Something about how the changes in the board has approached the budget itself in terms of the addbacks over time. This is showing you the number of addbacks, meaning individual line items in the boards restoration package at the end of the day, backed by year back over time. Its also showing you in the cross hatch bars here, the number of addbacks that are under 50. You can see a remarkable increase in the number of addbacks that the board has allocate through the budget process over time. As high as consistently over 200, as high as 250 different line items in recent years, compared to historical norms in a prior period of under 100. What this means is the allocations that the board is making are increasingly narrow and specific. You see the number of small addbacks increasing. I think this tells us something about how and the question it raises for me is how the board wants to balance what youre trying to do with the allocation process itself. Are you trying to allocate money for different policy Priority Areas or are you trying to do that in addition to allocating to the specific programs within that to achieve that goal. That balance is an important one. Its something that strikes us. There would be a lot of different ways to restructure the addback process, again with the goal of improving the efficacy of that process and the transparency. Here is one outline of one such way at the bottom of the page. I think this is in line with the recommendation you hear from the budget and legislative analysts regarding budget priorities. February through may would be a period prior to submission of the budget from the mayor where the board could engage in a process of developing and adopting as our legislative leaders set up policy goals for the upcoming fiscal year as a board. They would would be highframing strategy choices the board would be making. They would reflect if this was done effectively where the board felt additional investment was needed at a high level to move key priorities forward for the city. You would adopt that as a body. This would provide direction to the departments, to the mayor, regarding what the priorities were. Having done that, you could then, as a body, move into developing different investment strategies, help move those policies forward. For example, if the board adopted as a policy priority that you wanted to see a cleaner city, the next step of this project, then, would be a discussion of, well, how could we make the city cleaner . What are the specific proposals that members of the public would have, either us or the budget and legislative analysts for you that could move the goal forward . You would see different proposals coming forward to move those ahead, and you could begin to weigh how you want to spend money when its available at the end of the process. It could be a longer and more thoughtful process that has more analysis sitting under it with more of it conducted in public meetings. Then following submission of the budget in june and july, in this conceptual outline, the board would be reviewing the budget the mayor has proposed against the priorities you have already adopted and against the enhancements youve determined are the means to move forward. It would allow you to identify gaps by what the mayor has proposed and what the board of supervisors has identified as your priorities. It would help frame the june and july budget process. And then after budget adoption, and i think this is an important thing to keep our eyes on, is the role of the Budget Committee can be also to monitor the implementation of the budget as well, not just develop it. So if the board has adopted four different policy Priority Areas, coming back to those over the course of the budget year after its adopted to say how are we doing . Is the money being spent . Are we seeing the results, et cetera . This is a way one could see of the addback process. I will leave it there. Theres more information in the report. We look forward to working with you on this project in the year ahead. Would be happy to take any questions you have. Supervisor cohen thank you, mr. Rosenfeld. I appreciate it. Weve had many conversations about shaping this and making it as painless as possible. I also want to indicate that i really do like the idea of board priorities, talking to my colleagues and figuring out where exactly the tranches of large subject matter will resources. Supervisor yee . Supervisor norman yee as you look at these strategies, some are probably within the purview of what we can handle here as a committ committee, highlevel priorities, things like when you start looking into strategies and so forth, do you know if other jurisdictions have done this where theyre not theres additional staffing needed for additional consultants . I couldnt imagine that could be what youre talking about is what the Mayors Office does with probably 50 Staff Members to do this type of work. Or is it just melissa . [laughter] so i think its a good point. Any of the work requireded here is going to require not just the attention of the committee, which would potentially be significant, depending on how you draw this. It would also require professional help around it to help drive it forward. The mayors Budget Office has eight or nine people in it. Its important to remember that. You have resources from our office and the office of budget legislative analysts. That could be tweaked around. It depends on how you approach it. I know a number of other jurisdictions use facilitated processes to get through these different stip s. Ive been to county budget workshops elsewhere where they have a workshop approach to some of the early policy goal setting that could be a facilitated process that would be different than a standard meeting here. Ive also been here for times when this board of supervisors has adopted policy priorities. I think done best, you need support of a committee. I think there could be significant support that could be provided by our offices. To move different pieces ahead. Supervisor norman yee part of what im talking about is a big part, which is the dialogue we would have as Committee Members with the community. If its going to be meaningful, its going to require much more meetings than were having now. I dont deny that depending on i think theres different moves with how you could move forward with this place. If this is where folks wanted to go, you could take it in steps. To do the golden version of this would take significant time from the board itself. It would involve you using your existing time as a committee differently. I think weve all talked in both the process itself and after the process that its probably a broad feeling by Board Members themselves and departments that the way were conducting march, april, may hearings is probably not adding value in the way you want. Probably a smaller step would be how do we want the use those hearings differently without increasing the time from the board and departments and without meeting additional resources, we could make them more effective and organized around those concepts. Supervisor norman yee i guess the last question i would have would be looking at the two reports in regards to im looking at your arrows here in terms of timing and also the recommendation from bla, with their timing of when we would like or when the mayor would submit the budget is different. So what im seeing here is pretty much the timing for submitting the budget for us to review will remain the same versus bla report saying that we should get a month earlier than what is existing now. I just want to quickly interject. Melissa whitehouse is going to be presenting and will be presenting that. If we can continue with the presentation . I will just briefly say, youre correct, supervisor yee, the budget legislative analyst has suggested moving it up from may 1st. We have not. We have suggesteded that the board can effectively move half of the budget up to may 1st by maximizing the number of departments you have under your processes of may 1st. We have not suggested changing the date, just using the dates differently. Supervisor norman yee okay. Thank you. With that, its perfect transition to Melissa Whitehouse. Shes the director of the Mayors Office of budget. As she cues up her presentation, i want to welcome you and thank you for being here. Thank you. I really appreciate you asking me to come and speak on this item today. As you know, our office cares very much about the budget process. I do want full disclosure for the body. I did discuss these recommendations with mayor lee several times, but i have not had time to discuss with acting mayor reed. Please take this today as the Budget Offices perspective. I will be happy to report at a later date. So from a very high level, youve heard from the budget analysts on the great work theyve done for you all on research. I want to say thank you for taking a look at this process. Its really wonderful that this committee and the chair wants to take a look at this and figure out how to make it better. I think thats a worthy exercise. Everything that has been recommended and discussed today, we want to be helpful in any way that we can. Theres one area of disagreement with the budget analyst report, which supervisor yee just mentioned around timing im going to talk about why that is. And the rest of the time, i tried to put together what all the recommendations together sounded like to me. Thats using the hearings more productively, requesting work from the three financial offices. I have to agree with the controller. All three offices feel like were here to help and want to be helpful and focus on where the board wants us to focus and the addback process. So moving the proposal from june to may 1st would be incredibly challenging for us. The typing of information, i think, is timing of information, i think, is my biggest concern. We usually know how much discretionary choice the mayor will have to meet by may. People are asking what is in the budget and what is the mayor going to find. I cant really tell them until late may. Thats when i actually know. That doesnt mean we do nothing until midmay and wait until we know that information. We work extensively until midmay. A couple of big reasons are these pieces of information we find out. These are usually finalized right near the end. We have police and fire open this year. A 1 change in wages for police and fire is about 7 million callers, so you can imagine, you know, this can have a big change, and then the following year, it will be all other labor unions that are open. Its one thing. Another is weve got a weather update and the ninemonths report. Its always a number im anxiously waiting to hear. The next is the mayors revised budget. It comes out on may 11th. I did not know on may 1st what we were going to ahear. We had to have very Difficult Conversations with the mayor regarding a negative 20 million. I think this is a good example of why it would be very challenging if the board had had to make a cut that large in such a short period of time. Similarly, i know the controller mentioned that and actually be budget analysts this conversation has happened in the past. One of the outcomes of that is that we actually do, in a year when budgets are all open, we do propose a significant portion of the budget already on may 1st. Its not just underpriced apartments. We proposed 36 of the budget or 3. 5 billion and 13 departments on may 1st. We look forward discussing with this committee which apartments will be introduced. Do i not anticipate any challenge with departments moving forward on may 1st. This committee will have much more work in may than last year when we had five departments with closed budgets, and thats why we had not proposed any may 1st budgets last year. Similarly, i just wanted to note i did review the budget analysis around the actual time to review budgets. From my perspective, if you look at similar governments, similarly strong mayor Government Systems like San Francisco, this board of supervisors, right in the middle of that time frame i saw as average, for the six strong mayor cities in california, including San Francisco, theres approximately 54 days for legislative review, and, as you know, this body has 60 days. I do think theres an issue of using the time more efficiently and productively, but proposing our budget earlier than we already do, i dont think is necessary to address the problems weve heard from the controllers survey and expressed from you over the last budget seasons. My budget season is well under way for the current year. We proposed instructions on december 6th. I know departments, especially with commissions, have already been working for months on that are budget. So it would be extremely channelling to change the date at which we propose our budget this current year. Then im going to talk a little bit about would changing the date solve the problem. I think the answer to that is probably no. Just at a high level, i mentioned this, we spend months meeting with Community Members, the mayor himself, and many of the senior advisors leading up to the proposal. We make so many presentations on proposals. When i have the final presentation about how much money we do or do not have, its not like were starting from scratch. We have the information needed for decisions on may 1st. For example, i just wanted to talk about last years process. In 1718. For our currentyear budget, after all labor costs, baselines and other adoptive policies, such as fully funding the capital plan, the mayor made approximately 33 million in discretionary that was focused around homelessness. It was many, many months, consulting with community stakeholders, the board of supervisors allocated 30 million in the same year. The decisions were made over a much, much shorter time period. I think thats something to think about. And you know that the board will have an addback process every year. We put together a table that looks at addbacks. The average over both years since weve been doing twoyear budgeting, theres been about 25 million on average in the first year. I dont believe that the board i understand this past year that maybe there was some waiting to see how much the final dollar value would actually be before making serious decisions about where to spend, but i do think you can make assumptions similar to what we do when you know youre going to have a process and you know youre going to have a ballpark of some funds to spend, and you dont have to wait until the last minute to start thinking about how to allocate those funds. And the last slide, trying to summarize the allocations. Were largely in agreement with the budget analyst and controller. It would be extremely helpful for me and any mayor to have the board of supervisors provide a meaningful list of priorities for the upcoming year. I meet with every member of the board and hear their priorities. We do take it into consideration when taking into account the mayors budget. I think our office and the departments really do want to please this board and provide helpful information. Whatever is most helpful, we would like to present. And then asking as supervisor yee had pointed out, this will take additional work and manpower. I think all three offices will be happy to present savings proposals. I believe it was a challenge to do meaningful analysis. If any of those offices had that information in advance, we could come up with something. I know the board gets a lot of proposals from Community Members and groups, which is very helpful at our office, but you could also, as a body, knowing your Priority Areas, asking for enhancement approves from departments as well. Thats something the Mayors Office definitely does during the phase. Asking for an overview report is a great idea. One thing that hadnt really been talked about, but i just wanted to make a plug for it is moving departments to fix a twoyear budget. In the off years where theres a bunch of Department Budgets that wouldnt be open, it would make sure that the Budget Committee is focusing more on the departments they care most about. For example, i know there are 12 departments the last psych where will the budget analysts didnt do a report, and the board didnt hear very much about. So that would be a good place to start, if were adding to our existing i think we had five departments the last go around. And the next year, everything is open. We need to talk about which departments will be fixed. Im happy to talk about that if anybody wants to. The last one, i know chair cohen already started making some of these changes, but you could ask for the list by may 1st, so an earlier deadline. You could continue to set district specific amounts, like chair cohen did this year, and really hold offices to those amounts at an earlier date. You could set a minimum amount of addbacks. Smaller addbacks have gone up specifically. You could try to revert back to a time where you said all citywide addbacks needed to be 100,000, or whatever is an appropriate level. Again, using the spring hearings to hear about enhancement proposals and items that would really inform the addback process, i think would be a good use of your time. Thank you again very much for letting me speak on this matter. Supervisor cohen thank you for the time and energy youve dedicated to helping guide us through this process. Supervisor tang, i see your name on the list. Supervisor katy tang thank you. I think its pretty good idea. Speaking about beginning the process earlier, just given the sheer number of things we learn, whether its midmay or afterwards, i just dont support moving the budget process any earlier. I dont truly believe that we will collectively achieve any better results from doing so. So i commit to working with supervisor cohen. I also want to speak to the blas recommendation regarding having our board similar to Sacramento City council passing or adopting policy recommendations, that analysts could look into the feasibility and present a vetted list to the board later. In the past, we have adopted similar types of resolutions, but i think they were too broad. Right . It was all the members of the board just said, yes, we support public safety. We support homelessness and we support housing. Then it became a long laundry list and didnt give an idea to priorities. I havent seen what sacramento has done, that would also be a recommendation i would add. Thank you so everyone who looked into this. I hope well be able to have an improved process in the future. All