Good morning.

The meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the June 22nd, 2026 meeting of the recessed budget and appropriation committee from June 18, 2026.

I am Supervisor Connie Chan, Chair of the Committee.

I'm joined by Vice Chair Supervisor Dorsey and members Supervisor Danny Sauter, and shortly by Supervisor Shaman Walton and President Rafael Mandelman.

Our clerk, it's Brent Halipa, and I would like to thank Seuss Entnalls from SFGov TV for broadcasting this meeting.

Mr.

Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Thank you, Madam Chair, just a friendly reminder to those in attendance to please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices to prevent interruptions to our proceedings.

And should you have any documents to be included as part of the file, these should be submitted to my clerk.

Uh members of the public may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways.

Could email them to myself, the budget and appropriations committee clerk at B R E N T.j.org.

If you submit public comment via email, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and also included as part of the official file.

You may also send your written comments via U.S.

Postal Service to our office in City Hall at one Dr.

Carlton Big of the Place, Room 244, San Francisco, California, 94102.

And Madam Chair, that concludes my announcements.

Thank you, Mr.

Clerk.

Before we get started, I just want to remind the public how today's meeting will proceed.

Last week we questioned city departments about the contents of their budget proposals and dispense with most of the budget trailing legislation.

On Thursday, we began detailed discussion with departments that had disagreements with the budget and legislative analysts proposed reductions.

We recess that meeting so that we can continue that work today.

The departments that are scheduled to appear today are listed on the agenda.

However, if a department agrees to the budget and legislative analysts proposed recommendations, they have not been required to return.

The budget and legislative analysts will announce those departments shortly.

We have one change to the order listed on the agenda.

We will hear from the Academy of Sciences last.

We will be we will hear from the California Academy of Sciences last on today's agenda.

We will not have general public comment today.

Instead, general public comment that addresses any or all departments' budgets will be heard on Wednesday, June 24th, starting at 10 a.m.

in this chambers.

And those public comments will be limited to one minute.

With that, Mr.

Clerk, can you please call items one through three?

Yes, item numbers one through three are items as it relates to this committee's consideration of the mayor's proposed budget for the departments of the city and county for fiscal years 2026-2027 and 2027 to 2028.

Item number one is our hearing to consider the mayor's proposed budgets.

Item number two is the proposed budget and appropriation ordinance appropriating all estimated receipts and all estimated expenditures for departments of the city and county as of May 30th, 2026.

And item number three is a proposed annual salary ordinance, enumerating positions in the AAO for the fiscal years ending June 30th, 2027 and June 30th, 2028, continuing creating or establishing these positions, enumerating and including therein all positions created by charter or state law for which compensations are paid from the city and county funds and appropriated in the AAO.

Authorizing appointments are continuation of appointments there, too.

Specifying the fixations, uh sorry, specifying and fixing the compensations and the work schedules thereof and authorizing appointments to temporary positions and fixing compensations.

Madam Chair.

Thank you.

And uh, Mr.

Goncher, could you please announce um which city departments have now come to agreement with your recommendations and that which the committee will accept today?

Thank you and good morning.

Uh Madam Chair, Dan Goncher with the Budget and Legislative Analysts Office.

The departments that we believe we have full agreement with include the following.

Children, youth, and family, department of early childhood, department of recreation and park, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

The we have um agreement with Department of Emergency Management, but that's with a revision to our recommendations, which were sent out this morning and also handed out, I think, by the clerk of the board just a few moments ago.

Also, full agreement with adult probation, the fire department, department of police accountability, and the district attorney's office.

And in addition to those, um, we believe we have um a modified agreement with uh the sheriff's inspector general, where they agree to recommendation number one and not to number two, but to put the recommendation, the amount of recommendation three on reserve.

And as you probably saw in our report, the board cannot accept recommendation two and three under Sheriff's Department of Accountability.

So what they are agreeing to is accepting one, reserving three, and rejecting two.

Happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

I don't see name on the roster at the moment.

So with that, colleagues, in addition, we have reached agreement with our final enterprise agency, the retirement system, where we will be accepting budget and legislative analyst recommendations.

And rejecting recommendations six and seven, which then uh means that they will retain a position and funding uh for their um office uh investment.

Um, and so and since last week we have also reached an agreement with the ethics commission and will be accepting one through four recommendations, and so with that we will go to the first department before us today, but we will go that the way that it will go is that we're going to go to the budget and legislative analyst going through the disagreement, um, and then we are going to allow city departments to have the rebuttal for those disagreement.

And the first one will be for the mayor's with the mayor's office.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um, the mayor's office, I believe we have agreement on all the fiscal recommendations in the report, and uh that starts on page 33 of our report and total uh 77,440 dollars in savings, all uh general fund in the first year, and 19,440 dollars in general fund savings in the second year.

Where I believe we have disagreement uh is with our policy recommendations uh which start on page 34 of our report, and I'll go through those.

Um so the first one is recommendation number five.

Uh this is a vacant 0943 manager 7, sorry, manager 8 position.

Um, and uh so to to consider deletion of that position and reduce the associated revenue budget for housing authority reimbursement.

Um the position is the San Francisco Housing Authority Deputy Director for Housing Authority operations.

The position's been vacant uh since last August.

Um according to the department, the position is intended to be filled at the 0905 mayoral staff uh 17 classification, and that the department intends to fill the position on August 1st of this year.

We do note that the cost of this position are fully reimbursed by the housing authority, which is why you don't see any savings for that recommendation.

The next one is on page 35 of our report.

It's recommendation number six.

Um we uh state that you should consider deletion of one full-time equivalent 0903 mayoral staff 15, which has been vacant since February of last year.

Um it's our understanding that this position is intended to be the place-based strategy lead for the mayor's also mayor's office with a focus on Hope SF.

This position is a uh grant supported, so you see no savings there on Mayor 6.

Mayor 7 is an 0902 mayoral staff 14 position that's been vacant since March.

Um we don't have any information on what the role of this position would be from the department, but according to the job description for the classification, 0902 mayoral staff 14 positions are considered management positions within the office of the mayor.

However, we've been told that not all positions in this classification are considered management positions or perform managerial tasks.

The next recommendation is number eight.

Again, so this is an 0902 mayoral staff 14.

Again, we don't have information on what the role of this position would be.

It's been vacant since March.

And uh the same statement that I said about the previous applies here, where the job description says it's a managerial position, but they're not always used to the what the job description says.

Mayoral recommendation number nine is an 0904 mayoral staff 16.

We don't have information about what this role would be.

It's been again vacant.

This one has been also been vacant since March.

Uh and the same of what I described applies here on the managerial responsibilities.

And mayoral 10 and 11 are very similar.

They're both uh 0903 and mayoral staff 15s.

We don't have information about the roles.

Both have been vacant since September of 2021.

Um both have job descriptions that include mayo managerial responsibilities.

Um, but they don't always uh exercise those responsibilities in practice.

Um they're both off-budget positions.

Mayor, the recommendation um 10 is grant supported, and that's why you don't see any savings for either of those.

And I do believe we have agreement on a current year savings recommendation for $611,094 to close out uh CBO projects.

That's on page 39 of our report.

That's all the disagreements we're aware of, and we're available for questions if you have any.

Thank you.

Yes, good morning.

Uh Dan Adams, uh Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development.

Also uh with the Housing Authority.

Um, first I want to thank the BLA and particularly Lyndon Berry for their partnership on reviewing uh the budget this year.

We as mentioned our total agreement with the fiscal recommendations.

We do respectfully disagree with the recommendation to delete the vacant 0943 position.

Um this is a deputy director for housing authority operations.

It became vacant almost a year ago when the previous director of the housing authority left.

I've been serving in a dual role since then at no additional cost to the city, I might add.

Uh this position is essential to ensure the operations of the housing authority, uh, which is a large part of a f of our affordable housing infrastructure in San Francisco.

It will be filled as an 0905, so at a lower uh cost to the city.

And as was mentioned in the report, it's 100% reimbursed by the housing authority budget, so it offers no additional cost nor savings were to be deleted here.

So with that, I'll close.

Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

And when do you anticipate that you will fill the position?

I mean, I think it's been a year, so do you are you in the interview process?

That's right.

We received 44 applicants.

We have uh we're getting down to the three that we're gonna be interviewing this coming week.

We intend to make an offer in the next couple of weeks.

And so which then you will start on time for the fiscal year to require that you will need a full year of salary.

We will need a full year's salary.

That's correct.

Thank you.

I don't see any name on the roster.

Thank you for the explanation.

Thank you so much.

Good morning, supervisor, Sophia Kittler for the mayor's office.

Um I also would like to thank Lyndon Barry and the BLA for their partnership.

They've been wonderful to work with as always.

Um, we are in agreement on the fiscal recommendations and the current year recommendations, however, um we are not in agreement with mayor six, seven, eight, nine, ten, or eleven, which are the policy recommendations.

Um before I get into the specifics of the positions, um, so mayor's office has its own job classes as we are unrepresented um by a union, and so we are kind of on a different path, and we have everything ranging from an 0891 up to an 0905.

And in the mayor's office, we use 0904 classes and 0905 classes as managerial positions, and everything below that tends to be an individual contributor.

Um so while they are 09 job classes, they are not in a in a supervisorial or management position, although they do have authority to that effect um in the compensation manual um on uh mayor's recommendation six this is the place-based strategy um it was one that has been um held vacant for a long time but we are currently uh we have made an offer that has been accepted um for somebody to lead our place based initiatives and particularly think about kind of how to lead hope SF over the next several years in strategy and operations um that has an agreed upon start date of July 13th um and this is uh not general fund funded um mayor's office number seven the oh nine oh two is a budget position um we had a budget analyst leave in March of this year and as you can imagine March was not the ideal time for our office to begin hiring so we have been working with a very lean team in the mayor's budget office um and have posted that job to begin uh to fill um as soon as possible um mayor's office eight is a position that we do currently hold vacant for attrition and um we like to have the position to kind of flex up and down as people leave whether we want an 0901 or an 090 or 901 203 kind of have that flexibility within our budget.

Mayor's office nine is a grant supported position that leads the mayor's office of innovation that position was vacated in March and we are going through the hiring process right now and are in final rounds of interviews again that is grant supported so has no savings and then um 10 and 11 you will see are both 0.5 FTEs.

Those ones are uh currently not funded they are off budget positions for in the events that we get a grant to work on a specific strategic initiative um that is outside of general funds and currently we do not have any of those but were we to get a grant for for example in the past it's been used for public safety initiatives in the mayor's office of criminal justice which no longer exists um when we get a grant and we want to quickly deploy it without going for an ASO amendment we use these positions in kind of like a a short term basis um and so that applies to both 10 and 11 again neither of those have any general fund savings um thank you I'm available for any questions by Chair Dorsey.

Thank you Chair Chan I will say um this is one of the the having worked in the city government for a long time this is one of the sort of like little axes to grind I feel going back to the era when Quentin Copp I think banned uh deputy mayors I think it was in 1991 I've always felt strongly that the mayor's office if we're gonna have an executive a strong mayor form of government we should make sure that we're funding that adequately so my my um institutional bias is to make sure that the mayor's office has the resources um and expertise um needed and I'm not so up I'm I'm persuaded to support the mayor's position on this.

Thank you thank you um thank you and next uh we will have um department of homelessness and supportive housing and we'll start with the BIA Madam Chair our recommendations for the department of homelessness and supportive housing are summarized on page 42 of our report and the details start on page 43 of our report our understanding is that we do have agreement with the department on all the fiscal recommendations which is recommendation one through four on page 43 of our report that totals 2 million 26,054 dollars in the first year all of which is general fund savings and 1 million 27,554 dollars in the second budget year again all of which is general fund savings.

I believe we also we might also have agreement on the policy recs.

Or not we can not on policy.

Okay.

Just want to make sure.

Okay.

So sorry.

Okay, so policy recs.

They start on page 45 of a report.

There are there's two recommendations um that sorry.

So it starts on page 44 of our report.

There are four policy recommendations.

That's recommendations five through eight, which total 1,071,044 in the first budget year.

The total at the bottom of page 45 is incorrect.

It says $803,283.

It should say $1,071,044.

Sorry for that oversight.

So recommendation five on page 44 of our report is a vacant 0923 manager 2 that was vacated a little over a year ago in May of last year.

We consider this a policy matter for the Board of Supervisors.

The position has been vacant for over a year, is one of six vacant manager positions, four of which are in the same job classification.

And this, you know, this is one of many that are highlighted due to the stated uh budget priorities of the board of supervisors in motion M26-25, and in consideration of the growth of management positions compared to non-management positions.

Department has sorry, and then the next uh recommendation is HOM6.

It's an 0923 manager 2.

Um, it was vacated in March of this year.

We consider that a policy matter for the board.

HOM 7 is also a manager 2.

It was vacated in November.

HOM 8 is a 09 also an 092 3 manager 2 that was vacated in March of this year.

Um I believe we also have disagreement with our current year savings on page uh 47 of our report.

So um first off, this is uh current year HOM1 on page 47 of our report.

First thing I want to note is that this should be a one-time savings, and it's not notated as that.

I apologize for that.

Uh, if accepted, this would the board would realize four million four hundred thirty one thousand four hundred dollars in one-time general fund savings.

So this line item is uh was originally um budgeted in the current year budget for six million eight hundred sixty one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six dollars for a project um to uh for an interim housing expansion program when this came last year to the board, the department did not have a plan developed for this interim housing expansion.

This body um at that time, last June, decided to put the entire amount on budget and finance reserve pending a detailed plan on how that interim housing expansion program was going to roll out.

Fast forward to just a couple weeks ago, I believe the department requested 2.4 million of the 6.9, not for interim housing, but for community ambassador services.

That leaves 4.4 million, which the department still does not have a plan for.

We followed up with the department, and we're told that just a few days ago that the department plans to use that or would like to use that for additional community ambassador services.

Why they didn't ask for that initially for the computer community ambassador program just a few weeks ago is not clear to us.

We you know, these were originally these funds were originally again for an interim housing expansion program, and we just don't believe that the department has a clear plan for how they're going to spend this, these funds, and so we are recommending that uh these be taken as current year savings.

That's our summary of where we believe we have disagreements.

We're happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Um, good morning, Chair Chan and committee members.

I just want to thank you and your teams for working so closely with our department staff.

Also, thank you to the BLA for the same thing, really appreciate the partnership.

And so in my presentation, I'm just going to focus on the areas where we are not in agreement.

So we are not in agreement with the BLA on fiscal recommendations CY Home-1 to reduce programmatic projects, the programmatic projects budget by approximately 4.4 million in fiscal year 26-27 that is currently on reserve with the board.

The department and the mayor's office submitted a request for release of reserves for approximately $4.4 million to sustain and expand community ambassador services in the SOMA and the tenderloin neighborhoods to support interim housing in these neighborhoods.

These services are essential to implementing the good neighbor policy across multiple services sites and supporting areas experiencing significant impacts.

This reserve request complements previously requested release of reserves for approximately 2.4 million to support continued ambassador services at the embarcadero Navigation Center and the 685 Ellis Shelter Program.

And I just want to say, you know, we started realizing some of these things fairly recently as departments have figured out their own budgets, and this is a multi-departmental effort when we start thinking about our good neighbor policy in the neighborhoods where we know we really need to increase resources.

So sorry for that coming in late.

We also understand the city's fiscal constraints, and we've already made significant reductions as part of the proposed budget.

The department is losing nearly 29 positions over two years, including an 18.4 FTE reduction in the first year alone.

At the same time, our department's overall budget is growing because of new investments in the homelessness response system, and that means HSH is going to be responsible for managing more funding, more contracts, more initiatives, and more reporting with fewer staff.

And as you can see here, staffing has not kept up with the growth of our budget over the last eight years.

While the proposed fiscal year 26-27 budget increases by 6% from fiscal year 25-26, staffing actually decreased 7%.

And again, it's approximately 18.5 FTEs.

So we agree with the need to identify savings, and we've done that.

Our concern is that these four positions are essential to carrying out the work already included in the proposed budget.

HSH relies heavily on nonprofit providers and contracted programs.

Those programs require internal staff capacity to manage contracts, oversee implementation, support providers, monitor performance, and maintain accountability.

Three of the four positions are funded by CalAM and our city are home, so deleting them would not generate general fund savings that could be reallocated elsewhere.

Eliminating these positions would reduce the department's ability to deliver on the very programs the budget funds.

Each of these positions is tied to a core function of our department.

The mayor's key priorities, preventing homelessness before people enter our system.

The planning and strategy manager is essential to long-term system planning and the multi-year procurement plan, especially as HSH prepares to reprocure services through a more community-centered process.

The legislative affairs manager is the department's primary capacity for board coordination, legislative compliance, reporting public records, and transparency requirements.

The legislative affairs manager is on a leave of absence at the behest of the department and is expected to return in summer of 2026.

HSH respectfully requests that the budget and appropriations committee preserve our department's ability to implement the proposed budget effectively.

The department has already taken substantial staffing reductions and further redors reducing core management capacity would undermine our department's ability to implement the proposed budget.

Thank you.

Thank you, and Vice Chair Dorsey.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

Um, I am uh powerfully persuaded by the department's um position on the importance of the positions.

Um, in my view, we can't manage a growing homelessness response system.

Um, and with fewer people responsible for planning and core coordination, and I think that's especially true at a time um when we're undertaking some important changes to make this more effective for in good times and in bad with this department.

We have had you know disagreements and agreements, but on this, I I really do think um that now is not the time um to be um reducing um expertise uh at a point at a time when it's working.

Um I would say that my district, and I know Supervisor Mocklude's district sees the consequences when the city and its and our nonprofit partners um aren't doing as good a job as we'd hoped, and I will be the first to say I think in many respects, especially when it comes to permanent supportive housing, that's on us.

We're we're asking the city departments and we're asking um nonprofit partners to solve problems they weren't intended to solve.

One of the things that um having worked, you know, on one project that really brought a lot of neighborhood engagement that I saw was the impact of a good neighbored policy and uh community ambassadors, was essential to winning the hearts and minds and public support for what we're doing, and the failure to do that I think is asking for problems.

I I always felt that you know, as people who are who govern in a democracy, we have to listen to residents and remember that the reason we have money to invest in permanent supportive housing is because of the generosity of voters who who who made decisions in 2018 with Prop C about making sure that we would have a robust response with permanent supportive housing.

Um, but they have an expectation that we're gonna be doing this better than we have been doing it, and I think the neighborhood ambassador program and good neighbor policy is a really foundational element to that.

Beyond that, we're also going into a critical period of procurement and contract reform, and I think this is a really another reason that this that these positions are important, and then finally, you know, I think we probably can all agree that prevention and housing placement are among the most cost-effective tools that we have when we're talking about homelessness, and I am persuaded that um that these positions um would help make sure that we are setting this department and its contractors up for success um rather than failure.

So I'm on your side on this.

Thank you, Supervisor.

Thank you, and I want to acknowledge uh Supervisor Shaman Walton has now joined this committee and also welcomes Supervisor Balama Moo.

If I may, Supervisor, um, it's a courtesy to this body that I would go with the committee member first, and then we'll go to you, Supervisor Montmore.

Supervisor Sauder.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

Uh, just a brief question first.

I see you have 29 FTEs reduced already over the next two years, according to your notes.

Of those 29 approximately, how many are managers?

Thank you, Dylan Schneider, Deputy Director with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

Supervisor, thank you for your question.

We would need to go back and just double check all of those positions to get back to you.

But I believe um there is one manager position that is part of that 29 that is transferring to DPH this year, that is our outreach manager.

Um, but that is the only management position that I am aware of right now, but we can follow up with the details on that.

Okay, thank you.

I am just trying to get a sense of of the reductions already in the works, um, how many of those impact managers and the with with recommendation five, for example, it notes that there's uh four vacant manager positions for that particular classification.

Can you um and I know you've spoken to this a little bit, but can you just remind me this role again, the work it does and kind of the path from where you are today to the path to getting those four manager positions filled, what that looks like.

You want me to go while you go through it, you know the timeline.

So recommendation number five is our housing placement manager.

So while this has been vacant since last May, this is a critical position that really coordinates across city departments, including the San Francisco Housing Authority, Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development, and our coordinated entry system to ensure that housing placements in the broad variety of housing subsidies the department operates, as well as those cross-departmental initiatives like emergency housing vouchers, is well coordinated as well as transfers between those host housing programs.

So this manager not only leads the department's kind of strategy and referrals, but ensures that people are spending less time in shelter on the streets and being able to move to housing more quickly.

Okay, thank you.

And then on recommendation number one, we heard from the BLA that they didn't feel there was a clear plan here yet.

So can you maybe describe that?

Um it's my understanding this would be ambassador services to enforce the good neighbor policy.

Based on this plan, um what coverage are we looking at?

What sites?

What is that, what does that look like?

Absolutely.

So the proposal for the approximately 4.4 million would be um to cover some key areas in both South of Market area as well as the tenderloin.

Currently, Soma West CBD and midmarket CBD provide ambassador services that offer immediate response, enhance existing neighborhood security, deter loitering, and connect individuals to appropriate services.

Uh so the site in the tenderloin is the Department of Emergency Management is currently funding similar services around the area of Turk and Hyde.

The additional services provided by mid-market are around the Hope House, which is one of our interim housing programs and that surrounding area.

And then there is also proposal to expand um community ambassador services in the larger south of market area that cover a number of sites, including permanent supportive housing sites as well as interim housing.

Thank you, that's helpful.

Um, and I would certainly on those uh look to the wisdom of my colleagues that represent those districts, but I imagine they would be in support, you know.

For for me, I think um I've always had a feeling that our good neighbor policy has to be strengthened, it needs to be backed up.

Um, and I would like to see these services kind of built in from the beginning.

Um, but if this is a way to get us there, uh, you know, I would be inclined to support it because um, you know, we need those, you know, that commitment and that promise to actually mean something, and these ambassador services are uh a very good way to do that.

Thanks.

Supervisor Mammu.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, colleagues.

I want to echo uh the comments that my colleague Supervisor Dorsey has made and argue against the cuts proposed by the BLA because as the department has indicated, um, they have a plan to reprogram that money uh that was originally intended for interim housing to support ambassadors in the tenderloin and SOMA.

Um these are neighborhoods that do host shelters and PSH facilities and service centers that are an essential part of our city's mission to serve its residents, but in order for those services to be successful, the city needs to be able to uphold its promise to be a good neighbor.

Um, I'm gonna comment particularly on the intersection of Turk and Hyde.

This was a hot spot for many years uh in the tender loin, going back decades, and we've made progress there at this point.

And now's not the time to go back on that progress and ensuring that we're able to allocate this money as the department has indicated.

Uh, we'll ensure that we're giving that investment to the community that is looking for it, and it requires that investment in a coalition between DEM, DPH, HSH, community partners.

And so by staffing uh appropriately safety near these shelter sites, we'll be able to continue to show that these sites can be well integrated into our neighborhoods and make the necessary expansion of these sites in future years easier on neighbors as all across the city.

Um so I ask that we reject this BLA recommendation and allow HSH to invest in the tenderloin and SOMA.

Pardon the interruption, Madam Chair, but uh just wanted to note for the public that uh with the appearance of uh member Mattelman, we now have a quorum of the Board of Supervisors participating in this meeting, and we have now convened that's a special meeting of the board of supervisors as of 11 35.

Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Clark.

And um, and um what is the percentage of attrition rate again?

We are pulling that up.

Give us just one moment, please.

Um, I'm gonna articulate why I'm asking about the attrition rate.

I mean, I think that when it comes to the discussion of the positions, generally speaking, not specifically for the HSH, is that we're evaluating positions that has been vacant, attrition rate.

Um, and in this case, you know, the in discussions are that we can see that there are total 32 total vacant positions that you currently have.

So I'm just trying to understand along with those vacant positions what is the percentage of attrition.

Um, how can we better understand that you know to maybe you're balancing out the attrition percentage uh with these vacant position, but I also want to understand if you as you know the question by Supervisor Sauter is that you currently, for example, for recommendations, you know, policy recommendation five, you for the zero nine two three was vacate vacation May 2025, and you do actually have the four position making position for this very same job, and yet you have not been recruiting.

So I think the question is, um, is this something that we can do without?

Um, and that you since you still have four, um, and yet you still have to, you know, you start have yet to start recruiting.

I'm not making that decision right now.

I'm I'm just simply laying out the argument for it, and would want to better understand what is your attrition percentage, and if it's lower than seven percent, um, I think then that's understandable of what what why you want to push back.

Um, so I think we can get you the specific um percentage.

Our change in year over year attrition um is goes from 4.6 FTE to 5.6 FTE, and our attrition level changes by 10.5 FTE in fiscal year 28.

Um, you know, we're not a huge department, so when we when we increase the attrition, it really it really hampers our ability to do the things we need to do.

That position is one we really need.

We have, you know, we've had to prioritize our hiring over the last year and focus on like what we need immediately, but we do need that position.

What is the total number of um individuals in the within the department?

164.

No, it's um.

Yeah, two just two forty-eight essentially.

245, yeah.

248.

Okay.

More than I thought.

Sorry.

I was like, oh, 164 people.

248.

248.

Um, so if you have 10 FTEs vacant or more, actually, you have more FD.

Let's let me know what is your attrition percentage.

Maybe we'll circle back then.

We'll do that.

Okay.

Thank you.

I don't see any other name on the roster, so then now we will move to the next uh city department, which is Department of Public Health.

And with that, we are gonna start with uh budget and legislative analysts first.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Our recommendations for the Department of Public Health are summarized on page 65 of our report, and the details start on page 66 of our report.

It's our understanding that we have full agreement with the department on the fiscal recommendations, which again start on page 66 and go through page uh seventy-one of our report, and are summarized on page 71 and total seven million two thousand six hundred and sixty five dollars in the first year of that amount.

Uh 500,000 is non-general fund savings, and the remainder about 6.5 million are general fund savings, uh, mostly one time in year two.

Our our recommendations total 1,553,442.

That's all ongoing general fund savings.

We believe we have disagreement on all the policy three thousand four hundred and these start on page 72 of our report.

Um across the department, there are 23, or at least as of the time we put our report together, there were 23 vacant manager positions across the entire department.

So I'm only going to highlight uh a select few from our policy recommendations.

So recommendation DPH 18, which is on 72 and 73 of our report, um, includes seven vacant manager positions in public health administration.

Of those, I will just highlight that there is one manager three, oh nine oh nine three one manager three that's been vacant for over two and a half years.

That's the second one on the list on page 73, and then we also uh I want to note that there's an 0942 manager 7 position that's also been vacant for more than two and a half years.

I will now move on to DPH 19 on page 74 of our report, which highlights two vacant manager positions in behavioral health of these.

One of the two is an 0931 manager three that's been vacant for over four and a half years.

DPH 20, also on page 74 of our report, consists of three vacant manager positions in Laguna Hana Hospital.

All three of these positions have been vacant for less than a year.

DPH 21 on page 75 of our report includes six vacant manager positions in health network services.

Of these, I would just like to highlight that there is one 0941 manager six position that's been vacant for two and a half years.

And finally, DPH 22 on page 76 of our report includes one vacant manager position in population health.

This is an 0932 manager 4.

It's been vacant for less than a year.

Our total policy recommendations for these vacant manager positions is 7,281,123 in fiscal year 26-27.

Of that 6.4 million is about 6.4 million is general fund, about 900,000 is non-general fund.

And our policy recommendations total 7,663,709 dollars in budget year two, fiscal year 2027-28.

Of that approximately 6.7 million is general fund savings, and about 945,000 is non-general fund savings, and that concludes my summary.

I'm available for any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Dancy.

Uh, director of DPH here.

Um, first I just want to thank our BLA analyst Christina for having spent quite a bit of time with us.

Um Ragda, if you don't mind pulling up the slides as well.

Um, everyone in our community knows how difficult the budget has been for DPH.

Um, these will be things that we struggle with around the fiscal pieces, but after going back and forth, we concur, we understand the context uh for finding some additional savings, and so we have concurred on those fiscal pieces, and I'm appreciated appreciative of uh Christina and the BLA for working back and forth with us around that.

Um the uh policy recommendations around the 23 managers.

I just want to go through a little bit more of detail on, and we are in disagreement on that uh matter, understanding the overall context here.

So um let's advance.

Uh the gist of what I'll try to briefly walk through is um we, in this last, in the budget we brought to you all, we eliminated over 130 FTE positions.

19 of those uh were vacuum vacant manager positions and other manager roles.

So we have already deleted more than 40 percent of our vacant managers and at 8x the rate, as are non-manager positions.

That was very important for us to try to support as much of the frontline staff as possible.

All of the remaining positions we believe are needed.

Some of them we have they've been vacant a long time, only because in so much as we've done some restructuring to deliver the 19 managers we have deleted and used old positions to repurpose into new pieces to try to minimize FTE impacts.

And I've got some of our clinical leads from across the DPH able to talk about each one of these positions that we really combed through.

So let me go through a little bit of detail around that.

And so this, and I should say first, Adam Chair, you asked uh prior department about Trishion, just so we're we have been at the lowest rate of turnover in the DPH in the past 10 years.

We're at a 6.7% turnover rate.

I take that to be a good thing.

People are, I hope, enjoying being in the department.

We want people, we want to retain people.

That is the single lowest turnover rate we've had in.

I look at a chart going past 10 years that we've had, and our budgeted attrition for this current budget that we've agreed to is already around 10%.

So we are agreeing to an attrition rate that is far above our turnover.

We're already having discussion with our remaining staff who are very worried about workload, and we are unable to fill vacancies as they come up because we have that delta between budgeted attrition and our active turnover rate on that.

So that's context overall.

This chart just shows where we landed on the budget we all presented.

So as I noted, we've already deleted 19 manager positions.

That is 40% of our 45 vacant managers.

I had the team go through with a fine-tooth comb and really identify every possible position, including where we did some restructuring and reorganization, so combine two teams into one.

That's all built in here.

I would also note the rate of manager deletion you'll see in that gray column.

We deleted 8% of our total manager positions versus only 1% for all of our other staff positions.

Again, that was a very important principle to really take a hard look at our manager uh roles.

And as I noted at the bottom, we're at a attrition rate of 10% budgeted, which is far above our actual turnover rate.

Let's go to the next page.

This I won't walk through everyone, but this takes our 23 vacancies, manager vacancies, and breaks those down at the top.

The 19 are already ones we deleted.

Everything we felt like we could live without or could combine two teams because we could reduce what we called span of control.

We took in the 19.

And the remainder break down at a high level into five categories.

The first category is there are five manager vacancies that we need to either uh without which we will have a layoff because we have uh temporary staff that we've been planning on converting into a permanent position, or um, it is uh a manager position that might have an acting person in that role, and as part of how we achieve the 19.

So, for example, in a few of these, we took two manager roles, combine them into one, and we will need that one to execute on having been able to reduce the total number of managers.

So that's the first row.

The second are uh have no general fund impact or fully uh revenue backed and have some state requirements in some cases or federal requirements around that.

The third are purely are very focused on revenue generating, meaning more Medical, Medicare reimbursement.

Our budget assumes 176 million dollars of new revenue we will go find and get.

We haven't figured out how to do that yet.

These are people that are going to be tasked with that, including at Laguna Honda and across our medical coding and uh new revenue initiatives, and our clinical leads can talk about that if necessary around that.

This fourth bucket that you can't see on the screen with the closed captioning are other operational or regulatory requirements.

We have, everything from our head of cybersecurity, which we now have an acting person in, the director of nursing at Laguna Honda, which I can assure you we need a director of nursing, and we have an acting person in that role.

Some of the facility and capital pieces that were noted with vacancies, we have done some restructuring, and we've had a Prop F in one of those roles, and we absolutely need those for both safety and our ability to deliver clinical services across the board.

Uh, and then there are five roles that we have recent critical vacancies within the past six months that we are in the midst of trying to fill around that.

So that sums up the 23, and we've really I can assure you we've gone through with a fine-tooth comb and um taken out as much as we can, and the remaining 23 all have fit into one of these buckets.

So I think I will pause there.

Vice Chair Dorsey.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

I wanted to ask, um, I don't know if we can go back, I think it's slide five.

How many positions are essential for the credentialing, particularly given what we went through with Laguna Honda?

So are there positions there that are essential to that?

So I will I'm gonna ask Dr.

Susan Ehrlich to come up with CEO of San Francisco General.

Um, that credentialing role also is one of those ones that has a range of other reorganization things linked to that.

But um, Dr.

Ehrlich, would you like to speak about that?

Sure.

Thank you.

Good good morning uh committee.

Um thank you for uh your interest and concern about our budget.

Um the two positions we have um at CSFG support the rest of the network around revenue primarily.

So one is uh coding um at the beginning of the revenue cycle, and one has to do with uh compliance and billing at the back end of the revenue cycle.

Um so uh both of those are incredibly important in order to make sure that first that we are uh that our bills are correctly put together.

These are that are that our bills are correctly put together, that we have coded them correctly, that the clinicians have um included all the services they provide in their bills.

That's the first one.

On the back end, we need to make sure that our bills are compliant with all insurance and federal regulations.

Um we notice that insurance companies are taking um more and more of a bite out of the bills that we submit, and so that position is making sure that we get all the revenue to which we are entitled.

So think of the revenue cycle as a front and a back.

Um, and these these two positions um occupy the front end and the back end of the revenue cycle.

And were you also asking about the credentialing role?

Yeah.

So the credentialing role, I just want to note one piece and then ask Dr.

Ehrlich to uh jump in as well.

Uh, without that vacancy, we will also need to have an additional layoff of an existing staff member that we have, and so that's very important to know.

But if you want to talk about credentialing more broadly, yeah, pardon me.

So, in in our medical staff office, the medical staff office is responsible for credentialing all providers across the network.

Um, so this is over a thousand providers who are providing services, primary care, inpatient care, critical emergency department care.

This is a required regulatory uh responsibility, and we uh regularly uh go every month to the uh the JCC to review that.

Um Dan is correct.

Um we eliminated one manager, and this manager that is vacant now is one that supervises that whole staff.

Um, there's no other manager there, and it is required to meet uh regulatory uh requirements both at the federal and the state level.

You had mentioned um reimbursements, uh and I was that was actually gonna be a just a follow-up question.

Given some new wrinkles with HR one, I think there's going to be new challenges in how we do that.

I think there, I mean, it seems to me we have an interest in making sure that they're we're not leaving money on the table for the federal government if we can get it.

Is this am I correct in understanding the importance of these positions to make sure that we are getting all the reimbursements we're entitled to?

You are a hundred percent accurate about that.

There are things in the Medicaid program as a result of HR one that we cannot control, but to the extent that we can control the revenues that we are entitled to, we need to be able to do that.

And the two positions I I described to you, one at the front end of the revenue cycle and the other at the back end, are absolutely essential to make sure that we bring in as much revenue as we possibly can.

Um, you know, short of the losses that we're going to have as a result of HR one.

Thank you for asking about that.

Thanks.

Supervisor solder.

Thank you.

Well, appreciates the wrong word.

Recognize the cuts you've already made because I know they're significant and painful cuts, and that's the context that you're coming to us within.

Um, you know, so these particular additional reductions, I think we need to scrutinize closely.

And and I would say generally be uh reluctant um uh to pursue uh and I think the, you know, you've taken the mandate and the advice of this committee to heart.

Uh cutting manager positions at 8x the rate of all their classifications, 40% of your 45 vacant managers already deleted.

Um so I think that's again important context for us to make this decision in.

Um, and also just want to appreciate the uh the vacancies and kind of the rationale, laying that out clearly so we can understand as we weigh these decisions, you know, the real impact of any of these vacancies, whether it be a revenue generating or just something that happened in the last few months.

So just uh not necessarily a question, but just um wanted to put that on the record.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh I will say, if anything, I'm looking at this.

I'm kind of interested in going through some of the positions, like the director of public affairs.

I know that it's recently vacant.

I don't know if you if you really need that.

Um do you want to elaborate?

Yes.

Um I uh so many of you know uh the uh vice that was in that uh role, Deirdre Hussey.

We have been act uh working with an acting who has been uh holding three hats.

Um it is actually the comms person who's excellent at San Francisco General Hospital.

We've pulled up to do, I mean, the DPH gets countless numbers of inquiries on everything, and that is not only from a press standpoint, but also how we engage with the community to make sure a lot of times we're putting out health bulletins or trying to make sure the community are aware of what's happening, whether it be Supervisor Walton, some of the work we've worked on together on issues of the Bayview or recent TB outbreaks, the public information officer is really key in driving some of those uh those pieces.

So we have been operating with an acting.

That acting has worn three hats at once, and we don't have three.

Um the ZSFG head of comms.

There's another communications director that was out on medical leave and just returned, who is excellent, but had been out on um with uh on medical leave, and then the head of that entire media comms outreach, all of that.

So that individual has worn three hats for the past several months.

But technically, you do, if I understand correctly, you do have a uh comms director for general hospital specifically, and then this is not the same, or it is.

This is across the entire DPH, all 3.7 billion dollars of it.

Okay.

Thank you.

President Amendelman.

Uh thank you, Chair Chan.

I um want to just uh thank Director Sai and his department.

Um you are I think the largest chunk of our of our budget.

Um and therefore when uh cuts come, they come hardest for you.

Um and I think your uh work with the mayor, the mayor's team to try to find the least.

I mean, there's no cuts to public health that are not painful, but um, but to find uh the cuts that could be made in the way to minimize impact on uh service delivery um to uh make to shrink your managerial ranks and then your work with our budget and legislative analysts to um to figure out if you could manage to squeeze even more out at this point in the process, uh something I am personally grateful for.

So thank you for doing that.

Uh and I'm taking seriously your concerns about losing more on the policy side.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And so with that, uh we will go to human services agency.

Madam Chair, our recommendations for the Human Services Agency are summarized on page 81 of our report.

I just want to make one note.

We do speak to general fund versus non-general fund savings, but um I want to make a note that our recommendations don't include the adjustment to general fund savings due to some reimbursements, and there's department staff that are working on getting those numbers finalized.

So the general fund non-general fund savings final number, given whatever you accept might vary a little bit from what we stated.

So the details of our recommendations start on page 82 of our report.

My I'll go through one by one.

My understanding is the department agrees with number one on page 82 of our report, as well as number two, number three, and number four on page 82, and five and six on page 83 of our report.

So I will speak to HSA 7 and 8 of our report, which are on page 83, 84, 85, uh, through 89 of our report.

Um, so HSA 7.

This is salary infringed benefits of a savings of 1.5 million dollars to account for expected delays in hiring 154 new full-time equivalent positions proposed by the department.

Um also potential delays in acquiring leased office space and performing the necessary necessary tenant improvements for that space.

This HSA 7 and the following recommendation are all for an effort of the department to address um changes um introduced by HR 1 by the federal uh law that is going to increase eligibility requirements for various benefits.

Um this reduction would still allow a nearly 21 million dollar increase for the department's HR 1 response implementation expenditure authority for the first budget year.

It does not restrict the department's how hiring authority for all of the requested positions.

Um so our understanding is the assumption that went into this budget number is that uh 154 new positions would be hired by October 1st, which is quite a tall order um given the city's hiring processes.

What our recommendation is that we agree that the department probably can do half of that on time October 1st, but due to potential delays in the hiring process, potential delays in leasing up the space, potential delays, and then tenant improvement to that space, that their conservatively could be a six-week delay in half of the 154 position.

So that means that they would start mid-November instead of October one.

Um so that's what goes into HSA 7.

It's that that 1.5 million is the salary and benefits for half of the positions starting six weeks later than what the department is expecting.

And then HSA 8, there are no actual savings in HS HSA 8.

Um it's just saying 149 of the 154 should be should start out at least as limited term.

Because this is a program that is responding to HR1 that could very well be reversed in some way three more years down the line.

Do we really want to commit ourselves to 149 permanent civil service positions when they could be converted later down the road in two years or three years?

But do we really want to commit ourselves right now to that?

So the total.

So that is 1.5 million for those two.

And then I'm going to speak to the policy recommendations which start on page 90 of our report.

So HSA 9.

Um includes deleting four vacant manager positions, which we consider a policy matter for the board of supervisors.

So the first one is an 0922 manager 1 position with the San Francisco Benefits Network training and induction program for eligibility workers.

This position was vacated in September of 2025.

The second position is an 0923 manager 2 position, which oversees the workforce developments, CalFresh employment and training plan and public service trainee programs, which is part of the department's HR1 response.

The position was vacated in November.

The third position is an 09, also an 0923 manager 2 position responsible for oversight and compliance of the family and children's services funding streams processes and fiscal policies necessary to mitigate fiscal risk and optimize revenue management.

This was vacated uh in April.

And the final position is also an 0923 manager 2 position.

It oversees multiple San Francisco benefits network supervisors and eligibility workers that are part of the department's HR 1 response.

The position was vacated in January.

Our policy recommendations savings total $1,055,001 in the first budget year and $1,111,648 in the second budget year.

Finally, I will just speak to our current our recommendation for current year savings, which are on page 93 of our report, which I believe the department agrees with, which then the savings for that total $68,351.

That completes my summary of our disagreements, and we're available for any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chair Shann, members of the committee, good afternoon.

Trent Rohr, Executive Director of the Human Services Agency.

I'll speak to recommendations seven and eight, and then I do have some slides for the uh the manager position recommendations.

So for HSA 7, and this is the um 1.5 million dollar reduction, and as a budget analyst explained uh to account for um the pace of hiring 154 positions.

I'll note that the budget analysts said that our plan is to hire 154 positions by October.

That's not our plan.

When we are fully staffed, we will have 154 FTE, 154 new positions to implement HR1.

When we pardon me, when we built our budget request and working with the mayor's budget office, we took into account the pace of hiring, the pace of training, the pace of onboarding.

Um, and so we're we've already built in the savings that that the budget analysis is talking about.

If we were to try to score additional savings, we would have to slow our hiring uh further.

So, let me give you an example.

Um, we are currently anticipating hiring 84 people, 84 positions, filling 84 positions in October, another 34 positions in November, and then pacing from there.

I should say that um, in addition to building in the vacancy attrition and incorporating sort of the partial year FTE starting in October, um, we have current active lists.

One of the barriers, as you all know, you've heard to hiring is we don't have active eligibility lists.

Well, we do.

For the 2905 eligibility worker positions, we have 602 candidates on the list who have already been screened and qualified.

We have 70 candidates for our employment training specialists 9704, and our 2913 positions, we have 206 candidates on the list.

Um we are also should should we exhaust those lists and not be able to hire filling the positions, we would move to hire them provisionally.

And the last and really important piece, maybe most important, is that this work is going to begin and already has begun.

The new CalFresh requirements for um uh participating in work activities in exchange for your benefits went into effect on uh June 1st.

Um that requires new eligibility in terms of assessing 19,000 people for potential exemptions to the work requirements, helping place them into work requirements or work participation activities that meet those work requirements.

All of this is very intensive eligibility work, which is the reason we're trying to add these eligibility staff, in addition to hiring the workforce staff who do sort of the back end engagement piece for um for the clients to keep them on their CalFresh benefits.

For HSA 8, this is the um, again, the budget analyst said no savings in this because this is just saying they shouldn't be temporary position, they shouldn't be permanent positions, they should be temporary.

This creates um challenges to hiring that that um sort of are exacerbated by the notion that it's temporary.

Um, people will are less likely to leave their jobs and take jobs that are temporary in nature.

It does assume that this law might be overturned or might change.

We're not assuming that at this point.

Um, we would need a new person, new president in the White House, we would need new Congress, who knows what level of priority a reversion of HR one would actually be.

So we are we are building up staff in response to HR1 being the law and being the law for for the near future.

Should also say that should the law change, and we will be advocating to reverse this law once we get um perhaps more receptive, more receptivity in the White House.

We have such high attrition rates in those positions that we're hiring that we could manage the necessary reduction in staff through that attrition.

We have 12%.

We have a 12% attrition rate, for example, among our eligibility workers.

And so if we see this law being changed and the regulations changing, we will simply reduce uh our head count and manage the budget effectively in that manner.

Um the positions are critical.

Adding sort of this wrinkle that they're temporary will really create challenges for our recruiting, and then in addition, in terms of sort of good government, these positions, particularly the eligibility workers, go through a six-month induction training.

So we're gonna invest a lot of time, a lot of money and resources into hiring a staff, training them, getting them online to serve clients, and then two years later, two and a half years later, they exit.

I would question whether that's really a good use of city resources given that we're trying to get this this trained workforce.

I think it's much more strategic to manage a very large number of staff and perhaps a necessary reduction through attrition rather than a forced exit after three years of hiring them.

I will pause there and move to the managers to allow you for questions for those two items.

Please go ahead.

Okay.

Great.

Um so I'll start with sort of the context for the human services agency in terms of our our managers.

Um the BL the BLA reports um that over the last five years, the growth in manager, deputy director, and director positions across the city has far outpaced uh position growth.

About a 20.5% increase in those manager positions versus about a three percent increase in staff overall.

HSA does not fit that that sort of um statistical um uh illustration.

Over the last five years, in fact, HSA manager positions have increased by only 0.6 percent.

Um, and it's a slower rate of growth than our regular staff, which is a growth of about 1.6 percent.

HSA managers represent about 4% of the overall positions at the human services agency, which is far less than most big departments in the city.

In addition, we are proposing to add, as I just went through 154 new positions.

We are not proposing to add any additional managers.

We are proposing to that that the existing managers in our SF Benefits Net program and our workforce program and our HR division will remain and will simply absorb their spans of control increase.

There'll be more individuals working either below their direct reports or directly reporting to them.

I do also want to say that in the context of building our budget proposal for this year, we did eliminate two vacant manager positions already, and we converted two others to high-level analyst positions given the nature of their work.

So we already have eliminated or changed four positions, manager positions.

So if I can go to the next slide.

Okay.

This one, the BLA has already agreed with us to convert it to an 1824 senior analyst position, so that one's off the list.

Basically, it's four managers that we have four vacant manager positions that we are hoping to retain through this process.

Three of them are directly tied to HR1.

And as I just noted, we're not adding any new position manager positions for HR1 implementation, but we do need to keep the three vacant ones and fill them to be able to manage that increased workforce.

The first one is an 0922 manager position that oversees our induction training.

It manages all of the eligibility worker induction for Medical and CalFresh, which are the two programs that are being affected by HR1.

It leads the redesign and rollout of the training to ensure consistency and quality.

These regulations that are coming from the feds that give us the detail behind the law and how we are implementing, the Medi-Cal regulations just came out June 1st.

And those still could change within the next 30 days, well, 30 days from June 1st.

So we need a manager to be able to sort of address the dynamics of those regulations and make sure that the training is appropriate and that staff are trained appropriately.

Again, it's a big investment in training, and the way that we're rolling in our staff, 84 in the first month, an additional 34, etc., there will be a number of training classes that that induction training manager will not provide the training but will oversee the provision of the training to all of those staff in HR1.

I should say that that position has been vacant for nine months.

It has 12 direct reports, but more importantly oversees the entire training system for SF benefits net.

The next is the 0923 workforce development operations manager that has 42 indirect reports and one and a half direct reports, or excuse me, five direct reports.

It's been vacant for seven months.

This is sort of the back end of our decision to implement HR1 in the most humane way possible, which is not simply enforce work requirements on clients without giving anything, giving them options to participate.

So what we're proposing to do, we know we want to keep people on their Medi-Cal and their CalFresh, but also for those who want to take advantage of work opportunities to upskill to find jobs, to attend city college to get their GED.

We need staff to help them navigate those various systems and various offerings.

This workforce development operations manager is the position that would oversee the CalFresh Employment Training Program, including the workfare expansion that we're anticipating in response to HR1, as well as our public service trainee programs, which are individuals who are on public assistance working in city departments in trainee roles to get real skills and get real wages.

Again, critical to HR1 that that manager position be filled.

The next position is not related to HR1, it's in our family and children's services division.

It's only been vacant for two months.

The uh incumbents took a promotive opportunity in the Department of Child Support Services, and there's been an acting manager for the last two months.

The timing for this one really couldn't be worse.

This position oversees six direct reports and 26 indirect reports, and that unit and that team is responsible for administering $64 million dollars of foster care payments, adoption payments, guardianship payments to support over a thousand kids who are in out-of-home placement or who have been adopted.

Not only is the span of control large with the number of direct and indirect reports, the amount of money is large, and this is money that goes to our care providers.

Any delays, any hiccups, any inaccuracies means that our foster parents, our adoptive parents, or our guardians are getting less or are dealing with us in our bureaucracy to try to fix this, and without a manager overseeing that, it is as a potential for problems.

That's in a normal situation.

What we're experiencing starting October 1st is a brand new statewide system that over that IT system for our family and children's services and foster care division.

It's called the CARES system.

We're completely transitioning.

This has been a very fast paced over the last nine months at the state.

Um there is no pilot for this statewide IT system.

It's it's only a training environment, which means come October 1st, when the switch goes on, our staff will not have the level of comfort and understanding on how to use that new system.

And there's also questions about whether new system the new system will convert the existing data, the existing cases appropriately, and therefore will the payments continue, will the payments continue in the same manner.

Um when I was speaking with the director of social services in January regarding the way that they're going about transitioning the system, I refer to it as reckless.

I think it's potentially going to jeopardize safety of kids in care, but I also think it's going to jeopardize payments to our foster parents and our adoptive parents.

Payments that they rely on every month to provide food, clothing, and support for the kids that we have asked them to take care of.

Again, the position has been vacant just two months.

Um, and given all those reasons, is absolutely absolutely critical that we fill it.

The last position is at 0923 again in SF Benefits Net, which is the um program that's uh does Cal Cal Fresh and Medical eligibility oversees five uh supervisors and 38 eligibility workers, eligibility staff.

Again, given the changes that I've talked about with HR1, given the new uh positions that we are bringing on board to administer HR1 in a humane manner that keeps people on their benefits, that allows people to work and get uh uh job skills to hopefully get full-time employment and leave benefits, having a vacant position with brand new staff on top of the existing staff in a brand new environment that HR1 has created um is critical as well.

I will pause there.

Thank you.

Because during the pandemic, we have expanded uh quite rapidly and significantly on food security programming support in San Francisco on the local level, uh, and then recognizing that Cal Fresh was actually going through the state government was going to cut some benefits and how we can augment it.

And then there were um food security management or coordinator positions in your budget, and we had that conversation, and you were right to wanting them and to to have them, uh, even though the budget and legislative analyst recommending potentially eliminating them, if should we not have those um program anymore?

And but we did.

We expanded the program because it was necessary and it was important.

And it's also was important to have H to make sure that HSA had the staffing to continue to manage that.

Uh last year, I believe, then we have conversation about you know your facility, uh, which is roughly I think either five or seven million dollars of uh money that you have, but you sat there for quite some time and you didn't spend, but you made the move and you spent them, and uh you, you know, make sure that you work with real estate and really have your uh team start moving your locations and you made it work um rather quickly.

Uh and so I think that I come with the same mentality this year is that let's have a conversation, but that's not in any way to uh question your competency and your leadership because I think as it turns out, at least for me, in the last two fiscal years, when we say we reject a budget and legislative analyst recommendation, you you always delivered, and not to mention you did deliver too, when there's some of the very critical time for people who receive SNAP.

You have a good team that was ready to make it work.

So um, but I do wanted to, if I may, um have questions actually about the hundred and you know, 49 FTEs that the the I just wanted to understand your vision and your your decisions of how you're gonna comply with HR one, but also to understand is volatile um potentially could be changes uh by the end of this year, or maybe more.

I mean, it could be worse, it could be hopefully I am hoping for the better by December, but there's nothing that's guarantee in with September and October with the federal government again consideration considering the whole new rounds of reconciliation bill and appropriation bills.

Um, so I I have questions of that, but I'm gonna um have Vice Chair Dorsey to ask questions first, and I'm gonna go back to to that those questions on staffing.

Thank you, Sue.

Sure.

Actually, I with a lot of my questions were gonna be about HR1 compliance, so I really appreciate Chair Chan bringing that up.

There was one discrete question that I had that's separate from that though.

Um HSA recommendation five involves um drug testing.

And I'm curious, is that do I understand is that part of the contingency management programs that we have?

It's not supervisor.

The drug testing reduction as proposed is for uh parents who are engaged in our child welfare system.

Okay.

So if it if a child is removed from his or their parents because of a substance use disorder of the parents that are putting them in a position where they're no longer able to parent safely, um, we may remove their children.

We may also keep the children at home and on a condition that the parent or parents do periodic substance abuse testing.

And so that's what that reduction would be.

And it's simply a reduction that's in line with our past utilization.

So we don't anticipate uh a service impact on that.

Okay.

It's very often the court, the family court when making a decision on removal or not, will condition that decision or recommendation on the parents agreeing to undergo to um undergo treatment, but also then periodic or regular testing um to ensure that they're not uh actively using.

And then in um to the topic that Chair Chan brought up about the work that we're gonna be doing, my understanding is we're taking on new work to make sure that we that our beneficiaries are complying with the new requirements from HR one, which is I understand that there is a more of a robust work requirement.

Um, and I believe it has been reduced from one year to six months the amount of time that we have to demonstrate to the federal authorities that people are in compliance with that.

Um if we're placing people, are we gonna be are we are we working to place people into work situations?

And I yeah, I don't have a specific questions, but I think that what I'd rather do is send it back to Chair Chan.

I'm really interested to hear um how that is all gonna work.

If you'd like, I didn't have an opportunity last week to walk through it because my my time ran out, but I'd be happy to walk through just at a high level on how we're approaching it.

So the changes for HR1 are to two programs, Calfresh and MediCal.

Um the first one in um CalFresh, um, there's other changes affecting the way federal funding flows to California and to counties.

I'm not gonna talk about that, but that also impacts our budget.

I'm gonna talk about the requirements on our recipients.

So what HR1 said is that is that no longer they will allow they will no longer allow waivers to the work participation requirement for CalFresh nationally.

It's called SNAP, which meant that they that the waiver to this work requirement that California has been operating under for the last 10 years is no longer in place.

In addition, it eliminated exemptions to the work requirement that were in the prior law.

So now veterans, um unhoused individuals, families with children age 14 and above, persons age 60 to 64, and former foster youth, they all are now fall under a work requirement to in order to receive their CalFresh.

Um that's that's an expansion that HR1 did.

In addition to the existing uh individuals receiving CalFresh aged uh 18 to 60 uh to 59.

So basically, if you now if you are age eighteen to sixty four and are able to work, you have to do 20 hours of an activity a week or 80 hours a month in order to continue to receive your cow fresh benefits.

If you do not, you only get cow fresh benefits for three months out of 36.

In terms of the numbers impact, excuse me, clearly I'm finding a cold.

Um, terms of the numbers impacted in San Francisco, it doesn't affect all the CalFresh recipients.

We have about 112,000 CalFresh recipients in San Francisco.

It impacts about 50,000 of them.

Um, of that 50,000, we think that about 30,000 or 60% will be exempt, will be unfit for work.

That doesn't mean that we're not working with them.

We are the ones who determine the exemption.

So our eligibility staff are working with those 30,000 people to figure out whether or not they're able to work.

And if they're not, then they're exempt from that requirement.

We think, based on our analysis, that about 20,000, about 40% of those who fall in that big category will need to do some sort of activity to retain their calfresh benefits.

So, what does that mean in terms of workload?

It means that our eligibility staff need to deem them uh able to work and then discuss with them what their opportunities are, but more importantly, refer them over to our workforce side of the house to begin to discuss with them how they might meet the requirement.

The main component to our strategy to engage them.

Now, I should say for context, because this is important, the state of California is not giving counties any money to implement the work side of this sort of equation.

They are pro the legislature has proposed sending money to counties to add eligibility staff.

They are not taking on as their responsibility making our workforce systems more robust to absorb these individuals.

They're just not, and so they're not giving counties any money for that.

But we, because we believe that that the benefits are meet a basic human need, and you shouldn't ascribe any sort of requirement or paperwork requirement, work requirements something like food that meets the basic human need.

And so our response, uh, led by Mayor Lurie, and many of you on the board have supported it the same manner is to say we're not only going to add eligibility staff to make sure that you know the rules and we can help you navigate them, we're gonna provide you with real opportunities to meet these requirements.

We're not just gonna say go find a volunteer thing somewhere or go to college.

And so what we're doing is we're trying to expand what we're gonna be calling CalFresh Community Service or Calfresh Community Workfare, which will place individuals into nonprofit agencies in a workfare type setting, sort of as volunteers, but it needs to be a work setting because what happens when it's in a work setting, the federal fair labor standards act gets triggered, which means that individuals must be paid a minimum wage.

Well, they're not gonna be paid a wage by us or by the nonprofit, but what their wage is is their calfresh benefit amount.

Okay, the average CalFresh benefit amount for a single adult is 298 dollars a month.

When you divide that by the local minimum wage, the hour requirement goes from 80, which the federal law says a month, to about 14.

So essentially we're building a program that will say to the CalFresh recipient, all you need to do is volunteer in this workfare sort of setting, volunteer at a nonprofit or even a public sector placement for average of 14 hours a month.

If your benefits lower, it's fewer hours, but that's about the average.

So we say two days a week, you can volunteer at the food bank packing boxes and you retain your calfresh benefits.

What's even more elegant about that approach is that most of these individuals are also on Medi-Cal.

The Medi-Cal work requirements begin January of 2027.

The federal law says if you are compliant with your in California, CalFresh work requirement, you are exempt from the Medi-Cal work requirement.

So essentially, we're building a program that says you only need to do 14 hours a month to retain your cow fresh, and you don't have to worry about the medical work requirements, which for the city fiscally is more important.

We don't lose any federal money directly to the city for a cow for someone not getting cow fresh.

The individual loses their $298 dollars a month.

Our local grocers' local merchants will lose that revenue stream, but the city's general fund is not affected.

For people who lose Medi-Cal, we've estimated upwards of 150, 200, 300 million dollars of lost federal reimbursement revenue for Medi-Cal loss in San Francisco.

When we built this budget to add these staff, we assumed by adding these staff that we will retain X percent more CalFresh and Medi-Cal clients and therefore save the city's general fund on the back end to retain those federal reimbursements.

That was a lot, but that is broadly what our plan is.

So to your question, Supervisor Dorsey, are we going to place them in jobs or whatever?

We would like to, and some will go into jobs.

Some will also go to city college and some will get their GEDs and some will improve their English as a second language.

Some will go to hard skills training at one of our CBOs.

Some will go into training classes or training courses that are funded by OEWD, but most we want to go into this 14-hour month CalWork, CalFresh Community Works program because the hours are much more doable than 80 hours a month.

Our clients are going to make rational decisions when we say you need to do 80 hours a month, and they're going to say, Wow, I only get 298 dollars of benefits, and you want me to do 80 hours a month of something.

You know, I have to take care of my grandmother, I don't have time, I have to, whatever it may be, and they'll make a rational decision.

If we say it's 14 hours a month and it's twice a month, I think they're more likely to say, I'll I'll do that.

And by the way, they get to keep their medical too.

So that's that is our approach.

I hope that clears it up a little bit.

I know that's a lot.

So the visor solder.

Thank you.

Um I had a question regarding the recommendation uh of the hiring classification, you know, the contemplating the idea of maybe uh those 154 hires being more in a temporary role rather than permanent civil service.

Love to hear more about um, I mean, I I know your persp your uh your position on that, but more about that rationale and also um, you know, for past hiring spurts that you've seen within your department or another's, um, you know, going back to to last year with the government shutdown, or maybe through some of the the COVID times of some of the temporary hiring there, um, how those hiring uh spurts kind of inform your position here.

Um the best parallel um is uh the Affordable Care Act in 2010 when unfortunately what HR1 is tries to undo the Affordable Care Act.

The requirements that HR1 puts upon Medicail recipients, twice annual benefit reunification, twice annual benefit redeterminations instead of once a year, so more paperwork, and then work requirements.

Those new requirements only apply to individuals who are enrolled through the Affordable Care Act through Obamacare.

Republicans in Congress, the president knew that they couldn't undo the Affordable Care Act because they didn't have the votes in the Senate to override a filibuster, but they knew they could do it through budget reconciliation.

So instead of striking it from the law, they said we're gonna put all these onerous requirements on you so that you fall off affordable care act.

The reason I mentioned that is because in 2010 we ran the numbers and we saw that we were probably gonna have 80 or 90,000 new recipients from the Affordable Care Act, and we staffed up accordingly, added hundreds of eligibility staff for a Medi-Cal program.

Very similar dialogue, I was here then.

Very similar dialogue with the board on is this permanent, is this, you know, and we successfully argued for permanent civil service positions and successfully implemented that program.

We're sort of in reverse.

We need these positions to come on board to prevent the reversal of that program, the Affordable Care Act, as well as the CalFresh requirements.

It is a large number of staff in the Human Services Agency, it's over 500, even more with the call it 600 eligibility staff who we have with about an average of 12% turnover a year.

If this HR1 were to get undone, and it will not get undone before we get a new person in the White House, it just won't.

Um, it's too big of a price tag to fund the tax breaks for individuals who are not on these programs.

The soonest it could be undone would be a new would be a new White House and a new Congress, and then who knows what priority that will be.

So we're looking at at least a three-year time frame, at least.

If we see that this is gonna be undone, we can certainly manage the reduced work through attrition.

And I'm gonna argue that just because HR one might be undone, which would be a fantastic outcome in a number of years, all of a sudden we need to be in a position to re-enroll people who lost their benefits because of HR one, which is going to require that additional staff.

If we lose 20,000, 25,000 Medi-Cal recipients from the who are in the expansion, the affordable work expansion, we want them back on the rules.

That takes work as well.

So this sort of notion that it's only a temporary blip and this is a temporary sea change in federal policy around our entitlement programs.

I I wish it were, it's not.

It's this is the biggest shift in federal law governing our programs since the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and before that, 1996 with the Federal Welfare Reform Act that changed the entitlement for families.

It's it's a drastic shift.

And San Francisco has proven in 1996 and in 2010, and hopefully now that we step up to the plate to protect people who are most vulnerable and who are the lowest income individuals in in our county.

Thank you.

Um I am inclined to support uh and reject the BLA recommendations, but I'm not there yet.

Um I would love to understand a little bit more.

Again, you know, I think that with the 149 FTEs, you mentioned 80 FTEs that you will hire by October, and then another 30 in December, and then the remaining by I think March.

We will roll each month, we'll do a new induction class to ultimately get to the 154.

The way the federal law is that um the federal law is also phased in.

Sure.

Not all CalFresh recipients on June 1st were subject to the work requirements.

It was only new applicants and individuals who are having their benefits renewed, which happens once a year.

So essentially, one twelfth of of the caseload will have the work requirements um uh ascribed to them when they come in for to renew their benefits plus applicants.

So sort of we start on June 1, and then by June 1 of next year, everyone on California who's subject to the work requirements will have either be assessed for exemption or will be in an activity or will be discontinued.

Similarly in Medi-Cal, the work participation requirements will roll up the same way, month new applicants and then month to month, and then the twice annual redeterminations will begin to be implemented in March again on a rolling basis.

And so we are ramping up sort of similar and in kind of a similar cadence to the impact on um our clients.

So we're not proposing we're we're not we're not needing 154 new eligibility workers on October 1.

We're needing to slowly increase that count.

Um and also given the pace of hiring to the BLA's point, very difficult to hire 154 people by October 1st.

And it's the reason why that I think but 80 supervisor, we can do.

Sure.

I think that then I'm hearing the 80 FTEs out of this 154 FTEs, um, that if we could come to uh some agreement um that it's not to take away the money but to put the money on reserve.

Um again, I think colleagues, you will hear me to say this a lot through this budget, and I will say this on the record, that you will hear me saying that to put a lot of the spending on reserve, um inclusive of it will be more even more aggressive than usual um for even the first year like half of the second half of the first year, being that I think that we're gonna learn more information in the coming days from the state budget, um, that we we will have a lot of consideration um comes December.

Not not just for HSA in general, but really the entire city budget that will require some um tough conversation even beyond this budget process, and that we will have to regroup in sometime in November and December when we see more on what's come through with state um budget, but also from the federal budget.

So I I just want to put it out there that how I'm I am a lot more conservative uh than previous years, especially when it comes to both, even though I know it's um arguably um the right spending, um a good spending, and why I think that when we have to make choices, hiring more people, especially uh all said and done at the end of calendar year, not the fiscal year of this year.

That I would think that this body have more decisions, unfortunately, to make, um, and that that we may have to have some tough choices.

So I just want to put it on the record about the AD FTE.

Maybe is something that I can see because you know, maybe it's something that we need to do and have to do.

I don't know for the entire 154, not because I I am in disagreement that we don't need them.

I am in agreement that it's a good strategy, and under your leadership, Director Roar, I I think it's something to to absolutely to we should follow through.

Should we not have to make other tough choices?

Not even just now, but I think we will again have some tough choices, colleagues, in November and December.

So supervisor, if I may, a couple things one the total appropriation for this new staff is 20 22 million.

Um that's general fund and federal and state driven drawdown.

The BLA is only recommending reducing that by 1.5 million.

So I'm hoping that that doesn't lead to putting half of that 25 million on reserve because that would severely hamstring us.

My argument is that the 1.5 is needed in order to be able to proceed with our hiring plan.

What will happen if we don't fill those positions and hire what we think the workload to address what we think the workload will be?

The HR requirement one requirements aren't going away, and we still have an obligation to serve our clients who are applying and renewed applying for renewing their benefits.

So what will happen is we'll just start we'll be either hiring temporary staff or we'll use overtime.

So we will spend the salary money one way or another, and the 1.5 is simply coming off the HSA salary line, right?

So I understand the BLA's argument, but but we really did a very, very thoughtful and thorough analysis of the workload impacts, which basically is twice the work when you say, you know, when if 90,000 people on medical now have to have their benefits renewed twice a year, that's twice the work.

Another 50,000 have to be assessed for exemptions, etc.

You get you get the picture.

The work is gonna be there, and because of state mandates that require we resolve applications in 30 days and medical applications within 45 days and renewals within 45 days, we're not to mention it's good customer service.

We're under the gun to do this work anyway.

Thank you, Director Roar.

You make great argument as always.

I want to acknowledge that.

So thank you.

Thank you, Trisha.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, our recommendations for the public defender's office are summarized on page 112 of our report.

And uh they consist of one recommendation for the public defender's office.

Sorry, one fiscal recommendation for the public defender's office, which we understand that they disagree with.

This is a recommendation to address adjust attrition savings upward by $56,954.

This is specifically to reflect an anticipated two-month delay in hiring a vacant full one full-time equivalent 8108 senior legal process clerk, and a three-month delay in hiring a vacant one full-time equivalent 8106 legal process clerk position.

The department told us on June 17th, which was last Wednesday, that they expected a two-month delay in that uh first position, the 8108.

And they also told us that the 8106 had not yet received approval from mayor's budget office to fill.

We therefore think that this reduction is very reasonable, uh, and we stand by our recommendation.

Regarding the policy recommendations, they started on page 114 of our report.

There are three of them.

So the first one is PDR 2 on page 114.

Here we state that we recommend that you consider denying the proposed new four full-time equivalent 8177 attorney positions, which are converting from temporary to permanent and are assigned to the misdemeanor unit.

They um started out as two year limited term positions and are expiring on June 30th.

All positions are currently filled, which is important to note.

Um the department noted uh reported to us that their workload for these positions are permanent and ongoing.

PDR 3, also on page 114 of our report, are three eighty-one seventy-three legal assistance, and we recommend consider denying the proposed new positions, which are also temporary to permanent, assigned to the felony and specialty courts unit, and clean slate program.

They are also the two-year limited terms are also expiring on June 30th for those three positions.

And finally, PDR four on page 115 of our report, um, is a new 8106 legal process clerk position.

We recommend that you consider denying the proposed new position, which again is a temporary to permanent conversion.

It is assigned to the clean slate program, it started out as a two-year limited term position and is due to expire on June 30th.

The department reports that the position is currently filled.

The total for the policy recommendations is summarized on page 115 of our report, and that totals 2,139,098 in the first year and two million two hundred and fifty thousand five hundred eighty-two dollars in the second budget year.

Those are all ongoing general fund savings.

We're available for any questions you all may have.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Gonter.

Um, we have the public defender Manu Roger here.

Thank you.

Welcome.

The floor is yours.

Uh, first of all, I want to acknowledge the BLA and List Carrie Tan for her work with our office and thank the board uh for your attention today.

Uh and happy pride and happy Juneteenth.

Regarding fiscal recommendation uh one, uh, while there will be a slight savings in filling these approved clerical vacancies, our overall attrition target is way too high.

It's 7.08, which is approximately 2.9 million.

The way it attrition or what works in our office, and the reason that that's too high is if we have someone leave, they have a full caseload.

So we're looking for someone to reassign those cases to.

We need to bring in people as soon as we can for any position.

It's already too high.

If we add this amount, it's only gonna be higher.

You all were here just a few weeks ago when we had to ask for a 1.5 supplemental to our budget because the attrition target was already too high.

So adding another almost $60,000 here is just gonna make that problem compound the problem uh over the course of the next year.

Um it's just not something that we can do, particularly with our current status of unavailability.

If we can't fill positions because the attrition target is too high, it makes it impossible to meet our workload uh requirements.

Regarding positions two through four, these positions were initially um authorized for fiscal year 24 to 26 to document real documented demand, and that demand hasn't gone away.

Uh, but I want to thank the mayor's budget team uh for the commitment to make these permanent.

Um these are our, as was just noted, currently filled positions.

They've all been filled for a year or more.

Uh these are four attorneys in our misdemeanor unit who currently each have a caseload, and I just checked this morning of 129 cases each, uh, which is way above national workload standards, California standards, and actually the highest in the Bay Area.

Eliminating these positions is going to require us to give those 129 times 4 to other attorneys who already have too many cases.

The paralegal position is equally essential, both national workload study and the California public defense workload and staffing standards establish benchmarks of the ratio of paralegals to attorneys, and we're still trying to get to that level.

Eliminating that position is gonna unundermine critical infrastructure that the attorneys need to carry their caseloads effectively, and as the mayor's budget team acknowledged our unavailability would have to increase if we lost these critical positions that are already carrying these high case loads.

Oh, let me get to the clean slide, sorry.

1.5 paralegals and one clerk.

These are not new positions, these are positions that are currently filled.

One of our paralegals in the clean slate unit is Spanish speaking.

This is a critical needed capacity, particularly for the clean slate program, which serves a high volume of Spanish speaking clients seeking to clear their records to access broader opportunities.

Eliminating these positions would leave our clean slate team with no paralegals whatsoever, no full-time dedicated clerk, meaning they'd be left without the dedicated support that they need to sustain their operations.

These consequences would be devastating for a program that's already stretched beyond capacity.

Clean slate currently receives approximately 1,500 new clients annually, carries a backlog of over 400 clients that are just waiting for a court date, and maintains more than 3,132 open client files, all with a team that's already under resourced.

The wait list numbers are actually in the hundreds for our clean slate program.

Eliminating these positions would put a program that desperately needs more staffing, it would push it to the brink and delay justice for San Francisco residents who've already gone through completed probation or looking to move their lives in a more positive direction, and would just further increase that backlog.

Great, thank you.

Public defender Raja.

Can I just ask generally speaking, I know that there are multitude of reasons why outside counsel may have to be used, but is it more cost-effective for the representation for indigent parties to be handled by your office?

And can you just walk us through that?

Sure.

Overall, it's uh more cost-efficient.

Was the question?

Yeah.

More cost efficient because the people we draw to our office pretty much come because it's a calling, and they're all willing to work hard.

They're all willing to put in extra hours that we don't get paid hourly.

Um, and we also try to put an emphasis on trying to move cases quickly through the system whenever possible, which means we don't try to uh dissuade our clients for exercising their right to a speedy trial because that's what enables either a resolution or a trial or the proper placement in a program and gets the case moving, which helps not just the individual accused, but their families, witnesses, victims, everyone in the system with cases can move quicker through the system.

I think the dedication that our team does to reduce jail costs is also overall cost efficient by either coming up with release plans through our motions for release that are both safe for the community and enabling people to get back to work and support their families is a big cost savings of using the public defender's office and also just the efficiency of the wraparound services.

We're able to access our immigration unit so we can get the mandated immigration consultation in-house.

We're able to uh guide people to our clean slate programs so they can get those expungements quickly.

We're able to utilize our social workers so we can get people placed in the right system uh of care so that there aren't people slipping through their cracks and bench warrant issues and the sheriff or the police having to re-arrest people and bring them back in more days in jail and more uh overtime sometimes for other members of law enforcement.

So I think you know, I definitely think it's more efficient to fund the public defender overall for those for all those reasons.

Thank you.

And um I don't have any other name on the roster at the moment.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And with that, we will go to the sheriff's office.

Madam Chair, our recommendations for the sheriff's office are summarized on page one hundred and nineteen of our report.

And the details start on page one hundred and twenty.

My understanding is we don't have agreement on any of the recommendations, so I will walk through them one by one.

So starting again on page one hundred and twenty of our report.

Uh sheriff one, recommendation sheriff one is um recommending a reduction to the proposed fifty-two thousand dollar increase for communication supplies.

The department has told us that the funding would be used for replacement batteries and accessories for handheld radios.

However, despite inquiries with the department, uh they have not demonstrated to us the need for additional funding as these costs could be supported through the existing materials and supplies budget.

If you accept this cut, that would still allow an increase of four hundred and ten thousand dollars in the department's materials and supplies budget in this fund.

And based on the needs that they have shown us, we think that that would be sufficient.

Um recommendation two is uh in year two, so in fiscal year 27-28 of the budget, um that is for software licensing fees.

Um, and the savings would be $75,000.

The department told us that they that the funding would be used to fund the CareConnect application used by the reset center, and the uh application is scheduled for implementation in the first budget year, so fiscal year 26-27, and then annual maintenance costs are expected to decrease by approximately $75,000 in the years following implementation.

So that's hence the $75,000 decrease in this recommendation.

Um, and so are this recommendation would better uh reduce the appropriation to better align with the projected ongoing maintenance costs starting in the second budget year.

Recommendation number three uh is for building structures and improvements.

Again, this is in the second budget year.

This would be a reduction of 70,000.

Um the proposed budget for fiscal year 27 2027-28 increases by 150,000 compared to the first budget year budget of 100,000, hence the 250,000 dollar um budgeted amount.

You can see on page 120.

Uh the department told us that this funding would be used for vegetation management and access road repairs at the San Bruno jail complex.

However, we um reviewed the historical spending and found that uh the department spends less has spent less than the proposed uh budget of 250,000 in all three of the most recent fiscal years.

So in fiscal year 23, 2023-24, 42,000 was spent in um last year 120 123,000 was spent, and current year to date 177,000 has been spent.

We don't believe that the need has been demonstrated for this additional funding.

Um, so reducing down to 180,000 dollars is still higher by a pretty large margin by than the three-year average of historical spending.

Moving on to recommendation number four on page 121 of our report.

We recommend eliminating two full-time equivalent 8250 fingerprint technician two positions.

The department currently has five vacant fingerprint technician positions.

These two recommended for elimination have been vacant since May of 2022 and June of 2023, respectively.

The department has not demonstrated to us the need to retain all five vacant positions, and eliminating these positions would still allow the department to fill three remaining vacant fingerprint technician positions.

Recommendation number five for the sheriff.

Sheriff's Office is also on page 121 of our report.

This is a $500,000 increase to attrition savings in the custody operations in uh the first budget year and the second budget year, so it would be ongoing.

So the fiscal year 2026-27 proposed budget includes an overall almost $20 million increase in the department's salary and benefits budget, which appropriately helps the department meet their uh need for salary and benefits and custody.

This includes a $7 million reduction in attrition savings with these changes that are in the proposed budget.

The department's proposed budget for salaries and benefits is in alignment with the current year projected spending adjusted for cost of living adjustments.

However, in the current year, the department has used board boarding of prisoners revenue, which is revenue that the county gets for boarding state and federal uh prisoners temporarily.

They've used that revenue to offset a portion of their salary and benefit shortfall.

The boarding of prisoners revenue totaled 1.3 million last year and one point and is projected to total 1.5 million in the current year, but the proposed budget only assumes 150,000 of board of prisoners revenue in each year of each of the two years.

This recommendation increases attrition savings only by $500,000 in each budget year to account for the pretty significant underestimate in Board of Prisoners revenue, which can easily reduce the general fund support for custody operations salary and benefits.

We believe this is a very conservative recommendation.

Our total recommended reductions under fiscal recommendations for fiscal year 2026-27 are 848,442.

All but $52,000 of that is ongoing, it's all general fund.

And in the second budget year, we our recommendations total $957,568, all general fund all ongoing.

So that summarizes our fiscal recommendations, and then we have one uh policy recommendation that's on page 122 of our report.

That's SHF 6.

So this recommendation is to put a portion, just half of the contract amount in fiscal year 2026-27, but all of the contract amount in fiscal year 2027-28 of the professional and specialized services budget to place that on budget and finance committee reserve.

So the funding specifically supports the agreement between the department and a contractor to operate the rapid enforcement support evaluation and triage or reset center.

This is a new program that provides a safe environment for intoxicated intoxicated individuals who are arrested to sober up and receive connections to services for up to 24 hours.

So the proposed budget includes $6.7 million in the first budget year and $5.3 million in fiscal year 2027-28 for this contract.

Given that this is a new program and that there is some uncertainty regarding program utilization and outcomes.

We believe that placing $3.3 million or half the contract amount in fiscal year 26 2026-27 and the full amount of $5.3 million in fiscal year 2027-28 on reserve would allow the Board of Supervisors time to review the program performance data and determine whether continuing funding in the amount proposed is warranted before releasing the remaining funds.

That concludes our summary.

We're available for any questions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Sheriff.

Good morning or good afternoon, Chair Chan and uh members of the committee.

Appreciate the opportunity to speak once again on our budget and to address the BLA recommendations and proposal that were just presented.

Appreciate the time and commitment to review that BLA provided us.

And before we go into our responses, I do want to address one concern that arose at our last committee appearance, and that was in regards to our overtime.

So our first few slides are uh informational for you in regards to the overtime budget uh for this year.

Uh I do want to point out that one thing we did not mention to you at the end of that presentation when we started to gather the information for you on the budget.

Um you could see on the first slide here it's our department wide budget use, uh total budget use.

Uh there were some concerns raised uh due to our overages on overtime spending and expenditures.

I do want to highlight on our second slide that we're presenting to you that through our uh request for a 14 million dollar uh uh assistance in bringing our budget back into order.

Uh we're projecting that we're going to come out even on our budget for this past fiscal year in regards to our expenditures, uh, that we won't be requesting additional funding for our overtime because of how we addressed it, as you can see in the slide.

Um, and we're open to answering any questions that you have regarding that.

Um I do want to get to the BLA recommendations, and I do just want to mention that despite the challenges that we had, uh I'd asked that you at some point referenced the civil grand jury report for our agency, which was actually titled um when making due won't work, had to do with addressing some of the issues in regards to our overtime expenditures and what we do to address those issues on an annual basis, which are highlighted there in the slide.

And uh also highlight the fact that uh as we work with the BLA recommendations, we are still working with a budget that has not helped us to continue to do the work in a responsible, not reactive manner, so going into the BLA recommendations themselves.

I do want to highlight uh on number one, uh, the recommendation regarding the radio project that uh upon review uh we are going to uh the word escapes me, but we agree with the recommendation uh for that going forward with the radio costs and incorporating that into our material and supplies for fiscal 2627, uh which was reflected in that next slide.

Did I miss something?

Oh, go ahead.

Next slide.

Okay.

Number two, uh, in regards to our software licensing fees.

I want to combine our presentation with uh the proposal, the BLA proposal number six related to the reset center, because in order for us to get the data and information uh and make sure that we have uh performance metrics uh to work with six, we need the money for number two to get that done.

The care connect is directly related to how we get the information, the data and information gathered on CareConnect is exactly what we use to measure the performance metrics and to document those performance metrics.

So we'd like to keep that in our budget.

Um as you can see from the bullet points uh points out what those numbers are.

And Patrick, do you have anything to add to that?

Okay.

Uh moving on to, well, I do want to point out uh that we've had updates to those numbers as well for our reset center as of today.

Over 753 individuals have uh been released from the center process through, and of that we have a 27% release percentage that is connected to care.

So those are the numbers that we get from what we've done so far.

We're very optimistic about the uh the metrics moving forward, and that this is going to have a significant impact on the challenges that we face right now.

Uh, with those that are in the throes of addiction on our streets.

Uh BLA recommendation number three.

I'll let Patrick take that one.

For BLA recommendation number three.

The BLA had stated that we never expend it more than what was proposed in fiscal year 28.

I would also want to highlight the fact that we've always spent to what was allotted in the budget.

You can see on this slide our expenditures for each year.

If we had more money, we definitely would have spent it.

Um expenditures for each year, typically when there's a winter major winter storm, we exhaust uh the dollars that are allocated to road access and forestry.

Uh I think one point that the BLA does not uh highlight is that even though we've expended to the budget for next year, the there's two areas.

One is that it's going to be the forecast is that it's going to be a strong El Nino winter pattern this year, and if we consider the California state fire marshals, all of the surrounding area at San Bruno Jail is considered a high risk area.

I'm gonna move to the next slide.

This shows the uh a map of the San Bruno area.

What you can see is the adjacent areas have a very high fire hazard risk, and all of San Bruno uh jail complex is considered a high uh fire hazard area, and these are I want to also add these are some of the photos uh highlighting some of the road and um vegetation uh areas within San Bruno jail.

Thank you, Patrick.

Um BLA recommendation before regarding the fingerprint technicians.

Just to encompass that um we have 12 total positions for a 24-hour operation.

Fingerprinting individuals is part of both the booking and release process, and it's uh a very key component of making sure that individuals uh that our processed through uh are identified properly and that any corresponding warrants or uh legal issues are uh documented noted and we uh make sure that they follow their justice-involved path uh the proper way.

We currently have only three ID technicians for a 24-hour operation, and of those three that are on our active list, one is on disability right now.

Uh we run the operation right now uh with the use of our cadets who have experience in fingerprinting.

Uh they're on overtime, and we also have used deputies uh to offset the staffing challenges of making sure people are processed, and the process itself is very timely.

We have to make sure they're fingerprinted in a timely manner as a part of being justice involved.

Uh we are running short on those positions because we're on a hiring freeze and could not fill those positions.

So we are imploring that we maintain our current staffing numbers, our FTE positions, and that we be given the opportunity to fill those positions so that we can reduce our overtime expenditures in this area.

Um, and we do have active lists for the positions that that we are talking about uh through DHR.

Uh BLA recommendation number five.

Um Patrick, you want to take this one?

Sure.

For BLA recommendation number five, the BLA had recommended a $500,000 uh reduction to our custody operations.

Uh one thing I want to note is that for this budget cycle, we had to work with the mayor's office on calculating what an appropriate budget would be for fiscal year 27.

The budgeted dollars for salary only provides us funding for the staff that we have on hand.

Um we assumed for next year that of the 75 deputies that we would hire, that it would be paid for through the approximately 50 deputies that uh would separate from the department.

The reason that that would help pay for it is we're assuming that the deputies that leave that they would be Calperus members, and currently the uh cost for a Calperist member is significantly higher than somebody that's on SFRs, the SFR's retirement system, and so uh that makes the numbers balance out for fiscal year 27 because there isn't any flexibility within the budget to help address any contingencies that may occur throughout the year, we're requesting to keep the budget whole.

And for the uh Bureau of Prisoners revenue, I want to point out that although the revenue has been about 1.3 million for last fiscal year and currently it's a million and a half, that revenue is not guaranteed.

Um, and we've also used that revenue as a contingency if we were to exceed uh our budget.

I think for next year, because of the uh very tight budget for our personnel, that um this keep in place so that there's a contingency, should there be any um incidents that arise that cause us to um exceed our budget?

The last thing I want to point out is that the BLA is making this recommendation based upon the fiscal year 27 budget aligning with the current spending plan patterns.

We think that the proposed budget should align with fiscal year 27 spending.

The sheriff's office had 732 deputies at the start of fiscal year 26, and for the start of next year, what we're project currently projecting is that there's going to be 780 deputies, which is forty-eight deputies more than what we had last year, and so for at least the budget that has been proposed, um, a lot of it is to account for the additional staff that we have, smorn staff that we have on hand.

Supervisor Walton.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

Thank you, Sheriff.

Um just one question because one of the justifications you gave for not hiring certain positions were due to hiring freezes.

But some of the timelines that we get from the BLA report don't match hiring freezes being in place.

So how do we reconcile that?

At least for the hiring, uh the freezes are pertinent to our professional staff.

Um they are not in place for our swarm members and also for our uh sheriff cadets.

That's been the practice for this year, and it it also um was in place for last year as well.

Right, but when we talk about fingerprints, for example, and cadets having to um provide coverage to do the work.

One of the limitations the sheriff stated was do hiring freezes is why you haven't been able to give fully staff, but there's these are going back to 2022 and 2024.

We haven't had a hiring freeze all the way from 2022 all the way to now.

Let me let me uh contextualize that.

You know that we have overtime problems, and a lot of times when we don't meet our overtime projections in the middle of a fiscal year, uh some of our processes are slowed down as a result of that.

So specific to the sheriff's office, we've had instances where we were not allowed to hire uh non-sworn staff, uh the professional staff freezes that we experience are sometimes due to probation being on it uh budgetary probation.

And what is what is the concern with cadets covering some of this work?

I think the cost for one thing, one we're taking away from our cadet positions where we're staff currently at about 73% and putting them into the ID tech positions.

Uh, they're not working as cadets, so we're pulling them from their positions as cadets.

That's number one, and they're filling that role.

Uh, and I believe that their salaries are higher than that of a fingerprint technician.

So when they work it both on salary and on overtime, that creates a greater cost for us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Vice Chair Dorsey, thank you, Chair Chan.

Um, for recommendation uh sheriff uh six, and thank you, Sheriff Minamoto, for identifying its linkage to Sheriff Two, both of these pertain to the reset center.

I do appreciate the BLA's focus on accountability and performance measurement, obviously.

I think we should uh absolutely expect strong reporting and um you know transparent outcomes for any program of the scale and one that represents this kind of innovation.

Um at the same time, I do have concerns that placing half of the funding in reserve for FY26 and 27, and all of the funding in reserve for FY27 and 28 could undermine the continuity of a program that is showing some early promise.

Can I just ask you to address that?

Do you have share concerns that I would have of how that might frustrate continuity or raise concerns with new new vendors or contractors that we have?

I do have concerns, and that's why we only partially agreed with the recommendation and uh if uh the board saw fit to continue the funding uh without holding that in reserve, I'd absolutely agree to that.

Okay.

So I if I guess in um in my view, this is some this is uh an approach that I advocated for.

I think the reset center represents uh something that addresses a long-standing shortcoming in our system by providing a safe alternative to jail or emergency rooms for individuals who are gravely intoxicated or in crisis on our streets while creating a pathway to treatment and services, it seems to be showing great promise.

So I'm encouraged by that.

Um I think it's a major component of Mayor Lurie's breaking the cycle strategy to make sure that we are moving people off the street but connecting them to care.

Um it's my understanding that the sheriff's office is already developing a performance dashboard with admissions uh utilization and clinical outcome metrics.

Um that I think that work should continue, and the board should receive regular updates on that, if I understand correctly.

So, given that accountability framework, I think there is merit in the sheriff's proposal to place only the performance-based portion of the contract on reserve, and if I understand correctly, that's approximately 793,000 for FY2627 and $625,000 for FY2728.

Um I think that approach preserves the board's oversight role while avoiding any kind of needless uncertainty that we might be creating with uh partners on this program that depends on staffing, operational continuity, um, provider stability to succeed.

Um, I just think we should be careful not to create a situation where a lack of uh finalized reporting infrastructure is a barrier to maintaining a service that is really helping us address um public intoxication and showing good results.

So I would uh support continued oversight and performance reporting, and I believe um the reserve should be targeted just to the performance-based component uh rather than the entirety of the operational funding.

Thank you, and sorry, uh Vice Chair Dorsey, could you slow down and uh repeat the reserve dollar amount for fiscal first fiscal year and the second?

Sure.

So the account my understanding is that the sheriff's proposal to place only the performance-based portion of the contract on reserve.

And the numbers that I have for that incorrect, um, I'll rely on the CFO to make sure my math is correct.

It's approximately 793,000 for FY 2627, and 625,000 for FY 2728.

So that would be the performance-based portion of the contract.

That's correct.

It's reflected in slide 12, I believe, under BLA six.

Okay.

So it is there if you want to refer it.

And this is for recommendation six, and um which the BLA is suggesting to put 3.3 million dollars for the first uh for the fiscal year 2026 27, and then for the second 27 28 is five point three million dollars on reserve, and that is the totality of the contract.

But it sounds to me there is a proposal by Vice Chair Dorsey at the moment to put partial of that contract, specifically targeting the performance evaluation.

And so should we put that specific dollars amount on reserve?

It does mean still uh when you um have to fulfill the contract, you have to issue you have to submit a letter, a request uh to request the release of that dollar amount um likely at the end of the contract, hopefully before you come before this body again next June for the release of that fund.

Yes, we will.

And there will be a hearing for that.

Yeah, we'd have to do that.

I'm I'm very happy that we have the opportunity to have an actual uh performance-based metric in one of our contracts.

I think I believe it's one of the first times that we've done that here in the city.

So be happy to continue with that path.

If I may, um could I ask them what is the timeline specifically detailed in the contract for performance evaluation?

For if I can answer that for the performance um based portion of the contract, it's outlined within the uh contract that um the amounts that you we showed on slide seven, those would be the portion that would be performance based, and that's done um on a monthly basis each time that the contractor submits us an invoice.

We uh we calculate what portion of incentives that they've that they have earned, and then that portion would be paid out.

So in this context, um for next fiscal year for the amount that would be placed on reserve, that would be based upon what um performance incentives that we actually expect to pay out.

And the performance like expectation is that we place individuals.

Sorry, go ahead, chef.

Uh well connections to care, making sure that they actually follow through with those connections and uh we have documentation of that.

What is the threshold?

Percentage-wise, like a percentage of 93 people are 93 percent of the people individuals are placed, or do we know?

It varies.

Um within the contract, we outline multiple areas um where they could earn incentives, one of which is um the drop-off time um or processing time when a an officer um or when an individual is brought to the reset center um to when it the person is processed and when the uh officer or deputy can return back to their normal duties.

There's other performance measures where it um identifies uh whether a person is linked to services, um I and and within those areas it's all outlined within the contract that uh we presented approximately a month ago.

As you I don't know, I know we expect you to recall, but should you recall um what is the percentage that you have set for the goal?

Um have to meet 75 percent of the no um I I can't recall specifically, but um off top my head uh it's I want to say it's up to 12 and a half percent if if they reach um all of the incentive measures.

Above 12 and a half percent.

Okay.

Interesting.

Okay.

Um thank you.

I don't see any other name on the roster.

Thank you so much for your presentation today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And um next, we will have the police department.

Madam Chair, our recommendations for the police department are summarized on page 142 of our report, and the details start on page 143 of our report.

It's our understanding that we don't have agreement on any of our recommendations at this time.

So I will walk through them one by one.

So POL1 on page 143 is a um line on the building structures and improvement project budget.

The um recommendation is uh for $37,627 of savings for the hazmat abatement authority.

The department has not had any expenses under this authority in the past three fiscal years and has an existing surplus of $86,704 that could be used to cover any future expenses in this authority.

POL2 is uh $350,000 adjustment to attrition savings under the administrative division.

We believe this is a very modest cut considering that civilian vacancies in the general fund operating subfund has generated over $13 million in attrition savings compared to uh less than $9 million budgeted in the budget first budget year and 11 million budgeted in the second budget year.

That provides for quite a cushion for the department, and we believe that a $350,000 adjustment is very modest.

POL 3 is a an eighteen thousand dollar cut to a project budget for the lab information management system annual licensing fee.

Each year we've seen the department only spends $15,000 on this authority and carries a very or carries a large balance.

There's an existing surplus of $106,446, $464 to cover the expenses in the following two fiscal years.

We consider this to be a very small cut considering that surplus.

POL four is a recommendation recommended cut to the training budget.

Again, this is all under police administration.

Um and POL four and five are closely related.

So this POL four is money for folks to uh attend non-mandated training and um an associated overnight travel costs for such training.

And over the past three fiscal years, due to restrictions imposed by the mayor's budget office, um as well as staffing challenges that prevented staff from attending any training not mandated by the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

The department has uh underspent their budget.

They have an available balance of $661,555, and we're planning to carry that forward, could easily cover the cost here.

The department has not presented us with a plan for using those carry-forward funds.

As I mentioned, POL5 is very closely related.

Um associated with these trainings.

POL six is on page 144 of our report.

These are for vehicles.

Um this specifically POL six and seven um are also related.

Um there are eight uh vehicles in POL six and seven vehicles in POL seven, um in those lines.

So the department requested replacement of 60 vehicles.

Umits are budgeted in the general fund.

Of these 23 units, the unit price for each of these vehicles is incorrect, does not align with central shop's estimated replacement cost.

The total proposed budget for the 23 units is 1,071,975,932.

However, if we look at Central Shop's estimates for these 23 units, it only comes to one million two hundred twenty thousand seven hundred five dollars to replace this unit.

So again, we're talking about nearly a million dollars budgeted and a little over 1.2 million that they actually cost according to central shops.

The recommended reduction would still allow the department to replace all 23 of the vehicles they're requesting.

In the first fiscal year, all general fund savings, nine hundred and ten three forty three is one time three hundred sixty eight thousand is ongoing.

And in the second budget year, that three hundred sixty-eight thousand again is ongoing all general fund.

Our policy recommendations start on page one hundred and forty six of our report.

POL eight is an O nine three three manager five position in police administration.

The position's been vacant for less than six months, but the department has no plans to fill in as holding it open for attrition.

POL nine is an O nine five three Deputy Director three position.

It has been vacant for less than six months, but the department doesn't have any plans to fill and is going to hold it open for attrition.

And finally, POL ten on page one hundred and forty seven of our report is an O nine two three manager two position.

This is um an off budget position.

Um although there are still savings, it's just grant funded position.

Um the funding ended in January of this year.

According to the department, the position is currently being funded with temporary salary savings.

And that concludes a summary of the recommendations for the police department that we don't have agreement on.

We're available for any questions you all may have.

Thank you.

Sorry, my apologies.

It sounds like we have some technical issues.

Um, we come cast this out.

I think it is in the best interest that we recess until we sort out the technical, otherwise we just have to redo this in case for public records.

So I'm so sorry about this.

Um, five minutes.

Let's recess until one forty p.m.

And all.

And so.

And I'm not.

How too?

However, We are returning from recess due to a technical difficulty.

Mr.

Clark, do you have announcement?

Thank you, Madam Chair, to the members of the public end for the record.

Let's see, we were made aware of a uh a national Comcast Xfinity outage.

So it is just not our region, but it is nationwide.

For any of us who have joined us uh through uh SFGov TV.

Uh we have determined that uh we can go on with this meeting since uh since this meeting is still broadcast at least regionally and is still available for public viewing.

And with that, thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Clark.

And with that, um, we were having uh budget and legislative analysts uh going through the recommendations out for the police department and now the police department.

Chair Chan, Vice Chair Dorsey, and Supervisor Soder.

I'm the Chief Financial Officer, Kimmy Wu, and today I'm joined by the assistant chief Nicole Jones, Deputy Chief Administration Bureau, Mark M.

and the government affairs manager Carl Nasita.

We are here today to review the ten recommended budget reductions and one policy recommendation issued by the budget and legislative analysts for fiscal years twenty-seven and twenty-eight.

The BLA recommends a total of one point three million in reductions, nine hundred and ten thousand in one time reductions, and three hundred and sixty-eight thousand in ongoing reductions, which carry forward into fiscal year twenty-eight.

Um, budget.

Again, it's proposed fiscal year twenty-seven for eight hundred and eighty-two point six million, fiscal year twenty-eight, proposed budget of nine hundred and one million.

And our general fund breakdown in fiscal year twenty seven is seven hundred and sixty five million approximately, and with over ninety percent supporting personnel costs for the police department.

And the non-general fund portion, $100.7 million is for the airport bureau police departments personnel, and $16.6 million approximately for our special revenue funds and grants.

But these needs remain unfunded by more than $14 million, and this gap represents the critical investments that are necessary to maintain essential services, support operational readiness, and address infrastructure and equipment requirements that cannot be absorbed within the existing budget.

And so moving to the first recommendation, POL 1, $37,627 for a one-time hazmat abatement.

Currently, there are no remaining funds under this authority.

Allocations are fully committed, and this funding supports 10 stations and 14 leased facilities throughout the city that require ongoing upgrades and repairs to maintain operational standards.

And the capital resources in our budget ensure the safety and security of all our stations.

And investments support infrastructure needed for a 24-7 operational schedule, including critical building systems, security enhancements, and compliance-driven improvements.

And so while there appears to be no funding over the past three fiscal years, this small amount is allocated for hazmat abatement.

Now moving on to POL number two, 350,000 of ongoing non-sworn attrition.

That includes two high-level manager positions, 0953 as well as a 0932, and other administrative functions, including those in information technology.

Is the salary savings from vacancies currently fund temporary salaries, and that supports non-sworn roles as well as the ambassador program.

Project budget.

However, we have spent the last 12 months updating the crime scene results management platform, and this is used for every CSI call with all activities entered into the electronic incident reporting system, which captures CSI tasks, including crime scene reports, examination reports, latent print processing, vehicle examinations, and the entire CSI unit continues to expand and refine this system, which requires this ongoing programmatic budget to support these costs.

And so it's specifically the LIM system is a contract that supports all live scan systems across DHR, the sheriffs, juvenile probation, probation, as well as SFPD.

And so it supports both criminal and applicant processing, plus a new mobile ID technology for all law enforcement citywide.

And so this, as I mentioned, the citywide implementation is underway, and the pending final approval is in the coming months, and the annual maintenance should begin on July 1, 2026.

POL 4 and POL5 are budget set aside for the real estate authority, and a reduction in this allocation for one-time training would directly limit our ability to rebuild capacity, maintain required skill sets, and sustain service level once staffing returns to normal levels.

This unit performs highly specialized functions, and due to the prolonged staffing shortages, we have not been able to fully expend these funds over the past several fiscal years.

And the historical underutilization reflects staffing limitations rather than a diminished operational need.

And the department will require these resources to ensure that personnel receives the specialized training necessary to maintain certifications and operational readiness.

And so the support from this training fund is for the associate of certified anti-money laundering specialty as well as post-required training on real estate fraud investigations.

And so the portion of the overtime is POL 5 for $98,475.

And the department has not fully utilized overtime allocated in this fund.

However, overtime funding remains essential to support the mission critical investigative functions that cannot be completed within regular work hours.

POL six and seven is a one-time reduction to our fleet vehicle budget, totaling seven hundred fifty-five thousand two hundred and twenty-seven dollars.

The consistent and adequate fleet funding to replace our vehicles is essential to manage long-term operational costs and maintain a dependable vehicle fleet.

Regular replacement cycles reduce the rising maintenance expenses, which increase significantly as vehicles age and require more frequent costly repairs.

Investing in timely replacement improves fleet reliability, ensuring vehicles remain safe, functional, and available when needed.

The sufficient funding supports our operational readiness, enabling units to meet service demands without disruption caused by vehicle breakdowns or extended repair downtime.

And the proactive replacement planning helps stabilize the budget, preventing large, unpredictable spikes in repair spending.

And so I want to highlight historically what has been funded.

The average vehicles that were replaced in fiscal year ending 2015 through fiscal year end 2020 was 66 vehicles per year.

And we have not been funded at that level, which has led to a maintenance cost increase since fiscal year 2021 at upwards of $2 million per fiscal year.

And the central shops is incurring higher expenses due to the older vehicles requiring more frequent and complex repairs.

And so the impact is that many vehicles are now beyond the optimal service life.

The repair costs for several units exceed the actual value of the vehicle.

And the increased downtime is reducing fleet reliability and straining operational capacity.

And deferred replacement continues to drive up long-term costs.

And that concludes the reductions that were recommended.

There was one policy recommendation, POL 8-9 and POL 10, totaling $936,249 of ongoing, ongoing costs.

Um that have been identified as vacant for deletion.

Two of those positions were recently vacant, and we are actively hiring for the 0953 deputy director 3.

That is our chief information officer position.

And I do want to bring to your attention that two positions that is being proposed, is in the technology division, and they have already lost 16 FTEs in this fiscal year.

It is off budget, and the proposal is to cut temporary salaries, but this position is currently filled.

We use temporary salaries to pay for the position that is no longer grant funded as of January 2026.

And that is uh the end of the recommendations and the policy recommendations.

Um, and I'm more than happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Um, colleagues, if I may, I want to articulate that I am interested in rejecting the policy recommendations for the police department.

However, for the fiscal recommendation, um, I am also interested, and I'm open for conversation and discussion, is that I would like to put that dollars on reserve for the police department, and that for the police department to return when the time when you have a plan is to report back to this body about two specific items.

One is your long-term strategy because the dollar amount that we're talking about for the fiscal recommendation, truly it's really about the vehicles and about um the vehicles maintenance as well as your facility maintenance, and what I'm interested in learning about is to put this dollar amount on reserve and for the police department to return to articulate um your vision and your plan for Arctic and your other facilities, including inclusive of the bond dollar that just passed, proposition A, and how is that going?

Um, what is the renovation renovation plan for Terraval Station?

Um, the bond dollars did not be inclusive of central police station, what then um you're gonna do next, knowing that central police station actually also in need of repair, and so basically a vision of your facility plan, um, recognizing that our tick uh is a temporary solution.

What is your long term?

Um, and then also, of course, your vehicle fleet uh your fleet maintenance uh for all the um vehicles that you have to understand the inventory of it, how many of them I believe some of the vehicles actually been quite old.

Um, and so are there active strategy and approach to um retire the vehicles and uh making sure that your vehicles actually work.

Um, but but clearly you can't repair them or replace them at once.

So, what is the strategy?

Um so those are my questions about um fleet management, facility management for the long-term vision from the SFPD, and I think that it requires a conversation.

So thank you.

I don't see any other name on the roster.

We're ready to go to the Academy of California Academy of Sciences.

Our uh reserve recommendations for the Academy of Sciences are summarized on page three of our report and are detailed on page four and five of our report.

We are proposing to place three, four, five line items, fifty percent of five line items on budget and finance committee reserve, and twenty five percent of a sixth line item on budget and finance committee reserve in the first year, and then a hundred percent of the budget allocation for the second budget year on budget and finance committee reserve.

Um so these include um recommendation number one, the professional specialized services budget, uh, 50 percent, 50 percent of the other professional services budget, that's recommendation two, 50 percent of the salary and benefits for the for one full-time equivalent 7205 chief stationary engineer position, that's recognition number three, 50 percent of one senior one full-time equivalent 7335 senior stationary engineer position.

That's recommendation number four.

Recommendation number five is to place 50 percent of salary and benefits for eleven point two full-time equivalent, 7334 stationary engineers on budget and finance committee reserve, and uh recommendation number six is to place 25 percent of the building structures and improvement project budget on budget and finance committee reserve.

It's our understanding that um these positions and professional services budgets uh support the Steinhart Aquarium, and that the building structures and improvement project budget um support facilities maintenance as well as capital projects, including an elevator modernization project and a project to address infrastructure maintenance, waterproofing, and mechanical upgrades across aquarium facility systems.

The reason why we're recommending these reserves is due to recon recent concern um by uh but members of the board of supervisors, including a proposed motion um by Supervisor Melgar to direct uh our office, the budget and legislative analyst office to initiate a performance and management audit of the Academy of Sciences in the upcoming um fiscal year.

And so we our recommendation for all of these is to um place those funds in those amounts on budget finance committee reserve, pending a report from our office with an update on the pending performance and management audit with the Academy and Sciences that we could provide to you uh in the fall um before the you know the second half of that of the fiscal year uh hits, and so that if um the board of Spears is the budget and finance through the budget finance committee is satisfied with that update that those funds could at least the first fiscal year funds could be released at that time.

Happy to answer any questions you may have on this reserve recommendation, and uh thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Chan, committee members.

My name is Amber Mace.

I am interim executive director for the California Academy of Sciences, and I thank you for your time today and inviting us back.

Uh we welcome this audit as a constructive opportunity, and we are very happy to comply.

Uh I also want to say that we are not in agreement with the BLA recommendation to put these funds on reserve.

As an AZA, association of zoos and aquariums, accredited institution that just renewed our certification this year.

Uh, we respectfully request the committee not place our funds on reserve.

These funds are already tightly controlled by the city to fulfill the charter obligation to Steinhardt Aquarium with utilities and salaries paid directly and services and capital expenditures reimbursed only as incurred.

The 932,000 increase from FY26 is driven entirely by unavoidable costs, rising utility cost, mandatory union salary and benefit increases, capital projects constrained by competitive bid pricing and timing constraints of operating in a public museum.

Our professional services remain flat.

By placing these funds on reserve, this would jeopardize the Academy's ability to maintain standard operations and animal safety, purchase aquarium supplies, and most critically pay city-funded local 39 engineering staff.

And this is the most important point for me.

Our engineers keep our 60,000 animals safe and alive.

And I wouldn't want them to even get a hint that their jobs are at risk or that their work is not highly valued.

I wouldn't want them to think they need to look for other places for employment because these funds are on reserve, even if they would be released in a timely fashion.

So I ask that these funds not be put on reserve, and that our highly valued union employees are acknowledged for the work that they do.

And I am happy to answer any questions along with my CFO Matthew Lau.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We so appreciate uh you stepping into the leadership role.

We understand that you step in into the role uh in a time of crisis uh for the institution, and so we really appreciate your leadership.

I do have to say that I disagree about um what what really would make the members and the workers uh at County of Sciences think about changing their career or even leaving the institution is the fact that you start off with a 53 layoff already, and and that does not uh provide confidence uh for the institution uh when you have 200 million dollars of endowment available potentially offsets the deficits.

So it is the intention of this body to have an audit uh and and the board supervisor to have this audit and moving forward, but with the reserve as recommended by the budget and legislative analysts, I want to be very clear is that for the first fiscal year 26-27, it's only 50%.

It means that for the next six months, it will the fund is released to the Cal Camino Sciences.

It is until the December, the second half of the fiscal year that is being placed on reserve.

And I look forward to seeing the cooperation and the collaboration between Cal Cameo Sciences and uh our budget and legislative analysts for this audit.

And in the second half of the fiscal in the second fiscal year being placed on reserve, I think again it's reasonable, and I certainly hope that it will be released already by them because the audit will be completed.

We will understand your fiscal condition, and also uh potentially uh what you're gonna do with workers.

Will there be more layoff or will be no more layoff, and in fact, there will be rehiring, all those things that I think that this committee is uh wanting to learn more about uh before releasing the funds.

Uh, but of course that we are value the partnership and we value greatly of the Cow Academy of Sciences.

It's an important and critical institution in Golden Gate Park in that we certainly appreciate your leadership and work.

Uh Supervisor Walton.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

Thank you for the presentation and for uh coming into the chamber this afternoon.

I also just want to state uh not necessarily just for the academy, just for the public, that the city has actually had to dip into reserve to protect valuable programming from federal cuts and make sure that we do what we can and look out for our constituency as well.

So if you have reserves and opportunities and abilities to address some of the deficit, not just for the academy, anybody we may fund, it's important to note that the city has put skin in the game as well.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Um with that uh President Amandeman.

Sorry, hold on.

Uh I um just for my clarification, what do we think the timing on the audit is?

My understanding is uh that the audit motion is has been sent to government audit and oversight committee.

It has not yet been heard at that committee, but I believe that it could be heard at the committee, then sent back to the full board for approval before the summer recess.

That's before the before the summer recent board summer recess, so that we are our office is directed to start the audit um by the end of July, we could then get started uh on the audit um in August, September.

Yeah, how long does an audit take?

Audits to complete take about a year or so, but to get started takes us maybe a few weeks uh to do and some initial research, put a work plan together, schedule the entrance conference with the uh department or program, and within I would say a month or two, we have a very good idea of whether the staff at the department were auditing are cooperating with us or not.

Um, so we as you may recall had some challenges with the San Francisco Zoo for the first few months, and it was very clear to us immediately that we it was gonna be very difficult for us to complete our audit um and changes were made um with the San Francisco Zoo Management and the their their approach to our audit team.

Um so I do I am very confident that by I would say October or so we would be able to uh have a good idea and then come back to the board of subvisors and give you an update on that we were able to start the audit, the task that we were already able to accomplish in the initial phase of the audit and the um working relationship that we're having with in this case the Academy of Sciences.

So you think that comes to budget and finance by November, November?

Yeah, for sure.

And they would need it like released by December.

Yes.

So I belie I'm confident that we could come to the Board of Supervisors in November of this year and give a report back.

And I think that if it's to the budget and finance committee that the funds could be released at that hearing, and then I think they're available immediately.

Although the controller's office could speak, I don't think there would be any delay at that point.

So there's nodding from the controller's office.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

I I wanna uh also just for the the kind of understanding, very similar approach to what we have done with the zoo, is that uh we put the zoo um also the second half on reserve um and so that they can proceed and by the time when they actually coordinate like actually understand that they need to coordinate, otherwise the the funds will not be released, and it's almost near to the release of the audit too, and that was like the spring time, and when they also have like new new leadership and showed a step of like show steps of the next steps and the confidence of what they will will do uh with the next steps.

So for sure, we are a partner in this and wanting to make sure that Cal Academy Science is to be successful.

Um thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And with that, um colleagues.

Uh this is our last uh department for today.

Um, but before we do so, I want to make sure that uh we um reiterate the conversation today um that we have agreement with the mayor's uh fiscal recommendation and that we're accepting those are the one through four and the current year um amount again with mayor one those we have come to an agreement and we will be accepting this as a committee.

And then with the Department of Homeless and Support of Housing, there are fiscal recommendation one through four agreement, and that we will be accepting that today.

And with Department of Public Health, that we have fiscal recommendation one through seventeen, also an agreement.

Uh, we will be accepting those.

And for HSA, that again we also have agreement for fiscal recommendation one through six and the current year recommendation one.

We will also be accepting those from the budget and legislative analysts again, these are the ones that the department and the budget and legislative analysts have come to agreement with.

Um, we still have outstanding with those that are disagreement.

Um, but with that, I also want to go back to the agreement that we have with the city administrator last week, which is one, two, and five.

And then with Department of Public Works, though.

I do have these, but I do want to recognize that Supervisor Sauder actually have one that is a partial with Department of Public Works.

So can we pin the one that is partial with the um street cleaning vehicle?

That one, and I don't know which number is that.

Three wonderful.

Thank you.

So with the Department of Public Works, we have come into agreement with the exception of recommendation three, is four, five, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and current year one, and current year two, and that is with the department of public works.

Again, the city administrator is one, two, and five in agreement, and then with Department of Public Works, again, all the items that we already have come to agreement with the exception of three, that Supervisor Sauter has flagged.

Okay.

With that, uh, Mr.

I want to make sure I give a chance to the uh mayor's budget office.

Do you have any announcement?

I see thumbs up, no additional announcements.

Mr.

Clark, do you have any additional announcements for us today?

Uh thank you, madam chair.

Uh, just an epilogue uh to our um uh to why we uh did recess this meeting earlier uh toward viewing members of the public that were affected uh oh sorry that uh I did want to update that the uh that the Comcast Xfinity outage uh has been resolved into our viewing members of the public affected by the Comcast Exfinities uh national broadcast outage uh footage of our proceedings will be available at SFGOVTV.com on demand uh after the conclusion of this meeting.

Um and also for the record, uh although uh these are items on today's agenda, the following items have been satisfied that have satisfied public comment, been acted on and processed as uh completed business of the committee during our June 17th meeting.

Our item numbers four through seventeen and 19 through 22.

And uh finally, Madam Chair, if we are uh closing today's proceedings, we will need a motion to carry our undecided items one through three, eighteen, twenty-three, and twenty-four from this meeting for consideration to our June twenty-fourth meeting of this committee, and that we recess this meeting and reconvene on June 24th at 10 in the morning.

Great.

Um, and before I made that motion, is a reminder that um we're when public comment day is Wednesday starting at 10 o'clock, and it will be limited to one minute for public comments then.

And so um I will make the motion to move the item as indicated by Mr.

Clerk.

Second, second by Vice Chair Dorsey, and a roll call, please.

And on that motion, to carry our undecided items to the June 24th meeting of this committee, and that we recess this meeting and reconvene at 10 in the morning, June 24th.

By Chair Chan, seconded by Vice Chair Dorsey, Vice Chair Dorsey, Dorsey, aye, member Sauter, Sauter, aye, member Walton, Walton, I.

Member Mandelman, Mandelman, aye, Chair Chan.

Aye, Chan, I.

We have five eyes.

The motion passes, and now this meeting will go into recess until Wednesday, June 24th at 10 a.m.