president vietor: commissioners?commissioner torres: i was in sacramento yesterday for the swearing in of commissioner courtney, and i had a chance to speak with the secretary and i wanted to extend to him an opportunity, whenever it is appropriate, i think we will have a different perspective and a different vision for california. his confirmation will be delayed a little bit because the supreme court nomination is going to be forthcoming. at the end of the day, i think we will have a very good relationship with the secretary. >> we have sent him our first letter. commissioner torres: i saw that. president vietor: other items? >> on the 25th. >> if we can eliminate the meeting, i am all for it. president vietor: objections? >> we will wipe off the 25th meeting. on march 22nd, the items of interest are the wholesale rate in the environmental enhancement surcharge. i believe we can postpone those to the following meeting without any problems. but i wanted to make sure that we were not going to bump into somebody else'

president vietor: is there a motion? >> so moved. president vietor: comments? changes? holland favor? thank you very much. -- all in favor? thank you very much. >> we have no speaker cards for this item. president vietor: are there members of the public that would like to address the commission? next item. >> did we approve january 11? president vietor: we approve them of that the same time. >> communications. of the commissioners receive the electronic copies of all of the communications regarding this meeting. also, this is the time where commissioners might make any comments related to the calendar as well. president vietor: hearing none, next item, please. >> before the commissioners, a proposed resolution for the citizen's advisory committee. >> before you today, you have a resolution for the 17-member puc advisory committee. many of them have been meeting on a monthly basis, sometimes having issues brought up like waste water, power, and environmental issues. it might be a nice way to thank them. president vietor: i think we would be honored to consider hopefully

president vietor: i am supportive of it. i feel like it is really money on the table to get that cut in any way. it has really been troubling to see the decrease. go solar, the program should be funded as much as possible, understanding that we are saddling with our budget this year. i am supportive of that. i would love to hear from other commissioners if they feel is a good use. and we're fortunate enough to have them. >> one other point of clarification. whee recommended be funded at $2 million, we recommended that there be a split between the funding available for low- income and nonprofit vs. the rest of the program participants. we recommended that $2 million be set aside for low-income and non-profit and $1 million be available to the remaining participants. thank you. >> afternoon, commissioners. i like to speak to you about the reorganization of the real estate services. real estate services was assigned to me to take a close look at what functions were there, what were the capabilities? in the future, we will have

president vietor: any other items? next item. >> the report of the general manager. >> i wanted to mention that we have been doing operational statistics for the last couple of months. there is the general knowledge about how the business is running and we sent a copy of that to you. we will be putting it up on the main web site. i wanted to do a quick review publicly of the graphs that we are putting out on a weekly basis. it is in the communications portion of the binder. this is not intended to be easy to read. it can be better than that, maybe. the first of these items is precipitation. this year is so far the wettest year on record since 1919 for our system. if you can see the line that is only partially there, what that means is that the water in 2011, it is now head of any year to date. if we keep going at that rate, it will be over 200% of normal. we have already received 42 inches of rain this year. that is much better thank you. we are an incredibly strong positions in terms of total storage. that includes th

president vietor: i don't think so. hearing no objections, i would like to continue -- can we please continue this to the next meeting and get more information at this time? next item, please. >> item 15, discussion and possible action to approve the selection of hdr engineering, harry tracy water treatment plant long-term improvements project construction management services staff augmentation, to authorize the general manager to execute the professional services agreement with hdr engineering not to exceed $16 million with a duration of five years, subject to board of supervisors' approval. >> julie labonte, executive director. do you have questions on any specific items? president vietor: any questions or comments on this item? is there a motion to adopt item 16? i am sorry -- 15. is there a second? hough -- public comment on this item? all those in favor of adopting item 15? opposed? the motion carries. >> item 16, discussion and possible action to approve the plans and specifications of the water enterprise water s

president vietor: next speaker, please. >> mr. kelly. >> i'm just speaking highly of what i have had with the real estate department. they are very professional in running a horse ranch. still the same, they are a great group to work with. >> where is your horse ranch? hong >>> san mateo. president vietor: hanthank you r your comment. next speaker, please. welcome back. >> i have a prepared something. good afternoon president and commission members. i am the president of the board of the nonprofit skyline stables. when we have been your tenants for over 60 years. we negotiated an agreement in good faith to make way for the water systems improvement project at our old home. we have vacated our barns and the horses are scattered liberally throughout the country now. our group is prepared to invest a considerable amount of time, effort, money, and hope to build our stable on another location. this has been a very long struggle for us and we are tremendously concerned that the sfpuc might consider the idea of removing the present real

president vietor: any comments or questions on this? it would be great to take public comment at this time if there is any public comment on the community benefits policy. >> commissioners, i wanted to speak in favor of the policy. as most of the commission knows and is aware, over the past year this has been the product of an incredible amount of work. there have been stakeholder meetings with environmental groups, community groups, and job applicants. a lot of us. it has been very capable. with former commissioner ellis and your general manager consultants, there has been a lot of discussion about this. it is a robust policy. it gets us to a lot of the goals that are seeking to be advanced in terms of leveraging all the opportunities for community empowerment that are available. when you spend the type of resources the puc is spending to improve things like our waste water system rebuild, $3 billion to $4 billion, it is massive. i think there is a lot of reassurance. we have a general manager that believes in this. i was one of many p

president vietor: ok, any other further public comment? if you did state your name for the record, sir? >> my name is larry wong. i represent the collective bargaining unit for the engineer's and technical people. the past couple of months, kerin has approached local 21. at two of the meetings, we gave presentations. last week, we talked about the work scope. at this point, local 21 supports the rfp conditionally. it was involved in the resources of the puc staff, equipment, a final review of plans, reviewing training requirements, but making sure things are up to snuff, preparing a manual and policies, identifying staging areas. the one thing the union has a problem with is that you already have staff on board. they have the capability to do many of these items. the thing i find stressful is not interesting -- this was developed with the program. the program manager is being asked again to develop it. so does that mean we are throwing good money after bad? so i am wondering, last year, the commission had a panel to make a series of recomm

commissioners -- president vietor: commissioners? women make a comment. the greatest concern is that we do not create white elephants that we will have to worry about down the line. i do not think we do. one of the things i know that commissioner caen is interested in is getting the work on the digesters going. that has been a long time in the works. it is good that in the first couple of years, we do that. that is enabled by this. i think the recognition that we're going to have to be taking a look, not only the approach, that is the important business of this commission over probably the next several years. any public comment? commissioners? commissioner caen: i would like to move this. secretary housh: next item, and ms 13. the proposed budgets for the bureau's 42011-2012 and 2012- 2013. >> we have met, and i see that they are here today. we are still recommending that we go ahead with what our plan was and move forward. if the commission has questions, we will be happy to answer those. commissioner: commissioners.? : commissioner what has been the res

president vietor: think you, ms. jackson. commissioner: and voluntary staff. >> the first two years of improvement planning is $7.60 million, budgeted, and that is really to get us started, but to start facility assessments. we have an asset management program, but we have to assess all of the assets we have up there, actually do a full assessment as to cover a program costs. in your 11-12 and 12-13, we have $8.30 million to implement planning, and then steps upper -- and then, it steps up. treasuring the, 2012. our biggest enemies are escalation and inflation. this is a very flattering picture of oceanside. this is taken from the south. if we were to ask about it when it was built in 1992, it was $200 million. if we were to build now that is below the san francisco zoo along the pacific ocean in a canyon below ground with a membrane that has animals running around on the top, it would be $2 billion. if we were to delay and build oceanside out in the future, the price goes up from there to $4 billion, so this is one of the ch

president vietor: public comment on this item? all those in favor? opposed? next item, please. >> madame president, i believe we are coming to the end of the regular calendar. >> there are no closed session

i know president vietor was also in attendance. we gave presentations to the senator to discuss the issues we are facing with pg&e and areas where the enabling legislation could be beefed up. i think that was a good conversation, and hopefully, we will see movement in sacramento associated with those points. we are aggressively participating in a number of proceedings alongside our allies. we are really pushing back on the role that make cca success all the more difficult. one place where we are fighting is the adjustment to the exit fee structure. exit fees will be levied on the customer. what we wound up doing, we are pretty much pro forma applications, utilities, pg&e in our case, what put forward to the puc to get a rubber stamp. those could include approval for using a method of attack the exit fee. that has not been looked at since it was said in 2006. we noted there was a systematic bias, and that makes the exit fee higher than we believe is appropriate. in protesting that pro-forma filing, we got the commission interested a

president vietor: i want to thank you for all your work. express our thanks to the entire rate fairness board. we really appreciate your hard work on this and your recommendations. commissioners, and the questions? -- any questions? vice president moran: i would like to echo that. i think your last two slides were a couple taking us beyond the line-by-lined critique of what has been proposed and to keep up for us some issues we need to watch for overtime. that is very helpful. >> we are happy to do so. president vietor: any other comments or questions? anything else on the right issue at this time? any public comment? >> good afternoon. my name is wells lawson. i actually worked here for the office of economic and work force development, and have been talking briefly with the rate fairness board about some of the proposals. after today, after talking with todd earlier this week, i have a greater appreciation for the complexity of the policy we have to talk about. as the project manager, i am here with tiffany, who is also a project manager

president vietor: i have one question on this implementation. will we be hearing in our budget proceedings about what is going to cost, and the staffing needs to implement it? >> yes. i think the external affairs apartment -- external affairs department is up on the 27. we have been having intensive conversations with the general manager as well as assistant general managers. the great thing about the community benefits program is that it is comprehensive and hits different enterprises. the idea is, for example, as assistant general manager hale is thinking about issues around power and funds coming into the agency that will need to support disadvantaged communities, she will be working with external affairs and the community benefits team to have thus provide leadership about how to do that programming. as we think about the sewer system improvement program, there will be a community benefits approach and strategy. it is not just about new benefits. it is about how to engage the public as we think about what the impact is going to be, and how w

. >> [roll call] president vietor has an excuse to attendance. the next item is approval of the minutes of the special budget workshop meeting of january 13, 2011 and a special budget workshop meeting. >> any additions or corrections? all those in favor? it is approved. >> general public comment, members may address the public -- members of the public may address the commission on members -- items within our jurisdiction. >> the afternoon, thank you for hearing me. i like to thank the general manager and staff. in support of the infrastructure development. i just wanted to introduce myself and provide an invitation to the public utilities commission for a conference to be held in coordination with the federal government tomorrow. information is in the folder. we have been in the improved labor compliance program. i am one of 40 certified consultant in the state of california to provide assistance. we have been able to collect over $2 million or a correction meeting to be made. we are interested in facilitating contractors that are having problems

president vietor: think you, ms. jackson. commissioner: