Commission regular meeting, wednesday september 25, 2019 and the time is 5 p. M item 1, roll call. [roll call] item 2 general Public Comment. Members of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes on any matter within the commissions jurisdiction and does not appear on the agenda. Speakers shall address their remarks to the commission as a whole and not individual commissioners or personnel. Commissioners are not to enter into debate or discussion with the speaker. The lack of a response by the commissioners or Department Personnel does not necessarily constitute agreement with or support of statements made during Public Comment. Thank you very much, madame secretary. At this time, is there any member of the public that wishes to give Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Madame secretary. Item 3 approval of the minutes discussion and possible action to approve the Meeting Minutes of september 11, 2019. Thank you. On the agenda of approval of the minutes is there any member of the public that wishes to give Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Any discussion or questions for the commissioners . I move to approve, mr. President. Its been moved by commissioner cleveland. And i see Vice President covington. I was going to move it but i second it. Thanks very much, Vice President and seconded by commissioner hardeman. Without objection call for the question all in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. The motion is passed. Madame secretary. Item 4 chief of administrations report report from Administration Deputy chief jose velo, report on administrative divisions facility status and updates finance, support services and training within the department. Before we do that, chief welcome. Welcome, chief wyrsch sitting in the chiefs spot. Thank you very much. Chief velo. Vice president , commissioners, good morning, chief wyrsch jose velo administration, this is my Commission Report for the month of august, 2019. As ive done in the past few months i give you a comprehensive report for my division and bureaus. Im going to give you you a highlight report. On the matters im involved in, we are still meeting and we have the committees that we have formed and in june of this year, have been meeting regularly now regularly reporting. Weve been reporting minutes for the meeting coming up to the headquarters so we are pleased with how the members are involved in the process of creating new policies procedures and other things that are going on like that and more and more meetings are announced every day. So we are pleased with that. And my role is to coordinate to make sure that the persons working on meet the standards and communicate with the facility and process with them too. Im working on several projects with my different bureaus. We are working on the location of the training facility. We have meetings with the chief of the department and we are moving forward on this. We know its high priority for us and we are moving forward and trying to find a good location for it. So hopefully by next year with the bond measure we have some progress on it. But we are moving forward and we identified some sides that could be a potential for us so we are looking forward to that. The project, we are working with chief dewitt and the captain for the aws part of that project. As you know we are requiring we had the presentation last week that we are requiring to install awss piping on this project. And our goal is to have all new developments come up with this and paid by the developer. And the city will attach to our system and make sure we have secondary protection for these projects so thats one that has come up recently and we are working on that too. One of the main goals of administration is to make sure we have a good Succession Plan for future officers to be there. We have been in contact with different vendors to produce training for us, come into the department and start working on that. Im in contact with several vendors that can do this and come to us. Chief officer in training, we are trying to develop classes with the chief Training Division to come up with more officer training. We are looking at a range of topics, bill of rights, investigations training, so forth. So we want to develop this continuous training for the new promoted officers and chief officers to continue this too. So we really had a lot of focus on this for the future of the department. Training division, we continue with the training, we started on july 1 its going to go through november. We have the captain attend every training so far. We started to incorporate station 49 with this training. We trained 61 members this month so far 107 so thats great progress to get these trained in different topics of the department and be more involved so i want to thank the ems Training Division that is helping with this. So far for our members this month in august we trained 222 with a total of 149 members trained on active shooter. And i sent you to the drill we had in june and we just saw that for too so thank you for that. Recruit training, we have a new recruit captain that was selected by the chief. We completed the oneyear testing for the 134th class. We continue to do testing for the 125th and we are getting to start with the 126th. We will start on october 7. Projected collaboration will be february 28 of 2020 so we have selected all the members for that class and they are ready to go and the division is getting ready for that. Today they selected interviews for the new training lieutenants that are going to help the other class so looking forward to that for the other class. Another thing working hard on training. Some of the things they do, they had an event with them. And we also had train the trainers, approximately 12 members from the department became new instructors. So every year the captain trains a class so we have more members in the department and young members being involved in this training for them to develop and give to the community so we receive the young folks coming in and being a part of that. Our bureau of planning, we are getting close to the balancing thats coming up in the next few days. We completed the vacancy for station 49 that was september 4 we finished that. So members we have a new tour and we believe this new process and new shift process will alleviate some of the gaps we had in the system for coverage so thats going to help a lot too. The chief was extremely busy with this. Station 35. Its going to start october 1 delayed a week or so. On the 14th we are going to have on the pier, on the eighth we are going to have the parking area near pier 24. Its going to be a demolition. Next year they have some issues with the migration and things that we have to do this work now otherwise we have to hire a biologist to do this so we are on track with this but its going to happen. Station 49 facilities, its only a two week delay so far but its making Good Progress as you can see from the process and its within budget. Apparatus the standards the central this week. Actually had a meeting about an hour ago given that this is high priority for the department and we are going to streamline this process. A factory in louisiana to inspect the new trucks. They found issues they are going to address, the way the ladders step, they are going to correct that. Thats why we do just one make sure it meets our standards, correct whatever needs to be corrected and continue to build the rest of them so this is a better process, make sure we get what we want. And we have the new budgets that are coming in, going to be in place. As far as stations generally for 219 coming for 214 we are procuring contractorses. The Public Safety bond, it will start in 2020. The apparatus project, we have the stations that are being affected right now and we completed the reparations for the showers in station 19 and 33. We have as you may know already a new Health Safety and wellness chief chief parks is a new member thats taking the role and she started two days ago on monday. Already very busy. We have given her a lot of projects to work on. Some of the things she is working on right now we had a meeting with the Behavioral Health unit, she is going to be overseeing this unit and making sure that it meets the standards that we need. We want to make an argument to grow this unit because we need to grow and make sure it is functioning properly. Weve been having discussions about the Health Check Program restoration. We want to make sure that we have all the players in place 798 the office and chief parks involved in this office so make sure we go back to the members and offer the health check which is something we need to do. One of the things we also are doing is the Injury Report used too good to chief wyrsch and go to hr so now chief park is going to analyze that data, what kind of injuries do you see more common happening where all those things, so we can address some of those issues, whether its training equipment or whatever so we can focus on that so that process is going to change a little bit but from that information we can do education or equipment changes if needed for that. If we see too many ankle injuries for any month we can see whats going on and address that when we inspect the apparatus. If we see other things happening with gurneys we can address that too so we are going to get some good data and focus on the health of the members so i think thats a good project. Community events in the last month or so we had station 49, 42, this is something we are doing on a frequent basis in district 10. They do a stop the bleed and hands on cpr with the community. They go out there and this is done on a regular basis. One of them we had this month. Thank you for commissioners for those of you who attended the september 11 that happened the morning of the last meeting. It was a wellattended event. As you recall from the stair climb we had there too and some of you attended fire 101 thats an event some of you put together. I want to commend the commissioners. So thank you for attending fire 101. We put you through the ringer if i may say, so that was good. So i wanted to let you know this saturday we have the womens group is putting together a very nice event they do every year. Its two days, saturday and subbed, norcal girls firefighter camp. The chief is going to be there too so you are invited to show up if you want to be there. Its a great event and all the participants really enjoy that. And that concludes my report. And im happy to answer any questions you may have, commissioners. Thank you very much, chief. At this point we will call Public Comment on chief velos report. Any member of the public wishes to approach, please do so. Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Commissioners i see commissioner. Thanks for your report. In regards to the new health and safety chief how does that how is that going to work as far as hierarchy is concerned with the doctors that the department employs . So as you know the commission oversees the Doctors Office and the goal for the new chief is to communicate collaborate and gain information from the Doctors Office in regards to health issues, injury issues and so forth. So they are going to work together. The chief is going to work in my Administration Division and is going to be collaboration sharing information as far as how much they can get because we have the concern about raw data and information we are getting so thats basically the goal of this office. So you mentioned bringing back the wellness program, thats the program that does regular checks on firefighters. Correct. Where has that program been . So there was issues in the past, a few years back there were concerns with the members that the data they were getting directly reported to the Doctors Office and they were afraid that was going to put them out of service or whatever. So they had concerns then the program started to go the wrong direction because members were not showing up and we were being charged for that visit that was not scheduled because they were afraid of what was going to happen with the data. So our goal is to have a conversation with them for the health of the members the benefit of the members and then we dont want, we want aggregate data thats going to give us a picture of the Fire Department. And the member has to talk to their own doctor to get the issues that can be addressed that identify on the exam with the visit they do with the clinic. So we are going to start with that. The funding is there so thats the good news. We are doing it but we owe it to our members to make sure they do it. I think theres legitimate concerns the members have about their private information that is shared or their ability to earn. I think thats a big deal. But i think times have changed when it comes to both physical and mental health. And i think that this new physician is critical to building that trust level because obviously the members didnt trust the department enough with the information which is why they werent coming forward. I get it. I probably wouldnt have either. But this position is going to be critical in building up that trust to make sure that the information is used appropriately and not to disqualify people because it will fail from the beginning if the that trust isnt there. So im happy to see that. I looked into your report and i see that you have reports, for example, about how many, i think this is under the doctors report. How many random drug and alcohol testings. You know, this is the kind of thing in postaccident tests, this is the kind of thing the department is doing proactive to make sure its members arent doing something wrong. I think what i would really like to see in the future, i dont object to these because its important members arent drinking on the job. What i would like to see is a report about how many people have voluntarily come up and done this testing that the department has offered and what information we are gaining from that. And the third step being how we are using that information to better this department. Right. I think that is one thing that we do an amazing job in this department at saving the lives of the public. I think we do a terrible job im just going to say it because i think its true of fending for ourselves and taking care of ourselves. And it is at the to the detriment of our members, historically over the years, we are seeing it in cancers and suicides and all sorts of Different Health issues that we are getting as firefighters and i think that we have a real opportunity to change that. I know that cal fire has gotten a lot of money from the State Government on this issue, especially with mental health, and i believe that they can be a resource as well to help us with the structure of what the new health and Safety Department should look like. But i think we have real opportunity to do some proactive stuff and i also think that the fire ops thing that commissioner, Vice President covington and i went through two weeks ago was amazing on two different levels. One, its the type of thing that should be done before a budget and not after a budget because all the ledge lawmakers were shocked by it. The other lesson for me at least when you put a civilian through Something Like that, when we went into the burning building i thought to myself is this really the right type of equipment that we should be going into buildings with, because its so heavy, its confining, you cant see anything. Its like you guys are going into these fires with your arms tied behind your back and especially for smaller people like myself, its a lot of weight. And its a lot on a person going into these buildings so it made me think are we using equipment that is 21st Century Equipment or are we holding onto equipment buzz we have these traditions in San Francisco . And thats an important question we should be asking ourselves because we should be a state of the Art Department respecting our history but a state of the Art Department. Some of our equipment is outdated and old so the Department Needs to be looking at that type of thing. In regards to station 35, i echo your sentiments in regards to a biologist ill say what everybody is thinking you get down there and get the piers pulled before they get down there because it will be another excuse to delay another delay the city throws at us. Pull the piers out of the water before that guy shows up. Very important. Thats the goal. I think thats it for now. Are we going to get another report or is this the only item . Because there is something i want to say about the drones and why dont i just say it now . We had an incident last weekend where we lost a Police Officer here in San Francisco. We had to call on a neighboring county for a drone to come in and help us search for that officer. That is an embarrassment to the city and it frankly it angered me. Im not saying the department is at fault because we have been moving forward. I have been, chief cochrane is doing a great job with this but now theres another city obstacle and its a joke. We got to get through it. We put Police Officers and firefighters in danger by not having these drones. And thats my original comment that i made earlier. We are doing a terrible job of taking care of ourselves because this is one tool that will help us in the end. It will help firefighters, help the public but it also helps us by allowing us not to put ourselves into certain positions ce