Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Rules Committee 20240713

Chair ronen the meeting will come to order. Welcome to the march 9, 2020 meeting of the rules committee. I am chair hillary ronen. Seated to my right is rules Committee Member catherine stefani, and seated to my left is Committee Member gordon mar. Id like to thank sfgovtv for airing this meeting. Mr. Clerk, do you have any announcements . Clerk yes. [agenda item read]. Chair ronen thank you. Can you please read item number 1. Clerk item 1 is a motion appointing Megan Wallace to the Treasury Committee for a term ending june 30, 2021. Chair ronen thank you. Megan, if you want to come up . Thank you. My name is Megan Wallace. I just want to share a little bit about my qualifications. First, ive been a Public Servant in the areas of budget, finance, and Public Service for approximately 15 years. In 2008, my family moved to San Francisco, and i began my service with the city and county of San Francisco in the Mayors Office of housing and community development, first under mayor gavin newsom and then under temporary mayor edwin lee before moving to the Port Committee and working with that budget. Part of my work was overseeing the Bond Committee and most recently delving into ifde and issuances. Prior to transitioning sorry. As c. F. E. Of sfusd, i now oversee the School Facilities bond program, and we are preparing to go out for a bond sale this coming spring. Additionally, i just want to share that i am a resident of San Francisco. Ive lived in the city just over ten years, first in the neighborhood of Bernal Heights and then in the neighborhood of m mira loma park. All told, im a dedicated member of our local community, and ive been a Public Servant for over 13 years. And with my experience of budget and finance, i feel im a good qualified fit for this role. So thank you. Happy to answer any questions. Chair ronen thank you. Is there any questions . Thank you so much. Were so glad youre willing to serve in that capacity, as well. Thank you for that. Now lets bring this item up for Public Comment. Is there any member of the public that wishes to speak, please come forward. No . Seeing none, eric meinke isnt here . Page shaw, eric meinke is working at this time. If you have any questions for the treasurer and tax collector, im happy to answer them. Chair ronen i just had notes that he was coming. Any other Public Comments . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Would you like to do the honors . Supervisor stefani yes. Im very pleased to support Megan Wallace for this position. Weve worked together in many different capacities, and im glad to see you nominated to this board. Id like to move to approve the appointment of Megan Wallace to the Treasury Committee and move this forward with a positive recommendation. Chair ronen and we can take this item without objection. [gavel]. Chair ronen mr. Clerk, can you please item 2. Item 2 is appointing one person, term ending june 30, 2022, to the aging and adult advisory counsel. Chair ronen and is janet petty here . Thank you. Im honored to be here to be considered to be on the aging and adult advisory committee. I earned my doctorate degree in organizational learning at the university of San Francisco where ive been a professor for 20 years. Human services have been the cornerstone of much of my work. Ive worked with organizations like glide, city college of San Francisco, united way the bay area, and the red cross, where ive been tasked with providing services to the adult and aging population. [inaudible] and many of them, as you know, are seniors. I interacted with many, and i manage a team of 12 who raised the money to support the programs, and it was at that point that i became seriously committed to working with seniors in San Francisco. My i was the foreperson of the San Francisco civil grand jury in 2015, and it was during that time that year that i learned about advocate programs for independent aging populations in the city, and i now look forward to reengaging in these efforts to ensure Quality Services and attention to our growing aging population. We all know that we currently face a Public Health crisis challenge due to the spread of covid19. Its been noted that the elderly are at particular risk, heightened by the growing number of cases in california, attributed to community spread, and if a member of the commission on aging advisory council, i will support the work of the commission to provide services to the aging population of San Francisco through this crisis and beyond. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve. Chair ronen thank you for your willingness to serve. Any questions . No . No. Thank you so much. Thank you. Chair ronen any member of the public wish to speak on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. [gavel]. Supervisor mar yeah, id be happy to. I recommend that we make a motion to accept janet petty nominated to the aging and advisory council. Chair ronen thank you. We can take that without objection. Thank you so much. [gavel]. Chair ronen mr. Clerk, can you please read item three. [agenda item read]. Chair ronen thank you. Hi. I am ian fregosi, legislative aide to supervisor fewer, which she apologizes she cannot be here today. The purpose of the Reentry Council is to coordinate local efforts to support adults exiting San Francisco county jail, San Francisco juvenile Justice System out of home placements, the California Department of corrections and rehabilitation facilities, and the United States federal bureau of prison facilities. So currently excuse me. So there are Seven Members of the Reentry Council who are formerly incarcerated persons, but none of them are allowed to serve as an officer of the council who can chair the meetings. Currently, all of the officers who are responsible for chairing the reentry meetings are criminal Justice Department heads and members of the Mayors Office. So this would allow one of the formerly incarcerated members to chair the meeting. Jose bernal, a formerly incarcerated member, and the other six members, proposed that one of the members be allowed to chair the meetings, and it was supported by the other members. The council decided since they were seeking an amendment to the officer clause, that they should also focus on cleaning up the other language in the ordinance. This is in line with supervisor fewers resolution to adopt personfirst language, which was adopted unanimously by the board of supervisors this year. So if its okay with you, chair ronen, im going to turn it over to joffrey, who can speak a little more about this ordinance and can answer your questions. So thank you for your time, and we hope to have your support. Chair ronen thank you so much. Hello, supervisors. I also wanted to give you one more clause that was added is, like, a conflict of interest clause. So one of the beautiful things is that our seven formerly incarcerated individuals got a job with a Law Enforcement agency, and so it appears to be, like, two votes because she now works for a Law Enforcement agency, and one of those clauses is if you are hired by any of the City Departments that sit on the board, within 90 days, were the according to the update, were asking you to resign. But that 90 days gives the person a chance to resign. We dont want to discourage people from taking city employment while theyre on the council. Ian did not speak to that, but i wanted to know that. Because she works for adult probation, and it look like adult probation may have two votes. Shes a very hard advocate. She doesnt care who she works for, but we dont want a conflict of interest. While we opening it up, we might as well clean it up. So that is the reason for that. So if you have any other questions . Supervisor stefani i just have one quick one. In terms of the conflict of interest, can you just expand on that a little bit more . Like, what would be the conflict of interest if someone was taking their experience being formerly incarcerated and now working for the city in any capacity . I understand that its adult probation, but i just dont understand where the conflict is . Like, where is the division that would arise . So you can work for the city, just not one of the departments that sits on the council, so if one is a member who came if she got a job at the library, it wouldnt be a conflict. But when they vote, our vote, especially when in april, when we look at criminal Justice Reform bills, it could look like adult probation, they could vote in line with Law Enforcement. Members were questioning that. Supervisor stefani okay. So like any board, the port, the p. U. C. Is not on our board. Its 13 boards, like criminal justice, department of health, all that stuff. People want it to be nonbiased. Supervisor stefani okay. Thank you. Chair ronen thank you. Is there any other member of the public who wishes to speak on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. I think this makes a lot of sense and would love to be added as a cosponsor, and with that, i will make a motion to send this item forward with a positive recommendation, and without objection, that motion passes unanimously. [gavel]. Chair ronen thank you. Mr. Clerk, can you please read item 4. Clerk item 4 is an ordinance amending the police code to make an existing exemption to the paid parental leave ordinance to employers with fully paid family leave policies consistent with recent changes to state law. Chair ronen thank you so much. Supervisor stefani, do you want to make any opening remarks . Supervisor stefani yes, thank you. Colleagues, before you is a small technical change to our citys paid family leave program. In 2016, San Francisco became the first city in the country to ensure that employees receive 100 of their salary when they took paid parental leave. So San Franciscos Program Works like this. Under california law, in 2016, workers could take up to six weeks of partial paid parental leave. In San Francisco, employers are then required to pay the difference of these employees salaries so they are making 100 of their salary up to a certain limit. And last year, i think we all know that Governor Newsom extended the partial paid leave by two weeks to extend to eight weeks of partial paid program. Our citys current policy has an exemption for employers that provide more generous leave than required by city law. If an employer zoo giving fully paid leave to an employee for a number of weeks equal to or more than what is required by San Franciscos current law, they are exempted from the law because they are doing more than we require. When the time was extended from six weeks to eight weeks, a loophole was offered. The change in front of you would strike the word six weeks and replace with as required by the city and the state of california. This item was heard by the Small Business commission on january 27. The Commission Voted unanimously to recommend that the board of supervisors approve the legislation, and as a mother and, i know, supervisor ronen feels this way, too, this is a very important issue. I had the benefit of strong paid leave laws when i had my daughter, and it made all the difference. All of our workers deserve this leave, when it is particularly hard for lowincome paid workers to get by. I ask you to close this loophole and make sure that all San Francisco workers have full leave. Thank you. Chair ronen thank you. Any questions . Did you want to make any statements mr. Mulligan . Okay. Thank you. That was very clear and thorough. Thank you so much. I really want to thank you for this legislation. I it it feels, as a new mother, almost impossible to take your child to child care before theyre a couple months old, so even that is too short of a time, so i appreciate the governor expanding that period of time, and this legislation makes all the sense in the world to me, and id like to cosponsor it, as well. And do you want to do the honors . Sure. Chair ronen and thank you for cosponsoring. Supervisor stefani id like to move this forward to the full board with a positive recommendation. Chair ronen and that item passes unanimously. [gavel]. Chair ronen mr. Clerk, are there any other items on the agenda . Clerk that completes the agenda for today. Chair ronen thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned. Shop and dine in the 49 promotes local businesses, and challenges residents to do their shopping within the 49 square miles of San Francisco. By supporting local services in our neighborhood, we help San Francisco remain unique, successful, and vibrant. So where will you shop and dine in the 49 . I am the owner of this restaurant. We have been here in north beach over 100 years. [speaking foreign language] [ ] [speaking foreign language] [ ] [speaking foreign language] [speaking foreign language] [ ] this is a huge catalyst for change. It will be over 530,000 gross square feet plus two levels of basement. Now the departments are across so many locations it is hard for them to Work Together and collaborate and hard for the customers to figure out the different locations and hours of operation. One of the main drivers is a one stopper mitt center for permit center. Special events. We are a one stop shop for those three things. This has many different uses throughout if years. In 1940s it was cocacola and the flagship as part of the construction project we are retaining the clock tower. The permit center is little working closely with the Digital Services team on how can we modernize and move away from the paper we use right now to move to a more digital world. The Digital Services team was created in 2017. It is 2. 5 years. Our job is to make it possible to get things done with the city online. One of the reasons permitting is so difficult in this city and county is really about the scale. We have 58 Different Department in the city and 18 of them involve permitting. We are expecting the residents to understand how the departments are structured to navigate through the permitting processes. It is difficult and we have heard that from many people we interviewed. Our goal is you dont have to know the department. You are dealing with the city. Now if you are trying to get construction or special events permit you might go to 13 locations to get the permit. Here we are taking 13 locations into one floor of one location which is a huge improvement for the customer and staff trying to Work Together to make it easy to comply with the rules. There are more than 300 permitting processes in the city. There is a huge to do list that we are possessing digital. The first project is allowing people to apply online for the a. D. U. It is an accessory dwelling unit, away for people to add extra living space to their home, to convert a garage or add something to the back of the house. It is a very complicated permit. You have to speak to Different Departments to get it approved. We are trying to consolidate to one easy to due process. Some of the next ones are windows and roofing. Those are high volume permits. They are simple to issue. Another one is restaurant permitting. While the overall volume is lower it is long and complicated business process. People struggle to open restaurants because the permitting process is hard to navigate. The city is going to roll out a digital curing system one that is being tested. When people arrive they canshay what they are here to. It helps them workout which cue they neat to be in. If they rant to run anker rapid she can do that. We say you are next in line make sure you are back ready for your appointment. We want it allinone location across the many departments involved. It is clear where customers go to play. On june 5, 2019 the ceremony was held to celebrate the placement of the last beam on top of the structures. Six months later construction is complete. We will be moving next summer. The flu building the new building will be building. It was designed with light in mind. Employees will appreciate these amenities. Solar panels on the roof, electric vehicle chargers in the basement levels, benefiting from gray watery use and secured bicycle parking for 300 bicycles. When you are on the higher floors of thing yo of the buildt catch the tip of the Golden Gate Bridge on a clear day and good view of soma. It is so exciting for the team. It is a fiscal manifestation what we are trying to do. It is allowing the Different Departments to come together to issue permits to the residents. We hope people can digitally come to one website for permits. We are trying to make it digital so when they come into the center they have a highquality interaction with experts to guide then rather than filling iin forms. They will have good conversations with our staff. My background is in staff. Engineering. I am a Civil Engineer by training. My career has really been around government service. When the opportunity came up to serve the city of San Francisco, that was just an opportunity i really needed to explore. [ ] [ ] i think it was in junior high and really started to do well in math but i faced some really interesting challenges. Many young ladies were not in math and i was the only one in some of these classes. It was tough, it was difficult to succeed when a teacher didnt have confidence in you, but i was determined and i realized that engineering really is what i was interested in. As i moved into college and took engineering, preengineering classes, once again i hit some of those same stereotypes that women are not in this field. That just challenged me more. Because i was enjoying it, i was determined to be successful. Now i took that drive that i have and a couple it with Public Service. Often we are the Unsung Heroes of technology in the city whether it is delivering Network Services internally, or for our Broadband Services to low income housing. Free wifi for all of the residents here so that folks have access to do job searches, housing searches, or anything else that anyone else could do in our great city. We are putting the plant in the ground to make all of the City Services available to our residents. It is difficult work, but it is also very exciting and rewarding our team is exceptional. They are very talented engineers and analysts who work to deliver the data and the services and the Technology Every day. I love working with linda because she is fun. You can tell her anything under the sun and she will listen and give you solutions or advice. She is very generous and thoughtful and remembers all the special days that you are celebrating. I have seen recent employee safety and cyber security. It is always a top priority. I am always feeling proud working with her. What is interesting about my work and my family is my experience is not unique, but it is different. I am a single parent. So having a career that is demanding and also having a child to raise has been a challenge. I think for parents that are working and trying to balance a career that takes a lot of time, we may have some interruptions. If there is an emergency or that sort of thing then you have to be able to still take care of your family and then also do your service to your job. That is probably my take away and a lot of lessons learned. A lot of parents have the concern of how to do the balance i like to think i did a good job for me, watching my son go through school and now enter the job market, and he is in the medical field and starting his career, he was always an intern. One of the things that we try to do here and one of my takeaways from raising him is how important internships are. And here in the department of technology, we pride ourselves on our interns. We have 20 to 25 each year. They do a terrific job contributing to our outside plant five or work or our Network Engineering or our finance team. This last time they took to programming our reception robot, pepper, and they added videos to it and all of these sort of things. It was fun to see their creativity and their innovation come out. Amazing. Intriguing. The way i unwind is with my photography and taking pictures around the city. When i drive around california, i enjoy taking a lot of landscapes. The weather here changes very often, so you get a beautiful sunset or you get a big bunch of clouds. Especially along the waterfront. It is spectacular. I just took some photos of big server and had a wonderful time, not only with the water photos, but also the rocks and the bushes and the landscapes. They are phenomenal. [ ] my advice to young ladies and women who would like to move into stem fields is to really look at why you are there. If you are if you are a problem solver, if you like to analyse information, if you like to discover new things, if you like to come up with alternatives and invent new practice, it is such a fabulous opportunity. Whether it is Computer Science or engineering or biology or medicine, oh, my goodness, there are so many opportunities. If you have that kind of mindset i have enjoyed working in San Francisco so much because of the diversity. The diversity of the people, of this city, of the values, of the talent that is here in the city. It is stimulating and motivating and inspiring and i cannot imagine working anywhere else clerk good morning. The meeting will come to order. And wednesday to the march 4, special meeting of the government audit and oversight committee. And the chair of this committee is here and joined by aaron peskin and matt haney. Thank to the clerk john carroll and thank tom loftis from sfgovtv for staffing this meeting. Any announcements. Koirk silence your cellphones and Electronic Devices and your documents that have to be included as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. And it appears on the march 10, 2020 agenda unless otherwise stated. Mr. Clerk, call item number 1. Clerk a motion directing the clerk of the board to initiate a request for proposals process for special Investigation Services. Thank you. Supervisor haney, as a sponsor of this measure, the floor is yours. Thank you, chair marr, and good morning, everyone. I think that this is, you know, obviously a very challenging time for our city right now with multiple departments who have been implicated in a larger investigation. Clearly, you know, charges that have been levied by the u. S. Attorney against individuals in government and outside. And it is critical that we do everything that we can to investigate fully, prevent any future fraud or corruption, and to do everything that we can to restore the public trust. This is not a time for business as usual and i think that the public is looking to us as the board of supervisors to investigate fully to make some serious changes around accountability and transparency and to do this in a way that the public fully understands what is happening and why. I know that there are a number of things that are happening and i want to acknowledge supervisor peskins work in really making sure that were using our full powers as a committee and yours as well, chair marr, in restoring and bringing some role for a subpoena power here to the committee. Theres, of course, also the federal investigation, the City Attorney, the controller doing full investigation. And theyre doing their part. And its critical that we do not hesitate in doing ours as the board of supervisors. The audits and the investigations that are occurring now are critical. But they are also not intentionally designed not to be comprehensive in identifying all of the areas of local government where corruption or fraud are occurring or are prone to happening. There are clearly gaps that we can complement as the board of supervisors with thirdparty Investigative Services, which allow the board of supervisors to play a much more active role. Our constituents are looking to us to help restore faith in local government and i think that theres a general concern that we are going to fail to bring in outside eyes and outside role in helping to restore the integrity and trust. I think that theres a role, a Critical Role for thirdparty independent oversight and investigation in that. San franciscoians want us to stand up for them and i think that it would behoove us to do more than as we have been doing it would behoove us to actually be proactive in how this is done. Our city charter grants the board of supervisors broad powers of hearing inquiries so we can carry out our duties as the legislative branch of the city and county of San Francisco. And were also empowered to seek support in our role. To provide Invaluable Services to the board analyzing budgets and legislation, conducts research and helping to inform our policy proposals. The nature of the charges that have been filed and the potential for as of yet discovered illegal or inappropriate and unethical behaviors, and the need to restore accountability and transparency and trust require us as the board of supervisors to urgently procure thirdparty Investigative Services. With a special investigator we can investigate allegations that are coming directly to us that the City Employees or members of the employee have not yet felt comfortable reporting through the whistleblower problem or the current hotline. We can work closely together to identify certain policies to prevent misbehavior or corruption and how they may be violated. And we can pursue leads with the power of subpoena. We have the power of the subpoena now in this committee well, we will and with that complemented by the Investigative Services, would allow us to identify what sort of subpoenas are needed and to followup on leads. We can also look at broader systemic issues related to policies or oversight as they relate to contracts or permitting and understand what legislative changes are needed. And the important thing here is that we dont know yet exactly what will be revealed and well need to follow certain leads. For last few weeks my office in partnership with the clerk of the board, the City Attorney, supervisor ronen and other colleagues have thoroughly vetted options to provide the flexible, independent Investigative Services necessary for the board to actively respond. Today i have a set of amendments to proceed with a procurement process that relies on a pool of firms prequalified by the Controllers Office, rather than to begin a new solicitation process. Section 21. 4 of the administrative code allows departments to issue prequalified pools of prospective contractors in accordance with open and fair procedures and may have lists of prequalified contractors for commodities and services for future contracts as needed by the city. And the city controller maintains such a list of prequalified audit firms including those qualified for forensic auditing and Investigative Services. To be clear, it is not the intent of this motion to duplicate any investigations already occurring. We owe it to the people of San Francisco to be prudent with our resources. Over the next few months well hear regularly from the controller on their audits and likely see subpoenas and potentially cases filed by the City Attorney. And to complement those efforts well have the support of a special investigator. We should proceed with urgency to begin this work without delay. I have another set of sort of more specifics of how this will work and what this process would look like, but i also want to ask the clerk of the boar Angela Calvillo to come up and to lay out a bit on how this process would work, what the timing of it would be, and then theres a couple other quick things that i want to share and then we can open up to discussion if thats okay with you, chair. Sure, thank you so much, supervisor haney. Madam clerk, if you could just pause, supervisor peskin, i believe, had im happy to defer until after the clerk has spoken. Great. Members of the committee, chair mar, Angela Calvillo. If the board approves this direction for the clerk, our office will work with member offices to create to understand and to create the scope of work that would be included. Areas to be investigated, timeframes. And the expected deliverables. The Controllers Office has as heard an upcoming list of prequalified auditing firms that have been established through a request for qualification process. And that we will utilize instead of going through the r. S. P. Process which would take longer to complete. Well send a letter of intent and solicit a proposal from the top two or three prekawstled prd firms. We would assemble a informal pan to rank and to prioritize the qualified firms based upon the preset criteria. Criteria that would include years of experience, available resources, estimated costs special Investigation Services with regard to potential deception, fraud and corruption within local government. The panel would recommend the most qualified firms. The clerk would then bring that to the committee or to the board for review and your approval. And once approved, we would begin to enter into negotiations with the firms and would request parallel funding at that point if necessary through a supplemental process. Thank you. Supervisor peskin. Thank you, chairman mar, and thank you, chairman, for having this special hearing today on both of these items that have to do with one of the most sorted chapters of corruption that ive encountered in the 20 years that i have been an on and off again member of the board of supervisors, on and off again member. I absolutely appreciate everything that the proposer of this motion said. Yes, this body has an obligation, a responsibility, the charter authority, and the unlimited ability to inquire and to get to the bottom of things and i also appreciate your comments about not otherwise interfering or impeding with ongoing civil and criminal investigations. And i think and i just quickly read the changes that this all really comes down to what is the scope of work. And i believe that we may indeed need thirdparty expert outside investigatory help. But i dont yet know the scope of what that should be. The controller is doing their work. We have the budget and legislative analyst who we can use for policy recommendations and the City Attorney is doing their work and the u. S. Attorney and the f. B. I. Is doing their work. And this body has a role to play and, of course, the next item that has not been called is the beginning of what i imagine would be a number of different hearings delving down into this. But the only question that i have is what is the scope of work. And i would like to pause it that we dont yet know what expert things that we need that we do not have within our existing resources, be it the controller, City Attorney, and budget and legislative analyst office, and, indeed, the members of the board of supervisors and our staff. So i can foresee a need for this. Im not exactly sure how we can authorize the letting of a contract with a prequalified pool of vendors until we know exactly what services were requesting of them. So i just want to put that out there. I realize this is an evolving and an ever worsening set of revelations, thats the only question that i have. Supervisor haney. Thank you. No, and i totally appreciate that. And i think that, you know, theres a sense that from my perspective that we are going to need Investigative Services and support. And that the actual scope of it theres some things that we might put in the scope of it now but as you said a lot of this is, you know, being unveiled in various ways and there will likely be times in which we want to be flexible. One of the things, for example, i know that and i know that the controller is here that the first report which i think is on somewhat narrow focus on contracting within p. D. W. , and that we would have that first report come to us. And there may be things that we want to followup on further, specific things that come out of that that we want to have to be investigated. One of the things madam clerk, if you might just clarify in a little more detail this particular question of the scope and when we would really have to define the scope, how what is the timeline for that. Because, you know, it seems to us that we have to start this process to even begin to have a conversation about the scope. And, you know, the scope could be broad and flexible is my understanding. That is true, through to the chair to the members. I just had a discussion with our controller who indicated that his upcoming list should not be available for another month at least. So we would not be able to obtain even the list for several weeks. In the meantime as perhaps the g. A. O. Is having hearings or perhaps as youre having briefings by the City Attorney or the Ethics Commission or the controller, there could be items that come to light that then could inform the ultimate scope of services that youre working towards. And then we could hone our process a little bit further and then modify the scope as soon as you get more information. And this committee would have, of course, another opportunity to both weigh in and directly approve the scope of the services before this were to the committee could, certainly. And there seems as though theres going to be some time to do so. All right. So in just in terms of supervisor peskins question, i agree that theres still some work to figure out the scope. For us this was the first step to even to be able to have a conversation really about scope. And to begin to get the prequalified contractors on this and really start a process of discussing and defining what it is that we might move forward here. And i and i agree with supervisor peskin that we want to be clear about the scope before actually moving this. And thats something that i think that should happen here and it will happen also in informal conversations and happen in looking at what comes out in the next few weeks from the controller and other sources. And even other hearings that were having, there may be things that come up and say, you know what, this is something that makes sense. This feels to me that this is something that were going to need, even based on what came out before. I could make a list of some of the things that i would put in that scope, but i do think that we want to, you know, obviously use resources in a way that helps us to do our job better and really represent the publics interest in terms of getting to the bottom of whats happening and also how to prevent it. But, at the same time, not to duplicate some of the things that are already happening. Supervisor peskin . I absolutely agree insofar as just the technical process of procurement will take a while. That would allow us to get prepared about what that scope of work should be. And in the same way that were preparing ourselves by potentially super majority of our colleagues on tuesday agreed to give this committee the power to issue subpoenas, which hopefully we wont need to do because we will ask each and every individual that we want to talk to to come here voluntarily. But this is another preparatory action. So, yeah, sounds good. Thank you. Maybe we can go to Public Comment on this. So i do have one speaker card. Eileen spoken. If there are other members of the public that would wish to speak on this item, please get in line on the righthand side of the word. Eileen voken, here on my own behalf in strong support of this item. On my way here today on the streetcar i overheard two teenagers talking about learning to drive and the rules of the road. One said to the other, its only illegal if you get caught. I thought that perspective was fascinating and relevant to this item. Thank you. Clerk thank you. Next speaker. Hello, San Francisco city by the bay. This is ace. You might want to hear what ive got to say. As we here going through these processes i just came back from baltimore. And like i said before, before i traveled there i thought that San Francisco was the most racist corrupt city in the United States until i went to baltimore. But i went there and theres corruption there. And then i came back and i seen corruption here. But id like to put a word out in the beginning of this process in light that im a black man, in light that queen bee i call queen bee, the mayor london breed, we as African American oh, scratch that as black americans here in San Francisco are dealing with the most racist situation thats going on here, dealing with the reparation, outmigration and all of these other studies here. The office of racial equity. The removal of Justin Hermans name. So i want you all to be aware as we go on with this investigation, let it be fair, no racial overtones. Because my name is ace, damn it, and im on this case. So i know yall going to be fair because we going to be watching. And you know that our population is very low and were building up resistance right now. And like i said before, its progressive and the moderates got to get together and solve it. What is that . The black population going down. So all these efforts, energy, and all of this money is going to be spent on this investigation, and when it comes back around with the investigation with a lot of the departments in this city by the bay i hope that you get the same. My name is ace and im on this case. Thank you, next speaker, please. Well, lets say for the sake of argument that any District Supervisor who at some time in the distant unforeseeable future, would assist a Small Business owner by acquiring a monetariy subsidy for tens of thousands of dollars annually through the legacy fund program, imagine a proprietor then gets a Mercedes Benz for his or her daughters 18th birthday. And weighing Household Expenses against profit loss, and expenditure and income imagined in that the same proprietor places Campaign Flyers in the windows of their home or holds a fundraiser. And either or both of these places or donates funds towards the incumbents reelection or towards her political party. Can you tell me this would not appear to constitute an impropriety . Do you honestly not say that its an essential problem inherent with the dynamic of the program. Taking on the argument further, say the proprietor holds the premise under l. L. C. And runs under a separate corporate entity and the former raises the rent on the latter. And to assure that the enterprise succeeds on paper. And also most of small Property Owners hold their property under corporate l. L. C. Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. So i just would like to thank supervisor haney for bringing this motion forward. You know, im happy to have been a cosponsor and to see this as an important step that we could take as a board of supervisors in our role as a legislative body. But also as the directly elected representative of the residents in 11 districts in our city to provide oversight and potential policy or legislative changes that will result from the multiple investigations into corruption in our city right now. And i share their concerns thatt supervisor peskin raised about needing to clarify the scope of the contract or the services, the special Investigation Services, but it does seem that with the amendment that supervisor haney brought forward today that that is that is included or addressed in the amendments. So i think that, you know, i am supportive of the, you know, this motion as amended moving forward. Supervisor haney . Thank you, chair mar, and thank you for your support from the beginning on this. One question two quick things one is the controller when will the list be available . And what is sort of the why will it take why is it not available . Good morning, supervisor. So as has been referenced here earlier our office develops prequalified lists of different kinds of expertise that we use in performing our work and then we make those pools available to the department c. E. U. S to procure related services. The pool that were talking about here is one for as supervisor haney has noted for auditing, Forensic Accounting and Investigative Services and the rest. Our former pool has expired and were in the midst of refreshing that pool. And we have been working on that in last couple months. We are near the end of that process and we have proposals in for the prequalified pool. The panel will evaluate and awarding and creating the pool within the next several weeks. And i envision the final pool will be certified likely the last week of march. One could envision a couple pick ups in how these processes work to carry it to the first week of april. But it will be available within several weeks at the latest. Got it. And then one thing about the and so, obviously, this would even to get to point of sending a letter of intent and soliciting proposals we need that prequalified. So at the very least were talking about a few weeks from now or a month from now at the earliest. I want to say one thing about the scope which is that i think that one opportunity that we will have to help really define what sort of services we need actually can come with some support from the firms themselves. If we put out a letter of intent and solicit proposals, there may be some things that these firms identify as being things that we should be looking at closely. And that will also help us to really define the scope as well. You know, in the process of the letter of intent and the proposals that come to us. So i also just want to point that out. But, again, with all of that, for any of that to happen, this is the first step and well have some time to better define what it is and what proposals that were getting and, obviously, we could make a decision at some point not to move forward. But i do think that because of the likelihood that we will need these services, that its important to move forward with this part of the process now. Supervisor peskin. Thank you, chair mar. So through the chair to supervisor haney, the remaining question i have is what will the role of this committee or the board or the clerk be relative to the development of that scope of work . What i think that i just heard you say is that the pool of prequalified vendors could actually make suggestions as to what the scope of work should be. Im trying to figure out how we advise and consent to that ever evolving scope of work and what role the board or this committee plays. Sure. So if i could ask the clerk to come back up sorry. And as we think about this kind of process once we get the prequalified list of firms, as we develop the letter of intent, is that something that even at that stage that we might have this this committee involved with in terms of informing . And then i know that theres also some sort of more informal process where this committee may sort of give its feedback and input and then have some smaller set of either supervisors or with your support to better define that in a smaller group. Can you what might be a process in your view that would make sense in terms of the role of the board in this process . Chair, thank you. Or this committee in the process. Through the chair to the members. Obviously, supervisor haney, as were moving through this process and we received a list and working with the members who are most interested in this, being very cautious not to break the brown act, of course. Happy to bring drafts forward. Happy to have this committee then guide us with the details in the scope as your information evolves. We can certainly add it to the scope. And then you can finally bless the scope. And then we can move forward with the l. O. I. And through the chair to deputy City Attorney pearson, insofar as the next set among this agenda that has not been called is potentially an ongoing vehicle to continue to have these hearings, would it be acceptable if our clerk under that item or a similar type of item yet to be introduced would report back about the scope . Or would we need to have an ongoing hearing item because i assume that once we dispose of this item it leaves the jurisdiction of this committee. Deputy City Attorney ann pearson. The next item is a scheduled hearing concerning the essential scope of public works. I dont think that description would encompass a consideration of the scope because it might still be on the scope of that department. So i would think that you would separately notice any discussion on the scope of work thats brought back to this. This come committee. I suggest that we have an ongoing hearing item with prequalified vendors that we can call and schedule from time to time between now and april and thereafter to get reports and publicly advise the clerk as to the scope of work. Perfect. Perfect. We can assist you in drafting that, supervisor haney. Thank you. Does that make sense, chair mar . I think that does. Especially, you know, i know that the controller is working on several different specific investigations right now and it will be preparing sort of white pairs on those issues that we intend to hear in this committee and in the coming weeks. For example, i think that the first one is on the contracting practices and procedures with the department of public works. So i think that these so i think that so given that there will be more you know, theres ongoing investigations by multiple entities and theres going to be more information, particularly presented publicly by the Controllers Office, that could help to inform the scope of work. I think that it makes sense, yes, to continue this. Perfect. So is there a motion supervisor haney . Yes. So i want to move the amendments and then move this forward as amended. And can we take that without objection . And then ill introduce the hearing so we can have that separately. Great. Thank you. Please call agenda item 2. Clerk agenda item be 2 is a hearing on the public works Core Functions as they relate to Capital Infrastructure project delivery, operations and contracting, as well as an overview of the departments administrative decisionmaking policies and process. Thank you mr. Clerk. Supervisor peskin, the floor is yours. Thank you, chair mar, and thank you for having this special meeting today. And as i said during the last item this is one of the most sorted chapters of corruption that ive seen. Maybe i was in denial, but i thought that the paytoplay underbelly in San Francisco government had gone away or receded and turns out to be abundantly untrue. I want to start out by saying words to the leadership and the rank and file employees of our Public Works Department which is that i know many, if not all of you, worked very, very hard every day and this is as tragic and disappointing to you personally and professionally as it is to every member of this board of supervisors and the Senior Leadership of the city and the people in the county of San Francisco. So i want you to know that i feel that. And while we do have an obligation to inquire and to get to the bottom of it and to figure out how these infirmities came to pass and why the checks and balances failed repeatedly, and to understand the scope, i dont want this to be seen by you as a salacious political attempt by elected officials. What i want this to be although some of it may indeed be pretty prevehicletive, depending what rolls out through the investigations not being done by the board of supervisors, i want this to be a exercise where we figure out how to prevent these things from happening quite frankly. If they could happen in the Public Works Department, they could probably happen in other departments. This is about the control environment and this is about how contracts are procured, this is about the limits that we have, this is about what were now calling the tone at the top, the culture of a department and of the workforce. And so those are all of the things that i would like to focus on and i really wanted to start at a high level. We do this once a year in a very compressed fashion at the budget committee. Where 50 plus departments come through this chamber and are asked questions about what you do and what your performance metrics are and how many new f. T. You want and whatever and that gets compressed into a few minutes. I think that it would be very, very helpful and this is not salacious. It is boring as heck to do some public works 101. Just so we know that what all of those different functions are and then start to drill down on what went wrong, how to fix it and what happened in the interim between the revelations that happened in late january and now to make sure that that controlled environment has been temporarily been fixed and, obviously, this conversation should and hopefully will lead to some structural reforms. Whether they are things that change our charter and have to go before the electorate of San Francisco. Or whether they are changes to the administrative code, in chapter 6 and 21. And whether the Broad Authority that the board of supervisors unanimously granted in around streamlining as it relates to the provision of homeless facilities, needs to be taken back. This is the conversation that i would like to have. I think that its very important to understand not only the size of the departments operating budget, but on the capital side to understand the billions of dollars of projects that flow through there that are directly under public works or are contracted services. I think that its important for this board to be reminded and the public to be reminded that this is a department that provides services to the airport, to rec and park and to the Public Utilities commission. And lets drill down on that and see where that goes. Ive had none of this is gotcha stuff. All of the questions that i intended to ask i have shared with the acting director, and im sorry if i mess this up, but soon well be on a firstname basis, as well as the city administrator and staff to the department. So with that, colleagues, if you dont have any questions i thought that we would start by asking the acting director to start with a high level briefing to this committee about the organizational structure, about the budget, and then i would like to drill down into the contracting process, how contracts are let. Im not asking about any particular contract, at least not yet today. Although and i do want to say to supervisor haney that i very much appreciated your timely hearing on the topic of garbage cans. So i would i know that sounds rather pedestrian but it is actually one of the things that binds every corner of this city and all of our populous and visitors together. And you held i thought a hearing that really shed light on that particular function. And, yes, there are some contracts in and around that issue of procurement of trash cans that are in the public realm that we all know about, but i think that is a good example of how we can understand at least some of the contracting procedures as it relates to obtaining and procuring commodities. And insofar as the acting director is the former director of purchasing, i know that you will be very well positioned to explain all of those procurement processes to this body. And with that i will turn it over to mr. Degraff and reid. Good morning, supervisors. My name is alex degraff and im the acting director of the Public Works Department. First i want to just say thank you for the opportunity to be here today and thank you supervisor peskin for the kind words and the rank and file of the staff at the Public Works Department. I think youre absolutely right. We have over 1,600 individuals that do an amazing job every day every day. So im honored to be here today to provide you as an overview in the work that we do. And then in the latter half of this mornings presentation i will be discussing some of the contracting processes here. I guess that the one thing that hasnt changed here at public works, is that we care about building and the city assets forward and for the people of San Francisco. We have a vision, we have a forward thinking vision that honors the public trust. And the core values that we have are with respect and integrity and responsiveness is something that we try to drive down into every individual within the organization. We do that and we have developed a Strategic Plan which is focused around three goals. The first goal is that we want to be the best in a place to work. And thats not just the best as the City Department to work, we want to be the best place to work in the bay area. So whether it be the private sector or the public sector, we want to be the best place to work. And that really comes down to, you know, having and honoring the work that we do and knowing that the work that we do touches the lives of everyone in San Francisco every day. In the second goal it is to drive innovation as Exceptional Service. As was mentioned before, were actually one of the few departments across the city that operates every 24 7 and i would say arguably touches every person that lives and visits or otherwise comes to San Francisco every day. And so were doing that through very innovative things, whether it be the way that we come up with our routing with the street cleaning and in designing buildings, and the public infrastructure. And for the last and but not least the third goal is to improve and inspire the stewardship of the public spaces. That includes everything from in the public as rightofways and medians and things like that. And we also have a commitment to trying to find ways to get the public to join us in some of these things. Whether it be as a team event or things like that. This is truly as a partnership that we have with as a community that we serve. This is just a quick chart showing i dont want to spend too much time on this, but these seem to be aspirational goals and not necessarily a Strategic Plan per se. But heres my question because some of these things i can actually in my own experience translate into real things. Like what you said around goal number three, which was the improvement and inspiring of the stewardship of public spaces. And it was actually a real performance metric, which is that there are gatherings all over the city on an annual basis where people, nonpublic works employees, come out and participate in graffiti abatement and a host of Different Things. But are there any metrics that go along with goal one, be the best place to work . Is there something that assesses Employee Satisfaction relative to driving and innovating Exceptional Service . Are these just three aspirational goals . Or is this a plan . No. It means that there is a plan behind it. So behind each of those goals there are two key objectives and to give you an example about being or being as the best place to work. Im aware of a survey that was conducted in this past spring and the survey went out to the public works and employees and over the last several months we have been working with our Performance Team within public works to try to evaluate in those comments the feedback that we got back as City Employees. And were in the process of trying to i guess to develop initiatives to address those concerns. But i would defer to my colleague julia dawson if you want with more information about the things that we have done in the past several months. But i can say that these arent just pie in the sky concepts. We are trying to develop defined goals to meet each of these im sorry to try to define key objectives to allow us to meet the goals. Why dont we circle back to that. I dont want to impede your presentation. Thank you. Excuse me. Supervisor haney, did you have a question . I can wait. It was very similar. Whether those actually any sort of ways of measuring each of these goals metrics yeah, same very similar question. Okay, thank you. Please proceed. As far as the organizational structure, i as acting director, report directly to the city had miadministrator, and under me there are four divisions, the infrastructure building and the Operation Division and the Financial Management and the administration division. Each which i have my deputies here today to answer more questions if they do ever come up into any one of those specific areas. But then if further broken down yes, sir . Mr. Atkin i realize that you have only been there a few weeks so i dont expect you to be steeped in all of this. I mean, it takes years to figure out all of the intricacies of a Major Department with over a thousand people and its structure and what have you. But i just had a few questions. Which is, in your city experience, so bigger than your brief public works experience, when i looked at this organizational structure, it seemed very flat to me. I mean, it looks like you have three people, four people, but if you look at the lines its seven people flat who all report to the former director. Is that a common structure that you would have such a flat organizational structure at the top . As i was saying on this chart here, i guess it gives it has the illusion of being flat. But when i first began in the department about a month ago now they have this massive chart. So i can assure you that theres many more layers under this, but in order to have it to be more viewable, you dont see underneath this, in the wings if you will, that it does provide. But i can tell you that the chart that i have seen more recently in our offices, it really covers as a better part of a wall. So i guess that the Broader Organization of this. But to compare that to, for example, my experience at the p. U. C. , i would say it has a similar structure. For example, if harlen kelly and the a. G. M. S there and the assistant and the june wror junr managers and just off the top of my head for external affairs and infrastructure division, waste water, and finance. Then Michael Carlin is the deputy. So its a very its a similar structure there as well. As i cant speak to all of the other departments in the city, but this infrastructure is not for that form. You just put your finger on what i was looking for, which is that i dont see a chief of staff or a deputy in this organizational structure. I dont see an assistant chief. I see a whole bunch of deputy chiefs, if you will, in the parlance of the Police Department organizational structure. But i dont see anything in between the Department Head i dont see an assistant chief, a chief of staff, a deputy chief. Is that missing in this organizational structure . This is, again, not a gotcha question. Im just trying to figure out would this structure be better if there were deputy chiefs under the general manager or director i guess that we call it here . As i cant say it would be better, as im not aware of the assistant chief or deputy and director, the role that youre referring to. However, i can discuss that one of the things that we have been thinking about is right now in light of some of the things that happened, obviously, in the last several months. This is something that were thinking about. But i cant say if you were to add a role here or a role there that it would be better. Thats something they think that were going to be open to and discussing whether it be in the Mayors Office and the board. But in the future. So in this structure not this structure but in this org chart, the one thing that jumped off the page to me was the huge percentage of individuals, other than you the fact that youre acting makes perfect sense to me but the huge number of individuals on this page and this is the top commandandcontrol structure of this organization that have acting in front of their position. I mean, one, two, three im not including you we know why youre there one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight of about 20 positions are acting. Does that make sense . Or why is that . I think its its a mix of things, ill say, which is like as most things in life. But i think that and the h. R. Process here in the city isnt always the easiest thing to get through. I can tell you though as i cant speak to why the department had so many acting positions, and as my colleagues can probably answer that more. But the things that i can tell you though, supervisors, is this is something that i have been actively trying to address. We just today is wednesday and yesterday i met with the h. R. Department within the City Administrators Office to identify some of these key positions that we need to fill. Because i think that will go a long way to addressing the morale issues and things like that within the organization. So i would hope in the next several months we would be able to have several of these positions filled. Do you know why and i say this in the age of love and the vscoronavirus, why the Emergency Management position is vacant and how long its been vacant . I believe that position has been vacant for the past few months but, unfortunately, that individual passed away. And then there are some functions here that we are all aware of because on the board of supervisors anytime that a subdivision map is done, we have to approve it, so we see them on a weekly or a monthly basis. But the position of the city variesurveyor is missing from h. Why is that . My eyes are getting worse than they used to be. I believe that its at the street use mapping. So, unfortunately, i just cant i cant see it. But i believe that position is there. That person reports up under currently my colleague. Bruce stores. We all know his name and know his staff because they appear here regularly. The other name that was missing and im not picking on any individual person, but hes known to all 11 of us is larry stringer. I dont see him on here . Larry stringer is was the Deputy Director of operations. That person is now carla short. And larry stringer in the past several months has been supporting another group. So we asked him and reassigned to support asok, and given the housing crisis and the issues that were having, addressing homelessness, we have signed him to support that team that was seen as a very as an urgent need. So we assigned him there. Thank you for that explanation. I dont know if my colleagues have any yes but if they dont, keep going. I have one question following on the line of questioning that supervisor peskin was working on. And looking at that organizational chart, beside yourself as the acting director of public works, it looks like three out of the four Deputy Directors are also acting Deputy Directors. So you mentioned mr. Stringer who was assigned to a different priority project. Thats why carla short is now the acting director. Can you explain why the other two the other two are now acting Deputy Directors . Sure. So as a similar issue, as the homelessness issue but we have an issue regarding the housing crisis as well. So the previous and the City Engineer and john thomas was assigned to support the task force to address that. So thats when we shifted suzanne afersuscan to be the a acting Deputy Director in charge of infrastructure division. Likewise, with regard to the city architect, as an employee who im sure that you all know who retired recently. So when edgar left we asked ron alameta to step up. And so edgar retired. If im not in mistaken within the last several months or so. Got it, thank you. Just want to correct one thing because i was not doing the next level down. So i just wanted to state corrected numbers. Which is excluding director of public works on this organizational chart of the 24 remaining top level positions, 12 of them are acting. So its exactly half. And it would be interesting to know miss campbell or controller whether or not that similar other departments. And let me be frank with what my concern is. It is a lot easier to manipulate acting people than it is permanent people. So the reason this makes me nervous is and im not talking about the things that have happened in the last month, but if structurally i dont know the answer to this you have a whole bunch of people who by the way this used to happen on commissions, with no disrespect to Willie Lewis Brown he would not reappoint commissioners and he would allow them to stay and they would stay on a daytoday basis and he could get rid of them because they were held over after the end of their term. The board of supervisors fixed that by going to the voters and asking for the charter to be amended. And the voters embraced that. But i just want to understand if this has been a longterm ongoing issue. I understand Human Resources is a long, complicated thing. Although less true with high level positions than with normal Civil Service positions. So im a little dubious about that statement. But i would like to understand in future hearings whether or not this has been a structural longterm problem, whether its common in other departments. And whether it was done with any intention. Right. And id be happy to come back and to report on that. I think that in large part it has a domino effect, when someone leaves we move that person up and that person moves up. But id be happy to come back on that. And the controller may have some comments. please stand by in the bureau, provides engineering and construction. Its Management Services to new infrastructure and things in the public and rightofway. And the street use and the Mapping Division ensures that we have safe, accessible, as public right of ways. Theyre the bureau that is responsible for granting permits to use in the city and the rightofways. And the building and repair bureau provides and construction repair. And remodelling services to the cityowned facilities. They also provide as emergency and repair services across the city. And the urban forestry bureau, they are responsible for providing landscaping and maintenance in the medians and the treeplanting. Theyre responsible for keeping the cities and streets and sidewalks and the public spaces clean which is done as mechanical, manual sweeping. Graffiti abatement and Power Washing as well. And the street and sewer and repair bureau is responsible for paving, street work. They do, as patch paving, they fix potholes and things like that. Lastly, the General Administration bureau provides the finance, accounting, and the budget, the planning and the h. R. Function to as public works. This is a chart. Ill be brief here. It just kinds of shows what are some of the key processes that each of the bureaus performs. For example, and the building and Design Bureau provides Architectural Design and Landscape Design services. They also go about ensuring those projects are built properly, pursuant to the and the specifications that we have laid out. Likewise in the infrastructure division, designs roadways and things like that. They also provide in the building or they oversee in the building of those projects. Operations division likewise oversees the building repair, the street repear and the services repair and the services associated with things that are in the public rightofway. I think supervisor haney had a question. Supervisor haney yeah. So it seems to me when looking at the structure that sort of a pretty Clear Division between sort of the architectureengineering side of the department, which i guess would be building, design and construction, infrastructure, design and construction and then operations . Can you speak to what interaction there is between those . And the situations in which theyre actually working together . I have a number of questions which relate to conversations that ive had with many employees at public works over the last few weeks. And this is one of them, which is, its on both sides, its been their general impression that there is very little interaction. Am i getting that wrong from your perspective . Or in what ways do operations particularly street environmental services, urban forestry, intersect with things in infrastructure, design and construction and building, design and construction, if at all. Thank you, supervisor. I would imagine in the conversation with the employees of public works, that it seems that way, there is not a lot of involvement. I would say on a daytoday basis, theyre probably not involved that much, but i think behind the scenes, if you will, both myself and as my deputy and directors, there is a lot of involvement. And the reason being, for example, is enron alameda and his team is developing a design of a park or a building that is going to have to later maintained by and the Operations Team run, we are involved in making sure theyre having conversations with each other, so ron and suzanne and their teams arent designing something that is not going to be something that is going to be able to be maintained on the operation side. So i can see if you were on the operation side and youre working in the yard, or in the field, you may not think there is a lot of involvement, but a lot of communication between the two groups, but i would say there is a fair amount. That is one thing we try to do is make sure that we, as a department, and i say it more broadly as the city, were not designing things that we cant maintain. Supervisor haney so the main thing there is that if there is design going on that they would then have some advice given about how to keep it clean or repairs . Well, for example, we just want to make sure that when were designing a building or designing as a rightofway, that we are taking into consideration and the operational issues that are going to take place post construction, as relates to maintenance and upkeep of those assets. Supervisor haney got it. I did oh, supervisor, one thing to add, jeremie spitz. The street environmental services, all the Operations Bureau are also just a really theyre on 247 to say an engineer sees something in the field that looks unsafe, they can call them to block off the area. Its an accessible workforce that is available 247 to respond to emergencies and things of that nature. Like a sewer collapse or if a sinkhole is developing or any other emergency situation. I did want to ask, i had a number of questions about hiring and it sort of relates to this conversation about the acting managers. Under what circumstances does the department hire exempt employees, or p. X. Employees instead of the traditional fulltime employees . And do you track that . And do you have a sense of the percentage at public works versus other departments . Certainly the perception from a lot of employees is that is something that is happening a lot at public works. In some cases excessively or inappropriately in their view. And how are you tracking that and under what circumstances are you hiring people for those positions . And in a related thing, what is the directors role in hiring n in hiring . Ill refer to my colleague, but i guess to answer that to start, i mean there are several considerations that are made for hiring as a p. C. S. Or as a permanent Civil Servants versus hiring a temporary person. I mean this is all in large part comes down from the ordinance, but it really depends on the needs of the department. So it would be great to hire everyone as a fulltime, permanent Civil Servant and all the benefits that come with that, but frankly, some of it is based on need. So you and some of the considerations that will be made will be if we need assistants if someone calls in sick and we need additional staff and those individuals that cover for the people that are out sick, we may only hire them as a parttime basis, or they may be under a different type of as a classification. For example, if there is more seasonal work. If were doing trying to hire as paving crews, we may only hire some paving crews that can work year round, however, we know that during in the rainy season were not going to be as much paving, so we dont hire those individuals in the same type of role. With that kind of work, it just depends. I also know regarding urban forestry crews were trying to hire, for the last several years, weve been having contract didnt work out because we didnt have the availability of individuals to hire. So there is a mix of things. But again, ill defer to julia regarding some of the reporting that is done, but in my understanding, if we do want to hire someone whether it be permanent or exempt positions, that those as approvals go through approval process that includes m. D. H. R. And the Mayors Office as well. I was going to add to the citywide rules if it helps, supervisor haney . Broadly defined, the charter requires that City Employees are Civil Service position. And the charter has very specific allowances for the use of exempt positions in very specific circumstances. Theyre outlined in the charter. If memory serves, there are 18 different categories. Attorneys, doctors. Yeah, broadly speaking, you have certain departments that are at will. The board of supervisors, the Mayors Office are defined as exempt. You have certain roles in leadership that are largely exempt. Department heads, Deputy Directors are exempt under the charter. There is a set of other rule, other allowances for the use of exempt hiring. He mentioned some of the projectrelated work where the process of bringing on a Civil Servant only to have to let them go. So there is seasonal, temporary and others. Those are requested by departments, but ultimately reviewed and approved by the department of Human Resources. Those are appealable. There is an avenue they can be challenged by other parties. I dont have information today how public works compares to other departments, but thats information we do have available and can provide. Through the chair, we should put that in the same bucket as actings. I want to be clear why i think this is important because it has come up in a number of conversations with employees at public works and it relates to, obviously, questions of accountability and transparency. If you have employees who dont have those Civil Service protections and can be removed more easily, or hired quicker and sort of the role the director in particular of making these decisions, at least the perception was that these folks were being put in for reasons of favoritism, sometimes inappropriately. And that heavy reliance on these types of exempt positions was an issue at public works. So if you think its not an issue, i would love to have some really clearer data and demonstration or protections. I know there is going to be a hearing at the board around this particular issue, that these were relied on more heavily at public works. And that actually it was directly related to some of the inappropriate or even unethical behavior of the former director. Mr. Chairman, it just occurred to me, there is one thing on organizational structure that i had noted. Where is john thomas . You mean supervisor peskin what was his position and why is he not one of these 24 people . John thomas is currently representing public works on the Housing Task Force. Thats why hes not currently showing up on the org chart, but he is still with public works and then acting in his role. Supervisor peskin so, he used to be the City Engineer and Deputy Director for infrastructure, not acting. Yes, sir. Supervisor peskin and me he went to what . He is supporting and Housing Task Force. Supervisor peskin what is the Housing Task Force . Justin drew is im sorry supervisor peskin so he was on loan to the Mayors Office . What does this mean . And when did this happen . I did not know we had a new City Engineer. Supervisors, this happened in october. John thomas is currently on appointed project manager 4. And the acting Deputy Director and City Engineer is ann. Supervisor peskin thank you. Supervisor haney any other questions . Please continue. Ill be brief on the next slide. This is just some and the key support roles that public works receives and also provides to various departments. We get assistance regarding our fleet, operations provides free trade Management Services. And the admin Team Provides the accounting and budget management. And the other related services. This next slide really just provides numbers for you. Im not going to go over each of these, but i just want it say, behind these numbers are people. And these individuals that work for them day to day do amazing things. For example, as our street cleaners, you know, they respond to more than 350 requests a day to pick up piles of trash and to steam clean our sidewalks, to clear rubbish off medians. We have individuals that come in on the swing shifts and they do predawn cleanings of encampments and things like that. The arborist crews are out there in the heavy rains and wind storms, cleaning branches from fallen trees. And the carpenters, the glazers, the plumber, they work around the clock to sustain the city buildings. Theyre also there on emergency calls. If a toilet is out at the jails, if we have a broken step somewhere in the public rightofway, if there is a sinkhole, we have street inspectors there, with the paving crews that try to solve the problem as fast as we can. We have architects, Landscape Architects and teams that are in developing new parks and playgrounds, firehouses, police stations and health centers. These are things that make sure the city can survive as emergency. We have our engineers and masons that go around the city to improve curb ramps, to make the streets and sidewalks more accessible. We also partner with our nonprofit partners to provide and to staff and for public toilets to wash them down, keep them clean. This is a great opportunity for us as a city where we provide as a Workforce Development programs for individuals that may not be able to find employment elsewhere. So again, this is something that i am very proud to say, this is a department that touches the residents of San Francisco every day. And this is something that we do. We have to balance the various relationships here within the city because were often times working in the rightofway. And public works is responsible for the streets, the sidewalks and the medians and the street trees and the curb ramps, however, we have to work with partners in utilities as pg e and at t, comcast, mta, muni tracks and then finally we also work with partners at the puc regarding and the streetlights and the water system and the sewer system as well. The other thing we provide support to City Departments. Whether it be the public library, rec and park. We provide architectural and Design Services to these various departments. We also manage those projects to completion. Were also involved on mission zero, initiatives working with our partners at mta and the public works. And then we also do a number of work orders to maintain the public buildings here in the city. And this next chart goes to, i think, what supervisor peskin was asking for regarding the overall budget. We have our actuals for last year the expenditures around 730 million and the largest portion of those are for personnel services, those relate to the addneeded asneeded contracts that we need to provide assistance to street cleaning, street maintenance and things like that. And the second largest piece in the budget relates to labor. These are the 1600 or so employees that as we employ the bulk of which are within our infrastructure division, followed by industry environmental services. The last side, please. A few questions. The mayors the budget book shows for the fiscal year 201819, 1057 total fte as compared to the 1625fte youre showing. Every newspaper article i read said this is tragedy for the 1600 honest men and women of the department. I keep seeing the number 1600, but the budget said you had, in 201819, 1057. Where are the other 600 from . I can help with that. The difference is between fund and positions as opposed to other appropriations for positions that are funded through offbudget cycle, appropriations for capital, as you know, the annual city budget appropriates money for thesy and you as the you as the board of supervisors capital bonds and the rest. That is the difference between the numbers you see here and the positions you see here. In the budget, the board is doing two things. Youre authorizing money and youre authorizing position authority. A certain amount of those positions are paid for in the budget. That is the number youre seeing on that page. But additionally when youre acting on the annual salary ordinance, youre authorizing the department to hire a larger number. I suspect the 1600 corresponds to approximately the authority you granted to public works to fill positions. Supervisor peskin just the value of all of that capital, as compared to what were seeing here, is what . Ms. Dawson can probably speak to that better than i can. Supervisor peskin its got to be in the billions. 3, 4 . So were showing here, supervisors, the actual for the year, the nonpersonal services, a lot of that is construction. What i was trying to get at what the question you had. When you look at us as far as operating budget, it understates the activities that are under management of public works. A large portion of which is capital. So the bulk of that blue swath in nonpersonal services is really construction payments. And then many of our positions in infrastructure design and construction, in building repair and in Building Design and construction are offbudget positions because they rely on bonds, grants, other peoples bonds. It was a little overwhelming if we showed all the Funding Sources. Supervisor peskin the lefthand side that blue portion of the pie includes other departments for Services Rendered to the puc, airport, rec and park. It shows if we indeed have their Funding Sources on our contract, it will show that contract is ours, but the funds being theirs. So i was just showing you the funds under management which would point to other departmental Funding Sources. Supervisor peskin got it. The 374 million in the 201819 budget for total expenditures would be the pie in essence on the right. Those are the positions minus some number out of the infrastructure design, Building Design and also street use and mapping, and some in operations, because we dont want to doublecount other peoples funds and that would also going to work orders. We receive a lot of work orders from other City Departments to do maintenance and repair, so a lot of our building repairs are offbudget. Supervisor peskin got it. Thank you. Supervisor haney so just for example, the prop b just passed, the earthquake safety and Emergency Response bond. I think its 628 million. D. P. W. Kind of the lead yes, as public works will be the agency to deliver on the projects that are associated with that bond fund. Supervisor haney so for example, that funds a number of different important earthquake safety and Emergency Response priorities, seismic upgrades of the neighborhood fire stations . Right. Ill be discussing it later, but there are only six what we call there are only six chapter departments, six departments that can actually build things. Public works, puc, airport, mta, rec and park and port. And so all of the other departments, whether it be the Police Department, fire department, if they want to build and construct a building, those departments would have to come to public works. Supervisor haney thank you. This next slide is a bit of an eye chart and the next one is worse. But i wanted to talk briefly about contracting methods. The city has more or less broken up the contracting. If youre buying goods and services, that was governed in large part by chapter 21 of the admin code. If a department is looking to develop as a public work, building a building, that would be governed by chapter 6. Im going to start this discussion with some of the different contracting methods for the procurement of goods and services as it relates to chapter 21. So in large part, if you are seeking to do a professional Services Contract under chapter 21, the admin code defers the authority for that in the Contracting Department to develop the scope, to oversee in the bidding process themselves and then that contract then comes to the office of administration for review and approval. So this would include contracts for things like, if you were hiring an accountant or hiring a consultant to provide Outreach Services and things like that, this is what those provisions are for. As discussed earlier, for the procurement of commodities, all those go through the office of Contract Administration and ill do my best to use the trash cans as an example. So if a department wanted to buy trash cans, they would approach the office of Contract Administration or o. C. A. If this was going to be a onetime purchase, o. C. A. Would basically put it out to bid and we would award to the lowest bidder. If, though, for example, it was going to be something we didnt know the exact quantity in the trash cans over a period of time, we put out what you can see here, a term contract. Its undefined term, undefined as a quantity of contracts. If o. C. A. Relies on the department to provide them with specifications, if they package those and they put that out to bid, o. C. A. Oversees the bidding process and o. C. A. Awards the contract and then they would basically open it up in the client departments to issue as a purchase order citywide as a term contract. There are as a few other contracting provisions. Prop q, thats a proposition that passed in the 80s that basically delegates the purchasing authority from o. C. A. To the various City Departments to oversee their Procurement Center under a certain amount. That amount was originally 5,000. It was omitted years ago. Up to 10,000 and its been at that same level ever since. O. C. A. In partnership with the City Departments reviews those transactions to make sure that the departments are following the rules as relate to delegated authority which is often times referred to here in the city as prop q. But beyond that, the only other types of contracting which arent really contracting is the vouchers when you dont have a contract and it does happen from time to time when a department obligates the city without a contract. That is something that is a collaboration between the department, o. C. A. And the Controllers Office, but that is really how the and the chapter 21 contracts are overseen in the city. The contract methods chapter 6, there are various i think were on the wrong slide chapter 6, there are several different admin codes that govern different times of contracting as relates to chapter 6. The bulk of the City Contracting when dealing with chapter 6 are low bid contracts. On the next slide ill go over the amount of contracting that the public works has in the buckets, but just to give you an idea of what the methods are under chapter 6. As a formal bidding process, when you advertise a bid, typically every 10 Business Days we have informal bids where you can essentially reach out to a handful of contractors receive quotes. We have what i refer to as job order contracts which are essentially you have you award the contracts based as a fixed profit and there is a catalog, if you will, that the contractor and the department walks the job. They itemize the Different Things that are needed for the job. And all the prices are spelled out as a price book. And so really youre paying its a profit marchen that margin that has been bid out in advance. As i can certainly walk you through all of these various methods, but i dont know if you want me to do that. Okay. So before as i mentioned, there are sorry. Supervisor haney its about the slide. So ill let you talk about this and then jump in. About this slide . Yeah. As i was saying before there are six chapter six departments. Public works departments. Were one of the few departments in the city other than the airport that does not only construction but we have a team that handles architecture as well. With that said, ill answer the questions. Supervisor haney so, of these chapter 6 departments, the public works is the only one here that doesnt have a commission . Its also one of the only large departments that doesnt have a commission . I know youre an expert in contracting across the city. Does that, at all, change the way the contracting is done in public works as compared to other departments where a commission may play some role . No. I mean, i would say i dont think it really the process of the the contracting process is the exact same. The departments whether it be public works or the other five chapter 6 departments, were all following the same rules. The way that you advertise, the contracts, the bond requirements, the contract itself and the terms and conditions are in large part the same. The only thing there is a difference is on the back end of it where public works, unlike one of the other chapter 6 departments, those contracts go through a commission for approval at the end of the process, but in the Public Works Department the Department Head, now me, has approval of the contracts. But the process itself is the exact same. Supervisor haney the process of the folks who are bidding, et cetera, is the same except in public works the Department Head approves and in the other departments, there is an approval both from the Department Head and the commission . Yes. But yes. Supervisor haney there is one more layer in these departments that doesnt exist in public works . If i may. Four departments that we work on their behalf, they actually receive Commission Approval for the work in their commissions. So a lot of the work that were doing is actually approved by a commission body. Supervisor haney by the other commission. Because were essentially professionals for hire. Supervisor peskin with exception of the slides solely under the jurisdiction of public works. Right. Predominantly the programs were responsible for. But even the appropriations review of budgets, things like that, are going through commissions. Supervisor haney you may be doing the work for another department that doesnt have a commission, like the department of homelessness thats rare. Supervisor haney but all of the things that are specifically for you, these would not have Commission Approval. But the last thing, if you could address kind of more specifically and directly the role of the director or the Department Head in contracts, obviously, thats really one of the reasons why were here, because of concern about that. And their ability to manipulate the process in any way. Can you speak to that . Yeah, i mean, for the overwhelming majority of the contract processes, i dont think the Department Head has that much opportunity to manipulate the process. In large part because this is a very public and transparent process. So we put the contract opportunity out to bid, whether its to buy trash cans or build a building. Its not much opportunity to manipulate the end result, because youd be and the highest rank official, the lowest bid knows that i submit the bid for a million dollars, the next firm bids million two, in order to change that the first firm would have to have no interest in their own protesters. We see protests routinely on the bids just when the firms have an opportunity to challenge the decisions that are being made. And oftentimes those decision are not being made at the level of Department Head. There are other procedural reasons why theyll try and knock out one firm versus another. However, as relates to public works, some of the questions i think supervisor peskin referred to it earlier there were certain provisions that were given to address housing and the homelessness issue where there were broad authorities granted to public works and other departments to address those issues. That basically waived the competitive and bidding processes all together for those areas. So thats one area where if were going to try and put some guardrails, if you will, i would certainly advise that. Like i said, ive been here about a month now in this role and thats one of the things i did the first week of being here. Even though the admin code says when we were addressing those issues, whether were buying shelters or beds or clothes or kwhafr whatever it is to support those facilities, the admin code allows me to pick whoever i want. And to move forward, ive said even though we can do that, we arent. We have put in a process which were now going to require at least three quotes from firms that can provide bedding, housing, those kinds of things and were going to assess those quotes and award based on a low bid. If there is an urgent issue we need to address, then well reassess that, but then we even have processes in place now by which even if there is a pressing need to buy something to address the Navigation Centers were trying to support, we have a review process in place for that. So the days of so one person being able to make all these decisions is no longer the case here as of public works. Supervisor peskin not as a matter of law, but as a matter of internal process since the revelations with mr. Neuro am look, all the processes were put in place over many decades. 100 years since the days of the railroads running roughshod on the California State Legislature and government to the days of hiring johnson and the days of adolph sutro, where all of these mechanisms got put into law so the government didnt cheat, wouldnt give contracts to friends and donors and thats why we have all this complicated stuff. And thats why we choose as a matter of legislating to cut through the red tape that is there to protect us from cheating or colluding because there is emergency as there is in and around homelessness. It depresses me that a truck got driven through that dealing with unsheltered human beings, but that notwithstanding, the notions around the code are laud tory notions that the government would pick the lowest bid, that it is done pursuant to a process, the parties have the right to process. I think what supervisor haney is getting at and you commented on, is that it is regulated by any contractor who thinks that they were done wrong in the process. Its not regulated by an elected official or by an oversight body that actually has the ability to do this. From time to time, and ms. Campbell or budget and legislative analyst knows that every once in a while a contract that comes to this board thats a contract pursuant to section 9118 of the city charter in excess of 10 million or in ten years of duration, and occasionally, we will get an email or a telephone call alleging impropriety in the underlying chapter 6 processes, at which point we make ms. Campbell and her staff go and pulling the scoring and try to figure out whether there was any Insider Trading or collusion. And in the 20 years ive been here on and off, weve found it a couple of times and theyve led to litigation and what have you. The reason im asking you this is, look, i think every system is not perfect. And every system has ways to cheat. And every system, if its good, has internal checks and balances to prevent that. A commission may be that. A board of supervisors may be that. Transparency usually is that. But the reason im asking is, one of the best ways to cheat is to have an extremely truncated or compressed advertising period. So where is and there may not be an aggrieved party because if you have a very compressed advertising period and only one person who got tipped off bids on it, which may be the instant case here that we will get to probably at a future hearing, what oversight is there to say, nope, this is should be on the street for 60 days, 90 days, to that the entire pool of potential commodity providers will have a chance to bid . Have we looked at that relative to the scope of contracts . And then just in the next breath im sorry, you dont have to answer all of these things because some are going to take time to research. How many contracts are there . How many fall into the chapter 6 bucket . How many fall into the chapter 21 bucket . How many fall into the emergency bucket . How many fall into the bucket of where we waived all of the requirements, where i have to tell you i just assumed and shame on me that there was an internal informal process where, of course, you got on the phone or the email and solicited three informal bids and then had a faster compressed process because weve got a slowmoving homeless emergency, but it seems like that didnt happen at all. So where were the checks and balances as to that . You dont have to answer all these things today. But the first one about, is there internally within the organization, was there any chief of staff or Deputy Director who said, gee, mr. Director, you cant put this out on the street for 10 days because thats just not long enough to expose it and lo and behold your friend may be the only bidder on it . I think this is something that i will come back and report on, but the admin code and corresponding rules and regulations, typically, if its a formal bid you have 10 Business Days. Thats usually the minimum in requirement. So weve concluded over the years that is a reasonable amount of time. But again, i think to your point, the outreach is the big thing because you can have it on the website and unless the bidders know to come to the website, it could be on there six months, because if youre selling something that is not a good service that the city buys very often, you have to rely on your outreach. I cant speak to what happened in the past with some of our projects in public works. I can speak to the ones we did for example o. C. A. That is something we have been trying to do and better as a city, just do more outreach. I can tell you its unfortunate we do have a large number of bids and we unfortunately only get one bidder and its the bidder that is incumbent. I think we as city could do a better job as outreach, but thats not limited to public works, thats a broader issue we as a city need to do more of. And hard part with that is, as a city, were not necessarily the easiest customer to do business with. And right now we have ordinances that have basically made it impossible for us to do business with almost half the states in the country, which and for good reason. Those are very good reasons why. So there are a lot of reasons why. Sometimes we only get one bid. Thats some of the things we need to juggle. Supervisor peskin but in the case of the garbage contract i understand what you said, possession is nine tenths, if youre the incumbent provider, you are likely the future provider and once you get your nose under the tent, i understand that. But in the case of the procurement of the commodity that are these universally reviled trash cans of which supervisor haneys hearing showed we had procured over 2000 of them, that was not the case. That was a new provider. And you would think something as commonplace as rubbish cans would have dozens, if not hundreds, of providers that one could procure from all over this country, including in the half of the states that are nonencumbered by parts of chapter 12, but for what its worth. Just an observation. Please continue. The next slide will address in part some of the questions that supervisor peskin had. The next slide summarizes of our contracts now, these are the number of contracts broken down by some of the various buckets, if you will. We have 71 Construction Contracts with an awarded value of 334 million. We have 27 professional Services Contracts that are active. These are all active contracts that we have. With an award value of 21 million. We have 14 professional Services Contracts with value of 6. 6. To clarify again, the difference between the professional services on the third line and the professional services on the second line is the professional services on the second line are the ones that are governed by chapter 6, versus the third line which is governed by chapter 21. Grants, we have 17, and then lastly we have 4,000 active commodities transactions and thats everything from tools to supplies. Those are just a lot of small transactions. Supervisor peskin what does grants mean . If you go to the next slide it gives you a breakdown of the grants. These are grants for partners we have to provide litter reduction. We hire ambassador as it relates to the pit stop program. We have grantees and nonprofit partners to assist with the Landscape Maintenance and plantings. And then finally partners that assist us with our youth as employment programs. Supervisor peskin when you say grants, theyre not subject to 6 or 21. The grants in the city are not governed by chapter 6 or chapter 21. There is a guidance memo that was issued from a group of departments here in the city, the Controllers Office, o. C. A. , d. H. R. , and the City Attorneys office provided guidance on grants. Its a fourstep process that a Department Must do if its going to award a grant. Im sorry i dont know all the act steps but the main things are that the grant must go to a nonprofit entity. The services being performed must be a service that would not be otherwise performed by that department, so for example, public works cant grant out to a nonprofit to do construction wo work. That is really our core work. The biggest thing we tried to address more recently as a city in regards to grant in recent years, there must be a process for grants. So we cant just award a grant just because we want to give it to one firm versus another. You must have some type of a process that you follow to award that as a grant. Supervisor peskin why are they characterized as grants . All these things, and im not speaking to whether theyre good or bad, theyre all for the provision of services to somebody for something. Why dont we call them contracts . Supervisor, i dont have a good answer to that other than there is no exact provision in the admin code awarding contracts to nonprofits. Over the years, theyve just evolved into their own special type of thing. We have contracts governed by 6 and 21. But then we also have the bucket of money governed by the citys policies and procedures through grants. Supervisor peskin through the chair, pursuant to our Unlimited Power of inquiry, id love to know what the 17 are, how long theyve existed, how they evolved . Just one note, 300,000 may be a drop in the bucket to a 12 million budget, but there is a 300,000 discrepancy from the previous page to this. 12. 8 on the previous page. 12. 5 on this page. Im sorry, again . Supervisor peskin if you look at the previous page where you break down the contracts. You indicate there are 17 grants in the amount of 12. 8 million. On the next page, you set out the four categories, they total 12. 5 million. Thats correct, supervisor. Ill go back with staff and get that resolved. Supervisor haney just picking up a little bit on the questions that supervisor peskin was going to around the grants. It would seem that litter reduction, Landscape Maintenance and planting, these are pretty core what i would view as Core Functions of the department, why arent these done by d. P. W. Staff . What sort of leads to a decision to say this is something that needs to be granted or contracted out . And how do you assess that decision . Is it related to sort of specific responsibilities that are in your charter or these are outside of them in some ways . Two things that im particularly interested in are the sidewalk cleaning services, that seem to be largely granted out. At least as far as i can tell. And the bathroom maintenance. And also all of the monitoring and ambassador. Im kind of interested in why monitoring and ambassador work is im guessing maybe thats the bathroom work, but why that is something that is a big part of d. P. W. s role in general . That is something ill need to go back and ask staff to get a clarification. I would assume that the operations of the pit stops isnt necessarily something that falls into the core mission of the Public Works Department. It is a need certainly here in the city to provide rest rooms to people that dont otherwise have access to them. I think its just something that over the last several years if you had to pick a department to pick up that gauntlet if you will thats not the right term, the gauntlet i think we slowed down the gauntlet [laughter] good afternoon, acting director of operations. Specific examples, some of those grantees perform things like sidewalk sweeping which is actually not the departments core responsibility, but recognizing that there are challenges in the city and there is a need for that, those are granted out. In terms of Landscape Maintenance, a lot of these are Workforce Development grants. And those are opportunities for nonprofits to develop a green workforce we need in the city. So that is a primary function of public works, but a small amount of Landscape Maintenance. Usually just after Capital Improvements are built is granted out to nonprofit organizations. And same with bathrooms. Bathrooms and sidewalk litter removal are not viewed as primary responsibilities of the department. And how do you determine what is a primary responsibility of the department or not . Why isnt bathrooms a primary responsibility considering how critical they are. Theyre nobody elses primary responsibility. Or one of the responsibilities, it seems at this point, they seem to be a big part of part of your responsibility, not just a side temporary thing. Right. Well, they are limited term funding. We havent had a dedicated funding stream for the pit stop program. We cant always hire Civil Service employees when there is a limited term funding. So i think bathrooms has not historically been the departments responsibility, but we stepped up to address that, but we have not had a fully funded program at this point. Good it, thank you. Supervisor peskin while were doing our due diligence, i also wanted to ask that the grant advice memo that you referred to also be provided to the committee, so we can understand what it says and how it works. Then i apologize because i got a couple of calls because living in the age of covid19, but i dont think you touched on solesource procedures unless i missed it . I did not. The sole source procedures under chapter 21, the Contracting Department submits a request to o. C. A. That is reviewed and scrutinized by o. C. A. So you can have sole sources based on this is the only manufacturer that can do it provide a good and service. Within the last, i want to say, in the five, seven years, there was a similar provision put into the chapter 6 contracting regarding the sole source procedures. The sole source procedures under chapter 6, its very similar. Under chapter 21, it could be things like, for example, we began to pave a certain street but then we realized there was one extra section we needed to complete that was not under the original contract, it would not be impracticable to bid out that one extra, so those are the justifications. Whether it be chapter 6 or chapter 21 sole source, the department is obligated to report those to the board of supervisors each year. Thank you. Please continue. My last slide is the reforms that weve put in place in the last month or so that ive been on board. The first one were in the process of trying to roll out right now, were providing a level of ethics training to all of the public works employees. Its required that under law director, Deputy Director and all of the individuals that touch contracts do online training, but this is something i believe is important to provide as a baseline training everyone. Because again its a good as a government. We put in roles i was talking about before, as relates to the contracting processes when it relates to providing services to support the Navigation Centers. And finally weve put in some entitle processes into grants. Ill be providing the board a copy of that as well. Supervisor peskin together with the tightened solicitation rules. Yes, sir. Supervisor peskin isnt there also a fourth thing, which as i understand it now, virtually all contracting are also being reviewed all contracts are now being reviewed by the City Attorney office in ways they have not done before and the Controllers Office, anything you want to add to that . Yes. Those are the controls that were put in place by public works, but there is also a review process put in place in the Controllers Office and the City Attorneys office that basically says that anytime that a department is going to use chapter 6. 76 or section 21 of the admin code, those contracts must be reviewed separately and apart through the Controllers Office and the City Attorneys office. Which public works fully supports that. If you dont have any more questions, i really want to thank our acting director and his staff for coming. I know there are members of the public and i know that i actually have to go meet and confer over the subpoena matter with the affected unit of labor that started seven minutes ago. Supervisor haney one other thing that would be good to have a sense of as youre looking at reforms. Again, having spoken to a number of employees as well as their labor representatives, another thing that came up was the sense that there were some situations where work could have been done inhouse by d. P. W. Employees and there was expertise there to do that work, but that it was being contracted out unnecessarily. And so one of the things, in terms of really, as youre looking at the other things we mentioned here, i would love to see data around the exempt employees and the rates there and the policies around there. I would love to see that something added to your list of reforms. Maybe you come back and say actually, were doing great and there is nothing to see here, but i would appreciate if that is something you looked at because it is something that came up repeatedly when talking to folks. I also, similarly to that, this question of how you decide whether something needs to be contracted or and whether there is im sure there are policies extended to protect against this, but if that is something you would look at because the perception was among some folks there were contracts that were going out that didnt need to be contracted out and it was somehow connected to favoritism, political relationships or that sort of thing. And again, im sure youre on expert on this in thames of the pro terms of the process and how we protect against that, but from the people in the department, there was a lot of feeling that was going on. I can certainly come back and report on that. I can say also that there is a Civil Service and review process, so if any contract regarding professional services, General Services that those contracts must go through the Civil Service commission and they also get embedded through the impacted union. So there is a whole process for that, but id be happy to come back and report on the number of the public works contracts that went through that process and what that amounted to for the last several years. I do have just one other question. There was one supervisor peskin there was one agency which actually is technically not a city agency. Its a creature of state law. That was not mentioned in this. I was looking back at slide 13, which totals almost half a billion dollars in awarded contracts and 12. 5 million worth of grants. Does that number include the Transbay Joint Powers Authority work . No. It does not. Supervisor peskin got it. So is that offbudget . I know that d. P. W. Went in there to help them, but thats not reflected in anything reported today as to ongoing construction, professional services for construction . No, they let their own agreements and they would reimburse us, so we have had billings to that project, but they would not be shown as expenditures coming out of the city, because theyre their own authority. Does that make sense . We have recovery from them. Supervisor peskin so we loan them our professional staff and they reimburse us . Correct. Supervisor peskin thank you. Supervisor haney just two other last things i want to make sure to touch on. I appreciate the training around ethics. Obviously, i want to be clear and supervisor peskin said this, i dont think that the frontline workers that there has been any allegations that theyve done anything wrong, so i dont want them to i hope that its being communicated in a way that they understand that. That this isnt theyre not all being under some level of scrutiny when i dont think there has been any sense that theyve been behaving unethically with regards to contracts or anything else. One other thing i wanted to ask you to look at, i did get feedback there were maybe Health Training for frontline workers, that they felt like they were not receiving and particularly coronavirus and everything else, but just in general in terms of the Health Hazards that they may be coming across. If you would make sure that you have an eye towards what their needs are there. 100 , supervisor, i can tell you that within the last few weeks we had an opportunity to meet with local 261, thats the union that oversees laborers. And they did express concerns, so weve already started to provide more training as relates to picking up sharp those are needles and things like that because were most concerned with those as employees and their safety. Supervisor haney thank you. Last thing, what is friends of d. P. W. And what role do they play . I dont believe there is a friends of a d. P. W. Account. Those are typically accounts, but say the friends of x, those are usually accounts as a Nonprofit Group associated with the department that collects funds to support the morale of the department and things that arent paid through city coffers. But i dont believe there is a friends of the d. P. W. Group. Supervisor haney thank you. Supervisor peskin subject to Public Comment, i would like to make a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair where we can receive answers to our inquiries and ask additional questions. Thank you, supervisor peskin. Supervisor peskin it might be helpful just to hear from our controller as to what work product you are undertaking and when we can expect it, and how it will help inform this committee, not only about our investigations, but ultimately about what changes to the a administrative code or other codes, Charter Amendments are covered by the body, but if you could elucidate on those questions . Certainly, the City Attorney office is under way with investigation and the indictments against former direct director nuru. As part of that and related to that, were conducting reviews of a number of policies, practices and procedures in the city to determine whether theyre adequately controlling against waste and abuse. We envision delivering these in quick sprints as opposed to longer audit projects. We have three reviews under way. Each of these will be publicly released and publicly available. I think the goal of them is to make recommendations to departments, to the mayor and board and others on ways that the city could avoid these sorts of risks to the extent possible. Currently were working on three reviews. We envision this will change over time as your work here, our City Attorney work progresses. We have review of the contracting processes in department of pushing, thats the product public works, thats the product were furthest along with. They have a review under way citywide regarding appropriate practices, procedures and rules regarding friends of organizations and the use of other city accounts to support department operations. And then lastly, were in the midst of a review of standards and practices for ethical behavior. Each of those three products, the first with public works, we hope to have publicly released in 23 weeks i would hope. With the other two products following shortly thereafter. We would welcome the opportunity to touch or present those products and discuss them with you as theyre released. You have asked questions similar to the ones were working through. And director talked about some of the procedures hes put in place at public works and those are topics were looking at as well. Thank you, City Attorney. And, colleagues, i just wanted to say that the next Board Meeting im going to introduce a standing hearing request for the different review white paper reports that are coming out of the Controllers Office so we can hear them in a timely way for the committee and the public. Why dont we go to Public Comment. I know there is a few speaker cards. I just have one. Eileen. If there are others that want to speak on this item, step up to the mic. Coalition for San Francisco neighborhoods here on my own behalf. Here in strong support for the review of public works Core Functions and internal administrative policies. I would like to echo supervisor haney that this is the only Major Department without a board or commission. And as a side note, its my understanding that contracting is for best value rather than lowest cost. I would urge the committee to review d. P. W. Feeforservice structure. For example, a consultation can cost 450 for two hours consultation. It should be noted that the Easter Program comes under d. P. W. As the bond known as prop b, appears headed for approval, this would give d. P. W. Easter Program Additional 628. 5 million in new funding. I would urge the board to assure that the funds for the emergency firefighting water system are used to expand on the west side, starting with dedicated awas on taraville. Its consistent with the dig once policy as water and sewer lines are replaced. Awas on everything street was upgraded so it should be implemented on terreville. Dedicated awas basically is a concern on the expanding of the west side based on the civil grand jury report, act now before its too late, aggressively expand our water firefighting system. And awas has been endorsed by speak, the coalition, terreville missions and the greater west neighborhood. Mr. Washington . You can call me ace, im here on the case here. In city hall. Reporters dig, you missed the best part of what is going on, thats okay. None of them was black so probably didnt make no difference to them. Im ace, im on the case. Respectfully request from this department here, which in my opinion been doing a good job and i knew mohammed well and supported him and even do it today, because youre not guilty until youre found guilty. But your department, ive been having big problems. Let me say this, your Ambassador Program, which i want that to be investigated real quick, because in my community which happen to be a black africanamerican however you want to call it, the western edition, the fill no more, im the ambassador and have been. But you treat us in the fillmore like were nonexistent. Everybody community has ambassadorship program, Everybody Community has c. A. C. , all you got in the fillmore is me, a. C. E. And im sick and tired of that. I would like to talk to who is in charge of the Ambassador Program because you aint spent a damn dime in the fillmore. But thats not your problem. Weve been having problems for years since willie brown been gone. They feel the fillmore, the redevelopment has gone and taken everything along. You dont clean up there. I want to sit down with you all to talk about the program and insert that. Find out why there is no money spent in the western edition. My name is ace, and im surely on the case. I supported mohammed, but right now i want to find out where the money is going, coming and we want that done right away. My name is ace, dammit, im on the case. Ace, you left your phone. Just wanted to note one of three private enterprise closures in general is set to examine about as a result of employee embezzlement, theft and fraud. This may occur at the morninger level alex. Where nonprofits are concerned, theyre second to the Financial Service industry when it comes to corruption in terms of dollar volumes lost and at the time of ongoing theft and the concealment and the number of individuals involved. And i believe that marks once covered this territory in his famous 18th premiere which is similar to critical novel humorous accounts of englands long running administration regarding the notorious organized corruption of those times. The masses comment marked famz from the marquis. Any other members of the public that wish to speak . Seeing none, Public Comment is now closed. Thank you so much to acting director and d. P. W. Staff for the presentation and engaging in discussion with the committee today. Supervisor peskin has made a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair. Can we take that without objection . Mr. Clerk, any other business items . There is no further business. Thank you. We are adjourned