end of the agenda if speakers exceed 15 minutes of general public comment, members of the public who wish to speak at this time. may line up against the wall for this from the door. if in the chamber if you were calling in, please dial 41565500

. and use that meeting number excess code of 2484133. 2721. pound pound and then press start three. okay? and it appears we do not have any members of the publican person who wants to speak on in under general public comment. sf gov t v. do we have any callers and they are indicating we do not have any callers that have expressed interest in speaking on this, so we don't have public general public comment. that concludes public comment. please call the next item item two is communications and the director's report. communications include the restricted communications report of contracts out, but for a bit forbid, but have not been awarded yet. and the hmm. the

communications also include the commission's advanced calendar and a memo reporting the operations division. contracts that have have been or likely will be considered by the public works commission. interim director carla short is here to present her report. this is an informational item. good morning commissioners. carla short, interim director. public works just a few items to bring to your attention today. the first is chapter 12 x repeal, so you may be pleased to hear that the board of supervisors has voted to repeal chapter 12 x of the city's administrative code. for some background 12 x forbids the city from doing businesses doing business with companies headquartered in states that have enacted anti lgbt q laws, restricted abortion or curtailed voting access. san francisco employees are also barred from traveling to those states on city business. san francisco policy effectively made 30

states off limits. 12 x was initially adopted in 2016 and expanded over the years, and it's a tool really of pop pocketbook politics by using boycotts to try to compel change , 12 x aim to compel states to rescind their restrictive laws by withholding san francisco business. the value based tactic didn't work and instead ended up costing public works and other city departments money by limiting competition. a report commissioned by the city administrator found that 12 x increases contracting costs by as much as 20% annually and that's a significant financial hit. the first phase of repeal involves construction contracts for public works and other chapter six departments and that took effect on april 28th. the full repeal, which will lift the purchasing and travel bans is set to go into effect in early june. because of the contracting component, 12 x has a larger impact on public works. overall however, the operations division should see the positive impacts of the repeal because of the procurement component involving

materials and supplies. we are hopeful that these legislative changes will lead to more competitive bidding environment and lead to lower project costs. next up a p i heritage month we kicked off aapi heritage month on may 1st to celebrate the diverse group of cultures, countries and people of the asian american pacific islander community. the theme strengthening the fabric of our community. like our other heritage month celebrations, the api month events are organized by a staff committee. this past tuesday, they hosted a zoom session to hear from the curator of two arts festivals, camp fest and the united states of asian american festival. to learn about the offerings of music, food, film and art. there's a lot more on tap throughout the month, including daily emails, spotlighting notable individuals in the aapi community. we had an interactive trivia game last week, a zoom session api folklore and another on the

chinatown alleys through the public works. lens will cap the festivities with an employee potluck celebration. the aapi heritage month. organizers really have planned a great lineup. we're proud. i'm very proud of public works to host a variety of heritage months that celebrate the black latin x l g b t q and a api communities. the api organizing committee nailed it with their description of the importance of the events. quote by sharing with and learning from one from each other. we build integral bonds, which strengthen our community and our collective voice. that is a powerful message and one that can benefit all of us. as chairman, ghanem noted this past saturday, we hosted our monthly neighborhood beautification day in the hate and western edition neighborhoods and enthusiastic group of volunteers working alongside our bureau of urban forestry and street and environmental services. crews planted trees and medians, painted out graffiti and

freshened up the campus of the john muir elementary school where we kicked off the day's festivities. thank you, chairman ghanem for joining us and we are . you are always welcome to speak at these events. we were able to accomplish a lot of great improvements and continue to nurture our community partnerships. next month neighborhood beautification day will take place in potrero hill and bayview hunters point the event will be on saturday, june 10th starting at nine a.m. we'll meet at star king elementary school, which is located at 11 06 wisconsin street before we head out to the worksites. i hope you can join us. lombard street irrigation project tomorrow will be joining supervisor aaron peskin, the san francisco public utilities commission and russian hill neighbors at a press event to mark completion of a new drip irrigation system on the crooked stretch of lombard street. we expect the upgrade will save about 42,000 gallons a month in water usage and really helped

keep the beautiful flowering landscaping that borders the road thriving. the antiquated spray irrigation system we replaced had been using about 600,000 gallons of water a year and wasn't efficient because some of the water evaporates before it got to the plants. the new drip irrigation system, which was laid out by buff gardening crews in a grid design will bring the water directly to the base of the plants. the new system will also be less prone to breaks and leaks. the $126,000 project is funded jointly by public works and the san francisco public utilities commission. supervisor paschen helped secure the money. located on the 1000 block of lombard street between hide and leavenworth streets. the crooked street is a beloved san francisco landmark, both quirky and stunning. our bureau of urban forestry landscaping team, which designed and installed the new watering system takes great pride in this improvement project to keep the 10,000 square feet of landscaping on lombard, healthy and looking good. as secretary fuller

mentioned public works week is coming up. we start the celebration on may 21st i did want to highlight for you. one of the events is an open house at the operations yard and will be hosting that on wednesday, may 24th we've invited school groups to check out the work we do and participate in some hands on activities with our carpenters, sheet metal workers , arborists and gardeners, among others. this is also a bring your kids to work opportunity for our employees past years are any indication the day should be a lot of fun. so i also wanted to congratulate your chairman, um, on your daughter's graduation. last up the montoya awards. so commissioners you recently passed a resolution to restart the montoya awards, an annual event to recognize the outstanding work and leadership of individual local to 61 members who work at public works as well as um, being broadened to include other unionized trade workers that operations um we

now have a tentative date of july 19th for this year's awards luncheon, so we will keep you posted and we'll be sending out a save the date. ah, notification shortly. and that's it for today's report. i'm happy to take any questions. thank you . director commissioners. any questions? lovely event grad. glad to see that we're opening up our to our other vendors and other states that 20% hit. i mean, i get the concept of the message, but for us to take a financial hit like that, maybe we can save part of that 20% of savings to do more outreach to let people know what san francisco is all about, maybe influenced them and to be a little bit more inclusive and open minded but enough said about that, um, mr fuller. public comment. members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item to

the director's report, and communications may wind up against the wall for this from the door if joining us in the chamber if you were calling in dial 415655. and use the meeting number access code of 2484133. to 7 to £1 pound and then press star three to raise your hand to speak. no members of the public and have joined us in person to speak on this item as i've got tv do we have any collars who have expressed interest in speaking on this item? and they are indicating we do not. so that concludes public comment. thank you, um, any further discussion from the commissioners? hearing no further discussion. secretary fuller please call the next item. item three is the adoption of the minutes of the draft minutes from the april 17th 2023

meeting of this commission. please note that a number of corrections for clarity have been made to items two and four. um and this is an action item and i'm happy to take any uh, corrections or questions on the minutes. any further. corrections. comments questions from the commission. do i hear a motion to adopt the april 17th minutes? moved. years. given the motion. we will now hear public comment. secretary fuller please open public comment. members of the public who wished to make three minutes of comment on the adoption of the april 17th 2023 draft minutes may wind up against the wall for this from the door. if in the chamber if you're calling in dial 41565500 . and use the meeting access code of 2484133. to 7 to £1

pound and then press star three to raise your hand to speak. and we do not have in person commenters who have come forward , and it appears we do have one member of the public in the queue who would like to speak on this item? sf gov t v, please a knute the collar and color. you'll have three minutes to speak, and i'll provide you with a 32nd notice when your time is about to expire. good morning, david pill, pell. i assume you can hear me. i shared a number of non excellent. i shared a number of non substantive edits with the secretary fuller the other day, which i hope will be incorporated. and that's all in this. thanks for listening. thank you, caller. and that was our only color in the queue on this item. so that concludes

public comment any further debate on this motion? hearing no further debate, all in favor of adopting the minutes of april . 17th 2023 say i. the motion passes secretary fuller. i believe your mule record this yes, i will post the adapted minutes to the website. thank you and call the next item. okay item four is the central operations performance measure report, assistant director of operations starling from and assistant manager warren hill will present this report. this is an informational item. and, uh, just for the presenters knowledge. we were having a little trouble with the feed from the laptop, so i may have to run the slides for you. so. and bob. my monitor isn't

working, but that's okay. i can use the screen. don't don't delay. don't hold up on my account. i know. yeah, exactly. that's my head. my hair, okay? you shouldn't do that on okay? i'll just move the slides for you. thank you. good morning. i'm darlene from assisting deputy director for operations. oh, great. warren hill, assistant manager, central operations. some of the data i'm gonna be

presenting today is our workforce development programs as a whole and our outreach and enforcement, um, section as well. um, what you'll see in front of you is our current data and okay? is this better? there we go. all right. so what you're looking at now is our current data as far as enrollees for our 99 16 public service training program in which we currently have 83 individuals involved. i'm sorry, enrolled and employed . um next is our 75. oh, one general labor apprenticeship program. we currently have 12 active 75. oh, one general labor employees that's going to be a 3000 to 4000 our program just currently 3000 hours and we have , um, paperwork currently with dust, the department of industry relations and apprenticeship standards to alter those hours to 4000 training hours for the

completion of the program. we have 12 individuals currently involved. i'm sorry. enrolled we started with 13 but lost one to full time employment to sfo. so we lost him on a positive note, and then we have one plumber's apprentice currently enrolled, and they are scheduled to turn out to their journey level. um, role within the next 3 to 6 months. some historical data that we're looking at here. it may seem a bit confusing, and i'll explain that along the way . what we first take a look at is our 75. oh one program and what that looks at is the total number of individuals who have been involved in the program to date. um as of right now, that is 321. um what we're also looking at is 165 individuals who are currently employed in city classification. so what's that means is that we would have liked to have seen all 321 individuals complete the 75 or

one program and then go on to 75 14, the general labor classification or another employment classification here in the city, and that actually happened with 165 individuals. so of the graduates, some did go on to 75 14 employment and we did run a wage data. throughout the city, so we're able to see 165 individuals were currently enrolled, rather employed in other city classifications here on the with the city. um next will be our 30 14. this is where you start to see the discrepancy where we had 24 individuals complete the program. but we had 50. i'm sorry, was that 33 individuals enrolled or rather employed in separate city classification. so what that means is that individuals who started 30 14 program may not have finished and became journey level guard. honors. but they did go on to other employment classifications here with the city. next is all were 34 34. oh, nine, which is our arborists program. we had two individuals finish one individuals currently

, um, still enrolled at sorry. employed as a city employee. the next is our 73 98 73 99. that's our submit masons. we had five individuals complete. the actual program for went on to city employment, and one did indeed go onto private sector employment. um b at the time of their graduation. the next would be our stationary engineers. so that would be are you can, i guess, statistically, our most successful where we, um you know , had four complete and for those four individuals did actually go on to permanent civil service as stationary engineers. when we look at all were street inspector trainees, so that was a 12 person pilot program 11 of those individuals did actually complete ah, but they want individual who did not complete also went on to a separate city classification. so we have all 12. those individuals who are actively employed with the city, and then our last would just be our our plumbers, ones, which i just

covered, so we've had one individual complete and that individual is still employed with the city. um he just completed his. he turned out in february. so he's a journey level. he will be a recognized journey level plumber once we figure that paperwork out. the next thing we're looking at is are performative data evaluated ? metrics for our, um, our community engagement team. so what that actually entails? that's our one team, which is our outreach and enforcement and community engagement team, which helped put on the neighborhood vacation day event this past weekend. uh what we're looking at is we've had from february 2023 to april 2023. we've had three neighborhood beautification events, 35 greening days and 155 community cleanups. um not bad over three month time frame if you ask me, but we're also looking at debris that was has been collected so

total. we've had 3750 bags of debris. collected from these actual events. um. breaking down this individual data. i'm not gonna be able to do that for you. unfortunately the individual supposed to present is unfortunately out, but i just want you to see that as far as what that breaks down to. we have 197 compost bags that have been um, collected and 3500 and 53 bags of trash. total engagement events as far as we've provided 325 tools to community, various community events. 108 of those have been a different organizations, 97 have been to new adaptive street members and 35 have been for new graffiti watch. um, the initiatives. go for it. hello

everyone. apologies for the late arrival, but it looks like you've gotten here right in the thick of my team's contribution to the department. i'm ramses alvarez. i'm the acting community engagement manager. um the numbers speak for themselves . know that warren i walked in while he was kind of going over them. the slide that we're looking at now is our performance for the various things that we offer. so when i say things what i mean, is clean up events that we offer the volunteers. um those can kind of be the traditional litter pick that you might have seen before. they can also be greening events . so we have a program the street parks program where folks can stewart a public asset under public works domain, and they essentially show it more love than our department. can. they are the ones that, um, provide all the weeding the mulching plant things on it. they make it more attractive space. for the

general public to kind of take advantage of. so over the last three months, we've had 36 of those greening days across our street park programs. we've had 155 litter pick programs or litter pick days and we've hosted three neighborhood beautification days and some of you have seen in our neighborhood beautification day. they are big super bowl event of volunteer in its ah once a month. january to november. we go out to each individual district in the city, and we host anywhere from 10 to 20 volunteer work scopes on that day and again, they're really just an amalgamation of what we do. there are various litter pickups, graffiti wipeouts and, um, greening events across that district on the day that we're hosting. in terms of trash for if you combine all of the events that we put together, um in terms of pounds, i believe it's

3533. my eyes aren't what they used to be, but about £3500 of trash that we pick up and about £197 of organic material that we've picked up and thrown away from these events. um in terms of the total supplies provided little context. here. we have various volunteer programs. um adopt a street is one of them. it's folks come to us, and we give them things to pick up trash along the right of way. so we're giving out pickers were giving out bags and then we provide the hauling service. um, for the things that they collect. so for the total supplies we've provided these members. it's 325 service

requests so 325 different orders . we've worked with 108 organizations and in terms of adopting street members, it's 97 folks we've served. and graffiti watch members. it's 35. so this is what we have coming up in the pipeline. we just got had a great neighborhood beautification day event in district five. and for the rest of the year from june to november will be at these respective districts. so we invite you all to come out and join us for those events. um and if you wanted to check out what we're doing in between, then, um we have various ways online that you can check out our calendar and look at what we have coming up. for me. is the presentation.

thank you. could i just take a comment on the apprentice program is just in. you hear a lot of heartburn. i guess these days about how hard it is to find people to do jobs, especially blue collar jobs. so just, um congratulations on getting that many people. i think it was 83. general labor apprentices, even if you don't hire them all that's that's remarkable. so thank you, 83 of our public service trainees. so those individuals who help with our corridors who since jvs group over there will still get into a little later on, but those individuals are out on the streets actually, boots on the ground hands feet in the dirt, cleaning the streets and keep the city clean. right. and yeah, thanks for correcting it. just it's a big number. so, um,

congratulations. you for? that fine report knows that's good news with the hires and the apprenticeship programs and all. i don't know if this is appropriate time for this, but i think that you can carry a great big thank you from me in particular, and i'm sure the rest of the commissioners for the worker workers and did that fine work on they would left your dual bridge. i mean, that was just great. think they should get a hearty handshake. for that. it was good work, so thank you. um, yeah, thank you for the presentation. that's all the average of 20 people attending. boy. i must have turned all the big ones because whenever i'm there it's a lot more than that. so hats off to you on that. feeling watch member. could you elaborate on that a little bit? sure so the graffiti watch program is very

similar to our adopted street program. the nuts and bolts are very similar. we provide people supplies to obey graffiti, or, um, clean up litter along the public right of way. so we would give you kind of are basic colors that we have. one of the common ones is one that we refer to as san francisco green. it's a dark green that's painted all around the city. um if you see graffiti on public furniture, trash can retaining wall that's maybe an asset of the city. we will give you the supplies to paint over it. really what it caters to is the folks that go beyond the 311 warriors who allow us to do a better job of kind of serving the city and it takes it one step further. not only are you letting us know where these kind of problem areas are you're doing something about it as a volunteer as well . so we try to essentially provide these people the easiest avenue to just kind of receive what we have for them in terms

of resources to do something about you know something in this case graffiti that they want to see, corrected or abated in an expedited way. basically volunteers and painting city properties. the utility box like you said san francisco green and that other beige color that is so popular, correct, excellent. and we only have 35 members volunteers throughout the city. we have 35 new members over the last three months in total, we have a few 100. i could provide the commissioner. total number if you'd like, i don't know what offhand, but it's a few 100. you know, like i said, we're all noon. we're all developing these reports for these commissions. anytime you can do that. i love contextual information like that , like we have 35 new members. we've historically had so many over the years and currently we have this many always helpful to contextualized it because that would be my next question with regards to the apprenticeship

program. are we closing the gap? because that's really is a commission. what we want to know what we want to support our vacancies closing, or are we losing one gaining one? you know? how are we doing with regards to that if we can include that in the next report. to see. you know, i like a holistic picture because sometimes you get siloed information and looks great, but i really want to know. are we closing the gap? are we getting more people? what do we need to do to get more people? it just helpful for us, the public and everyone else involved to be cognitive of that. other than that. great report. thank you. all right. thank you. um. where was i? i let's see no further discussion. secretary fuller. public comment. members of the public wish to make three minutes of comment on item for the performance measure. report for central operations may line up against the wall for this from the door. if in the chamber

if you're calling in dial 4156550. news the meeting number excess code of 2484. 133 to 7 to £1 pound and then prester three to be recognized. ah! and. working in the chamber. we do not have any members of the public who have expressed interest in speaking on this item. sf as i've got tv. do we have any callers who have raised their hand to speak on this? and looking in the queue appears we do not. so thank you. that concludes public comment. thank you, uh hearing the further discussion from the commissioner's secretary fuller, please call the next item. item five is the street environmental services performance measure. report. and assistant

superintendent of this bureau, jonathan ving will present it and jonathan just to let you know that similar to the last report. i'll run the slides for it. so you don't have to worry about it. but just give me an indication when you need the next slide, so i'll bring that up. good morning commissioner director jonathan vang filling in for chris montgomery mcdaniel for scs. we're going to slide. there we go. what you looking. here is a comparison of the service order received from fiscal year 2023. it's currently projected to be over 150,000 monthly reach for this year's so it's about 1200. previously had monthly average of 14,800. this

can be lowered to s. so was order volume two july august as well as during the winter months of this fiscal year. well this is not much of a last fiscal year record. breaking that soul volume. this amount as i was indicating new normal for us. meanwhile the response rate is at 80. it is a 2. decreased since the last fiscal year. next slide. so this ah. the little patrol. so comparing to, uh steamers and package truck encampment over 70% 76% are street cleaning little bit all related. ah 20% or steamer. and the packer is about 2% and the cabinet. 2% just want to make a note that the low percentage of

the encampment it does take a longer time to clean even though you see the small percentage down there. maybe i could just also chime in. so when the requests for encampments come in , they typically get routed to the healthy streets operations center, which is our multi agency services first group that goes out and does a lot of engagement with encampments, and the goal is to ultimately get people into services. but we then do the cleaning part of that. the cleaning portion of that, you know, after they've done all that of it all that engagement, so the ones that come to us directly are cases where there's just a request to clean around that area. um but i did want to emphasize that most of those requests will first get routed to that multi agency h sok healthy streets, operations center. thank you. and that's provided that the people do vacate or do they just clean around them? if they don't we will. we will do our best to clean. um and i think working

with h sok, we often have people who are willing to move to allow us to clean even if they do not leave that area, but the goal is to first go in with those, um those resources before we clean thank you. thank you. next slide. this is a different shape from different years. r s l a is about south 95% of 75% were trying to keep it there. uh, the monthly for this year is about 12,800. where the previous fiscal year monthly was 14. and it's kind of explain the packer the encampment. um, i believe the last follow up. we was supposed to break down the tonnage information for the street cleaning. unfortunately we don't have that during this time, we will add that on the next follow up. and sorry just

to jump in one more time. so when you see the person the percentages or the response time our service level agreement is we try to get to all requests within 48 hours, so that percentage is the number that we got to within the 48 hours. we do eventually get hopefully, we get to everything so it's not that we never got there. i just wanted to emphasize that thank you next. are in no question would move up to graffiti. cleaning. so uh, this is a comparison for the public graffiti when we talk about public afridi as uh, rams was mentioned earlier. we graffiti watch program and all we do have a crew that abating public graffiti as far as signal box utility poles and public structures that's on the public right away. it's a comparison of the yearly uh, as you can see,

we do have the increase. um. as we projected. it's gonna be a digital 12,000 over fiscal 2023 . but our abatement rate on the s l. a. we did improve to about close to 20% this year. 20. this is a comparison on the public graffiti. also just, uh, service order respond way within the 48 hours again. it showed that we did increase to 48% from last case of last month. and this is the goal. 48 hours was the goal 72. some 48 hours. 40. okay. thank you. maybe for a little bit of context. um i think you'll see that we had a big climb in fiscal year 2021, which

of course, encompassed a lot of the covid pandemic. many of our graffiti, um, staff members were redeployed during the pandemic to backfill emergency. um other roles so that we saw a big increase in kind of the backlog that we had to address and then we also had a new program launched this year with the, um private graffiti opt in program and to get that started quickly . we actually diverted some of the public graffiti resources to help make sure that program got up and running quickly, so now that we're almost fully staffed up on that we should be able to see and as we're seeing, we're seeing the improvement in our response time for public graffiti requests as well. but there were a couple of factors that i think contributed to this increase in response time, as well as the backlog. alright i want to note also that graffiti

private we do have about 43 case that's going to the border supervisor hearing for blight. okay. bateman fee. these cases are from 2019. after that, there was kind of pandemic shut down. there was no hearing or anything like that. so these are okay. and the hearings actually scheduled for tomorrow. hmm. alright uh, private property again. service order for crime property is currently projected to be over 22,000. for this fiscal year, 2023 this would be about 71% increase or no service order compared to our fiscal year, 2022. response rate is not being shown to the part of the policy changes during the pandemic. part of the opt in program as director said, we're working on that stats to provide more detail. um, to report in out in the response of futures.

this statistic comparison to the private between the private and public graffiti. uh stats. basically are this fiscal year? we're pretty much even now as far as how many private public in comparison on that. uh until 2020 so it was order were almost evenly split between the completely private and public. and graffiti private, largely. early in the pandemic, especially since 2021. about 70% of servers or on public property. but due to the growing number of service order, public property and civil order for private we're seeing symbols or are becoming more evenly split again. the graffiti. we expect the lower volume of public graffiti this year. um again. we

talked about the opt in program. uh, right now. we're proud we have about 413. probably that's opt in. and, uh, sign the paper for us to abate. seven of these probably had been abated and the number is probably higher now, as we most property, we obeyed more than once. once we get the opt in approved. we're going to be constantly abating it as soon as the media pair. we don't need to wait for a new option to be signed. so that's going to be the number is going to be a little higher than what you see here. so this data is based on the actual properties and once the property gets recorded doesn't add to the count anymore . yes we're working on that try to add since sometimes there's a certain property the mission, etcetera. we obeyed like 56 times within a month, so we need to add that on there to see is abated. that's typical of graffiti to you. the first time you abated, they come back and

then after a while they give up and that's that's our goal. that's the to abate as soon as we see it. thank you. anything else? uh any questions regarding street cleaning off graffiti move on to the little receptacle. this is a receptacle that just showing the charge. that's being moved and install. ah well, kind of even out from 2020 to 2023. then stall rate 386 to remove is 4 41. we move as mostly our regular standard concrete can. that's pretty much kinda faded away. ah we're kind of out of does so anytime we replace already is an accident hit it. we have to replace with our regular standard metal. can uh, the installation also, we're working with cbd group to replace some of the big belly and vice versa. with our standard city camp. and there's

another data to shown by monthly. what are rate is april. uh we remove less will stall more as 54. are probably the biggest one we have is probably the downtown area during during the construction projects. that's include my presentation. any questions. for thank you, um , commissioner's questions. no commissioner stephen yes. sorry um, two questions. i guess so the first would you mind jump into slide five again? i think more just generally a point of clarification and kind of all these numbers, are they how do i say this? if you know? three or

four of us c one incident of graffiti or syria. no and encampment or whatever, and we all call it in. does that count as three or four? like in these numbers, or do they sort of remove duplicates? i guess is that the way i would say we would remove the duplicate? okay okay, so these are like 39,000 individual different service orders in fy 21 there, so that's just a huge number. and then i guess the second question i had. i was kind of looking at the, um , both the graffiti one. and i'm sorry. it was actually a slide to like, kind of the all complaints wants it. i guess. as a non expert in this, i would kind of expect if you have a year where there's like a lot of calls you'd expect that to kind of translate across the different types of calls. i mean , not in all cases, but it seems like we sort and i don't you know, maybe you guys probably don't have an answer for this, but um do you kind of know why the all service orders really,

really went up by 22, for example, right? and then if you look on the graffiti one, it seems like they've been bigger. more recently. um and just do you guys have any any sense of that? i mean, i would expect less during the pandemic, of course. but other than that, just any any inset on because you know, your ability to respond is the numerator in time as numerator and a denominator and i just kind of interested in the this sort of absolute number of requests and why we're getting so many so many more. i should say that makes sense. yeah do we? we do it anticipate to be higher. um we were talking about the response rate. we have crude as service every you know , we're pretty much moving staff around too. ah abate or taking care of some service in different area so some of the number can be. it will be high. actually, i'm not sure i'm not. yeah i think the question is so much about the rape but just about the absolute number of

requests that we're getting. and do we know why they i mean they really they really spiked in fy 22 even if you compared to 19, which is pre covid at do you guys have any intending to that? i think in the past we, uh as a little bit show sometimes if the crew drive through omission street and they see a bag or something to brush up that usually does not get recorded. ah we we're trying now to at least document everything we do , so i think that some of the number that's going up um, i might just add and i think that's a great point. i think in the past we were tracking simply the public calls rather than all of the work that we do, and now we try to at least capture the work that we're doing, even if it's the proactive work. i also think that, um, one of the things we found during the pandemic is people were out walking around their neighborhoods and then might be more inclined to call things in then say if they're just driving by are going to work or whatever

. and so we did notice an increased generally which, at first didn't make sense to me because i thought, but there are fewer people out on the streets, but i think it was that i know, at least in my neighborhood. i get out and walk, you know, and that became a habit people formed. um so i think we've seen an increase in those types of calls as well. i think it's also a revitalized kind of engagement from the community where most people are apathetic, saying well, okay, no one's going to do anything. so why should i and everyone's been encouraged? you know, if you see something, say something, and that includes graffiti. yeah also when i had there's always a special in terms cisco we always involved with a lot of special events and planning. such biggest one right now is the mosconi center events. and of course, we have the terms of carnival parade coming up and the baby breaker. and that's what we have a lot of shifting crew around during nighttime swing shift and knowledge. for the questions.

thank you. thank you. mr fuller public comment. members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item five, the street and environmental services performance measure report may line up against the wall for this from the door if present in the chamber if you're calling in dial 4156550. and use the meeting access code of 2484. 133 2721. pound pound and then press star three to be recognized. and we do not have any members of the public who have approached to speak on this item. ah as i've come tv. do we have any colors in the queue who

have expressed interest in speaking. okay now appears we do not have any callers who have expressed interest in speaking on this item, so that concludes public comment. on that note, mr fuller call the next item, okay? item six is the racial equity action plan. update presenting is presenting this update is deputy director of policy and communications beth rubenstein and leadership and racial equity manager at operations guillermo perez jr. um and this is an informational item and just to let you all i was able to resolve the issues, so you have control over your own presentation now, so okay, so it looks like we have to close this and.

might be. that was the editorial . oh, sorry. okay, cool. great. good morning commissioners. i'm beth rubenstein. i'm the lead of the racial equity initiative and the deputy director of policy and communications, and i'm here with my colleague guillermo paris. good morning commissioners. and director um my name is caramel perez and i'm the leadership and racial equity manager at operations. here's

our mission for the racial equity initiative. as you can see, it's a two part mission that speaks and reflect to reflection and education, as well as making changes change to our policies and practices that you are interconnected. underline this work is the belief that positive organizational change can only happen with the combination of grassroots grassroots organizing and executive leadership. working towards racial equity can't rely on top down decision making if staff don't support the work, the workplace culture get stuck in all ways of doing things. on the other hand, it can't rely just on grassroots organizing as the department needs its leadership to approve and support policies and procedures. the initiative works to change hearts along change hearts and minds, along with policies and procedures. who's leading this work the racial, the working group is multiracial and multi gender and represents bureaus and job classes across our department and includes

expertise in project management , training and professional development. communication and design performance and data, street operations, finance and organizational change. except for beth and myself, each member does this work on the edge of their core responsibilities? as a reminder of our racial equity action plan. phase one was built on the quantitative and qualitative research the working group did in 2020. the action plan was written collaboratively collaboratively by the working group and then closely reviewed but with a six person executive team before being publicly released. phase one focuses on the workplace phase two, which is which is will be developed in late 2023 is outward facing and will address how the department delivers services. the research identified these five priorities. they are to create career pathways, which means

that every staff member needs to be supported in reaching their professional goals. also to rethink just we just disciplinary process, which means that processes need to be transparent, fair and equitable and that we need to focus on deescalating difficult situations. another is to empower our frontline workers, which means to which means that we listened to staff voices. that staff voices are valued and part of decision making and process improvement. also too broad and diversity of staff and all bureaus and at all levels, which means that recruitment needs to rely on broad proactive outreach of people of color and the hiring processes need to remove unnecessary by barriers. and it also to support and train managers to be the best leaders, which means that managers need the skills and support to support all team members and model equitable leadership. and

we are guided by these three values that impact every step of our process, which is to be transparent, be accountable and be inclusive. all action items fall within these five priorities as well as creating an organizational change of inclusion and belonging. here's here's a summary of our progress. i'm going to touch just a few of these topics. one is the racial equity action plan . we have received citywide accolades for racial equity action plan both for the final document, and the process used to create it. unlike many other departments, the process was collaborative and deeply relied on the voices of our staff. the 12 person working group did extensive researching by engaging 400 public works employees, which is about a quarter of our staff in conversations about racism and our workforce. we took the qualitative research and combined it with the demographic data about race, salary and job

class, as well as the results of the 2019 employee employee. experience survey. we then spent two months working closely with the executive team to review the research and recommendations, culminating in a 170 page document with an introductory letter from the 18 of us this collaborative process has made implementation easier in that a large group of our colleagues were already invested in the work. or action plan was one of the most comprehensive and research based in the city. last spring, we released inspecting our foundation, a reexamination of public works history through a racial equity lens that was researched and written in house . we launched a monthly discussion series based on inspecting our foundation, which has been a combination of outside speakers like a usf professor and public works staff. in march, a group of landscape architects presented

and discussed how they're bringing a racial equity lens to their work. and a group of architects from bdc is presenting inspecting our foundation at the nationals. a conference in june that happens to be in san francisco this year . staff has also presented at the construction management association of america conferences about racial equity work. the office of racial equity has commended us for this work and other agencies have looked looked to us as a model. in 2022. we launched our second all staff survey and had 79% participation. this is extraordinary in a department or size and with about half of our staff working out in the field, the survey is key to our racial equity action plan. the goals of the survey are to hear voices and to look for ways to improve employee engagement and workplace satisfaction. the survey had 72 questions and a majority of which touch on

racial equity action items that 2022 employee experience. survey data can be split up by bureau. bureaus are are now in conversation with the respective staff to devise a team specific action plan grounded in the data from the survey. we've also been approved to two for two dedicated administrative analysts, which are 18 22 for racial equity. these positions are in the queue right now, and we have also been approved for 300,000 for racial equity for racial equity consultant. it looks like the operation specific consultant might be able to begin in june, which is next month perfect. there are also 140 action items in the plan, which 62% of the action items are either in development or implemented. we engaged about 80% staff members across the department to help lead the implementation. this level of action is impressive, given that limited nature of our dedicated racial equity staffing as you'll

see later, we've set up important infrastructure and have a number of shovel ready projects waiting for the on boarding of the racial equity staff and consultants. and also last, but not least me. i've been with the department for 21 years with the bureau of st environmental services, and i'm also a founding member of the racial equity working group. i also am in a new position, which is the leadership and racial equity manager at operation which is new as of february. we are very excited to have this dedicated racial equity position that builds the capacity of racial equity initiative. i'm bringing my expertise to operations specific action items . make sure we implement them. now pass it on to my colleague beth. um high commissioners. beth rubenstein. um when our director short spoke of the api heritage month, and the panels and the potluck upcoming i want

to just make a note of that is that these heritage months in the pure lead programming or not just sort of feel good events. they are feel good events, too, but they're actually part of building an organizational culture of inclusion and belonging so all people feel like they can succeed. and part of that and very much at the base of our racial equity plan. as you saw from the graphic is, um, is discussions about racism and how it impacts our work. both impacts us as as a workforce and also the way we do her services because we swim in a culture that has hundreds of years of racism. just want to note that these conversations are actually, um in many places in the country are seen as kind of radical and they're actually not being allowed in schools and colleges. so this is really important. this idea of discussion and sharing and creating an organizational culture, um. so we've had. about 75% of the action items that are

in this category. we are in the process of implementing or we've implemented it, and that is because we've had a like an incredible blossoming of, um pure lead programming. as guillermo mentioned at the beginning, we only have two dedicated staff person staff people, the two of us, and then everybody else is doing this work on the edges of their um of their work. that's been frustrating, honestly, and we've waited for two years for funding and consultants, but we actually haven't sat by and sort of and waited. so this pure lead programming really speaks to 80 90 people stepping up and leading, um you've had lunch time series had heritage month celebrations. things that are fun but educational. um do you want to say the potlucks that we've been having has been really important in terms of organizational culture because they're bringing the two art the two parts of our house together , especially after the property . so we've had these incredible , um, potlucks with hundreds of people. both at 40 nights south

fantasies and that the operations yard where we share music, food, family background history and so on, um, to do this to do this work. we need a department full of, um of advocates, and that's what this that's what this section really speaks to. um we're also really grateful that this work has been recognized by the san francisco health services system. and then we had we received three awards. for the different pieces. um do you want to note that in the 2022 employee experience survey ? there were three new questions and two of them and their results are up there about experiencing racial tension and feeling inclusion, and we don't have anything to compare those two, um, statistics to right now , but we will keep polling. um, are our employees. um the next piece that i think, uh, we've been really successful at in the last year is beginning to embed racial, racial equity lens in

like the work we do across the department, and, um i would say that shining a light on racial equity takes practice. it's like rebuilding a muscle and we're figuring it out together because it demands a sift a shift in thinking we need to think more broadly about our goals. and about unintended consequences. and the beneficiaries of our work. um as you as you can see, we have now so we haven't we've done a number of things. sometimes it's structural, and sometimes it's more procedural. so we've added a racial equity goal to our performance plan and our performance planning, um, is actually really key from a racial equity point of view in terms of building relationships between supervisors and staff in terms of building um, career pathways for staff, and so the fact that this is now sort of embedded in our performance is really is really important. um we're doing things like, uh, with our new hr team. this has been a huge part of our progress that we have a dedicated hr team

of 40. plus that we really hadn't had that kind of focus before and our director director hill comes from dph and comes with racial equity, commitment and knowledge. and so her staff are already and embedding. social equity ideas into the hiring process, including interview interview questions. um yeah. just go on. so next steps last slide. what are our next steps? so, um obviously we're really excited to be that will hire and then onboard those two dedicated staff and the two racial equity consultants. um we really want to focus we have we have to like, um, parts that we haven't really been able to focus because of lack of staffing. one is on sort of operations and operations staff need. it has been a huge just has been on board for about two months in his new position, and already we're seeing, um, really important change because he's

both detail oriented, and he also sees the forest for the trees, so even things like you know how can operations staff go on zoom to listen to director shorts monthly breakout room that's been like an impediment because there's a did there's some digital barriers of operations, and guillermo and his position have been able to sort of work with that. um the other thing is we haven't been able to do is think about disciplinary processes. and we're talking about that holistically. so like, how do we deescalate before they become e o, um, issues with our new hr team? we actually are going to be able to work on that, and that was something that was a high priority in our research. um the other thing is we have shovel ready projects, and i love using that term as a public works employee. we do have a number of programs that are absolutely ready to implement when we have the staffing. um one is a racial equity committee . that's based it operations and made out of made of 12 to 15 frontline workers. it's like the deputies and the executives that operations are excited about

that. um, a morning huddle program at operations that, um the communications and university team have been working on bdc and i d c racial equity subcommittees worked on a mentoring program that there are a lot of people interested in being mentees and mentors. and then we also want to, um, continue to work on sort of making our apprenticeship and internship. both high school and college internships more robust , and we're set up for that. so um, we're really excited to work with you as a commission. we've um it's been wonderful working with you on landing acknowledgement and potential programming and we really see the commission as the opportunity to hold us accountable to our goals. so we welcome any questions. thank you. station of you have some shovel. ready programs. how are you guys looking for the budget? are those shovel ready programs

ready to be implemented? are they budgeted or the ones i listed in those? those shovel? ready things? yeah they for the most part they don't really take, but they don't take it a budget. there's not a budget resource, i would say, like, for instance, the resources more around time, okay, and that's something that we've been talking with. deputy director did. jada durden about is like, sort of how to implement that. we definitely have gotten, um one thing that's not mentioned but is really important as we've got huge support from our director and also our executive team, and all the deputies and bureau managers. for the most part, um, in bdc, and i'd see they've helped identify overhead hours so that people can code to that for racial equity. that's a budget that is definitely a budget issue using overhead hours. um and direct like deputy director. jordan is really supportive of how like how we figure out time for those morning huddles. and how do we figure out time for, um, the members of the operations racial equity steering committee, because, um, and operations were

such a 24 7, you know, like, get it done workforce. it's hard to make those times for these other kind of conversations. thank you. sorry i'm didn't mean to ask on every single presentation question just you brought up the budget and i can't help myself. you mentioned high school internships and just was wondering, i are those paid internships. um a number are so this city has a couple of paid high school programs were three that i can think of us. my ip, which is mayors, um i can't remember mayor's youth employment and experience program or something that opportunities for all and, um, project pull and those are paid internships. um and we do have youth who are coming through those citywide programs to public works and like in a very various, uh bureaus. also are bdc are bdc subcommittees or working on bringing high school

interns in in the non paint like , actually, it's through opportunities for also it is paying. it has to like actually for liability reasons. we have to work through the citywide programs for high school students. it's good to hear. thanks. thank you. no further questions. could could i jump in and just add? we also have ah summer youth program that's includes many high school age students through our operations , um, workforce development program and will be relaunching that this year post pandemic um , and that provides summer employment for, um. two cohorts of 60 students each. um and they work with our gardeners and, um we have seen folks come from that summer youth program to our gardener apprenticeship program and ultimately to be employed by us, so we actually have some graduates who started with

summer youth and got into the apprenticeship program because they enjoyed that work, so i just wanted to highlight that as well. thank you. no further questions or comments mr fuller public comment. members of the public who wish to make a comment on item. six. the racial equity action plan update may line up against the wall for this from the door. if in the chamber if you are calling in, please dial 41565500. and use the meeting number access code of 2484133. £2721 pound and then press star three to raise your hand to be recognized. and we do not have members of the public in person wishing to speak on this item, and it appears we do have one member of the public, uh, who has raised their hand to speak on this item through, uh, through the call in number? sfp of tv. please unmute that collar

and color. you'll have three minutes to speak, and i'll provide you the 32nd warning when your time is about dick spire. members of the commission. my name is francisco. the cost? we have to be very careful. how we are going to program. racial equity. in the presentation. we have no mention about the first people. for the native americans. unmentioned the people. from the middle east. and we don't mention the whites. how are you going to have racial equity? if those who have perpetuated racism. 400 years. that included

in the question. so racial accurate e as you presented is an oxymoron. i've been monitoring the city for 40 years. the principal thing in this city is when it comes to quality of life issues are straight. the drug addiction. the city being so expensive. so many thousands of families who contributed so much drugs living our city. way you know various districts before about city which blend it up. we had gardens beautified it no more. so. we have 33,000 employees on

the payroll. and. city itself, 50. and we have chronic situation with people having or being mentally challenged. this affects the workers. bomb any psychiatrist to you have how many psychologists you have 30 seconds out for us employees. so we need to do a big dive. into the house. and mental wellness of employees. we have many of our employees who are mentally challenged. thank you very much.

thank you. collar and that appears to be our only caller for this items and concludes public comment. no further discussion. mr fuller, please call the next item. item seven is the commission secretary review briefing. and i'll provide this. uh, this briefing is an informational item. so uh , just to preference this, not all commissions provide their secretary or their director with a briefing or with a review of their performances. um however, are working group and the executive staff and our interim director short, uh, suggested that this should be something that we prioritized to get this. this commission and the public works commissioner off on the right foot. um the just also let you know that the director is

not subject to this commission's review. um but chairman ghanem has been invited to participate in the public works commission's process, and so i'm sure can take feedback from other commissioners as well on that, but how our process will go. is that i'll provide commissioners with with my review form as well as my job description. um. to that will be filled out by myself. and then chairman ghanem. um and then, um ahead of the june 12th meeting that will be sent to each of the members of the commission. and during the june 12th meeting will have a closed session where you'll be able to provide me input on my performance, which i very much value from the folks who are not just my bosses, but also the folks who i interact with quite a bit. um in my own work, and also it's very helpful for

planning the future for that conversation is an opportunity. for the commission to think about. what does it want to be moving ahead? um, so we'll have a final. uh well, the commission will then during that closed session conversation will be able to adapt the final review by emotion. um and then i'll have that for my permanent record, um, which is helpful, and then looking ahead, the sanitation and streets commission in in september roughly will also have its own kind of self assessment of their own work. and so i very much you know, this is a work in process. yes and not all commission as i mentioned, not all commissions have this process since so many of them have been established for years and decades that it would be helpful getting your input of what type of information what you would like to know that possibly i can gather about the commission. you know, i can provide the wrong

numbers. how many meetings have we had? items we've heard things like that. but if there are other things that can also be included in that september review, that will be very much helpful. um so that's essentially the process for my own review. and as i mentioned interim director shorts, review and then for the commission's review in the future, and i'm happy to happy to take any questions or comments on this plan. commissioners. thank you, mr fuller. um and i agree being that we are in new commission with the new commission secretary, a new quote unquote department or whatever sanitation and streets is we're still trying to find our way and that's wonderful. i think it's very important that we do do a 3 60 review of ourselves of everything. there. um because we are working progress, just like everyone else's. and you're right. we are a new commission were not established, so we look forward to making things better . that's that's why i hopped onto this not just to fill a

seat one day a month. thank you. all right. no further discussion. public comment. okay i also wanted just to add that there you'll get your own opportunity to see what the employee review is, including that racial equity goal that, uh , the racial equity team discussed in their presentation , so that will be an opportunity to see that in action and be able to interact with it. as all public works. employees have now so good to know. thank you. members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item seven. the commission secretary review briefing may line up against the wall for this from the door. if in the chamber if you're calling in, please dial 4156550. and use the meeting number excess code of 2484133. to 7 to £1 pound and then press star three. and no

one in the chamber has approached to speak on this item and sf gov. t v. do we have any callers who have expressed interest in speaking on this? and they are letting me know that there are no colors on this item so that concludes public comment. thank you, commissioner. further discussion. please call the next item. item eight is new business initiated by commissioners and this is an opportunity for commissioners to make announcements or to request agenda items for future meetings , and this is an informational item. commissioners. do anything. commissioners have any new business to raise for a future meeting? um i just wanted

to input that it would be nice to possibly form a committee to where we can. get together with staff about getting more substantive reports. maybe get granular and not have to be on the microphone and having to look at these little screens just to see how we can help everyone get get better reports because i'm sure every time all of you have to formulate some of these reports you're saying oh, my. what do they want? what do i give them? what do they need? what do they looking for? i think it requires dialogue, so i will look to bob to mr fuller to help us, um get together and possibly get a committee going and i'd like to invite any of the commissioners. but i'd like to go to mr see me into it because he seems to be the numbers guy. thank you chair, so i think what you're you're asking is that we try to provide some guidance to staff just in terms of what what we would find most helpful as commissioners. with respect to the various, um , performance measure, reports

that especially that we receive , correct. okay um, happy to help about. thank you. um and that is all for us. i believe um , hearing no further questions. mr fuller public comment. members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item. eight. new business initiated by commissioners may line up against the wall for this from the door if you are calling in dial 41565500. used the meeting number access code of 2484133 to 7 to £1 pound. and then press star three to raise your hand to be recognized. and we do not have members of the public in person who have come forward to speak on this item. s f g m t v. do we have any callers who have raised their hand in the queue? and they are indicating we do not so we have no public comment on this item.

question secretary fuller. please call the next item. item nine is the refuse rate hearing commissioners will remember. we heard the first refuse rate hearing during the march 2023 2023 meeting of this commission for the same francisco health code section. 290.6 the refuse rate administrator must hold hearings on the proposed rate changes with this commission and with the commission on the environment notice of this hearing was posted in the san francisco examiner on april 13th. 2023 and refuse rate administrator j. wow will lead this hearing. but we have a host of other folks also joining so. thank you. commissioners jaleo referees right administrator with comptroller's office. uh this is our second. i think last hearing before we go before the rate board. um, we have slides

up. can we do it here? because this, my friend. so we'll just go through a few items. the first is a process update, uh, will go through this quickly, since we've given you a lot of context about our process. a couple of minor changes talk a little bit of apologies. can you hear me now? uh we'll go through a process update. we won't go through too much context since we provided a lot of that last hearing, um, and then we'll talk a little bit

about our outreach efforts. since there was some questions around that last last hearing, and we'll talk a little bit about the public comment to date. and then finally, we'll focus more around the preliminary analysis and findings. i think we're a little further along these were, um from last week, but we have a few items that we're focused on. and i think, uh, for this hearing what we hope to get from this commission is comments around a few particular items will do. a summary of d. p. w s budget for the impound account that are funded by the rates, which you already heard before, but the two items that i think we're particularly interested in hearing comments from this commission are a couple proposed enhancements from ecology around abandoned waste pickup and also public receptacle pickup and some possible modifications that we worked with dpw to propose in terms of service level agreements. uh so real quickly

are rate process. we had this schedule. we. submitted schedules for anyone to proposed rate change. requests for ecology submitted those march 7th. uh departments also submitted their requests for funding through the rates department of public works and department environment. um, we're now kind of in this middle phase here. closing it out. the ref use our analyses, building the public record, and, uh, developing our proposed rate order and as part of that we have your commissions input. department environments input and we also have, um, input from the public through a variety of venues, public workshops. these commissions. we had one refuse rate board hearing where we worked through some items and some proposals. we have written objections. we have a 24 7

website that allows for this. um we have the prop 2 18 protests which will, uh, nippy initiated as soon as we issue our rate order. um and then we have our public information requests on our website. and our next request through 311. so once we develop our rate order that goes for the refuse rate board will also packaged comments from this commission and the commission on environment and public comment that we've received throughout this process will also go to the rate board will deliberate and adopt a rate order. and so i knew. sorry the new item here is a refuge rate administrators hearing, um so at the request of the rape board, they asked our office to conduct additional hearings to work through some details of issues. so, for example, the last we're having two of those last refuge rate administrator hearing. we worked through some of the details of some of the program enhancements requested by rick ology. and

some of the large items such as, uh, assumed profit margin balancing account and some pension items. so for the public record building just to give you a quick update on that. there's two pieces as i mentioned, uh, there's one uh the interrogatory process since we can't hash out everything through these hearings, we are doing a series of written requests and written responses from our ecology that we update weekly. and so there's 33 types of these requests one schedule requests, so we submit the schedules. they were incomplete, just kind of given the time frame that we were asking them to complete them. so in the interim, we've been tracking the status completion of those requests. we have exhibits that include additional information that we need for ecology that weren't captured in those schedules. and then, lastly, questions related to, um clarification and justifications

for some of the assumptions made by rick ology. and so as of last week, this is a status we've made. uh 17 schedule requests 11 responses. exhibits 37 exhibits , 13 responses and 156 questions. 96 responses. we're getting these at a pretty fast clip, so there have been a lot more responses since then. um and, uh, we're focusing. i. and likely not going to address all of the requests, but we're focusing on the priority wants to help us make decisions for this rate order. and to validate , uh, validate some of these numbers. uh um the other part was the hearing, um, using the hearings to build the public record, i won't go into this because i think you've heard this before. but for the commission hearing, we have a few items that we want. the commission to focus on ah to address the question from last hearing what we're doing around outreach. we've we have our

public website. we've done a number of email campaigns and we're using social media. we have our public records automation, then the couple new items since then, we've done some targeted outreach to some local news outlets. neighborhood papers such as potrero hill and richmond review sunset beacon. we've reached out specific to specifically to neighborhood groups and district groups. um to just informed them of this process where they can provide input. we're also going to be doing some press releases ahead of the great board hearings. an additional email campaigns and then we've also reached out to specific individuals who have in the past expressed interest in this in particular, some industry groups restaurant association. some tenants or some apartment associations have expressed some interest presidio trust and so we've reached out

to those folks individually as well. um so that's kind of where we are with public outreach. um in terms of the public input that we've gotten from that we've gotten 10 written comments and or objections. nine of them are related to residential rates , one related to both residential and commercial um all of them are protesting any increase in rates. um for variety of reasons. one is it's contributed high cost of living. um one is customers should receive credit for recycling materials sales to offset costs . this is actually already happening. ah, there's some miss distrust and ecology to receive any increase in repair funds after the recent scandal, and then that ecology has recently received cost of living adjustment back in january, so should not receive any increase again. um we've also had some comments from public hearings. this is just a few comments, uh more requests for information

and impound accounts concerned about some nexus, simple personality, proportionality and use of impound account funds from rates. and then once you see reasonable fair rates and good value for repairs one common actually was not included here was they actually expect to see increasing rates? um, that was one of the public comments. uh so i'm going to jump into kind of some of our findings and analyses. we have our jurisdictional comparison of rates that your will share. we had some consultants support this work, h f and h so they'll be sharing a few days slides jurisdictional comparisons. profit margin comparisons with other jurisdictions and companies. uh i'll go briefly into balancing account proposal . it's a mechanism to adjust rates and future in the next rate cycle. uh, as i mentioned, we'll talk about the impound accountant department public works proposal. and then

ecologies proposal will focus on the program enhancements. those two items, the panda materials and public receptacles. the other analysis that we're doing around labor enhancements, pension costs and also zero waste incentive account. and then along with their other program enhancements. so with that, are we able to bring in the consultants through webex? yeah j i'm here. can you guys tell me great, thanks. great. thank you all. well, thank you. dave hilton, with h and h consultants is j described. we've been helping out with this process. one of the things that hf and h was passed with. was to compare some different jurisdictions and they're solid waste raids to what san francisco for season the rates available in the city. um we

have that on this slide here and you'll see is that san francisco the minimum rate that can be paid? order to receive service is just shy of $47 less um which when compared to some of these other jurisdictions isn't the highest you'll see. you see burbank, east palo alto of san jose, all higher than that amount. however it is quite a bit higher than the average about 50% higher of the average of jurisdictions surveyed at around 34 78 being not average. we should note that san diego is a bit of an anomaly. um they do not currently charged for service to their residents paid for through other means. we also looked at this in order to try and equalize these great comparisons. as you know, there's different rates available through different service provision, different sides of container. all those things, and some jurisdictions like to incentivize diversion

and using a smaller black container going to the landfill . um and so we tried to convert this into a per gallon equivalent. based on the service offering some of these rates. for instance, san mateo can jose , they may have smaller overall service levels that are provided castro valley's one where they only received 60 gallons at this rate of total service, and so we wanted to try and equipment make more comparable by doing this turned down equivalent and as you can see here, in doing that , it turns out that san francisco even though they're, uh, monthly rate is a little over 50% of the average surveyed jurisdictions when converting that to this per gallon equivalent, it's nearly doubled, but that averages. we also looked at some commercial, uh, great that we sampled for these

agencies as well. and you'll see at pretty similar story there, although we should note that, um it looks like the small commercial service small business that carts for medical service really, actually is a little bit under the average here. where do you have about 50 to 60? certainly two gallon garbage commercial part the average for these other jurisdictions is around $82. so the commercial small business, it seems, is getting a better deal than these other jurisdictions. however if you move over to this monthly one cubic yard, then once a week service and really looking at the been customers, as opposed to card customers, even with the one cubic yard being the smallest been available, that rate is at $282.63. which is much higher than the other survey jurisdictions again, the

average for that cubic yard been would come in at about $187.90 chance. converting this to the equivalent per gallon is about a dollar 41 per gallon for these commercial customers, as opposed to the average for the other jurisdictions coming in at 94 cents. so after looking at these different rate comparisons we wanted to look at, you know, what are these things that are going into the race? that's part of the process that we're working with, um, refuse rate administrator's office trying to understand colleges proposal. um what costs are included in here and one of the identified costs that makes up the rates is across. if we can move on that perfect, and so rick college is requested a 9.89% profit margin , which is 91% operating ratio. um and this operating ratio and profit margin, or only on

certain eligible costs, not on the entire contract. um, and this does vary. these tough operating ratios vary on what the eligible costs are. in contracts all around the state and in the certainly jurisdictions here, but we did want to just have this as a baseline. the other thing to consider, along with their profit margins. is that mcclarty ownership program also presents some additional tax savings. we believe that to be around 2 to 4% in benefits that ultimately just passed through, you could say, as as a profit item in terms of there not being catched on this a mountain, so therefore their employee owners are receiving this in addition to profit. when we looked at the risk management associations, benchmark of solid waste companies that have revenues of over $25 million a year. what we found is that the profit margin there is at an average of 6.9%

and it should be noted that that is also including, um you know, open market, not necessarily municipal haller contracts and so in that more competitive environment, you know, we believe that the profit margin is probably smaller as a result of that. and some businesses that may not be operator operating profitably in a given year. something else to consider is we're working with the ecology and evaluating their application and discussing this profit margin withhat they currently have this balancing account. um which which essentially, can them whole, uh, they're also requesting 100% balancing account, which would in essence if they were short on that 9.89% profit margin. i would be corrected so that then they would reach their target margin in every year despite costs or revenues. we performed a survey of these profit margins for other municipal contracts, and i

have that in this table over to the right of the slide, and you'll see that there really is a wide range here. the smallest profit profitability ratio profit margin that we saw was in san luis obispo and that came in at 7.53% these other municipal contracts. it varies from 8.4 all the way up to 21.1. we've also included oakland's here with their cease cws contract. this is an estimate, but it's believed that it may be all the way up to almost 36% and so these are municipal contracts over here on the right, you will see that that is a much higher profit margins stipulated than some of his other, you know, open contracts as as i mentioned at 6.9. um so. the ecology request does fall in range with what's what we're seeing in other jurisdictions for municipal contracts. however we should also be taking into consideration. other contract

provisions such as the balancing account, um he employee share program and other risk mitigating factors as we, uh, evaluate this for reasonableness. great. thanks, dave. um. so we just want to share that so you can have some comparisons for where our rates are and, uh, see how we're evaluating their some profit margin. um and then this is just a little bit about the balancing encounter pro proposal ecology is proposing a balancing account mechanism that would allow 100% adjustment based on their 0.91% 0.91 operating ratio, and this adjustment would impact rate year 2026, which would be kind of falling right side the first year of the following rate cycle. uh so the proposal has no impact on the proposed rates we have this year, but they might have impacts to the, uh, future year. um we're currently proposing and balancing

mechanism with a 50% adjustment . um this, uh there was a settlement in december 2020 to adjust this current rate year by 50% the intent was, um partially to stabilize rates. if um, ecology sees excess profits, we would adjust down 50% compared to the that 91% 0 r. if it's below, it would just spec. just up. um. moving on to kind of the next two items, and that we're looking at one is the department requests the solid waste impound account. ah departments are requesting, um, department public works is requesting 9.5 million for each three year. um for the next two fiscal years and department of environment requesting 4.7 15.1, just as a, um. just an overview of what was

presented last hearing department. public works proposal for that 9.5 million includes support. for example, three existing ongoing programs , the one team outreach and enforcement of 10 ft. litter patrol with 16 ft and then the contract for trash can cleaning. so this funding supports 27 ft. and then they're requesting one you position that would be included in that 27 there. uh recall, dpw is also requesting the use of 15 million and unspent on a appropriated and inappropriate. uh, fun balance for the community of the new trash can and sensors. um and then, lastly, part of their proposal was to memorialize some of the service agreements from, um from the previous rate order . um for this one, particularly around removing litter and illegal dumping. uh, in terms of

colleges requests. uh there are $3.5 million in program enhancements. 3.3 million, an additional unfilled labor enhancements or backfill? uh one of the program enhancements includes additional contamination, technology and outreach that they're estimating would generate additional five million in contamination fees. so the balance of this if you look at the i think third column is the enhancements impact that's about 1.8 million and enhancement costs. uh that would essentially equate to a dollar. sorry, not dollars. 49. i can't do the math in my head, but about 30. 30 34% 34 cents change . uh the zero waste incentive account. the impact of count is about 8.2 million in the first year. um so that account

accounts for, uh, another 68 cents and dollars change. um sorry. the calculation that third column isn't correct. so that's a 68 cents change there and then pension simulate. we asked for pension simulation. currently, they're assuming fully funded target. uh fully funded and right here, 2025. so we've asked them. what would this look like? three or if we spread this cost three years out five years out, and so this would the dollar change would be , uh rather than this full dollar 83 in that rick ology proposal would be a 77% change or an 11 cent change for the three and five years. so these are the two items from the program enhancements we were we wanted to hone in on for this commission, which were the abandoned materials and the public receptacles. uh so we've

been going back and forth ecology around data data and requests for justification for these enhancements. most of that is complete. i think the last request was whether or not these adjustments include offsets for overtime. if they're increasing their ft, we would assume less overtime. so we're waiting back for the for the response on that , but this is our current estimate. here it's the third column total expenditures are a hearing. so abandoned materials about 7.8 million total program costs. their enhancement is that first column of a little under a million enhancements for that program for that first year in the second year. uh this would kind of i think that with the cost of business adjustments. this goes up to eight million for right year 2025 for public receptacles enhancement of about 886,000. the uh as part,

including their total costs of 6.3 million for the public receptacles pick up again another 886,000 for the year 2025. with the total cost for that program at 6.5 million, they're looking for two new fte for each of these programs. uh and then the last thing i'll mention around these programs is memorialization of the service agreements, including abandoned materials four hours for most abandoned materials, including electronic mattresses, furniture appliances and contained garbage for public receptacles to our overflowing garbage can 72 hours for little receptacle maintenance and this last item. this last one. i think we still have some ah, we still need to work this out a little bit with ecology in terms of the impacts of imposing to our to our for

overflowing garbage cans. um i think these numbers initially came from 311. and we're working with the t p w to validate some of these numbers as well. um so i think that concludes my presentation. we've asked for ecology to go into a little more detail about these program enhancements. so you have information to consider their um and we've also asked them to talk a little bit of kind of about there. um, ah! uh kind of their high level overview of their business operations and some of the proposal pieces as well. so um unless there any other questions. i'll ask for ecology to come up with their presentation. for yes, sure. and i've also asked bruce robertson to answer any questions around dpw's proposal or the service level agreements to thank you.

thank you. i'm gonna break. the long let me know. it'll show up. good morning, dan shaded, vice president, regional manager. san

francisco ecology companies. it's my privilege to represent the employee owners of ecology at this hearing today. employee owned company has service in francisco for over 100 years. oncology currently provides comprehensive collection processing and disposal services to over 160,000 customers in san francisco. you're 2022. we collected 640,000 tons of material devoted and diverted over 250,000 tons of that material from landfill to be recycled or turned into compost . we are proud of sustaining one of the highest diversion rates in any major city in the country. we know that in partnership with the city we can do even better. the unique relationship between our employee owned company in the city allows us to innovate how he handled material in the company's focus with the communities are a waste goals and values. colleges sunset scavenger and ecology, gold gate or the collection companies. they're responsible for operating the routes that pick

up trash recycling organic materials from san francisco ratepayers. in addition, the collection companies operate numerous programs, a survey payers, including abandon materials and pick up programs. and through our zero waste specialists. we conduct outreach and education to help ratepayers understand proper sorting and to encourage them to increase the diversion rates. we'll talk more about that later and in some more detail throughout this presentation. ecology san francisco is responsible for processing disposal. of the materials that are collection companies pick up the materials are taken to ecology. san francisco facilities, which include recycled central appear in 96. construction and demolition debris processing facility known as the emerging the tunnel out of transfer station organics processing at the west wing. the public reuse and recycling area in the household hazardous waste. collection facility. these materials are then sorted and hauled to the appropriate facilities. the trash is disposed at the heroes landfill near vacaville, california

recyclables are shipped to proper recyclers, and the organic material is then transported to blossom valley organics near modesto. ecology currently serves 139,000 residential customers. 8400 apartment customers and 16,000 commercial customers in the city of san francisco. we are proud to have provided uninterrupted service throughout the pandemic and beyond san francisco customers. the pie chart here illustrates represent the cost associated with operating our business in san francisco, as you can see labor truck costs of disposal make up almost 78% of those costs associated with our services, the largest of which is actually operating the trucks in the labor. the next slide demonstrates our commitment to making sound business decisions when it comes to managing cost. the chart on this slide represents the revenue and expenses of the collection companies in constant dollars.

it further illustrates our ecology was able to respond to the dynamic business environment during the pandemic while maintaining an interrupt service to our city. the chart graphically shows how our expenses reduced proportionately with the change in revenue, which is approximately 11. on this side. this one's representing our processing facilities in the world college of san francisco cos i spoke about earlier. the rsf revenue and expenses are similarly represented by this chart illustrated here, the rsf team was able to reduce expenses from 146 million pre pandemic to 124 million in 2022. this graph for over illustrates how reduction in both services and volume do the pandemic and the slow economy economic recovery in san francisco. increase the cost per unit at the processing facility. and trans facilities due largely to the fixed costs the shell

sheet with post collection operations. please note the inflection 0.8 year 20 when expenses exceeded revenue due to the pandemic economic injury, economic impacts that affected us all. ultimately. the economic reality is what is driving the 16% increase in the tipping fee. businesses have right sized their services based on demand, which equals lower tons. the truck's still have to drive the routes and simply servicing lower amounts of volume at each stop. because disposal is only a portion of what makes up the rate paid by our customers. the requested ratepayer increases only 3.9. college is incredibly proud of the work we did to control costs while providing interrupted service during the pandemic. the 3.9% increase requested will maintain residential rates below $50 for the next two rate years. this is

significantly lower than comparable communities like san jose and oakland and as far smaller than the double digit increases we're seeing in communities in jurisdictions across california. we value our partnership with the city and will work to continue providing excellent service to our repairs at a fair rate. i also would like to just comment on some of the data we saw from h f and h consultants. that's one of the point out a couple of things for the commission. if you'll indulge me before he moved to the next part. um during our last hearing with the reference rate administrator even the city administrator agreed that per gallon analysis. it's not a great way to do a comparison. um you know, as as i discussed earlier disposal is only a fraction of what goes into building up the rate cost, and the truck's still have to service it. we could very easily increase the amount of galaxies customer has with very little cost of ecology, driving the cost per gallon down, but it would be against the city's climate goals and everything

that they've established and work towards on their climate action plan. additionally when i when i saw the commercial rates, those are the published rates. those aren't what people actually pay. because it doesn't take into account the diversion discount that is offered, which often discounts the rate by 30 to 60% in some cases. ultimately . you know, we're called you service provides a lot of services, and it's really important to note that not all of the services provided by these jurisdictions match the levels. that we see here in san francisco there dedicated towards keeping our city clean and achieving our environmental goals. and so i think it's really important to, uh make sure that when you look at those rates, you consider all of those factors and i'll turn it over to terry do want to talk about our rate setting. thank you. thank you, um, just for clarification. i'm looking at the. i got a mismatch in my sheets because i'm looking at page seven here.

right? time yeah, and it's not showing up on the one that they're presenting here, that's all just running from pulling up the right slide. pardon me. there are they're updated slides that both refuse aerated administrator and rick ology have brought today which i'll update to the website and provide all commissioners. perfect. thank you. yeah because i was to go to the ipad. so i get the thank you. good afternoon commissioners. terry dong, the regional controller for san francisco. i'm going to take the next couple of slides and talk about our rate setting methodology. so the rate charged to ratepayers are based on a cost plus allowed profit model. this reflects the expenses that ecology incurs to provide services. our submission is based on a projected expenses for right year 24 25. um, it's important to note that certain expenses are disallowed for rape purposes and these expenses.

these are expenses that pass rate boards have determined should not be charged to ratepayers for an example advertising expenses. um projected rate expenses fall into two categories. the first is operating ratio or oh, are eligible expenses. that's the expenses on which we ecology can earn a profit and two nano are eligible expenses. these are expenses allowed for rape purposes. um but but but which ecology may not earn a profit. um in addition, the rate contains pastoral collections, and these are amounts collected and remitted to the city. we have a couple of different slides to give you an overview of the methodology used to set rates. these rates prevent present the same information in a few different ways. we'll start with a visual representation of the rate setting process and then we will move to the revenue requirements. um so the basic steps of rate setting, um, is depicted here on the slide. we

start with the projected operating cost, and then we apply the operating ratio to determine a target profit. then we add the nano are eligible costs. these are the costs with no profit, and then we add the past through collections and again. these are funds that we collect for their waste. zero incentive account. and the impound account deposits. these are funding for public works and the san francisco environment. then we apply any other revenues that partially offset the rate increase. um these could be the recycling revenues, contamination charges, other non tipping fee revenues, and the result is the revenue requirement from the ratepayers . net of the revenue offsets. so for rsf. the revenue requirement is divided by tons to get a fee per ton. and the new tipping fee is divided by the current tipping fee to get an increased percentage. for sunset and

golden gate. the river revenue requirement is divided by the revenue at the current rates, and this results in the needed rate increased percentage. um we use the term operating ratio to describe the process and let me take the next slide to explain the concept of the operating ratio. operating ratios, a standard methodology and the waste industry used to calculate profit. o r. is applied to eligible expenses to come up with a target profit and then re colleges proposal. we use a 91% operating ratio on the category of expenses that are o are eligible. this number is consistent with past rate setting. and generates a dollar amount of profit that we need to sustain our business. it is low by industry standards. other california jurisdictions use operating ratios between 85 92. with the average of 29 cities at 89.8% which translates to higher allowable profits and those jurisdictions. um in our

submission and consistent with longstanding practice. operating ratio is applied only to those expenses that are are eligible. that means a lower effective profit margin. when you look at the business as a whole no profit is earned on some expense categories, including disposal processing. or eligible expenses are approximately 65% of sunset and golden gate and approximately 80% of rsf expenses. um one thing i wanted to mention is that are projected over our is 8.2% for right. you're 24 that is still lower than what h f and h had presented earlier when looking at the child jurisdictions. so it's still lower than seven of the eight jurisdictions that was depicted in there. slide. um and i also wanted to mention that eight of those top jurisdictions are all in the same j p a.

psychology needs to generate this level of profit for several reasons. um we need we need a reasonable return on our investment capital and ecology is being and will be asked to make capital investments to serve our ratepayers. those investments are not risk free and ecology also needs to return value for its shareholders. who are our employee owners. um here's an illustration of how we come up with the revenue required revenue sort of the required revenue chart for rsf, um provides a visual representation of how the revenue requirement is built. starting on the left hand side we take our are eligible expenses, we add a profit. those are the blue bars. and then we add non or eligible expenses and pastoral collections. um, those are the blue hash bars. then the revenue offset are subtracted to obtain the revenue required from ratepayers. this is shown in the

orange shade of bars, and the final result is the gray bar. this is the net required revenue used it to determine the rate increase. similarly for the revenue requirement for sunset and golden gate. um again. this is how we, um, calculate the revenue requirement for the two companies again, starting on the left hand side. we have our are eligible expenses and we add a profit. these are the blue bars. and we add the non or eligible expenses and pass through collections. the blue hash bars. and the revenue offsets are the orange shaded bars, and the final result is the gray bar. the net revenue requirement used to determine the rate increase. um, and now i'll pass it on to my colleague, anthony crescenta to go over abandoned materials.

good afternoon. my name is anthony crescenzi, general manager for rick ology. sunset scavenger over 160,000, san francisco residents and businesses receive collection service from census scavenger and golden gate and the collection companies have a combined workforce of over 550 employee owners who work here in the city. funny the core of the collection services, of course, our three stream system that i was familiar with. but in addition, we offer 26 other programs to support rape pairs, most notably is abandoned materials collection for material left in the public right away. and public receptacle service throughout san francisco. we're proposing to enhance these two programs to meet the changing service environment and customer needs. adjustments to these programs are necessary to support cleaner streets and more vibrant san francisco. we are proposing to increase the abandoned materials collection service by one additional zone to provide more proactive service and improve response times shown on the map

college you currently has five dedicated zones and seven total routes covering san francisco. abandoned materials routes are dispatched via the 311 system. and we received over 108,000 requests and collect over 4400 tons of material in 2022. various types of material we collect include couches, mattresses, furniture and the ways. in addition to these 311 requests, the abandoned materials team works in partnership with public works to provide service to specific locations in areas that experience high levels of legal dumping. 2022 public works requests equate to about 13% of the total am see service provided and or in addition to the 311 request we receive. the key services take to statistics to gauge the appropriate level of amc service and determined that current resources are not meeting the level of service needed. first banned materials team saw a 2.89% increase in 311

request for 2022 compared to 2021 that demonstrates that the program continues to see increasing demand. it's also important to note here on this chart that tonnage is not on its own good indicator for demand of the program. material tends to get lighter. however, we are still seeing more service requests being received. second there has been a 14% increase in 311 requests in 2022 when you compared to 2018 when the current number of zones was originally determined. also these totals do not include the daily dpw directed sweeps and services that i mentioned previously. finally colleges experience a declining 311 response time in 2022, averaging approximately eight hours compared to six hours in 2021, a decrease of about 33. the existing five zones will be rerouted into six zones, which will increase service capacity

to meet the existing demand. with the new zone service capacity will be increased approximately 132 approximately 136,000 requests per year, which would exceed 2 2022 actual requests of combined 311 requests and dpw sweeps. this additional capacity would allow the team and all zones to proactively service material and be able to move closer to our goal of responding to 311 request within four hours during the work week. to provide this additional service to additional drivers and two additional collection vehicles are required. the cost for the headcount would be approximately 276,000 and the trucks for acquisition for 193. and i do anticipate ecology does anticipate in offsetting overtime as a result of the additional zone. additionally as part of our rate application for abandoned materials we're proposing to continue to provide abandoned source separated cardboard collection throughout san francisco in late 2022 into

2023 abandoned cardboard group significantly due to a drop in commodity prices and the sudden absence of independent cardboard haulers city engaged ecology to respond to this need into cardboard routes were deployed to commercial quarters throughout san francisco. since february over 160 tons and about 20,000 bundles have been removed enhancing street cleanliness. cost to continue abandoned cardboard collection will require two additional driver ft. next we're proposing increased public receptacle second past service with the addition of two dedicated collection routes. currently there are 10 dedicated collection routes for public receptacles, providing second past service to about 2100% cols throughout the city, and we collected about 4000 tons in 2022. now this services in addition to the regular

collection routes that serves all 3000 or so public hands on the first pass, and these are all 3000 cancer shown on the map. with recent requests for increased levels of service for high traffic areas and the deployment of sensors in the public receptacles. we need to increase routing capability. currently 69% of the 3000 or so public receptacles receive second past service. public works has made additional requests for service passes in specific areas to such as the mission district. college is proposing to increase the percentage of cans receiving a second past 80% to account for any additional requested services. next public works has recently begun the rule out of public receptacle sensors that determine their need for service. to illustrate the initial impact of the additional sensors on just 30% of the total cans. there has been a 285% increase in 311 over follower

requests for 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. as we move forward, ecology and public works will continue to partner as a sensors are deployed to analyze the data and to determine appropriate service standards for the public receptacles. the addition of the two public receptacle routes will provide for additional collection of high use public receptacles as well as a dynamic service capability to respond, respond to increased requests due to the sensors. anticipate the dpw and recalled, will analyze the data over the next year. it wouldn't at that point be able to further refined service needs throughout the city. to provide this additional service to collection routes to drivers and two vehicles will be needed cost headcount again would be 476,000 per year and the cost acquisition costs for the trucks would be 410,000.

concludes our presentation. we're happy at this time to take any questions. thank you. commissioners. tom. no you go. i'll go. i got i got something. you can go for it. i thought i would defer to you since i've asked so many questions already and then asked mine. we're gonna have a race here, aren't we? um uh, thank you a couple of questions while one of the big ones and i'm not trying to try try to get to granular. um well, first of all, 9.89 while that's impressive. i wish my portfolio had that. kind of a return. but my real question is that this is an aesop. and when i look at company expenses and reports and profits, i see a company that's union. i see a company that's non union and i see a company. that's aesop. i see different ways of gauging and i'm wondering when you're doing all these compare, and that's fine. i assume he stops employee sponsored ownership program.

yes, correct. thank you, okay. i just want to make sure i was on the right page there and i wholly encourage and support that. but when you do the comparisons are any of the other waste management organizations that were brought up in the comparison or any of them esops and how did their structure differentiate? and did anyone take that into account? i have john brown's lawyer or directors , process. improvements come up. i started asking the question. good afternoon commissioners. my name is john breslaw. i'm the director of process improvement for ecology. um, former director of finance. so did a lot of work on our aesop and first the answer. where the only that i'm aware of now the only, um, waste company that's 100% employee and certainly the only large waste company. and in terms of the aesop and the impact. um on our business there. there's a couple

of things that want to point out first, the aesop and for myself and all of our other employee owners. um it's treated as a retirement benefit, so it's a benefit that i accrue. uh a small ownership percentage over the years of service and then when i reach retirement receive a payout from the aesop so the aesop is technically the owner of recall aji the, uh, the employee stock ownership plan. and so there was a reference in one of the earlier slides about the benefit that. the about rick ology receives from our aesop structure. that's a benefit that was put in place in the tax law in the late nineties, and 97 98 , there were specific changes to tax law that were intended to promote employee ownership. the important thing to point out for

us is that the cost of maintaining that benefit that is the cost of providing the benefit to employees that reach retirement. far exceeds the cost . uh where we a taxpayer, so in fact, if you're trying to measure profitability um, the fact that we're in aesop actually. cost more money than what would be paid in taxes under a um, hypothetical tax rate. we do a tax calculation as part of our annual valuation process so that, um the sa payment is probably anywhere to 20 to 50% more than what we would pay in taxes. the other important thing i want to point out with respect to the aesop is that we have from its inception , used it as um, kind of a way to help. motivate and encourage

our employees to take that pride of ownership again. that's the that was the impetus for the tax structure that exists. and we believe that it's provided a lot of benefit over the years. both the ecology to the employees and to the city. and so we've we've got many employee owners, um many in in have gone through and retired. i feel that sense of pride and ownership. in the service that they provide. you know, and thank you and like i said, you know, i commend you for doing it because i know it reduces churn. everyone's invested partner. everyone's got skin in the game. as they say, i just was wondering if maybe there's more of a question for the comptroller's office or somebody. how is that figured into the formula? what, whether it was an advantage or disadvantage really wasn't my, um right height, jaleo comptroller's office. so referring back to the h and h

presentation around the profit margin we did do ah, they did support us in doing the analysis around the impact of the sa, particularly the tax benefits. the calculation was about a 2 to 4% benefit to recall aji. um i think their conclusion was that you know, in comparison to other jurisdictions and other companies. uh this fall's kind of within the range of what other ways providers are seen in terms of their profit margin, even with the benefit um and so that's the main calculation we've looked at is the tax benefit of the sob. um and like i said, i just wanted to just make sure we're comparing apples to apples is going so we can make an educated eyes wide open. evaluation. thank you. commissioner sammy. yeah, i think just. that is so many

fascinating. um and i'll try to keep it a little short. i said, a kind of question in the i think it's actually more question for the comptroller's office, even though it came out of their ecology presentation. when you guys were very helpfully graphically sort of showing how the how the rates are calculated. you know, i saw a lot of the word projected. in there, and i know that as a budget director, what you project is rarely what happens in real life. and just as as we go through this this process, uh through the rate setting board. um do we is there? i don't want to say true up, but is there any sort of looking past at what happened in past years, you know, say the expenses were higher revenues were lower things like that, do you is that accounted for in this in this process? yes so in the schedules that we've asked for from the ecology, their submission includes past years. mm. along with that we're we're not completely done with kind of evaluating the various economic

growth factors that are assumed in the submission. uh i won't go through all of them, but they include things like inflation. fuel costs, bridge tolls, things like that. and so we're going through kind of the list of various assumptions, um, comparing them to kind of ah, past actuals and then also, uh, looking at various models that project these out forward to inform if we have any changes to make to any of the assumed economic costs or growth that they're assuming in their submission. yeah. yeah. go ahead. and i think, commissioner in part to your question, if i understood is that the way rate setting worked historically, actually, uh, through today, our current rate is that rates are set on a prospective basis, and there was no retroactive rate

making. so there was no there was no mechanism to true up. the rates but as um. as mr leo mentioned, there's a proposal and we're in discussion about balancing account and balancing account precisely will do that, uh, the. balancing account. the purpose is to ensure that the profits earned by ecology are consistent with the operating ratio that's adopted in the final rate order. we're currently discussing do we want to 50% balancing encounter 100% balancing account? um recall aji believes by adopting 100% balancing account. that there's a full true up uh, it was mentioned that the impact of that trip wouldn't start until rate year 26 but it would really

be focused on radio 24 the reason it doesn't start till 26 is you need to finish the year. understand the final results do the reconciliation which doesn't happen till 3 to 4 months later and then apply it to the next following year, so it would be affected 24 so as an example. if we set rates for eight year, 24 we find that the economy grows faster than we had projected in our growth. then that balance would be, um, calculated and then added to the rate, um, actually reduce the rate in 2026 . so it would be a reduction in 2026, but it would be related to 2024. conversely again, um we're currently discussing does it make sense to have a 50% balance or 100, and there's some you know, i arguments to be made on

either side of that of that line. thank you for that. yeah that sounds like a big question for rate setting board to sort out. and kind of just related to all that. i think you know, this is i have been a property owner for two years now, so i don't have a lot of experience. uh, with with paying, you know, trash bills and everything, but i think just, um it's worth saying sort of. i can. congratulations or whatever, just on you know, standing up this whole new process over the past. i don't even know how long is i know there's a lot going on and for you know, people like us. we're sort of we're consumers, but we don't necessarily we're not experts in this and so just, uh you know, thank you to everybody involved distant in the public outreach. i think it's actually been pretty pretty robust from what i can tell, and the sort of continuous information that's been provided and trying to distill some fairly complex stuff into, um simple slide, so i just wanted to thank you all for that work. i'm good. no

maybe them off that easy. really um, um and i want to echo commissioner semi's remarks. yes, it was, you know, from all the departments of the reports were extensive, you know, and that's why i had looked at it earlier. and then when i looked at the other one, and i looked at this one, i noticed that there was a difference because yes, every once in a while, i do. read the things that are submitted to me. thank you, mr fuller. ah but thank you very much for the presentation. um, no further. remarks from the commissioners. um thank you. um mr fuller public comment. members of the public who wish to make a comment on item nine. the refuse rate hearing may line up against the wall for this from the door if joining us here in the chamber. if you are calling in, use the number 41565500. and the excess code of

2484133. £2721 pound. and then press start free to raise your hand to be recognized. and we do not have any in person commenters, but i do know we have a couple of people waiting on the wine as i've gov. t v. could you a newt the first collar and collar, you'll have three minutes to speak, and i'll provide you with a 32nd notice when your time is about to expire. great david pill pill. you can hear me, okay? we can great. um i've spoken at length with most of the presenters here today and plan to continue to follow and comment on this process. there are lots of, uh, aspects and details that were presented today. i want to

emphasize the adequacy of rates to provide service. minimizing contamination, maximizing diversion and facilities. in real estate planning on each of those points very briefly. i think it's important that we have sufficient rates that are fair, just and reasonable so that service can continue to be provided if we try to zero things out or reduce costs on the ecology side. i think that might result in a dimunition of service, which is not to anyone's benefit. i think it's important that some of the program changes do minimize contamination, which, uh, has the effect of maximizing diversion and reducing costs through commodity revenues, and i have not seen enough emphasis on the need for facilities and real estate planning so that we can left in both facilities and

equipment to again, um minimize contamination and maximize diversion. i do believe that program changes should be scrutinized to a much greater degree than baseline or status quo operations. as relates to the c w y a the impound account and public works. i tentatively want to emphasize that support maintaining existing impound account allocations, which might mean absorbing cost of living adjustments, which might reduce fte counts slightly. and again, i tentatively support deferring the trash can replacement project given all the other priorities right now, it seems that we could live with existing street trash cans for the next two years. i'm happy to discuss this further with staff. i'm sure bruce robertson and others may not be happy to hear those last couple of thoughts. and just finally, while the o r or profit may seem uh, hi. to some

, in my opinion, it is not. it is definitely within range of other operations as you heard opinion, thanks, and in my opinion, it would cost the city much more to run. ah refuse collection and processing operations than it costs ecology to do so, with or without the o. r. thanks very much for listening and report further proceedings in this matter. thanks. thank you, caller. sfp of tv, please on mute. the second caller. and color. you'll have 30 seconds to speak, and i'll provide you with a 32nd warning when your time is about to expire. my name is francisco dacosta. i think i have three minutes to speak. and you will provide me with 30 seconds. wanting. that's correct. thank

you very much. the director of in my mental justice advocacy. i look at the performance of ecology. linked to climate change. and then try to the city and county of san francisco is concerned. i look at the department of environment. and see. how is the city has been the department of environment, providing them with resources and funny funding. if this commission looks into that you'll see that very little funding is given to the department of environment. so i do not know what law you pitch playing, but as far as being an advocate and a director of environmental justice advocacy, i see that on various levels and france that city and county of san francisco gloria's lacking.

the presentation given by, uh, college is very faint. and there are areas where we could do more, but that's soft. for example, if you go to the area ah, by executive power every single day. garbage is brought into from south san francisco and dumped on our street. every single day. and i'm not talking about, uh, a little bit of garbage tons and tons of all sorts of commercial, um. you know, mattresses, commodes. and so on and so forth. so this commission i had to look outside the box. two. address such concerns. and this commission should take a stronger um,

action. in our schools and colleges. linked to climate change. can francisco yeah. talks a lot about climate change, 30 seconds. but we do not do we talked the talk, but we do not walk the walk. so those are my comments. and then you commissioners should meet with the ecology. so that together you can go to a better place. but in order to go to a better place your hearts but being the right place. in your heart in the right place. can you go to a better place? thank you very much. thank you, caller. and that concludes our public comment on this on this item. um. hearing no further

discussion from the commissioners. next item. the next item item. 10 is the general public. public comment continued from item number one if necessary, and it is not necessary as we did not exceed 15 minutes of public general public comment. thank you, um any further business from you, mr secretary? there is no further business on the agenda. mm hearing. no objections. i adjourned the meeting. this commission will meet again. june 12th 2023 10. am i believe same time? same location. that's correct. thank you. everybody have a wonderful day and thank you.

>> may 19, 2023 special meeting of the san francisco ethic's commission. today's meeting is live cable cast on sfgovtv and live online at sfgov.org/ethicslive am public comment members of public may attend in person or participate by phone or the web ex platform explained in our agenda document. >> clerk, can you explain to the public how today's remote comment will be handled. >> thank you, madam chair >> public comment made on each item on this agenda. each member will be allowed 3 minutes to speak. for those in person opportunity to speak during the comment period made available