City and County of San Francisco Wednesday, April 07, 2021
>>chair haney: this is the evil
July 20, 2021 budget and appropriations committee
meeting, I am not haney joined
by supervisors safai, ronen and mar.
I want to thank mendoza from
sfgov tv for broadcasting this meeting and course if you have any announcements. >> due to the covid-19 health emergency the board of
supervisors legislative chamber
and committee are hosting but participating in the meeting remotely.
This precaution is taken pursuant to federal orders.
Committee members will attend the meeting through videoconference and participate to the same extent they are physically present. Public comments will be
available on channel 26, and
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number across the screen . Each speaker will be allowed to minutes to speak.
Comments or opportunities to speak are available by phone
call by calling 1-415-655-0001 .
Meeting id 187 809 1658 . Then press pound, pound. When connected you will hear the meetings discussion but you will be muted. When your item of interest calls up, dial star 3. Test practices are to call from
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official file. Finally items acted upon today are expected to appear on the board of supervisors agenda item unless otherwise stated. This completes my announcement.
>>chair haney: thank you Madam Clerk. We have 2 items today .
If you will please call item 1 . >> item 1 resolution adopting the five-year information and communication technology plan for fiscal years 2021 to 2026.
Public members who wish to
provide comment May call 1-415-655-0001, meeting id 187
809 1658 . Then press pound, pound. If you have not done so press
star 3 to speak . Indicate you have raised your hand and indicate you have been on muted humidity in your comments.
>>chair haney: thank you Madam Clerk. We have brian strong on the city administrator's office here
to present on this item.
>>brian strong: chair haney, i believe the first item is going
to be the itt plan .
Is that correct?>> this is according to the city administrator so I will do
introductory remarks if that's okay. I believe we called for a five year itt plan as item 1 so I will provide some brief comments on that and turn it
over to mattias from our team who can share the overview and brian will, for item number two . Again, chair haney and members
of the committee thank you for hearing these two items. Before you currently is the five-year itt plan, technology plan for the city . Just by way of introduction I think 20/20 has been a pivotal
year for us in terms of the importance of technology but also where technology has fallen flat in terms of assets for our community and for how people have tried to get access to city services public information.This has helped
to inform our plan and 2 big central
drivers to the plan you see before you is the context around equity and accessibility . Our team has worked hard to build the office of racial
equity and in particular how it thinks about us providing services to remove barriers to many of our community members.
We have a few contexts that are critical which is this idea
about meeting people where they are, trying to create easy and accessible service for people as much as possible and helping
to focus on the things that help people when it comes to economic recovery including how we connect folks to jobs and
workforce development and potentially housing and permitting services to be universally accessible. We look forward to continuing
to work with you and others to try to ensure we continue to build upon the start and to improve those services.
For you is and itt plan that tries to organize these investments and technologies for
the city.
The unfortunate thing is the current plan seem a reduction in its budget of roughly $132 million over the next five years
from what was originally a $270 million budget. This is a course something we can revisit our economic situation changes or if there
are additional funding sources
that become available but before you is and itt plan that is considerably less in terms of its funding resources.At the current level plan is able to
fit products currently under development and there are no
new projects anticipated for fiscal year 23 through 24 so with that I want to transition
over to mattias jamie who is our director for the committee on
information technology and as you know, you have questions about specific activities or programs we also have representatives from the
department of technology , from digital services and civic innovation, cyber security and the office of contract administration. I want to say a big thank you to matthias and to his mighty
team of 2 and emma because you think about pulling all this
information together and doing all the work around cyber
security and around privacy, , just a big thank you to them for their work so with that I will turn it over.
>> mathias jamie: thank you and good afternoon.One
clarification, we work very
closely with the security team
but we are doing our best to help where we can and chart the future for technology and I'm happy to talk about the five-year technology plan and
answer any questions you May have.
Let me share full-screen . Before I begin I want to extend a thank you to all the different people that have helped in the development of
the it plan. It's the citywide strategy and
it takes me conservation and many voices. We started this in July so I
want to extend a special thank you to linda and her whole team at the department of technology , digital equity and the mayor's budget office and data theft
. We talked about these issues and it does help inform where we are going to go in the future so I want to send a big thank you to everyone who do about the it plan.As carmen
mentioned, on the five-year
technology plan was by the circumstances of the last year . Covid-19 changed the way we work and interact with the public and economic recession
has an effect on our society so as we were talking about where we were going in the future we had to reflect on where we were and requirements to move to social distancing and remote only workplace really elevated
the importance of technology and did inform the way we are thinking about where our investments are and where we need to go so the beginning of this process, expected the city's first ever citywide
service inventory just to identify all residential safety services across the city and
asked the departments to report what is the current of their services in this extraordinary time to make sure that they were open and available
governed and would be able to
support community and through
that process we were able to identify 967 different services
and overall I'm happy to report
when we did this survey in September, by and large the department did have services available and has converted to making those services digital and remote friendly warehouse.
Also took the opportunity to
start seeing a better sense of what is the level of digital maturity and accessibility of these services and on the screen is showing the grid that
we use to read each of the residential safety services going all the way from paper up to design to be fully accessible and seamless with other department services and
this helped us to see if
there's a gap where we are and
using the standard of services
digitally accessible and
designed specifically so people
with disabilities and other vulnerable populations who have barriers to use digital tools, we found only 100 and 94 of our services meet that standard so we have quite a bit of work to
do to make sure that the city is providing online and universally accessible services so as were talking about the vision for the future for technology we set the decision of government services available in uniformly
universally acceptable times of crisis and beyond and I want to take a moment to clarify what we mean by universally accessible services. This means to live alongside our most honorable community
members and taking a lot of the racial equity work we've been focused on, this idea of procreation adapting practices
of design and making sure they are part of the process to make sure our services are accessible and we need to make sure services are accessible and mobile friendly and exceeding standards. We have an opportunity to do
more with our digital presence and finally, not re-creating paper processes or even our departmental dialogue but creating a unified service between departments that provides a seamless experience
so that's where we like to go but the other big part of the it plan is talking about the finances and resources available to support us to get there and I want to make one clarification for you supervisors on the role of it plan versus a budget. Talking about setting the
allocation level new technology projects, the actual
investment in specific projects will be part of the budget process and will be part of the mayors project in the summer. Technology funding comes from 4
different sources.
It's between two funds, annual allocation and major it project allocation but the vast majority of funding does come from other sources of technology, department operational budgets, the
ongoing licensing maintenance , department of technology as a rate model to support their services and the city receives a bit of non-general fund services. To give you an idea of what has
been impacted in the economic
recession, we do see a debt in city spending on technology. And a large part of that is
from the allocation which was reduced to address the
shortfall. so looking at the five-year
allocation, we are looking at 17.8 million in the next fiscal year and 27.6 million in the year after that.
So as carmen mentioned this funding for the next two years is only sufficient to meet
ongoing projects only and so we are going to have to continue
to have conversations about how we support new project needs, other technology needs that need to be replaced and maintenance and how they're
going to be able to address the vision of the it plan. Just to give you more idea of what kind of investments that apartments are asking for, we
are facing a significant shortfall in the next two fiscal years and just to note for fiscal years 23, 24 and beyond , the it plan we anticipate this cycle to happen again.
So with the final slide I'll
just finish with the it plan
recommendations to the board of supervisors but technology has
become more important than ever so I think it's important that we talked about how we can return the allocation to pre- covid levels by 2526 at the latest . We also should be talking about finding a dedicated funding source to support development
of universal essential services
as we have seen, we have a large legacy technology environment and all our existing resources are dedicated just to supporting existing technologies and replacing those so we need new funding sources to be able to support the development of
universally accessible services . The final recommendation to you all is really leverage a citywide service inventory and the support department in the
digital transformation read
departments of elder services customers and residents , we really want to be here as a resource for them and to support them in this digital transformation.
So the recommendation is that the next budget year having
each department submit a
digital transformation roadmap based on services inventory so we can continue to see that progress towards our universally accessible services . And with that I'm happy to discuss anything on the it plan or as carmen mentioned there
are representatives from the
defense program , programs across the city that can answer specific questions on
technology in the city. Class thank you so much for
this presentation and for your work.
Supervisor ronen .
>> supervisor ronen: a couple of questions.
When you said 194 , facing services meet our standards for
accessibility, not out of what?
Out of 967 is what identified .
that is information that was self-reported by that apartments to say these are the services they provide the public, thanks. And kind of moving, I have a bunch of random questions so bear with me and you might not be the right person to answer all of them so just feel free to hand me off to whoever the right person is.
One question , I had a meeting
with ddi this morning and I know they are working hard to
streamline and hasten their permitting services .
I'm just wondering why dvi and
planning and other permitting departments aren't on the
committee?
>> .
>> mathias jaime: I would defer to carmen but I'm happy to feel that.
>> carmen chu: I can't... Thank you supervisor.
I can't speak too historically
the rationale for this . The court committee has tried to focus on the number of representatives from different
departments including large departments that have a lot of it resources and can bring to bear expertise to the full committee and in addition to
who's on that, there are also subcommittees for budget and finance and others when we bring in other departments as well so I haven't had the instance where I've heard a
department like dvi or planning for example potentially not getting their projects through as a result of not being on point. Rightly I think the committee really does try to review all the different items that come through and try to prioritize the ones that are the most urgent. I believe if you ask dvi and you probably ask tpc or the city planning, they have worked
closely with not only our department of technology on their projects including most
recently dvi and the project where they had a lot of support
through dt on that as well. I hear what you're saying.
I'm not sure what the rationale for the existing membership was but I think it was to try to balance large and small departments and different topics, potentially different areas of focus so that does rotate over times in terms of the
membership and we can always
reevaluate whether there's a need to change. And then I don't know if there's anything we can add .
>> carmen chu: I think the way of the board of supervisors wrote the legislation does try to address those service areas but half of my team, we spent a lot of time reaching out to
different departments and feel that their voices are heard and represented so a lot of departments you have a process as well so that's why we take it as our responsibility to facilitate and elevate their voices as much as possible so I
think it's always an ongoing
conversation. >> is clearly such a priority not only for the mayor but for
the board of supervisors to heat in the process, the permitting for small businesses and for housing development and so because that's such a major
priority of all of us, it's just surprising to me that the two departments that are
responsible for trying to make changes to streamline and
equipping those processes , in
the case of dvi have incredibly
ancient, outdated systems . That certainly is not making their job any easier. These would be two departments
that would be sort of priority
for the committee etc. So I'll
just leave it at that.
I'm sure we can look forward to that going forward but I want
to bring that up.
>> supervisor ronen: from what I heard , we were one of the
departments who had system
needs and have asked for a seat .
We ended up not getting a seat but we did have a lot of
conversation with other folks to make sure that they were fully aware of our needs and the importance of the projects and work well with them even without being on the connate
but I wanted to also mention to
you that carry bishop I believe
from digital services is also available as well and she's been working closely to try to improve that interface for folks on the permit funds as well as affordable housing funds.
>> carmen chu: and of course no
surprise, myself and I'm sure all my colleagues are very
excited that digital access is a focus.
I'm just wondering if there , if there are any plans on the city
to bring free high-speed internet to low income
households.I know that you
have a project in 36 low income housing's complexes which is
amazing and I'm just wondering
what are those projects? What do those projects include
and who is left out? Is this amount portion prioritizing more because of
course if folks don't have
access to high-speed internet ,
then there benefiting from for
your work . It limits it. I love the fact that you consider accessibility equity, being able to access services by phone. Which is I agree very important . But it's just often so much easier if you have, if you are
at home to do so much .
>> mathias jaime: I'm going to
pass to linda because she's working on this. the only thing I'll note is
given the different allocations
of capital we had capital funds
and a lot of this kind of cyber housing and digital equity work , that could be part of that conversation with brian but
I'll pass it along .
>> carmen chu: thank you
supervisor ronen and we have
7000 units connected and that's good news. The focus is always three-pronged and we work
closely with mohcd.
We bring affordability and also devices. The focus has been on that
access piece and because that's what's missing.
But the unserved areas of the
city need service and that's
where we have been installing
and implementing noticeable broadband to provide high-speed
, equitable service . That's not a reduced level of service to our underserved areas which is important and because it is infrastructure, it can be funded with capital dollars.
So that leaves the other two legs of the school which is around devices and training and this is something that
certainly needs funding . We are also watching very carefully the new broadband federal bill and we are
prepared with a series of projects to submit and would
look to the board of supervisors for
support. What we don't know yet is what
types of funding and ask
aspects of the project it will cover so I don't know where the gap is right now.
But we're waiting. But we definitely have a gap right now with regard to
devices and training.
And as much as I appreciate sometimes people's willingness
to donate used laptops and say
we can refurbish them , I don't think that's equitable and honestly, it increases our cost so the management point of view , technology management point of view we would like to be able to have people get
devices and support them and we can only support them at a low price point if they are all standard and if we know what is and then we can have our service team be available to support them. So that's why I'd like to see funding, sustainable funding
level to these support devices
where we have been able to
implement the broadband services. I will say that we are doing broadband service but we are
also doing different kinds of wi-fi for places where we can't get broadband in. Right now we're using funding from last year that was set aside .
Supervisor peskin, we are implementing service to a wi-fi
in charlottetown. If I look at cost per unit is
more expensive but we are able to deliver that service and we are making that happen so we
can talk more about that point if you'd like to know.
>> supervisor ronen: has there been any , clearly it's not yet
a plan but I'm just wondering
on public municipal broadband and you know, whether it's
worth bonding and it seems like
it would pay for itself and not a huge training time and then
some and we can offer much cheaper internet to everyone. I'm just curious about what if
anything has stopped us from
going that route.
>> carmen chu: that's a great question and we've done the economic analysis, we've looked
at public-private partnerships what we know is the cost estimate on that is about 2.3 billion to do the entire state . The fiber product contemplated that service delivery with a partner.
We did look at payback and management of the system and how that would work . The cost per resident would be
about $35. That was back two years ago, I don't know if that's changed.
So I think what's interesting
about this conversation is we are trying to go right now where there's nothing. But I hear from residents that
say they have spotty service, they have service they can't use and they still pay a lot of money for itself I hear them and but right now our focus is
on the unserved areas.
>> supervisor ronen: I'm
wondering if diane can chime in on this as well.If this is
just that our bond capacity is oversubscribed. For so long that we can't find
a way to fit this in weston
mart I'm curious why this isn't
a project of ours .
>> of our forward thinking city it has been a project that we've been funding for several years. So we've been doing that and I
think that to the tune of around $2 million a year .
And I just don't know linda if you recall how far back that goes . At least three or four years if not more.
So we have been supporting that program and that's mostly
already at sf and those projects. I know we've been talking with
linda and with boyd about expanding the program and looking at other sources that
we could use to cover future
...
>> carmen chu: going to stop
you because what I'm looking at is similar to energy and taking
over the infrastructure of pg
and the and making a public power system. what are we doing something like that which would pay.
It all works out. Is the impediments, and this is my ultimate question that getting a $2 billion bond into
our bond schedule is just , is that what's stopping us or is it
something else?>> .
>> mathias jaime: due to the current policies, 2 billion
would be well over our capacity for the next 10 years.
So yes, that is . Balancing this important need with all the other important
needs that we have are really, I think you hit the nail on the head. That's really where the
struggle is . That's why we're looking at economic stimulus as a potential way to do some of
this work but when we're talking about those large
dollar numbers, it's going to require a bigger effort and require federal support and
funding potentially or getting additional types of partnerships which I know we are being considered for, when we are talking about having our own fiber network to be
available .
>> supervisor ronen: so this
would be a geodon and that is ... Could it be a revenue bond? In which case that's not a limitation .
>> brian strong: it could be a revenue bond.
That would rely on , likely it would be a revenue bond coming
out of the pmp or one of the enterprise agencies where they
have ability to collect revenue . So they have utility, user taxes or those types of things. They are ratepayers.
The revenue bonds that we use within the capital fund, we
talk about our participation and that would mean using the
general fund as a source for the revenue bond and the amounts were talking about it
wouldn't be feasible. >> the general fund would be
really large and certainly dramatically impact all our other programs and our operating budget .
>> supervisor ronen: this is a
larger discussion so I don't want to take up too much time but I do want to dig deeper
here because I think there's an
opportunity that we're not
hitting the green light on but
might be much better off in the long run and there might be ways to do it that were just not exploring but I would leave
that discussion for another day. One last question and that's about the office of civic
innovation.
What is that office doing? >> the office of civic innovation is a small but mighty team.
ndp serve the entire city . He is on the line and can go into great detail but I just have to speak for her because I know she will not speak on this
of the incredible impact that
they make on business progress
improvements, in thinking
innovatively and changing mindsets
, and bringing new ideas and partnerships from the
third parties , commercial companies .
She can all this but I just you
would have a chance to just see the projects that have been
done and the tremendous work .
Oh my goodness. And I'll just let the talk about
it, are you on?
>> five, I am here.I am the program
director for the office of civic innovation.
We were funded originally in
the mayor's office for dp and our primary focus is our ship programs so we run to that
bring in external resources to add capacity and help make
services and on city programs more responsive so one of our programs is stirred, startup and residents that we run for a few years, it brings in startup
to create new solutions for
city departments but our primary program is civics
bridge which brings in pro bono consulting teams read so we
work with private sector partners and scope out business process issues so one of them was actually thalia, one of our first projects.
We worked with mohcd so we've done several projects around emergency management and other
areas . We bring in those teams for
four months, accountable products so there's a deliverable.
Often we partner with digital services dt data sf on these initiatives and we've done
strategies, communications for
optimization and over the last five years we brought in a
little over $5 million in pro bono in-kind evaluations with
55 projects with 26 city departments and our goal is to continue adding capacity so
that projects that are on task get to completion. We can do that by bringing in external pro bono consultants
around issues and subject area
expertise to help supplement and capacity ads. New methodologies, resources and a lot of it focuses on
design so creating pathways for our city staff to do more of
the social on the groundwork that they really need to do and help optimize processes for that staff and for the residents
.>> supervisor ronen: interesting, thank you for that .
I really knew involved public-private partnerships but
I did not know exactly what it did so it would be helpful to
hear more of those examples and
examples of success in whatever
committee makes sense. thank you for that, I
appreciate that.
>> carmen chu: I will say I called a hearing on all of that
so we will have the opportunity to hear again from both offices of civic innovation and
essential services and about all of those things, human centered design and the way
it's all coming together. I think you'll be interested because we will likely have it in this committee.
Supervisor safai.
>> supervisor safai: thank you
supervisor ronen for those
great questions.
I wish you had come to chair haney's favorite ring we had at ps
and s. I don't think I've been a part
of a hearing had more
departments involved in
presenting but we held a hearing on closing the digital divide. Really I want to appreciate
some of the things that linda
and her team have already mentioned here today but essentially just the kind of
sum it up, the impediments of
doing a citywide fiber network municipally owned at the time it would take and the cost it would take, what we're doing is we're bringing dt, city administrators team to the administrator to linda , and her
team, mattias and so many different departments.
Cw, mohcd to create a roadmap
on how we're going to close the
digital divide and after we had this meeting there's a whole host of legislation were going
to work on with that department .
So supervisor mar, I'm happy to work with you and anyone that wants to be a part of that area
there are some decisions we need to make rid have a private sector there as well and they talk about expanding 5g and using people's personal devices . So all options are going to be on the table but I just really wanted to appreciate the work
that city administrator chu and
her team have done during the covid recovery plan.
They referenced some of this work already and are building on I think it's 16 years of work that linda and her team and a
whole host of people have been involved in. I just wanted to put that on the record.It was a really informative hearing . There's a lot of different players involved in trying to help us close the digital divide so I'm really happy to
work with supervisor ronen and everyone involved. I think that is something that
we have committed to. Certificates of participation are expensive, revenue bonds are related to, you have to generate revenue obligation
bonds. That encumber our future indebtedness and have to get in line and spread it out so I think we're going to have to have a real eclectic approach
for lack of a better word putting pieces together to do this but certainly starting with those that are the most low income and those that have
the hardest time accessing that. I wanted to get that on the
record and we want to make this
a top priority . I want to talk about expanding some of that in our budget
process so chair haney and others, we will bring this back
to the rest of the team as we get some cost estimates what it
would be but it sounds like everyone's in line we need to make this a priority and I think that is so many of the things we've worked on
collectively in terms of it
being underscored, now more than ever as so many children and families have had to learn in the past year through
technology or lack thereof and there have been many that have not been able to access that and thank goodness for our community hubs and other places that they can go but there's
still a lot of families and children that were left out
even in this year so I think
that's what was even the second impetus at least for myself to get involved and I'm happy to work with all of you on that issue but I just wanted to make
sure that we prioritize this in the budget process in these conversations. >> thank you Mister
Chair.
>> vice chair safai, I did have a question and I know we are hoping to be able to get some additional funds and obviously
what you presented to us at
least in the immediate a few years is not really as
expensive for meeting the broader goals that we have as the city here and it's really kind of maintaining.
With and there are some things that I would think we have pulled around and that
supervisor safai and ronen spoke to but with the potential we May have some additional stimulus dollars that are going to be potentially an infrastructure bill, where we could see some of our funds from that and we May be able to devote additional funds sort of more generally. One of the things that I wonder
if you might his what you view as some of the bigger needs or some of the bigger goals that we have at the city.
I understand wanting to get the funding levels up to a certain
place , but what does it actually mean in practice?
If an influx of additional funds were to come in, what would be the priority? What are the big needs that we have for the big goals that we
have as a city that you'd like to see us meet in the coming years?
>> brian strong: thank you for
that question, that's exactly what we could talk about and we
can also expand on this as well because I think our current
technology environment, we do have a large legacy environment
that is aging and risking ongoing operations in the city if we don't replace it. So our top priority has to be
ongoing support of our it infrastructure.
Department of technology is the one who manages these networks and data centers and a lot of
the high infrastructure for each department, each major service 80 you can see this legacy technology rising up as major expenditures for the city right now I'll call out the public requirement.
We have to replacement on the dispatch programs and that's going to be a $40-$50 million project which we have to deal with unlimited money but we also have the updates for the justice program which dt is managing right now and that was about $30 million and that had
to be reduced significantly. We have been replacing the
crime data warehouse which is part of the police departments basically overhaul their system so they can do case management and provide some of the reporting they need.
That's another project that we have early estimates between 20 and $30 million not to mention all the other agencies that use
case management systems because it's so old but sheriff's department, I kid you not. You go there and there's a black screen with green text. It's so antiquated that we're
trying to get updated.
This is not for every single department. Dt, one of our major projects is fixing phone lines for voice over internet so that departments can have
functioning phones read these are things we don't have
sufficient funding now so should more funding become available, it's first going to
be going to make sure our it infrastructure can be supported and were not risking critical disruption and ongoing
operations. Trying to put forward the plan
is what this universal acceptance is, we nine need to figure out a way to change the
way we are providing services to meet residents where they
are at and we know where residents are at our increasingly digital and we
need to make sure our resources
are focused on those who can't be digital but make the other side of the equation as cost effective as possible and that's a lot of the work that carrie and myself.
I would say there's no shortage of opportunities if funding becomes available it is a
matter of what are we going to prioritize first and what will
have the greatest impact.
>> supervisor walton: and that since there are these large needs that are not yet funded across various departments that are really operational infrastructure technology infrastructure that are obviously needing to be prioritize and still in many cases are not funded and that speaks to our ability to work efficiently and in a cost-effective way.
I think within the department. Then there are also these larger set of goals that we
have around accessibility of all of our services and really
how our residents experience
services and access services and interact with their government .
I think as I mentioned
supervisor ronen, we have a hearing coming up on that second category and how we're thinking about that and supporting it and it's actually
a part of the questions that I asked each of our departments
to present on when they come forward to us in the budget process . It's really how their thinking
about that so this is huge, both of these things, internal operational and sort of the front facing access the services that is a huge consequence to
how our government operates. It's a little early for this
but have you all look at the
proposed infrastructure bill from the federal government or
stimulus or anything of that area and how that interacts
with some of these communities that we could have here to
address some of these needs?
>> carmen chu: yes we have and we are working with the mayor's
office right now on preparing a draft, the project plans that would be once we know the details it could be easily
modified so that we can quickly put our name on the list and I
think what's exciting is about
our proposal is we been doing this work. We have to teams, we have the technology and we know how to do this. We know how to deliver it and we've been very successful and cost effective in the service delivery.
I think our challenge is around the perception of san
francisco. Will you all just take care of that yourself? We also have other problems
we're trying to take care of. Homelessness, mental health,
the issues a big city has so we need to recognize that again, just as I talked about you have to repair the roof as well as move new furniture in. This city has to really look at all the needs and then how do we balance it and we are going to need help. I think that's where we hope to
make a strong case for that.
I wonder just lastly as a big picture sense
, and that vein of san francisco being able to take
care of itself, a lot of folks look at san francisco and go how can you possibly have
technology problems? If there's one need that you should have addressed, it should be that. And I think a lot of people
assume that the way that we solve that problem is sort of
work in a way where we take
advantage of the technology
companies that are here and their support and partnership and it does sound like we have some ways that we do that but
in other ways we think relying on that sort of private infrastructure and such actually can, with its own set
of efficiencies and costs and such
. I wonder just in a big picture way if you might respond to that and how you think about that. Why can't we take better advantage of where we are and
how the best possible systems
of technology using the fact
that the companies and private sector folks doing this at the highest fastest levels are literally our neighbors and our residents.
What are the barriers to doing that effectively , what are the
challenges and what's your
response to the view that san francisco should just be able to work with the folks who are here to get this done and ask
them to help us? >> that's a great question and I can show you right now we have outstanding partners. Industry partners that during
the pandemic, stepped forward and reduced their maintenance
cost on all of our contracts , our big technology contracts to the city.
My microsoft , cisco, oracle, salesforce
, service now . All of them reduce their cost
to us , saving us millions of dollars. The mayor's budget office as our numbers. Millions across the city had partners during this pandemic
so we do leverage due to best
practices and industry , leading technologies but I have to tell you a very funny story.
So you are right, san francisco always leads. Always in technology. We even led, before my time
with mainframe technologies. Our mainframe is 45 years old.
It has been running and serving the city for 45 years. There are two people left in the united states that know how
to maintain that environment
and as we have been migrating information systems off that mainframe we have been just so
impressed with the technology that was put in place. They were writing down to the chip level to do the processing for the city so we are always building leading-edge
technology but a lot of that as
mattias pointed out needs to be replaced and modernized and what is holding us back is the city department and everybody has been using technology for a long time and these have reached their end-of-life.So scheduling things like an upgrade to the 911 system and upgrades to major business
systems, these are big complex projects that take money and
time and as mattias pointed out we have a set budget and we've been trying to push those through. If we want to accelerate, if we want to accelerate we really
must think beyond what we have right now because we still have
a lot of upgrades and legacy technology to repair.
That will propel us forward.
A perfect example is the new
next-generation network that we have installed in the city and
our new data center.
And all my good heavens, it is
already giving us so much advantage.
There would have been no way we
could have telecommuting over 10,000 people in a week without that new technology that was
put in less than a year ago. There would be no way. We would not have the bandwidth or be able to move everybody over to voice ip so there answering the phone from. That's the advantage to give us the resiliency that these systems need to be upgraded and then we'd also like all the new things as well.
>> chair haney:
>> brian strong: supervisor, I
want to add one thing and call out carrie bishop if she's on the line.
That question you're asking is part of the it plan at our focus on equity and the way we
are talking about technology. The city's funds spends a lot
of money bringing in the new technology and we're very
innovative and this is across departments but I think this idea of how our residents engage in the city and how do we make sure that we are meeting the needs and technology
is not the silver bullet to do that.It's really the
business process around the weight we are organized so when we're talking about that we're using for example modern website practices that we have over 200 websites in our department.
They're just creating new websites and that limits the way the public will be engaging with us because they have to go
to each departments website so they're trying to seamlessly
develop a service experience
that is going to be universally
acceptable . That's how you start feeling like those technologies are making an impact because our services are making the impact
and that's what we're trying to
get through and everything linda is talking about, we can't do that without her and that the complex picture of
getting this organization in place so that we can make the most of our investment.>> chair haney: thank you, President Walton.
>> supervisor walton: director, I had a quick question and maybe I missed this but what's the timeline for when we will have the infrastructure for free wi-fi for all in san francisco
?
>> carmen chu: our work is focused on affordable housing at our budget is 1.5 to 2 million per year over the last three years. We are able for about $2 million a year to implement about 2000 units, access to internet service.
That's our budget capital this
year. And there are 30,000 people in
the city that need access.
We have done 7000 so it will
take us some years
.
>> supervisor walton: what is the price tag?
>> carmen chu: 42 million
approximately.
>> chair haney: not seeing any other questions from my
colleagues . Madam Clerk, can we see if there's any public comment please.
>> I see vice chair safai has
his hand raised .
>> supervisor safai: we can wait until public comment. >> yes, Mister Chair
,
department of technology is checking to see if there are any callers in the queue. If there are those who wish to provide public comment rest star 3 to be added to the queue. Parties on hold continue to wait
until the system indicates you have been muted . Are there any speakers in the queue? Item number one?
Thank you.
>> chair haney: public comment is closed.
Back to you supervisor safai.
>> supervisor safai: thank you.
I wanted again to say for the record I really appreciate the
hard work that director gerrull and her team. One thing I wanted to get her to comment on is I know the city has made some strides in trying to get some of the technology more user-friendly in terms of updates or mobile base.
I wanted her to comment on that and see how that work is coming.
I know the 311 app for example,
people use that frequently for their smart phone but there's
other services also are in need and can make it more user-friendly and the city has made strides on this I want to give her the opportunity to comment on that and get her
thoughts .
>> linda gerrull: I really think that's in the realm of carrie bishop's work on digital services. That beautiful redesign of our webpages so they are 100 percent usable . Our mobile devices. Carrie, would you like to
comment?
>> carrie bishop: thank you supervisor. Yes, we've been working on redesigning for a while now.
And in particular it has shown
what sfgov is capable of as far as where residents can go for
information . Most of our work in the last year in that department has been there.
We have mobile first tools so .
[Inaudible] It's designed for
mobile first and also is a central tenet of how we
designed it as well.
There are some 200+ websites in
every different department, multiple websites per department and really in the digital services category which is part of five years or now ,
they really were talking about .
[Inaudible] He taught me about
a unified experience for our residents centered around
different websites.We do the
hard work on the back and to make it easy for the resident on the front and to access
those services . So digital services have been working on that for a couple of years now and has made good progress. It's still hard to work with departments on how this is
different because it's a different way of thinking about how we use these abilities. It goes much deeper than a website.
It goes to the whole of how we
engage digital services we are making good progress and we're in the midst of moving dba to the new website which is going
to be a very big achievement. They have 67 of their 200 websites on dph right now. I hope they don't mind me mentioning that. It's not with any judgment. It's all these rings have moved at the time .
In terms of app's, the 311
continues to be a good way to
report things on the street
. We have a good collaborative relationship .
I think in general we definitely want to discourage
the proliferation of app's .
We have to be careful about our
residents and a lot of things can't be done by the web and don't need a whole separate
app. We rely on people who have phones for that kind of
capability.
[Inaudible] We're trying to
keep it as similar as possible
for the residents.
>> supervisor safai: thank you.
>> chair haney: while we are revisiting many of these issues , I appreciate this presentation
. We definitely want to support
the committee and as the budget process moves forward in the coming weeks and months we will
find ways to address some of the larger goals that we have and of course beyond the next few months into the coming years.
Any final comments from the folks here or can we move on to
the next item? All right, not seeing any.
I don't believe that there are ,
there's some sort of mixed up stuff in my script. I think what we want to do is ... Are there amendments to this
item?
Number okay.
I think what we want to do is recommend this to the full board with a piloted recommendation
. I will make that motion, is there a second?
>> supervisor safai: second.
>> chair haney: Madam Clerk will call the role.
[Roll call vote]
>> there are 5 aye's .
>> chair haney: thank you, this will go to the full board with
a positive recommendation.
Call item 2.
>> item 2, resolution adopting
the city's 10 year plan for year 2022 through 2031. Members of the public who wish to provide public comment should call 1-415-655-0001 mary. Meeting id 187 809 1658.
Then press pound, pound and if you have not done so press star
3 to speak . A system prompt will indicate you have raised your hand.
>> chair haney: thank you and for this item, this is the one that brian strong is here to present on but I'll turn it over to the city administrator's office. I don't know if city administrator chu wants to provide comments, otherwise administrator's strong.
>> carmen chu: we are pleased to provide in front of you a 10 year capital plan for fiscal
year 22 through 31. It is a $38 billion plan that covers critical investments to
secure san francisco's infrastructure.
As you'll see recommendations provide a number of different elements that we are covering but one of the big pieces we
want to emphasize especially at
this time is how important our capital projects are in terms of economic stimulus.We know this plan over the next 10 years represents 170,000 jobs
that will be supported through
the direct funding into our construction sectors and also
the indirect costs of those
construction jobs also ,
utilizing other services etc. . In this 11th capital plan
update, there are two important improvements or changes to the capital plan.
The first is in response to the
mayor and boards request to appropriate affordable housing into the capital plan and you'll see that reflected in the plan before you. The second is also the idea that we are using this to ensure that we also are uncovering and thinking about equity and how it is our capital investments think about covering and providing benefits to communities that have been left out in the past. These are two big changes in this particular plan that we
think you will see. I will pass this over to brian
strong is the director of the
office of resilience and capital planning who can help
to answer any questions that May come forward but I wanted to take the opportunity to thank
brian, kate and of course the incredibly hard-working staff at our capital planning division. If you so much. >> chair haney: thank you city
administrator chu.>> thank you very much state administrator and chair and the rest of the board of
supervisors for inviting us to speak today and talk about the city's 10 year capital plan. We are excited to be presenting this to you and clearly there's a lot of discussion about the ipt plan.
Where sort of sisters and how
we develop our programs and sort of came to it into existence and we worked closely together . Our capital plan was a 10 year cycle as opposed to a five-year cycle. And again, we do pull in a
number of different sources as we had the ability to do that .
I wanted to recognize the city administrator pointed out, kate
on my staff.
They've really stepped up and currently we do not have a capital planning director, we're in the process of bringing someone on board.
No it's great work to be able to get this forward and of course that applies to all the
different departments have stepped up and really were helpful and especially folks over at mohcd.
Jonah lee and director shaw for
putting this together and I
should say there are a lot of staff and members from your
offices who were also helpful
and for the first time having affordable housing in our capital plan, one of the first times any he has done something similar where they're looking at their overall affordable
housing needs and categorizing it and developing plans and moving forward. Next slide. This shows the overall picture of the capital plan.
It's a 30 day billion dollars , it's $1 billion less than the
last capital plan we passed and most of that is because of some
reductions in spending and the transportation category , especially sfo where they had a lot of large capital
infrastructure improvements they needed to stop and cut back on. Some of those, some of that reduction was made up by the addition of the affordable housing so you can see we have to.6 million dollars here that
they were expecting to spend through the capital program. There are other advantages affordable housing but this is the capital program over the next few years. With that said we can go to the next slide this one we talk
about emphasis that applies to the capital plan and really,
we're relying on these five
different categories to fund our program. Each of them we have constraints . One of the unique things about
san francisco's 10 year capital plan is we say what we are going to fund but also what we are not going to fund.
We work within those financial constraints and that means if we have these difficult, we have to make these difficult choices while we are in the planning phase as opposed to other places where maybe only when they get to the budgeting phase. For our general fund departments you can see E.G.
All bonds and the general funds provide the vast majority of support for those types of
programs which would be our public health department, police, fire, emergency management and a lot of those city services, human services agencies that we provide. And we add in all the departments and the enterprise department
, then you'll get a fair amount of federal dollars come into play especially transportation and utilities but they also do a lot of
revenue bonds as well and that catching that graybar under
other debt where they are using their revenue bonds .
Their ability to raise revenue ,
to issue bonds be able to get
infrastructure work completed . If we go to the next slide we
talk about the principles of
how we make decisions about where we are going to spend
time. So all of our projects are
prioritized under these five different categories. And this year , we especially wanted to call out racial equity . It isn't to say we were
considering racial equity , it's always been part of what we
would call resilience reedit
you can't be a resilient any without a city that's racially fair and equitable.
It's one of those things we
need to make sure we improve and we are working on
. I want to talk about how we
move forward after covid and
that we are going back better we can protect the life and safety and resilience of the city.
We recognize it that preservation is important as well and we need to take care
of and there are also programmatic needs .
A lot of the times we talk
about doing infrastructure and enhancements suggest that it's
something extra or new often enhancements are seismic improvements or new programs
such as the cyber programs that
have to move forward. There's a different categories
in how we do this , how we think about our capital plan is how we are addressing some of these key buckets that are important . Racial and social equity,
promoting and ensuring the services we deliver our
equitable and that begins with
not just doing studies and collecting data but also making sure the outcomes are equitable
and as we have those service standards that we can make these comparisons. Some of the highlights of this on equity project are listed below . Our community health centers we mentioned digital
productivity.
So with affordable housing
,
around affordability is part of the geodon that we've done in
the past so since 2019 affordable housing bonds,
geo-bonds as planned certainly go towards that.
Kind resilience, again a lot of
our communities are due to climate or in the same areas
that are at risk for other
types of disasters every project that all of our capital
projects are over $5 million
and see level rises own areas needs to complete this checklist. We've done a lot of work at
ocean beach and we're
continuing to follow up on that in this capital plan and work on clean air in cooler facilities, doing an action
plan working with the department of emergency management and human services to ensure we have places for people to go and one of the central tenets as always been earthquake safety.We remain living in a place where there's over 72 percent chance we are going to have a major
earthquake and now I think it's 25 years so we need to be prepared for that.
We need to leverage the lessons we learned from covid to ensure we are continuing to be ready.
We need to address our unsafe buildings and we have a number of bonds that especially our earthquake safety and emergency response bond, our public
health bond, our are working to make sure that our buildings are safe and that our first
responders and other areas are able to have a place to
withstand the earthquake and the able to provide services
and finally infrastructure is always important. We are one of the oldest cities, where the second densest city in the city. We have areas where there prone to liquefaction where the soil moves.
So we're always needing to upgrade our infrastructure on a
regular basis. If we go to the next slide. When we think about our
building our future and what , where we want to see the city go, one thing that's important
to mention is in the last two
years alone we've been very aggressive with our capital program. $1.47 billion since 2019 we passed in g0 bonds read that
includes 1.6 million for affordable housing, etc. 29 million for emergency response almost 490 million past November for health and recovery .
These are vital programs across
the city is also going to help
us with recovering from covid as we are actively spending money and developing plans for a number of infrastructure programs that have already been funded.
We're doing additional work
around promoting local economic
stimulus, recognizing the big impacts that covid has so this
plan starts sets aside under $25 million in civic participation for economic stimulus recovery and those are going to be emphasized , equity will be a big emphasis of those
funds . It's one of the key criteria for how those decisions will be made. Then we have near-term
po bonds
as I mentioned above.
The one that happened recently, we also have three bonds coming up in the next 2 and a half or three years around transportation, public health and again, another bond on affordable housing. Finally I want to mention we have been seeking quite a bit with the department and looking
at ourselves introspectively and then also looking at what other jurisdictions are doing and working with the office of racial equity quite closely to develop levels of service and understand how our capital
projects are impacting equity and how we can make sure again as I mentioned before to build back better and we're not creating projects that are fixing things but they're also tackling multiple issues and multiple problems we look
forward , that are looking forward and a lot of this means collecting better data, understanding how people are impacted by the data and thinking about levels of service .
The next slide, moving to the individual programs that we
have. So one of the things most people love to pay attention to in our capital plan or maybe it's the most sought after information. What are the old bonds we are moving forward with?
This came up I think supervisor ronen's question, where do we find dollars for some of these big things we want to do that are critical to the city. This capital plan has $1.2
billion in jewels giorgio bonds the next 10 years and that's
actually quite a bit lower than what we had in the previous capital plan and a lot of that is due to the success. Where a victim of our own
success . Bypassing 7.2 billion it means the next 10 years have been reduced so the last capital plan we had 2.7 billion ngo bonds and we're down to 1.2 billion and a lot of that is
because been so successful in passing bonds
. The next bond that we have coming up are the transportation bond and June 2022.
That's $400 million , $50 million more than what we had
in the last capital plan in our
transportation network has been severely impacted by covid but we also have a lot of agency
infrastructure that needs to be
addressed so those are covered there. We have public health bonds coming up in 2023 to address a number of clinics that are seismically unsafe and we continue to do improvements at our san francisco general
hospital campus but also to expand some of the programs we know of that are critical during covid and it will be critical going forward . Especially around behavioral
health . Then we have the other of the housing bond I mentioned before to continue that program.
[Please stand by]
>>
I'll get to the pay as you go program.
The pay as you go budget went from 150 million down to $46
million a result of covid. So we're looking at other ways to supplement the funds and be able to keep making these critical repairs and
improvements. It's certainly not in anticipation of what happened
with covid and the really severe impact from covid.
But we do have $125 million
right across fiscal year 22 and
23 for recovery stimulus to
ensure this is going to go toward projects that are going
to be able to get in
construction in 18 months or so.
And these are for projects addressing equity and doing enhancements of what we're
talking about is really critical enhancements needed.
Finally, I'll talk later about frequent servicing to ensure
that we're meeting our targets and our streets are not deteriorating.
And we know once the streets deteriorate to a certain level,
it costs much more money to maintain and upgrade. The next slide shows the capacity that we have for the general fund debt program.
Again, this is a constraint we established through the capital plan.
We will spend no more than 3.25%
of our revenue on net service.
So we've managed to stay below that line. That line is a red line.
You ill see the dashed line there. That is an agreement we had
through the last capital plan
where we are -- where some of
the hall of justice facilities
relocation of the share of the district attorney and some of the other offices getting around
the hall of justice were paying debt service on that until we were able to move them back into a new hall. Which is also part of the
capital plan.
Part of the C.O.P. Program.
Once we do sell that, once we're
able to move the departments back and we're able to get rid of the debt service, we'll be
able to -- I mean, get rid of
the rent payments we'll be able to issue more cops.
I want to talk about the pay as you "go!" program.
This is about $1.2 billion. This is almost half as much as
we had for the pay as you go
program through cash in our last
capital project -- in our last capital plan. This is where we've seen the
biggest impact as a result of the covid budget.
What we've done is created a
number of policies to make sure
we're funding the most critical items. So ada facilities.
Am of the routine -- some of the
routine maintenance and our ada
right-of-way are all funded at
100% of what the needs are for
-- yeah.
Then for street resurfacing,
we're using this as a way to supplement the general fund for two years before we see the budget come back to something
like the pre-covid level. The next slide this shows a little more detail on how we're
addressing the pay as you go program.
The red line at the top shows what was in the previous capital
plan around the pay as you go program.
The blue line is what it is in the current capital plan.
I mentioned it was about 45% less.
By us adding some of the supplemental revenue sources, we were able to bring that up to about 37% less.
Which we think is really going
to make a big difference, you
know, to the overall program.
So the bottom -- the hash line
there in the middle connecting the two lines shows some of the stimulus programs that we have, the critical repairs money.
We also received some money from the last bond to help cover our
street program, so we had in the
last yield bond we had funds set
aside for streets and for right-of-way. About $30 million. $30 million for streets.
And $10 million for right-of-way.
Going forward, we're looking at
using COPs to provide additional funds.
We have three COPs in fiscal year 23 and fiscal year 24.
That's why you see the blue line bump up.
Then we do have commitments in the capital plan at the level
we're able to achieve.
We'll grow it by 10%.
The next three years we'll grow by 10%.
Then we'll grow from that by 10%
going forward to catch up as
best as we can to where we were in pre-covid levels.
The next slide, I wanted to
mention, chair haney, you were
asking about an amendment. We're proud of the affordable
housing chapter and we really
appreciate the questions and the comments and the interest in being able to make improvement
to it and many of these came
from your offices, supervisor
haney's office, supervisor
walton and supervisor ronen especially in identifying where we can make the improvements and
then communicating it to us.
I'm sorry, I should also mention the mayor's office of housing and community development.
This is an amendment that we're requesting. It's really about providing greater clarity.
We're not changing any of the
numbers, so it's not a
substantive change that needs to come back before the committee at a late date. It's making it clear why affordable housing is important. Making clarity around the
affordable housing need.
And the local numbers, the regional housing needs assessment number that abag put together. They come from the state.
And then what are some of the financing and non -- what are
some of the financing of the
noncapital strategies that the
city has added, that the city is
able to use to address some of these important things?
That includes things like evictions. Some of those types of programs.
And I should mention, I believe
that amy chan sent a copy of these changes to each of your
staff and you this morning. So, our intent is if this
amendment is okay that we would
submit those changes as part of the record and we would make
them directly in the document and they would be available to you before the next hearing on this before it goes to the full
board.
With that, we can go to the last slide. This is to see if you have questions and thank you for your
time and attention.
>> thank you, Mr. Strong.
Appreciate your presentation and
your work. Colleagues, question, comments. I know we have the amendments
which I'm very happy to see. Any questions or comments from
colleagues? Supervisor mar?
>> Supervisor Mar: thank you, chair haney.
Thank you director strong and
city administrator chiu.
I didn't just have a few questions. Very much appreciate the number of personal priorities included
and reflected in the capital plan.
I also appreciate the historic moment we're in.
Infrastructure week is finally here with the biden administration proposing multi-trillion dollar investments in infrastructure that are long overdue and critical as well.
Not only for our economic
recovery and restoration of crumbling roads and bridges and
long underfunded on transit
services and other forms of infrastructure, but building toward a sustainable future.
and response funding are all investments in climate resilience, but there are other initiatives that need critical
funding including building,
decarbonization, local build-out
for renewable power regeneration, grid resilience and urban grading.
I had a question, director
strong, has the capital planning committee considered programming
a dedicated green infrastructure
or climate resilience bond to ensure that we're adequately funding these priorities?
I would say I did appreciate seeing that climate resilience
is sort of a guiding principle across all the infrastructure categories and projects.
But I was just -- I guess raising the question about
infrastructure and climate
resilience as an actual -- yeah,
priority for a bond, standalone or part of one of the other bonds.
>> yeah, it's a good question.
And you're right, it is something that we're incorporating into a lot of the
existing bonds, so I mentioned if you're going to build something along the waterfront,
you have to meet the sea level rise guidelines. We're also building in
performance centers, not just
earthquakes, but talking about building in cooling that address
climate change but also making sure that our buildings are you
know non-carbon, right?
Not carbon-producing. We've had a longstanding policy
of ensuring that all of the buildings are lead goals, but
we're going further and saying,
hey, we can't use any carbon, they have to be all electric and
we've been working with the department of environment and of course all the enterprise departments and the chapter 6
departments to ensure that goes forward.
So some of those amounts you won't see because they're built into the capital budget.
As far as the geo bond program
goes, we've been talking about
some of the climate resilience aspects. I don't know if we made a
decision if that is a stand
alone geo bond. I'm thrilled about the potential
for seeing significant dollars
coming from washington D.C. And
seeing them from this different category. We have a climate resilience coordination committee that we put together where we're working
with six or seven core departments. I think they're at about five or
six other dentist that come to the -- departments that come to the meeting.
one of objectives is to develop financing strategy for climate resilience. So I think what you're talking about right there is one of the considerations. In fact, I know we already talk about it, but one of the considerations that will be thinking about.
Can it be a geo bond program?
If it is how does it fit into our program or something else? There has been a lot of
discussion at the regional level about climate resilience and also the state level.
And we've been active in those.
The one bond, we have a waterfront safety bond which in some ways is a waterfront resilience bond.
That is scheduled in the geo bond program.
Part of that is going to be
working with the port on their
flood study and the army corpse
of engineers, but that May address other needs around the creek.
I know with supervisor ronen we talk about the farmers market
and some of those areas. Cayuga certainly in district 11.
A lot of areas in the city where
this issue of climate change is
going to start to have direct impact. Already having direct impact on residents, but going to have larger impact as we go forward.
I appreciate that we need to address those impacts.
But we also need to address the demand-side and try to make it
feasible so that when people are
retrofitting whether it's
financing solutions to
antiretroviral -- retrofit their homes.
we need to bring these to the
people so we're not causing displacement other other things
through the programs which is really important.
>> Supervisor Mar: thank you for all of that.
Ius wanted to add -- just wanted to add that the budget and legislative analyst office is
about to release a report that I requested on building
decarbonization of our existing
housing and commercial buildings. And the projection of how much
that is really going to cost.
So it's a pretty large amount of
resources in order to really
build decarbonization in our existing stock.
It's going to require subsidy to have that happen.
As the climate crisis demands. Thank you, director strong.
I support you continuing the
discussions with you and others in financing for climate resilience and adaptation in our
city. >> thank you, supervisor mar. Colleagues, any other questions
or comments?
I did want to ask two questions.
One is I know that we're
watching the infrastructure bill at the federal level closely.
In a broader sense, how does something like that impact our
decisions? I mean, would it render projects
that are included in some of the
proposed bonds, that we would
then use those funds for and
then we would have some of those
fund freed up for additional
projects, or put elsewhere?
How do we think about, you know, a major infrastructure package when obviously most of these
bonds are infrastructure?
>> yeah. I mean, having lived through and
been in the capital planning
director when we had the last stimulus packages coming out of
washington D.C. In 2008 and 2009, the most important thing is that we're shovel-ready.
They're going to want to get that money to cities and get the money out the door as soon as possible. So just the fact that we have a
capital plan and that we've
identified and prioritized a lot
of our projects puts us a step
ahead in some ways. It's definitely where we're going to need to focus our efforts. There are a lot of different programs they're putting forward that we've seen. And, yeah, we're going to need to make adjustment.
I think that part of the stimulus package we're looking
So we're going to need to be flexible in some ways to take advantage of those funds.
I also think we're going to need
to -- we're going to need to be
strategic about where we get the biggest bang for buck.
My sense is that as the program
rolls out, we're going to be
spending a lot of time with the
capital planning committee and coordinating with coit and the
offices around, what are the projects that make the most
sense that we want to get to the
table as fast as possible.
like I said, we May need to be flexible in some of the situations to take advantage of
the funds they have.
>> got it.
Then, you know, I understand
that our limitations are on the overall debt service and that
drives a lot of the decision-making. You know, for something like
transit when we look at that being the next bond that we have coming up next year.
And the number says $400 million, maybe if you could just
sort of describe a little bit the process by which we get to
number like that and the sense that you know, you could look at
that and go, well, why is it $500 million and this other one
there is $100 million left?
Obviously, there is a need for $500 million.
Just with that example, for example, with that specific
example, how do we get to that number when we probably could
look around and say, well, you
know, the actual need is a billion? How do we come to that number? >> yeah. I think the actual need is
somewhere like $11.5 billion for transportation.
But anyway, yeah.
So, one of the things -- one of
the other tenets in the capital plan is we have these bond programs. We're not fooling ourselves saying we're going to address all of our transportation need
or all of our affordable housing
needs or all of our -- it can be anything -- street repaving needs, all of the public health
needs in one bond, or in one fell swoop.
In the past that was sort of the program. It would be whatever we can get on the ballot and as much as we
could get on, we would do.
And then we hope we can meet
voter expectations.
So we weren't always able to do that.
Then we had to shut the program down until we got more money.
It could be two years, five years, six years. In transportation for instance, there was a large task force.
We did the last bond in 2014.
And we made a commitment then
that we would be coming back and I think it was for the
transportation bond, 8-10 years with another bond, to keep the work going.
They've been spending through the funds they have there.
They have identified additional needs and again critical needs we need to fund.
That's sort of how they got their place in the capital plan. Typically, as we get closer to the issuance of the bonds, we
will be looking at what is our capacity and what can we do? And do we need to make the
changes around the edges?
So, you know, I mentioned in the last capital plan,
transportation was at $350 million. We thought that was a reasonable
amount to address the most important needs.
Covid came along and we're like,
wow, now all of a sudden, they've been walloped because
the revenue is so severely impacted. That was part of the decision-making that went into saying, okay, we're going to
need to add $50 million to make
sure they can -- that they have
enough funds to address these --
you know, their highest priority
needs which go around being able
to service buses and facilities
that aren't going to be fully operational and those type of things. That's the decision-making that we have.
That's sort of how we treated the earthquake response fund program.
That's how we're looking at the affordable housing bond as well. For some of the programs, it's
every five to six years.
Others eight to ten years or so
that they can rely on and they
can look to and plan toward.
>> Supervisor Haney: got it.
Okay.
So it's a -- I kind of figured
you're balancing a lot of things
in terms of how to get there.
Madame Clerk, is there any public comment? >> members of the public who wish to provide public comment
on item, please press star 3 to
be added to the queue.
Those on hold, continue to wait until the system indicates you've been unmuted. Are there any callers in the
queue for item number 2? >> we have one caller in the queue, Madame Clerk.
>> Clerk: please unmute the
caller.
>> hi, good afternoon. Brian and supervisors.
This is mary kate I'm the policy
director at family services and co-chair of the homeless
emergency service providers association, hespa.
Thanks for the presentation and
it's great to hear racial equity as a strong priority.
I'd love to engage in more
conversations around the planned investments and permanent
supportive housing and shelter.
I think that with the pandemic, it's essential that we consider
shelter enhancements to create
safe and dignified housing. There are many shelter providers
who are engaging in conversations how to re-imagine shelter.
I would love to put that before the board and before the capital planning committee and we would love to be talking with you about how we can leverage this
and other investments to move that conversation forward. Thanks very much.
>> thank you for your comments.
Are there any other callers in the queue? >> there are no more callers in
the queue.
>> Clerk: thank you.
>> Supervisor Haney: great. Thank you.
Public comment is now closed. Is there a B.L.A. Report on the
item?
>> chair haney, members of the committee. We do not have a report on this
item.
>> Supervisor Haney: thank you
for that. Appreciate it.
So, I know we have amendments and I want to -- amendments.
We've been working for a long
time now, my office and your
office as well to make sure that affordable housing was included formally in the capital plan. This is a really important thing and I'm glad we're able to work together to make that happen.
so I want to make a motion to accept the amendments to the
capital plan. Is there a second?
>> second. Ronen.
>> Supervisor Haney: seconded by supervisor ronen.
>> on that motion, yes.
>> Supervisor Safai: aye.
>> Supervisor Mar: aye.
>> Supervisor Ronen: aye.
>> Supervisor Walton: aye.
>> Supervisor Haney: aye.
There are five ayes.
>> Supervisor Haney: great. Those amendments are accepted
and now I want to make a motion
to accept -- to move this
forward to the full board with a positive recommendation as amended. Is there a second?
>> second ronen.
>> Supervisor Haney: seconded by
President Walton. Roll call.
>> Supervisor Safai: aye.
>> Supervisor Mar: aye.
>> Supervisor Ronen: aye.
>> Supervisor Walton: aye.
>> Supervisor Haney: aye. There are five ayes. This will go to the full board with a positive recommendation as amended.
Thank you so much to the entire city administrator's office.
And team who are here.
And city administrator, too.
And Mr. Strong for your great work.
And I appreciate you also
addressing the equity focus here that we've taken as a committee.
I know that the mayor has taken as well and integrating that into the capital plan as well.
As I said, I really appreciate the inclusion of affordable housing which is key obviously to the overall future and well-being of our city. Madame Clerk, are there any other items before us today? >> there are no other items.
>> great, thank you so much, committee members. Great to see you all.
