Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20240713

SFGTV Government Access Programming July 13, 2024

Organizations and faith institutions and more. And explore ways to pass the cost savings on to the residents themselves, and not just the managers of these sites. And as i mentioned, highlight affordable and Senior Housing sites. We have already started seeing the consequences for neighboring communities in the last round of Public Safety power shutoffs that there were multiple Senior Housing complexes in communities where the power went out. And with some cases with clients living there and tripping over each other and going without their oxygen equipment that required electricity for days. San francisco, we dodged the bullet in this case, but we might not be so lucky in the future. There are a number of other recommendations. Just to touch on one real briefly, a prohibition on natural gas and new construction has been discussed. I think that is worthwhile considering, given our cas disar prone areas of the city with earthquakes. We saw that in the Richmond District how disruptive and devastating even an accidental natural gas rupture for a relatively small pipeline can be. And, again, ill note in several points, back in 2014, our hazard and mitigation plan recommended solar plus storage. In 2019, in july, our hazards and Climate Resiliency plan identified, again, seeking funding and through advanced solar plus storage at critical facilities. But as i mentioned earlier, theres been little progress on this thus far. Next recommendation is another strategy to reduce Financial Burdens and its around energyis for. Currently much of our programming is often complicated and requires a variety of different agencies implementing it. And San Francisco has areas that have low utilization of existing funds. For example, one pg e Efficiency Program requires customers of new appliances to complete an application, refer to this years guidebook on what qualifies for a rebate and then to keep that receipt, submit it in an application to them in order to get cost savings. That puts a high burden on individuals to meet. This is a map of areas in San Francisco that have older housing stock. But low rates of energies for programmulatprogramming utiliza. And while its not as exciting sounding as having solar installed, it has a meaningful impact on reducing bills and improving home health. So i have a litany of recommendations, again, including working with the department of environment and others to develop a onestopshop, one place where people in San Francisco can found out about energy Efficiency Programs and to be guided through that. Also its worth noting that north of here theyre developing an advanced Energy Center with significant funding from the state where people would be able to walk in and to actually learn about and to purchase new Energy Efficiency equipment on site and theres nothing like trying something firsthand and understanding it. But we dont have a good system to set that up for both customers and contractors at the moment. I think that theres an opportunity to offer remote demonstrations and to instill excitement. Last, but not least, Workforce Development. A key goal should be bringing job and crossindustry training for locals for cleanpowersf and as it expands its Renewable Energy portfolio and the city electrifies our infrastructure, the need for a trained workforce is going to grow. And amidst that theres obstacles to our existing Workforce Development programs and training folks. One example of an existing obstacle relates to our grid alternatives partners, who implement and install lowincome solar through our gosolarsf program. And most of the funding they receive goes to staff training and the actual infrastructure themselves. Folks who are being trained to install this on homes are not necessarily getting paid for their time. And if youre someone who is looking for training but you still have bills, that makes it hard to retain trainees and hard to keep them in the industry and to bring them up to where they need to be. What i would suggest is that we if cleanpowersf decides to support more of this type of programming they have funding for stipends and to meet people where theyre at. Now the next workforce recommendations that i would point to, theyre a variety in here, and another one includes voluntarily disclosing our g. O. Centerificertification program , minority, lgbtq, and veteranowned business enterprises. And last year they started asking those enterprises that have that certification to voluntarily disclose it to m. C. E. And moren. And another thing that we should consider doing is building our funding existing Workforce Development programs in the Community Like citybuild, the ymca and Young Community developers and pore. Especially for trainees that need more than just job training. And some final notes, whatever process that were embarking on, as it pertains to equity, needs to be inclusive and to allow the participants and communities to meaningfully steer it. Theres examples of projects in the bay area and the oakland block to boldly introduce water and other efficiency improvements to communities that have been met with mixed feedback and to enhance the displacement pressures. So if the communitybased organizations, and faithbased groups and participants in these communities think that another strategy should be adopted, cleanpowersf and lafco would be wise to heed their input. And its also going to be an obstacle and it should be a priority for us to serve undocumented populations. And they encountered this obstacle and as were trying to tailor the programming to communities to reduce their energy benefits, cleanpowersf would be wise to partner with the services that already serve undocumented communities to make sure that they can really get those services to them. And most of these recommendations will require collaboration and lastly, i feel that as a city were at a critical juncture. While these projects and recommendations will take time and theyre worthwhile endeavors, nonetheless and we have an aging population. We have the threat of climate change. And were already experiencing the consequences of it. And i hope that lafco and cleanpowersf will seriously consider these recommendations because we have an opportunity as the city to lead the way in responding to these challenges and these recommendations will be a key part of our choice to rise and to meet them headon. Id like to acknowledge a very long list which is in your packet of folks who have been resources who have interviewed me and provided me with information. And with that i would welcome your questions and feedback. Chairperson fewer wow. Mr. Parsons, thank you very much, i think that we all really learned a lot. Colleagues, any comments or questions . I actually have a lot of comments and questions, but ill defer to my colleagues first. Commissioner mar, anything that you would like to share . Commissioner mar well, thank you very much for your work on this. Yeah, its extremely informative and helpful. I just had some questions about the solar plus storage part. And so, yeah, that really sounds important and, you know, i definitely agree with your recommendation about prioritizing looking at Affordable Housing sites and senior centers, where we could add this. I had a question you showed a map of i guess the Department Environment had already identified sites. Yes. Commissioner mar when were those sites identified . This was back in 2017. And the sites on this map where the areas they did a study to see what energy loads were needed and what would have to be is stored on those sites. These were not all of the sites and it was a list of 67. And those were mostly schools, fire and other community centers. Not housing sites. Commissioner mar and do you know what the status is right now of moving forward with on on installation at any of these sites . The only one that im aware of from my conversations with the sfpuc staff who work on these projects is at fergg and marshall high where theyre piloting it. And thats the only one that im aware of thus far. Commissioner mar great. And then im just trying to understand the benefit of these installations so at the site, would that provide backup energy just to the school or would it serve a broader a broader geographic range of people that might lose power during a power outage . Sure. My understanding is that it was just for the school site itself and the reason that it was identified in part is that its an identified shelter. So if theres a disaster, people need somewhere to stay and that building would be able to have some sort of backup power on site. But i dont believe that its included in a larger what they call a microgrid where the whole area would be identified to have backup power. Commissioner mar great. And then on the Energy Efficiency section, and the single point of contact recommendation, yeah, that sounds really important. Is this something that maybe pg e had more developed work on, energies foron,energy efficiencg it easier for the customers to access information on energy Efficiency Programs versus cleanpowersf . They have a Training Facility in the south of market area but i believe that is mostly centered around training contractors. And the Energy Efficiency like Program Landscape and the Regulatory Framework is extremely complicated. So i dont want to make it sound that cleanpowersf could snap their fingers and have a point of contact. Others are considering banding together to have a single point of contact. And theres obstacles in statewide funding to apply for it that would be critical to overcome in order to do that locally. Commissioner mar great. You know, i think that is all the questions. Chairperson fewer thank you very much. I commissioner handy, do you have any comments . Okay, so i have really a couple of them. So, first, concerning your charts on page 8, you know, no, page 10 and 11. This is very concerning about these disconnections and the concentrations in certain areas and especially i think that would be really important to find out the information about as you mentioned how long is the power disconnected for. And also who is in those homes or households. Because we know that this area of San Francisco actually has a high concentration also of zero to 18 age individuals. So family members. And then also the reasons for the disconnections. So is it a lack of payment . Is it moving and not reconnecting . Or i think that an overlay of this actually to look at demographics of who this affects would be really be important for us as a city if we really want to reach our equity goals. And, actually, Something Like this, because its related also to Health Outcomes, should also this kind of information should also be shared with the newly formed office of Racial Equity that we can see that there are disparities racially in this information. I think that that would be important to have. And it is concerning, of course, because in these neighborhoods we have a legacy as you said of burdening these areas already with these power plants that weve had that were now causing so many disproportionate Health Outcomes for those communities which, quite frankly, that is for San Francisco, the most progressive city in the world. And i wanted to also mention about the solar plus storage sites. Is there a recommendation of how big these storage site areas have to be . That can vary on the energy load of the building. So there would be a lot more scoping work that would have to be done in order to say exactly how much needs to be allocated where. And one of the things that Valencia Gardens project has going for it, it has a large solar instillation on it. And you have to assess what is supported there as well. So in short, no, this recommendation was pretty broad. Suggesting that we do some scoping work and also to do jousoutreach to the communitiest we have identified here and who is the best candidate for this, where do you want to see it, and how do we structure it to serve your needs and wants. Chairperson fewer i have been looking in my district at sites that could be under construction. Since were building and were building it new, what are the things that we should be includes, and this seems like one of them. One of them is a senior center, actually, to house about 99 units of affordable Senior Housing. But it seems as though this would be something that we should add into it while were doing it. And i have also talked about cooling centers. You know, that if were serving we dont have enough in our district actually, and i dont think actually citywide. While were doing this remodeling and dem ligd demolitd rebuilding, that we keep this in mind. Is there any legislation that requires the developers or the builders to include this in their plans . I think that thats probably a question that we could look at, because we should legistate just as we are legistating, quite frankly, about the gas natural gas in public buildings which is going to expand, and to be extended to private development. To lessen our dependency on natural gas and we do it to have impact. And about the training programs, i think this is really super important because were going into the area and were in like the third Industrial Revolution in our country where things like driving jobs is a number one living wage jobs for folks without a college education, right . And it seems as though this is sort of a niche where we could actually have people sort of reimagine their professions and to get into this field that is actually growing. And that theres a growing need for it. So i actually see possibility of a Certificate Program at city college, which is free. And also people who are incarcerated that we the best thing that we could do for folks who are incarcerated is actually to give them a job when they finally come out of finishing, completing their sentence. And so i think that these opportunities actually we could be developing a pipeline. I think that thats what were going to need. Because many times in the jobs that we have in San Francisco there isnt a pipeline of people that we have built along the way. If theres a standard such as a Certificate Program with the city college, that theres a standard that is developed, then we can actually take that standard and train people up to that standard and we could have a pipeline of folks for those kind of hopefully for living wage jobs to help us through. And then again, i also just think that, you know, when were doing all of these and were doing about Workforce Development, that were always thinking about the most marginalized communities that we know in San Francisco actually make below a living wage or a livability wage. And so how can we elevate those communities actually to have more financial or economic stability. So i think that this report is fascinating and i am wondering because i think that there are things that we could be doing. As lafco or even as the board of supervisors that we could be doing on these recommendations. Im wondering how we should work on some of these next steps. Because this is just i think that this is its thorough but its just the tip of the iceberg. I think that we could be doing, for example, the storage plus storage spaces we could be developing a citywide overlay of about where the eligibility just as we did for Affordable Housing where are these sites that we could be actually having them. And we could do a city overlay about where they could be all over the city. I think that, you know, in relation to actually where our shelters are and coordinate it all and i feel that a lot of that is very uncoordinated. So i think that theres tons of possibilities. It hits on many of the things that im super concerned about which is, of course, disparities in San Francisco, and never really thought about that this disconnecting of power, actually. I kind of didnt even see that. But, again, i think that were we to weed out disparities, and especially the Racial Disparities within San Francisco, these are the nuances that we actually dont think about, right . Because those of us who have never had their power shut off, and we dont even think about it. But that this happens, now im looking at the number that you gave us which is like 15,000 . 15,000 account shutoffs in a year. Chairperson fewer and what percentage of that are affecting families . I suspect a high number of them. And so i just think that this information is really fascinating and i want to thank you for this project and how much work you have done. Commissioner haney any comments at all . Commissioner haney i wonder what kind of updates in terms of some of these recommendations that we might be able to receive in terms of what ends up happening and whether some of these things are formalized. And i am sure that supervisor fewer that there may be some things with the office of Racial Equity that you have been championing that they could be looking at as well with this. And some of the data that, obviously, seems to be missing and it is some of the Racial Equity questions sort of more directly. And one other thing that i wanted to ask about, and i know that you looke

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