City and County of San Francisco Thursday, October 23, 2014
will begin shortly. . >> to my right is supervisor tang, the vice chair, President Chu will be joining us soon and we are also joined by supervisor scott weiner today. The clerk is erica major and I'd also like to thank the sfgov tv folks who are filming our meeting today, jessie larson and josh what alexander. Madam Clerk, do you have any announcements? >> please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices. Speaker cards and all documents to be included as part ftd file should be submitted to the clerk. Items acted on today will appear on the November 4 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> item 1 is municipal transportation agency to discuss auto fees for stolen vehicles. >> supervisor weiner, thank you. >> thank you, Madam Chair, for angendizing this item today. I very much appreciate it. Today, colleagues, this hearing which
I called for this month has as its
purpose a review of our city's automobile towing policies and fees
with respect to stolen vehicles. And I
called for this hearing because the
mta's contract with auto return, our
vendor that provides towing services, expires next year and will be renegotiated and then ultimately presented to the board of supervisors
for approval or rejection.
So rather than wait for this contract to come to the board of supervisors and then at that point have a discussion after the negotiation about the treatment of stolen vehicles, it seems
it me that now is the time to do it. So the purpose of this hearing is to
have a discussion about the city's towing policies with respect to stolen
vehicles, how the fees and penalties
are structured, how stolen cars that are recovered are structured and how we May change the contract to treat the
owners of stolen vehicles in a better and more respectful and fair way.
I want to be clear that I am, the
purpose of this hearing is not to criticize auto return. Actually I am a
fan of auto return. This city has a
long and sorry history in terms of our
towing contracts and corruption and other significant problems and auto
return came in and really drained the
swamp and cleaned up towing operations
in san francisco and our towing system is much more professional than it used to be.
This is not about criticizing auto return. The problem is not auto return, it's the contract itself. And
right now the contract does not treat
the owners of stolen vehicles fairly.
It used to be that if you had your
vehicle stolen and then it was
abandoned in san francisco and towed for many years you had your towing and storage and administrative fees waived, you didn't have to pay them. That
changed in about 2005 when the board of
supervisors I think incorrectly repealed that waiver. Looking back at the record, it looks like the police department did research and found that
we were an anomaly, that we were one of
the fee venues that actually provided that waiver which of course is fine with me because san francisco often leads the way and we should lead the way here as well.
So in 2005 the board and the mayor
repealed that exemption.
The current contract, as I mentioned,
is with auto return. Auto return processes, tows approximately 45,000
vehicles a year, that's in the last
fiscal year. Of this 45,000 towed vehicles, approximately 2500 are stolen
vehicles so that's about 5.6 percent. So we're talking about a pretty small universe in the big scheme of things.
When a vehicle that has been reported as stolen is found on the street and is
going to be towed, the san francisco
police department contacts the owner
and gives him or her 20 minutes to retrieve the vehicle and that makes sense because we don't want police officers to be having to spend all day
baby-siting a stolen vehicle. So that's not the problem in my view.
The problem starts once the vehicle
then gets towed and gets placed and
stored with auto return. The m.D ta
assesses a $266 administrative fee.
That fee is waived if the victim presents a police report indicating
that the car has been stolen.
In addition the mta and police department, to their credit, will waive parking tickets incurred as a result of the stolen vehicle being abandoned.
However, the owner does have to pay the
$220 tow fee, in addition to storage fees that accumulate once the vehicle is stored. San francisco residents receive a four hour grace period for stolen vehicles so if they are able to retrieve the vehicle and get down there within 4
hours of its tow they don't have to pay. Non-residents receive no grace
period so if your car is stolen in oakland and dumped in san francisco you receive no grace period whatsoever.
At that point, either immediately for
non-residents or 4 hours for residents, storage fees begin to accrue and they
accrue and they accrue. So if
for ra are able to get down there, you could have to pay significant storage fees and we have heard over time from various people who have accrued hundreds or even thousands of dollars in storage fees and there
are times when those fees are higher
than the actual value of the vehicle, in which case typically people will simply not retrieve the vehicle and
auto return per the contract, per state
law, will simply auction off the
vehicle to pay for the fees.
So the system is not fair, the
contract is not fair. When you have
your car stolen uefr been victimized by
a xripl -- criminal and we shouldn't be victimizing that victim yet again by saying you have done sluertly nothing wrong, your vehicle was stolen, it was dumped somewhere in san francisco, it was towed and now here's a bill for thousands of dollars. No one should
have to be subject to that.
while some people have comprehensive insurance that can then reimburse them
for the cost of the tow and the
storage, we know that many car owners
do not have comprehensive insurance. Comprehensive insurance is expensive and particularly for owners of older
vehicles they often do not have comprehensive insurance, it tends to be something that you have for a newer vehicle and older vehicles, of course, are the ones that are most likely to be
lower in value so it's worth just abandoning your vehicle at auto return rather than paying the fees and retrieving it.
So today, colleagues, the goal is to really have a discussion to hear from the mta and from the police department and from auto return about what the system is, just making sure that we have, you know, know exactly what the
facts are, and then we can have a discussion about providing in my view
guidance to the mta about what we expect when this contract comes to us next year.
It is my intent after this hearing in the next few weeks to introduce a
resolution at the board indicating our
intent formally to the mta and really
sending a clear message and again trying to get ahead of the curve on
this to give the mta guidance on what we expect rather than waiting for the contract to come to the board
and then creating a kerfluffle because there's something about the contract that could have been fixed and we didn't fix. With that, colleague, if there are no other comments we do have a few presentations today and I'd like to start with the san francisco police department, we have commander
ali here,
the operations commander of mta commander ali
>> good morning, mikail ali, san
francisco police department assigned to
mta and I must applaud you, supervisor,
you clearly have the issue in hand. >> that's because I have good staff.
>> the one thing I would say, we do do
our part to lessen the impact of the vehicle stolen which is not unique. We
make an effort to recover them through proactive policing as well as respond to incidents where others identify the
vehicle as being stolen. We attempt to lessen that impact by all persons by having, while the officer is in the field, making an attempt to contact the owner of that vehicle, waiting the 20 minutes of time not just for san francisco residents but for all, particularly in this day and age where
your ability to contact folks by way of
cell phone is instantaneous and then in many instances you have individuals who actually are working or playing in san francisco and their vehicle was either stolen or recovered so it affords them an opportunity to avoid that process of having their vehicle towed. So that's
the only thing I would add. We do abide by all the ordinance rules in
terms of waiving the $194 administrative fee the police department charges when they are
involved in these types of towing a vehicle.
>> for that waiver, how does that work? Is it an easy process for people to get that fee waived?
>> it is an easy process. What takes place is at the hall of just
stus -- justice they come down and receive the
waiver from the ofrsers that work the
tow desk. All vehicle tows, information for the public on how to go
about the various processes, whether to simply pay the fee and recover the vehicle, if they have a concern that the tow was improper we have procedures
in place to evaluate those circumstances and to remedy them if in
fact they were improper. So those
things are in place now.
>> thank you. Supervisor tang has a question.
>> just to build on that, if someone has their car stolen do they have to provide some kind of police report or
insurance claim form that their car was stolen.
>> the lion's share of folks with stolen cars, they are aware of their
vehicle being stolen prior to it being recovered and towed by the police department. There is that instance
where the vehicle is towed for some
reason, maybe it was improperly parked
and then you become aware that your car was towed and the circumstances lead up
to the fact that it was actually
stolen. So that's the minority of
circumstances. So when a car is
stolen, is entered into a statewide system and then a nationwide system. The statewide is called the california
law enforcement electronic telecommunications system. Every law enforcement agency that deals with
these types of incidents enters that information so if your car is stolen in
san francisco and it's in san jose, for
that matter, san jose officers will become aware, they can also have the
mechanism by which they can contact -- clearly I don't think they would have a
policy of waiting 20 minutes for non-residents just as we don't as well.
>> so essentially it's pretty easy for, again, if someone was trying to get this fee waiver that it should already be in the data base that it's been stolen. >> absolutely. It's typically in the
data base, the officers who work those assignments have access to the information, they can see it was stolen
and the person typically will be
advised and that waiver is made.
>> in terms of the distinction between residents and non-residents and this is
something that to me I think is an
issue. I don't -- and this applies, we'll talk about more with the mta -- to me I don't think it should matter whether the person is a resident or a non-resident. If they've been
victimized and had their car stolen, I understand the desire to maybe help out san francisco residents a
little end whether someone
lives here or is visited or never set foot here and had their car dumped here
after it was stolen, to me they should
be treated the same. Does the
20
minute period that sfpd stays with the car, does that apply to the residents? >> it does.
>> the waiver of the $190 fee is just for san francisco residents? >> it is.
>> what's the rationale behind not applying that to non-residents.
>> it's the ordinance. The ordinance only speaks of waiving the fee to residents of our city.
>> these are all board of supervisors ordinances which of course the board was then removed from this whole
process when the voters voted on prop e
in 1999 so we'll definitely, that's an issue we're going to be bringing up to
try to equalize the treatment.
Thank you very much, commander. >> supervisor.
>> okay, so now I want to call up the
sf mta which administers the contract with auto return.
>> good morning, supervisor, steve lee, sfmta, manager of financial contracts and services.
I'd like to begin by saying I can't imagine that the mta wouldn't take this opportunity to make things better for
people who get their car stolen. I
totally agree that this sort of situation adds insult to injury in terms of when you get your car stolen. We're going to do everything we can to work with your offices to make sure we cover as much as we can in terms of
making things better. Supervisor weiner, you spoke to a lot of things I was going to mention so I think I will start with the contracting
of the existing agreement and go into
what we anticipate in terms of a new agreement.
So the existing agreement
today is based on volume, multiplied by the rate
that is set by auto return for recovery of storage and fees which goes to pay for their operating expenses. So it
really depends upon volume. When they first started the contract in 2005 the
volume was in the range of 75,000
vehicles and has dropped dramatically to 45,000 today so we want to move away from the volume type model agreement
because it's too volatile and too risky
for a vendor. We May be considering an operational reimbursement type model
where all operating expenses are reimbursed and the vendor is
paid a flat management fee.
this will provide the mta with the
flexibility it theeds in terms of adjusting service levels and the fees
that we charge. If there's any questions you have?
>> a few things. So as I understand
the auto return collects about $531,000 last fiscal year. >> correct. >> relating to stolen vehicles.
>> that's correct.
>> and that's in the contract. So what's the total amount of revenue collected by auto return? >> I'm sorry?
>> what is auto return's total amount collected for all vehicles?
>> we estimate it to be in the range of $16 million.
>> so it's a pretty small percentage of the total.
>> well, I kpbts speak to what it cost them to return the entire operation, so what we're really talking about is the
net income they would have to absorb in terms of providing this relief.
>> right. And in a renegotiated contract that provided your complete
waiver for stolen vehicles or a
significantly longer grace period or
lower storage fee or whatever, however
it might be structured, that lost
revenue would have to probably be reabsorbed through the rest of the contract. >> possibly. I mean when we go out to
and we do a new agreement it is really early to tell. We really need to see the proposals to know what it's going to cost us to run the business. We're
hoping to see some savings that can apply to some of the reductions but if
we were to eliminate that completely,
yes, it May be spread among the other fees. Definitely would be abdomen
sored by the mta because a new contract, as I mentioned before,
possibly will be doing an annually approved operational budget where all expenditures are reimbursed and the operator is just paid a flat management fee for their services.
>> I definitely don't want to deprive
the mta of revenue so to me in terms of
determining the cost structure that can be determined within the contract.
There are a couple ways this would be
done, one would be no charges for stolen vehicles, one would be a longer
period instead of 20 minutes it could be days or even weeks. There is an
argument we don't want people to be
lackadaisical in terms of recovering their vehicle, we want people to come
get their vehicle in a timely way, or a longer time period and less of a storage fee once the grace period ends.
Do you have any thoughts on those various options?
>> they all vary and it could be a combination of whether we relax the time to retrieve the vehicle, waive the
storage fee or waive the tow fee altogether in part or whole. It could be a combination of things and when we
look at it later we'll really start to
pencil out what is the impact financially to the mt aflt. It's hard
to commit to it now without seeing the proposals but I think in terms of the contract model that we probably will
pursue it provides the mta the ability,
even outside the contract, to implement
these policies without impacting the
vendor's bottom line.
>> in terms of what I asked commander
ali about resident versus non-resident, other than the fact this was in the
statute, was there any policy rationale
that you can think of in terms of
providing waivers to residents versus non-residents. >> it's the same thing. Whether you live in san francisco across the bridge
or right at the border of daly city I think it, I think you're right, that it should apply cross the board.
>> I agree with you. I think there's
no reason to provide waivers to
residents and not non-residents, I think they should be treated the same.
It's the same victimization so I'm glad
we see eye to eye on that. Supervisor tang has some questions. >> just to get a better understanding of the landscape you mentioned that we
started off with about 70,000 cars
towed then it went down to about 45,000. I'm curious if you have the breakdown as to how many are stolen from san francisco residents and then stolen from outside of san francisco residents.
>> right, those figures were provided.
65 percent of stolen vehicles, stolen
vehicles for 2014 was about 2500 vehicles. About 65 percent of those vehicles are san francisco residents so that's about 1400.
>> okay, thank you.
>> okay, if there are no further questions, we appreciate it. >> thank you.
>> I'm sorry, one last thing. In terms of the timing, my understanding is the contract expires June 30th of next year? >> that's correct.
>> so what is the time -- have you begun negotiations with auto return? >> I'm sorry?
>> has mta begun its negotiations? >> we don't know who to negotiate with.
>> so there will be an rfp
>> yeah, the rfp will likely be released early January and then go
through the process of pre and preproposal conferences and submitals
so in terms of negotiating we're
looking at spring of 2015, coming back to the board of supervisors for approval before the expiration.
>> okay, terrific. Thank you.
Okay, now we have john pendleton from
auto returns who is auto return's chief financial officer.
>> thank you. I really came prepared
to offer you perspective, we work in 7 jurisdictions around the country so if you'd like to know more about that I
can tell but that. I can give you more
detailed answers how the process works for citizens within the context of the police department's process.
>> I think it would be both to talk
about the process and it would be
helpful to hear about other
jurisdictions where auto return works,.
>> let me start with the later because
I have it at my fingertips. We went
out and spoke to each of our service
managers that work in each of these
jurisdictions. If san francisco you
understand administrative fees are
Inaudible: There are
no fee waivers. In concord they also waive the administrative fees but they
do that for all people who are towed,
not just the residents of
concord. In
kansas city the tow fee is discounted 50 percent and there's a 4 day great
period for the storage. In indian nap
police nothing is waived. In baltimore county, likewise nothing is waived and the same is true for the pennsylvania state police where we are conducting a pilot.
There are incidents in all of these jurisdictions where there will be extenuating circumstances where the police department might choose to waive more of the fees just due to the circumstances so that's what we see from the other jurisdictions and then
we also hear from all of our police department clients that they also are very mindful of the fact that many of the individuals, there is insurance
coverage in place so they tend to try to incorporate that into whatever policy they put into place as well.
>> I mentioned this at the
beginning
of the issue, comprehensive insurance.
I think that was part of the rationale of eliminating the waiver because if there is comprehensive insurance obviously we would prefer for the insurance company to pay for the towing costs and not for the city or auto return to absorb that. Actually we have not been able to get the data yet,
we're trying to find out what
percentage of vehicles actually have
comprehensive insurance and I suspect, you know, it's probably very high for
newer vehicles and very low for older vehicles. Do you have any sense of that?
>> I would agree with your atefrptions on that but it's very difficult data to
come by unless you have a policy implemented where you are actually asking people for that information as part of your process. I wish we had more information to share with you about that, we just don't have that information because we don't collect that from any individuals. >> we're trying to get that from the state department of insurance so we'll let you know if we find out. >> okay. >> okay, and in terms of the process here can you walk us through the process? >> it's very consistent with what you've heard already but I'll walk through the steps. These vehicles are all, when they are towed, they are towed by the san francisco police department. We do not release any vehicles towed by the san francisco police department unless we have the written release from the department.
The written release comes with instructions about what we are supposed
to do in terms of waivers of any type
so it's not just stolen vehicles but whatever type of release, if there's
any waiver to be applied, the instructions come to us in writing.
That actually is in the process of
changing, the team at bryant street is in the process of using our system so they can send us those instructions which is better because it
makes it a more streamlined process.
But when we get those instructions,
when the individual arrives at our facility, we go into the
system, it's
all automated based on the type of tow.
Our team goes into the system and puts in essentially negative amounts and that results in the total amount of
fees being paid on the vehicle being reduce ode by the amount of the waiver.
For example, all of these stolen vehicles, if it's a san francisco resident as you've been told, we receive instructions to waive the admin
fee and prior to that the pd has also waived their administrative fee. We now collect that fee on behalf of the pd so we are now getting instructions from them not to apply that fee in the same instances.
>> in terms of the fee structure, so we know there's an administrative fee
from the police department, $195, the
mta has an administrative fee of $266,
those can both be waived for san francisco residents. Then there is the
tow fee, as I understand it, it's
$220.75 and then what is the storage fee? >> the storage fee is different on the first day. The first four hours are
free and just to clarify, that four
hour grace period is applied to all towed vehicles, not just stolen vehicles.
>> okay, we had heard it was only for -- it's for all.
>> that's a very long-standing policy of the mta >> but only for san francisco residents.
>> no, no, every towed vehicle, no
matter the reason for the tow or where
the vehicle owner resides, all vehicle
owners have a four hour grace period.
We don't see that very often in other
parts of the country, I think it's a very favorable part of san francisco's
fees. But that reduced fee is $57.25,
that's what it was set when we received
the new fee structure from the mta, and
after that the fee is $66.75. That's for passenger vehicles. There are
different rates for larger passenger
vehicles and lesser rates for motorcycles but it always is the same
the first day is less than the subsequent amount.
>> and it ends up being approximately $500 per week. >> yes.
>> thank you very much. Any other questions? Thank you very much.
>> thank you. Probably at this point
those are our presentations and I think
we can go to public comment.
>> okay, at this time we will open the
floor up for public comment. Each
speaker will have two minutes and
please feel free to approach the podium and stick to the subject matter, please.
>> these few days I establish a new
proper actor something like for the
Inaudible: Equivalent for diane
Inaudible: Protection against prostitution city -- . >> sir, this is about parking. Thank you.
Is there a charles howell available to
speak?
>> hi, I had my car stolen 2 1/2 years
ago and supervisor warner's office contacted me, they have the notes on
it, but I had the most negative
experience and felt like I was
victimized three times: once by the victim of stealing my car, then by auto
return and then by the police in the
city. And I can tell you exactly what
happened in that time and I sort of disagree with the 20 minutes because I don't think even the police department
can get anywhere in 20 minutes
without
a siren. And I was, I worked for the police department before, I was the
deputy convention manager for the 1984 democratic convention so I thoroughly know their operations in terms of what happens.
They called me after 3 days that the
car was stolen. I was downstairs so I
didn't answer the phone, I went
directly upstairs and called them back
and they said, well, it's in the
process of being towed. And I said,
well, where is it? And it was
at 21st
and shotwell in the mission. So I
said, well, I can get there, you know,
as soon as I can. Well, it's in the process of being towed.
So they went ahead and towed it. In the meantime the police department called me back and apologized because I have a handicapped placard in the car
because I had two surgeries in three
months and the last one was a total hip replacement so I had a handicapped placard in the car so it didn't need to be towed from the parking space. Then they said, well, you have to go down and get a release. So I went down
to the police station where they -- .
>> you can continue with your story. Go ahead.
>> then I had to go down to auto return and then they said, oh, the car
is not here, it's at pier 70.
Do you need transportation? They did
not waive any fees, including the storage.
I got to pier 70, a neighbor was driving me around, otherwise it would have taken me forever to get all this done. So I got to the front gate and I
was walking with a cane and they said,
well, you have to go down to the administrative thing which was a
quarter of a mile in on pier 70, so I
walked down to it and then they finally
brought the car out. Then I found out that whoever had stolen it had broken off the key in the ignition so i
couldn't drive it so I had to have it towed again. The reception was so bad at pier 70 that I had to go back to the
entrance in order to call triple a.
They would not allow triple a into pier
70 without me being in the tow truck
with them as if there was something to steal.
So then we towed the car to my mechanic, which was two blocks away
from where the car was stolen, okay? Then I had the, saw the information
they gave me at auto return and I
called the numb to appeal at the police department appeal on the first floor
and, by the way, it was, the written
stuff from auto return was contradictory with the number that you call. So I went down there. I was waiting and waiting, I found out one guy had won an appeal from the year before and he was down there to find out what was going on and they had lost his file.
>> Mr. Howell, can you wrap up, please? Your time has expired. >> I basically went through the whole
process and I was denied the appeal. I
was charged the tow, I was charged the storage, as far as I remember. It was several hundred dollars, plus I had to
have the car repaired. So all in all
it was like a totally negative
experience where I don't think anybody in the process cared anything about what had happened. >> thank you. >> okay? >> are there any other member s of the
public who would like to make public
comment? Seeing none, public comment is closed. President Chu
>> I want to make a very brief comment
of thanking supervisor weiner for calling this hearing. It has been a
busy year for me and I support you in
making whatever changes need to
be made
in this area. This is definitely something where changes need to be made.
>> I think there does need to be a change to the contract. There needs to
be at a minimum a longer grace period,
we need to make sure that owners of
stolen vehicles that are towed are
treated in a fair way and are not hit
with all sorts of storage fees so I
look forward to the negotiations, the process and negotiations and then received a proposed contract from the
mta that reflects the need to treat owners of stolen vehicles fairly. So, colleagues, as I mentioned in the next few weeks I will be introducing a resolution so that the board can go on
record to the mta and also, commander ali, would it be possible for you to
speak with Mr. Howell after the hearing because it sounds like an odd situation if the fees weren't waived. I'm not
sure why or how it happened.
Colleagues, thank you, thank you to mta, sfpd and auto return and I would
request that the committee continue this to the call of the chair.
>> thank you, supervisor weiner, I really appreciate your leadership on this. I know that when I was the director at the african american art and culture complex often times it was a place that many stolen vehicles were left and those vehicles were towed and
people would come to us and ask for assistance, they were frustrated, we didn't realize the vocs in some cases were stolen and it was just a nightmare for many of those folks to recover their vehicles and the expense of
storage for days at a time, I mean,
again, I do agree with Mr. Howell in
his comments that you are a victim three times over because of the process of what you go through. So I do appreciate your leadership. I'm happy to work with you and support you in your efforts to reform the system.
Thank you everyone for coming today and presenting and being willing to work on this particular matter. I look forward to some great changes in the future.
And with that there's a motion to table -- excuse me -- there's a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair. Without objection this item is
continued to the call of the chair. >> thank you. >> okay, Madam Clerk, please call the next item.
>> item no. 2 is a resolution receiving and approving annual reports
for the fisherman's wharf community
benefit district and the fisherman's
wharf annual dinner for 2014.
>> as you know we have an amazing number of community benefit districts around the city. One of the first I
had a chance to work with was our fisherman's wharf community benefit district. As we are required to do under our cbd laws there are annual reports we must receive, evaluate and then move forward in resolutions and that is what we are doing here today.
I want to thank troya campbell from our fisherman's wharf community benefit district for being here, as
well as our owd staffer and I understand she has a brief presentation for us today. >> good morning, supervisors, I'll try to keep this as brief as
possible. The presentation that's on the
laptop,
we wanted to -- senior project manager, I oversee the community benefit district program for san francisco.
As stated by supervisor chu, there are
two pieces of legislation that requires to go through this process. The first is the 1994 act which is otherwise
known as the california street and highways code of california. Our local
act, which is a part of our san
francisco business tax and regulation
code and its otherwise known as article 15. The resolution in front of you covers
annual reports for the fiscal
year of
2009-10, 10-11, 11-12 and 12-13. Owd
is responsible for ensuring all community benefit districts are meeting their requirements.
The fisherman's wharf cbd is
responsible for two districts. There
are roughly 127 parcels on the land side district and around 49 businesses
that are assessed on the business side.
On an annual basis we collect around
$800,000 in assessment revenues.
The fisherman's cbd, both port side
and land side, will expire on June 30th, 2020.
Staff of the cbd are comprised of 3
main staff, executive director troy
campbell, who is with us today, program manager ruell daniels and marketing communications manager rachel brown. The three components of service areas
at the fisherman's wharf covers is
district identify and streetscape improvements, street operation, beautification and order and admin and corporate operations.
In terms of financial review, owd reviewed 4 benchmarks, the first being
whether the cbd was between 10 percentage points between their management plan and their budget for the years. Second is whether or not on an annual basis they were able to
collect 5 percent of their budget from non-assessment revenues, the third being whether or not between their budget and actuals were within 10 percentage points of each budget item and the fourth being whether or not they identified how many funds were being carried forward into the next fiscal year.
In terms of benchmark 1 on the land
side, fisherman's wharf cbd for the most part complied with this wtd
exception of fiscal year
2010-2011 and in 2009-2010 they were very close to
not being in compliance with that regulation. In terms of the port side there were
no issues with their management plan versus annual budgets. For assessment revenue and other income, the cbd has always met this for
the fiscal years in review and in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 they
well the comparison of budget to actuals, the cbd on the land side had met this requirement in all years.
On the port side, however, in fiscal
years 09-10, 11-12 and 12-13, in their
district identity and streetscape improvements line item they were
slightly out of that 10 percent range.
In terms of carry over you will see
here that fisherman's wharf cbd on
average had between $200,000 and
$300,000 in carry forward. We
attribute this to the delay to getting
the funds to the cbd from the tax collector's office.
In terms of recommendations we recommend the fisherman's wharf cbd
through their financial analysis reports really separate between land
side and port side given the complexity of the management plans and that they actively work toward improving their
performance and owd also committing to reviewing midyear reports on a timely manner and annual reports.
In terms of the fisherman's wharf cbd's programmatic performance, they
have exceled at many of their areas. They have hosted numerous events that really are regional destinations, they have strengthened their partnerships
with community stake holders and their board of directors and committees are extremely strong and they have really led the kha rpblg with the public realm improvements on jefferson street. I'm
going to ask executive director troy campbell come up and talk about all the successes they have experienced in the
past 4 fiscal years. >> hello, good morning to you. I just
want to start off by also letting you know we have one of the largest board of directors for any cbd in the city, we have a 25 member board of directors
and a 7 member executive team. Our mission and vision really is to work on
market research, branded destination marketing, sidewalk operations, district beautification, traffic and urban planning and emergency preparedness.
I'm going to skip this next slide because it's redundant, we've already seen the district map.
We have several active committees, marketing, transportation, finance, sustainability, pier safe which is our
emergency preparedness xlit, street operations and urban planning. We work
with and partner with over 20 other
organizations as well in the city.
City agencies, other nonprofits, associations.
We have several on-going programs that
I wanted to highlight and I'll be going through each figure and talking just briefly about some of the accomplishments for each of the four fiscal years we're talking about today.
One of the things is we do holiday lights every year, we deck raid the crab wheel sign, we have a program
called fish net, recognizing in
a major disaster fisherman's wharf
could be a major evacuation point for the city due
to all the boats that are there. There are about 15 different hotels and boat companies that are part of that and it
is riging us by radio so in the event of emergency we can all contact each
other and evaluate situations, run an infinite command station if if
necessary with over 6,000 hotel rooms at fisherman's wharf and 30,000 people walking the street in the event of an emergency we could have a lot of people
there that have no place to go.
Then one of the other things that's been on-going for years is our public realm advocacy and pushing that program forward and keeping the community involved.
Our fiscal year 2009-10 some of the accomplishment there were planning, working with the san francisco planning department, the mayor's ofrs and the port on the environmental impact report for the public realm plan. Some of
these things, while not too reduck dapbt I put the fiscal years because
it's something we do on an annual basis and that is partnering with the city for the 4th of July celebration, we
held our third annual pier safe drill that year, we participated in fleet
week every week and we also designed
and printed 12,000 brochures on fisherman's wharf that are distributed
in hundreds of locations around southern california. We secured grants
that year to expand the flower basket
program and 80,000 on a program to make fisherman's wharf a sdoe row away zone.
We provide additional 10b coverage with sfpd in the evenings when our beat officers go home and we have no
coverage at the wharf. We have also worked on short term parking locations and bus parking to make the district
work better and flow better with all the tour busses we have. We did a street banner plan that year and every year we work with the san francisco yacht club on the holiday lights and
boat parade and that year we also held a celebrity crab cracking
contest.
In 2010-11 we added a hospitality program and this was to supplement a street clean team that we had working picking up litter and trash in the
district. We lit all the trees on
taylor street from jefferson, the
intersection of jefr -- jefferson and taylor. Began implementation of the
grant on zero waste program, improved conrad park by lighting all the trees, the park had no external lights at all and was quite dark and dangerous in the
evening. We did that to help beautify
it but also provide additional safety.
We redesigned and provided more brochures, provided cell phones to our regular beat cops since we in the
district can get ahold of them since we get a lot of calls asking for aid and we held workshops that year focused on sustainable seafood practices for the
fisherman's wharf restaurants.
In 11-12 we helped support the
restaurants in the district by working
to keep mobile food carts from getting permits there. This is very important
because we have many eateries that pay
very high rents and were struggling.
We did the emergency preparedness
drill, we did the second year of the zero waste grant. The community is still working on redesigning conrad
park to make it safer.
Opened a series of free workshops about sustainability, zero waste for local businesses that were free, made
improvements to our ambassador program
by xwipk the clean team to the
ambassadors to work as one,
worked with supervisor scott weiner's office on improving the local food legislation that was essentially passed, printed an essential card list that was printed to
the entire district and gave them
information on how to contact our ambassadors, hospitals, all those things to improve safety.
In the 20-13 we replaced the iconic fisherman's wharf crab sign, it was
slated to be torn down, very iconic,
known the world over, we worked with the merchant's association in the port
to raise funds and rebuild the sign.
It also has led lights in it so it's a
lot more efficient than it had been in
the past. We produced our 6th annual emergency preparedness drill, completed the third year of the grant which has many of the restaurants if not all the
restaurants at the restaurant using
compostable bins and recycling instead
of trash compactors where everything
went into one bin.
We improved joseph conrad park thatee,
made it a lot safer, stepping up patrols in the area. We produced the
first crab fest event which produced over $5,000 for local charities, we
built out a new web site called new jefferson street.Com which tracked the construction of jefferson street and provided a blog that updated the neighborhood on all the construction
and meetings and we partnered dpw that year to hold a ribbon cutting
event for the street opening so just kind of in conclusion we continue our vision, remain on track with our management plan with emphasis being on funding for
phase ii of jefferson street, district cleanliness and safety, beautifying and embellishing the district, adding additional signage that
supports our
district branding, planning to end homelessness, planning to make the district prepared for emergencies and improving transportation. And that's
the end of my presentation. >> supervisors, we're here to answer any questions you May have regarding this matter. Thank you. >> I just want to make a comment and thank both of you and all the work we have done together for fisherman's wharf. We have come a long way in recent years and I know Mr. Campbell
has been in his job for only a short time, but it is good to work with
community benefits district and city staff that has been working very well and a good example of what we need to do.
>> okay, thank you. We're going to open this up to public comment. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak at this time,
please come forward, you will have two
minutes.
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religion, and unity and what we have
enforced upon philosophy. Sciences,
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the realization of a dream of better
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talent, booking talent, talent beauty,
all have an easier way of
schedule work day. Decent retirement, and good health. >> thank you. Are there any other member s of the public who would like to make public comment at this time? Seeing none, public comment is closed.
Are there any further comments from
the committee? Seeing none, is there a motion to -- . >> move this resolution forward with
the full board with recommendation.
>> thank you, supervisor chiu. Okay, there's a motion to move this item
forward to the full board with positive recommendation. Without objection,
this item is moved. Madam Clerk, are there any other items before us? >> there is no further business.
