Im the chair of the budget and finance committee and joined by supervisor walton, mamd exlman and president yee. Thank you for broadcasting. The due to the covid19, the Committee Room is closed. However, members will be participating in the meeting remotely. The interpreter, please. Im sorry, i didnt get the whole thing. Im going to find somebody that can assist, because its long. Its pretty long. So i think maybe one of our interpreters has the script and will do a more accurate job. Due to coincident house emergency and to protect boar. S. Due to coincident Health Emergency and to protect Board Members, the board of supervisors, the chamber and Committee Room are closed. However, members will be participating remotely. This is pursuant to the local, state and federal orders, declaration and directives. Committee members will attend through Video Conference and participating in the meeting to the same extent as if they are physically present. Public comment is available on each item on this agenda. [ ] i apologize, chair fewer, it sounds like we got disconnected. Can you go ahead and hang up and ill make arrangements with the spanish interpreter later. Yes, yes, of course. Sorry for the inconvenience and is there anything else i can assist you with . No, not at the moment, thank you. Thank you. I apologize, chair fewer. No worries. Happens all the time. Madam clerk, i think we were in the middle of our cantaneese interpretation . No, issue was call fo i was e interscript. Theentire script. Since we were interrupted, can you read this again and then we can be uninterrupted while we have the cantonese interpretation. Thank you. Due to the Health Emergency and to protect Board Members and city and public, the legislative chamber and Committee Room are closed. Members will be participating in the meeting remotely and this is taken pursuant to the local, state and federal orders declaration. This will be through Video Conference and participate in the meeting to the same extent as if theyre physically present. Public comment is available on each item, both channel 26 and sfgt. Org are streaming across the screen and each member will be allowed to speak. You can call 415 6550001 and again 41 415 6550001 and meetg i. D. 146 1698090. Press pound twice. When connected, you will hear the meetings discussions and you will be muted and in listening mode only. When the item of interest comes up, dial star three to be added. Best practises are to call from a quiet location, speak clearly and slowly and turn down our television or radio. Alternatively, you may submit Public Comment by email to myself, the budget and finance committee clerk. If you submit public email, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and included as a part of the official file. Finally, spanish and cantonesree are available. speaking cantonese . Can you provide us with a script . Sure, im just pulling up the script, sorry. speaking spanish gracias. Denada. Madam clerk, can you please call items one and two together, please. Item number one, appropriating ordinance all estimate receipts and expenditure for the school years ending june 30, 2021 and 22 and item number two in the annual budget and appropriation ordinance for fiscal years june 30, 2021 and june 30, 2022 or establishing these positions. Members who wish to provide Public Comment call 415 6550101 and i. D. 14616980 and press pound twice. Please dial star three to be added to speak. Thank you very much and good morning. Welcome to day two of this weeks budget hearings. Yesterday we heard from 17 departments and today and tomorrow, we will be hearing from 13 departments per day. I want to acknowledge that Public Comment is already trick and i confuse fo confusing for w virtual system. I want to let you know how were structuring the day. The main items were hearing are the annual appropriation ordinance and the annual salary ordinance. Together, these items make up the budget and when we are hearing departmental presentations, its under the umbrella of these two items and this is why Public Comment is heard all together on the budget rather than on individual departments. The other items you see on the agenda during these days are pieces of trailing legislation that is associated with a particular departments budget and thats why its called concurrently as we hear the departments budget. Im hoping to move most of the departments to the front of the agenda to avoid further confusion. I see reminders about what today will look like and the budget and the Appropriations Committee is hearing first round departmental presentations today and tomorrow and these presentations do not yet include reports for the budget and legislative analysts but will allow departments to share an overview of their work. Each day will begin at 10 00 a. M. And the committees will recess at 12 30 or 1 00 for a 30minute lunch. Im asking departments to be concise in their presentations. We have 13 departments to get through and were hearing the service system, public utilitys commission, treasurer and tax collector, economic and Workforce Development, planning, children and familys commission, children, union and families, department of Public Health, department of hopelessness and Supportive Housing and Human Services agency, Municipal Transportation Agency and the airport, the port and as much as possible, we will be hearing the departments in the order listed, but i wanted to recognise that we need to accommodate scheduling conflict and call departments out of order. Thanks to all in advance for your flexibility. Next well well be at the second round of the departmental hearing where the legislative analyst will be prepared to present recommendations and cost reductions within each department and Board Members will have the opportunity to make changes to the mayors proposed budget. Theyre in the process of hiring new hires to their department and we were under, i think, impression, understanding that there wont be new new hires and there was a hiring freeze. Can you please explain. Happy to, thank you. All position aprofessionals now come through the Mayors Office and it was not a hard hiring freeze and we are approving critical positions, particularly to respond to the Health Emergency welcome as well as other critical backfills in city departments to ensure that critical core City Operations can continue and im working with the Controllers Office to generate a report of what those positions that have been improved are and im happy to provide that to the committee when it is available. So, actually, when the departments say we where in the process of hiring nine people, are we in the process of hiring ten people, does that mean that those positions have been approved . It depends, but yes. And so what could have happened is it could have been a position approved since the beginning of the hiring freeze or it could be a position that has been approved before the hiring freeze and the department had Authority Approval to fill it is sometimes it takes a long time and so, it depends based on the position. And then my next question is, does that mean that those positions, if someone says were hiring nine people and theyre in the process right now, that those positions are actually budgeted . Even though they havent been hired but theyre budgeted that departments budget . Yes, a department should not be hiring positions that they do not have budget for and taking into consideration the reductions we took in their budget to account for other vacancies in their budget. And so we will not know i mean as this board deliberates over budgets, will we know, then, which positions have been approved or not approved . And will this list continually grow throughout these budget discussions . So, yes, im hopeful to have that list available. The report from the Controllers Office available to you soon. All positions come through our office. That normally would not be the case but with this pause, they are all coming to us. We are approving positions that are critical to the Covid Response and other critical backfills and it is possible that, yes, the list will grow beyond a Snapshot Report date as our office sayses and decides that these are critical backfills to ensure city business continues. If theres a discrepancy about what might be critical, is that an area where there could be discussion or a reconsideration of actually hiring those positions . I dont know the answer to that. I dont know where the authority fits in approving of the positions. So i would be happy to circle back and understand whats possible. I see Ben Rosenfield has popped on to the scream and screen, ane can weigh in. Mr. Rosenfield because they have not yet hired but pending and so there is an opportunity, actually, to delay those hires into a time where, actually, we are not in this budget deficit. We have the understanding as a committee that we are not growing the budget and we are in a 1. 7 billion deficit and this is what our instructions have been. So could you please clarify . Sure. indiscernible . Good morning, members and city controls. Just to clarify on these questions, to the extent that a position was included in the annual salary where the departments have authority to fill them, thats one of the two items here in front of you, along with these annual appropriation ordinance at committee. To the extent the committee eliminates a position in the annual salary ordinance, the departments would no longer have the not authority to fill that position. Thats good to know, except going into these budget deliberations, what weve been hearing is that these positions are pending, not yet hired and so, actually, its not considered sort of a layoff, but its actually just postponing, perhaps, the filling of those positions. Thank you very much and i would love that clarification and i appreciate it. Thank you, mr. Rosenfield and thank you to the budget director. With that, lets get started. And so the first item on our agenda is the Health Service system and today we have with us abbey yang with lawrence lou and pamela yan. Miss yan, you have the floor. Good morning, supervisor fewer and members of the committee and thank you very much for adjusting the schedule so i could go first because i have a health board this afternoon. I will share my screen for the slide. Have they come up . Yes, we can see them, thank you. Perfect. Love it when technology works. Yes, im with the Health Service system and, we will jump right in, because we do want to be respectful of your time. The Health Service system, as you know, a dedicated to improving sustainable Quality Health benefits and enhancing the wellbeing of our employees, retirees, families, including black, indigenous and peoples of color. We wanted to point that out at the beginning, we have adopted a Strategic Plan two years ago and the principle of inclusion in the work that we do. And we have account abilities to four employers, the city of San Francisco of unified School District, the courts and city college. We cover over 124,000 lives, and number oandbecause families havd over the last five years by 11 . We have a 12. 1 million operating budget which supports the annual cost, only about 1. 2 of our annual benefit cost. And so we do see that were very efficient. And in looking at the strategy this year for our budget, there are many lenses that we use to examine the expenditures that we have. We to have a Strategic Plan with principles and core values of inclusivity and do take a zerobased budgeting process and look at all expenditures and recalculate for the coming year and we have staff that needs to maintain required certification so we meet those obligations and we also maintain High Service Levels with our existing staffing. This has been with many departments a huge challenge in moving to a virtual environment and closing to direct Contact Services with our members. There will be addressing the Mental Health needs of our workforce and prioritiz prioritg Racial Equity in our policies and practises and are happy to discuss any of the activities and i will highlight this as we go through the presentation. We look at the attrition rates to account for the vacancies that we have and we do have eight vacancies currently and are recruiting in four of those operational positions. That gives us a total attrition of four ftes and so, we are being respectful of those hiring freezes and well continue to monitor our expenses carefully and i will say that my experience in working with the Mayors Office on getting authorization for these hires is a very rigorous process and were cautious and purposeful about the positions that we do fill. We have converted to many online activities to promote wellbeing and thats important during these trying times. We have a workforce that has shifted to work environments or frontline essential workers and we are concerned that they maintain physical and mental healtmentalwellbeing. To that end, we do see a reduction. And i want to be clear, when we stood up on expanded services for eap for Public Safety and for the city workforce as a whole to have eap Services Available 24 seven, we did have very intense discussions with the Mayors Office so that we would retain those services into the next fiscal year. We want to be able to maintain those without negatively impacting the department as a whole because it was an expansion of services to support our workforce during these times and i felt like if we didnt have that commitment upfront when we set up these services, i was very leery of putting something out there and running out of funds to pay for poin th. This is the biggest shift that we saw in our budget was the increase for the nonpersonnel services and the Employee Assistance program that we stood up to support our workforce. And just lastly, i would like a few comments about the work that were doing in the area of equity. We have normalized conversation about race and operational behaviours and this is a part of our effort to shift the decisionmaking and take a close look at how our staff composition impacts the decisions in our department. Evacuee leveraged the office of Racial Equity as a resource and partnering in developing the Racial Equity plan. Were developing work inhouse and we are involved in ongoing and efforts to address atrisk members in many ways. We looked at when i started there a couple of years ago, we do have an allpayers database where we collect information from all of our health plans and that database at the time did not capture race. We have made some of those changes and it is a big both a policy and technical issue in being sure that we have accurate race information for all of our members and so we have identify offed that as a part of our work going forward. And we continue to collaborate with our provider groups and the Health Delivery systems with the Population Health disparities and align our systems for systemic change. And so we do continue to support, as i mentioned seller l times, the response for healthcare workers and i think thats where i can pause and take any questions that you might have. Thank you very much. Supervisors, any comments or questions . Seeing none, i have a question for you, so you said that you had eight vay an vacancies and e looking to fill four of those vacancies. Is that correct . Yes, maam. So those hires are pending and you havent actually hired them. Is that correct . That is correct. Theyre in the recruitment process. Ok, thats great. And then i also wanted to ask, are you looking, actually, at your supplies and materials budget, which is actually, youve gotten a huge increase on your supplies budget and it is almost 50,000, 50,000 for the first fiscal year 2021 and almost another 50,000 for 21, 22 and how many employees do you have in your department again . Theres about 50, 51 employees. In compareso comparison, thia fairly large supply and materials budget and i didnt know if there was a specific reason for that and whether or not youve seen an increase in these. Or pens and pencils . I dont think its pens and pencils. We do have a significant regulatory requirement to do mailings to direct mail to our members upon confirming their Health Plan Selection and a variety of other things. We produce all of the open enrollment materials and so, yes, we use very few pens and pencils phase days. Were in the computer world. And we are buying digital computers. We are a virtual workforce at this point in time and i think we now have we may have a few computers were about to order because we have to have some on reserve for Member Services should they stand up. So theyre pretty legitimate, supplies for an office of our intensity that we have to produce. Thank you very much. And president yee, i see your hand is up. Just a quick question. I noticed for the general fund contributions, that it went up,