City and County of San Francisco Thursday, January 23, 2014

captions. >> the meeting will come to order. This is the regular meeting of

the government and over sight

meeting. I'm supervisor breed and to

my right is -- to my left is

supervisor david chiu and cohen. The

committee clerk is major and i

like to thank sfgt for staffing the meeting.

>> silence all cell phones and speaking cards and any documents

should be submitted to the

clerk. Items acted upon today will appear

on the February 4th agenda unless otherwise stated. >> thank you. Are there any

other changes to the agenda?

>> there are no changes. >> Madam Clerk, can you please call the first item.

>> item number 1 is ordinance amending the business and tax regulations code, by adding article 15a "public realm landscaping, improvement and maintenance assessment districts," to provide for establishment of assessment districts to finance landscaping, improvements, and maintenance of public realm areas, including parks, parklets, sidewalks, landscaped areas, plazas, and gardens; to authorize the purchase of real property with assessment funds, where property will be a public realm area and the district will provide landscaping, improvements and/or >> item number 1 is ordinance amending the business and tax regulations code, by adding article 15a "public realm landscaping, improvement and maintenance assessment districts," to provide for establishment of assessment districts to finance landscaping, improvements, and maintenance of public realm areas, including parks, parklets, sidewalks, landscaped areas, plazas, and gardens; to authorize the purchase of real property with assessment funds, where property will be a public realm area and the district will provide landscaping, improvements and/or maintenance; and making environmental findings. >> thank you. I'll turn this over supervisor cohen. >> thank you for your interest and today's agenda. I want to thank you for hearing this item today. I have been working on this ordinance for a year now. This ordinance mirrors our city's

successful community benefits district area in dog patch and we have a number of open spaces that

are not owned by the city. They are

either held in trust by a non

profit organization or held by cal tran or resident have taken upon

themselves to improve. In the city we've

developed a robust grant

opportunity for communities to improve and

in some areas acquire open

space, but we have no consistent funding

source available for long term maintenance. This enabling ordinance

establishing a process and the procedure for accomplishing a district is maintaining and improving

open spaces other than the public --

other public realms which we're

calling the green benefit district.

So you're here and have heard it first. Green benefit district. That's a new term. This ordinance is identical to the procedures and process that are currently used

to form the community benefit districts focuses on commercial district, so many of you are aware of

that form. This will allow for the first time residential property

owners to vote to tax

themselves, there's an interesting novel concept, willing to tax themselves to pay for maintenance and improvements to neighborhood, open spaces. This ordinance before us

today does not form any

particular district. It sets the framework

and requirements of potentially interested parties must comply with

to form a district. Interest in this mechanism is not limited only

to dog patch and portions of patrol hill and there are several neighborhood organizations that

have expressed an interest in formatting something -- informing something similar to better maintain their own neighborhood open spaces. Now, you should have

received a copy of some technical amendments that I'm asking the

committee to adopt in accordance with this ordinance today. This is

non sub sti tifb and seek to clarify. First, that the majority of

the governing board for the funds for an assessment district is for property owners in the assessment district. The funds

can be used

for recreation improvements, he can logical system improvements, pedestrian and bicycle amenities. It would provide better clarity on the role of the management plan

and changes to the legislative digest

to clarify the process for dissolving an assessment district. Now,

I'd like to provide an opportunity for Mrs. Tono from the work force development to briefly describe

to us the formation process for these districts.

>> good morning, and thank you.

>> good morning, chair breed supervisors. I currently oversee the

city's community benefit

district program. Currently the petitions

-- the cbc process takes about

a year. Currently the cbd program

which will be a plowed to the project which says that they're collect

30 percent of waited vote. upon receiving that petition, we take this through the legislative process where we have a process include the department of elections and

require that of all ballots submitted, 50 percent are in

favor of forming the district. Owd is

in favor of article 15a, kurnltly our cbd legislation doesn't allow for residential areas to form community benefit districts so our

current cbd law is limited and the gbd would allow for many communities in your own

neighborhoods to be formed through the gbd program. If there are any other questions, I'm available to answer

them.

>> thank you very much. Seeing there's no colleagues with questions,

I would like to bring up sarah

ballard who was hand our partners in this effort. Good morning.

>> thank you, supervisor, and good morning chair breed. Sarah recreation parks department.

i'm glad to be here to support this legislation. This krd of -- this idea of neighbors coming together to support their park and open spaces have been something that has

been kicked around in our world

and we have struggled to figure out the appropriate mechanism to

end able them to do that.

we're grateful to supervisor cohen

and andrea and working through the details to do us and enable us to give a vehicle for neighborhood and park groups to come together to

support their open spaces. We are familiar with working with bids

and cbd's. We have property in some

of the existing spaces and look forward to working with the green

benefit districts that are formed in supervisor cohen's neighborhood and hopefully throughout the city. >> thank you. >> well, at this time, I'd like to open up for public comment. I see we've got a couple of neighbors

here. Do we have cards? Are there public comment cards? No. Okay. Are there any members of the public that like to talk. I

want to remind everyone that we have two

minutes. They'll be a pel at

-- they'll be a bell at 30-seconds. >> northwest patra and vermont street and it's a neighborhood that

was split in half by the 101 freeway in the 1950s. Some homes are owned by families who parents owned the property before the freeway

built. Some are turned into

condos and some are single family homes.

The neighbors surrounded by

potential developments enabled by the eastern neighborhood plan is

lacking in green space, but it contains two acres of green space that

can be used by the community. The green space is the 101 freeway

and the work has improved to improve

the park and to plan meetings with a landscape architect that the

city paid for with money that

they earned to create an urban area for the loop which surrounds the freeway and bounded by 17th street.

Week working with san francisco

alliance and dpw and cal trans on

this provide. Some neighbors are willing to provide volunteer efforts to maintain the property. That's not enough. More is needed. Creating a green district will put together a management

structure and a source for small capital funding that will care for

these areas and provide by

green street skate and other green projects that will benefit the environment. Thank you.

>> perfect timing. Very good.

Next speaker. >> hi, I'm alicia holloway and

I'm a homeowner in dog patch. This legislation is important to me because in our neighborhood we have --

we don't have a lot of large

spaces to develop traditional parks and

so the legislation will be

allow us to form a gbd so we can develop and maintain these smaller spaces that we've been working on and

provoid a consistent -- provide a consistent framework and

infrastructure and source of

revenue. Thanks.

>> thank you alicia. Next speaker, please.

>> my name is bruce and I'm a

dog patch property owner and as alicia

is. We've met with a number of property owners in the district or

dog patch as we call it were they've supported this idea.

There's a

big appetite in our area for

it. We have neighbors come out to create the largest park and we like to continue that trend through

the district. Thanks for your support.

>> thank you. Next speaker, please. >> hello supervisors. I'm tony

kelly and on the board patrol neighborhood association.

Thank you for the hearing and thank you supervisor cohen for doing the

hard work to get this before you

today. I want to undermine a couple of points that the supervisor

mentioned. One, this is a very unserved area in terms of open space.

There was a report that came

out from the parks -- it talks about

how under served the eastern part of the city is. What neighbors have done over the past 15

years is really a gorilla gardening. Plan first, and ask permission later and we've created more than a dozen

open spaces in the neighborhood

and this is really one -- one of the

only ways to do this after the

founders move on. It came up through the mayor's open space task

force and I want to credit elizabeth wade and then later in the mayor's office working in the benefit district.

It took those partners as well as supervisor cohen who will a tremendous amount of work and the neighborhood work to get it to this point. It's a good model as

long as we keep it home grown and affordable to residents. We're

grateful and it's great that Mrs. Ballot shows that, at the same

time this is not for rec and park

spaces, but it's for the grown spaces because they're not under city ownership. Thank you. >> ron miguel, is that you.

Wow he can!. >> thank you for hearing this.

I'm a member of the gbd steering committee. While on the

planning commission, i

constantly heard from neighborhood groups and rightly concerned citizens to the lack of

green space needed to serve our rapidly expanded neighborhood. I understand the problems of rec

and park and appreciate Mrs. Ballards concerns. The situation that

would occur if any land or obligations

were added to their charge. I

know green san francisco. I shared

the open rec and park open space and recreation to prozach. I was on

the community that wrote the golden gate park and master plan examine

I shared the concord at gate

park. As President Of the neighborhood

organization, the richmond

district, I was intimately involved in the

rehabilitation of nine parks and recreation areas. What's

interesting is the richmond

district and pa tril hill and dog patch has eight rec and park

locations but the richmond

which consist of

low density, single homes has a

three and a half mile border and a

whole park boulevard and the green needs. The green benefit district

will come into play that it can provide green which is needed now and

for the next 20 years. There's

a huge density coming in to patrel

hill and dog patch. 1300 maybe 2,000 units. We need this for the

next 10 to 20 years in order to

maintain dpreen in the district. I appreciate your support. >> are there any other members

of the public that like to speak on this. Mr. Yep.

>> good morning, supervisors. I'm douglas yshg ep and I've lived in san francisco for 61 years and

I'm familiar with this neighborhood. First, I would like to thank

this committee for holding this hearing.

For the record, in my opinion,

this committee has had way too many

cancellations and that's enough

said. Secondly, I'm opposed to this

idea. In my opinion if you're going to involve direct and park department, if you talk to activist in other neighborhoods in the

city, they say it's not that interesting working with them because obviously park and rec has

their own agenda rather than the

neighborhood's agenda in my opinion. I've driven throughout the

neighborhood and based on what I heard this morning, you seem to be making prodpres so I think you'll be making more progress without

this item. In my opinion, park

and rec has had noticeable difficulties maintaining other

projects that was supposed to be high

priority in other neighborhoods especially in the richmond districts.

It took a lot of behind the

back discussions in order to get those

two areas cleaned up from the

way they had degenerated over the past

ten years. So in my opinion, I

think that the neighborhood would have more control and ultimately more benefit by doing it the way

they're doing it now. Let's

put it this way, if the neighborhood

supervisor's behind it,

whatever you decide to do as a neighborhood will succeed. Having park and

rec is going to stifle things and make it a bur democratic mess. Thank you. >> any other members of the public that like to speak on this item. Seeing none, I think we can

close public comment at this time. And I'd like to just take a moment

to say thank you to our partners that have helped us, rec and park

and I like to callout the neighbors have

had numerous meetings in the community on the weekends, in the evening, on the weekends and on the evening, and I think the weekend

of mother's day if I'm not mistaken. That's commitment.

I also want

to acknowledge michael and handy who have provided technical support and doing the writing and the neighbors, thank you for coming out. It has been a pleasure to work

with you on this item. Colleagues, i

hope you'll be supportive and accept the amendment. >> supervisor cohen, are there any other member that's would like to make comments.

>> I'm happy to move in if the supervisor like to move in.

>> it has been moved and without objection, the amendments pass. >> thank you.

>> colleagues, can we take this

without objection? Okay. The motion

passes. Congratulations

council member cohen and patrol hill.

>> Madam Clerk, can you call the next item. Hearing on the budget and legislative analyst's

performance audit of the fire department.

>> okay. Thank you all for

being here today. We are calling this hearing, supervisor cohen and I

to address issues in the fire department. Supervisor cohen has taken the leadership on this issue and I commend her for the work that she's done on this as well

as the

budget and legislative analyst for their detailed report and looking forward to this hearing, but I

want to get started with supervisor cohen who will provide opening remarks for this hearing.

>> good morning, just a few

couple -- a few opening remarks and thoughts. Last year was the

chair of this committee for gao and

that's a government audit and oversight committee. I called for this hearing because many people including myself have heard from several

current and former members of the fire department of their

significant concerns related to the department's process for

recruitment, testing as well as promotion. Specifically I had

concerned about the testing and hiring process, lacking transparency and the decisions on how was being promoted seemed to be based on a

series of secondary criteria

that's not specified or evenly weighed in the hiring process. Additionally this audit takes a

look at one

of the often forgotten components of our fire department and that's

the emergency division and their concerns about ability to transfer

from ems positions from fire

positions. It's my hope to discuss it

with the budget and analyst that's here today and the members of the

fire department so we can make sure the hiring process is fair for

our future and our current fire department employees. This will be a

friendly, honest and spirited conversation. I'm looking forward to hearing from the department and the representatives. Thank you for

being here today. Thank you

for taking this very seriously. Madam Chair, I turn it back to you.

>> colleagues, are there any other opening comments? We're going to get started with hearing.

We'll start with the budget and

legislative analyst report, and we'll move onto the fire department

and then we'll move onto the

human resources department for the

presentation. And go from there. So --

>> good morning chair breed, and supervisor cohen and supervisor tang. Budget and analyst

office. I'm going to present a project

manager for this audit on the

city's processes to recruit and on

their over staffing process. I want to introduce smith who is a key part of the audit team, so I'll

turn this over to amanda.

>> thank you. Thank you chair breed and supervisor cohen and members

of the committee. My name is

amanda guma and I'm here to provide a

brief presentation on our

audits and findings recommendations. On

9th, we were directed to

conduct an audit with the effectiveness of recruitment, hiring and

promotion at the san francisco fire

department as well as to look

at the overtime staffing practices at

the fire department. We are

initiated our project on july 23rd. Our

report was released on January

13th, it includes 6 findings and 19

recommendations. The fire department of current

structured has 43 fire stations and three

stations at san francisco international airport and station 49 which

the station from ambulances are deployed throughout the city. They're

currently as of October 2013, ,131,393

unformed employees at the fire

department. 1,070 are in fire

suppression and 323 are in

emergency medical services. The fire department has the fifth

largest department budget in the city. And

its resources are derived from

the general fund. Total projected expenditures for the fire

department and fiscal year totalled on --

>> we're having a technical

glitch here. In 1997, the city's ems emergency emergency function was relocated from the department of public health to the san francisco fire department. And today the fire department continues to provide both fire suppression and

emergency medical services to the city. The table presented here shows the total calls for

service broken out by function

of ems and

fire from 2005 through 2013.

Over the past few decades the

courts

and the elector has taken -- in

1988 in response to civil litigation,

a federal judge ordered a consent decree which had work force requirements for the san francisco fire department. This was a

requirement that the department

achieve 40 minority representation in the work force and 15 percent

in the female work force. After about ten years, the courts

terminated the terms of the consent decree through a stipulated order

which called on the city to use best

efforts to maintain the diversity requirements established in the

consent decree. Later in 2006,

the voters and the board of supervisors approved f. It requires the fire department to maintain all fire stations in place and

located as of in 2004 and it

required 24/7 fire station staffing.

This table shown here shows the current annual count and percentage of the uniformed employees at the san francisco fire department by

race. It shows that break down of

fiscal year 08 through fiscal year 13-15. The fire department maintained a work force with --

from the range of 48 to 52 percent, minority representation over

those years. And obviously that exceeds

the 40 percent established by

the consent decree. Moving on to our findingment our first finding

was related to organization and management and recommendations focused on issues of transparency. We

made two recommendations to the

fire commission with regard to the

documentation of their

meetings. We recommended that meeting minute be transcribed completely and

posted to the fire commission's website

and we recommended that the fire commission consider relocating their

meetings to city hall in order

to increase participation of the

public and to insure video

recordings of those meetings through

sfgovtv. We wanted that to be publicly documented and sources are

allocated between the ems some suppression function to insure quality

patient care and safe response

time. As you May have seen on the

previous slide, we recommended

that recruitment responsibilities be

clarified. Until 2002 the fire

department had a dedicated recruitment staff. Since then

and since the transfer of the testing

functions from fire to the

department of human resources, the responsibility for recruitment

has been unclear and there's no city department that's recruiting

perspective fire employee and that

responsibility has fallen onto various employee organizations. This table shows --

>> excuse me. When you say various employees, can you tell me what you're talking about?

>> there's a few employee organizations representing

uniformed -- including the black firefighters association and

the asian american firefighter association and I'm

probably leaving out one or two

others. >> these associations, are they independent or is it state wide.

>> these are local san

francisco organizations that are voluntary so their activities are again,

volunteer -- voluntary, so what they perform is on their own time

and dime. >> is the information uniform,

or are they developing an announcement

and I guess the mechanism on

how they're communicating with the public.

>> the materials that those

employee organizations produce for recruitment activities are generated from within, so the department

does not have an over sight over what's produced and sort of what the message is that they're putting

out to the public. Is that the question?

>> there's no way that we can

maintain or manage a uniform message that these individual organizations are using to

communicate with people?

>> that's correct. Not at this time. >> are these recruitment tool to the best of your knowledge, are there done in multiple

languages?

>> as we understand it, there's recruitment materials produced by the

employee organizations that are produced in multiple languages. But

I can't speak to specifics on that. But as we understand, they are. Thank you.

>> the table on this slide

shows the percentage of female applicants

from 1988 through 2009. As you

can see over recent years, the number of female applicants has been

trending down. So even though currently the composition of female employment in the fire department

work force is meeting that ten percent threshold, the decline in the

number of applicants seem to

indicate that attention should be focused on recruitment efforts

and we have recommended that the fire department develop a recruitment strategy and plan

and that they coordinate with employee

organizations actively around their individual recruitment efforts. We also recommended that as the

department of human resources

implements it's new testing model by

which firefighters will be

tested for recruitment into the department, that they provide

-- dhr provides the chief and commission ongoing performance results of that model as its rolled

out so that the department can insure that it's recruiting the

full

force that it needs. So the process of selecting candidates for the

h 2 which is the entry level

firefighter class or the academy class has been complicated overtime

by the large number of applicants. 2009 was the last time the test

was given and there was 10,000 applicants for the job. This

is a need for secondary criteria and a

secondary process I and the fire chief can make selects from that

volume of candidates. We

recommend those criteria whether they're

language skills, fire science,

course work, or employment as an emt

or paramedic be made clear in

the job announcement to have fair opportunities for the

applicants. In addition, since the 1997 merger

of the ems function into the

fire department, there have opinion changes in employee classifications, particularly

with regard to the cross trained firefighter,

paramedic class. Today, there are two classifications, there's

designations and the h 3 level

3 and the h 2

p. And they have identical

jobs and identical skills. We recommend the fire department and dhr work together to review the department

staffing needs and insure that the classification adequately reflect the needs that they have in the

department and make any necessary changes.

>> in the area of promotions,

the fire department, we made a few

recommendations in our audit.

The first is regarding the test development process.

Specifically the development of the answer key.

The current practice that the

department of human resources utilizes and has utilized for many years

now is to create the answer keys to

the test concurrently with the administration of the test. So that

means that the test is developed, applicants are recruited to take the exam, but the answer key for the exam aren't developed until

they're sitting and taking the

test. We believe this prevents the department from identifying any

problems in advance with the test instrument. We believe that

goes against standard practices for ensuring liability of the test instrument and we recommend that the

department of human resources

review this process and identify any

opportunities to identify problems with the test

instrument prior to its administration. Secondly,

we recommend that the fire department

clarify the training and skills that are required for advancement in

the department to insure that

all supervisor staff has sufficient

knowledge to perform the duties related to the advanced position. We

recommend that they do this through developing a professional development plan which would outline advancement requirements and the advancement process. Finally

we recommend that the department insure

that promotional test timelines are aligned with projected retirements and we'll talk more

about that in the next section which is on section planning. Despite recommendations over

the past ten

years and various audits, the fire department doesn't incorporate succession planning into its

operations. As shown on the slide here,

a review of current employee agents and service shows a number will

be reaching retirement age in

the next five to ten years. We recommend therefore that the

department conduct a detailed analysis

of retirement data and

incorporate those results into multi year

hiring and recruitment plans. We believe this particular -- we believe this is important by

maintaining diversity in the work

force. The last within the

audit was overtime use. Shown on the table here, overtime use at the

san francisco fire department has

increased by 19 million or 90

percent since fiscal year 09-10.

Because overtime is less costly than filling vacant positions, the

department has come to rely on it. But studies shows overtime

includes safety risk. We ask

that the department increases fte by

138 employees. And that would

increase it to one thousand

hundred

hundred 76 total. We ask for

vacation usage, so it can avoid the

peek of vacation usage over the summer which requires

significant overtime during those months.

We would like to thank the management and the staff, the san francisco fire department and the department

of human resources for their assistance during this process. And we

are happy to take any questions

from the committee.

>> great. Thank you. Okay.

Any of my colleagues have any additional questions?

>> I have a couple of

questions. I can jump in. So

I wanted to talk

a little bit about -- my question is directed for the dhr and the fire department. >> we're going to change the

order a little bit. We're going to call

up dhr first and then the fire

department afterwards. >> thank you.

>> can I ask one question. Just about overtime, this has been a long time conversation for us here

at the board and a couple of years ago and the director micky will

remember this. We tried to think of

different ways to manage it including trying to put limits on the overtime that an employee can

do to spread out the work among others

if the given the 90 percent jump over the last few years that we have

discussed, but it's a really

significant number, what has been your experience in attempts in the last year or two to bring these number back. Nothing seems to be

working at this point and it's pretty

frustrating for all of us and it's frustrating for management and us

at the board and dhr and

frustrating for rank and file.

>> to the chair, we looked at the overtime specifically in terms in how they incorporate into the staff. We didn't look at overtime or overtime control, but in

response to your we, one specific thing that

happened in the spring was

prior to that, individual firefighters

didn't have a cap of overtime

hours they can work. That was implemented in the spring.

they put a cap which is high on overtime

hours. It didn't reduce the number of overtime overall as it reduced it per firefighter.

>> I'm sorry, did not reduce it

over all. Just reduced it per firefighters.

>> numbers are through the

fiscal year 2013, so it was implemented

late in fiscal year 2013. But it increases mandatory overtime so the

firefighters who might not want

to have to work overtime are required to since other firefighters have reached their cap. We looked at the practices in the fire

department and a lot is

correct. On an an to

hour basis, it's cheaper for overtime than to pay regular pay because you're not paying the ben fets.

Over the last several years, they started reducing the budgets

for salary and not filling vacant positions, but we looked at

what should they be filling and with he

think there's significantly under filling positions not leaving firefighter positions vacant

and filling that with overtime. So our

recommendation is that they

need to increase the amount of budgeted

positions that they put in

their budget each yeah. There's a cost to

that, but we think that's correcting a historical problem and they have allowed the number of position to go vacant and rely on overtime. >> have you looked at other

city firefighters and how this issue is

managed? I can't imagine that we're the only ones gravelling with this one.

>> we didn't look at other fire

departments, but we used other measures at other fire departments and how they staff and how they back fill for overtime and positions and put that into their budget.

what we looked at as standard with the approach.

>> I look forward to this

discussion with hr and the chief. There was almost a 99 percent increase. We have to figure out how to get a better handle on that.

>> thank you. Any other

comments or questions.

>> your audit found it was a $1.6 million savings. Can you talk about that

speaker:   when we say -- so the

increase by the net, the increase --

we figure the budget will go up

by $5 million if you reduce overtime, but there's other benefits that

can be quantified by that. But there

are savings, one of the biggest

ones through the cost of fighting complaint about the testing process. This one --

>> the what kind of process? >> testing. They'll be saving there if the process were sort of clarified.

>> okay. When you say "savings", where do you identify?

>> I have to go in and look at

the specific numbers here. We found

there would be about -- one of

them was -- the staff and resource

between ems and suppression would increase the reimbursement. One of the problems that we didn't get

to talk about. The department gets reimbursed for evidence cost

and there's an imbalance, we believe, between the staffing for ambulance or paramedics and emt

and the

staffing for fire suppression.

In our report on page 20 of our

report, we show the increase in

the medic to follow call. Those are reversible and we estimate

they'll be 2 to $3 million generated by having the right sort of medic that can be available. The other one

was a savings, but there was a

settlement this year, a legal settlement to firefighters who

sued on the testing process and we calculated that into if there

were a reduction in these types of

lawsuits they'll be a saving. >> what was the settlement amount?

>> we didn't look at it such as cost.

>> I think it was $3.7 million.

>> did you take into consideration in the evaluation

of this report

some of the findings that the

court found in relationship to that settlement?

>> no, we did not.

>> okay. And that's all I

have. I want to thank amanda for their help on this.

>> thank you. Next up, we have

dhr. Micky calihan will be presenting. >> thank you supervisor, micky human resource department. I want to thank you for the opportunity to comment on this report and we appreciate the attention paid

by the budget and legislation and the subject of recruitment and

promotion in the fire

department. All the tension that was mentioned, I

don't think it was apart of the report.

i want to introduce people.

We have linda who is the city director and she's an expert in the

subject of labor market availability. And

we have john who is the head of the city and testing program. Before he joined us in san francisco,

he was in charge of all public safety testing in the city of new

jersey, so he's an expert in that field.

I want to thank jennifer johnston for attending and she can address

issue that's you have about the

civil service requirement and

the services we operate our recruitment programs. We appreciate the

attention paid to the important subjects, and it is very important that we do pay attention

because we need to maintain a diverse work forcement what's not highlight

in the report is the city's

success in this area and maintaining

diversity. The work force is 52 percent of

color and 16 percent women. These levels strip the percentages of these groups in the labor

market. San francisco is the highest in

the nation of the number of women. We're at 16 percent

compared to 3

los angeles and less than one

percent in new york city. For example,

madison, montgomery maryland,

and austin texas. The market of women

are 77 percent, and year at 16 percent. That speaks volumes for the

efforts of our chief and the testing and the recruitment to bring in

a diverse poolment the labor market ability for african americans are

17 percent, but the chief's

recent hire, 11 percent african american. We're doing well in this area.

And I'll speak more about that. What's more impressive about these achievements is that the city is

faced with a difficult task of maintaining diversity and the changes

in the law. Prop 209, affirmative action in 1997 and the new haven richie case which made the

news, it was a firefighter case, prevented

-- clearly established that an

employer is prevented from responding

to adverse impact after administering an exam. So we have to put all

of our eggs in one basket.

None of these legal factors are

considered in the auditor's

report. We've gone well beyond -- >> while you're discussing

this, we he had a jury award that was close to $40 million of

promotions and I think we all understand the

impact of prop 2089 but we have jew ishl environments that saying

we're not doing our jobs correctly, so how do you reconcile those two things? >> I can't properly comment on the litigation because it's still in

process, but I'll point out that was an age discrimination case and

it involved 15 firefighters and more of 200 who were promoted and who

were over the age of 40. We

disagree with the verdict and that's in process. The litigation -- the findings the require did not rely on

any of the points that the

auditor raised in this report.

So I can

address that further.

>> as I pointed out, we've done

more than the decree. But we also

continue to work on new ways to increase diversity. The last time

with he had a firefighter

recruiting, we went down to the testing

hall and observed the test hall and we were disappointed in the

diversity in the test taker.

And we had made great efforts -- we

sent notice to various publications and interest

groups to try and get them to send people over to take the test and we didn't have the pool we wanted.

>> do you have some examples of some names of the particular groups that you sent notices to?

Speaker:   I don't have them with me.

>> that's concern with the response from both the fire department and dhr is you have communicate

groups listed. You talk about interest groups but you provide no examples and I don't recall even during the

tiement when I was on the fire department commission, any information

around any recruitment effort or anything to signify there's testing,

significant that there's an

opportunity. I'm confused by the information provided in the

response as it relates to outreach

because I'm an wear of the organization that's were outreached too.

So I'm trying to understand what are those specific community group

and what are the outreach efforts because clearly people want -- people were able to find out

about it, but some of our under representative groups were not. >> I like to speak about that point. Weblg go back and look at -- we

can go back and see who we sent

it too. The last recruitment was in 2009. People that have support

for being in the fire service, you'll

meet people whose father and

grandfather was in the fire service and that's not a diverse group.

They know when an exam is coming, and there are family members that

say, come take the test. They see ourselves as firefighters, but we want to find people from the community where they have

support for applying and the studies shows that continual contact and immediate followup is how you're able to get people to take the test. That's why moving through a continuance

testing model which is the

result of our experience in 2009. We're looking to increase that

ability. It would be a waste of resources

to suggest to the department or

dhr and go to a group and say, come

out. Don't you want to be a firefighter. Come out in two years. We

have to shake up how we do it

and I'll talk about our experience so far because we started that in the police department and we're

pleased to the results. To get

back to your point, we'll look

through our records and see who

as contacted. It was only in 2009

and there wasn't anything else

because there's a lack of eligible

list. What I want today do -- we have significant concerns the

report beyond the fail your to highlight the department's success and diverse if I cajun and there's findings we can't agree with and I'd

like to share those with you.

I touched on the available labor

market. We chose to use the

general population to compare the

diversity of the fire department. This includes many who are not in the work force and can't be firefighters even if they were. I'm

talking about babies, retirees,

and people who are too tired to work.

We would identify them as having experience -- the comparison isn't

an inaccurate of our recruitment. It's very misleading. The available labor force is a

correct comparative and that was used during the consent decree. It's used by the federal government for

all the reporting and in fact

our work force utilization, we look at the fire department. Every five years we submit that and that's available for your review and

it's on the dhr website. Using the incorrect comparison, even then, the only area in which the report finds that we're doing less well than we should be in trms

of the

statistics -- swhe be in terms

of the is statistics. The labor market available market is less than 15 percent. In this area, we're

doing well. That doesn't mean we can't do better.

>> can I ask you as a last graduation class, were there any asian

folks that graduated from that

academy class? >> I believe -- dhr, we don't

have the graduation statistics, but I can have the chief address that. >> I wanted to know -- because

you mentioned we're doing very well

and it's my understanding and i want clarity on how many total and

how many asian and if we had no

asian, anyone from the asian community graduate from this last academy, to me that's not doing

well. That's the point I'm

trying to make.

>> one the problems we have is our list. People applied four years

ago to be firefighter and some of those individuals May have gone onto other career choices which further limits the pool of people

we're able to look at. Moving

to continuance testing, we'll address that issue. >> I think you mentioned too

that there was the last test was at

10,000 people that actually took the test and we have a pool of what

to pull from?

Speaker:   6800.

>> 6800 people and we can't

find an appropriate number of asian candidates in that pool.

>> what's interesting is we can't go down the line and choose people based on their gender and race.

That's why we have secondary criteria which are published

with the announcement, approved by the

civil service commission and

the chief uses business related

reasons to --

>> those criterias aren't included in the recruitment. If they're

looking for someone who speaks mandarin for a specific station where

there's a large population that speaks mandarin, that information is

not provided in the recruitment

of anyone for the firefighter. >> that's the concern about trying to tie down any particular need.

for example, at the time of the

rekrument -- we're looking for people that speak kand knees, that be

a problem because it May keep them

from applying and two years later, it might be mandarin. So the ability to be flexible among

the pool and in broad terms recruit a

broad pool and the chief can

use her secondary tool using business related issues.

>> we don't advertise that in the recruitment process at all. >> we haven't done a

recruitment. I don't have the announcement with me from 2009, but we can provide that. We have approval

from the

civil service commission to

proceed with the testing module and we'll post that within the next several months. We don't want to say we favor this language.

>> you mixed there's a large

pool. You mentioned that there's secondary criterias based on need. There's nothing wrong with mentioning that this is a

potential need in the department, not necessarily a requirement or what we're actually looking for, but in many cases, this is something

that welcome actually use at various stations throughout the city. That's just something that will always

happen. We'll always have

people who we need, you know, cant knees

and spanish and that's the largest population and those stations needs those folks that have the ability to communicate with that population. That's a natural need in the city. >> we can certainly include a

statement to the effect that we encourage people various

language skills to apply rather than identifying particular languages which would be a

concern. >> thank you. >> I'm hearing a number of things from what you're saying from your presentation. You started off by saying because of prop 209 and other cases, we're not allowed

to look at race and gender, which we

all know and the the fire department has done well when it comes to

gender and I want to applaud

the chief and the management time.

We're interested to has happen

to go firefighters of color. There's a both a reality and perception of issues and I want to look at the date that we're talking about and chief officer rank, when

you have

48 percent of the work force

that's caucasian and you have 77 percent

that are caucasian and in the paramedic, 76 caucasian. Just pointing

out the numbers. But let me just make a comment about perception

which is I have had many conversations with firefighters of color who feels there's challenges they

face within the department and I'm going to articulate this because the firefighters don't feel comfortable raising this within

the command of the fire department

and this is why breed and cohand and myself feel we need to raise these issues because they don't

feel comfortable in a situation where

they May be promoted and discussing this more broadly. It doesn't seem as if you're saying

there's much we can do and I have to say

just given what I know of

situations -- the issues with the promotional test, there's got

to be things if we're making these

great gains with our women firefighters, why is it that we can't

figure out this question. I do

want to thank breed for raising the

language issue. That's something I'm concerned constantly. I've

discussed this on a number of occasions with firefighters. In my district, in china town, there have been too many times when I have

shown up at fire scenes and I'm being asked to translate and to get

my staff to translate. And

it's a real problem, so I to -- so I do want to thank the firefighter,

but I want to hear some acknowledgement their there's

issues and what the next step might be.

>> thank you, supervisor chiu.

what I like to do is speak to this. The piece that we -- what we can do and should do and I

think what we

all agree should be done is

develop a diverse pool of qualified

individuals from whom the department can hire and who then can form

the pool of people would

promote to the successful levels within the department. What -- there is a

long history, not just san francisco,

across the nation. We've surveyed other departments, particularly

every large urban agency has a long history of discrimination of

people of color and women. The

descent decree was a good start. We

can't hire based on race in any

way. We striving to find testing

pools that -- we're obligated

to find testing tools that reduce

impact. We must follow the

guidelines on employee selection procedures which were developed

and adopted by the employment and the department of justice. The way we do an exam, it's not hey,

these are good questions. We have to survey subject matter experts

which are the individuals doing the exam examine a detailed survey, but what it takes to be successful in the job. What do

they do on a

day to do basis, how important

is it. And then we must design an exam that test for those things

that are required on the job. And that's what we do. There are

debated all the time. You try to do

things like, for example, multiple choice exams. We'll have higher

levels of that impact. We use video based or simulations which are more like an employee would

face when they're out in the field. But

it's not possible to design a

test that we can guarantee will not have an adversed impact on any group at all. It's not possible to design a test that every employee will think it's fair. In case of the litigation you mentioned, the 15 people who weren't promoted

thought it was fair, but I

guarantee you the 240 people that was

promoted did think it was fair. that was an age case and it's not on

the point you're raising here.

I'm not throwing up my hands at all and we work with our

department. We engage national experts and my recruitment and public safety

team is now surveying other departments. Do you have great

tool we can consider on the promotional side? I'm reexcited to continue the testing model which I'll talk about because we hire

from the pool of people that

are

there. There's a lot of

largely -- the hiring is done at the rank

order in both the police and

fire department. How you do on the exam

is important. There's a lot of

controversy, well based in what

happened historically. There's

concerns that people are cheating or

those who designed the test May give information to those who they

favor who are in the same ethnic group or their friends so we go to great lengths to make sure that can't happen, which gets to the other point which you'll touch on

now. One item in our testing program was

identified by the auditors as

not meeting national best practices.

To me that determination is surveying several fire

departments who have good reputations, that's

fine. They don't have san francisco's

history. The item they talked

about is we develop the answers as the

same time the test is administered. That's important because the people can't provide the

answers to the test. It prevents cheating. This was a process that came

out the consent decree and agreed by the advocacy groups that participated and moving the

city toward the

consent decree and it's appropriate to reduce the likely of cheating.

That's not that there can

never not cheating. And we take that very seriously. I don't want to say there's nothing we can do, but we're

doing a lot and it's not the case that things are in disarray as it would appear from the report or we're not following this practice by any stretch.

>> I want to make two final

comments. I have respect, Mrs. Kelly for the work you do and you're

trying your best and I have respect for the chief and what she's doing.

I moved to the city 18 years ago to

work for group that created the lawsuit. There's a perception and a reality in the numbers that

this is still a problem. And

the fact of

the matter is, it doesn't allow

us to have direct affirmative

programs race is a protected

class. We had to cough up $40 million

based on a program they're recommending that needs to be revamp. I want to make sure we're doing

all we can to limit our legal liability

as well as make sure we do have the fire department up and down looks like san francisco. But I want

to again, I know you are trying your

best, so I want to say that publicly. >> supervisor tang has

something to say. >> thank you director cohen and

my question will help you into your

next segment. Speaking to supervisor chiu original point. I believe recruitment is important and it

impacts what happens in terms of promotions so is I'm excited

our city is moving to this continuance

testing model so in the next segment of your presentation, if you can

show us how dhr is work with

the fire department and how it's ongoing. Because I know the

budget an hift report did point out --

the budget analyst report shows

the lack of who is in charge. If you can address that. >> we have -- we intend to

follow the model in our

continuous testing for the fire department. We

disagree with the analyst that there is

a lack of clarity as to who

does what. I assigned our chief of policy with the background communication to develop the materials to assist the police department.

And they've been using those materials. We gave them interest groups and invited them in and says here's materials, would you

like to use them. We have a video on on

the website and the police

website and on the dhr website. They talk

about the testing method and

how do you take the test and it gives

examples so people can see what the testing process is like and it

describes the process in great

detail. We started in early November

and we have no adversed impact

on the passing rate of the exam which

is great news and it's a

diverse pool:   we have the show rate, which is the rate at which people

show up to take the test is much higher

than it was for the old exams and higher than the rate that was shown

-- that was included in the

report in 2009 particularly for protected

groups. Those rates were 30

and 40. We are upwards up 90 percent

for the police examination so

far. It's really exciting and the police department seems pleased. We'll work closely with the

firefighter. We'll rely on the firefighters -- the firefighters that

the chief assigns to help

recruit now that we'll have a recruitment

to do. And we will be providing materials in support and certainly

all these jobs are posted on

the website. The beauty is it's an ongoing recruitment. The list is continuously refreshed by

people who take the test. Okay. This

is an answer to the question that

chair breed had. That the san

francisco firefighter set the flier to more than 100 organizations and

will submit a less.

>> supervise are cohen has a

question. This is where I'm struggling when listening to this. There

is no acknowledge nor do I have a desire to -- a desire to

change, to move from one direction into

another. There is an independent audit that is

saying two dhr and to the fire department, there

needs to be change that needs

to happen. You also have a legal challenge that is also evidence saying, hey, there's something that's

happening in your testing that needs to

change. And I don't hear in

the -- in your testimony and your

testing, an acknowledge. We've identified two problems. There's an

exam problem and evaluation and

where and how we're recruiting, but I

don't hear a desire to move in

that direction or acknowledge, yes, we

hear what saying and we're incorporating the feedback and this is a direction we're going to go in.

This is an example that refer to often and I think it drives

home the point. If you were looking to

recruit african americans, then

you're going to africans congregate,

where they socialize and you're empowering people if it is in the department or outside the

department to act as an agent to search

out, to find the best of the best. And it's like going to the grocery store, right. When we

want eggs, we go where the eggs are.

We don't go to the bread

section or to the pace tree section. We're doing great in this area, but

we can do better. I would like to begin to hear more conversation

on what are we doing to create pathways to careers within the fire department that represents our ethnic communities that we

share. Examine I do want to

take a moment to highlight the accomplishments of the department. 15 percent

women, I think you said. >> 16. >> that's phenomenal when you think of the total population of women

that are in the industry. It's

only seven percent, so you're doing

something correct. We need to

duplicate that in other parts of the -- I don't have the numbers in

front of me. We need to duplicate

that when it comes to the

ethnic community. And the city does a

great job of putting that out.

they say, if you speak a different language, we'll pay you more

and we'll look closely to your application. That's the same level of uniformity that I would like

to see in the recruitment of future fire employees. Also I want to talk about the report -- the

report talk was the imbalance

of

staffing between fire and ems or employees. >> May I defer those questions to the chief because we're not involved in the staff.

>> not a problem. >> we can wait for the chief to

get up. I would like to ask about

one of the recommendations that

was made -- this is recommendation

1.3 and it is to make sure that the recommendations has been

clarified through dhr and the

fire department. This talks about

discrepancy within staff and

your department and where that responsibility lies. Your recommendation -- on this recommendation, you indicated that you

disagree. And you stay that both dhr and the

fire department are clear on its recruitment responsibilities. Can

you talk to me about that clarity because it's not clear to me?

>> sure. Let me say that -- so

on we have -- I have not -- we are changing if the we've adopted a

testing module and we're able to host recruitments.

>> what when did -- when did you adopt it? >> last month.

>> this is a new thing. >> it's absolutely new. We were engaged in the conversation. We

were able to go forward with

police first because their eligible list was expiring sooner so we

started there and we did not need a civil service rule change. It is the next big thing and we're hosting. We're able to -- people don't

have to go to the testing facilities in

the region, weave been hosting

testing and we can invite

people from the community college and if they have people, we want them to do that. >> what are the responsibilities, who is doing what?

>> what we have done -- we plan

to repeat that police -- excuse me, in fire. The first thing we do is prepare materials. We have the posting and the announcements

and in this case we created business cards. Mrs. Guard created

business cards and posted videos to make it more accessible. With he

provided that to the police -- we provided that to the police department and the constituent groups who were interested and we have them available. We're posting

it and providing the information.

Examine if a group ask is us, we can host

a test in the mission district on caesar chavez and thanks to the board, we're fixing up a little bit, so it has greater capacity. that's a big change and I'm sorry if you did not hear that we want to

change because in 2009 when I saw that, despite sending fliers out to

100 groups and getting a diverse pool, we weren't satisfied with what

we got and it's note in the

report that the group is more diverse

than 2009. We're going down a different road.

>> is dhr responsible for that? >> for which?

>> the model? >> yes.

>> dhr is under the charter and

civil rule responsible for examinations. So we adopted this method of examination and brought it to -- Mr. Crouse identified

it. We brought it to the chief and the fire department. We brought it to the fire commission. We

pre-view it had with interest grouped and other membership groups in the fire department and we

achieve the rule change and it's our

intention to move forward in the spring sdmrchlt dhr is responsible for examination? >> exactly.

>> who is responsible for recruitment?

>> we provide materials to the department. We can support

them, but

the department does recruitment.

>> do you -- prior to last

month, have you -- what materials have you provided?

>> well, there has been no recruitment. It's very disheartening to go to a community and say, don't you want to be a firefighter and

there's no test in the future.

It's a waste. That was our concern

with the report. We get kas

gated for not keeping a lively recruit,

it's a waste of effort and it

on be unfair for candidates. So they're going to wait around

for two years. We can host groups and we totally support groups

turning people out and we will host as many administrations of the exam as we want in san francisco.

>> just so I'm walking away from this. Dhr main responsibility is to

manage the examination function? >> exactly. >> so the succession planning doesn't fall on you

speaker:   we have our work force

development unit. And we work departments on succession efforts and we do a work force -- we give reports to the department on

who is likely to retire and we work with

-- they work with other units

in dhr, and labor relations to provide apprentice programs, but the

department is responsible under the charter and they decide where they need to put their resources.

>> again, I'm trying to process

this. When you say you support them,

you're giving them the data

saying you're going to have

five people to retire. And the department is responsible for saying, thank you

dhr. Do they put it in writing

or is it an internal body?

>> it's not a centralized

function. We're supporting the efforts.

We don't require reports from departments. The public health

commission asked us to do a presentation on succession plan and we gave the materials and told them we would consult with them and there has been consolidation, but

it's more of a support from dhr.

>> my final question, what kind

of feedback do you need to hear or

from what entity do you need to

hear from to change the testing mechanism that you have? What

is it going to change? You've heard people -- editorials from the chronicle examine the court has spoken

on a desire to see a change in testing, this audit has expressed a

desire to see a change in

testing, so what does the department of dhr, you as the director need to hear, see, what more evidence, what else do you need for this change to happen?

>> I think many people are operating under a misconception of what the findings have been. The

exam about which there were a ruling by

a jury was the -- it was administered in 2008 and the issue had to do

with score corrections and lack of clarity in the score corrections. Process that was used at the

time is no longer used by dhr and we retain the scratch paper which is what the jury wanted to see. We've made that change. The other

issue, the only issue that came up in

this audit is about the practice that we've adopted. It didn't come

out of thin air. It came out

of the consent decree to prevent cheating which is apart of the exam and the answer key. We don't want to change that. The experts say don't change that. If we

change it, we're going to spend time talk beginning security violations and so and so gave the answers to mb. We don't want that. We've had that. We really

don't want to change that. We

have made

the change years ago that led to, I think, the misunderstanding associated with that case that

has been referenced in that the --

that has been reported on. But the --

>> what's the internal process

to change something? Any exam. Any testing.

>> we just decide to change it if it has a legal implication, we would talk to the legal

department. We might say, for example, in the sheriff's department, we

found a new video exam that's a

good way to assess integrity. >> the testing process belongs

to dhr. I will say that we continue

to search for improved testing mechanism. We believe we are been

doing it correctly and it's natural that those who hasn't been successful is going to disagree with that. I'm sorry for that, but it's our job to look for better mechanisms and we're still doing that. >> thank you.

>> I want -- one of our plans

-- I'm reminded, to go back to the succession planning question

that you asks, we always are a list

available. It's going to address our ability more quickly and we'll

have a list that we'll move to and fill positions. The other

part is

-- there were no fire exam administrations, so there were acting assignments that people weren't

allowed to take. They were given

assignments based on sinority. They're challenging that process and that's their right and we respect that right. We feel like we've

done a fair process and if someone disagrees and if we believe we

haven't, we'll change it. It's a fluid process and we're always looking for new tools and I

challenge my team to do a national search and look -- we're doing --

>> how many people are on this team?

>> on our public safety team? John. >> five.

>> are they public safety experts.

>> examination experts. That's independent of our miscellaneous examination team.

>> who would be testing for things like custodian. >> got it.

>> do you have anything else

from your presentation. >> yes. >> we have a list for the chair

of the organizations that were contacted.

>> you can continue your presentation. >> thank you. I want to just discuss a couple of points that

were made. I think that the -- I

want to point out that savings

that were

-- that the savings -- there have been no grieve answers to I don't

know how you save money.

>> what's the lawsuit about?

>> that is in process. We have

not paid money. So I think it's

pretty con jekt you'll that

they'll be money saves. Nationally,

we've done a better job than, I

think, of any other fire department and our testing program, we

produce job related test that conform to state and national standards

which my team and I are proud of. They feel like they've been under

the gun and I want to on commend them

because they're devoted. And

they spent their careers putting together exams that are fair and I want to recognize them. My final

point -- I have a concern that

the report was released to the press

before it was released publicly and released to the responding department. >> do you know who did that?

>> I don't know. I raised my concern with the budget and legislative analysis but I was concerned

about that. We was told that the report had been made public. >> it hasn't been received by

the members of the board of supervisors

and it was only received by dhr

and the the fire department in draft form. >> we received it. As you can tell from my presentation, we were working hard to get changes.

We did not provide it to anyone

speaker:   somebody possibly in

those departments might have or even, I

guess, your imply that the budget and legislation department -- I want to be clear because i didn't receive a report when the information came out. It clearly came from a department

and that's a real problem. >> it didn't come from our

department. I can verify that. There's a limited number of people were

able to see it working with me on the response. There wasn't a request from the department for that. We

didn't receive a copy of the final. >> thank you.

>> and I want to say thank you

for your presentation and thank you

for taking the tough questions. This is a hard subject to talk about. I have concerned and we

look at the numbers and we talk about the numbers. This is what we're supposed to do. When I was a

commissioner, there was another african and there's five commissioners examine two african american s the fire department commission and at the time of the first recruitment class in a long

time, there were no african

american men and as far as I'm concerned, that's completely unacceptable.

We can talk about how well we're

doing, but the truth of the

matter, from my perspective and looking

at the list, and I'm seeing our organization the list as someone who received information from the

fire department and throughout my ten

years on the -- as a director, I don't recall seeing anyone from the

city of the city other than announcements about opportunities for housing and opportunities for jobs potentially with the police

department. But I don't recall seeing any announcements other than what I have received as a commissioner from the department. I'm not

sure whether or not this is --

I have this laundry list of

organizations. If they were

outreached to, this is a great outreach. We're headed in the right

direction and looking at the testing. But I'm concerned -- in the

department, it's 30 percent and I know we can't legally address issues of

where people live, but there are people who live out of the state of california that work for the

department and we have some that live in san francisco san francisco.

Why are we not giving kids who

graduate from our high schools

in san francisco apart of our organization. And those who

know how to speak

a language with removing the barriers for those who come to san

francisco san francisco. I'm putting that out there. We have too many folks who work for the department who do not live in san francisco and we need to make

sure that we are doing everything we

can do support allowing folks who live in these neighborhoods to work

at their local fire house. That should be something that we're doing

as a city. Thank you for your presentation.

>> I have two more things to

talk about. Two things that you dispute

in the recommendation. This is

recommendation 3.2 and it states you

should insure that the job announcements is selection criteria the extent possible, the relative

way to these criterias should be

clearly stated in the job announcement. I'm talking about secondary

cry -- criteria and you should

use that secondary criteria. My question -- you say you

disagree and say the criterias

are ready and

that the -- the already published secondary criteria, so my question

is what is the secondary criteria. What's the language?

>> we haven't applied --

drafted the secondary criteria, but we'll take into consideration the comments for the need to emphasis that language is a plus.

>> so if it's not drafted yet,

how do you disagree from the recommendation. >> the way we read the

recommendation, when the chief is hiring, that

the hiring -- you can only hire

on specific criterias which were

already published. My example about language abilities. You say,

now we need someone who speaks

russian, but I didn't put that in the secondary criteria. >> it's some of the same

language that you see on any application that you apply for within the

city. If the language isn't drafted for the the fire department, what have you used in the past, so prior

to the 2009 exam >> I don't have that with me. >> stand up, john.

>> this is our director of recruitment.

>> thank you for coming, Mr. Crouse. Just to rephrase my question.

You know about secondary criteria so the director disagree with the

recommendation so what is the current language now in

>> in the 2009? >> correct.

>> I think the fire chief can address that.

>> are you done with --

>> no, I have one more but I want the question.

>> the question for the 2009 process, it's a valid drivers license or

high school or ged, age 19 older examine prior to

selection, you are

to have an emt, california valid certificate and successful

completion of the c-pack which

is the candidate for the an ill sees test.

>> as a result of this hearing,

I would imagine there's going to be

changes. We'll be looking and

watching. One last question, you disagree with recommendation

4.1 and that states the

director should review test development and you

spoke about this. There's a deep

concern that goes back decades

that -- for cheating for an exam. My

question is, how do you account for the department inability to allow

if there are any other problems that the test -- so you take the

test, right, and as the test is

being given, the key is also being developed simultaneously as

they're taking the exam. There's certain bugs or unintended consequences

that these questions May ask. How do we account for this?

>> what happens and john will

correct me if I misstate. Before we

finalize the list, we would

eliminate questions. We have so many question items.

>> how many? How long do the test usually take?

>> of course, it depends on the

test. I'm sorry, I'm john crouse,

dhr. It depends on the

examination that we administer, but typically

there May be hundreds of scoring elements in the examination, sometimes thousands of scoring

elements when you factor in ever

looking at the scores or the ratings of multiple raters, so

did that answer your question. >> no, it doesn't. >> how do we adjust for --

>> how do you adjust for any problems with the test in advance of the administration of the test?

>> we have -- we convene

groups, we call them subject experts to relevant the examination and we

have a separate group involved in the development of the answer key

and we try to make that group as representative as possible. So

they're the one --

>> representative by --

expertise, race, age. >> their level. They're betting the test material and determining if it's appropriate or not. If

it's not, we don't include it.

>> what if one say it's

appropriate and two say it's inappropriate. >> if they can't agree, we should throw it out. But

generally we try

to get consensus from everyone on an answer. >> thank you. >> thanks.

>> are you done?

>> I'm done. >> I will note that we will

make sure that the ability to

speak -- although we cannot target

anything based on race or resident even in our recruitment or in our materials, we certainly can talk about the

skills and that -- for example, language skills that are valued and help someone maintain a position and we'll include that in our terms and I commit to doing what we

have done in police as well which is to

host numerous recruitments which can be -- >> at high schools

speaker:   they probably would

have to come to our center because of

the computers.

>> any high school who want to bring folks over, we would love it.

>> chief, I don't know the

exact name. There is a high school that

meets on third street. What is this called?

>> the fire safety youth

academy that are young people. Some have

graduated from college. A lot

are young and in high school, but some

are applied and have been unsuccessful to getting in. This is a

great way we can support and supports looks like volunteering our time and not only being

knowledgeable about the -- I'll save that budget conversation for my friend.

>> thank you.

>> thank you. Chair breed and

members of the committee. I need to

respond and I want to make it

clear, we were consistent with the office standards. We didn't release this report to the media and we

spoke to no one in the media,

although I know that charge has been made several times.

>> we did provide a draft report to the department before it was released.

>> that's apart of our bidding and control. >> thank you.

>> good morning, chair breeds

and soup riser tang and supervisor cohen. >> just to piggy back on that

topic, I want to be clear that I believe there was no information provided to the press. And I think

it's interested to note it was

made a public document to director's

callahan's point. It was made

a public document and we received it 24 hours after it was made a final report and public department. We did have the draft report, but

the final department which was

reported on the 13th when it was released, neither the department had

the document in hand. >> well, somebody's department

did and it is what it is at this point

and Mrs. Callihan brought it up

that she didn't appreciate it, but none of us appreciate a report

being put out before we received it. The draft which I didn't receive was close to what the final report

stated and I think that each

department needs to basically go back to folks who had access to this

report to make sure they're doing what

they need to to make sure it's an inappropriate. >> the final report is far department from the draft reports we received. Given the good work and collaboration feedback we provided

to the budget an list is far

different in terms of the first draft.

the subsequent draft, somewhat similar, but the similar draft.

>> good morning to the chair of the committee. Supervisor

breed and

tang and I know supervisor chiu will return. I'd like to acknowledge

the good work of the budge analyst. There are elements

having to do with the use of staffing requirements and overtime, and I joked with the budget analyst and I

wondering if your boss looked at it because

it is a $5 million infusion

into our budget. I'll refer to that

before I go to budget and finance committee later this year when it

comes to staffing. I thought amanda and hampton did a good job. I like to acknowledge my staff, specifically they're here today. My chief financial officer, I know

supervisor breed, you're familiar

with him having served as a fire chief. He handled the staffing and

overtime piece as well as my hr

director and manager, jesus who

handled the recruitment. I'm

joined by deputy chief and ray. I like to thank very particularly the staff of the department of human resources. I can tell you we

do work well with them. The director and I meet regularly. During business hours, after business hours,

whatever it takes to manage the

department. I consider her a well regarded and respected colleague and have gotten a lot of advice from her as well as her staff who

has years and years of expertise.

Finally, I'd like to

acknowledge the presence of the director jennifer johnston who we appear before them. They have to take a

look at the exams and we have

to look at the secondary criteria. I like to acknowledge mayor lee because if it wasn't for mayor lee and

his staff, they've been

extremely proactive in prioritizing public safety. We're headed in the

right direction with the hiring plan. As an example, approximately

ten years ago, we had over 1700 fte's

and we dropped to a low of

1350, 1360. I think the budget analyst

talked about 1390. As of today, we have 1452 and that's

because we

were grateful that we graduated 42 recruits in December and brought in another 48 on this tuesday

morning and I think the other

thing is that relevant, I know supervisor breed, you had asked -- page 14 of

the analyst report, it talks of

the academy demographics and I wanted to respond directly to one of

the questions that you asked during amanda's presentation. The

numbers across the top, those were entries into the academy. We

try to make sure every person is successful, but that doesn't always happen. Those numbers reflect

upon entry. But I know you had a specific request regarding asians

in the last class which is 115. They graduated on December 15. Let

me bring your attention to the

115 academy three asian male, two asian females that started. Ha

we graduate -- what we graduated was

four. We did lose one asian

female that was released. Let me make clear that the budget analyst didn't have, if you look at the lower chart, just to let you know, if

you want to do a line of the 116

academy which is 48 people and

85 percent male and 15 percent female.

If I'm going down to give you

the results for 116. We have 45 percent caucasian males.

that's 19. 19 percent african american,

six males, 21 percent hispanic

or nine. 13 percent asian. Specific islander, that's six. And I

believe one in the philippino category. Two percent. Again, we're proud of the efforts that the department

has made in working with our

employee groups. And that came up

earlier to. The employees are addition to local 798 and we meet with

them on issues. We talk about recruitment, retention, what's happen

nothing the department. We consider them our partners and just as important, we have employee

groups and we have four active groups and we have the firefighters

association -- we have the black fors

association and the asian for

association and finally we have los

banbarios who represent the hispanic firefighters. It has been

repeated that we haven't had

this recruitment since 20 009 and we're looking forward to working with dhr. We appreciate the work that everyone did on this audit. We

had a lot of our folks working very diligently to provide lots and lots of information that you see in this information and that's in addition to their day job. This was a

lot of work. But it's important work. And I just

wanted to set the tone that obviously we're into

improving all that we can every single

day, but I also want to give a

little bit of reality check from my perspective. I'm 24 years in the department and ten years of chief as of last week, and I can tell

you and I asked for this this

morning, I'm proud, even in the last ten years and certainly in the

last 24 years. This is a post consent environment and you heard earlier from the budget analyst, amanda and her office

is the goal of the consent decree was 10

percent minority and 10 women. That consent decree ended in 1997.

It was my goal before I was chief that

I was very proud of the department. Made huge strides.

There was a

concern in the post decree

environment that those numbers might shrink. I'm glad of the work

that has been done within the department and can more improvements can be made, yes. I have to

tell you, there has been no shortage of occasion. I have been asked

to go out to speak about --

it's very ironic, recruit, diversity. I

get questions, how do you do

this? This is from large jurisdictions,

like chicago, boston, new york,

dallas. We're in the top three, not

just in women, but in all

ethnicity's and in culture. In 2004 which

was six years past the

stipulated order, we had 43 percent minorities

and 13 percent women. Ten

years later, we have 16 percent women. It's 15.7. I don't want that

to be discounted because the fire

service is unique and very rich in history and tradition and when I visit outside of our department, most departments do not look like our department. And we should

all be proud of that. I'm proud of

the fact that I never

considered a career in the fire service growing

up. I was always fascinated by

the red engines and trucks that road

by, but no one looked like me.

Now, our greatest recruitment tool is

our own members so we rely on

them. Could it be enhanced if we had a specific recruitment unit on or around the time we're recruiting,

yes. We did have that. I used

to be a recruiter and there was time coming that was provided. We

had a recruitment staff that was a budget. We don't are that anymore. I'll hope that you'll consider

the recommendations that the

auditors make because it comes

down to dollars and cents. We're

starting to see more of a shift and it makes sense to evaluate that.

we have seen a shrinkage in civilian

and uniform staff. We have been hampered and it has talked about in

the audit, we agree. We used

to have strategic planning and research unit. All of that has gone a wau because we had to make changes

because of the budget. What

you'll see is request for more personnel

during the the budget related

to the emergency operations --

emergency medical services related to the operating development. We he asked for resources and we couldn't get it and we understand there are competing interest. It's not just about the fire department, but

many of these recommendations

do require money. And I'm

incorporating it all in my comments. I had specific remarks but I

think I'm hitting all the

topics, and I'm happy to answer more questions. With staffing, we

would love to have more people within our department, but it's very

difficult. As you see, it's a $5 million minimum infusion to take the recommendation from the budget

analyst. And years ago,

probably around on 07, 08, we made deliberate -- we have deliberate discussion and everyone agreed and

it was counter intuitive to me,

but I don't like that overtime has

gone up. So I think that's

important to point out. A high of 1750 down to 1371, of course the

overtime is going to go up. Up course

that's going to go up. Now

we're seeing more overtime and seeing the

fatigue factor. There are things that I think are very good in the

audit, but there are things

that I agree with callihan. We're open to any suggestions you have regarding outreach. We haven't had that

opportunity since 2009, so we're asking to work together and give you the bigger picture. People say

only in san francisco, we want to be

the best. The four of us, born

and raised here. We're proud. I love local hire, but we need to make sure that we're doing thing

that's are legal whether it's local hire and residency restrictions, does it bother me that people live out of the state, it's a small

percentage, but yes it does. I think 31 percent that live in the

city is good and better than other departments. 46 percent,

if you

count san francisco county and san mateo county. That's good. They

don't have to depend on a bridge. If you look at new orleans, you

don't want all of your first responders living in the city.

Like we

saw with new orleans, they had difficulty responding and they were

dealing with their own

devastation. We are making strides. I'm

proud to say this class and

previous class, we have spanish speakers,

we have someone who speaks

russian sitting in the classroom today. I

agree. It's less important at

a fire scene. When people are trying

to get information, it's difficult. But it's critical -- it's value

to have people that can speak

someone's native tongue when you're trying to get family history so

we have a large number of our people

that were bilingual speakers.

I'm big at adding bilingual speakers. Former President Of the commission, george low was an

advocate of that. Very candidly. When we were having discussions with the

bargaining unit, that was controversial and I'm being honest and I've

been an advocate for having

someone who is bilingual because of the city we live in. There's

things that we think are sort of myopic

when you're looking at the fire

didn't. Anywhere I travel, I do not

see a work force like ours. I want to improve and I'm committing to

doing that. If you give me a

second to look through my notes. I'm

happy to answer questions along

the way. But I think -- I think the list that was provided, I was asked to let you know there's information on it that should

be -- there's home addresses so dhr being the good folks that you are, have asked know respectfully ask

that some of that address information be reducted. What we did in

09, we highlighted four things

in terms of outreach for 2009. We specifically can't target

recruitment. We produced and distributed

the recruitment materials to the constituents. I know you were the director and if you're indicating you didn't receive that information, we need to look at

that. We published the firefighter job opportunity through the job

outreach and we advertised and we're

our best recruitment tool, the

firefighter process, the general order progress and generate those to

give information to their friends and

local communities. I think we

can be proud again of -- it hasn't been easy. We had 5200 people

on the list and we hired 150 off the

list. Early remarks, it's a diverse work force but we look forward

to the future with the

continuance testing model that

dhr has

described. And we agree that

having the dhr because they are the subject matter expert overseeing the testing, and we'll work on that.

Just to let you know, I know we're hearing concern and I'm hearing

it, but most of the way the test are conducted, there's consent decree and the focus was on

diverse -- diversity. It was

implemented in the decree.

That's worth noting. As wells the participation of the test

consultant and experts during the test process. It's not a redesign

and maybe we need to look at redesign,

but those came from the consent

decree. A couple of more comments

with switching to the strategic planning. We agree to the strategic planning is important. We've

been really reduced and you'll see or

those of who -- you'll see -- our fire commission will see

our budget

calls for the restoration. We're in the business of responding

day-to-day, but one of the

frustrations I have is not doing forward planning. We don't have those resources and we're taking care of the day-to-day business and we need to be more forward. That's a weakness and limitation that we

need to focus on.

>> do you -- excuse me. Do you

know the cost of doing strategic planning for the department would be because it mentions

both the d

hr and the department mentioned lack of resources to do that planning

but I want to have a clear understanding of what dollar amount we're talking about?

>> we're going to ask for one

-- for that position to be restored

that's with $200,000 for a position with benefits for us.

>> thank you.

>> thank you.

>> just a couple of slight disagreements with the conclusion drown by

the audit on the succession and the overtime piece. I said that

overtime is less expensive than straight time. And our overtime is

approximately in the mid -- 15, to 16 percent. Urban jurisdictions throughout the country, most of

them, that's low. It's usually between 23 percent on over time, but I'm all for reducing overtime if we can get more bodies in and I

know the only barrier there is the

cost. But we think that's a good idea. And I think it was referred to a little bit, I'm happy to

discuss and I don't need to get into it because it was talked about.

The overtime control and caps. We did

work with labor very much so

with dhr. There's a 633 cap on overtime

and given the nature of how we run the organizations structurally, that wasn't working for us and

so there was no cap. Most fire departments don't have an overtime cap. We think it's high, but we

think it was a big deal that we

were able to collectively with director callihan to agree with

an 1100 hour cap and the fact that we're bringing that staffing

back in terms of the new hires is great because for a long period of time, we didn't have the

ability to

hire. So for example, 43 hired

and graduated in December, we're

hoping for another 48 coming

out in May. The trajectory of retiring

is 30 percent. We're headed in

the right direction and that concludes my response. Again, we're appreciative of the work, but I continue to be very proud of

all the efforts that we've achieved. You have my commitment that if

there's anything that we can do

differently, we will, you I would encourage you as you know, as well

as I do, you go to any fire

station and or you look on any rid and you should be proud because

it's a diverse group of people and it was different ten years ago. So, thank you very much. >> thank you chief. I just want to also acknowledge that we have, in

the audience today, tom oconner

and I see kevin from the black

fire department. Colleagues, are

there any questions for the

chief? >> supervisor cohen.

>> I want to again, refer to

back to the audit, to the key finding. Chief, there's a recommendation

that was made -- it's recommendation

1.3 and states the fire chief will insure that recruitment has been

clarified within dhr and the fire department. And your response is

that you guys are clear? Micky

has also indicated that. So I'm

going to ask the same question,

what does this policy outline?

>> so -- supervisor cohen,

we're looking forward to beginning recruiting. The last

recruitment was around 2009. We're challenged

financially. We have a zero budget for recruitment, so we would like to consider enhancing that, but

short of that, we try to make it work. Sometimes that does not

work to our advantage. But we have

full intentions to work closely with dhr and outreach to various groups and we would appreciate

any input you have that was provided

related to recruitment. In the

past, we have posted notices at gyms, at churches and different

neighborhood groups to get the word out.

We've relied on our members to

either through the employee group process or our members to reach out to people that they think would

be a good fit to be a good firefighter or emt within the fire department.

>> what is the police department's budget for recruitment?

>> I do not know.

>> okay.

>> director, callihan, do you know what the fire department's budget. >> I don't know the budget, but they have assigned staff to work on

it within the program.

>> thank you. That somewhat answers my question. You don't need a budget to do recruitment or maybe you need to look within

the budget

that you do have, prioritize it

and work with what you have. There's

another point that I want to ask you -- is there a representative from the fire commission that's here? >> no, there's not. >> no. All right. I'm going

to ask you questions about the commission.

>> I'll meet with them later.

>> my question is, the park

commission has gone on record to disagree

with recommendation 1.4 which is that the fire commission should

insure that all public meetings

are recorded and archieved and the

fire department says that the meetings are reported verbatim and

available to the public. I'm wondering if you as the leader of the

department would be open to exploring conversations to have fire

commission meetings here in city hall?

>> I would have no objection to

that. I do think there is some

relevant and appreciation from the fire commission related to

logistics if you will. I know

it's an expense and I would not like

to are it in my budget as well

as it being filmed. I have no objections. The odds are it

doesn't always happen and it was cited

or it was at the commissioner meeting. The President Of the fire commission was at ate meeting

and supervisor breed who May have been

a commissioner in September 2010 during the explosion. We activated

and we were able to activate it that much quicker. We went upstairs examine fired up our department operation center and got to work pause we he did respond to that

emergency. I think that's a very

good illustration of one of the

benefits having them done at san francisco head quarters. It

was seamless for us getting on that

incident. I would say I think that's relevant, but I'm not saying

that I'm oppose to having it here although there's an expense.

>> I want to express it televised and to insure a certain level of transparency the way police

commission as well as police commission

is being televised. I reached out to the building management for

them to look at a way to incorporate the fire department into the rotation of space. The fire

commission is a charter commission and

will take precedent over the other commissions. We can talk about

budget because there will be a cost associated. And we can figure

that out. And I would agree, it's seamless to have someone to have your meetings and then to go up

and activate, but I'm sure there's someone in the head quarters that would be there -- that you can make

a phone call to get things

moving should there be another major emergency. And you are

correct, our department did excellent job

responding to a lot of regional

challenges, the rim fire, but just

regionally, we're big to the

other bay area counties so thank you for

bringing that to the attention.

I'm going to let -- I think

supervisor chiu has a few.

>> I had a couple of issues that I want to talk about so we can move

on in the interest of time. I think the issue of ems is the most

alarming part of this particular report because over 76 percent of

the calls or service were for

emergency calls and less than 24

percent is for fire and the

staffing level is the opposite. You have

23 percent that are ems and 77 percent are you appreciation. I think that the department is

consistently under valued and we're experiencing many challenges in

that particular area, so it's not

surprising to me that -- excuse

me he -- the calls have

decreased.

I'm not sure if they know what

it means. When someone calls 911

because someone is having an emergency, the pay hent is left to hope

someone gets there in time.

This happened in 2013. This happened 274 times in ten months so

that's eight times each day. Eight times a day, we don't have an ambulance available to help people when they

make those calls. So what are

callers being told from the medic is how long is the response time

in these situations. And from my

understanding, with my conversations with ems personnel is that

sometimes patients have to wait

20, 30, and sometimes 40 minutes.

Why are we letting this happen?

How could we consider this

safe

service to the city of san francisco if we can't help these people.

What if we have an incident like an earthquake or terrorist attack,

so I'm trying to get an understanding, there's a clear discrepancy with ems services and the

volume of the call and I have listened to

those calls over the radios and

amazed at home paramedic calls are needed throughout san francisco and I don't feel the department reflects that and I wanted to give you an opportunity, chief, to

explain to me what's happening in that regard.

>> supervisor breed, thank you

for that question. The calls respond to are medical related, but

most of the medical calls, you get a whole bunch of resources from

the department. We adopted in 1997

with the merger of the paramedic. And that's the way to go in an urban setting. Having said

that, when there is someone

that calls 9 11 we're disstached ambulances. I think it was under stated in the audit in terms of the cross

over amount of times --

firefighters

just aren't fighting firing. You're gleten yins and trucks whether it's a car accident. That's

medical. But you need the resources.

So I don't want to down play

the amount of cross that exist related

to ems and fire. Probably for a larger discussion and maybe an

especially rat -- in 2008, the state of california had indicated

that they thought the san francisco exclusive operating area, the way we provided medical services had changed in manner and scope. Since

that time, I have and the department has always been in the position

that it has not changed. Unfortunately in 2008, a decision was made

by the state that the eoa would

be suspended if you will and so then

it created a lot of uncertainty. We weren't able to staff up because

of the loss of that eoa. fortunately we've lobby and worked hard to get that exclusive operating area back. But in order to do so, we're

try to go get to the level of returning to an 80 percent share of the

market if you will, 80 percent firefighter and ems response, 20

percent private. There's two private ambulance companies

that's operated in the city. That

requires -- it has been estimated 10 and $12 million. That's something

we have had open discussions with, with many of your colleagues as well as the mayor's budget office and

that's a budget issue that will

come up. Frankly it is a policy decision that the mayor needs

to make and we've had multiple meetings, we haven't sat with

him, but I've talk to the mayor's budget director because she's

responsible for the city's budget. In

order to get back to that level and to reinvest, if you will, in personnel and equipment, and

training of the ems division, which is

an equal partner, let me state that clear, I've heard real da recognize tory remarks and I

consider the ems department as important

and they should work hand in

hand with the operation side. That will require a large investment to

get back to where we need to go. >> another question. I know

this is really cheesy, but I watch

chicago fire and I noticed that their ambulances and their fire stations and I know that we don't --

>> that causes a lot of

problems if you watch that show. >> I was just wondering why

that isn't the case here in the city? >> great question. So 1997

like I talked about that, that was the

merger and we've had stops and starts. At one point the ambulances were housed in the fire stations working 24 hour shifts

and we found

it to be attendable. Our engine trucks are busy, but

when you go on a medical call, they're longer.

We were finding it wasn't a

sustainable model. And the 24

hour shift, we were seeing clinical

errors because our members were

fatigue and we saw demeanor issues

and we saw from a resource

perspective, we in did studies

that there are some peek times. So we looked at peek period and we decided that

we would go back to the former dph model and do ten hour shifts and

it has worked better because we utilize peek staffing and we have more ambulances in the times we know we're going to be busier

and we

have the ability to be flexible

on the post locations. But adding to some flexibility.

>> so the other thing I wanted

to ask about is why is the command

staff for the ems division,

they have no ems experience or training. It's in the report that that's the case, so I wanted to get some clarity on that.

>> not the case. We have an

assistant deputy chief that oversees the

ems did I rigs and he's a medic. And we have supervisors that's medic.

>> and they all have ems training.

>> everyone in the department

since 1989 including myself, it's a requirement to maintain an emt

certificate. Everyone has a certificate from 1989 forward.

So they are paramedic licenses

examine referring back to this eoa and the restoration of resources,

we have asked for a greater level supervision for paramedic trained

individuals to be apart of that exclusive operating area, supplement if you will. >> for clarity because there

was a lot in this report. I

vaguely remember seeing that wasn't in

the case in the report, but your response was saying -- >> off the top when asking me the question, and if you can give me a

page, I'm happy to look at it

on the fly. I do vaguely recall that,

but we do have paramedic up

advisers, rescue captains as

well as an

assistant deputy chief who is paramedic trained. >> where did they get that information if tharz not accurate? Or

maybe they can look and respond

to us later. Do you want to respond now or wait? >> well, thank you chair breed. we're flipping through the report to find the exact reference that you're referring to. We do point out in the report that one of our

concerns is that there are

fewer promotional -- for paramedic staffs. That's a statement we got from the fire department, so we'll find that reference and send that to you following the meeting.

Speaker:   repeat that.

>> within the existing command structure, there's a limits number that have paramedic training. >> okay.

>> so but that doesn't necessary hee directly relate -- that doesn't

necessarily relate to the over

sight as it relates to the ems division of the department?

>> that's just the command

staff in general. >> correct, there's an ems chief.

>> I'm sorry, I read it to mean that potentially the command staff that oversees that division didn't have the proper training but what

you're saying is overall the

command staff doesn't have paramedic

training in particular and I specifically said ems training which chief, can I explain if there's a difference and if that's actually

accurate, please?

>> sure. My cfo jogged my division. We are an ems did I rigs and he has a higher level of training

and he's a pair met. He has

approximately 250 and 350

paramedics. They have to have a paramedic

license. There's eight excludeing me. One, appropriately over the

ems division and I have a chief

that maintains a license and my chief

at the airport is a paramedic.

Everyone on the command staff has the

emt certification. >> because it says --

>> what page?

>> it's in there, executive

summary on eight, which is biii. Fwl thank you. >> in the last paragraph, it

just says a total of 38 and

this is from

the budget and legislative

analyst, a total of 38 command staff

hasn't been trained, ems, yet

through promotions they're charged with

supervise are paramedic staff.

On that's why -- that particular

statement was cause for

concern. You're telling me they all have an

ems certificate which is different from what this

statement says. >> having an emt certificate is significant. It means you have that

life support skill and ability

sdmrchlt it's for the department since 1989. >> there's less than five

percent who don't have the ems certificate. The paramedic that has a

higher level of training, they're being supervised by people that don't are that same level of training. In

the ems division, there's a

paramedic supervisor and chief, and there are paramedics overseeing

their colleagues who are paramedics

and yeah. I can read verbatim a statement they wrote. The ambulance

personnel do receive the support from h 33 captains.

They're all

paramedics trained. Is it the

captain who has the responsible

of personnel. Station 49, the

status work location is also staffed. I did okay. >> okay. Thank you, chief.

>> so I'm going to allow supervisor chiu to we are question and we'll

open up to public comment. The

planning will be achieved supervisor

had to leave and what your

thoughts are. Hopefully we see you. But how does this succession happen

up and down the department. So certainly, one of the many role

of the fire chief is make sure we're

looking forward. We have been challenged for that. When you stepped

out of the room, I talked about

a loss of resources both uniform to take analytical looks at what

our department is going to look at

2025. >> certainly we would love to

have and we'll ask for the restoration

to address the issues in the audit. >> so you're saying you'll be

able to do this in short order. >> given the situation we're

in, we have to do strategic planning and

succession planning and more

planning with what little budget we

have, so I do appreciate the

constraints and thinking of how we can be supportive but the fact of the matter is I don't see the picture changing that much and the fact

that we've been able to get the fire academy classes, that's where

we want to spend new dollars but again, what I hope doesn't happen when

I read in this report that are despite recommendations over

the past ten years, the fire department didn't have strategic plans.

whatever we can do, that would be helpful. >> supervisor tang.

>> last chief, before I open up to public comment. There's some

changes in the department that need to be addressed and there's a

command staff responsible for

assisting you in making sure those issues are addressed properly.

I'd like to see -- I reviewed your response and reviewed hr response, but I like to see a clear plan. I like to see a clear plan as to

how we're going to address these particular issue regardless of whether or not we dispute them.

there's a clear issue and I'd

like to see us figure out and not always attach dollars to the

solution, but this is what our plans are for succession and strategic planning. This is what we recommend to

get to that point, this is how

much we would need in order to do it effectively for years to come

and this is what we're asking the board to provide us with and let us

open the dialogue up with clear solutions of what it would take

to get us to a point where we can support the department because

we do have some challenges. We do have some concerns and I

realize in one of the things

that Dr. Keller mentioned, 200-something folks

are happy because they were able to

promote -- >> what that means in going into the neighborhoods and making sure

we're being fair about the recruitment process because if we're going

to look at changes and the way

we make it xabl to the public, the recruitment process is an ongoing thing and there are, like, for

example, this list of a lot of great organization that's we have is definitely a great tool to

start with, but what can we do to enhance

the outreach efforts in those

particular areas for recruitment for opportunities to allow folks

the opportunity to take this new testing mechanism, so based on the

things that the department is already planning to do, what are we

doing to look at the report objectively and not necessary whether we

agree or not, address what the issues are of the report, the corrective action of the report so that we're

clear about the policy, we're

clear about adding additional information or secondary

criteria or what have you as it relate to the job announcement. What I'm

looking for is how are we going to

make the changes necessary to

make things better. Based on the challenges, the department

created this testing mechanism, I get

that, but there's other issues

that relates to that so we can make sure the opportunity for

working in the department is able to me. It's mg that I want to see that

we're doing a little bit more aggressive outreach in that particular regard as well as making the

necessary changes to ems and a couple of the other things. I know we

look at other departments and

what they're doing, but we as san francisco should be setting the trends. >> I they we are. >> but I see the opportunities

to get better, so I do appreciate that

the efforts are being made, but at the same time, the lawsuits and other things that we deal with as members of the board, they're difficult to take because that

means less money that we have less available for the things you

need to do. In my mind, I'm thinking

let's try to make it the best

it can be and let's make sure we're

clear and we have everything we need in place and we're improving on those things on a regular basis

to get to where we need to as a department and as a city to again when you're coming to us and

saying, I need $5 million for

x, y, z, we're saying --

>> the budget analyst asked.

>> you're saying $11 million for ems based on my question and the response and based on what we

need to do as a city to really provide

the level of ems services in a way with equipment and we know that --

I don't know if you received your five new ambulances but it's clear we need new equipment in that area and we need to make sure we have

enough staffing in order to

address the issues not just locally in response times but to get to

the 80 percent required by the state. There's a lot of challenges and

need and I want to make sure we're

moving in that direction and we need to develop a plan to get us to

where we need to go, so that's what I'm looking for. >> thank you.

>> okay. Now, we're going to

open it up to public comment. Are

there any members of the public

that wish to speak or comment? Come on.

>> good afternoon, I think. Commissioners, I mean supervisors. Thank you for allowing me to

speak here. I know my time is limited, but -- >> you want to tell us who you are.

>> yes. My name is kevin smith and I'm President Of the san francisco black firefighters and I hold the rank as a chief

in the san francisco fire department.

As I said, I like to comment on the

audit. I want to thank the committee for conducting the audit and

the team that put it together.

I think it highlighted several issues

that be improved on. I want to

improve on how the fire department conducts business and how they

do recruitment and testing. Just to touch on recruitment, our

organization has noted that recruitment

needs to be targeted so we can get a diverse pool, you you have to start young and get the candidates when they're young, when they're in school and have them build up because this is a career that you

need to prepare for. In regard

to testing, there's problems with testing. We firmly believe and

I think it was proved in court, you

know, even though that was an age discrimination case before the

judge can allow an award, they

had to prove that the test was invalid. We need to use best practices. There's some problems with the answer key being developed

at the aim time. But there's other

ways conducting a test. We do

think we have some answers or in suggestions for the dhr, fire department to conduct exam in

the

future and I would look forward to haring those dialogues.

>> it would be helpful if you share that would be helpful. >> any other members of the

public who would like to peak. >> good afternoon supervisors.

my name jerry cooper. I like to

thank the board and the budget analyst office for bringing to light

the problems in the fire department. I like to keen in

on one area which we discussed already

which was the prevision of the emergency services to you're community

and citizens here in san

francisco. As

we were discussing, the fire

department is able to serve 72 percent of ambulance request. 43 out

of our total fire stations have a paramedic within their

community in san francisco on their fire apparatus. As we were

discussing earlier and in audit report, over

9,000 calls to date have been logged without an ambulance that's been

able to be sent at the time of the emergency. Granted, most

of those

calls did have a firefighter

ems or firefighter on that emergency.

Our department today is under

funded, under staffed and under

equipped to handle our current

volume and the volume going forward

for emergency medical care and

fire request. If woor looking at fire practices, we must put together a plan to address this shortage that continues to occur day after day. Thank you. >> thank you. Any other

members of the public would like to make public comment. Speak now or

forever hold your peace. With

that, public comment is closed. Again, thank you all so much for being here today. I know this was a very hard conversation to have and we

will continue this dialogue. This is extremely important to our city and as a former member of the

commission, I know this was a hard

commission, but I've never seen more dedicated men and women in this city work harder to save lives

and to do all the things that they do throughout our city to protect

folks in san francisco. I truly feel safe being in their hands and I

do want to make sure that we're continuously doing all we can

to make the department the best

department in the entire country. And so with that, we are looking

forward to hearing the

recommendations of what's to come around changes to the department and we're looking forward to hearing recommendations from the

various groups and the challenges they face

and we'll continue to have this dialogue to move the didn't forward

and making sure their voices are heard. Is there is a move to continue.

>> this item is moved. >> Madam Clerk, any further business. >> no further business. >> okay. This meeting is a

your honored. Djourned. Thank you very