The meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the January 17 meeting of the Budget and Finance Committee.

I'm Supervisor Connie Chan, Chair of the Committee.

I am joined by Vice Chair Rafael Mendelman, and shortly by Supervisor Mirna Malgar.

Our clerk is Brent Halipa.

I would like to thank Matthew Enol from SFGov TV for broadcasting the 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.

Assessed not to interrupt our proceedings.

Should you have any documents to be included as part of the file, they should be submitted to myself, the clerk.

Public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda.

And when your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, uh please line up to speak on the west side of the chamber to your right, my left, right along those curtains.

Alternatively, you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways.

Email them to myself, the budget and finance committee clerk at B R E N T dot J A L I P A at S F G O V dot or G.

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

Dr.

Carlton B.

Goodlick Place, room 244, San Francisco, California, 94102.

And finally, Madam Chair, items act up acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors Agenda of January 23rd, unless otherwise stated.

Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Clerk.

And before we call all the items uh for uh before we proceed with today's meeting, like to just uh alert everyone that uh none of the items today have uh budget and legislative uh analyst report.

Uh therefore we will have presentation from city department uh and committee.

Please feel free to ask any questions and we'll proceed to public comment.

With that, Mr.

Clerk, please call item number one.

Yes, item number one is a resolution retroactively authorizing the Department of Juvenile Probation to accept an expended grant allocation from the California Department of Social Services in the amount of approximately 360,000 for the period of October 1st, 2021 through September 30th, 2026 for intensive foster care and family preservation services.

Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Today we have uh Seth uh Coborn Principal Grants uh and policy analyst from our juvenile probation department.

Uh good morning.

Um the department um is seeking uh authorization uh retroactive um uh to fund um intensive foster care services um for youth with um special needs and more complex needs um with through a partnership with alternative family services and the uh department of children youth and families um the resolution is retroactive because it reflects the grant terms from the California Department of Social Services, although we don't expect to we we will be billing for um costs for this fiscal year moving forward um and we fully intend to use the the the all the funds in this fiscal year and the next and I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have thank you I don't see any question uh for now and uh just a quick question and help me understand um will this services be provided on site at the hall or how how does this actually work?

No, no, these will be um provided through our partnership um with alternative family services so it will no not not on site no understood yeah sorry go ahead that was it okay thank you with that um let's go to public comment on this item yes we now invite members of the public who have joined us today who wish to speak on this item uh to go ahead and line up and um approach the lecture madam chair we have no speakers thank you seeing no public comments public comment is now close uh colleagues I would like to uh make the motion to move this uh to full board with uh recommendation and with that a roll call please and on that motion to forward to the full board with a positive recommendation vice chairman aye mandleman I member melgar Melgar I Chair Chan I Chan I we have three ayes thank you and the motion passes and please uh Mr.

Clerk call item number two yes item number two is an ordinance retroactively authorizing the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to accept an expend a grant in the amount of approximately one million from the California Department of Public Health Substance and Addiction Prevention Branch and authorizing the addition of grant funded temporary class uh 2403 forensic laboratory analyst class 2456 forensic toxicologist and class 2457 forensic toxicologist supervisor positions has required for the period beginning december first twenty twenty three through june thirtieth twenty twenty eight madam chair thank you today we have Dr.

Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Today we have Dr.

Luke Rhoda, Chief Forensic Toxicologist, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Good morning.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Honorable Members.

Thank you for hearing this matter today.

I'm joined with my colleague, executive director of the department, David Serrano Sewell.

And again, thank you for hearing this matter today.

So as this this board well knows, we've undergoing a significant increase in accidental overdoses in recent years, some 400% increase from the last decade to the start of this decade.

And so with that has been some increase in caseload to support this efforts.

California DPH has reached out to us a couple of years ago with a grant to help supply us with staffing for the reanalysis of 2022 accidental overdoses for novel novel synthetic opioids.

With this project, we developed really leading methodologies to detect over 250 of these novel opioids.

And we retrospectively went back and reanalyzed sedents, blood and urine for this type of compounds.

We found that over 50 substances of novel synthetic opioids and orzalozine was detected in these decedents.

Specifically, and I've mentioned fluorofentanol was an increase of 45 cases were detected.

We issued a 27-page report, and this was released on our website, providing the in individual data of the decedents, but also categorize these drugs into classes to better provide information for the policymakers in the health department.

With that, the California DPH reached out to us again to ask if we would be interested in doing a five-year term grant at this time looking not just at novel synthetic opioids, but novel drugs in general, so larger scope of drugs.

And to do this, there's there's obviously some challenges that we're facing, and that's due to the increase in caseload, as I mentioned before.

And so there's more drugs to test.

And so the cases that we receive are getting more and more complex.

And so with those challenges in mind, some of the aims that we have is to create and validate a novel drug testing scheme that needs to be automated and efficient to keep up with these caseloads and demands over the next several years.