And comment by email to the government audit and oversight committee clerk at Stephanie S-T-E P H A N I E dot Gabrera, CS in California A, B S N Bay, R E R A at SFgov.org.

You may also send your written comments via US Postal Service to our office in City Hall at one Dr.

Carlton B.

Goodlit, place, room 244, San Francisco, California 94102.

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

Finally, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors Agenda of May 16th, unless otherwise stated.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Please call items one and two together.

Item number one is an ordinance adopting and implementing the memorandum of understanding between the city and county of San Francisco and San Francisco Firefighters, Union Local 798, Unit One.

And item number two is an ordinance adopting and implementing the memorandum of understanding between the city and county of San Francisco and San Francisco Firefighters, local Union Local 79th, sorry, 798, Unit 2.

For those joining us remotely, if you haven't done so already, please dial star three to be added to the speaker queue.

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Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

And before we get started with these items, uh Supervisor Chin.

Thank you, uh Chair.

I just want to be on the record that uh I do we are a proud firefighter family, and uh my partner has been a firefighter since 2011 and now a fire prevention inspector.

But I have confirmed and checking with our city attorney and our deputy attorney Ann Pearson has confirmed that uh I do not need to recuse myself on this decision and um and we'll be happy to support.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, uh Supervisor Chin.

And so we have today uh presenting on this item uh artists uh Graham from uh the DHR, employee relations director, and uh and the DHR team, uh including Steve Ponder and uh Mawuli Tugbenyo.

Uh and so we will uh turn it over to you, uh Mr.

Graham with thanks for uh the advanced briefing on this and all the work to get this uh this far.

Floor is yours.

The board.

Um we do have an extra DHR member today because Oakland Unified's teachers are on strike, so I got a five-year-old member here, so he may have you know something to add later.

So just to be advised.

Will he be doing the presentation?

Well, you know, he may he may need to be our expert witness on some questions that come up.

We'll see.

Um happy May the fourth, by the way.

All right, so uh thanks again for having us.

So what you see in front of you now is the charter factors that we utilize when bargaining with any bargaining unit.

We've gone over these before when we met with PO with you about the POA contract.

Um, but and they're they're the same.

Um and so as you can see here, we look at things like inflation, we look at the wages in other markets, um, etc.

And the ability of the city's ability to pay as well.

One of the things we looked at with the fire department um is their recruitment and retention.

And as you may recall, we had a very similar slide up for um the police department.

And so in the police department, you saw we saw a decline of staff of that almost 8%.

Here you see that their fire department has been able to increase staff by 3.5%.

Um and in both cases, we were not able to run academies or or trainings during the pandemic, so but we had retirements and other reasons why people left.

So they were they are both understaffed, and so the fire department is working now uh assertively to try to fully staff up, and as you can see, um we you know have been able to add hires.

We still have 73 retirees and seven resignations.

So as you can see, the resignations aren't as significant as they were with the POA.

So we just had a different set of factors that we were looking at in terms of our current staff level.

Here you can see where the city of San Francisco compares in the market of the Bay Area around compensating our firefighters.

And as you can see, we do compensate our firefighters well within the marketplace.

Umgaining, we believe we'll be number two subsequent to this contract taking effect.

Um I guess it would all depend on what Hayward does, but we do believe we'll be number two once this is completed.

I guess we'll depend on what Hayward does, but we do believe we'll be number two once this is completed.

Here you can see what the firefighter retirements look like.

And you can see that the retirements really peak at year 21.

Um and then there's a series of retirements thereafter.

Retirements were of concern for us because as I mentioned earlier, the fire department is understaffed as a result of the of the pandemic and not being able to hire during that time.

The department is working, as I said before, to uh hire as many firefighters as they safely can effectively train.

The there is still a lot great deal of interest in the community in being a San Francisco firefighter.

Um so we anticipate that in a few years they'll be fully staffed.