tv Replay BOS Govt Audits Committee 111716 SFGTV November 17, 2016 6:00pm-9:01pm PST
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>> good morning, and welcome to the government audit and oversight committee for today, november 17th, thursday. i'm eric peskin joined by supervisor katy tang who is sitting in for vice chair supervisor nor man yee. we'll be joined shortly by member and president breed. our clerk is dash -- derrick evans.
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>> do you have announcement. >> speaker: make sure all electronic devices and complete speakers and it should be submitted to the clerk. board of supervisor agenda -- >> thank you, mr. evans. supervisor tang, can we have a motion to excuse supervise yee. >> so moved >> that will be the order. and mr. clerk, could you please call item 2 out of order. >> item number 2 is hearing to consider appointing one member, term ending february 1, 2017, to the park, recreation and open space advisory committee. (rules committee)vacant seat 4, succeeding heather fuchs, resigned, must be nominated by the district 4 supervisor and from district 4, for the unexpired portion of a two-year term ending >> item number 2 is hearing to consider appointing one member, term ending february 1, 2017, to the park, recreation and open space advisory committee. (rules committee)vacant seat 4, succeeding heather fuchs, resigned, must be nominated by the district 4 supervisor and from district 4, for the unexpired portion of a two-year term ending february 1, 2017. there's 1-c and one applicant >> supervisor tang. >> thank you for considering this item which would go through rules committee, but we have an eager appointee who would like to start in december. i would like to invite mrs. dylan to speak. >> thank you for your e-mail. the floor is yours.
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>> hello. thank you for having me today. my name is natalie dylan. i'm the native of san francisco. born and raised in the mission where mission play ground became my second home. it was there where i formed character, i formed friends and i formed a community. and i was introduced to my first tennis classes and it was through tennis that i got my scholarship of standard. i was able to play for 4 years and study urban studies. my honor species was on the relationship between graffiti and crime in san francisco. so it was addressing the broken window theory which was has been spoken about in qualitative measures in new york and chicago, but much of the research has hasn't been conducted here in san francisco. so back to kind of pro sack. i think parks and open
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spaces have always been a -- had a special place in my heart, particularly because of my child and how kind of intra gal mission play ground was for my development. and secondly, as someone who has studied urban studies in urban development cities, i think open spaces is a powerful mean if build community at great and enormous scale. that's one of the benefits in san francisco is for us to be concentrated in one place, and to really build community, so i hope you accept my candancy >> any members who would like to testify on item number 2. seeing none. close item 2. thank you ms. tang. >> i think you're going to be a
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wonderful asset to this committee. i would like to move forward natalie dylan to this seat. >> without objection, we'll forward item number 2 without recommendation to the full board which would be considered on the 29th. mr. clerk, could you read item number one, please. speaker: item number one is tanghearing on the city's electric vehicle fleet, to determine what would be required for the city to commit to procuring 100% of its light-duty fleet as electric vehicles by 2020, and how to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles for our medium- and heavy-duty fleets; and requesting the city administrator, the general services agency, the department of the environment, the mayor's office, and the san francisco public utilities commission to report. >> supervisor tang has brought this hearing to us. supervisor tang. >> thank you so much. and a colleague, as you probably know i rarely bring forth hearings to the board of supervisors, but i do so when i feel an issue is morning and one that our city should take a leadership role on. today we have a hearing before us where we'll hear from sf environment
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and city administrators office and representatives from puc and our public works department to talk about how it is that we can collectively achieve our goals in reducing greenhouse gas admissions and to moving our own internal city freak towards a greener fleet. and this interest really sums from my personal interest in pursuing the ability to drive an electric vehicle myself, but live nothing a multi unit building, it's difficult. after working on this initiative with our city, i really do hope that we can expand how it is that san francisco as a whole and our private market can adopt other markets to encourage the use of electric vehicles or other improved technologies so we can collectively achieve our client goals. with that, i'll have more to say and ask later during the presentation. let get started. i'm going to call
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up jesse for our sf environment. >> good morning. >> good morning. is this presentation loaded? thanks. terrific. all right. today, myself and the city administrator's office are going to give you an overview of local, state, and federal policies that apply to electric vehicles across the country. al turn tifsh vehicles and charges general 101, what are we talking about when discussing electric vehicles, general admission vehicles progress we have made through this last year around electric vehicles, both within our fleet operations and city wide. city administrator office is going to give you an overview of the current city
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fleet. fleet initiative and then discuss next steps around the question that supervise tang has asked regarding our municipal procurement. this represents 40% of the city's greenhouse gas admissions. today there are over 400,000 vehicles registered in san francisco, and more than 100,000 inbound vehicles via commuters. transportation is a key strategy that will help san francisco meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals, and stick with our city wide renewable energy goals which of course in 2008 was established via the board of supervisors to have 100% renewable energy electricity supply by 2030. just a reminder our other
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municipalities are -- they're delivering 100% greenhouse gas free electricity to the vehicles we have. any expansion of electric vehicles we have in the fleet is 100% reduction in greenhouse gas admissions from that component of our foot print, and in 2015 mayor lee signed a west coast mayor's fleet initiative that established a 10% procurement goal annually for electric vehicles in our municipal fleet. locally the legislation that -- implements this is 10% -- this applies to fleet vehicles that are 800 bounds and less so these are light duty sedan and trucks. this is is safety vehicles like
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police, pursuit and fire. as well as some exemptions to enter prize. they have -- that includes fleet management, vehicle selection, with some support from sf environment. and really what the city administrator's office is achieving through hacto is mandatory fleet reduction fleet requirements so they're exercising the fleet and how to use fleet vehicles appropriately and how to size the vehicles so they meet the needs of the different departments. and also to select vehicles via a vehicle selection list that are the highesty -- the highest
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efficiency. it's aligned with the greenhouse goals around fleet operation, which is a 4% reduction in greenhouse gas admissions by the end of fiscal year 2017 and a reduction by end of fiscal year 2021. sf environment within hacto has alternative field vehicle infrastructure and i'll talk about what we're doing on that in a few minutes. but this includes looking at how we expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure throughout city to -- we apply for grants from the state federal government, and foundations which i'll discuss as well. a quick review of california policy that applies to electric vehicles. in 2012, governor brown established an executive
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order that mandated 1.5 million zero mission vehicles that are on the roads by 2025. when we talk about zero mission vehicles from the state's perspective, this includes plug in hybrid electric vehicles, battery electric vehicles and fossil vehicles. s -- it established a 50% renewable portfolio goal to ensuring inveters and utility was delivering 50% of their electricity portfolios throughout the state which is sinner jess tick of the state with the 1.5 million zero mission vehicles and we need another outlet for that renewable energy generation. besides the built environment and that is they lek tri cajun of transportation. just this month, state of california
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also issued the zero admission plan which established a new procurement goal for state vehicles so they'll be working to ensure that 50% of the state's annual light duty procurement is zero mission vehicles by 2025. and then the federal government, they have their procurement goals which were established last year which requires 20% of the federal fleet to acquire electric vehicles by 2020, and their procurement goal of 50% electric vehicles by 2025. when we talk about zero mission vehicles just quickly, battery electric vehicles only run-on a charge that is electric. this is a fully plug in vehicle that has a battery on board to store that energy. plug in hybrid electric vehicles use an electric motor for short range trips, and then after that charge has run out, there is a hybrid gasoline engine that
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kicks in for the extended range. and hydrogen electric vehicles are electric vehicles that use hydrogen as the fuel to power an electric engine through fuel cells. primarily what we're discuss is the plug in and hybrid vehicles which are plug in electric vehicles. what we're not discussing is cng and hybrid simply because they don't fall under the definition of zero mission vehicles from the state of california. so what is the range of some of these vehicles, battery electric vehicles we see that full electric capacity having range from anywhere to 80 miles to 115 miles currently on a charge. there are some possible options here that could be integrated into municipal procurement including the ford focus, kia,
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the nissan lease which is what we have and smarty remembering trick drive vehicles and you can see the varying range of these cars, plug in hybrid electric vehicles. they have a shorter range on the fully electric component of their power system with extended range, hybrid engine that can be in access of 30-mile and we're familiar with the different hybrids that exist. coming soon and not -- when i mean soon i mean next month are the long range electric vehicles which are battery electric vehicles that have a higher range than the electric vehicles we have seen on the market to date. this includes the chevy bolt which yesterday was named motor trend car of the year. this will be a 30,000 vehicle that gets over 200 miles of range. we have the tesla model three which gets 200
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miles of range with a sim particular price range that has -- and then the hydrogen fuel vehicles, we do have the hydrogen fuelling station near ssfo and a potential for pro hydrogen stations to open in san francisco in the next couple of years via a couple of energy grants that are pending decision. there are fuel electric vehicles including the honda tusan and the honda clarity. the san francisco bay area is already a leader in electric vehicle adoption. and this is consist at that point with -- california is one of the world's largest mark hes for light duty zero mission vehicles with plug in electric vehicle ownership exceeded 230,000 vehicles by the end of
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the summer. californians drive 40% of all the electric vehicles on the road in the united states. and california electric vehicle market represents 1/3 of the world's easy market. in san francisco, there's approximately 5,000 electric vehicles registered to residents and businesses. and in some areas of our city, this represents 2 to 3% of the registered vehicle totals in those neighborhoods. so what this image represents is the darker green is where we have higher up take of electric vehicles throughout the city. so this shows how many vehicles are actually registered in these neighborhoods, and how many electric vehicles are registered in those neighborhoods as well. new sells of electric vehicle in san francisco represent about 4% of those -- of the sells of vehicles in this city. and in the bay area, we see in
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communities and the south bay, new sells of electric vehicles representing 20%. so san francisco and our early adopters of technology and throughout the bay area really are driving the market transportation for electric vehicles. but nationwide, worldwide, electric vehicles still only represent 1% of annual car sells. but this is going to change and it's going to change really soon. what this image represents is electric vehicles that are coming to market. i mentioned the chevy bolt which of course is being released in december that will have better range and lower pricing. so in addition to the chevy bolt, we have the tesla which has the lower price point and the nissan lease is going to have over 250 mys --
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miles of range and we have those entering the market who have promised, this week at the la auto show to deploy multiple models of electric vehicles by 2020. so electric vehicle adoption, i cannot be successful without implementing accessible ev charging. there's three primary types of ev charging bases on use case of the vehicles, so a level one charger is what you think of when you think of a wall socket. this is the lowest cost for charging. this is for charging over night at home or in the case of our that municipal fleet when vehicles are not used after work hours and they can charge all night. level two charging is common at work places. the chargers that
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we do have installed through the city of san francisco are mostly level 2 chargers. a level 2 charge enables you to recharge that battery to gain about 25 miles of range per hour of charge. this is when you think of when you install a 234 vault driver socket if the -- and the range can level for level 1 and level 2. if we needed to install for example, a run to support a ped stool for level one at a municipal facility, that could require trenching and require labor cost, so we do see that this range of cost could vary based on the municipal facility and the use case of the vehicle, and how we pair a different -- a specific type of charging to that vehicle's use case. and
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in san francisco, of course, our cost are generally more expensive than what we see across the country, and these averages that we see here - they're average from a cross the country. we want to ensure moving forward in the analysis we conduct of how much it will cost for us to support municipal vehicles that we're really looking at appropriate levels of budget for that charging. with level 2 charging, one of the important components that we also want to look at when assessing municipal facilities and the appropriate types of charging for vehicles is the electrical capacity of the building and make sure there's in the electric cal facility. one way for us to manage that is to
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through manage charging because they can be expensive. load control strategies, these technologies that enable fleet recharge management through an integrated computerized system can really help accelerate deployment of electric vehicles without requiring those electrical upgrades and they sequence multiple chargers through an automatic process so you don't have all the cars charging at one exceeding that building. and also it helps to reduce cost for labor, for fleet, staff to be managing charging of electric vehicles. and reduces those, again, those electrical infrastructure needs. likely what we're not looking at for dc fast charge. that's going to be applicable
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in the private sector when meeting the needs of business and -- transportation network companies like uber and lift, and how we work with them to electrify their fleet of drivers. city does have one of the highest per capital rates of electric vehicle charging infrastructure vehicles in the bay area. at municipal across -- about 20 minutes of post facilities we have 217 publicly available charging ports. 111 of these are located at various municipal facilities, mainly concentrated around mta garages and lots, and then there are over 100 at sfo as well. 25 of these charging ports are dedicated to municipal fleet
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vehicle charging. you can see there in the green box, the september statistics for use of these municipal public public available charging ports, so they're being utilized frequently. city wide we have 200 charging stations deployed. these points on the maps representing charging station that's can have multiple ports, so what you see here doesn't look like necessarily 600, but there are 600 here with multiple ports at each location. and then there are also dc fast chargers throughout the city. not all of these are publicly accessible. some are at hotels and other locations. but in general, we have one of the
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highest per cap rates of charging infrastructure in california and san francisco has done a great job over 5 years of leading the charge of integrating charging station, but we see the private sector picking up this, and i think that as much as we can work with the private sector on public private partnership on how to deploy -- that would be great. just quickly, and just -- >> if you don't mind, looking at the various maps and the up take within the city for ev, it -- once we expand into talking about the private market, really there's so much opportunity as you can see visually on the west side of town where we have more single family homes and probably more availability in terms of charging infrastructure, but there isn't a level of uptick
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as we would want to see, so i think again in the few just focusing on outreach efforts would be beneficial. >> yeah. when we put together the green square illustration, we were really surprised actually to see the opportunity that exist in these areas that have single family homes, that have actual dedicated parking spot and garages and we also know our places where people are driving a lot compared to the center of the city where we have public transportation that's available, and what not. it's definitely an opportunity. just quickly on what we've been up to in 2016, the city of san francisco of course was one of the 7 finalist for the u.s. department of transportation smart city challenge, and through this process, we were able to, in a very quick period of time, develop a strategy around ev deployment in the
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private sector with internal and external stakeholders. we of course were not successful in winning the dot smart city challenge, columbus, ohio won that particular grant opportunity. but from that particular -- from that experience, the city and the other smart city challenge finalist have begun to collaborate and work together. we collectively submitted a department of energy grant application that we're waiting to hear about. we've all agreed working together rather than competing against each other is a gra g- strategy to move forward -- we included projects including work place charging, andy remembering tri cajun of medium duty delivery and shuttle vehicles so we'll know more about that grant application in march. sf environment also implement a number of california energy
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commission grants including a grant that we're just getting started on looking for opportunities for electric vehicle charging in multi unit dwellings. the city is a member of an organization called the neutral alliance, and we're working on a grant with portland and other industry stakeholders and a consultant who is verifying a carbon standard that would provide access to private sector investors to access the carbon market for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, so that's really interesting project that's gaining traction. we worked with sf-mta over the last year to help them establish a fee for charging at municipal facilities that's pending. to date, charging at municipal facilities has been at no cost, but to influence behavior on charging equipment and make sure users aren't
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staying on the equipment longer than they need to, we feel strongly that a fee does need to be in place and lastly, we are apart of through both the west coast mayor's fleet initiative and the pacific coast collaborative, an effort with portland, san francisco, seattle, and los angeles. los angeles is taking lead on issuing a request for information to the automobile manufacturers, the oem to say collectively our fleet represents these many units of demand and we need you to manufacturer a light duty electric pickup truck. there are no electric pickup trucks on the market. and there's ways to retrofit it which is expenses and when we met with the oem earlier this spring to
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tell them this rfi coming, they said well, one of us will make it for you, so we're -- we're optimistic on that, but it shows how when we work with other cities, we can create market transformation whether than waiting for it to happen. to wrap up, this month, the white house issued a challenge to cities and states saying what are you going to commit to around electric vehicle. we have established our procurement as the federal government. we have huge buying power to drive the market, and cities and states across the country responded in a big way. so los angeles committed to a 50% annual procurement the battery electric vehicles by 2020. and 80% commitment of battery electric vehicles by 2025. they've already met their
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initial 50% commitment. portland, 30% of their sedan fleets will be battery electric or plug in hybrid by 2020. austin is adding both battery electric and plug in hybrid vehicles by 2020. this was also apart of their smart challenge city commitment as was the goals there represented by columbus, ohio. so this is a very timely question that supervisor tang has asked and we look forward to supporting the city administrator's office moving forward. so with that, i'm going to turn it over to jackie fong to tell you more about the current status of our municipal fleet. >> thank you mrs. dern and the st environment department. i know debbie is here. thank you for your work through the years and i feel now is the time really for us to help you -- support you in the research you have done and the work you have laid the groundwork down to push this forward. we
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absolutely want to take advantage of the fact we do still have a president and administration in place that believe in this goal, and i'm sure we're going to be closely monitoring what we'll be to come with the next administration. we'll turn it over to our city administrator's office, jackie fong. speaker: thank you. i just like to take the opportunity to thank the supervisors for their support of telamatics and the use of telamatics is presenting the data you'll see today. as far as an overview of our light duty vehicles, there's 270 -- 2,754 vehicles in the city's fleet currently. of those, 859 are sedans and will be the focus of our presentation today. over one half of those
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sedans are hybrids or 57%. about a quarter remain that are gasoline powered vehicles and the city owns 52 electric sedans and 9 electric suv's. again, there's 859 total vehicles, light duty sedans. 509 are general fund. and 350 are earned by enterprize department. of the general fund department of sedans, approximately 80% are hybrid, ev, or sng vehicles. of the enterprise department, about 60% are in the same categories.
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72% of the vehicles are used less than 300 miles per month. some vehicles are regularly used for necessary long distance travel. ie, the puc and human services agencies frequently travel long distances within california. at this rate a vehicle is driven approximately 36,000 miles over a 10-year life pan of the vehicle. based on this analysis, it appears that the city's use is well suited for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. in addition, sedans
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are used 8 -- 85% of vehicles are an average of 35 miles per hours a day. it's important to note that although vehicles average 2.5 roundtrips each business day, some take dozens of trips. for example we have vans or vehicle that's are delivering mail on a regular basis and this distance is within the full electric range of plug-in hybrid options. 3 quarters of the vehicles are used at least 10 days per month. 10% of the vehicles are used 5 or fewer business days per month. there appears to be
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some opportunity to reduce fleet size and or pull resources so optimize the fleet. currently, the fleet is engaged in a number of different initiatives, telematics is 97% installed in our sedans and we plan to have them fully installed by the end of the year, and we're utilizing a vehicle on demand system and vehicle pulls. fleet is presently piloting vehicle pools to determine how the city can optimize vehicle use and efficiency. pilots are presently being conducted with dph. there's a pilot at central shops and one in the civic center area. we're looking to expand that to one
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south van ness and the airport in the next few months. we're looking also at expanding the use of certain technologies in the future of vehicle technologies. presently we're looking at how ride sharing services could supplement the fleet. we're looking at where the industry is going in terms of automonous vehicles and it's projected they'll available to the public in the next 5 years. in addition, we're looking at other technologies to reduce greenhouse gas admissions. there are built on hybrid bolt
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kits and there's gasoline, engines, next generation fuels and energy storing that is available for car body panel to reduce the car's weight. looking forward, we're planned analyses to better -- fleet utilization patterns and ride sizing, we are doing economic analysis on the vehicle cost, mapt nance and fuel. we're looking at expanding charging infrastructures and where those best -- where it is best for us to invest in that. we're looking at electric sources and
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cost. options to lease vehicles verses purchase them. we're doing photo greenhouse gas admissions analysis, and again, looking at the possibilities of autonomous vehicles and we're looking at how to accomplish these goals while maintaining our ability to respond in disasters in the future. we hope to have our analyses complete in the next six to 7 months in order to present these recommendations to the board. we're looking at creating a more green and effective fleet in the city.
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the city administrator's department is working to -- to determine the best options for an increasing ev purchasing. are there any questions? speaker: thank you ms. fong for your presentation and giving us the overview. so i know there's a lot of analysis that has to go into how it is that we move our or shift our city towards different owe whether it's leasing or purchasing models for ev use or other improved technology and you said the analogy will take six to 7 months and i hope you probably -- you probably have a lot of this information, and you know, our office will be following up with you, but we're hoping to see something probably shorter -- in a shorter amount of time because i think that we do have opportunities, probably to start moving forward on some of these goals earlier. so one of the questions then is, you know, i'm wondering when is our
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cities next big purchase for -- because currently we're purchasing, but we might move towards different models for our vehicles? >> we presently have term contracts and our contract expires in january 31st of 2017. the contract is actually based on a projection of what we will purchase over a certain term. and so we don't necessarily do a consolidated buy at this time, but we do get the advantages of the pricing discounts that are available to the city. so for example, last year, we purchased over 90 sedans and they were all hybrids sedans for from the general fund. >> i'm wondering then, as this contract is about to expire though, i do understand the pricing discounts for january
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2017, do you feel like -- i mean i know it's around the corner, but is there any opportunity to start, again, shifting our city administrator's office to thinking about different options whether it's leasing or purchasing, whether -- so we can get out of contracts earlier and so forth. what are your thoughts around that? >> yes, we are looking at the possibilities of lease purchase. we also have looking at the possibilities of pig backing off existing contracts that are available from other government entities also. >> okay. all right, colleagues do you have questions for environment or city administrator's office. speaker: supervisor breed. >> okay. with that then, for your presentation and i think we have public works here. mr. john. i want to give our public a snap shot. i know
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that some departments have actually already try today adopt ev technology for their fleet wanting to kind of hear about some of the benefits that already -- and the challenges you face and i certainly know that every department is different and has different needs and functions, but we do have public works here, so thank you, mr. leal for being here. >> thank you supervisors, sorry about that. i'm john leal, public works fleet manager. we have 38 electric vehicles in our fleet right now. and we have 19 more that should be delivered in the next -- about 60 days. we don't really have that many challenges with the vehicles. we had a couple that ran out of power, but i don't think they were plugged in properly in the beginning. we're at capacity with charging stations though. when we get the new 19 vehicles, we're going to need to significantly
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upgrade our electric cal capacity which is going to be expensive. al capacity which is going to be expensive. for the 19 coming, what are you using them for? >> i believe they're going out with inspectors. we have a lot of smart cars and being a two-seater, there's not a lot of room. we have the plug-in prius which seats three or four, but most are for inspectors. >> i don't know if you've had an opportunity to do some cost analysis in terms of switching over to ev verses using just regular sedans, and how that kind of pan out for the department. >> there has been some analysis down and the break even point is supposed to be 7-year, and we've had them for two. i can't really tell you how that's going to work out.
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>> we'll followup with you then. speaker: 5 years from now i can probably give you better information. >> okay. great. and so is dpw -- i'm sorry, sf public works, are you planning on expanding even beyond just the 19 that are coming? >> we are, but we need to upgrade our electrical capacity. we've charged a solo charging station which mixed results if the it has broke down more than it's working, so maybe if we can get more dependable solar stations we can add more vehicles, we need to upgrade our capacity. >> okay. great. thank you so much for just that snap shot for your department and for, you know, being early adopters of ev adopters in your fleet. thank you. >> you're welcome. speaker: i believe we also have department of building section here. thank you for being here. director huey and i think madison is also here, so
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just wanting to listen to your experiences as well with ev in your department. i know you have a lot of inspectors who go out on a regular basis. >> we do. good morning, from the building inspection. we have 8% of our fleet is smart vehicles. speaker: how many? >> 8%. speaker: that represents like -- >> 10. we have 10. we have 10 vehicles. they're all smart vehicles, we've had them for 2 years now. they have been convenient. the size makes it easier and they're used by inspectors. you'll vehicles are used by inspectors so it has been convenient for us for parking. those are the pluses. we had not had issues withholding a charge because that has been fine but similar to dpw. there are some other issues primarily with the smart vehicle in particular. the
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vehicle itself is really small. it's comfortable in many ways. it really isn't a good drive for extended use. so that's what i'm hearing from the inspectors. our overall fleet is 93% of fuel. we're down to 7 vehicles that are gas vehicles and we're slated to replace those in the fiscal year, so every year we've been doing a replacement speaker: that's wonderful. thank you for setting a great example and sharing that experience and hope. -- hopefully other departments can take from that. anything to add dr. huey. okay. i believe we have puc. barbara hail, i don't know if anyone from puc wanted to chime in on anything. >> thank you for the opportunity. i would say as a participant in the working group, we helped prepare the content that you've seen and
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we're comfortable with that. i do think one of the challenges will be as sfpw just mentioned, the need to increase the capacity at various fascitis because that's a costly endeavor and it will take time. we need to be realistic about the financial outlay as we pursue this important goal. thank you. speaker: great, thank you. thank you for your support on this. so those are all the presentations that i had and it gives our public and our colleagues a high level overview of the important work we're embarking upon, so i want to thank the city departments working with us on this, but of course, it's not just about how it is that we achieve this goal by the year 2020, but how it is that we constantly work as a city together to adapt to whatever newer and improved technologies there are so we can it will to eliminate green gas house. with that said, thank you for being here. and of course, i will be following
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up with legislation that will be you know, representative of this hearing and the goals that we have stated here today. and i do hope that when the bum he satisfied on comes that my colleagues will be aware of this goal we have and hopefully support efforts where we're trying to improve our infrastructure for charging, to purchase vehicles that are electric and so forth. so with that said, then mr. chair, i will be happy to open up to questions or public comment. >> it's supervisor tang and thanks for your work on this area of policy. this has been going on for many, many years
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resolution approving a historical property contract between christopher j. ludwig and liesl ludwig, the owners of 361 oak street, and the city and county of san francisco, under administrative code, chapter 71; and authorizing the planning director and the assessor-recorder to execute the historical property contract.. >> this is with condition street 301 known as the millennial tower, and at our last meeting, we heard testimony from the department of building inspection and i wanted to followup with the director of the department of building and inspection, mr. tom huey. i wrote mr. huey a letter yesterday with a number of questions that he has prepared to answer this morning, but i wanted to start by following up on, think, the most important issue in that and that's the peer review of what we call the hamburger report dated october 27th of 2016 which we were going to
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have independently peer reviews and i realize that's not entirely within the department's building inspection's hands, but if we can start with that. mr. huey, good morning, and thanks for being here and thanks to your staff as well. >> good morning, supervisor. thank you forgiving us the opportunity to give you more update today. first of all, before i start, i want to mention our department and also myself. you know, public safety is a number one concern for our department. the second thing is you know, yesterday you send an e-mail 5:30 and then we have my staff to look into it and give you more detailed answer. but before that, i want to talk about an update, what we did for the, you know, since the last hearing. you heard about what
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we do, you know, behind the pu review and revising the ab 82 and 83 and right now also, yesterday we have the bic meeting, our commission meeting and we announced we are going to develop, you know, some kind of expert lease of consultant and then we can have a pool and then to come out from there. the reason is we want to -- the per -- the perception with the owner, we want to be paid by the department and then the developer pay us. reimburse the cost we have. then this will be a lot better to make sure, you know, public perception to be clear. the second thing regarding the soil type, classified type f, we don't understand what type f
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means as the worst soil in the world. it's a [inaudible]. in our geo technical, factual or whatever we require specialty, right now we're going to add one more in that area for those soil types for over 240 feet high rise building. >> mr. huey, you're going to amend to require additional review in f situations. >> uh-huh. and also the, you know, we're working closely with the administration's office and inform the supervisor's office and mayor's office, we're very lucky, we
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already developed you know, peer review panel. the first task we'll ask them to do is to study all the data including what we call 2014 draft report and 2016 final report from juan hamburger and besides that, all audit data. they need to study it and come up with a conclusion, is it the building, safety, at this part. then we're going to further to give more detail. >> mr. huey, how is this peer review panel selected and which review members are on this panel? >> first of all i assume the administrator's office would be here. >> i understand that ms. kelly
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is out of town, but that -- mr. barns was going to be here on her behalf. >> before i give you the name and i tell you one of the person is from academic from your resident of stanford, and another one is a [inaudible] engineer, experienced and analogy technical. what -- but i'm one of the election courses, you know, with two data with them and also make sure no conflicts of interest will touch any of those projects, you know, like tga or 301 admission. then i want to tell you, you know, last -- >> mr. huey, they will be paid for by the city? >> paid for by the city from of course from our department. >> who will instruct them? who will charge them? >> we will have a panel of 7,
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you know, including city administrator, me, and person from puc and other, you know, also city attorney will advise us for a committee member to oversight -- >> this panel instructions will be in writing as to the scope of their review? >> yeah, we have write down the scope of what they do, you know, on that. speaker: is that available for me or the public to look at? >> can i maybe later on i can consult with the
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>> i went into the basement and you can see piping that is getting pinched as the building recedes. i mean, i'm sure it's fixable, but there's a series of u-hooks or placements that you can see the insolation is getting cut through. they're easy to find. all you have to do is look up and see them and you can see the end in the pipes. >> we'll have to look into those concerns. >> and then also in several of the walls in the basement where there isn't small concrete, i took pictures of it, there's cracks in the walls. it appears although people placed monitoring devices on these cracks. >> that's correct. when we went to basement levels and we did an inspection, we noticed
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monitoring. it should be apart of the report that they're going to provide. speaker: so they're monitoring those cracks so see if there's movement or openings in those cracks and it should be in the [inaudible]. >> thank you. we'll circle around with puc in a little bit. don't worry, we'll get to you in a bit. come back up, tom. >> okay. now, we want to ask my assistant director, ron tom to go through your request from yesterday's e-mail. speaker: great. thank you mr. huey. mr. tom. >> good morning, supervisors, assistant director ron tom, director of building and inspection. is there -- would you like to have any specific area covered, supervisors? >> i'm happy to go through the
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letter, but if you want to take it from the top. >> okay. >> so our director huey has already alluded to the fact that we're making changes in the department of which i'm task with shepherding. some of the things we're going to do now is specifically tailored toward design review letters that are generated by the pure review group. and we're going to insure these are now going to be accessible and linked directly to every project based on this application. that's the constant thing we always have is the application number. addresses can change after a project is completed. the lot number also can be changed if you have condos. so, i have
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also, as an interim directive prepared a memorandum giving review to our design -- on how to accomplish the goals that we have set forth. also, we are -- we have begun that dialogue to assess what it is that isn't covered in the current retention policy that we want to think through -- think through issues that occurred during the course of review. how they're documented, how they're captured and how they're communicated which currently now are at the discretion of the plan reviewer because this course of review, and once they have to finally sign off on it, it's after the
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discretion is whether they retain it or not. for instance, the plan review comments and corespondents and issues we issue as a department, how do these -- what do we do with these in terms of the hard copy and also making sure that they're captured electronically. how do are we in-- how do we index these items because that will have to be thoroughly thought through as well. we have requirements for the permit application, inspection records, plans, things of those nature which we actually regulate an issue. those are all currently retained. so there's not a problem retrieving those. it's the elements that bring you to the approval level and also they don't always have the same
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characteristic. every job does have a little -- they're different from one another, so you can't come up with a blanket directive that covers every single condition that you can conceive of since the projects can range so greatly in terms of scope, value, complexity, but certainly for the larger projects that we're talking about, these high rises, those we can start with and think through more clearly, what it is that necessary to retain that currently doesn't have a retention policy attached to it. so that's what we're headed towards now. >> and mr. tom, what would the timeframe for putting that in writing and making that an official departmental policy? >> so, i alluded earlier to a memorandum that i prepare and it's in draft form, but it's in
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-- that's clear what you do with your design letters. that's immediate meaning that this month. november. the other ones, right now we have to look at it, work closely as more of a committed -- on the committee effort and so i believe that that -- we're looking at in the next -- i would say within the next four to 5 months, we could have something more clear in terms of what our policies will be, and again, you have your written policies and you have your customary activities that aren't codified. they're understood and everyone approves -- we want to see if we can distill that to
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something that has a higher level of commonality so we can bring greater uniformity to the process itself. but we don't -- so micro manage the process itself so it becomes unattainable. >> mr. tom, obviously i'm not a plan checker, a building inspector, but if you don't keep the comments and the correspondence between an april bring sxant their engineers and the department, how do you have any ability to have quality control. how do you -- you can't go back and recreate a record to find out whether one plan checker wasn't doing his or her job and another plan checker was. doesn't it strike you as odd that in 2016 with the kind of technology that we have -- a dozen years ago when this program was winding its way through, once the permit is
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approved, all that stuff can go into the circular filing cabinet? >> that's -- that would be a misconception because not all of it goes in a filing cabinet. not a circular one or garbage can. i want to emphasize during the course of review, the elements that bring you to the final approval will vary. we have different individuals who manage their files differently. we do not have a written policy how one shall manage that. take myself as an example, i have all my comments, i have them whether they were handwriting, and i have retained all my notebooks and mainly they're typed out and they're captured, and they're in a personal u-drive. every one of our plan review
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staff have their over u-drive. it's not a common one. it's their own. so the likely hood is more than likely they're still there. we didn't tell them you can't purge your files. we have files of people who no longer work for us or are decease who are in our filing system because we don't go and systematically purge them. i don't think i'm a typical going through plan review for quite a few years nor do i think that we have any specific individual who would take it upon themselves to go and purge every project they have ever touched. so yes, they're there. we don't have a policy to guide them. >> and with regard to the 4-volume permit application that, that you would still have for 301 admission street? >> we, on staff level, we're trying to determine what the
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four volumes reference was. the likely hood is those were the calculations because 4 volumes, i'm assuming there's at least binder size of two to 3 inches and not just a half inch binder. they're volumes, right, so we anticipate -- we think that those were calculations. i look back at other large projects. that's what generates amounts of information is calculations because often days for complex projects they're run off a computer program so that generates quite a bit of information. that -- the current and this is a policy we don't intend to change at this point. calculations by
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customarily has never been changed. there there so a -- so they can question specific elements of a project and get the sense of the whole project, but the point i'm trying to make is we always have either returned the calculations to the applicant or if we have them, we would no longer keep them. we don't scan them. we don't -- again, they're numbers, right. so you have to have a reference point for them to be of any good and usefulness. >> mr. tom, do you think that d samone who have attained that information. i'm pretty sure she provided that information. >> if i answer that, it would be have to be con jek tore, but i can say that because i'm a design professional and i've
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had an office for over 10 years. we obtained our records for 5 years once a project was completed. we generally, you know, we retain -- there is defect law in california for 10 years, after a project is completed, and taken occupancy, so they have to maintain certain records during that time until the statute of limitations expire. so i think it would be a generally -- a good practice, and since we're talking about when you make reference to four volumes, that's the paper. but what comes from the paper is the actual digital format from which it was generated. but that doesn't take the same kind of physical -- physical need to store something as it does in an electronic format. i would say as a design professional, there's highly a likely hood
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they have some, if not all of those four volumes, but again, that's an opinion that i'm rendering. >> okay. we can reach out to samone and determine that. with regards to my questions having to do with documentation of the retention of the pure review panelist mr. hardy and professor jack, have you been able to find any documents that instructed those individuals, retained those individuals? >> from my knowledge, and discussion with staff, the answer is no. the letters that, right now are being circulated, actually came off the approved plans. >> right. those are the letters with the bubbles around them. >> those are apart of the larger format plan. those are not eight and a half by 11 pieces of paper retained. they're shots of -- apart of
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the plans that aren't -- that are available to the public. as opposed to an instrument design and a copy right plans, these are apart of the plans. speaker: they're hard to read and they're copies and they raise more questions than they answer, but there's one in particular dated october 30, 2005, which as you -- revised january 24th of 2006 in the middle brook and lewy structural engineering firm which says that they have completed the peer review prepared by the samone project for the 301 project and they go on and say that they think that it's okay, but they
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specifically say this is harty panue. we were not asked to review the effects of the transbay terminal project on this project. number one, that makes me believe that they were asked to review something and presumably that ask was not a verbal ask. there must have been a piece of paper, here's something that says here's what you're supposed to review. it's interesting to me, i mean, remember the eir for trans bay was completed in 2004, trans bay, while they haven't turned a shovel yet was an absolutely contemplated project and mr. per knew is saying you didn't ask us to look at the effects of trans bay. did they generate any correspondence like we want you to look at trans bay, we want to tell you us that trans bay couldn't have an impact? >> i'm going to defer the
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answer to hanson tom. i want to set this in relative to our department. trans bay as we all know is not apart of our city government -- i mean apart of our city structure. currently we do have a relationship with them through our mou to do review which we've done. at that point in time, to my knowledge and to our staff's knowledge, there was no contract you'll relation between them and the city. we don't have documents that they prepared at that point in time. i guess about 2005, we didn't have anything. there was no contractual relationship. there wasn't an ongoing relationship and dialogue that
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occurred later. subsequently when the project started to mature and get its entitlements in place, so that reference is a little perplexing to most of us, in fact all of -- we're not sure if this is a cover your rear end kind of statement which is -- they're known do that from time to time so they can put it there and say i didn't look at this or i'm not involved in this, so therefore it's deferred to some other party. that doesn't mean necessarily that there is another party or we're reviewing this. >> mr. tom i understand what you're saying, but whether or not the anticipated reasonably for seeable project planned for next door was within the city's jurisdiction or not, as the 301 mission which was within the city's jurisdiction and dbi jurisdiction, this is before dbi is hired as the trans bay
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consultant. you would think this for seeable hole next door whether it was under the city's jurisdiction or not, it's something we might want to say, please go back and we cannot issue a building permit as long as you have -- what do you call it, cover your behind language. if i got that letter, i would say you guys are telling me we may have a problem here and further analysis is required or take the language out, and the same thing is true in jack mainly's letter which is another copy on the plans. this is dated 20 -- it looks like it says 2008 but if you take a magnifying glass to it, it's 2006. they take no
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responsible for theish -- for the -- it refers to a number of supplemental written clarifications dated september 1, 2005, but we -- no one has been able to produce those documents. again, it raises more questions than it answers. and what's particularly interesting to me is it is unclear. i mean, even though these letters by mayley and pernue are written to the building and safety, there's no letters that tells them what their responsibility is, and i assume they're working for millennial partners or working forgetting paid by either millennial partners or d.samone. there must be some
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instruction as to what their charge is, or what their duty was, don't you think? >> supervisor peskin, those are reasonable questions, and i think that at this point in time, it's best that hanson tom, our principal engineer who was the party at that time developing this new process for our department which is what we call currently, we know it's peer review, that was in its infancy. i'm going to turn it over to hanson sol so he can give you a better answer. >> thank you, mr. tom. before we do that, i would like to welcome, before we have the other mr. tom come up, i would like to welcome and acknowledge former director of the department of building inspection, mr. chu. i think you left in 2004, 2005. come on up. and the reason i wanted him to jump in before hanson
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because at our first hearing on this item, we actually talked about the infancy of peer review and i believe that mr. tom invoked, then director chu in the role that you played in performance based analysis as compared to code prescribed projects and i'm pleased you can't down here this morning. mr. chu i had a chance to chat yesterday and he reminded me of something we had all forgotten about or not discussed publicly which is actually one of the first performance based designs. it wasn't infinity. it was actually the building that we are sitting in right now relative to its base isolation system. so i thought that was a good way to jump in and may be mr. chu you can regale us a little bit with your role and how performance based design review and peer
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review came about. welcome and thanks for joining us. >> good morning, supervisor. my name is frank chu, former director of the inspection. it has been about almost ten contemporaries since i've retired from the city. i don't recall a lot of detail, but you're correct. back in 1995 or 96, around that time when the city hall was going into a major renovation, particularly as a result of earthquake damage, there was a proposal to propose a new technology, what do they call it. based isolated system. at the time it was new to us and i wasn't familiar with it nor was staff. while we heard about the based isolation system, we wanted to make sure that we have all the
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expertise that analyzed the system to make sure that the proposal is safe, so we have convened a peer review panel at the time. i also recall -- >> for city hall? >> yes, that's right. that was the major upgrade at that time. >> that was the first peer review panel that you can think of? speaker: as far as i can recall. there was a force peer review panel we assembled. >> later on? >> i recall there was not a project. 425, i believe, market street. they have unusual structure system that they proposed. speaker: a core system instead of a moment frame. >> that's correct. which again, there was -- at that time, a state of the art technology. while we embrace and have a unique design and state of the art technology,
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but we want to make sure that the proposal is safe. so again, for that project, i recall invoking that peer review panel as well. >> and do you recall early on being initially resistant to the notion of non code prescribed projects? >> well, again, as i said, we encourage the unique design and state of the art technology, but we want to make sure that it's safe. so we want to make sure that we have all the experts in the field, also given recommendation and support as to ensure the project is safe. >> and mr. chu, my understanding is during your entire 10 year, the department had the legal act to invoke
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peer review on any project whether it was code prescribed or performance based? >> as far as i know. my policy has always been in doubt, have a second or third look at the project. so we will always do that. >> and you were around -- we discussed this at our last hearing and mostly based on letters and documents from when you were director of the department, but you were around for the 80 nitoma matter and can you just share with us what your recollections were in and around and why at a certain point you chose to suspend that permit? >> again, i don't recall the specifics or the details of the incident, but as far as i remember, someone brought to my attention that this project is one of the unique projects in a
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special [inaudible] area. and at the time i felt that we want to have a second look. so i requested the project to stop and suspended the project so we have the ability to look into it. >> and do you recall whether that project was steel or concrete? >> i don't recall specifically, but so i don't want to speculate what the design was, but i was aware of the unique design or probably somebody brought to my attention that we should have a second look. >> and i know you've been gone from your role as director of dbi for a decade, but in hine sight do you have a -- on
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seismically banned high rises? >> the only thing i can say is at any -- the only thing i can say is at any time you have a unique design in front of you, you want to make sure you vt expertise is to make sure the project is safe. when in doubt ask for a second opinion. >> relative to you being around at the dawn infancy of peer review, do you remember any kind of policy concerns or issues around how the city obtained or instructed these third party experts? >> i always felt that the staff -- we had a staff that has the capability of making that kind of decision. so therefore, i think it's up to the designer
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or the plan checker to read it and whether they need additional support or additional recommendations found in peer review or outside consultation. i thought i had that feeling, that our staff had the capability to make the decision. >> in your role as director, do you recall outside influences, via the developer or project's teams or expediters putting pressure on you or your staff to shorten peer review and not have peer review? >> well you know, that's always the case, but our pass see has -- we want to make sure the project comply was the code. >> when your staff came to you and said mr. director, i think this project needs additional
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review, i have concerns, would you back that staff up? speaker: sure. i always respect the staff's judgment to make that kind of inquiry and always support them if there's a valid concern. >> and relative to safety being of concern and we agree with -- you were talking about the core foundation system of 1 -- do you have any concerns about these buildings being built to minimum seismic safety standards that while they're design to withstand a major seismic event would be uninhabitable? >> well, we want to make sure that the design meets the latest code compliance and make sure they're safe. we would encourage the project to make sure they meet the various
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concerns on a code's issue. speaker: do you have any thoughts about whether or not foundations in areas of landfill should go to bedrock? >> i'm not so sure that i would say that all the projects or all the designs has to go to the bedrock, but again, we want to make sure that when a proposal comes in, we want to make sure that we look at a project thoroughly and when we're met with doubt, we invoke the peer review and make sure we have all the experts, raise all the issues to limit any concerns. >> a couple of minutes ago you said that we should keep up with -- we should make sure our codes are compliances, what i was asking, should we beef up our codes to have more stringent standards than the minimum standards that we
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choose to adhere to? >> well, as you know, when you allow a performance based code, sometimes the building code cannot address all the issues. that's what the beauty about the performance code is it makes sure it allows the designer to come up with the design and we want to make sure we have all the experts look at and raise all the issues to ensure what they compose is safe. in responding to your question, i don't know that the building code could address all the issue and i say that because that means you're not allowing a structure code design to come in with a unique design because sometimes the code can't address all elements
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of the structure >> thank you mr. chu. thank you for taking the time and give my best to mr. olea. >> tom as it hanson. we've got a tom huey, a ron tom and hanson tom. a lot of tom's. >> supervisors, i think it's still morning, right. good morning. >> it's still morning and the board is starting to get annoyed and i can feel it. this is hanson tom. principal engineer with the department of duty inspection. so there was a question that you asked in our -- when you talk to our assistant director ron tom about why there's no, sir
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record about our retention of the pay reviewer. >> yes, how you directed the peer reviewer. >> yeah. i think at that time we don't have abo 83 and abo 82, to spell out the guideline. i think at that time, it was still in the early stage of peer review process. i remember at that time i recall that for the [inaudible] building, we usually -- even for later buildings, we actually have a quick off meeting. kickoff meeting usually will identify the scope of work and also the length of pay review. and we have some stages, maybe, milestone, what peer view have to accomplish
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before what permit has to issue. so looking at the record in here, i kind of recall. we have that meeting. the meeting with the record spell out that scope of work very clear. what kind of item have to be reviewed. in something like this, usually it's a design criteria. when the design criteria is accept, we are able to issue the site permit. following that stage, we usually go to the design of the building. so the design of the building usually is -- you build something from the bottom and you go up, so you start from the foundation, so the foundation reveal -- unfortunately with this case, we don't have a review. but
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the foundation structure system is reviewed it, and we have the letter from the peer review team on that. and so on, on the super structure, we have the third stage for the super structure and what they have to review in the super structure, usually the most important thing like i identified at that time is the computer modeling system because what you design in the building is based on the output of the data and the data you input and the output you use for to design the structural element. that is a very, very critical review pair for the review team. i kind of bring that out in the last two hearings that our office really
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is not equipped with sophisticated computer, modeling requirement. >> you've been very straight forward about that and consistently so. >> yeah. speaker: but everything you just said which is -- there must have been an initial meet with the peer reviewers and there must have been a scope of work and mile stones. >> yes. >> you're saying all of that was verbal? >> at that time, we -- in the kickoff meeting, we actually have notes taken by all of us, and also the formal notes by the engineer of record. so the engineer of records have to have that agreed with the building department. speaker: is there some written document between the engineer of record and the building department as to the scope of work of the peer reviewer? >> yes, we should have. >> where would that be? >> yeah, that -- this is
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13-year-old permit. so i think at that time we don't have a policy how to retain that record. as a matter of fact, we don't have a kind of format, how we're supposed to put it in the scope, but when i look at the ad -- i kind of have an initial letter going out to the peer reviewer saying that oh, here is our projects and the structure system and it exceeded or building code allowance and that rendered that building to be a performance based design. i kind of -- in that letter, i kind of put in the scope of review for that [inaudible] i have that. 301 admissions, i think we have a kickoff meeting and we have the notes and the
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agreed upon scope and at that time, i'm trying to recall the note is taking in past by the engineer of record. >> and did the two peer reviewers harty pernu and jack, who did they work for? >> well, our peer review, the initial part of peer review is to have an independent review. it has to be built in files to -- so that insure meeting the code, so i am pretty sure, even though our structure at that time is to have the peer reviewer to pay by the project sponsor, but the peer reviewer has to be under the jurisdiction of the building department. so all the time, when taking the order, they
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have to, like, staff with the building department, so they are contracted to the project sponsor, but the work -- the organization comes from the building department. >> yeah. speaker: i don't think -- >> it's hard to put that together if there's no charging papers or we can't find charging papers. i've talked to professor maley who first said he would like to come here and clarify this for everybody, and then decided he didn't want to come. i talked to mr. pernu who is not available today, as you may know on tuesday, i asked the city attorney to draft a subpoena for mr. maley so we can ask him these questions and that will go before the full board of supervisors to consider the issuance of that subpoena in the weeks ahead. speaker: yes. speaker: but it would be nice to get that clarification from
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>> the building structure configuration of tghp. we have really no information on what kind of structure is adjacent to 301 admission street. it's kind of like mr. purnu probably get information in his design world that he got some information, but in the building department, we really have no design [inaudible] related to the -- >> at what time did hgta fire the building department to be its consultant? >> i think it's about 2010. as i recall. we have an mou signed with them. have i to check the date.
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>> we're talking about -- that's 2004. that's a span of 6 years in there. >> so even though the department, look, in 2004, there was an eri that was done for trans bay which is long before 2006 and there's a letter from the peer reviewer that says, foundation is good, but we were not asked to look at the place next door. why didn't dbi say go back and look at the place next door. the information had been around for 2 years by then. >> well, we usually don't go beyond the review -- the review don't go beyond the property line like all this high rise right now. we look at the [inaudible] building which is over 1,000 feet. we don't --
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so we only can reveal whatever information we have at that time. >> mr. tom, i just want to say i think that that was the most honest statement and the most important statement that we've heard in these three hearings. i mean, it's interesting to me, and there are many other parts of this where, and i've -- i'm not trying to be mean or accuse tory, but where dbi excused the world in a very, very small narrow silo even though it has all of the information about these linking projects that cumulative can cause settlement. for instance, d-watering is looked at on a case by case basis, but the ground underneath all these buildings doesn't end at the property line. the water underneath as we're pumping
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millions and millions of gallons, when you pump it from one site it comes from another site and you have soil compaction and what have you on those sites and yet, even though we're at the dawn of the 21st century, the department says, we don't have to look at the thing next door. i mean, it's extraordinary and it's the same thing we realized in some of the previous hearings, which is if somebody didn't call or do an online 311 complaint despite this was in the newspaper, dbi wouldn't have sent somebody out to inspect the project even though in reality since at least february of 2009 when ray lewy wrote that letter was gary ho was copied on, we knew the building was sinking. on january 2009 when samone gives dbi a letter says it has sunk 8.3 inches and it's going to sink another 2 to 4. we knew that, but in august
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of 2009, we handout the final certificate of occupancy. and look i'm not -- there's -- there was a series of directors during that time, amy, lee, hannun and vivian day, it was a revolving door of directors, but what i was hearing from mr. chu there was a place revolving to that revolving door period where the buck stop and in the case of addy, a per affect was is spended because there was information compared to in early 2009. >> [switching captioners]
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particularly at page 592. dbi requirements. dbi would require that the detail geotechnical report-this is not 301 mission, this is transbay. report address the potential settlement of impact of excavation dewater. the report include determination bl a lateral movement and settlement survey of adjacent streets during construction. if a monitoring survey were recommended department of public works require a special inspector be retained. it goes on-if you can wait one second mr. brigs. mr. hui, relative to dbi requirements in the eir
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for transbay, do you know who in your department is in charge of that? >> i wasn't involved at all. i think it [inaudible] >> presumably this requirement is ongoing right now. >> i think [inaudible] hired their own consultant. i only doing the plan check in charge of the plan check for them. so, the watering is not in my
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area of expertise. >> i appreciate your candor, mr. tom-this is pretty amazing and deputy city attorney gibbener in so far this is the subject of years of litigation, let me just read what it says page 590. ground settlement could result from eccavation of subservice parking oreb basement level from construction and heave during installation of pime squz long term dewatering. these potential effects are described below followed be department of building inspection procedures in place to insure unstables conditions do note result. this is mitigation section of
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the eir. they didn't get the memo. that is abendantly claer. the head of the department never hurbd of this. it says they are responsible for monitoring the groundwater-dewaltering. as a matter of fact, when dewatering happens, a permit has to be obtained from the puc to discharge the water into the city's waste water system for which uc gets reports and the eir says they will get reports and found the dewatering report for 350 mission and says here we reviewed your application for a banch waste water permit and says to discharge 5 million gallons of water and requires reports. interestly enough rks
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the puc charges them for putting that water in the waste water system. same with 101 first street. what i cant find and found correspondence is the dewatering records for the building of the salesforce tower at transbay. what i have been able to find is a series of e-mails that indicate that the monthly reports have not been forthcoming for some 15 months. i see e-mails from brian coon to the contractor saying that they meter broken and going on for a long time. i don't think mr. brigser are you in a position to answer this? do you know anything about that? >> i am looking at the same corresponds nss. as far as i know we don't have it data but
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requested it. >> but as the permitting agency, when i read the permitatize says if you don't get what you want you can cancel the permit. dbi has certain rights. given that all this is happening right now in the real-time and building is continuing to sink you think that somebody somewhere in this government other than a member of the legislative branch of government or supervisor breed and i have the ability to ask you lots of questions, we don't have the ability to tell you what to do, but somebody needs to get this thing under control. there are all these moving pieces whether it is lateral or dewatering. here are the documents that say dbi is charged with looking at the dewatering comprehensively and yet dbi doesn't know that. i guess we have to get transbay
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in here too. anyway, if you can follow up on that and do what you should be doing that would be helpful. >> point well taken, and any members the public who like to testify on item 5? please come forward, ma'am. some day we'll get to the bottom of this. go ahead. >> hello supervisors peskin and others. my name is janet campbell a architect trained at georgia tech and mba in real estate and have 38 years of experience in architectural and real estate development. i came to shed loithd on what i have seen over the past 17 years within the planning and building and other departments. in 49 states the lines of responsibility to produce plans
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is not allowed. architects structural engineer and contractorerize notd allowed to practice each other profession. they use a standard orphdue care particular to their profession for the life, safety and welfare the public including financial with regards to those who hold loans on such properties. in all such places in california an earthquake country those lines have been blurred. architects and engineer can practice each others professions. further, while the license laws are clear who can and cannot practice architectural and engineering, time and again we see paper napkin like drawings taken in against license law jz approved oner commercial space or residential propertys with multiple units. against the law and in multiple departments. why in the hell
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does this hap snn we see [inaudible] expediteers who discuss properties with planning and building and other personnel representing clients against license laws. we see restaurants biltd biment without plans and appropriate permits and contractors crowing in e-mails how they got her done. the afect is brutal on a number of my clients. because of illegal units at least twof my clients are stuck in a round hell based the biing prices through clueless realsters with mortjudges on the income. hin one case approved and bought by my clients been to directors hearing and lean against their property and unable to sell or refinance. another client found her self represented by a expediter who represented the landlord rchlt sijeed a commercial lease prior to hiring me and when i go go to
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into the project found no way to accom daitd a exist. she lost-i prevented a number oaf other clients fraup similar mistakes, if they get to me soon enough. i have a list of items that i have given you that could be changed. >> thank you mrs. campbell and in receipt of your written statement and gave a copy to had clerk so will be a part the official proceedings of this committee. thank you for your comments. any other members here for public comment? seeing none, we'll close public comment. supervisor breed. without objection we will continue this item to call of the chair. thank you all very much for coming and before i see my doctor who just walked in, would anybody-we got a quick closed litigation session
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before supervisor breed has to split. deputy city attorney gibbener. >> mr. chair, if i may we do need to call the item 6 through aithd >> settlement of lawsuit filed by first national insurance for $405 thousand. 7, is ordinance setment of lawsuit fide-item 8 settlement filed by bhr opraigds for 169, 263, 18 >> i don't think we need to go into closed session, so if is there a member of the public who would like to comment on 6
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francisco public utilities commission is xhoefl that light with new led with the did i audits for better light for streets and pedestrian and they're even better for this vitally lasting longer and consuming up to 50 percent less energy upgrading takes thirty minutes remove the old street light and repeat 18 thousand 5 hundred times while our street lights will be improving the clean energy will remain the same every san francisco street light is powder by 100 percent godfathers hetch hetchy power in one simple word serious as day turns one of the major
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was asked to do is water system improvement program and one thing i looked at is about the 4.8 billion dollars wurthd of work and a lot of the work was regional. we looked at how can we make sure that we provide opportunities for san franciscan's and people in the region and so we looked at ways we can expand our local san francisco lb program. so, we thought about it and worked with general manager at the time to form an advizry committee to talk about how to include local businesses in the region. >> i was on the first committee back about 10 years ago and the job changed over time. in the beginning, we just wanted people to know about it. we
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wanted to attract contractors to come into the system which is a bidding system and bid on some of these projects. our second job was to help the sfpuc to try to make themselves more user frndly. >> i like that they go out of their way, have contractors trying to teach and outreach to small businesses and lots of creative ways. help the community as well. there is so much infrastructure going on and repair, new construction that i think is helping to get construction back on its feet. >> my faiv rlt part of the committee has been that we have played a opportunity for many small businesses. [inaudible] women owned business to come in and [inaudible] sfpuc. it is a
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great opportunity because some are so small they have been able to grow their companies and move up and bid other projects with the sfpuc. >> everyone i was talking about with any contractor [inaudible] and super markets and things like that and i realize the transition was on the sfpuc. he got that first job and knows about the paperwork qu schedule and still works on this type of job, but he works with general contractors that also did other things. pretty soon it is like he did that one and that one. it completely changed his business. >> my name is nancy [inaudible] the office manager and bid
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coordinator for [inaudible] construction. worked on 10 plus puc, lbe contracts. today we are doing site maintenance on the [inaudible] chr site and currently the gentlemen behind me are working on every moving and basic specs of plants. in order to be success you need to work hard, bid low and keep a look at the sfpuc website for future bidding opportunity. >> this is a successful program because it provides opportunities to regional communities that might not have opportunities to work for large scale projects. the sfpuc is a fortunate agency we have a lot of capital program that span over 7 counties who also to see how some businesses like [inaudible] and bio mass
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started as small micro businesses grow and expand and stay in the program and work on several projects before they graduate from the program. that is what warms my heart. >> my name is college willkerson, the principle for bio mass. bio mass has been in business since 2006. 3 partners. small businesses fill a niche but apply and being a part of the program helped us be more visible and show the city and county of san francisco we can also perform services. >> this program had tremendous impact to the region. in fact, the time we rolled the program out was during the recession. this has h a major positive
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>> there is the recreation and park commission meeting. will the secretary please call the roll. >> commissioner low. >> here. >> commissioner anderson. >> here. >> commissioner bo knee ya, commissioner harrison, commissioner mcdonnell and commissioner buell dez does have an excused absence, just a few quick reminders for everyone, we would ask that you please turn off any sound producing devices that may go off during the meeting and that you take any secondary conversations outside. if you would like to speak on an item today, please complete a blue card, commissioner, will it be three minutes? >> three minutes. er >> so, each person will have three minutes for public comment on each item. if there is an item of interest to you that is not on the agenda
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