trust in city

government. on a personal note. my honor to be the first appointee to the commission from the arab and muslim community i hope to representative not just those but all diverse communities in the city. >> i like to thank those who contacted the committee in support of my application including members of the democratic club. the asian law caucus. equal justice, council on american religions and otherim grant leaders. happy to answer questions. thank you. >> great >> thank you, i think you answered the question about focusing on backlog i appreciate thank you very much supervisor safai. >> thank you. thanks for coming here and putting yourself forward it is important to have diversity. individuals that represent communities that don't have a voice at city hall. i wanted give an opportunity to talk about the work you have

done with that community and what that meant to you and the over all community. >> thank you. i appreciate the question. a form of serving the public since i began working from the communities i come from and the, community i viewed to be experiencing similar formsful marginalization or ecing collusion. i think that bring the values to the commission is also important. i know the commission as a racial equity plan in place and hope that serve nothing this role is a way of serving the public's interest. >> >> great. no questions or comments can we open up, thank you mr. salahi. can we open up to public comment. why members who wish to speak and joining person line up to speak. for those listening remotely,

press star 3. for those in the queue continue to wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted that is your queue to comment. our first in person speaker? thank you for having us i'm mayorium i'm here speaking on behalf of the community in spchlt yaman salahi. has he mentioned has the support from our community, our civil right's organizations, our worker organizations. he has an objective upon experience that will qualifies him for this role as well as a very clear purview and runs around civil learnts and i believe he will take that experience and passion to the commission and hopeful low play a strong flow which i believe

this commission needs. thank you for your consideration. >> next speaker, please >> i'm with the [inaudible] and also with the [inaudible] association here in san francisco and the bay area. i known yaman salahi for a long time during the muslim bane remember he was working with us so hard. itch will not forget all when he was with the asian law caucus, yes. i'm really appreciate the support him and put him in this commission. we need his help. thank you for your support.

public money this applicant or all the applicants. >> both applicants. >> >>well, supervisors, i'm paul i served on ethics commission 1995 to 2003 and brought the first private action as a citizen on behalf of the voters of san francisco to enforce the campaign fines xoerns foubldzing members of friends of ethics with larry bush and supervisor peskin who was active in friends of ethics. i'm please thered are 3 individual this is outstanding qualifications applying. there is a pleasure there is interest in the commission i say i think combauz currently, all of the members of commission are new. i continuing is important to have at least one with a

historic memory of the commission from the beginning and that would be larry bush. larry bush an intgradual part of commission going become to the founding when it was conceived by supervisor shell and he implements by supervisor robert imsa in 1992. and he supported all the ballot measures by the commission on i'm proud that i'm the commissioner made the motion for prop oshg for public finance all 3 of you have taken advantage of and put limitos contributions to committees making inspect expend tours against candidates. thank you for your careful consideration of the applicants. no further speakers in the

chamber our first caller in >> good morning. president of coalition for san francisco neighborhoods. for all neighborhoods. guess back 50 years i go back with my relationship with larry bush 10 years. joined the civil grand jury and served on a committee investigating the ethic's commission. our investigations to suggested reforms some of which enacted leading to better operation of the ethic's commission than to the resignation of the executive director then and to the beginning of the new executive director that larry just referred to. >> larry was visible to come

talk and election's committee about ballot measures he addressed the general asum bleat meetings on occasion. and now that he is up for reappointment, i would support him in every way. we have he and i both chased the beast behested payments not totally eradicated thanks to president peskin's work the ballot measure was paddled. but did not total low reform temperature so again, echoing the previous comment about its god have someone experienced on the commission. i would totally recommend and support renomination of larry bush for the seat. thank you very much.

next speaker, please. >> can you hear me now? >> yes. >> david pilpel. >> good morning. so i know larry bush well. and support his reappointment of the he knows this topic. i wish him continued good health and ability to participate in commission meeting. i philidelphia ethics on and off since inception and i will try to participate there more upon often at his suggestion. the commission has an important and limited role in the city. the ability to get work done and deal with backlog and policy and education and all of that is irrelevant based on the budget if the board mayor and the board allocates resources and the staff can get the work done and appropriate the policy scombes

decision for the commission. it is a challenging budget year and really a resource allocation question this i think really will determine the ability to get through the audit backlog and other important policy priorities. i agree with several of the comments that were made before me. while mr. salahi may be qualified ask no reason to dispute that. i would reappoint larry bush at this time and encourage mr. salahi to condition to participate in city government and perhaps be appointed to this body by another officer or apply and serve in another capacity for the staechl no objection to representation i think it is important to keep the larry bush on the ethic's commission at

this time. thank you very much for listening. >> thank you. that completes our public call in. >> thank you. public comment is now closed. >> and i want to ask supervisor safai to speak >> thank you. i have a few words i wanted wait for commenters to say a few words. i think that this is the most critical commission in the city during a time when skrupgz on top of a lot of minds. many san franciscans are concerned about it. we had top officials plead guilt tow federal crimes and a culture of pay to play negatively impacted san francisco. and has impacted moral and the perception this people feel of our city. laws at their best provide that level playing field folks

participate in the government and elections without fear or favor. i believe now is the time for commissioners who have the city's interest and the skills and ability to make a difference. at the same time agency needs a new executive leadership. prit with an upon interim director and a backlog of work that the staff is trying to get through. a critical role of the next commissioner will hire and improve processes that awful us here have gone through as elected members of this body. you know i reviewed the qualifications of the applicant andment to express my belief all 3 would make a good commissioner. i want to thank larry bush for his service to the city and country. we come from different angles approach thanksgiving work i find his commitment impressive and the w he has done impressive. however today i will be supports

yaman who will make history as the first arab-american to serve. we live in a countryim grant rights are under assault and in this city, there has been a more -- recently attack onim grants from many angles. and we must do everything to strengthen those rights for immigrants. yaman has walk third degree walk. assisted yemen-americans for the last 15 years special we had a member speak about their work and the work had been done with passport and immigration struggles. and many ways immigrants are taken advantage of buzz they don't understand the process. and that's the work yaman has done to stand up for individual who is work for the fast foot food industry and jan tors, mall

business owners and ensured their rights and the rights of well tino residents when is working in connecticut. who alleged hartacement. a ba from berkeley and law degree from yale, not shon and he qualified for this appointment. and on a person note as a childim grant you finds you may be the first to hold a certain position but hopefully you are not the last. thank you, clothes and thank you for giving me an know opportunity to say a few wordos his behalf. >> thank you, i would also like to echo supervisor safai's appreciation to all the applicants. alost quaffifications and plays out in rules committee. often we have a difficult commission but i would also like to make ail motion to recommend

yaman salahi to seat one and appointment to the full board. >> mr. clerk a roll call on this motion. >> on that motion, vice chair walton. >> aye. >> supervisor safai. >> aye. >> chair dorsey. >> aye. >> the motion passes without objection. >> thank you, unanimous vote. mr. salahi seat one to ethices and this nomination is going to the full board. can you call item 2. >> item 2 an ordinance amending the code to expand the definition of public service allow members of the employee's retirement system to purchase time served in military before city appointment. >> thank you, mr. clerk. do min cadonovan from supervisor stefani's office is here to peek to this item. welcome to rules committee.

>> good morning chair dorsey, walton and supervisor safai. the item before you stands the definition to create equal opportunities for all and retirement members with public service to purchase requirement service credit. current definition in the code limits the public service eligible for purchase service credit simple yen only this . definition excludes prior military service for the opportunity. believed that in the 1970's the change was made to lim the definition in response to antiwar sentiment. we believe this change rights the historic wrong and creates equitiee for those who served. on april 11 the veteran affairs commission spoke in support of it. the supervisor would like to extend her gratitude to supervisor safai for

cosponsorship. we also do have nonsubstandive amendments supervisor stefani would like to be introduced. they were circulated this morning. where the amendment utilized gender neutral pronouns. others don'ts in the amendments would address the language so the use of gender neutral pronouns uniform throughout. i turn to deputy city attorney for any questions on the amendments as well and i'm happy to answer questions and read the amendments in the record when you need. >> thank you. mrs. donovan. deputy city attorney should i ask her to read them in the record >> no that is not necessary. as she described the pre-existing section of the code has gendered language when we update we go in and bring all of the language updated. no need to read them in the

record. >> okay. >> great. thank you. i think this it is fair low straightforward. i don't know supervisor safai would you have questions or comment sns >> no , i want to add i appreciate t. currently the president of the retirement system really want to thank supervisor steph neap. i'm happy to cosponsor this with her. this was a tiny loophole but impactful missed for those service members not getting the credit i know we worked with the retirement system to come up with with this language. i want to thifrng her and say has my full support and thank those that have served our country and now this is their opportunity to get their just do. >> thank you. >> thank you. supervisor safai. seeing no further questions or comments from colleagues. mr. clerk, could we open up to public comment. why members who wish to speak

and in person should lineup to speak. those listening remote on the call in line dial star delete to enter the speaker lionel. for those in the queue wait until the city indicates you have been unmuted that is your queue to begin your comment. we have our first in person speaker. >> good morning. supervisors. i want to thank you for giving meet opportunity to speak i'm hamlin than veteran affair's commissioner. i support this ordinance change. opportunity to the people that work for the city and county of san francisco that serve our count reap honorablely a chance to buy back time of service from the m. and federal law employees and federal employees could already buy back the service. san francisco needs to step up to the plate and give our service members and veterans the opportunity. thank you.

>> no further speakers can we have our remote callers? >> double checking. >> yes, our remote caller, please. >> >> can you hear me? >> yes. >> this is [inaudible] i'm a san francisco [inaudible] vet republican affair commissioner and thank the commission the committee for considering this and i would like to have it passed for the entire board to recognize [inaudible] and all who served in the military. thank you very much. >> >> thank you that completes our remote call in. thank you. public ment on item 2 is closed. >> and i would like to make a motion to sends this item as

amended with nun substantive changes to the board with a positive recommend a recollection. >> mr. clerk. did k we have a roll sdmaul on this motion to recommend as amended. amend and recommend as amended, vice chair walton. >> aye >> supervisor safai. >> aye. >> chair dorsey. >> aye. >> the motion passes without objection. >> thank you. on a unanimous vote item 2 including military service and the definition of public service for retirement service credit purchases guess to the full board with positive recommendation. >> and mr. clerk. call item 3 >> item 3 is an ordinance amending the park's code to reduce the number of seats on the park open space committee to allow member tos serve for more than 4 terms. >> thank you, mr. clerk.

happy to welcome president peskin to the rule's committee. welcome, president peskin. >> thank you. chair dorsey. and mittee members. let me start by thanking you mr. which i remember for put thanksgiving on the calendar. and thank members of prozac and the members of the board of supervisor who is saw fit to cosponsor this legislation. i think this is spurred a long over due conversation about the governors structure of the pk recreation open space committee. which has existed for many years. and i think that governors structure can and should be optimized. i want to start that conversation public low today. i don't want to act today. i want to hear from the prozac mittee scheduled to meet to discuss this early in june.

i do have signatured amendments one of them from myself and one from the office of supervisor chan. but i wanted use this opportunity to socialize the concept and harp back to the days of when the board supervisors sunsets and reconconstituted the bicycle advisory committee, which was unwieldy in the size. and ultimately needed a gentlemanal structure reorganization. i knowledge that when you look at this very are well intendsd and important b.ed it is quite large in size. as you know each member of the board appoints 2 members for 22 and the mayor appoints one for a total of 23. while tell is not a big problem

that from time to time including recently lead to electric of quorum. it it is also interesting as far as, this i think has been uniform low almost uniformly ignored. structure in the i way rec and park is supposed to maintain a list of individuals that are supposed to advise the board members appointments as to one of each 2 appointments that has proved to be unwieldy. i think there are questions about what happens and when the supervisors 2 appointees don't speak with one voice and nullifiyor cancel each other out. there are issues about just fairness in voting when with one district as one of 2 members show and up another has 2 of the 2 members show up dp it leaves

to imbalance. had upon this seeks to do is one district one vote. and makes sense on its face as set forth in the legislative digest. ordinance is not intented disqualify current members from service. the way it is structured the current board appointees decide who is the voting representative and who is the alternate. and when one can't show up the district would be represented so, it seems to to this offering supervisor make sense on the face. i want to hear the input from prozac. i had a good conversation with the chair of the new chair of prozac. wendy argone this morning wo had a number of constructive suggestions she needs to socialize with her numbers and

notice in the public session. supervisor chan's, staff is here today with another suggestion. and then in the interim number of individuals have commented that having this body mote at city hall where every other a pointed elected body meet makes sense. personnel in prozac's by laws they can mote in city hall they chos to mote at mc clarin lodge. city hall is appropriate with public comment and when have you. i'm offering one amendment that provides the meeting occur at city hall and that would have the provision in their by laws and i would like to adopt that and the purposes of our discussion in june, adopt this

amendment from supervisor chan. kelly is here to explain to the committee. >> great. >> thank you, president peskin. vice chair walton >> thank you chair dorse and he thank you supervisor peskin i want to say publicly and i will be brooefr i think this the changes will mech the mittee more fortunate. it is about allowing for full participation by members on this body. i see this as period everpositive for decision making and community voice president peskin stated it does avoid the removal of current member this is is a wise way to make the committee more footwork and allow for you to get work done and move in a more less complicated matter. >> thank you.

president peskin there is going back -- many years -- i appreciated his leadership understanding the operations of city government and making sure that we were we want government and functional. probably more than anybody in the city hall i worked with in 20 years. your leadership is floushl with me on this. i appreciate everything. and i will give an observation which is when you have a -- small are benefitted 7 or 9 people. am they don't show up there will not be a quorum. when you have 23 people everybody assumed the other will show up and the don't get a

quorum. has not been a huge problem butch has been there have been i number of meetings they did not make quorum one result in the number of come mrinlts which is when got mow to look at it and evoke the bicycle advisory committee experience years ago. with than i will turn it over and by way, rather than to the call of the chair i reasonable doubtize that if we can continue it to june the 12th that would be after the june -- because the -- what i would like to do is have prozac have an opportunity to discuss it amongst themselves, share other these ideas, other ideas and able to come forward to this committee with suggestions they may have and than i are scheduled sdhus on june sixth. >> great. >> thank you, president peskin.

we have from sprierdz chan's office. mrs. gross. >> thank you, chair dorse and he walton, member safai and president peskin kelly gross from supervisor chan's office. the first amendment an additional seat by the president of the board of supervisors representing by environmental justice organizations the second add relevant experience for all mittee members include disability as anning experience with an issue. and i have distributed hard copies and e mailed copies to you all and the item will be continued but would like to offer the amendments to address the occurrence the chair of prozac discussed with our office. >> through the chair the way i read the language that you just spoke about and just circulated. is -- it is the president shall appoint but subject to approval

by the board >> correct. >> >> great. thank you. >> seeing no further questions or -- can i add. the one thing i know you head become and forth. given the time we can approve but i think if it it is we have our own seats per district. if the board president will add a seat i would probably leave it by appointment of the board president. i think the city attorney would say it has torn action of the body and even when we individually appoint it is subject to approval by the full board. we dove this on the adoption without committee reference calendar. from changes i made i think it will either way it would require confirmation or approval by the full board and the deputy city attorney is nod nothing affirmative. that's right. i think it was draft third

degree way to be consistent with the other appointments. which are also made by the other supervisors which are all subject to approval by the board >> that's fine. >> thank you. deputy city attorney pierson. no further questions or comments. mr. clerk can we open for public comment. >> yes, members speak and joining person line up at this time. for those remote on the call in line dial star 3 to enter the line. for those in the queue continue to wait not guilty system indicates you have been unmuted then begin your comments. first in person speaker? >> good morning, supervisors ip steven. i'm a member of prozac for district 11 by supervisor safai. and i think when we first learned about this. supervisor peskin was last

tuesday night at our prozac meeting and most were shocked. we are not shocked that we are discussing quorum we had issues with having quorums in the past. especially when they were highly agenda item this is need votes on we could not participate in. but i think the one thing that we are not interested in is having one voting member in one ultmitt from each district tell pin the 2 people against each other. i think. the suggestion of 2 appointise at large from the board is wron from the mayor and one from each district would be would suffice with prozac. i have issues with this because, a lot of times the reasons why we don't have quorum the supervisors have not made their appointments. to prozac.

it was one district this did not have an appointee at our meetings. that is a problem. and then supervisor peskin you -- thank you for explaining the reasons of bring thanksgiving. but prozac have always wanted meet at city hall when we started meeting at mc clarin lodge we fought to come become to city schmuhl it did not work. i would along with our chair argone, would welcome the opportunity to meet at city hall. i think we valid more participation from the public during public comment and i thank you we would have quorums at the 100% level. thank you. >> thank you. >> no other persons in the room move on to remote public

comment. good morning i'm new chair of parks open space advisory committee i served vice chair appoint in the 2017 by the supervisor. with the nomination the environmental justice organization. . both had a number of equity occurrence about the department and count on me to make consistent low hold the department acountable [inaudible]. open space and programming under served and resourced communities. my fellow members elected me as chair knowing this. and our staff tell you i speak freely when i believe the department needs to do better. i want to remoinldz the board there is checks and balances system to departments that have strong mayor/commission

commissions and prozac is important in this step. i thank kelly gross for working with me to discuss solutions that will includor membership feedback and spoke with president peskin and we near agreement quorum has been an issue not the largest problem butt vacancy [inaudible] i understands this filling vacancies is difficult and resolution 39113 is in need of reform. before this legislation i have been in conversations with other prozac members jupiter jones, our staff liaison and even other supervisors [inaudible] resolution. and thank you president peskin will continue this item and committed to working with the leadership and members to the stake holders in the process going forward and look forward to making [inaudible] with my committee so rec and park system can better serve san francisco.

the bay area and visitors to the city. >> >> thank you. have our next caller please. >> great. daved pilpel again. i referred to my comment letter with the public today and urge a continuance to this matter. i don't agree with some of comments of the prozac members but i think we all agree a continuance is needd and a month is a good time although june 12 will likely be a refuse rate board meeting i'm not sure fiwill participate with rules at that time. i did want to sorry? anyway. i department to note in reference to the dialogue with

deputy city attorney pierson in my experience appointments to both the mta, cac and the puc, cac are accomplished by letter and don't require the any action by the board of supervisors. to appoint. and they are similar cac's that are referenced in the charter and the code. so00 eye think it possible to structure prozac in a way that would not require action by the board. buttil dhaefr to the city attorneys for their review. i had some idea in my later i hope you will take the time to review this. and i support the continuance. thank you for listening. >> thank you. that will completes the public call line. public comment on item 2 is

closed. and i would like to invite president peskin to discuss amendments >> colleagues. for the purpose of continuing these conversations i would respectful low request that you incorporate the amendments suggested by supervisor chan. set forth in what ms. gross circulated at page 2 in section then.01 subsection a to add the additional appointment of member -- by the board president subject to approval of the board who represents an environmental justice organization based in the city to add the word, disability in line 9 of the same section. to add in subsection c the term of the president yell appointee

on september first of 2023 and then to add what i have circulated which is under subsection d, duties. will a sub >> once a month insert in city hall. and adopt its rules of procedure. >> i would request that those amendments be adopted and the item conditioned june 12. >> i make a motion to accept the amendments that were submitted. >> yes. >> we can make those motion to approve those. [laughter]. a roll call on the notion to afruf the amendments vice chair walton. >> aye. >> supervisor safai.

>> aye. >> chair dorsey >> aye joovment great >> thank you, mr. clerk. i like to make a motion to continue this arizona amended june 12 on the motion to continue to june 12, vice chair walton. >> aye. >> supervisor safai. >> aye joovment chair dorsey >> aye. >> the motion passes without objection. >> thank you, mr. young the item 3 park code prozac is continued until june 12. and mr. clerk could you do we have further business yoochlt that completes our agenda. >> thank you, everyone we are adjourned.

>> who doesn't love cable cars? charging emissions and we're free which we're proud of you know, it's not much free left in the world anymore so we managed to do that through donations and through our gift shops. you got a real look and real appreciation of what early transit systems are like. this was the transit of the day from

about 1875 to about 1893 or later, you know. cable car museum is free, come on in. take a day. come down. rediscover the city. you can spend as time you want and you don't have to make reservations and it's important to be free because we want them to develop a love for cable cars so they do continue to support whether they live here or other places and people come in and say, yes, i have passed by and heard of this and never come in and they always enjoy themselves. people love cable cars and there's none left in the world so if you want to ride a cable car, you've got to come to san francisco. that what makes the city. without the cable cars, you lose part of that, you know, because people who come here and they love it and they love the history ask they can ride a cable car that has been running since 1888 or 1889. wow! that's something. can't do that with other historical museums. rarely, have i run into anybody from outside

who didn't come in and didn't feel better from knowing something about the city. it's a true experience you'll remember. i hope they walk away with a greater appreciation for the history, with the mechanics with people are fascinated by the winding machine and i hope the appreciation, which is a part of our mission and these young kids will appreciate cable cars and the ones who live here and other places, they can make sure there will always be cable cars in san francisco because once they are gone, they are gone. it's the heartbeat of san francisco that founded the cable and the slot and without the cable cars, yeah, we would lose something in san francisco. we would lose part of its heart and soul. it wouldn't be san francisco without cable cars. [bell ringing]

>> i am iris long. we are a family business that started in san francisco chinatown by my parents who started the business in the mid 1980s. today we follow the same footsteps of my parents. we source the teas by the harvest season and style of crafting and the specific variety. we specialize in premium tea. today i still visit many of the farms we work with multigenerational farms that produce premium teas with its

own natural flavors. it is very much like grapes for wine. what we do is more specialized, but it is more natural. growing up in san francisco i used to come and help my parents after school whether in middle school or high school and throughout college. i went to san francisco state university. i did stay home and i helped my parents work throughout the summers to learn what it is that makes our community so special. after graduating i worked for an investment bank in hong kong for a few years before returning when my dad said he was retiring. he passed away a few years ago. after taking over the business we made this a little more accessible for visitors as well

as residents of san francisco to visit. many of our teas were traditionally labeled only in chinese for the older generation. today of our tea drinkkers are quite young. it is easy to look on the website to view all of our products and fun to come in and look at the different varieties. they are able to explore what we source, premium teas from the providence and the delicious flavors. san francisco is a beautiful city to me as well as many of the residents and businesses here in chinatown. it is great for tourists to visit apsee how our community thrived through the years. this retail location is open daily. we have minimal hours because of

our small team during covid. we do welcome visitors to come in and browse through our products. also, visit us online. we have minimal hours. it is nice to set up viewings of these products here.

you're watching san francisco rising. today's special guest is monique gray. >> hi. i'm chris mannis and you're watching san francisco rising. the our guest today is marquise gray. he runs out of the office of the mayor in the city and county of san francisco.

and he's with us today to talk about the recent progress of the sunnidale hope sf housing project. welcome to the show. >> good morning. thank you for having me today. >> let's start by talking about the existing residents of sunnydale and their history. >> so sunnydale was built in the 1940s for a workers. it's the largest public housing community west of the mississippi. it's about 50 acres. pretty huge. about 760 single story units one to four bedrooms. >> i understand it's an ambitious rethinking of the residences. can you briefly describe the scope of the program and hope sf's involvement? >> yeah. the work of hope sf is this idea of more than housing. that acknowledging that our public housing community, the

levels of violence and poverty that are in these communities are not by accident. you know, it's our opportunity to address a system issue, you know, that people need more than housing. they need health services. resources. economic investment opportunities, jobs and things of that nature. and so hope sf strives to work with our city systems to better serve our public housing communities. >> so recently, mayor breed and speaker pelosi toured the site to both put focus on a national housing initiative and also to highlight the completion of the first new building. how many units does it contain and when will people start moving in? >> yeah. it was an amazing event. honored to have the secretary here with us as well in our community. it's 167 units. it's about 75% going back to the original families that currently live on site. so the replacement.

so i did forget to mention i want to say real quick, the beauty of hope sf is housing development, new development without displacements or anti-displacement initiatives. so, for example, the building is 167 units. 75% of those units going to families that have lived there in the community for generationings and the other 25% are tax credit units adding to the affordable housing stock here in san francisco and those units are up and running now. they're leasing them as we speak. people are picking their units each week until they're filled up. >> so was this particular building put on a new plot of land or did people have to move out so it could be constructed? >> that's a good question. our first building was vacant which you may have saw across the street from this building and then this plot of land is the way we kind of do it, we do it in phases. once one goes in, we're able to

move families into the new unit and where they previously were occupying, able to demolish old buildings to build the new. so this area had some older units that were demolished. >> it's impressive that construction has been able to continue during the covid-19 pandemic. can you talk about some of the challenges that needed to be overcome and how the community has managed during the crisis? >> that's a great question. you know, in san francisco, if i understand it correctly, i could be wrong, i believe housing was an essential service. the mayor made a strong commitment early on in the pandemic that we would continue to build housing as housing has been a critical issue in our city. so the housing part hasn't impacted us too much. 67 units have been going on its current time line. the bigger challenge for us was

showing the families in our communities, low income families had the resources we need to survive the pandemic. many of our families didn't have the luxury of working from home, working in the zone and things of that nature. making sure they had access to covid testing and things of that nature. so i want to give a big shout out to our resident leaders, our service providers across all four sites. for those that don't know, hope sf is four sites. sunnydale is one of the four sites. and so across those four sites, the most critical thing was making sure folks in these neighborhoods which have historically have been disconnected from resources have the things that they need to remain healthy, to, you know, survive the pandemic as we all had to survive the pandemic and we did pretty well. we were able to bring back scenes and covid testing on

site. food distribution was happening all throughout the week. wellness services and things of that nature were all happening on site thanks to our resident leaders and our service providers across the sites. >> so, finally, when could we expect the next set of residents to be ready? despite -- i guess we just said covid doesn't have an impact on the schedule. when will the next residences be ready? >> yeah. things are rolling. we have block a3 and block b3 to the building we were referring to earlier. and things are on pace. things are going really well. so we're looking at starting construction spring of 2022 and that will be 170 units and the goal is to have that lease up around 2024. >> well, thank you so much. i really appreciate you coming on the show, mr. gray. thank you for giving us the time today. >> thank you, chris, and i

really appreciate your time as well. >> and that's it with this episode. you've been watching san francisco rising for sfgov tv i'm chris manners. thanks so much for watching.

>> good morning. this meeting will come to order. welcome to may 4, 2023 regular meeting of the government audit and oversight committee of the san francisco board of supervisors. i'm supervisor preston, chair of the committee. i'm joined by vice chair stefani and supervisor chan. the committee clerk today is stephanie cabrera and we want to thank the team at sfgovtv for staffing this meeting. madam clerk, do you have any announcements? >> the board of supervisors and committees are hybrid meetings that allow in person attendance and public comment. also remote access via telephone. the board recognizes equitable public access is essential and will be taking public comment as follows, public comment is taken on each item on the agenda. those in person will be allowed to speak first and then take those waiting on the

telephone. the call in number is streaming across the screen. if you wish to comment, enter meeting id, 2 (590) 299-0350 then press pound twice. when connected you hear the meeting discuz but will be muted and listening mode only. when your item of interest comes up and the public comment is called, those joining in person should line up to speak along the curtain wall and those on the phone dial star 3 to be added to the queue. if on your telephone please remember to turn down the tv and listening devices. you may submit by e-mail at stephanie.cabrera@sfgov .org. and also send comments via u.s. postal service in city hall, 1 dr. carlton b gootlet place,

room 244, san francisco california 94102. if you submit public comment in writing it will be forwarded to the supervisors and included as part of the file. finally, items acted upon today are expected to appear thon board of supervisors agenda of may 16, unless otherwise stated. thank you. >> thank you madam clerk. please call items 1 and 2 together. >> item 1 is ordinance adopting implementing the memorandum of understanding between city and county of san francisco somewhere san francisco fire fight rs union local 798 unit 1 and item 2 is ordinance adopting implementing the memorandum of understanding between the city and county of san francisco and san francisco firefighters union local 798, unit 2. for those joining remotely, if you haven't done so already please dial star 3 to be added to the queue. the system will endicate you raised your hand cht please

wait until the system indicates you are unmuted and you may begin your comments. thank you. >> thank you madam clerk. before we get started with these items, supervisor chan. >> thank you chair. i want to be on the record that we are a proud fire fighter family and my partner has been a fire fighter since 2011 and now a fire prevention inspector and confirmed checking with the city attorney and do not need to recuse myself on this decision and happy to support. thank you. >> thank you very much supervisor chan. so, we have today presenting on this item artis graham from dhr, employee relations director and the dhr team, including steve

ponder and--we will turn it over to you mr. graham with thanks for the advance briefing on this and all the work to get this this far. throor floor is yours. >> we do have a extra dhr member today, because oakland unified teachers are on strike, so i got a 5 year old member here, so he may have something to add later. just to be- >> will he be doing the presentation? >> he may need to be our expert witness on questions that come up. we'll see. happy may 4 by the way. alright. so, thanks again for having us. what you see in front of you now is the charter factors that we utilize when bargaining with any bargaining unit. we have gone over these before when we met with you about the poa contract, and they are the same. as you can see

here, we look at things like inflation, we look at the wages and other markets et cetera and the ability of the city ability to pay as well. one of the things we looked at with the fire department is the recruitment and retention and as you may recall, we had a very similar slide up for the police department so when the police department we saw decline of staff all most 8 percent. here you see the fire department is able to increase staff by 3.5 percent. in both cases, we were notably to run academies or trainings during the pandemic, but we had retirements and other reasons why people left, so they are both under-staffed and so the fire department is working now to try to pull staff up and as you can see, we have been able to add hires. we still have 73

retirees and 7 resignations, so as you can see, the resignations are not as significant as they were with the poa so we had we had a different set of factors we were looking at. here you see where the city of san francisco compares in the market of the bay area around compensateing our firefighter jz we complicate well within the market place. going into bargaining we believe we'll be number 2, subsequent to this contract taking effect. i guess depend on what hayward does but believe we'll be number 2 once this is completed. here you see the fire fighter retirements look like and you see the retirements peak at year 21 and then there is a series of retirements thereafter. retirements were of a concern for us because as mentioned earlier, the fire department is under-staffed as a

result of the pandemic and not able to hire during that time. the department is working as i said before, to hire as many firefights as they can effectively train. there is still a great deal of being a san francisco firefighter so we anticipate in a few years they will be fully staffed. here on this slide you can see the wage summary, and so the basic wage pattern was established in bargaining with the p orks a and with 798. we were able to come to agreement with both of those units at the wage pattern would be the same, and you can see there are also in this contract, there is a delay of 6 months if the city's budget has a projected deficit of $300 million on the first increase and 12 month day if that should happen again in the second year. also, you can see there

is a 2 percent increase in retention pay, beginning year 21 because that is when we saw a peak in retirement and we are trying to retain people as the department is able to become fully staffed. the term is 3 years. you can see we also added a couple holidays. one of the issues that had happened over the last few years, the last two years i guess was a lot of firefighters had to work a lot of mandatory overtime, and that mandatory overtime really was resulted in a struggle for individual firefighters and their families as well as for the department from the scheduling standpoint. you know, we are addressing that on both fronts. the department worked closely with 798 to try to address it, internal basis. we also looked at additional holidays where people call in sick so they are not technically holidays, it is

mother's day and halloween, but those are a couple days people call in sick, so the 798 agreed to allow us to have some restrictions around people calling in sick those days to try to address the issue of mandatory overtime and in addition they also agreed to 2 percent additional holiday pay. those are the sort of significant increases in compensation is retention pay and 2 percent holiday pay. and then, we also added a emergency child care pilot program, similar to the one in the p orks a contract for the purposes of when people are held over because of mandatory overtime or whatever sort of the situation may be, and have trouble getting their children, this is a pot of money to help compensate for the additional expense of that. this is the total contract cost over the next three years. you can see it is $15.6 million

year 1, 34.4 year 2 and (5) 400-0000 in year 3 for total 3 year cost of 103.710 and 1 percent is $4.3 million. lastly, this is the resolution procedure. again, you are familiar with this procedure from the presentation regarding poa. happy to take questions. >> thank you very much. i have a couple questions or some more comments. just, on the p oa contract we talked about retention pay which targeted

folks with much shorter, 10 year, where this is at year 21. i are want to reiterate a point, to the extent we look in the future at retention pay, i think we should be beefing up the basis for arguing that the increase will retain someone and that is with exit interviews and looking at if people are leaving over the money or not. here i have no issue what so ever, i view it much more as longevity bonus then a retention pay amount to add that kick-in after 20 years is to me a non issue, so i support it, but i do think as we bring these things forward, if they are framed as retention, i think should be something that we are basing the assumption that retention bonuses are going to keep people and in particular around the lack of

comprehensive exit interview. i don't know if you can comment on that. i don't know if maybe fire has more comprehensive data or dhr, but the same issue i riseed. >> we understand your position and appreciate that and will use that going forward. here it is just differ and retirements. it is just differ and retirements. >> makes sense. thank you. the other thing i also just wanted to flag, we talked about this before, i do think it should be standard in the presentations we have a sense of overtime pay in the presentations and you just quantifying that both average and some data on that, especially when we are making the case that to be competitive with other jurisdictions that part we are comparing-to only compare the base salary and not be looking at the realties of overtime, i think is incomplete picture, but i also understand you have-there is challenges getting that data, so i look

forward to figuring how we can work together if there are avenues to try to get a sense how we can compare with other jurisdictions on the overtime front as well. i recognize that may not-maybe you can speak to this, may not be as easily attainable but think that should be standard for us when we present publicly and tell folks whether it is firefighters or anyone else what they earn not looking at just salary but overtime data. >> understood. we did look at the average overtime our firefighters earn which is around $47 thousand. as i mentioneded there was a lot of mandatory overtime people had to work so anticipate the number of hours which is about 500 per person on average, which is a lot of extra hours to work, right? we anticipate that that will go down as the department continues to staff up. >> great. supervisor chan.

>> thank you chair preston. i think this is very similar to what i have said during the poa or just the police mou process. this is not really to speak on the mou itself, but as i have offer with the police department and really moving forward in terms of upcoming budget process, but also thinking about there over operation of the city department and as i have acknowledged the poa presence, i want to acknowledge the local 798 officers (indiscernible) with being here with us, and just wanted to say that looking forward to continue sort of some of the progress we have made with city departments, training, just making sure that our firefighters, similarly to any other first responders like the training continues making

sure that they see the overtime that is actually putting on our first responders that we want to make sure they are well taken care of, physical and mental health and i think those are things that are worthwhile to talk about it. i concur with the sentiment of chair preston about overtime is not a long-term strategy in terms of especially for first responders, so i look forward to that conversation. thank you. >> thank you. vice chair stefani. >> thank you. i actually agree with that too supervisor chan. definitely not a long-term strategy and want to acknowledge local 798, love our fire department and very supportive of this contract. just wanted to give a shout out to the provision regarding the emergency child care . i think that is so important, especially given the overtime and constraints that puts on parents, and just had a quick question about why it

is a pilot program and why is it sunsetting on june 30, 2026? >> it is a pilot program just because we are seeing how effective and whether or not it work jz do people take advantage of it et cetera. that's all. >> thank you. i have one more question on the provision, 11.2, the parody provision that tethers some of these to the police officer increases, what is the origins and purposes of that provision? >> i don't know what the historical origin is to be candid with you. i do know that parody provisions in police and fire contractors were very common. at one time they are no longer common. but that was something that was commonly done throughout the region. >> thank you. if no

further questions i want to echo the thanks to 798 and dhr and all our firefighter s for the crucial work and open this up to public comment. >> thank you, any members of the public who would like to comment on items 1 and 2? please line up along the wall to your right. remote, dial star 3 to be added to the queue. for those already on hold, please continue to wait until the system ind icates you are unmuted and may begin your comments. you may approach the lectern. >> thank you. memorandum of understand, -yesterday i attended the police commission hearing and it was a very long hearing. i didn't want to take time and didn't get a chance to speak. when i left i was outside of the performing arts garage and assaulted by two gay man and now it is a matter i should have called the police. i was assaulted. i

don't know why-they don't want to be here and talk or share my public comments. but listen, there is a crime being committed here with this memorandum. there is a crime. you got to find who these people are. who are these people that are doing this? we got to find out who they are. that is taking a long time and they are assaulting me and- >> (indiscernible) >> you are intruders. >> hang on one second. >> i do need to ask you stay on the subject of the fire department. >> what i say to the fire department is they are intruders. these are latent intruders in your house. they burrow a hole in there for 30 years and they are there, they are intruders. firefighters are includers and what the

memorandum says is it is okay. i have no where to go. you have to look at the language in the memorandum it says it is okay to intrude in your house. some cultures your house is your castle, it is your private domain, but these firefighters think they can come in and do whatever they want. they tell you don't show yourself! they tell you as little kids come to the classroom and speak. don't show yourself to anybody. dont tell your family who you are. they say, your kids. say that to the kids in school. everybody you know they say to the kids. (indiscernible) they are killing them off. these firefighters-look at the language in the memorandum, that is what it says. >> thank you for your comments. next speaker, please. >> good morning. adam wood, san francisco firefighter district 7 resident and secretary of local

798. i just want to speak on the mou. our members ratified this contract not unanimously and with some frustration. just i think primarily through exhaustion over the last 3 years working through the pandemic with the levels of mandatory overtime that was mentioned chblt i want to paint a clearer picture of what life is like in the fire department now, just to let you know what we are looking at going forward. hiring has resumed after year and a half enabled to put together safely a fire department academy, but the hiring has not kept up with the accelerated rates of retirement concentrated in the suppression ranks. the folks in the fire house. and/or with the expansion of administrative positions, primarily in the very positive development of our community paramedicine programs, but many of those positions pulled people out of the field. our ranks

in suppression in the fire houses are still below where they were even in 2017, much less in 2019 before the pandemic began. so, we dug ourselves a hole because of the age of the workforce, increased work load especially over the last 3 careers and enable to hire for year and and a half. it will take a number of years to climb out of. we have 200 members eligible for retirement now. whether or not they take that step immediately or not will depend i think on how they can handle increased stress and workload forced upon them by today's fire load, the need to address the homeless crisis with our members being the first line of defense in that area and the need to expand our ability to deal with the opioid crisis and mental health problems on the street. we will need your help. we need your help going forward. the contract will not solve our future problems.

>> thank you for your comments today adam wood. may we please have the next speaker? >> good morning. my name is floyd rawlins the elected president of local 798 and are want to say thank you for your support in this process. as adam said, we did ratify it, it was not a easy process because of everything that kind of went on and went down behind the scenes with regard to the negotiation. we came to the table with the broad spectrum of issue s because as adam said, our members have been on the front line since the beginning of the pandemic. they have been there risking their lives as well as their family lives that they had to continue to interact with because we are expected to show up at work and when we show up to work we show up to work to defend and to protect the lives and property of the citizens of san francisco. i am proud to say our members continue to do that work and will continue to do that work in a honorable manner. what i hope in the future is that there is a more

inclusive process with regard to the negotiation, versus what we dealt with in essence and i hope that we will be able to address some of the issues surrounding mental health, surrounding ptsd and ptsi because it speaks volumes when you work with members that suffer through this but continue to show up day after day and put the uniform on and do the job they were sworn to do. i am proud of my membership in the work they continue to do and i hope to engage in further meaningful conversation regarding those issues that we still face in the fire service and in the san francisco fire department. i want to thank you again for your support and we look forward to further conversation. thank you. >> thank you for your comments today mr. rawlings. we'll go-if no other speakers in the chamber, we'll go to the call-in line. we currently have one person on the line with zero in the queue to speak. no speakers.

>> thank you madam clerk. public comment on these two items is now closed. unless there is further comments, want to reiterate our thanks to 798 and all firefighters for their work. i see vice chair stefani. >> thank you. i wanted to acknowledge the comments from local 798 in terms of this contract is not the end of the discussion by any means on all the support we can give you here at the board of supervisors in terms of mental health and everything we can provide the fire department. i know that supervisor chan is the chair of the budget committee and she will be leading those conversations as they come up, but this isn't the end of the discussion and we do appreciate your work because you are on the front line jz do so much for us so thank you. >> thank you vice chair stefani. i fully agree and

look forward to continuing to figure how we can support and i think for members of the public to understand, i think the most visible part of the work for our fire fighters is obviously when there is a fire, but that's also just one part of the work and i think for all of us seeing so much of the work around addressing folks who are experiencing drug overdoses, other medical conditions, just the scope of work that we go to on a daily basis go to fire fighters to respond to-and i will say and i don't say this lightly, that while we often get a lot of varying feedback on different departments performing different function jz it isn't like the fire department doesn't have its own issues, but in terms of the public perception on behalf of my

constituents especially through the office through pandemic that it really has been uniformally positive feedback and appreciation from my constituents around how members of the fire department handled the broad range of issues with skill and with kindness, so we are definitely want to make sure we are supporting mental health and other needs of fire fighters. unless further comments, i like it go ahead and move to forward this with recommendation to the full board. >> thank you. on the motion to forward items 1 and 2 to full board with positive recommendation, [roll call] you have three ayes. >> thank you. the motion passes. madam clerk, please call item 3. >> iletm 3 is resolution

selecting the macias gini & o'connell llp as independent auditors for the controller's office and separately audited departments of the city for amount not to exceed approximately $6.8 million for four year contract term. for those joining remotely, if you have done so please dial star 3 to be added to the speaker queue. the system will indicate you raised your hand. when dwee go to public comment, please wait until the system indicates you are unmuted and you may begin your comments. thank you. >> thank youed madam clerk. today i believe we are hearing from carmen lafrank financial reporting manager for the controller's office. welcome, and the floor is yours. >> thank you very much. thank

you, sorry. i believe you all have copies of the presentation as well, and it is on screen. or should be on the screen. okay. so, this is the contract with as we heard from macias gini & o'connell llp. as independent auditors for the controller's office and separately audited departments

of the city for amount not to exceed $6.8 million over a 4 year contract term that would commence on july 1, 2023. and the board of supervisors pursuant to chapter section 2.115 selects the independent auditor to perform the annual financial audit of the controller's books. and then we talk about the bid process. in july 2022, the city selected mgo as the highest qualified scorer pursuant to the rfp for the following 8 entities and areas: the city annual comprehensive financial report known as a-zuckerberg hospital, laguna hospital, single audit and other funds which includes treasure island

development authority. they were also selected for the san francisco employee retirement system. the office of community investment and infrastructure. san francisco health service system, port of san francisco, san francisco finance system and california project grants and city county of san francisco retiree health benefit trust fund. the next slide shows what the not to exceed amounts are for the 4 years broken down by year so you see that the first year and this is for the coming year for fiscal year end, 2023, which will be paid for in the budget year of fiscal year 2024, the audit services subtotal is $1.5 million as needed. subtotal $180 thousand and grand total of 1 million 7 per year. as you can see, we do

have a rate lock with them, which does help with budget and keeping costs down over the 4 years. i ask if anyone has questions. we do also have supplemented slides which get into each area in more detail if you have questions. >> thank you very much for the presentation. before we do questions, i believe we have a bla report on the item, mr. monard. >> thank you, good morning supervisors. nick monard from the budget legislative analyst office. item 3 is resolution that approve a new auditing agreement between the controller's office and macias gini & o'connell . the agreement has a 4 year term through june 2027 and does have a not to exceed of $6.8 million. there is a optional three year extension in the agreement which requires board of supervisor approval to exercise. the audit will cover several areas. audit

service including the comprehensive statement, audit of the enterprise and fiduciary funds and state and federal grant compliance. we showed the budget for the audit work in the contract on page 4 of the report. it is based on number of hours worked, with billing rates from 104 to $380 which as noted are flat through the 4 year contract. we do recommend approval. >> thank you mr. monard. any comments or questions colleagues? let's open this item up for public comment. >> thank you mr. chair. any members of the public who would like to comment on item number 3? please line up along the wall to the right. remote members dial star 3 to be added to the queue. for those on hold please continue to wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted. you may approach the podium.

>> i know macias and gini and o'connell. i know them. i went there. i visited the office. these are close personal individuals a law firm i know very well. why would i go there? you know? why would i go to this- (indiscernible) why would i go there? why would i confer power on this firm on this organization? why would i can confer the power on them? so, $6.8 million, i look up to them, i respect them, i gave them something. why would i do that? so, we got to go back to what the item before this, you want to go into this place. you want to go

in there. you want to go into macias gini & o'connell . you want to. that's what it is at the end of the day. i'm a person- (indiscernible) from a very small school child told i'm disabled and have special needs, so you want to go there. you want to. that's what you want to do. so, what i'm getting down to the bottom is macias gini & o'connell come here and let's talk again, because there is a bad actor here. there is a bad actor somewhere here. doesn't look very highly on us. it is very down on us and wants to go in there. that is his life mission, life goal. so, that's what it is at the end of the day. that's what it is, okay? nothing else about it then that. you want to make money doing it. they want to make money doing it. that's what it is. >> thank you for your comments

today. any other speakers in the chamber that #wd like to speak to this item before we move to the telephone? seeing no in person speaker we will go to the telephone line with one listener and zero in the queue. >> thank you madam clerk, public comment on this item is closed. i want to thank the controller's office for their presentation and their work on this and also to the auditors who we worked with previously when the audits come through and appreciate the professionalism. for those in the public following there audits this is independent auditors. we also have bla program audits, controller does audits, but this is a crucial function in terms of city government and the soundness of our financial operations in terms of having independent auditors fully support this measure and i did neglect to mention at the start,

he is not committee with us today, president peskin is the sponsor of this resolution, so i like to move this forward to the full board with recommendation. madam clerk. >> thank you. on the motion, vice chair stefani, aye. chan, aye. preston, aye. the motion passes unanimously. >> thank you, motion passes. madam clerk, please call the fourth item. >> findings and recommendation made in the november 17, 2022 city service audit report entitled the city must determine whether united council of human service should continue providing service to san francisco residents despite continuing non compliance with city agreements and updates on the 14 recommendations made to the department of homelessness and supportive housing to improve oversight of uchs program administration and compliance with grant

agreement requirements and requesting the office of the controller and city services odder auditor. please dial star 3 to be added to the queue. wait for the prompt to indicate you raised your hand. when we go to public comment, the system indicates you have been unmuted and you may begin comments. thank you. >> thank youed madam clerk and welcome to the speakers from the controller's office and department of homelessness and supportive housing. this item is sponsored by vice chair stefani. i want to thank you for calling this hearing and also turn it over to you for any opening remarks and to introduce the speakers on the item. >> thank you chair preston. i called for this hearing because i have serious concerns with respect how to-how the city actually is managing our contracts with our non profits. our non profits are tasked with taking care of so many different issues. we have incredible non profits and providing very

necessary services to thousands of people and doing incredible work and unfortunately we had many different stories detailing some scandals involving mismanagement of those contracts and i think it reflects poorly on the individual non profit and of course i think the city management of those contracts and are think we ourselves can be doing better and why i'm working on legislation to really drill down on how we can do better. the city relies on non profits to provide $1.4 billion in social services and san franciscans deserve accountability and transparency how taxpayer dollars are spent. the most striking example of such mismanagement was publicized this past fall. the san francisco controller's office found the united council of human

service out of compliance on fiscal and procedural agreements. infraction include improperly keeping rental revenue. non compliance with hiring processes, improper calculation of income for most tenants and providing housing for ineligible applicants. this was reported through the audit. we sit on edge on a looming fiscal crisis, i pleev believe as a city we absolutely must do better and in helping the non profits as well. that is why i believe it is so important to shine a light. thank you for all the work you do and to provide a opportunity for the department to speak how to improve the monitoring and evaluation of such contracts moving forward. we have several people i think with us today to present. we have mark del rosa director of audits, thank you, and amanda (indiscernible) i want to be exactly,

not close enough. project of office of the controller and (indiscernible) hsh and emily cohen, hsh, noel (indiscernible) both deputy director of finance administration with hsh as well. i are like to invite director del rosa to start us off. >> good morning supervisors; chair preston, vice chair stefani and supervisor chan. mark del rosa director of audits for controller's office and believe we have a presentation that would be shown on the screen by a team member. thank you for the opportunity toprint to-present today. the audit we issued in november, 2022 on the department of homelessness and supportive housing

grant agreements with bayview hunters point foundation to the united council of human services. joined by amanda who will be copresenting with me highlight s of some of the audit findings and recommendations from our report. just wanted to acknowledge the team that worked on this. (indiscernible) for their work on the engagement. before turning it over to amanda, just wanted to highlight inductory notes. on the next page, this report that we issued in november was a audit requested by the department of homelessness and supportive housing. this audit had 4 over arching findings and 14 recommendations, all of which the department concured or partially concured with. as you know, the process we go through in csa audit division is that we follow our

generally accepted government auditing standards insuring all the findings and recommendations are based on appropriate and sufficient evidence. as you also know, every 6 months after issuance of audit report we follow up on recommendations for this particular audit that is before you, we are in the process of collecting information that will be reported as part of our annual report that will be issued at the end or beginning of next fiscal year for all the audit recommendations implementation status. with that, let me turn it over to amanda for the audit presentation. >> thank you. good morning. i like to begin with the timeline of contracting background. in 2009 human service agency transitted to fiscal agency due to defaish aebs found in the financial record keeping. in 2016, the department requested audit of these

agreements as they were transferring to the newly created homelessness supportive housing. after the issuance of the 2017 audit report, contracted a new fiscal sponsor. in 2022 the department requested audit of agreement with subsequent sponse, bayview hunter point foundation which serveds as the sponsor. following the audit the sponsorship agreements were transferred to felten institute. next slide, please. the audit looked at the 6 programs listed on this slide under grant agreements between hsh and bayview hunter point. the 6 agreements had not to exceed of (3) 600-0000, nearly 28 million allocated to uchs. next slide. the audit

had to verify the eligibility of participants and expenditure of grants funds in accordance with grant agreements or laws as well as assess the department management and oversight. the audit focused on participants and expenditures as of july 2022. next slide. the audit found did not comply with eligibility expenditure and record keeping requirements out lined in the agreement. especially related to 2 hud funded programs. (indiscernible) coordinated entry system and therefore could be ineligible. we found 24 of 29 sample tenants are 83 percent were not appropriately prioritized or did not have the required eligibility documentation. such as verification of homelessness or disability. most of the documentation was not in the system of record as required. when reviewing income calculations 19

or 66 percent of 29 sample tenants had income calculates incorrectly by uchs when they entered the program which may have resulted in incorrect tenant rent paid. the audit identified three employees who were enrolled into one of the two hud funded programs without going through the required assessment and referral process. as a result it is unclear if or how they were prioritized over other potential program participants in need of housing. also identified at least 16 other active employees on the tenant roster for one of the programs as of august 2022. another finding related to the 2 hud programs was collected at laest 108 thousand inerant from march through august 2022 without department approval and not turned over at least $30 thousand to the fiscal sponsor. last on the slide did not provide adequate support when submitting

expenditures to bayview hunter point foundation across the program creating back-log of unpaid and unreconciled expenditures. the report also identified deficiencies in hsh oversight and management of the agreements. the department did not accurately monitor the 2 hud programs (indiscernible) part of the program enrollment process. hsh more actively monitored the general fund agreements the program monitoring procedures did not always accurately capture. [speaker speaking too fast] of non compliance, and inadequate controls over fiscal processes raising the question whether the fiscal sponsorship model is the appropriate structure for uchs when it hasn't demonstrate it can meet the city requirement of financial stability or compliance with program operations and

documentation requirements. our final slide, please. the report included 14 recommendations. key recommendations include that the department should consider terminating groont agreements with ucsh, particularly funded through federal funds and transfer of service for any continuing service we recommended the department also review the current structure and services provided to reconsider whether the fiscal sponsorship structure is the best model for uchs to address internal control deficiency. also recommend the department require to stop collecting tenant rent unless amended by the grant agreement with fiscal sponsor and turn over all remaining rental revenue in possession. other recommendations in the report are clearing guidance and expectations around each entity responsibility. that concludes the presentation. we are happy to answer questions

after hsh presents. thank you. >> thank you. welcome. >> good morning honorable committee members. noel simmons chief deputy director department of homelessness and supportive housing. i have 8 slides to present. first i want to thank mark and amanda from the controller office for the work on the audit and continued partnership. i also want to recognize and thank mr. al gilbert, president and ceo of the felten institute being present this morning. let's go ahead and t up our slides. there we go. so, the united council of human services has binch a hsh funded provider since the department was created in 2016 at which time we inherented several

grants from the human service agency. united council operated under fiscal agent or fiscal sponsor since 2009, due to concerns about the agency capacity to directly administer public funds in a manner consistent with city expectations. hsh maintained its partnership with united council in recent years, really because the organization has very deep community ties in the bayview, and are have been effective in providing cultural competent service to people experiencing homelessness there more then 30 years. as a trusted black led service provider united council was uniquely positions to engage and effectively serve a highly vulnerable population of san francisco residents in d10 who might not have access to services elsewhere. next slide, please. this slide presents a timeline of key milestones in the

funding relationship with united council. the slide is really here for your reference and i won't read through all the details, but just to hit the highlights, since hsh took over ucsh grant agreements in 2016, united council had three different fiscal sponsors, including (indiscernible) bayview hunter point foundation for 7 months in 2022, and now the felten institute as of october 2022. within the same timeframe, the controller's office conducted two audits of united council, one pub lished in 2017 and the one that is the focus of the hearing today. again, hsh was actually the one to request the controller's audit last april in response to concerns that were both raised by united council

fiscal sponsor at that time and also being observed directly by the department. the audit included 14 recommendations for hsh to implement in order to improve oversight of program administration as well as compliance with hsh prauls and requirements of the grant agreements. hsh is required to submit 6 month follow-up reporting on the audit recommendations and our first status report was formally submitted just two days ago to the controller's office. next slide, please. before i walk through the status of the recommendations, it is important to note that there have been a change of circumstance since the audit was published last fall, which provides important context to today's status update. first of all, in december of 2022, the controller's office placed united council on red flag status. this was a outcome of the city's joint non

profit monitoring program, which jointly monitors city contractors who do business with 2 or more city departments. it is reviewed to insure contractors are stable and in good financial health and when contractors fail to meet the fiscal compliance standards that are developed by the controller's office, one potential outcome is to designate red flag status. that designation is used to identify non profit agencies that are at high risk of instability to the point that service delivery is jeopardized. non profit designated red flag status are less competitive or may be ineligible for new grants and contracts with the city and defunding is a potential outcome as well. when that designation is placed, there is a plan put in place to specify what corrective actions need to be taken in order for the agency to come off red flag

status. that happened in december, then a couple months later in february of this year, the controller's office issued a new policy clarifying that the city cannot legally do business with a non profit who chairable registry status is revoked or suspended by the state attorney general office. on march 6 this year, hsh sent a letter sof non compliance due to suspended registry status all continuing program services would be fully transitioned to united council fiscal sponsor, the felten institute. the department is currently in the process of removing united council as a subcontractor on all of our direct grant agreements with felten, and as of march 7, all hsh funding now flows directly to felten and felten institute is solely responsible for the delivery of program services. i note all this and bring to your

attention because this change in circumstance whereby you unitsed council is no longer recipient of city funding made many audit recommendations no longer applicable. next slide, please. so, these next three slides supervisors, summarize the 14 audit recommendations. the first slide lists the five recommendations that are no longer applicable due to the circumstances i just described, so terminating grant agreements with united council, reconsidering whether the fiscal sponsorship structure is the best model for united council, requiring mou between united council and fiscal sponsor, developing clearer policies and procedures on the fiscal sponsor responsibilities, and insuring the fiscal sponsor requires united council to provide complete and adequate documentation to support invoicing. those recommendations are now effectively mute given

that united council is no longer a recipient of city funds and no longer under the fiscal sponsorship of felten institute. next slide, please. these 6 recommendations have all been implemented by the department. we have had prior to the change in status required united council to cease tenant rent collection and remit rent previously committed to the fiscal sponsor. they did remit over $78 thousand back to their sponsor. we have added veteran verification requirements to all our grant agreements. we have required fiscal sponsors to confirm review and approve credit card charges before payment. we have developed clearer guidelines that we have now reinforced with the felten institute around program enrollment processes for the 6 grants in question. we have conducted recent monitoring of

both the (indiscernible) and site f, and we have considered and responded to any complaints regarding services by united council. and then finally, this next slide lists the final three audit recommendations which have been initiated and are in process. the department has developed guidance whether and now not just united council but all our contracted providers are to enroll employees in city funded programs. we drafted a department wide policy that speaks to the issue and expect to issue that policy later this month. similarly, the audit instuckted to decide whether united council should charge fees for program service, took that is a kep further and again developed a department wide policy applicable to all our funded providers issued later this month, and then finally, we are in the process of amending our continuum

of care guide to reflect all of the eligibility and documentation requirements for programs that are funded through the coc. in terms of the current status of hsh relationship to united council, again, united council is no longer a party to hsh grant agreements and no hsh funds are directed to united council. the department is in the process of negotiating a new agreement with the felten institute to provide technical assistance and capacity building support to united council and board of directors. this is really with the goal of again, preserving a non profit with deep roots in the bayview with the ability to reach and serve a very vulnerable population that is in need of hsh services. and finally, the red flag status designation i described earlier

does remain despite the fact united council lost city funding, because united council is not a recipient of city funds the city will not be monitoring united council progress on resolving the red flag status. importantly however, if at a future date united council stabilized the operations and wishes to become a city grantee, the city needs to demonstrate compliance with the city administrative standards through fiscal and compliance monitoring in order to have that status designation. that completes my presentation. happy to answer any questions as i know mark and amanda are as well. >> thank you so much for the presentation. i do have a couple questions. i think i can probably speak for all of us, we definitely want our departments to contract with non profits that have deep community ties in the

communities that they work, especially in the bayview and we definitely want our non profits to provide culturally competent care. i think here we just want to make sure that those contracts are not so mismanaged a entire city loses faith in the government and creating a lot of negative thoughts about non profits in general, so definitely very supportive of non profits with deep community ties and it is just we have to make sure that we are working with non profits in a way not to create negative connotations to that work. i have a few questions for the controller's office and then to hsh. with regard to-this goes back to 2009, why did the city stop contracting directly with uchs in 2009? >> human service agency was the contracting department at the

time and were contracting directly. we reported in the 2017 audit as well but they found deficiency in the record keeping so they had decided to get a fiscal agent was the bayview ymca. >> okay. after that, the first audit issued in 2017, what follow-up did the city services auditor have with hsh regarding uchs? >> yes, we fallowed every 6 months as we normally do after the issuance of the audit report. hsh addressed all our recommendations within 18 months and we determined them closed. >> are there procedures-how do departments request the controllers step in to perform a audit on a contract? do you have those written up anywhere? >> i dont believe they are written up but we do meet with the departments and give ideas

of potential audits-we talk about risks assessment or suggest audits and departments can bringioids at the time but throughout the year they can request a audit if they have any requests. >> okay, thank you for that. you mentioned the fiscal sponsorship structure might not always be the best. when it is necessary for a non profit to utilize the structure and when you recommend it? >> i think that is a better answer for the department to answer. >> are there other non profits in the city that use such a structure? >> we don't have a full understanding othf population. it isn't data captured now in the city system, but it is a plan that we include that in next year's non profit audit planning to get a better understanding of that. >> so we don't have a idea-all the non profits we contract with, we don't know how many of

them are using a fiscal sponsorship structure? >> the controller's office does not, but hsh might know for their own department. >> okay. that is something we'll talk about when we talk about the legislation we are working on. okay, i are think the next line of questions are for hsh. in terms of the bayview hunters point foundation, curious what responsibility they have nin shoring there was compliance with the city agreements? what-well, felten is taking over now, so what responsibility will they have to insure this is the case? >> chair stefani, so felten institute to be clear at this point isn't the fiscal sponsor of united council. we

have wholesale transition the service agreements that used to be operated by united council to the felten institute and they are now just delivering those services as a prime contractor through their employees. >> were the federal grants awarded to felten as well? >> yes they were. >> okay. how was it felten was selected through-how did that come to be without-what is mechanism for that to happen? >> yes. so, as you know, bayview hunter point foundation was the prior fiscal sponsor for united council and took on the role february of 22. after a period of several months, it became clear i think both to bayview hunter point foundation, and united council, sort of mutually agreed the relationship want working out as hoped and

envisioned and there was desire from both organizations to part ways. that request came to the department and we immediately began to try identify another organization that was willing and had the right skillset and ability and capacity to step into the fiscal sponsorship role for united council. our experience has been that forced marriages dont work between fiscal sponsor and sponsored organization, it has to be a partnership that works for both partners. we were very grateful the felten institute stepped up and expressed willingness and ability to serve as the fiscal sponsor. they were able to establish positive rapport with united council and their board and so both united council and felten institute felt they could work together in an effective manner and the department really just supported that arrangement by then transitioning

fiscal sponsorship and the grant agreements from bayview hunter point foundation to the felten institute. >> so, but now they are responsible for the delivery of program services as well? >> that is correct. >> how did that come to be? it seems to give it another--i don't understand why we didn't do a new rfp and sole source contractor how were you able to just give it to another entity? >> thank you for the question. to clarify chair stefani, there was a two step process. in october felten institute became the fiscal sponsor for united council of human services. unitsed council was a subcontractor on the grant agreements, but the grants were already between the department and the felten institute. that is step one of the process. step two of the process occurred march this year when we had no choice but

to remove direct city funds from flowing to united council, because they had run afoul of the state charitable registry requirement, and so pursuant it the controller 's policy we were asked to come up with a transition plan for programs and services delivered by united council and that transition plan was really just to leave the grant agreements where they already were with the felten institute but to remove united council as a subcontractor on those agreements so they reside wholely with felten. >> okay, so felten was a subcontractor and fiscal sponsor at the same time? >> in october that was the case, yes. >> okay. and, how did you determine that felten was able to deliver the services? just we heard of staffing shortages and things like that.

this happened before on-were you able to determine they were going to deliver the services in a way that would be effective? >> thank you for the question. yes, department leadership and felten institute leadership had a number of conversations before they moved into the fiscal sponsor role to make sure this was a good fit, that the services united council was delivering were consistent with the mission of the felten institute, to insure felten felt they had adequate capacity to take this on. we also entered into a new stand alone fiscal sponsorship agreement with the felten institute back in october that funded them basically for their administrative costs and the infrastructure to adequately serve as the fiscal sponsor and to date felten has been a extremely responsive partner and don't have any

indication that lacked capacity to manage these agreements. >> thank you. nothing further at this time. >> thank you. supervisor chan. >> thank you chair preston. i are have two parts questions and i think the first part is for the controller to help me understand and just piggy back on what vice chair stefani was questioning really about-i think the process of identifying problematic or problems with our non profit contractors, while we appreciate of course always wantic to make sure we have cultural and are language competent organizations-i want to flag one thing, it is very similar as i am looking at the department of homelessness and supportive housing presentation on slide 3, just since august 2016 about united council and history of it, and it

actually reminds of the positive resource center in baker place that has been ongoing issue for quite some time talking about mergers of the two non profits, looking at just the finances of it-these are obviously it is different city department, but again what is the controller's role? this doesn't really-it seems like it didn't happen until you have the joint non profit audit and report and then or until the felten institute as a fiscal agent to say, something is wrong with this and you must audit this? so, help me understand when is the controller actually step in? >> i can certainly answer that question supervisor from a audit lens and we do have my colleague from the city services auditor-city performance team that

is more charged with the city wide non profit monitoring program. from a audit perspective as amanda mentioned we do get input from various departments as part of the work planning process and do our own risk assessment but to supplement that, on the controller city performance side there is ongoing effortt thais basically working with the departments to monitor a contract of compliance. >> yes, i remember we had a presentation, gao before at the committee before, $50 thousand and above and if you have more then one city department contract and there is like a process of auditing. i recall that process, but again, the question would be, how is it then even with that protocol in place, this is since 2016 clearly that is a agency that seems to have issues. i

understand that the so called of we can't force people to-not a forced marriage or forced partnership or merger or whatever it is that is not on the city, still, i mean that-wouldn't we not consider that somewhat of a red flag and to say hey, we see that this is again different kind of fiscal sponsors since 2017-no flagging? >> the decision to contract and this is when we differ to the department to management decision for the department to make. i think from a audit perspective we certainly are in the business of providing recommendations to address any of the observations that we have, but i differ to the department in terms of the working with certain organizations. >> i guess that is the

question for-since you inherited the agreement from human services agency and you have been again, (indiscernible) and i think that so for that question, first of all, having it since 2016 or even 2017, identifying that this is a agency has been going under two different fiscal agents and then i do actually do also want to question about what then-besides the fact that hey, there are now red flag status so we can no longer contract with them, and therefore even audit recommendations no longer applicable because we have to stop that relationship. that is like very-so, if you can walk us through more. it is really long time from 2017 all the way here. >> thank you for that question

supervisor chan. i will just start by acknowledging that you are right, there is a pattern of concerning behavior with this particular provider that extended over a number of years. i think-i do think we are at a bit of turning point with this particular provider and there have been very frank conversations over the most recent months that the status quo is unattainable and that really at this point what the department is saying is we are willing to continue to support the felten institute to provide capacity building support to united council as a last best final effort to see if this organization can be stabilized and preserved in order to continue serving the community, but if it can't, then i don't see a future in city contracting for this organization or at least not as a direct prime contractor. i think the department takes very seriously its

fiduciary responsibility to making sure that public funds are being spent with integrity. we also take very seriously our commitment to deliver needed services to people experiencing homelessness in san francisco, and what we have found is that in the broader non profit community, it is not unusual to have smaller more grassroots non profits who do a excellent job delivering service on the ground but lack that sort of administrative capacity to do things like pay roll, fiscal reconciliation claiming and part of our role i are think as a department is to try to best we can support our non profit partners to build the capacity of the non profit sector to deliver the services we need to be delivered. we know we cant deliver and meet the needs of all homeless people in san francisco directly as a department, we rely critically on our non profit network and there is a lot of discussion in these chambers and are elsewhere about the

fact that the non profit sector generally is often lacking capacity, lacking adequate funding, resources and are infrastructure to effectively meet the service delivery needs of the city and so we are committed as a department both to fiscal stewardship, but also to supporting non profit partners to be able to deliver services effectively and i think that's what you are seeing in this ongoing relationship with united council. >> sure, but you know-just going through all the slides from the controller as well as your department, what i personally and as just in observation that i actually think ultimately it is back to the city department itself, the ability to actually identify whether the services is being delivered and because you actually came up finally the metric to measure suck cess and in my opinion in this case is because of the coordinated

entry system you finally identified who is getting housing and important service and track the individuals receiving the service, therefore now you actually understand, these are the individuals that getting services and in this case housing assignment without going through the coordinated entry system and that-i say i appreciate director (indiscernible) and her team and just understand that how critical the work that your team has been putting into develop the coordinated entry system and i love to see-to be successful in the coming months and help us to say, understand services provided to these individuals and tracking them and tracking these individuals and progress. i think i am frustrated, i have to be very honest that i'm frustrated seeing that this time and time again

since 2016 it is-because it is not just about the integrity the services provide and process but most importantly the people that deserve the support, and really getting services that we as a city intend. we spent all these dollars staffing, resources, and we want to reach the people that we want to help. so, i think that's where my frustration is that you know, that is the problem with what we are seeing the money we are spending. it doesn't seem we are delivering the results that we need and deserve, so those are my frustrations. i think the last question though is that, now that-clearly some of the audit recommendations no longer apply because uc contract completely-just not doing business with united council. what you are doing is now that you are

expecting felten institute to deliver the services. how did you make that decision and-i know it is-you have to figure out delivery of those services all over again in some way, but how is that you just decided that it is felten institute? i get they are the fiscal sponsor, but again, just instead of figuring out are there other agencies or organization that can do this better just as well instead of just default to felten institute? >> so, supervisor, again, felten institute-the department already had the grant agreements with felten institute when they became the fiscal sponsor and so when we cut off funding united council the natural course of action is remove united council as a subcontractor because felten was

already delivering the service with its employees and doing a very competent job with that. i think it might also be reassuring to you to understand that two of the programs that are being operated by felten are actually in the wind down phase, (indiscernible) jennings street will be closing june 30 this year and site f by end of the callan endar year. the two federally funded hud grants also have to be renewed annually and so there will be a reprocurement of those services in the late summer, early fall, and felten wishes to continue as the provider of the services they need to reapply through a competitive process later this summer. so, not sure if that answers your question. >> it does because it goes back to the jam this body at full board have to like

sort out for positive resource center and baker place and again, in that space was we have all these people that in need of the service and we only have 6 months of ramp down time to figure out how to place these individuals or continue to provide the service. in the event it seems like we kind of lucked out that felten institute actually has capacity at the moment, because you wouldn't need a subcontractor if you already have the capacity. i'm walking back that logic a little too. okay, so the services we are providing, we wouldn't need a subcontractor if fulton can actually just service it, provide all these services on its own. we lucked out the fact it does have the capacity to help us transition when we can just completely stop contracting with

united council and so the question that back to both city departments but also probably the controller, overall, how do we in these situation when we identify our subcontractors even our contractors, red flag status, no longer capable to provide services, what are there recourse and i think that is something for all of us to think about in terms of contracting process and in terms of when we do provide services like how fluid and adaptive can we really be because ultimately again, the goal is to provide the service, because that is our responsibility and in terms of dealing with contractors. what are the ways that we could in a way it is like, be able to be prepared ourselves much in advance and is there a way to actually through the auditing process that we can actually identify these

problems much earlier in advance so we are not in the 6 months or less then a year or just few month situation where we now have numbers of individuals that we have to make sure we take care of? thank you. sorry. thank you so much for your indulgence chair. >> thank you supervisor chan. i had a couple questions for hsh. i'm curious why hsh requested the audit in april 2022? were there complaints from residents? was there a whistle blower? what transpired that lead you at that time to request the audit? >> thank you supervisor preston. it was really due to some red flags we were seeing around the ability to adhere to fiscal compliance requirements of the city, so we were both hearing from the

fiscal sponsor at the time, bayview hunter point foundation and observing ourselves that things were not as they should be. for example, we were not receiving adequate documentation to support invoices that were submitted to the department to pay. we were seeing improper cost allocation across the different grants, and the fiscal sponsor was coming to the department to say they were struggling to get adequate documentation and adherence to policy from united council. so, it was a bit of earlier warning of what you are talking about supervisor chan. we thought this sounds concerning, this sounds similar to issues raised in the 2017 audit so requested the controller's office to come in. >> thank you. mr. delarosa tell me if you can answer this. whistle blower complaints that lead to any of this

activity? i know there are limits to what you and can't say but curious if you can confirm- >> that is correct supervisor preston. as you know, one thing we hold seriously in the whistle blower program is confidentiality of the complaints, especially any details on it, but we do report out on the general themes that we investigate as part of the whistle blowing program and quarterly and annual reports. >> got it. the number of complaints you report in the report but can't confirm or deny if there is whistle blower activity on a contract? and correct. >> thank you. while you are up, does uchs have contracts with other departments as well? i know there is reference to original contracts. we talked about the contract

about the contracts with hsh but curious if there are contracts with other departments and if so have those been audited? >> from our understanding uchs had no other contracts with the city. >> thank you. there was reference to the may 2 update. i don't think that's been provided-provided from hsh to the controller, so the controller's office has that now. i don't think the committee has been provided with that. can you tell us what the status of that is when it will be shared with the committee and if you are at liberty to share you or hsh at liberty to share any findings there. >> as of three weeks ago we started our process to follow up on all the recommendations so this was a city wide effort which included the audit. we are still in the process of reviewing the responses from homelessness as well

as other departments as part of the follow-up process and we will be doing reviews in the weeks and issuing a public report on the status of recommendation frz all of those audits we followed up on beginning of next fiscal year so by july, august. >> is there a reason we don't have that as the h is hsh report submitted to you? is that confidential report or a reason that isn't committed -printed presented to the committee? >> my impression and haven't yet reviewed thoroughly the responses from hsht is consistent with what was reported in their slides, but i may be mistaken. i differ to the department on that. >> mrs. simmons do you want to follow up? if it is provided to the controller and we are holding this hearing, is there

any reason that hasn't been provided? >> yes, we did submit that to the controller office two days ago. the substance of the update is similar to what i presented in the slides today but see no reason why we can't provide you with the source document. >> thank you. i don't know if this is for hsh or controller or both. are you able to determine the impact on service and financially-we talked extensively and dont want to minimize compliance issues that are serious and severe and we talked about those. those don't always translate into a failure to deliver services, right? there are non profits that violate all kinds of compliance requirements but out there in the community doing the work they say they are

doing. i'm curious if there is any effort to quantify the impact on services or the cumulative financial impact to the city of all of the issues that have been flagged in the audit and the follow-up. >> from our audit perspective, that wasn't part of our audit that we issued in november. >> has hsh tried to determine that? >> we haven't quantified them in the way you are describing. we have monitored recently the sites, and you are right, generally speaking i would say the programs are meeting their service delivery expectations. an ecdotally we heard quite vocally from the our city our

home committee, coalition of homeless #234ss they are opposed to the closure of site f because they believe that is a site that delivered excellent services that have been well received by the people receiving service, but we haven't done quantifyable analysis we can share with you. >> right. thank you. you mentioned site f, i want to also note our colleague president walton introduced a resolution at the last board meeting earlier this week to try to prevent that closure that you announced earler so hopefully there will be discussion on that. i do think it is significant especially when you look at the potential investment of further time and resources and capacity building, technical assistance for a non profit if the problems were primarily compliance issues, versus not delivering the services. i would hope and think

that would impact the appetite for doing the additional capacity building and technical support and so forth. some effort to-i realize this spans a number of years and not a simple task, but i do think some effort to look at whether most or what percent of the service delivery under the contract was actually achieved and i don't know the answer to that, but it sounds like you may have a anecdotal sense, but i think if there is a way to try to get more clarity, i think that would be helpful. >> absolutely agree. thank you supervisor. >> thanks. last question i had is just around-i had the same reaction that supervisor chan did around just the experience of the prc situation and just certainly notable that felten

is again turned to and or stepping up to deal with a situation that is prettycould be pretty devastating in terms of loss of services. i'm curious how that happens? the selection process. and just whether vice chair stefani asked whether all is a rfp process. sounds like in this situation there isn't, but is this for hsh, is this just a situation where there is only one provider that can absorb this work, or do you put the word out to everyone and say hey, here is a situation we have and we need a non profit to initially be fiscal sponsor and to take these over? for contracts of this size, if there is not going to be an rfp process because some

are existing-you are not asking for additional money from the board, that is how a lot of that came to light at the board, but i'm curious since there isn't a rfp process, can you shed light on just how does that happen? does felten volunteer for that? is the word put out to all providers or only one group in town from your judgment that could do it? can you shed light on that? >> i really want to emphasize first i think this is a little unique situation with regard to felten and united council. the department typically process is that when we are procuring a new service or program, we do a process for that. we put an rfp or rfq or solicitation of interest, publicly noticed, providers all over the city and responds and apply for the funding and we evaluate the responses according to the procurement response,

the budget submitted and so forth so that is our typical process . in this instance the first decision was around what organization was well suited and willing to step in the fiscal sponsor role for united council, and so again, that was not a procurement, it was really more of a discussion process with a few other organizations to find one that was willing and able to take on the fiscal sponsor role and that was felten. once felten is in the fiscal sponsor role that dictated the second decision as a department to transition these agreements wholesale to felten when we could no longer fund united council as a subcontractor. so, you're correct, it did not go through the board because these agreements were not over $10 million. it did not go through the homeless oversight commission but these things would in the future. the commission is meeting

for the first time today. we did have authority to enter into that agreement with felten. as you know in 2019 i believe the board of supervisors approved emergency ordinance 6119 which relaxed the contracting requirements that hsh has to adhere to. we are not required to go through the regular competitive process before entering into contractual agreements under that board ordinance. >> so, i guess i'm trying to get-it started as fiscal sponsorship then transitioned to them taking over the contracts, but what i still-and i'm not saying this needed a rfp process. (indiscernible) but i still-what i haven't heard, when you are in an emergency situation of this type, do you put out

the word to a range of non profits, here is the need-whether you do a formal competitive process or not, do you put out the word and say this is the amount of contracts, these are services provided, we need a fiscal sponsor, or we need to transition, or do you just in-house decide here's a non profit we have a relationship with, or here is the only non profit we think can do this? i think i'm still asking if you can shed light on just the process because these are pretty big contracts not going through competitive process and bless them if felten is stepping up to deal with two very situations. the brt situation and this situation, so it is not a comment one way or the other on felten, but i'm trying to get with no review by oversight board, no review by the board of supervisors, we

are here in the hearing, can you tell us how you pick and do you put it out to others in this unusual situation? >> again, supervisor, 99.9 percent of the time we do public process. we post the notice that funding is available, we accept applications and we evaluate them. in this particular instance because the fiscal sponsorship relationship between bayview hunter point foundation and united council was on very precarious footing, we were under pressure to move quickly to identify a new fiscal sponsor in order to preserve continuity of service in community which was the primary concern. in this case it was a different process that was really seeing who was available and who had the adequate capacity to assume this role and who united council could work with effectively as a fiscal sponsor so it was a more informal

inquiry process and series of conversations we had with other providers before we selected felten. >> thank you. if no other comments or questions let open the item up for public comment. >> any members of the public who would like to comment on item number 4? please line up along the curtain wall to your right. for remote members, press star 3 to be added to the speaker queue. those on hold, please continue to wait until the system indicates you are been unmuted. you may approach the podium. >> we have deputy director of hsh--person like that says i don't see a future relationship with this contractor with the city anymore. it is about power. this is a agency. h sh individual director says i don't see a future with this

company contracting for the city anymore. it is about power. they have the controller here. they have all the lawyers here, the city employees and tell you that. united council has been giving services to the city. has been providing services to residents. does united council have a say? is anybody going to listen to united council? can it assert its privacy? being able to administer service, can it assert privacy. if a company is like a child, united council is a like a child. it is a entity, so doesn't hsh have a right to privacy? is that child ever going to grow up to become a adult and come here and say anything about it? does the

agency ever go toog have a say? no, no. so, there are people in charge of this, it is not in this room. there are people who see me and know i'm here and saying a lot of things about united council and why? why are you doing this? why are you doing this? comes down to why. that is what we all want to know. this is a big big-it is like a crime to me, right? it is like a crime. anybody else want to say anybody about it? is there press? anybody here or reporter? >> thank you for your comments. any other members of the public that would like to speak to the item in the chamber? seeing no additional speakers in the chamber, one listener with zero in the speaking queue. >> thank you public comment is now closed. vice chair stefani, thank you for calling this hearing and let's

turn it back over to you for closing remarks and are to let us know how you want to proceed. >> thank you chair preston. i want to thank everyone for coming and presenting and colleagues for your incredible questions. i think we are all on the same page here, especially with regard to how contracts get turned over and when things like this happen. i want to reiterate working with and building up people in the community and working with non profits that have deep community ties and that are providing culturally competent care. i think that is a very important and really on us as a city to work with them when we are contracting with them to make sure that they are doing a good job and intervening in a way and monitoring contracts in a way that is helping them deliver the services we want them to deliver. i do remain concerned that concerns were raised back in 2009 and 2017 and here we are in 2023 at this hearing rightfully raising our concerns about these

issues. ime i'll continue to work on legislation how stoobelter monitor the non profit contracts and look forward to providing that copy of the legislation soon and for now i think we'll file the hearing so i make the motion to file the hearing. >> thank you. on that motion madam clerk, please call the roll. >> vice chair stefani, aye. member chan, aye. chair preston, aye. three ayes. >> thank you, the motion passes. any further business before the committee? >> there is no further business before the committee. >> we are adjourn ed. thank you. [meeting adjourned] ryr

seats so wes so wes so wes so wy name is davids davids da chu. ir to be the firste firste firste n city attorneyttorneyttorney in d county of san francisco.anciscoa you, madam mayoram mayoram andal of the city and county county c francisco, welcome welcome welce officialofficialofficialofficiai heritage month. month. month. mt our cityour city we we we we we, the cultural, the social socialr of the asianhe asianhe asianhe y

in our country country country,t just just just just because of our historyhistoryhe fact thatct thatct that asian is started here in our very city. it's not just because of the fact that we have the oldest chinatown in the united states, one of three japan towns in the united states, little saigon, the filipino cultural heritage district and so many communities that reflect the diaspora of r ap community it's because of all of you. all of you who represent this amazing diversity who are leading in so many ways, and i just want to thank you for that. we have so much to celebrate this year, and i'm not just talking about academy awards. i'm talking about the progress that we re making after very challenging. several years as we are bringing our community back after covid in the wake of anti asian hate, as we move things forward, and each of you again has been a part of that. i also want to say that san francisco this year