that would be something that would either -- we could come back to the board with or we could have dhr and the vice president, you know, look at to make a decision about whether additional recruitment is necessary. >> i guess would i like to have that maybe come back. >> okay. >> i agree. >> okay. and in terms of the interviewing process, whether we want dhr to do some initial screening by phone and/or if we want a peer review panel. we can also have some of that decided in january if you would like us to come back with that information and then you can also make a decision then about who among you will participate in the interviewing process, if you all want to do it, and we can bring you some potential questions that you may consider asking. does that sound like something to defer to january? >> i think that makes sense. i would ask all of the board members to participate if they're able to. >> okay. so i think that ticks the boxes. maybe i can propose a motion for you to consider and we need to take public comment, but the motion would be then to delegate or nominate vice president

after engaging the controller's office and dhr, the 2017 version, we believe, reflects the sort of bestortunity to go forward with the whistle blower protection ordinance. you will note that the 2017 version adds provisions when a when issal blower complaint is -- whistle blower complaint is given to the staff. when it's a revised version, it's a portion of the law in which the local agencies would be involved in a complaint that is made to a state or federal agency. both the controller's office and the department of human resources felt that because of a number of issues, that it would be almost impossible to track whistle blower complaints to the state or federal agencies or offices. the difficulty comes with a lack of sharing of certain confidential information and a number of other provisions that we simply in working with them did not believe we could include in this item. however, going to the 2017 version, there's expansions in the clarification that rectify that revision, including, as i said, requiring supervisors to obtain training that we have all taken regarding whistle blow

more mois dhr off the coast, and this is all moving in our direction. and this downpour right here, about two hours away. so even about 11:00 tonight we're still tracking heavy rain. a flash flood watch in the north bay. as a heavy rain moves through, there could be some flash flooding. still a strong level 3 storm tonight on the storm impact scale. an additional half an inch to an inch left of rainfall still in this system. >> all right, drew, thanks. because of the wet weather a tree fell on a muny bus today in san francisco. >> it happened on the corner of sampson and pacific. officials say the tree snapped on its base and fell right on top of a muny bus. >> no one was injured. >> the north bay fire zone is the area of really the greatest concern of today's storm given the med slides. >> now here's wade freeman in santa rosa. >> reporter: based on the demand for sandbags at the soanta rosa public work's hard, no one's in a panic. maybe their immune. it's been three months to the day. concerns today a stepchild of all that past child, all the worries

i just wanted to make sure we had representation in the discussions with the city and dhr, the city firefighters union. thank you very much. commissioner hardeman, did you have a final question? >> cancel. >> thank you very much. chief gonzalez, welcome. >> good morning president cleaveland, commissioners, deputy chief gonzalez operations. the operations with the san francisco fire department two month operations, for the calendar year 2017 we had 22 greater alarm fires, 20 were second alarm one was a third and one was a fourth. during two months six greater alarms. i'll mention a bit on each. first november 3rd, 1206, mason between washington and jackson. four story type five cause of the fire was accidental. fire started on the ground floor laundromat, it spread to the four story hotel, via the interior stairwell. people on fire scapes, many people coming down where a lot of the smoke was going up. crews were very aggressive, engine 41, lieutenant, good officer. they were able to stop the vertical spread of the fire to the attic and maintain control of the stairwell and were able to keep it ou

i would suggest you ask dhr to provide any copies of laws that says it's not going to be provided. i don't think that exists. i think that's a convenient explanation for not doing something. secondly, i think that if you take an action right to court, it means that you have deep pockets of your own to hire an attorney or else find an attorney who will take on the case on contingency. when i had to file on a discrimination case as a federal employee, it cost me about $50,000 before we had any kind of resolution. there are not that many employees who have enough access to cash to do that. i was fortunate. if i hadn't had that, i would have just been out of luck. the third thing is even if the federal government or state agency finds retaliation, they can't do anything to the city employee who retaliated. but if you did something here, you could direct to this agency head that the person who did those wrongful actions pay a penalty of some kind. you can't do that otherwise. so there are good reasons to proceed with this in a broader scope, in my view. thank you. >> can i make a clarif

dhr does a very good job in making sure it's a comprehensive evaluation process. they brought in approximately 36 members from throughout the country with fire suppression experience at the rank of captain and above to evaluate the close to 250 members of our department that took part in this opportunity. they're doing a lot of work in assisting us in getting that list published and adopted by the department of human resources. once that list is adopted, i anticipate we will move very quickly to promote some new lieutenants, probably between 16 and 20 openings on day one. that's also a positive thing in moving forward and having regular examinations. and yesterday, the deputies and i interviewed members for the homeland security assistant deputy chief position. we had 23 members apply, and we selected six to interview, so probably by the end of this month we'll have made our selection on that. last night, number of us responded to the third alarm fire on westportal avenue. it was a challenging fire. i'd like to acknowledge two different two today -- the incident c