Transcripts For SFGTV Public 20240703 : vimarsana.com

Members of the public wishing to make comment on an item from outside the hearing room, you would. Dial 415 a6550001 and use the meeting id. Of 266 a2546002 8 pound pound. And then to raise your hand to speak, press star three. Unless you are speaking under general Public Comment, please note that you must limit your comments to the topic of the agenda item being discussed first. If commenters do not stay on topic, the chair may interrupt and ask you to limit your comment to the agenda item at hand. We ask that Public Comment be made in a civil and respectful manner and that you refrain from the use of profanity. Please address your remarks to the commission as a whole, not to individual commissioners or staff. The public is always welcome to submit comments in writing via our email address of public works Dot Commission at sfpd. Org. On behalf of the commission, we extend our thanks to govtv Building Management and Media Services staff for helping make this meeting possible. Chair post. Thank you. Before calling the next item, are there any requests from the commission to amend the order of todays agenda . Hearing no requests, we will move on to the next item. Announcements by chair. I do have several today since our last meeting there were a couple of news articles regarding Illegal Dumping in the bayview neighborhood, which of course weve heard about before at the commission. One article was discouraging, one was encouraging. I thought the discouraging piece described the breadth of the dumping breadth of the dumping problem and San Francisco public works heroic work to address it. In an effort to give residents and businesses a neighborhood in which they can take pride while there is Illegal Dumping. In every San Francisco neighborhood. The problem is worse by orders of magnitude in the bayview area. The article referenced the cameras the department will be installing to help identify perpetrators in trim. Director short, what is the status of the camera project . When can we expect the cameras to be installed. Good morning, chair. Post commissioners carla short interim director for the camera project excuse me, has been a little bit challenging. We had a identified vendor who knew we were in the process of entering into a contract with that vendor and then during that period of time they were purchased by another company who then basically, i guess, eliminated that function that they had. And so it took some time for us to find a new vendor. We found a new vendor that can do the same basic work. And i am looking for my cfo. We have run into a snag with a new vendor as well, so im going to ask bruce to describe that because i dont want to get the details wrong. Good morning, commissioners. Bruce robertson, cfo for public works. The overview from interim director schwartz. Absolutely correct. We have run into an issue where with the new vendor that weve identified, theyre not currently a city vendor. So were really just going through that process of making sure that they comply with the various ordinances. Um, i dont have a timeline at my fingertips, but we can certainly report back. I do know that this is a priority for our Contract Administration team. And alex burns, the contract manager, is personally working with the vendor and our partners in oca. The office of Contract Administration, to make sure we can get this up and running as soon as possible. So let me get the exact date and timeline and then well certainly report back. But thats really the holdup at the moment. Its just making sure that they meet all of the city requirements. Thank you very much for that clear explanation. Well look forward to updates on the program as i mentioned, the second news report was encouraging. It profiled Brian Johnson on a resourceful bayview resident who was designed and built a drone Flight Program to identify garbage hotspots in his neighborhood and in the mission. And this more quickly deploy Public Works Department resources to clean the areas up rather than relying on 311 calls. Mr. Johnson is partnering with public works to run a pilot of his system. Interim director short, will you please tell us more about this Drone Pilot Program . All so if the pilot is successful, will our colleague, commissioner turner suggested this might be a very good program for Workforce Development whereby young people would be taught to fly drones and learn related technology skills. Is this something the department will consider. Thank you. Chair post carlos short, interim director. The Pilot Program is basically using this technology. To alert our crews to where we have debris to pick up in the bayview more quickly than relying on neighbors to call 311, although we will still track the work through the 311 system. Mr. Johnson has actually been doing this independently for some time and has found that his technology can identify the debris and call it in and then weve been responding pretty effectively to that. So hes been weve had a couple of meetings with him to talk about specific areas that we would like to have him fly more frequently rather. So basically , you know, looking at operationalizing this to get the best possible data, which will then also allow us to identify potentially when people are dumping and we may be able to follow up and try to prevent that dumping from happening. And or catch people in the act. So in terms of Workforce Development, i think the technology hes developed includes, you know, some built in ways to ensure that were not identifying people, that this is focused on garbage. So i think we would need to explore the possibility with with the developer about whether theres, you know, its a fairly lean operation at this point. And the city also has these rules around the use of drones. And we for this project we did present to the Citys Department that reviews that and explained know they want to ensure how were protecting public privacy and things like that so that were not identifying individuals. So i think those would all need to be kind of worked through. But certainly if the if the if the developer of this would would be interested in teaching folks the technology, then we would thats an interesting idea that we would be very happy to pursue. Thank you. I realize its early days here, but never hurts to start thinking about these things early. Good. Thank you very much. Recently there have been media reports on alleged illegal actions by the director of the citys Community Challenge Grant Program and the head of a local nonprofit who was awarded city contracts for public improvement projects. S does it . The Public Works Department have any contracts with Rj Enterprises or any of its affiliates and how do we work with the citys Community Challenge Grant Program . If we do . Thank you. Chair post carla short, interim director. As this is an evolving investigation, we are working with other city departments and the City Attorneys Office to review the complaint that was that was issued against Rudolph Dwayne Jones and lanita enriquez. We will continue to review contracts and grants that may have been implicated by mr. Jones and miss enriquez. We did learn through the just released indictment that there are a handful of additional business names that may have been used. So we are going to be reviewing our contracts for those as well. And then were exploring and pursuing all appropriate remedies and enforcement actions. I think ive been advised to be rather general in comments this morning as the were still reviewing with the City Attorneys Office, but but we are looking at all of those grants and contracts that may have involved those individuals. Thank you. I felt thats a very satisfactory answer. Could you just explain for a moment, does the Department Work with the Community Challenged Grant Program in the past . We have worked with with the Community Challenge Grant Program and that a number that that program serves communities as as the name indicates. But eight city departments would along with public works potentially send funds to the Community Challenge grant to support those community initiatives, says thank you my final announcement on a cheerier subject is to highlight the august edition of in the works. The departments newsletter. It comes out every month and can be found easily on the departments website. This recent issue highlighted two Capital Projects that weve had presentations on previously at the commission, the Historic Mission Library Renovation and upgrade, and the castro Muni Muni Metro station, elevator and plaza renovation and upgrade both of these projects show off the talent and skill of the departments architecture and design teams, and well be hearing about both of them again when we receive annual updates on significant, significant Capital Project contracts that the Commission Approves in the works also highlighted the departments clean corridors program, an initiative that each week provides a deep, clean and sprucing up of a select commercial corridor in the city. The first phase of the better Market Street improvement program, which is upgrading the streets and sidewalks of the citys signature boulevard and the july love our city neighborhood beautification day, which took place in the sunset district. We do any commissioners have any questions on my announcements . Do any commissioners have announcements of their own today . Hearing none. Secretary fuller, please open this item to Public Comment. Oh if possible. I have a couple of announcements. I beg your pardon. Please continue. Oh, so my announcements are very brief. The sanitation and streets Commission Meet the next sanitation and streets Commission Meeting will be monday, september 18th and their august meeting was canceled. But the next meeting will include performance measure reports from the bureau of urban forest and Street Environmental Services is on a different note. Ill be surveying commissioners with potential meeting dates and times for the 2024 calendar year. It being september 1st, were already looking at the new year. So commissioners, please look for a message coming from me in the in the next week or so. And then also to point out on the calendar that we do have a special meeting of this commission that has been scheduled for wednesday, september 13th at 8 a. M. To hear a person matter in closed session. And that meeting will take place in city hall room 400, which is not our normal meeting room. And all of this has been posted to our website and notice has been posted and at the library as well. And that concludes my announcements. Thank you. Now please open this item to Public Comment. Members of the public who wish to make three minutes of comment on item one. The announcements by the chair, commissioners and secretary may line up against the wall furthest from the door if you are in the chamber. If you are calling in, please. Dial 415 a6550001 and use the meeting number access code. Of 266 a2546002 8 pound pound. And then press star three to raise your hand to be to be recognized and in the chamber we do not have anyone who has approached to speak on this item and govtv is indicating that we. Have one caller in the queue and please go ahead and please go ahead and mute that, unmute that caller and caller. Youll have three minutes to speak and i will provide you with a 32nd notice when your time is about to expire. The great can you hear me now . We can hear you. Excellent. David paypal i hope i havent expired, although my time may at some point so three brief comments on this item as to the drones issue. Just wanted to remind the department and perhaps the commission that the city has a Surveillance Technology policy that requires a Technology Like drones to be approved by both the committee on information technology, fauci and the board of supervisors. And theyre kind of way behind on approving department requests. So i dont recall that dpw has an approved Surveillance Technology policy for our drones. And if thats the case, then they would have to write one up and get it approved prior to the citys use of drones for these purposes. Anyway, i will let other folks figure more of that out. I did note in the public materials that the advanced calendar is missing. I always look forward to the advanced calendar and hope in the future that it will be included with all regular Commission Meeting packets. And finally there was a hiring memo that said that it was off calendar but was included publicly. Actually, maybe thats under the directors report. Anyway, i found the hiring memo to be very encouraging and wanted to appreciate hr director hill and the work that shes doing and throughout the department on hiring two key vacancies. Those are my thoughts on item one. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Caller. And that is our only caller looking to speak on item one. So that concludes Public Comment. Thank you. If theres no further discussion on this item, secretary fuller, please call the next item. Item two is the directors report and communications interim director carla short is here to present this report. And this is an informational item. Good morning again, commissioners. Carla short, interim director. I just i have a few brief updates today. Not too extensive. I wanted to start with the hiring update, so we provided the off calendar memo, but a quick summary, as you probably recall, we set a very aggressive hiring target of 250 hires by the end of fiscal year 2023. We were able to meet that hire by having 200 sorry, meet that goal by having 265 hires complete within the timeline. Overall, the hiring has continued with a total of 297 hires, and public works is processing 85 additional new hires. These important employees have already made a significant improvement in our ability to develop, deliver the Critical Services that we provide of the new hires. Theres a combination of positions to the department and internal new positions to the department and internal promotions. I wanted to just highlight a couple of the key areas where weve made progress by our Human Resources bureau. So bureau of Street Environmental Services, one of our most public facing bureaus. Its the bureau responsible for our street cleaning staff, our functional vacancy rate is 13. 9 as of august 2023. However because were in the process of onboarding an additional 41 staff, once they are hired, our functional vacancy rate will be down to 5. 3. I think thats the lowest that weve had in many years. So thats a huge achievement that we wanted to highlight. Another critical position that youve heard a bit about in our meetings is our 9916 Public Service aid, and these are our block cleaners. So theyre the folks you see out in the orange vests with their brooms and their rolling garbage cans, and they are out on the streets cleaning, assigned blocks all day, every day. Thats been a really, really Important Program for us. And they are part of our Workforce Development program as they feed into our apprenticeship programs. In an ideal world. So weve hired an additional 45 staff in this classification. We have another 18 hires all additional staff to the department in the hiring process. So 18 new folks coming in. I also wanted to note our 6230 street inspectors. Weve approached full staffing for this classification when we have a just a handful of vacancies remaining, we have 11 additional hires in this program. So i think we are seeing the results of that improvement. They are responsible for not just looking at street cleaning, sorry, sidewalk conditions and street conditions around the city, but also implementing the illegal vending program which has been, as you know, a challenging program. But having the staff available to be able to rotate through the assignments has really, really helped with that program. So the focus there, as you know, is the mission in particularly un plaza, chinatown , some areas working with partners along the port and then we also have a few of the street inspectors who help with our graffiti program. So notifying Property Owners of their responsibilities to clean up graffiti and also assisting Property Owners to opt in to our proactive Graffiti Abatement Program for commercial corridors. So another really critical all our positions are critical, but wanted to highlight some of the essential positions that we f