To the west side of the chamber along the curtains and not necessarily to provide Public Comment we invite you to fill out a comment card and leave on the trail by tray. You may submit Public Comment in writing, email to myself the Budget Finance Committee clerk at brent. Julipa sfgov. Org. If you submit Public Comment via email you will be forwarded to the supervisors and also included as part of the official file. You may send written comments u. S. Postal service to our office at 1 dr. Carlton b goodlett place, room 244 San Francisco california 94102. Finally madam chair, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the board of supervisors agenda of may 7 unless otherwise stated. Madam clerk. Thank you mr. Clerk. Typically with those items with budget legislative analyst report, we have presentation and then the budget legislative analyst and questions and Public Comment. With that, mr. Clerk, please can you call item 1 . Yes, madam chair. Item 1, ordinance amending the administrative code to prohibit the Fire Department from providing or using personal protective equipment containing pfas by june 30, 2026 and requiring the Fire Department to conduct regular meeting with elabor representatives and submit regular reports to board of supervisors and Fire Commission regarding the progress towards meeting the june 30, 2026 dead line. This is sponsored by president aaron peskin and like to start with introductory remarks. Thank you chair chan and thank you to yourself and Committee Member melgar as well as supervisor safai and engardio for cosponsoring this ordinance, which would make San Francisco the first city in the country to ban cancer causing chemicals from our firefighter personal protective gear which we refer to as turnouts. Our firefighters are the shield that came us all safe and the turnouts keep them safe as they put their lives on the line and put their bodies in harms way every day and they expose themselves to any number of harmful chemicals in the course of fire fighting, which is made cancer the leading cause of death among firefighters here and around the country and ironically, one of these forever chemicals is not what they breathe when plastics are on fire, but is actually found right in the innerlayer of firefighter turnouts. The department and their Cancer PreventionFoundation Lead the field in ascertaining what the causes of cancer are and ways to mitigate them, including but not limited to, washing all their protective gear after incidents and a number of different measures and that has been pioneering work that has lead the way and has ultimately lead to this legislation and i want to thank and acknowledge that pioneering collaboration between the department and the leadership and the rank and file, the Union Representing the working men and women of the department, local 798 and the Cancer Prevention foundation and i think this is really a step where San Francisco can lead the nation in this very important next step for firefighter safety. The purpose of this ordinance is to create a timeline as well as collaborative process to implement the phaseout of turnouts with pfas. With the goal of removing all cancer causing chemicals from this protective gear june 30, 2026. It mandates collaborative process between labor and management to work towards this goal and public accountability through reporting back to the board of supervisors on the progress. The product exists. It is being tested as we speak by rescue 1 and rescue 2, and we will hear more about that, but i think the time has come for us to be very deliberate about implementing this as quickly as we can. I also want to absolute the department and the leadership for being proactive and actually having gone out and obtain grants that reduce the amount of money we need to come up to replace all of this gear, which is approximatelyit is it 2 turnouts per firefighter which is in the magnitude of 3500 units of turnouts that need to be replaced over the course of the next two years and with that, it is my pleasure to bring up our chief, chief jeanine nicholson. Greetings and salutations all. Im your San Francisco fire chief jeanine nicholson. Chair chan, mandelman, supervisor melgar, president peskin thank you grour time today. Im joined today with labor with local 798 president Floyd Rawlins is in the house as well as one of the directors adam wood. I will have adam wood speak first on his he works very closely within the San Francisco firefighter Cancer Prevention foundation and can provide some backstory on that. Thank you. I will abuse my position being the first speaker to take time to thank you for continuing the item last week meeting to this meeting so everyone you see could attend the funeral of our fallen brother steve and my friend rudey gonzalez reported on a moment of silence you observed at the meeting in memory of steve. I where want to let you know how much that means to us and thank you so much for doing that. Our condolences to the department. Thank you board president. Back to the item at hand, we have known some time the firefighters have a elevated risk for cancer. As board president peskin mentioned t is had leading cause of occupational death for firefighters. Last year the International Association for research on cancer firefighter is [indiscernible] we assumed the primary source of exposure to carcinogens is on the fire ground. Every time we go in a burning buildings or wild fire, but we learned some of the most toxic chemicals are carried into the fire by us in the gear designed to protect us and these are it the per pfas chemicals known as forever chemicals that permeate the materials that make up the protective gear and in the course of the wear and tear of a fire migrate from the materials to the body tissue where they take up residents forever and known to be linked to a number of cancers including the liver, pankerous and reproductive organs. This was confirmed in a study that was put forward by the National Institute for standardss in technology conformed the presence of the chemicals in the gear and drew correlation between the chemicals in the gear and high level of pfas chemicals in firefighter blood serum and a important follow up to that study just released this past january, this determined even when the chemicals confine to one layer of the three layers that make up a turnout garment, within a very short time in the course of normal fire base wear and tear, those chemicals migrate to all three layers of the garment so there is no safe level of pfas chemicals we can have in the turnouts. We strongly believe the new understanding of the presence of the chemicals in the protective gear helps explain what has been one of the most frustrating aspects of the work trying to prevent cancer in the fire service, which is, even thou we have a entire generation of firefighters that have come into the profession with a full understanding of the risk for cancer and have taken a number of steps to try to change the practice and culture of the fire service to reduce our exposures, we have not been able to move the number on cancer cases. Just in the past 6 years, in the San FranciscoFire Department alone, we had 62 active members and 141 retired members diagnosed with cancer. We are missing a piece of the puzzle and convinced the presence of the toxic chemicals in the gear is one of the missing pieces. But we are on the cusp of change. The National FireProtection Agency which helps set the regulations that determine what protective gear could be approved for usehftesting pfas turnout to make sure they can still perform and do the job to protect firefighters without the toxic chemicals. We are right on the cusp of regulatory and technological change which makes this ordinance you are considering today so timely. The ordinance sets up a reasonable ap mount of time to get a product approved and available at scale so we can aquip our entire department with two sets of pfas free turnouts. As the board president mentioned, it sets up a Labor Management process to monitor the progress of the change and report back to you. But it sets a limit where once we get to the point where it is possible to stop poisoning firefighters then we must stop. That is the key element of the proposal important to us the San Francisco firefighter Cancer Prevention foundation. I just will close by saying as i said before, i think this if you can join and help us move the ball forward it will get us closer to a point where we can go back to doing what we do best, saving other peoples lives rather then having to come to you and ask for help to save our own. Thank you for your time and consideration to this item and i will return to chief nicholson. Thank you adam. Can we start the overhead projector . I handed youhfwell get one to supervisor safai and president peskin. Thank you. I wont take up too much of your time. Adam explained a lot of it. But, in terms of background, we have known this quite a few years and even before i was the chief we were pushing the industry to make these changes and it just has taken a really long time to get these pfas chemicals out of the turnouts because research, development, testing et cetera. The pfas worked as the moisture barrier. We need a moisture barrier because we dont want water or oil getting through. Water gets through and it gets too hot in a room we get bad steam burns. Oil gets through, it is flammable. We need to make sure that these new turnouts can do that and can withstand the heat and so, ourselves,b the Cancer Prevention foundation, the union, we all have been pushing the industry for years and as a department, we have a commitment to reduce health risks and we have multiple partnerships to do so. Next slide. Our number one priority, my number one priority is Health Safety and wellness of all my members and that can take all sorts of different forms. We have as adam stated changed the culture and changed a lot of our practices. It used to be whether i first came, im one of the old people that says, when i came in, 30 years ago we would be a fire and old timer tells you brush up against something burned to get your coat dirty. That isnt the case anymore. Now we have all sorts of policy to get rid of these things off our skin, ourselves and out of our gear and we have a ton of other sort of studies and initiatives qulou can see here. I would say the most significant of late is going to be the overhaul res pir tory protection study. We can take masks off and suck thin chemicals. The fire is out and searching for extension and take all the burned pieces out of the building. We have a policy that we are not supposed to do that, but the [indiscernible] we are working on getting something smaller for our members. We also have done Cancer PreventionFoundation Blood test screen frg multiple cancers, so we are doing the work. The transings to the pfas free turn out are in aware test. 10 members are wearing two different pfas Free Products one from lion and one from fire decks. After a 90 day period, we will compile the findings and the recommendations of those 10 people, but it is important to understand that there is currently only one vendor available and thats lion, with three month lead time. Of course, this also has to go out to bid, et cetera. And we still center the Operational Requirements that we need in these turnouts to keep our members safe. So, the proposed ordinance as you have stated is, by no later then june 30, 2026. We will both neither provide nor use the pfas personal protective equipment, and as a department we are in full support and we are rowing as fast as we can. But i just want to let you know about some of the logistical and fiscal challenges that we have. Next slide. As i stated there is one vendor available and the estimated availability for other vendors is late 2024 but no guarantee for that, and so we are already chipping into the timeframe. Obviously the supply chain and demand issues. We are not the only Fire Department doing this across the country. There are quite a few other major metropolitan departments and smaller departments going towards the pfas free turnouts. There is also unforeseen circumstances regulatory approval. What we dont know, as stated we are doing a wear test right now to see how they perform and we dont know how durable they will be. Our current turnouts last about 10 years. What we hear is these may last 8 years, soi just want to caution about buying the first model of any car, right . I dont want to buy just the first model and have something great come out in 6 months and now everybody wants that one, so i think you understand what im getting at. Next slide. So, even just estimating it at 3 thousand turnout sets needed for 1500 Fire Suppression members, our current contract is 3404 for a coat and pants. These new turnouts will be more expensive. We are not sure much more expenses so we estimated between 10. 2 and 11. 5 million. In terms of the grant that president peskin spoke about, we were granted a fema grant of 2. 3 million in august. It currently sits at the Controllers Office waiting for their approval so it is going through the process. Obviously there will be ongoing annual funding support for cleaning, which we currently do, and we may need to replace these every 8 years instead of every 10 years until they perfect the technology. So, we would be looking at replacing this all again in another 8 years. We are also looking at gloves and hoods. What we wear into fires to make them pfas free, and pushing the industry for that as well. Currently in our budget, we have 900 thousand for all our turnout purchases and that does not include other uniform needs and costs. So, there are a number logistical and budgetary challenges that we have and we want to be realistic about while we continue to push the vendors and do everything we can to keep our members more safe and here are just some of our members in their turnouts and the photo on the left you see the hoods around their necks, but this is what we are talking about replacing. So, happy to take any questions and provide any clarification that you may need. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Nick monard, budget legislative analyst office. Item 1 is ordinance that would create a policy in the administrative code to prohibit the Fire Department from using personal protective equipment with concern chemicals. The cost of replacing all the equipment the deadline is june 2026 is 10 10. 1 million which is detailed on page of the report. The department spends 850 thousand a year on uniform replacement so if you take that base budget spending out and the 2. 3 million grant it leaves about 3. 1 million a year the department would have to add to its budget next year and the following year to meet this deadline. One thing we know in the report is cancer is assumed to be work related for firefighters in california. Over the past 10 years San Francisco paid out 12. 3 million in cancer claims, so over the longterm as this equipment is replaced with less toxic equipment that liability will reduce and could offset some of the new spending here. We do note as the Department Also noted, there are challenges in meeting this deadline given the availability of the equipment. The research that has come out funded by the federal government indicates there are certain manufacturers that have less concentration of the chemical then others so the city to the extent there isnt equipment available to meet the environment of the legislation, the city could work with other jurisdictions to identify the least toxic equipment and jointly purchase it, but we consider approval of item 1 to be a policy matter for the board. Thank you. Vice chair mandelman. Thank you chair chan. Thank you president peskin for this legislation and chief and Fire Department for your commitment to making this work and of course to the firefighters themselves who keep our city safe and protect us often at great prnl risk. I like to be added as a cosponsor. Thank you. Supervisor melgar. Thank you chair chan. I want to say thank you president peskin for doing this. I believe that it will be transformational for the workers for people in the Fire Department, but also the country because being at the forefrent and challenging the industry to produce safer equipment i think will be transformational for everyone so thank you so much chief for that work. To local 798 for your rigessness. My sister served in the air force in iraq and developed cancer which is common among folks exposed to burnpits and that was something that was a period of time in her life. For folks who are exposed weekly and daily sometimes to chemicals it takes its toll not just the individuals but ptheir families. I think in terms of the expenditure in the budget versus the cost of the families and to the individual firefighters it is a nobrainer and fully in support and so thankful we are doing this and doing it quickly in that we are setting the bar for everyone else so thank you. Thank you chair chan. Thank you. President peskin, should i call on supervisor safai first . Sure. Absolutely. Supervisor safai. Thank you chair chan. There isnt many moments in time in elected office i think we do something that is transformational, but i think this is one of those moments, and as someone that worked in the city all most 25 years in public service,