my name is kate howard, i'm the mayor's budget director. with i'm going to do is briefly talk to you about some high level elements of san francisco's budget. as i think the mayor and the s*urp both indicated, a budget really does reflect the priorities and the values of a city or of a community. it's also a spending plan just like in your household your budget reflects your spending plan for how you are going to spend the money that you have and then in san francisco and in all public jurisdictions a budget is also a legal document. every year the city is legally obligated by its charter to balance the budget no later than july 31st. so this year as the mayor mentioned we are beginning our next two-year budget where we will take all 50-plus of our city's departments and balance the budget for the next two years. i have some slides that you'll cecuming up on the screen momentarily so san francisco's budget is very large. as many of you will remember, san francisco is both a city and a county. what that means is we have all the normal respon

and the discretion that we have over an $8 billion budget as kate howard mentioned so well and broke it down, half of that is not within the general fund so we really don't have a lot of discretion within that. then within the $4 billion that we're able to allocate there are so many set asides and base lines where we actually have zero discretion over how we spend that. our true discretionary budget as a city, it's still a big number, it's around a billion dollars, but it's a lot less than $8 billion. >> you must have money for everything. >> what about 5 million for this? our ability to control what is spent is really significantly smaller than that, it's just over a billion dollars. again, a large amount of money but within that we have to fund so many projects that everybody in san francisco truly cares about so i think it's important to note that our true discretion, what we really do have a discussion about during bunket season, is actually a much smaller amount and our ability to control that is very important. so that's where all these intense negotiations come from. >> also i

us today are mayor lee, of course, supervisor mark farrell, the chair of the budget committee, kate howard, the mayor's bunket director, and i'm barbara taylor, city hall bureau city for kcbs radio. quickly again if you'd like to submit some questions or comments you can email mayor edwin lee at sfgov.org, include the subject line sf budget town hall or budget town hall, you can tweet the mayor at mayor ed lee, using the hash tag sf budget or you can post comments on mayor lee's youtube page. i'm going to put together some of the things all of you said and talk first about city workers salaries and benefits that take up about half the city's budget and that leaves the greater question of how much discretion, mayor, when all is said and done, we talk about an 8 billion dollar spending plan, but on a practical level what you are really dealing with is a much smaller piece of the pie and how to work the benefits and salary fit into that. they very strongly feel that they deserve some good tidings this year after going through the recession and experiencing a lot of pay freezes. >> one of the,

kate howard. so i really want to avoid the kind of show down we're at right now but have a show down. the show down today i'd like to actually table the puc portion of the budget. and then i want to see if we can actually talk. and communicate about our joint and different concerns about infrastructure of the puc and the programs that are basically infrastructure like green power sf that what work together i know that the public utilities commission has greatest needs around the power enterprise just before we approved the clean power sf program two years ago we knew we were looking at a cliff. i've had numerous conversations about the needs of the program. we also have a policy direction that the board of supervisors has indicated with a very strong majority vote that we'll have a clean power program to provide san francisco residents with a choice based on renewable energy that's been taking taken away but to have a program in go place. i think there's ways to accomplish both and that we have to

thanks to all of you who participated in today's online town hall, mayor ed lee, kate howard, mostly you, the public, we hope we have been able to answer some of your questions and please stay involved in this budget process. there's going to be lots more opportunities in different neighborhoods all around the city. i'm barbara taylor with kcbs radio and again thanks so much for joining us. >> welcome to "culturewire." today we are at recology. they are celebrate 20 years of one of the most incredibly unique artist residency programs. we are here to learn more from one of the resident artists. welcome to the show, deborah. tell us how this program began 20 years ago. >> the program began 20 years ago. our founder was an environmentalist and an activist and an artist in the 1970's. she started these street sweeping campaigns in the city. she started with kids. they had an exhibition at city hall. city officials heard about her efforts and they invited her to this facility. we thought it would coincide with our efforts to get folks to recycle, it is a great educational tool. since then

thanks to all of you who participated in today's online town hall, mayor ed lee, kate howard, mostly you, the public, we hope we have been able to answer some of your questions and please stay involved in this budget process. there's going to be lots more opportunities in different neighborhoods all around the city. i'm barbara taylor with kcbs radio and again thanks so much for joining us. >> good afternoon. welcome to the san francisco full board of supervisors which tuesday, april 29, 2014. madam clerk, call roll >> yes. supervisor avalos. supervisor breed. supervisor campos. president chiu. supervisor cowen. supervisor farrell. supervisor kim. supervisor mar. supervisor tang. supervisor wiener. supervisor yee. mr. president, all members are present >> thank you ladies and gentlemen, please join us in the pledge of allegiance. and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. colleagues, we have the meeting minutes from our march 25 do i hear a motion to approve minutes. 0 we'll take that without objection. madam clerk, a

howard beach queens in an area hit particularly hard overnight. indra, what have you been seeing? >> really sun believable this morning, kate.bout four or five everythinges of rain in one day, talking about severe flooding. just look at what residents are waking up to this morning. they're seeing several feet of water. you can see some of the residents coming, trying to get out of their homes this morning. here's the concern though. after talking to people in this region we heard this is actually the waters that have receded. i want to show you what is just right behind oh me on the right. what we're hearing is that really a lot of this is the sewage water that got flooded and then now drifted down this hill right in front of their homes. a lot of people are dealing with about two feet of this sewage lying in their basements of their homes this morning. that is the concern. unfortunately we're still talking about more rain expected on the way. definitely not a good situation when you have flood warns across the entire area. still dealing with the flash flood and watches out there. i'm in a worm froarm front. unfortunately th