the item is closed by the performing entity. once puc has completed the work, the puc staff go in and modify the 311 database. supervisor chu: ok. just because we have seen situations before where 311 calls the agency. >> thank you. looking at some of the challenges -- san francisco street safe -- which you can see here, have a broad variety of lighting. we maintain through the puc at least 75 discrete lighting systems. there are 12 different styles. none of the parts are interchangeable on the systems. in addition to what you see here, there are 60 streetlight variations. many of the pictures are no longer fabricated, and therefore maintaining these lighting systems is very challenging. some of these fixtures are historic fixtures. they are unique to their location. this is for example on market street where we have of those lights. these are streetlight design variations that personalize san francisco within our historic district. so, puc funds means for all street lights in san francisco, regardless of who owns them. the we have a wid

the yellow lights and the white lights. >> yes. puc observes the lighting standards established by national street lighting standards. when we do our photometric analysis, our target for the amount of light hitting the street is an industry standard. i would agree with you there is quite a bit of variation in the quality of the light. some is whiter. some is yellower. as we go through our elie the conversion project, we will be converting -- our led conversion project, we will be converting the cobra head-style to be dark sky contras, if you will. it is compliance with concerns. we will see more uniformity in the quality of light with the neighborhoods that have that overhead style over the next two, two and a half years as we complete that conversion of 18,500 lamps. is the national standard that we observed for the amount of light that should be hitting the streets. pedestrian lighting that comes from streetlights on most of our streets today is a secondary benefit. the street light system when it was designed was not designed for pe

pg&e owns about 43% of the street lights in san francisco. puc pays for the operations and maintenance of the lights on a pg&e by -- owned by pg&e as well as by the city. many are decorative, such as the historic lights in the neighborhood. there is not our really transparent way for someone walking down the streets to know whether the light they see that is out is a puc light or a pg&e like. that is where our interaction with 311 allows us to see whether it is a puc-owned light. and mention the california public utilities commission controls the rates. these rates are low -- allow pg&e to recover their maintenance expenses and their costs for capital investment. so, we pay them over the life of the asset for the operational maintenance fees. that includes enough for them to set aside to perform the improvements we talked about earlier on their series of loops. -- series loops. and that comes to about -- for the distribution of the power we provide for those lights -- i mentioned that it is our power, but pg&e is delivering it to the lights. we p

i wanted the puc to go through that. perhaps, we can go to the budget analyst to talk through the budget as a whole and that we will talk to those items. primarily because i want to understand the relationship between the preparation and the sale. i want to understand the potential impact on these items and what the plans are for spending. there's not a lot of detail in the report about it. supervisor cohen, did you have a question? supervisor cohen: i just want to publicly go on record to acknowledge the right -- the importance of the project to the south eastern neighborhoods. i have spent a large part of last year, as well as this year, getting better educated on the technologies available when it comes to waste water treatment plant and the management of plants of that nature, and what san francisco is in store for. it is very exciting. i also know you will be spending some time going to your commission and beginning to create a pathway for this project to move forward. i just want to encourage you to do this quickly

we have worked very closely with the puc to develop the street like guidelines. street lights are of fundamental organizing element in the streetscape, both creating identity, as you mentioned, for the daytime and the nighttime visual environment, as well as serving the more utilitarianism functions of providing safety and security. we have kept the street lights guidelines at a very high level , touching on concerns such as light level, claire, like color -- glare, light color, with the understanding the puc was going to be developing a catalog of street lights for the city, and these guidelines and performance criteria could help inform that catalog. i think ms. hale mentioned that, and we have been working in partnership with them to develop a set of guidelines for street lights to provide a streetscape environment that will fit the other st. elements out there. we continue to work with the puc on at informing and developing the street like catalog and implementing the overall recommendations. thank you. i am happy to answer any questions. >> how optimistic ar

they sent this over to the puc. they tell us, read the criteria. we can read it, but there is interpretation. the department has some obligation. it is not necessarily this department. obligation to give examples, how do you want to see this implemented? i could go down to the plumbing department tomorrow and i can ask them, if there are 40 inspectors, 39 of the 40 would draw it on a piece of paper and a book the exact same way. if i asked a similar question, how do i do my water retention program? i will get a blank stare. when i go to the puc and i ask them, they tell me to go figure it out. it is not acceptable to hear from the puc to go figure it out. there were started under one set of rules and now the rules are being forced upon us in the middle of the game. it is going to happen. it is not a question of if it's gone to happen. -- if it is going to happen. how do we make this a smooth transaction? we are stuck in this. we're both getting out of date information from the puc. -- vague information from the puc. i would ask that these two compo

there also questions about the transfer agreement between the puc and the modesto district as well. >> we originally started the program with about $5 million and net dropped to $3 million. the budget shows $2 million a year for the next few years. we have been cutting everything, including energy efficiency programs and this reflects the lack of money in the budget because we need to make sure the infrastructure has to be kept up to speed and we just don't have that much money. in this current year, we were doing well until the middle of the year and there were folks who figured out a great way to have a small solar program with our subsidy. it became a free installation. it was not deleveraging we were hoping to get. we have been talking about how to stretch the $2 million as much as we can by making sure we are leveraging the money appropriately and having it available for all parts of the community. you may hear from others that whatever we can do during the next year to figure out how to leverage it to make sure the program continues to grow. what you have now is we have dropped

that is great because the puc exists because of ratepayers. t to see the smartest technology. gerd they want to see a building that not only houses 900,000 employees but also those that are smart handling a strong interest in making sure we continue maintaining a water system. not only is it a great building. this is for you. this is a building that educates you and your families for generations to come. how we take care of our water system and how we maintain the system not just for san francisco insert but for the people who depend upon a national water system and maintain it and spent a lot of money making sure it is earthquake safe. this building is also going to be the safest building to be in in case there ever is an earthquake event, and we are doing that with our libraries, our civic buildings, and we will build new buildings, and we want to make sure it will withstand. if you are in buildings, it is going to rock a little bit, but it will be saved. i was here over a year-and-a- half ago, and we were across the street and putting on the

about the puc. for 30 years, we have worked to protect the river from our headquarters in san francisco am. are bay area program director cannot be here today. i am standing in to express concerns we have about the proposed 2 million gallon water per day water transfer. the river trust has submitted a letter to the puc that addresses our concerns. i have given you copies of the letter. the puc is negotiating an agreement to purchase 2 million gallons of water per day at a cost of $1.5 million per year. a second contract would be negotiated transferring an additional 22 million gallons of water to the bay area. we believe this water is no longer needed and would be a waste of money. in 2008, when the transfer was studied, san francisco was collectively using about 250 million gallons of water per day. however, our water use has declined dramatically. last year, it dropped to about 205 million gallons of water per day. the contract would be -- customers would be obligated to pay for the water every yea

we have a representative from the puc you can speak specifically to the project., i will be happy to answer them. chairperson chu: thank you. >> good morning. the assistant general manager and cfo of the san francisco public utilities commission. i have a brief presentation and update to give you on our seismic upgrades as well as disaster preparedness as well as the of the three water supply system. on the city fraud, we have been making good progress with the comprehensive -- city front, we have been making good progress with the comprehensive review for the required repairs to the existing in the structure. we have been coordinating and working with our fellow city departments over the last several months. chief white, our general manager, and their representative from the water department and mr. ritchie from dpw are all working to make sure that we deploy these assets as best as possible for the city. the auxiliary water bond authorization has been covered. we are back for our second series of what voters have approved some time ago now. we are making good pr

what i would hate to see is having the puc acknowledge we should move in that direction and do it can to get there in the long run and then have pg&e keep doing the mistake of the past i think it's really important that the goal of pedestrian great lighting be embraced in san francisco. i could understand if we were a tiny town -- you can't have every single town, but we're one of the largest cities in the san francisco. -- one of the markets with the largest lighting needs. i think it's important to embrace that. >> we are striving to meet the city's goals. i should clarify that all cities are required to be treated equal as part of the code. to the extent we are offering a customized service, we would have to offer it to another city. our goal is to identify alighting styles and changes we can make to meet the better streets plan, but i'm not sure a formal approach would come immediately. is something we can work on. >> -- supervisor wiener: are you saying the code would prohibit pg&e from having infrastructure that fits san francisco's needs and it has to be one size fits all for t

ron has been not with the agencies since muni was part of the puc. i had the opportunity to speak briefly with him yesterday, and learned that he has really had his hand in much of what we see in our rail network today, particularly in the downtown and embarcadero area, in getting the f line up and running, starting back in the 1980's, the extension of muni metro to caltrans. he played a major role as part of the waterfront project team, which was part of its own office that developed plans initially to snake around the supports for the embarcadero freeway, and was able to reformat those plans and go right down the center of the embarcadero. it is hard to imagine what the embarcadero used to be like, compared to what it is now. he was involved with many different rail replacement projects, such as the church in dubose, and getting historic street cars back into service. doing all that, he had to work with a lot of different parts of the agency and the rest of the city government -- the business community, the residential community, the tourism industr

on item number four, colleagues, we heard from the puc earlier today. the area of concerns we raced had to do with the plans going forward for this huge project would be. one of the suggestions that i had put forward and the general manager had suggested on that item, appropriation of the $588 million, was to put on reserve value to allow them to go towards the boards in their summertime. i would like to entertain a motion to reserve year 2. that value is $255 million. do we have that motion? we can do that without objection? thank you. on items #5 and items #6, i believe public utilities commission had articulated a number of amendments quickly to those items. i would like to ask the controller's office to reiterate them. >> [inaudible] 4 item #5, -- four item number five, page 8 online 11, the financing cost would be changed to $18,951,686. that amount excludes the rboc amount. for the next item, item number six, which is the appropriation for the $141 million -- on page 7, line 10, at the end of that line, we would add under rating agency disclosure c

presdienident chiu: the puc's actual was higher than was budgeted and i wanted to get a sense of whether that is the case for other departments. >> it is very likely, the puc and most of the enterprise departments, they do budget in one year even though it might take two or three years to spend the money. it would not necessarily be uncommon for those not to match perfectly but we can provide the information on an actual basis. president chiu: we all agree with the goal of centralizing our technology we can but it does seem as if the department of technology's budget, we have been forcing them to engage in cost-cutting but the i.t. budget still remain very substantial. that is something i think all of you know i've been focused on. i have a number of other questions but our colleagues have been here for a long time. i will ask them in private. thank you for being here. >> thank you. supervisor chu: i appreciate the presentation and i am glad we're moving forward with the [unintelligible] this is something i asked about last year as well. converting to a look from lotus which is something

and things like the non-portable project -- non-potable project were going to be out of reach of the puc in august, which is great, but it means the decision could take place in july before we have discussed alternatives. somebody was telling me in the last report was that the true cost was almost $2,500 an acre foot, whereas conservation was about $1,100 an acre foot. i think that there will be a lot of projects that come in under the 2500 that have not been explored yet, maybe because they were seen as too expensive, but now we have a real price tag for the water transfer and we could look to a lot more innovation. i just have a concern about the timing, that that discussion should take place before a vote on the water transfer. again, thank you very much for your leadership on the project. >> the timing issue is that the july 10 meeting will be the workshop, and the two items we will be discussing our more supply options and the sewer system improvement program, so actually, we are not meeting in august. we're meeting july 10 to discuss the things he brought up. commissioner moran: i

harrington stated on the puc on the specific line items in the budget.if you look on page 10 of our report where we stated that we are recommending reductions, and these are shown on the pages 13-17 of our report, a total of $2 million. we have revised that down to $two million two ordered $23,017. -- where we have previously recommended 2 million to a moderate $48,000, we are revising that down. -- $2,248,000, we are revising that down. on page 14, and the middle of the page, we are adding to that in government and public affairs manager. instead of that ad-john, we would recommend a manager -- add-on, we would recommend a manager to that. it would now become 20 four thousand dollars. and for 2013-14, where it says 28,000 two hundred $95, it would be $25,206. that is the first change. on page 16, toward the middle to the bottom of the page, on maintenance, services, buildings and structures, where we had been recommending a reduction of $220,000, our recommendation now is $100,000 for both fiscal years. the number in the second column will become $30439

just for a moment, i want the puc to raise their hand and give a shout. we have a lot of folks who really committed in making the systems wwork. again, we have billions of dollars that we are entrusted with delivering in a timely way, which needs to be within budget. systems like this will really elevate and make it really transparent that we are delivering these programs in a very conscious and deliberate way so we can save the ratepayers' money. with that, i just want to thank you guys for this award. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> if you are a consultant or you work for a company that does work for the puc, raise your hand. that's about half the room. thank you, harlan kelly. >> it does not matter just where you're going to go. it matters how you're going to get there. our team came together in 2008 and we started looking at procuring something to navigate us away from paper-based to on- line filing. >> we collect the majority of the city's revenue. all of those payments were made by piper until we undertook this project. we asked the team -- how d

called for quite some time on the state of the street lights and the challenges that we have and what the puc, pg&e, are doing to resolve the situation. none of us anticipated that we would have hundreds of folks come out for the first item, so i cannot ask everyone to wait. i would request that the item be continued to monday, june 4th, at 10:00 a.m. and request that it be placed first on the agenda. >> that would be a special meeting but we will do that. that is the motion. before we take a vote, i would like to open it up to public comment on the item. just this item, not the street lights. >> supervisors, street lighting affects everyone including the seniors. since the seniors are here, maybe they should hear a little bit about street lighting. really, we do not know who maintains the polls. we do know in a general way, but we do not know in a precise way. the hearing will be continued i would suggest that the board of supervisors to some focus outreach and do some outreach to the seniors off so that they know more about these lights, what will be done about these lights, how the puc and