Transcripts For SFGTV 20130305

Relieved. I want to thank your family and friends for being here, and what you put in the hard drive of these promoted officers. Its how you cared for them what they are today. All of you did a great job. And i thank for the gift of these officers and the department and a great city. Going forward these fine men and women that you love so dearly will need your support. As much is asked for them in their new positions. It will not be easy. We are all in this together, and we need to show up for one another when the time comes. And it will be those times. Hopefully few and far dween between, butg to get ready for sfgtv to catch up with this meeting. Great. Okay, we have agenda item, but before we get started i would like to welcome superviser chang. She is the vice chair, correct. This meeting will come to order, welcome my name is cohen and to my right is chang to the right is supervisor campos. And the crowd goes wild. Thank you, thank you very much. Madam clerk, i want to thank sfgtv and thank you for making us look beautiful and sounding smart. Please silence all cell phones and complete any speaker cards to be included as part of the file should be submitted to the Committee Clerk and each member will be allotted the same number of minutes to speak. The items will appear on the march 12, 2013 Board Meeting agenda unless otherwise stated. Excellent. Im so excited. Okay, could you please call item one. Item number one is a hearing Controller Office Park Maintenance report for fiscal year 2011 and 2012. And parks throughout the city. Are there any opening remarks . Seeing none lets begin. I am sorry, there is one, excuse me. Good morning, everyone, so i just wanted to introduce hearing item that was previously introduced under supervisor chu it is a annual fee that was passed by voters in 2003. We have here today general manager Phil Ginsberg to start off and litia from park as well. Thank you, for introducing this. Thank you for calling this hearing, this partnership that we have with the Controllers Office is really critical and invaluable to help us fulfill our mission, what you have before us is the clinical data, it relates to every single one of our 22 parks throughout the city, and this program has been continuing since 2005 and since what we have is a body of data where we can start to study trends and start to understand the changes in data and really understanding this and our director of operations and park superintendent and their staff is here today and may speak a little bit to deserve a tremendous amount of credit to really use this information. We do, park evaluations quarterly, what we are talking about is the annual report for fiscal year 1112, the managers are aware of their scores in all of their parks four times a year, where we see changes or dips, our park Service Managers are on it and we investigate why and we try to makeshift resources. As you know ours is a department that frankly struggles for the amount of resources that we have to take care of all of the land that we have and this document is a very and this program is a very important tool for us to help us allocate resources as wisely and strategickly as we can. We love it. It is really important and we are grateful to Controllers Office for the guidance in establishing the program. Let me talk very briefly about some of the highlights or at least my preliminary observations for this report for 1112 and i will turn it over and then our staffs are going to do more of a deeper dive. This is a really good report. There are marginal score changes at different parts and what we see is that the scores are stable and they are fundamentally remaining for the my main nens which 85 percent, it is perceived to be a well maintained park and what you can see since 0506 and particularly in the last few years is a general upward trend of the number of high, performing parks in the reduction of low performing parks and over all, which is most fundamentally important to us, a decrease in the disparty between our highest scoring parks and our lowest scoring parks. This year, rements the smallest disparity between our highest scoring district and our lowest scoring district that we have ever had since the program began. And i think that is a reflection of this board of supervisors and the Parks Department and frankly the ethos of our park volunteers and stewards. That every neighborhood deserves a clean and safe park and we really do fundamentally strive to allocate resources in such a way where those parks whether they are old or they are in or have challenged or in a neighborhood with other challenges that actually contribute to a challenge in keeping the park clean. We are allocating resources or trying to allocate resources in such a way to overcome some of those more structural or fundamental challenges from the way that our different parks respond. There is going to be always going to be some deviation in the data. You know, we go out four times a year on a given day and frankly we go out quarterly and it depends on what day the evaluators go out and they go out on a thursday and they might see Something Different than if they go out on a monday after a long weekend. If they go out after a period of rain, the scores might be different than if they go out after a prolonged period of sunshine. The controller actually in the way this works is the controller scores are 50 percent of the over all scores, and our scores are 50 percent but we go out four times and the controller visits each park once. There is going to be variation and what we are doing to work with the office is to understand is where it signals a trend. You know, we have really good communication and we are constantly reviewing these scores. We would also say that we take this very seriously in our evaluators take it seriously, and so we are not padding our grades. Our evaluators undergo training and every year we work with the controller to strengthen the standard by which we are evaluating which actually could result in lower scores sometimes. So over all this is a great program, i think that the highlights of this report for me are the level of consistency that we are tying to achieve which is the high, performing parks and the strifrngage of low performing and cleanliness and that is a trend upward with respect to the cleanliness of the parks and rest rooms in particular. But this is also a document that set a little bit of a road map for us and tell us where we need to reinvying ate our focus and where we see drops we ask why and where we see Disturbing Trends we try to get to the about the bot tom of it. I think that what you have seen are three or four years of steady increases and there are a variety of reasons for that and i think that our park staff and our gardeners and our custodians are doing incredible work. I think that we have also been helped by the Workforce Program and we have partnered with the agency that have provided to help to keep the parks clean. I think that that has helped as has the first of its kind guard gaer apprintice and i also think that our Capitol Program has had an impact. Some of that does get reflected in the annual scores and the parks are able to address some of those structural maintenance issues that do get reflected in these quarterly evaluations but we still have a lot of work to do and even with the 2012 parks bond, we are only chiping away at the total amount of what is needed in our parks. As we are trending upward, given the resources that we do have, i think that we are performing at an exceptionally high level and that is a threshold that is tough to maintain and increase, giving the Staffing Resources that we do have. I think that this is a good news report and talk over to peg to talk more about the program and i am happy to answer any questions after our presentation is done. You mean that was not the presentation . That was just a warm up. Thank you, phil. Thank you for that wonderful warm up. Now, on with the program. Actually, im going to turn it over to our staff to talk about the content and to introduce Sarah Swanbeck who is our lead in the Controllers Office. And so i wont go on. I also wanted to say, im steve enson from the Controllers Office and there is a good awareness of performance programs that are at work and municipalities around the country and i hope that we are honest about the citys strengths and weaknesses. We pride ourselves on that in the Controllers Office and one thing that you would want to be able to brag when you think that you have the best in class . I think that we really do. And i think that some of the characteristics of it. When it was built, all of those years ago after prop c was passed it was proudly and deeply conducted in the rec park department, so that people from gardener to park supervisor were aware and helped to develop them. It was publicly consulted and it strikes the sweet spot between the technical and laypersons information. Detailed enough so it is useful for the people who have to do the workday to day and not so detailed that the people that want to understand what is going on in the parks and get value out of it too and it is still said consistently and we have multiple years of data and train with the department every year so that we are sure that the Controllers Office and evaluators are seeing the same things and consistent leadership in the department and phil and denny and lidia and the park supervisors do take the information seriously and get everybody else in the department as well. So, i really think that, you know, i look back at the smartness of the design, the call in prop c for a specific standard, if you have never looked at the standards, i recommend it, it makes you look at a park differently, it helps you look at how chipped is the paint . How well maintained in the playground equipment and there are puddles in the playing field, how much litter is too much litter . For myself, i have to say that every time that i go out i see something that i have not seen before and i lived here for 20 years, and before i went to inspect the park i have never been in half of those places. I would, if you have never had the chance to do that, have a walk around and it is really eye opening so that is all that i am going to say and i think that lidia and sarah will present the content. Push good morning. So you have hard copies, i dont know if you like one or others. I am just going to give kind of a larger overview of some of the findings in the report and turn it over to lidia who will talk about the details and recommendations that we made in our report and how the department is responding. So, so mentioned over all scores this year have been incredibly consistent, 8. 4 percent was the average which is over that 85 percent flesh hold. As you mentioned we will see a leveling off of scores just given the fixed resources in the department, but over all, that 0. 1 increase over the last year is consistent. This is showing you the over all program and breaks it down by quarter, and so you are seeing this upward trend over all and importantly this shows the quarterly variation that happens in the seasonal variations in weather and use of parks in general. And this next chart is showing the distribution of park scores. And again, over time, so the red here is parks that are scoring less than 80 percent, the yellow is parks between 80 and 80 percent and the green is the parks over 90 percent, consistent relative to last year with the improvement with the parks scoring below 40 percent, relative to last year and so if you go back to the fiscal year ten, a slight decrease over those scores. These next two slides are just going to show you the district results so kind of like this map here because it gives a pretty clear indicator of how the districts are doing relative to one another across the city. Traditionally the parks in the south east section of the city do tend to score lower over time or at least they have over the beginning of the evaluations over this year, district ten and eleven have seen improvement and eleven has seen the over all improvement and that went up by 3. 3 percentage point which was a really large jump and this second side is showing you district results and it is showing you over time which districts were the lowest scoring and which were the highest scoring, just to kind of give you a sense of the range in scores over time and as phil did mention earlier, i know that Something Interesting this year is this continuing narrowing of the scores. So, you know, fewer disparty in park scores across the districts. That is the last slide that i have for you i will turn it over to lidia to keep going. Hi, good morning, im lidia, analyst in the operations division, i am going to take you deeper into these results. You see the psas and that is how reorganize the units. The next slide, second from the left shows you that she straddled the districts it was to make them equal for each of the managers and the park service area. And then, of course, ggp is the Regional Park on its own, if you look at this, the scores are pretty much consist at or above the threshold and we are pleased to see that. Our goal in that column to the extreme right, the parks scoring less than 80 percent is to minimize those as much as possible and we are pleased to see what happened and the psa five service area. Where that scores went up 2. 67 percent and the manager had no low scoring parks below 80 percent and so we intend to use that operating model as a model for others and what we notice with this particular manager and very timely and attentative response to the deficiencies that were pointed out in the park evaluations. Then, again, this is digging deeper, so that was kind of looking at over all scores and we rate 14 features in each park. Those are the list on the left tells you what we are looking at and again, a good news story over all, with rates, you know, at that 85 percent mark or above, we have one, excuse me, inconsistentcy in the little of the screen is the open space, that is the nonlandscape such as the interior, it is only rated on one quality, which is basically whether or not trash is present, that can fluctuate wildly and since it is not actively man taind nothing else is rated that effects the volatile nature of that score. The other three things that i wanted to point out since 0506 and we have had that trend for the fields and rest rooms and oern mental gardens and the rest rooms are important for the users and we needed to bring it up to the field as most people that are residents know high demand and so that really reflects that kind of attention to those things that we want to provide the park users. One other thing, we have focused on throughout this rating process especially when they were lower are cleanliness ratings and basically in the report you will see an oscillating trend. This is also a quality in a park that when it is rated really again reflects the volatile nature. On a monday after a long weekend and the custodian has not been there and you will get a poor rating and come at a different time in the week and this really is a snapshot and again, the peaks are the winter when there is less usage in the parks. And then, to focus on some of the things that we actually already started doing in 1112, in terms of Continuous Improvement collaborating with the Controllers Office, there has been a variety of process improvements that we have undertaken. The first three are really guidance to evaluate ors and the next two are monitoring Quality Assurance and the last is looking at next steps and we have customized the forms and if you get a chance to look at the form it is a long form so we can shorten it to the features that evaluates a park and made it easier for them. We suggested target times and we had a lot of fluctuation that they were spending at a particular property and we averaged them out and went out and took a look ourselves. That is from a new staff member that has taken on the new process to a new level. You know that it is in a park but there may be Something Special about something in a park that the evaluator should know. And 4 and 5 is monitoring the submitted evaluations and did they put in all of the answers and did they rate something that is not in the park, why did you do that . What happened. Really a lot of Quality Assurance follow up and dual evaluations, we are trying to keep the people more honest and a lot of times it is someone that we have on the watch list that i am not sure that is quality, lets send them out with a good evaluator and make sure that they are looking at things. No matter how subjective you try to make it, we are all human, when we go together it works well. This is something that we did with the employees going out with the Controllers Office and that is useful in terms of making sure that people are on the same page and observing the same kinds of things. Regular reporting action plans and we had always acted on the results of park evaluations but we did not document that process. So there is a new process to document the response to a park evaluation. And then, here we have specific recommendations that came from the report that you have before you. And to just, you know, we have actually already acted on quite a few of them, and so assessing the park data to improve the maintenance that is talking about the action plans that we are documenting, we get an evaluation and there is a great lag between the data entry and the results getting back to the manager. We scan the original and give it back to the manager hopefully in a three day period and so they know what was seen in the park and they dont get the information with a lag time. Consistency, for the larger parks, rating Regional Parks is not easy and in the subsequent slide i will explain that more, but again it is about standardizing the area that people are looking at. The retraining of evaluators has been discussed and do it once a year with the Controllers Office and also actually this year, 2013 undertaking a significant revision of the standards, looking at best practices and what questions have perhaps consistently been misunderstood and changing wording and so we will have a special retraining later this year when we have the standards and building on what we have already. And excused absences you may recall in the prop c language we need to postschedules for main nens and then observe whether or not the staff are there maintaining as per the schedule and record that and present that rating. So we changed that methodology a little bit more and a little bit this year to make it more adequate and i will talk about that in a subsequent slide. We have a watch list for those performing parks and we are really following up each quarter with those particular parks to make sure that we can get those scores up. So that main nens schedule this way, we had for all of the previous years posted what you can see there is labeled as the base compliance rate and you went to a park and you saw the staff member there as schedule or not. What this did not take into account is excused absences. They may have had to be absent for a staff meeting or for a required safety training. They may have taken a vacation day and may have been out sick. Any legitimate excused absences are now accounted for and it represents a more accurate picture of whether or not the staff are where they should be at the time schedule. We will be posting it in this manner from now on. Here is the slide that basically describes what we are doing with the Regional Parks. This is mcclarin park and used to be divided into two sections. Huge land that is difficult to look at in a reasonable manner, so the goal was it divide this up into sections between one and a half to two hours. And so that people are looking at the same about of land as much as possible. We were trying to time things for evaluators so it was much more palatable. And as a example i had Golden Gate Park section six which was the area down near ocean beach and i ended up doing it three hours a day five days a in a row, a little bit unreasonable and that is how we functioned for a year. So we are splitting up the lake into smaller sections and further smaller sections to make it consist he want and to get the mark evaluations that have results that are more consistent and responsive and report on the actual condition in the parks. That concludes my part of the presentation. We thank you very much and we can take any questions that you would like. Thank you, very much. I see supervisor tang has a question. Yes, i have a question here, regarding psa four, which includes the outer district, for example, we have one of the highest member of parks lower than 80 percent also the lowest number of parks higher than 80 percent. I wondered if you could see how when you see this data how you address the main nens and whether you beef it up for certain parks and so you could talk through that a little bit. District four also had a long term absence of a manager and so that was one of the challenge theres and so now district four has a new manager. We actually received a lot of complaints that you are familiar with what is going on at lower great highways i think that you have seen recently a lot of effort in terms of maintaining that and looking at and i know that there was potential legislation about whether or not people could park there and i dont know the status of that but i dont know if that was something that was discussed. The great challenge, specifically for district four was a personnel issue that has been rectified. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor campos . Thank you, very much. You know, i was happy to be a cosponsor of this item and i want to thank supervisor now assess or chu for bringing this forward and it is great to be part of the first meeting that tang participates and i just wanted to briefly go over some of the numbers for district nine and i know that Phil Ginsberg told me that district nine was going to be his priority and so i appreciate that. Oh, really . He told me the same thing. I think that he tells that to every supervisor. You are caught. But, if you look at the presentation that is attached to the agenda, i am concerned about this district nine in particular, i think that we have seen a lot of improvement and a lot of good things happening. If you look at page 12, none of the d9 parks are among the