BOS Budget and Appropriations Committee (2024)

BOS Budget and Appropriations Committee (1)

City and County
of San Francisco

Friday, June 14, 2024

okay good morning. The meeting

will come to order. Welcome to the JUNE 14th, 2024 meeting of the budget and appropriation committee. I'm supervisor connie chan, chair of the committee. I'm joined by vice chair raphael mandelman, supervisors mariano

melgar and shamann walton. Today, supervisor ronen will be

sitting in for PRESIDENT Aaron

peskin shortly, our clerk is

john carroll, and I would like

to thank, corwin cooley from sfgovtv for broadcasting this

meeting. MR. Clerk, do you have

any announcement? Yes. Thank you , MADAM Chair. A quick reminder to those in attendance today in the chamber. Please ensure that you've silenced your cell phones and other electronic devices to prevent interruptions to today's proceedings. If you have any

documents to be include as part of the file, you should submit them to me and you can do so by bringing them forward to the rail. I'll meet you there. Public comment will be taken on each item on today's agenda. When your item of interest comes up in public comment is called, please line up to speak along the western side of the chamber. I'm pointing it out with my left

hand. While not necessary to provide public comment, I also

invite you to fill out a comment card and leave the comment card

on the tray by the television on

your left hand side. If you wish, you MAY submit public comment in writing, and you MAY do so by writing them to the budget and appropriations committee. Clerk. That is brant

halpa, brent's email address is

b r e n t j a l I pr at sf gov. Org or you MAY submit your public comment in writing by sending your comments to the clerk's office that is in city hall, room 244. In city hall's address is one doctor carlton b goodlett place, san francisco,

california 94102. Throughout the budget process, we are in partnership with the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs. We have arranged for interpretive services to assist us during public comment. Today, we have tinky wong for our for chinese, and we have david cruz from inter graphics for spanish. MAY I please, request each of

the interpreters to come forward to the lectern to provide an introduction to their services in language. We could hear from

MR. Cruz first, please. Hola.

Muy buenas tardes, por favor. Si usted necesita interpretation de ingle s. Espa}ol favor y dirigir

a dirigir aqui a las personas

presentes por favor de forma de lado de las ventanas. Este para

probables interpretation

consecutiva muchas gracias. Was chosen. Come out of the jamboree

and, don't go finding yourself

being able to say thank you very

much for your assistance throughout the meeting today.

And, MADAM Chair, that concludes our preliminary announcements

for today's meeting. Thank you,

MR. Clark, and welcome to our third day of departmental budget

hearing before we get started, I

wanted to I just wanted to reiterate for the public how

today's agenda will proceed. We

will hear presentations for departments in the order listed

on the agenda. Some departments

have additional legislation tied to their department budgets,

which is often referred to as trailing legislation. Those

items are listed as items four

and five. On today's agenda, I will call those items along with

the department responsible and affiliated with it, and you will

hear MR. Clerk announce those

items accordingly. Items five.

Item five also has a budget and

legislative report and budget and legislative analyst report.

So for that item, we will have the department presentation

first, followed by the budget and legislative analyst report.

Then we will take questions from the committee members before we

proceed to public comments on

that legislation. Only for that legislation, members of the public should keep their remarks

related to the legislation, not

the overall all department budget public comments that

addresses any or all department

budget will be taken after we have our final department budget

presentation for today, we'll be

the police department and we are

also limiting public comment today to one minute, and so with

that, MR. Clerk, please call

item one through three together

agenda item numbers one, two and three. Consider the mayor's proposed budget for the department of the city and

county for fiscal years 2024

through 2026. Agenda item number two is the budget and appropriation ordinance appropriating all estimated receipts and all estimated expenditures for departments of the city and county as of JUNE

1st, 2024 and item number three is the annual salary ordinance

enumerating positions in the annual budget and appropriation ordinance. Continuing creating or establishing these positions, enumerating and including

therein all positions created by charter or state law for which

compensations are paid from city and county funds and appropriated in the annual appropriation ordinance authorizing appointments or

continuation of appointments thereto. Specifying and fixing

the compensations and work schedules thereof, and authorizing appointments to temporary positions and fixing

compensations. MADAM Chair,

thank you, and before we start, though, I just again wanted to set the tone and understanding that while each city department

kung fu to come to us for their

presentation and generally my line of questions are going to be about your staffing management, contract performance

functions within your division. And those will be the line of

questions that I will have as chair of the committee. But I'm going to always open up to committee members to present their questions first, and then

I'll leave those questions last, and I do look forward to seeing

those, answers hours in your

presentation as well, so those are just kind of set everybody ready? But the first we have our

city attorney. Good morning,

supervisors. MADAM Chair, let me first, just thank you for your opportunity to present our budget during this difficult

budget year. We know how challenging your job is and very much appreciate your work. And

hopefully the presentation is up

. All right. So as you know, we are your attorneys. Our office

provides a wide range of civil

legal services to over 100 plus city clients, including the

board, from advising counsel to drafting countless contracts and

ordinances, defending thousands of matters, affirmative

litigation and public integrity work. Since our work touches

every aspect of the city, our expertise spans 25 legal teams,

alphabetically from the airport to worker protection. We're in

the midst of everything hard and messy in the city, working to solve the most complicated issues facing us. Much of our

work comes to us from clients or in lawsuits filed against the

city. We don't, unfortunately, control the spigot, but we

handle the ever increasing inflow of work, and our

resources are constantly stretched. Now, with only a few minutes, I'm going to touch on a few topics that are relevant to this year's budget. First, I want to highlight our work protecting the city's coffers, such as defending ongoing tax revenues and new local taxes

such as big c, baby c and prop

g, with nine appellate victories

since 2020, these victories will allow the city to collect this

tax revenue every year, but unfortunately, we have seen a

dramatic spike in tax claims and litigation. Our litigation

budget reserves for business and transfer tax disputes has

increased by 1,700% in recent

years, and property tax appeals have tripled in just the past

year alone. We want to thank the assessor. I know the treasurer

is here in this chamber for our work to together request positions to handle the surge,

including in our office for tax lawyers and two support staff

positions. Essential to protecting hundreds of millions

of dollars for the budget. These are temporary positions so we can assess the ongoing need down

the road. Now, we've spent

thousands of hours addressing the impact of homelessness, both

in litigation and advice, drafting hundreds of agreements for departments to address what's happening on our streets, as well as a dramatic increase in our conservator workload.

From care court petitions to lps conservatorships to temporary

conservatorships in the area of housing. In addition to enforcing city codes against negligent property owners and

expanding our city's affordable

housing portfolio, approximately 100 new state housing and

planning laws over the past two

years, and defending our city's land use decisions have imposed

significant demands on our teams . Our public integrity team has

been very busy. Just this past

year, we moved to debar 29 individuals and entities who

violated the public trust, and that's in comparison to 11 in

the prior three years. Our trial

team, which defends hundreds of cases, has been extremely busy

as more cases have gone to trial post-pandemic. And discovery has

been much more complicated with a 20% increase in billable hours

from last year. When it comes to claims against the city, we've seen a 165% increase in fallen

tree claims and a 323% increase

in flooding claims. Now, I know

you're familiar with the work of our affirmative teams. We have two new budget, two new positions in our budget to

support our affirmative worker and consumer protection teams,

which should both generate

revenue for our city. Like the $350 million we won from the

opioid industry. I would just note that we would fund these

positions from a restricted consumer protection fund, so they would not impact the general fund. Now, our budget

this year also includes increases that were approved in

last year's two year budget to address a shortfall in two operational areas. First, our

technology systems have been woefully antiquated, which

impacts our ability to compete with opposing counsel in thousands of cases. And we're currently undertaking reforms to

modernize, and we need to pay for the actual increasing costs of litigation support from outside counsel, consultants,

experts, court reporters, translators and other legal

vendors. Now on to our budget

for fy 2425. Our proposed budget is 118 million. On the sources

side, 65% of our budget are work

orders from departments to pay for our services. On the use

side, over 80% of our budget is personnel related. Salaries and

benefits, 16% is for critical

non personnel costs. The remaining 4% is for services to

other departments. Essentially, our budget is made up of personnel costs and fixed budgets. Fixed expenses with no

excess. And here you can see our

changes this year to our budget.

Again these are adjustments that are related to personnel

included. The critically needed new tax positions that i mentioned. The two non-general fund positions that I mentioned

and hard operational costs. And with that, I'm here to answer

any questions. Thank you. I don't see my colleagues

answering, having their name on the roster. I just wanted to understand what is your total

ftes at this time? We are. I

believe at about 340. Get you the specific number. Supervisor.

Thank you. I would appreciate it. I just try to help us

understand. Out of the three 4340 ftes. Also, what is your

vacancy rate? My assumption is

I'm sorry. You said our vacancy. Vacancy rate. Sure. So by the

way, of the 340, about two thirds of those are attorney. The rest are support staff, as you can imagine, we tried

whenever someone leaves, we try to fill the positions as quickly as possible. Both from a budget standpoint, but also the work is

ongoing and we want to make sure every team is not left stranded

so that vacancy level is very, very low, certainly compared to

prior years. And then from what I understand, we did actually

have a new positions for you

from last year. And I think that is both for the care court and the gun violence. Was that correct? That is correct. And,

maybe if we can go back to the slide on conservatorships, we can give you a sense of just how that work has peaked over time, one of the things I'll just mention when it comes to care

court. So compared to last year, we spent over 2500 hours just on

care court implementation. But in addition to that, I think a number of you are familiar with

sb 43, which is a new law that

came on this year, which gives a number of our city departments a different way of engaging with individuals with severe mental health challenges. That workload

has increased dramatically. Some of the numbers are on the slide

that you see. The number of temporary conservatorships has

doubled, the number of lps conservatorships has gone up

dramatically. That team is incredibly busy as we are

litigating those matters as well . Thank you. And now I think my colleagues do have some questions, starting with supervisor ronen. Thank you. I

just thanks for the great work.

And, I'm just so excited to see

you finally not I never have seen the city attorney's office

use consumer protection funds to hire more attorneys to do this

work. And I am so excited to see it finally happening. I've been waiting for this forever, and I

was wondering if you could just detail for the two new attorneys

in the affirmative litigation unit, what kind of cases they're

going to be working on. But just really, congratulations.

Finally, I've been waiting to see this forever. So first of

all, I should say to the former budget chair, this is a conversation we had last year as

you know, we have had a consumer protection fund that's extremely restricted, there are all sorts

of rules on how we can tap into those funds. It's money that could be audited by the attorney general. So we have to be careful in how we do that, we looked at this, at and thought that it was appropriate,

particularly during these budget

times, to move forward. So one of the challenges is, our office

is known for our affirmative work. That's what oftentimes the

public focuses on, even though

90% of the work we do is advice and counsel and drafting and

defensive work, that work is very, very limited. But one

thing I will tell you, because our trial, our defensive work

has been so difficult because of the tax litigation that we've

had to do a lot of the work over half of the work of the affirmative team has actually been handled. Defensive litigation matters and tax

matters. And so we're trying to free ourselves up to do more affirmative work, in part because it's important, but also in part because it actually

brings dollars back to the city.

So we have, we are hoping to move forward with one additional position in the worker

protection team, which is I know , something near and dear to you and many members of the board, the work we have done just in our first year has already

started to bring money back to workers, back to the general

fund. My hope is that work will pay for its own, but we need

lawyers to do the work to bring it back. And then the second area would be consumer protection to really bulk up

that team again. That's an area that we think is ripe for more work. Can also bring in money. And I mentioned the opioid litigation because if we could bring another case that a few years from now can bring tens or hundreds of millions of dollars back, that pays for itself. But again, we need lawyers to do that work. Well, just congratulations truly, I, I've been waiting for years to see this and it's just very exciting to see it. It's a great work. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to you raised this issue last year and believe you us we took

it seriously. Thank you. Vice chair mandelman, thank you,

chair chan. Thank you for, for all your work and all of your

all of your great lawyers and

staff work, I don't necessarily

think this is. I don't expect to have an extended conversation about this now, but I would like to follow up on kind of the expanded work around care court and conservatorship, I think on

care court in particular, I think some of us have been wondering what this would look

like, with concern that it would

take a lot of time and also concern about what would outcomes be looking like or how would this program be used. So I'm curious how it's impacting the attorney or attorneys working in your office so we can follow up offline on that. And

then on on the conservatorship, it sounds like you're saying the expansion and work is largely about sb 43 implementation, and

also, we'd be curious to see how that's working and what, you

know, sort of how that's playing

out. So, not necessarily for now, but, when the dust is

settled around budget, maybe in

JULY, I can follow up with your office. So we would be happy to do that a couple quick things I would say, obviously, the intensity of need on our streets when it comes to mental health

services has been driving a lot

of this work. I will say with regard to care court, we have

been surprised at how incredibly

work like maybe I won't say surprised. It has been

incredibly work intensive, anyone who observes the court

around a care court case will see there are many professionals

in the courtroom at the time. For every person who is being

asked on a voluntary basis to accept help, and oftentimes

those individuals don't volunteer for that work. So I do think there is a question about broad more broadly about care

court implementation. Often I like to think that we are doing it as we should under the law, but the state law has been onerous. Lots and lots of

requirements. It's, lots of lots

of hoops for the court. And as a result, our lawyers to jump

through. And so it's been difficult, I think, for the

amount of legal work compared to

what's actually happening for those individuals. I would

prefer to change up that I think, we that's a longer

conversation, more than happy to have kimiko burton and her team

that heads us up to brief you and anyone else who might be interested. I think there are other conversations to be had. I mean, I don't think that supervisor ronen and I are on any committees that would prevent us from doing that together, and I think we would both be interested in hearing

about that because I think both of us had the concern that the legal structure set up around care court is, you know, very

complicated for a process that

is fundamentally voluntary. And so, we'd love to know if there's

some. Yeah. So maybe we can continue that conversation. And

also I would agree with that sentiment, by the way. It's,

it's been a ton of work for our

lawyers and particularly also for, you know, with a lot of

different lawyers involved, it just takes a long time to get folks the help they need. I had

also, though, had the hope that sb 43 might actually be opening

the door to new interventions that we hadn't seen before, and so maybe we can have both those conversations together.

Absolutely supervisor melgar.

Thank you, chair chan. So I

have, three questions for you.

But first, I just wanted to say thank you, because in my, my

time as a public servant and also just involved in the city,

I've never seen a city attorney who gets out in the community,

and is available to the citizens like you have. So I really just really appreciate that and have gotten lots of really good feedback from my constituents, and I also have to say thank you

to anne pearson, who is our city attorney here, who, deputy city attorney who is always

available, at 11:00 at night

during her vacation. Not that

I'm going to do that to you. And but I, you know, just I have to say how much I appreciate your, commitment to the job. So my

first question for you is about climate change and your

projections for staff time, so

you both fallen trees and,

flooding, have led to more claims, and I'm wondering if

you've seen a trend over time over the last, you know, five years, if you've looked at that

and if you can project over time , you know, like how much that

will cost the city. And if

there's in, you know, there's

anything that you can, or your attorneys who are dealing with

these, any patterns that we could weigh in on in terms of

protecting the city from these claims going forward, because I think there, you know, climate change, they are happening more

often, well, first of all, I want to entirely agree with you about your comment about your general counsel. And we have many incredibly hard working deputies in our office. But she

is going around the clock. And I appreciate your engagement with our office through her, so when it comes to those data points,

we put those data points in because we think they're notable

because I think we all know we've seen a lot more flooding

in the city, but we often don't think about one of those impacts. Our claims against the city. And if we can't resolve them at the claims level, they could become potential litigation, which then require

other costs. Both from our office, but also ultimately how

those issues get resolved. So from our perspective, what I'm

always suggesting to our deputies is that we think about patterns that are ongoing and think about whether there are

some policy changes that we might want to suggest to you to reduce the number of claims in

those areas, probably in both of those areas. We're happy to talk about that further. But I think in part because of climate

change, those are you know, some

of that is potentially

inevitable, right. As the storm surges get more significant. And

we are seeing once in the century, storms become more

frequent, the city has to deal

with that and react to that. And whether that means we have to,

in the short to medium term, think about how we cut our trees

to make sure that trees aren't falling down on folks or or

think about what we are already investing. You know, we're investing billions of dollars into our infrastructure when it

comes to addressing flooding. And this is another difficult,

ongoing topic. And I know the puc, our client on that side, is

thinking very hard about what we need to do to mitigate those

issues. But these are these are ongoing conversations and happy

to if you're looking for more longer-term data, happy to

provide data beyond the one year data that we just gave you of the jump in claims when it came

to those two areas. Thank you, so I have a question about public integrity. There's been,

you know, a bunch of press about about specific nonprofits that

haven't quite met up to our

expectations of how to provide services and do it in a transparent and financially responsible way, and so I see

that you've you've done a lot,

and thank you so much. There is an effort by one of my colleagues to do streamlining of contracts, to nonprofits because every department, as you know,

does it a little bit differently, a little. And so I

can imagine that that on that

end, you know, before the contract is even signed, it takes up a lot of time and energy from your staff in

reviewing those contracts and making sure that they are

compliant. So I'm wondering if you think that, you know, if

this effort is successful to do

sort of streamlining of contracts with nonprofits or a

city that that might save staff

time on the, you know, before

they're signed. And, if you can

foresee sort of a, a savings of

a time staff time on that,

that's a good question. So, one thing I'll first say is, given that we just shared some numbers

of the jump in the number of organizations and individuals that we have moved forward on this year, 29 individuals and

entities versus the 11 in the previous three years, I want to just emphasize that the vast majority of folks that are doing

work within city government and outside of city government and nonprofits, contractors and other city workers are doing

good, important work for which there are no issues. So just it's important for me to emphasize that. But as I have committed to the public since my first day, we cannot broker

anything when it comes to holding everyone to the highest ethical standards. Hence the information that I provided. I

will say from our perspective, the contracting process is

incredibly onerous. And in fact, there has been a working group that my office has been a part of with the comptroller and the city administrator's office to think about contracting reform,

of how do we remove parts of the contracting process that are

more onerous than they need to be? For example, I want to credit supervisor mandelman. I often use his example when he

had proposed that the idea of

requiring, of putting,

contractors from states that are

not doing good things around

lgbtq issues, making unwrapping some of the past laws that we've done in that space because we know it hasn't had the impact that we want that makes sense. I think there are many other areas

that we could go. So by and large, big picture. Yes. I think contract reform is important

both to simplify the process, reduce the cost of getting things out, but also the more complicated a process is, the more fraught and potential there

could be for abuse of that

process. Now that being said, I also just have to ask mention

this which you have not asked in

this side of grant on the on the grant side there, frankly, from our perspective, hasn't been as much oversight as there might need to be. And so I do think there's a rebalancing that probably needs to happen on both sides of the of the equation for us to get the right level of accountability, but not so much that it's onerous or creates opportunity for mischief. And

obviously we would be involved in in all of that. Thank you.

City attorney. Thank you. Thank

you. We appreciate you and thank you so much for your leadership and your work. I appreciate your leadership and hope today's meeting doesn't go too long. Thank you me to, great. Thank

you. And the next we have our treasurer. Thank you. So much

for being here. Good morning, chair chan and

supervisor. I'm jose cisneros, treasurer. I'll just begin

introduction as well. We bring

up our presentation as I'm sure you all know, our mission is to collect and safeguard the city's money and use our expertise to assist low income san francisco families to build economic

security and mobility. We. I

want to begin by thanking our mayor's budget office analyst,

tiffany young, and our bla budget analyst, ruben, for

working with us, as well as now

acknowledging our own treasurer's office team,

including david vong, for their work with us this year. And of course, I'll acknowledge my chief assistant treasurer, tejal shah, who's helping me this morning with the presentation.

Moving on to our objection objectives to do our work well,

we focus on fiscal stewardship,

financial equity, customer

service, innovation, operational

excellence, and rigorous

compliance, looking at

highlights and priorities is first by the numbers our office

collects nearly half of the

city's budget each year. We

swiftly process deposit and invest those funds, and we

continue to see an increase in

online payment adoption by our

taxpayers citywide. We communicate thoroughly with

taxpayers consistently through

multiple channels and that

consistency and communication translate to extremely low

delinquency rates of as low as 1. With our collection of property taxes and 5% with

business taxes. Moving on to our

highlights and priorities. Our priorities reflect that we have

a great deal happening with business taxes this year. I'm

sure many of you are aware of

that. Given that I will briefly outline our business tax

collections and compliance strategy and plans for business

tax reform and our work on a much needed replacement of our

business tax system, and I'm pleased to report that we're

well on our way to successfully implementing the voter approved

empty homes tax, which will be one of the largest taxes

implemented ever, with over 80,000 property owners required

to file for that tax. Looking at

our tax collection and

compliance now, more than ever, we understand the importance of

revenue to support city services

. Our collection of $1.4 billion

in 2022 of annual business taxes

is an excellent example of the treasurer's office comprehensive

tax collection activities. Every

year, our gross receipts tax rates are adjusted based on

previous decisions of the voters , so we have to make necessary

communications and systems adjustments to reflect those new

rates. For business taxes, which

are due at the end of FEBRUARY.

We mail and email every taxpayer a notice and instructions on how

to file online. We also provide

written and video tutorials immediately after the FEBRUARY deadline. We follow up by

sending failure to file notices from. For anyone who's delinquent, which results in most delinquent taxpayers filing

and paying. As we continue to

communicate with taxpayers in

MAY and through the summer, the delinquent list continues to narrow to a relatively small

group that we continue to

actively pursue. And that same

process is occurring right now as we speak for the 2023

business taxes, looking at tax

collections and compliance hours

is charged. Our office is charged with auditing all business tax filers for the

annual and other business taxes. The results of our audits from

this year are shown on the slide. The average audit brings

in over 180, I'm sorry, over $800,000 in revenue and a full

time auditor completing 15

audits in a year would bring in

over $13 million in collections.

From time to time, you MAY hear about disputes that we have with

certain taxpayers. As you can see, we take our response, our

responsibility seriously to enforce the law and collect the

city's taxes. Looking at

business tax reform, it's no secret that our current business

taxes are complicated. And at the request of the mayor and

PRESIDENT Peskin, our office has partnered with the comptroller's

office to propose changes. Our

joint proposal reflects months of careful analysis and feedback

from stakeholders to reduce the complexity and volatility of our

business taxes. Many of these

changes are simple, but impactful, such as exempting

thousands of small businesses from taxes and aligning our

filing deadlines as continuing

business tax reform. While we

know any tax proposal will be an ultimate decision of the voters,

we're obligated to plan for a quick implementation should the

voters pass the tax measure.

This timeline shows our high

level plans for the next two years. For example, our plans

include passing an ordinance

that will eliminate $10 million in license fees for small businesses, which will take effect if the reform measure

passes. As we've learned from

the reform process that there are several actions outside of a ballot measure that our office can take to simplify the

experience for businesses. The new programs will provide

clarity and predictability about

expected tax obligations to all

of our business taxpayers. Now moving on to our empty homes

tax, we've been hard at work preparing for the first empty home tax filings next APRIL. The

tax is unique, with a distinct universe of property owners who are not normally subject to

filing a return with our office. Due to these issues, we have

identified the need for an inter-departmental data sharing

effort and a new database to build and store the filing universe annually. We believe

this will lead to a more seamless experience for property

owners and for greater efficiency and coordination for

city staff. Our office will soon

begin a comprehensive communications and outreach

campaign to raise awareness among property owners about

their requirements under the tax, to make sure they can be

compliant. And now, on to our

business tax system replacement.

Our current business tax system has been active since 2014, and

we are currently the only

customer using the product. The city's business tax structure

has evolved in ways not foreseen when the system was originally

brought online. Our office recently issued an rfp to build

a customized system that will be

very responsive to the city's unique needs, and you can see our stringent performance indicators for any new system

that we're going to acquire.

Now, looking at our budget, in addition to the requested five

years, we looking at staffing

levels, we've included staffing levels from 2009 ten to provide

critical context. Since 2010, voters have passed several

significant business tax measures, such as the gross

receipts tax. We've managed to administer a multitude of new

taxes with almost no increase in

staffing levels and next year we will significantly lower

staffing levels while beginning to administer the empty homes

tax and preparing for business tax reform. And the slide is

showing actually approved positions and the number of

currently filled positions are lower than the numbers that

you're looking at. And looking

at our budget at a glance to

achieve the cut target, our office deleted 11 vacant

positions. This is a significant reduction and requires our continued diligence in

operational efficiency while

maintaining consistent and quality work with our customers

and strong management of our

practices. Our budget also reflects increases in our work

order to the city attorney and funding for our business tax

replacement and implementation of the empty homes tax, as well

as adjustment to cost to support tax reform and a maintenance of

our tax regime, and finally, I'm

proud that our economic justice work and our kindergarten to college program continue to receive financial support from the state and philanthropic

entities. And now I'm open to

any questions you MAY have. Thank you for your consideration. And I do want to mention that I am understanding we are even at this point, already in agreement with the blas budget recommendations. We

look forward to finalizing that with you when we come back next week. Thank you. Supervisor melgar, thank you, chair chan,

thank you for the presentation, treasurer. And for everything

you do for our city, and for

your, awesome work and your

staff's work on kindergarten to college and all of the things that you do to support our low income residents and building

wealth, so I have a couple questions, one is, you know, I represent district seven. It's

mostly homeowner occupied, and one of the things that people

get crankiest about is missing

the deadline for filing taxes because they forgot they're busy

or whatever, and I, you know, other than the mail that I get

from your office, I don't really

hear from your office so much. And I'm wondering if you have

thought about having a social media presence, you know, an

instagram account. Just ways to, you know, communicate with folks

about upcoming deadlines and just things that are out there. Absolutely sure. The property

tax is the largest tax that we collect. And of course, every property owner of every single

real property, as well as, business property. File with our

city. We would love to work with

your office and all offices to continue to more communication

to property owners to make sure that they understand. As I

mentioned, we do a lot of

outreach. We physically mail a paper bill to every single

property owner. Well in advance of the deadline. It includes all

the information as well as the payment return envelopes and the

two payment coupons, but I think there's no shortage of communication that we could do

through every different type of channel to make sure people are

aware of their obligation. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, I was just raising it because, you know, more and more people communicate and, different ways. Sure, sure.

Just by mail and we should take advantage of all the channels we

can use to reach folks and make sure they're aware of the deadlines. Yeah. And just your

staff is great. So we do put it

in our newsletter just to remind people and thank you very much. Yeah, so the other question I have, and this MAY be already,

something that you have in the

plans and on slide 12, the business tax replacement in your presentation. Because another thing that I've heard from

constituents is that, you know,

they get stuff that belongs on,

you know, the bill from you. So for example, the rent board has

their own system where they send out communication and it really should be streamlined through you, even though it's a different department. And I've heard that from a couple other

things that are sort of outliers

like that. It would save us, you know, aside from the postage

stamp times, you know, 300,000,

you know, it should be an integrated system and you should control it. So I'm wondering if that's something that that is planned for the business tax system replacement. Well, I'm

happy to have tejal chime in on that as well. But I know, for

example, and again, tejal MAY have more information on this. We're we're are there are limitations on what we can

include. For example in in the property tax bill, property

taxes are governed strictly by state law. And so we have

limitations. We can't put things on there that state law don't

allow to be put on. There but that's not to say we couldn't put notices and reminders in there. And that do you want to have anything you want to add? Sure. Chief assistant treasurer

so there are a lot of other bills from other departments

that are within the business tax system. So we do have the unified license bill, which consolidates all of the five regulatory departments on one

bill. It is a shopping cart kind of portal for taxes and fees. Maybe not the happiest shopping cart, but it is there. The rent board is particular and peculiar because it was actually on the property tax bill, but then deemed not appropriate to be on the property tax bill and so it went separate, we can further

discuss sort of consolidating that into our piece. And we do do their delinquent collections for them, which then ultimately

does get consolidated. Okay. I'm

sorry, who who deemed it not. It was at the state. It's the it's at the state level because of the revenue taxation code. And

what can be on the bill as the treasurer stated, we can work with the city attorney's to see if there's something that the

board MAY do to enable that to make it easier. Okay. Great.

Thank you, thank you. I, of

course, can see why the budget and legislative analyst agree

like that. You're in agreement. I first of all, I just want to appreciate just seeing the chart

that you presented, how you know, just since 2009, fiscal

year until up to this point, I just really appreciate all the work that your department has been doing. And thank you so

much. Treasurer cisnero. I think that it's one of those things that you've just been doing

this, and it's like stabilizing us for so long that sometimes we take you for granted. And so I just want to take this opportunity to say, really just thank you. Like, thank you for making sure that things work and not broken, and of course, I

also want to appreciate you for again, consistent budget for

over, over time. Still making efficient even all the things that would change with like tax code. You just go with the flow, including showing us that how you're going to go with that flow. It's a really significant difference with this. What is

before us if the voters decide to put this on the ballot this

NOVEMBER, the tax reform really is going to change quite a bit. Hopefully better for all of us,

especially in the category of which industry goes with what.

And hopefully that just streamline a bit, not just for

you, but for also for our city attorney to really sort, also

appreciate the fact that you

deleted 11 fte, vacancies positions and in fact, you

substitute three ftes to a lower

cost fte. Those things are truly sound like a person who knows

money and, you know, cost. So I

appreciate it. Thank you very much, chair chan. And I appreciate the recognition, but

I also want to return some of

the, the praise because I really respect the fact that we've had the opportunity to build very

strong relationships with if, if

not many, almost all of the city

leadership, including all of the members of the board of supervisors, the controller's office, the mayor's office, and many of the other department

heads. And the reason we enjoy

doing that is because you folks are the places that originate

new taxes, changes in taxes, controller's office, budget

analyst's office work to modify

and or or, create these things. We just want to be included in the conversation in the earlier we're brought in and allowed to

work in partnership with you,

all the more successful will be when it comes time for implementation. And I think that

it really has also made for a

great, great increase in the opportunity for us to be

successful and so in a way, right back at you. Thank you.

And I also want to say, though, what supervisor melgar just brought up actually, I have heard from her constituents in

the town hall, so I just want you to know that it's actually real. Like from real people that actually have bug her about it.

So I am a witness to that. And

so I know she's speaking for her district seven constituents. And

i think I've heard similar in district one as well. And of

course, knows.But leslie's last but not least, it's like I also concur with how can we continue to elevate the work that your

office does and not just making

things easier? But I think that no other treasurer's office has

done sort of like the kindergarten to college, you

know, financial justice work that you're doing. I do agree

that if we can make it a bit more robust and more presence,

online and however on other

platform, maybe really help

educate more people about the good work that your team is

doing. So thank you. Thank you very much. Open to all the ways we can continue to work together. Thanks very much for your time. Thank you, and next we will have, superior court.

And my apologies. I forgot to

remind our clerk, that we will have a five minutes presentation

timer for you. Of course, if you go beyond five minutes, please finish your presentation. But we thought that we would just give

you a reminder of the time. Like

a time check. Thank you.

Good morning. I am brandon riley, court executive officer

of san francisco superior court,

and I am here to present our

budget for, the indigent defense

administration and civil grand

jury, civil grand jury, county function managed by the court,

we staffed the needs of the civil grand jury. We are the

fiscal agent of the civil grand

jury and cover, the jury's

expenses, the budget is 250, k

per fiscal year. The indigent

defense administration. The

court appoints conflicts councils for conflict, counsel

for indigent adults and

juveniles. Whenever the public defender declares a conflict of

interest or is otherwise

unavailable, justice for all.

All persons are innocent until

proven guilty in a court of law. The accused. The accused are

entitled to represent nation.

These rights are guaranteed, that these rights guarantee an

appointed counsel for the for

indigent defendants, the laws that govern this is the landmark

case, gideon v wainwright. The

us constitution, sixth amendment

and california penal code,

section 987, the fiscal year

2324 budget. Was $9.6 million,

the year over year compared

listen is for grand jury 259 62 consistently across the years.

And we are projecting that to be

consistent in 20, fiscal year

2425 and fiscal year 2526 for

indigent defense, you see an

increase in 2425, of $200,000

and, in 2526 of $200,000. The

cost for attorney, of for attorneys, providing indigent

defense are increasing due to

increased case filings and, jury

trials, current year case filings, particularly in

felonies, exceed, pre-pandemic

levels. So that's all I have.

That's, the ask from the court, and I'm available for any

questions. Just want to thank

say thank you. Supervisor melgar , thank you so much for the

presentation, so I think, you know what I'm going to ask

about. And that is the property that the court owns in district seven that, you know, has been

empty for a really long time, in

what the plans are for it, I

will tell you, we are in, and i

can't divulge all, but we are in

talks with the city, the state

judicial council and the court,

and, carmen chu and her staff

are in talks, those, that property has been part of the

discussion, no decision

decisions have been made, but we

understand all of the, concerns

with the property. Okay. I

appreciate you, you know, thinking about it because it

does put a strain on the budget

for the city for, you know, maintenance, cleanup and all of that stuff. Not to mention my staff who deals with the

neighbors complaints on a daily

basis. So, you know, it does have perhaps not a, you know, budget impact on you, but it does have a budget impact for the city. So, I encourage you to

resolve that issue. Thank you. I fully understand that. Thank

you. Thank you. Supervisor ronen . Yes. Thank you. Hi. Thanks for

being here. These the question

I'm about to ask is related to the public defender's budget,

which I'm going to have a lot of

questions about, upcoming. But my understanding is that the

case loads of the public

defenders have become so high that they're getting to the

point of just not being able to

meet those caseloads. And so if

that were the case, would those

defendants then come over to you

and would you be able to serve

them? Well, I will tell you, yes

, whenever there's a conflict

and the public defender cannot,

defend a defendant, we do have,

conflict attorneys available,

and I have. Come on. Julie truong, julie tran from the bar association, who partners with us on this. I would just say everyone is stretched. The public defender's caseloads are

too high. Our lawyers caseloads

are too high. We've added 4 or 5 lawyers just in the last month. Everyone is completely

stretched. It's a problem. Yeah but I understand the public defender backfilled seven positions. The mayor backfill seven positions. So I actually,

I mean, talk to him. I know he's here, but it sounds like it's gotten better. He's in the hallway, but it sounds like it's gotten better because I asked him that very question, because I met with him to say, I hope you're not declaring unavailability because we can't

handle it as we did in 2009. We

were able to absorb it in 2009 when the public. But, you know,

it's the filings are the filings

whatever. The district attorney files, we all have to handle

everybody's caseloads are sky

high. So but but this is a

really a really serious question

because my understanding is that their caseloads have never, in

the history of the office been this high that lawyers are

leaving because they can't

handle the caseload, that

they're literally at the, that their caseloads are higher than

any surrounding counties, public defender's offices, I'm going to

confirm this all with, public

defender raji when he gets here.

But my question is, if they

literally cannot meet the need,

what happens? Hi, I'm sue wong,

the cfo for the courts, most likely we will try to absorb it within our existing allocation.

But in the event if, say, case

filings go up by 20% in a year period, this budget allocation

will not be able to support it.

We MAY have to come back for a supplemental, but the timing of

the cases are such that the

trials kind of lag from the filings. So you kind of have a couple of years to figure it

out, so our hope is that if our

hope is to live within our budget this year, but in the

case they do declare a conflict,

just based on, you know,

resources versus a conflict based on, you know, interests of conflict of interest, it might impact our budget. Here is a

public defender, raju, okay, so basically, you're saying that

you would have to come back and ask for more money if that were

the case, if they were to

declare unavailability? Yes, because that's what happened

back in 2009 and ten. They also had a similar situation where caseloads were sky high. They

couldn't represent everyone. And so they declared unavailability,

unavailability at that point, all the cases were just shifted

over to the bar association. And

that was actually the first year we had to request a supplemental. Okay. And in addition to the supplemental,

there's a shortage of lawyers. We wouldn't necessarily in this

environment. We don't have the lawyers, if there's

unavailability this time and we don't have the administrative

staff to send in to cover, we're

pretty skeletal at the bar

association. And in 2009, 2010, do you remember the amount of the supplemental that you asked for? I don't recall I do know

that at some point, we had 49%

of the filings that year, we

typically carry, around a third.

it's more like 40% at juvenile,

but I can just tell you,

supervisor, that typically we will file a calendar where we

send lawyers to the court, every court, you know, for a month at a time. Lately we've been doing

it a week at a time. That's how stretched our lawyers are. So it's true for the public defender's office. It's true for our lawyers. The filings have

skyrocketed. And I don't know how the district attorney's office is doing it, but, you

know, all of that falls on on

our two, offices, respectively, and it's a lot. Well, my

understanding is that the there

was an increase. Is that correct , to the district attorney's

office, but not a sign, not a corresponding increase to the

public defender or or to the

courts. To the budget through

the chair, to the budget

director. Sure, supervisor ronan, your question if there is an increase in the number of fte funded in this proposed budget

to the district attorney's office, no, there's no

additional increase in fte

beyond the same cola adjustments that every city department is seeing. Okay, so all the departments received cola adjustments, but not additional

money for ftes or additional

money for their budgets unless there was additional fte added

through non-general fund sources or grants. So there's a few of

those here and there. Okay. I think there's a couple in the public defender's office. There might be one in the da, but

there is no no general fund. General fund supported fte.

Okay. Yeah so this will be a

theme that I want to bring up when I, when we get to the public defender's office. But you know we held a hearing the

other day, about violence in the

jails because of understaffing

and what, what seems to be happening in our criminal justice system. And I love your comments on this, as you're

seeing part of it as well, is we

are increasing thing as a city,

the district attorney, city, significantly. The number of

prosecutions, that she's filing and not only the number of prosecutions, but the seriousness, you know, that

charging many more felonies than

we've seen in our, recent

history under other, da's

therefore, the jail population is skyrocketing. We don't have

enough sheriffs or space in the

jails, to properly serve those inmates. And so we're seeing

violence erupt. We're seeing our

employees getting injured. The public defender's office and

your caseloads are so high that

you're unable to meet. And, in fact, we're losing attorneys

both in, you know, in the

private bar and the indigent defense that you provide and in the public defender's office for

the first time, we have higher caseloads than any of the

surrounding counties for the first time in our history. And it just seems like there's an

there's a there's a balance that we need to maintain in the

criminal justice world where we need to have enough defense

attorneys, enough space in the jails, enough sheriffs, you know, to make sure their coworkers and the inmates are

safe, and then enough prosecutors so that it's all

balance, but in a way where we

have a safe and functioning system. And it would appear to me that we're off right now. And I'm just wondering if you agree and if you could comment on that. Well, I think it's challenging for sure. And, you know, betsy and I have been doing this work for 20 years. You can that's why I asked you can sort of chart out, costs

every election year. Cases don't settle. The court is doing

everything it possibly can to create settlement conferences

and get the parties to come together and settle, rather than

going to trial. A lot of these cases are going to trial. That means the lawyers are overloaded

with trials. The court is overloaded with trials, and

things aren't settling. If we could get cases settled,

diverted, you know, use our collaborative courts more than

than we are currently. The collaborative courts have worked well by reducing recidivism. I'm not seeing as many cases being referred to the collaborative courts as historically has been

true, those are all pieces that

you know, we work pretty closely with the public defender. We

check in, and I'm so grateful

that they were that they have seven positions that they can fill because I think they probably would have been forced to have declared unavailability.

And you know, I just don't think we can handle it right now. We're doing what we can. We've created a mentorship program, as

I said, we've added, I think, 4

or 5 lawyers just in the last month, we have a couple more

applications coming in, but I

need, you know, more than that, it's just it's just hard. People

are working as hard and as fast

as they can, and it's. We can't keep up in the criminal justice

system as you are, are prosecuting more cases if you

are changing policy. All of the other justice partners need to

be ready for that, and we have not been ready for that. With this district attorney's office.

So, I mean, everybody feels it.

The sheriff, everybody. Right and there was one important

component that I also forgot to mention in this. And just all

the backlogs from covid that the

backlog has really improved, has it really improved. So on the

backlog and specifically for the

courts, we are here to ensure access to justice for all. We

have made significant, progress.

That's good to hear in felony

and in misdemeanor, backlog, I can't get into it because of

course it's still subject to some litigation. And so but we have made significant, significant progress. And we are

providing access to justice,

beyond this question of indigent

defense administration and, and

the, the shortfalls in the

public defender's office, the

court, we make sure our judges are available, courtrooms are

available, we also received it

from the state budget, a $2.7 million cut to our budget this

year, but we are still working

to ensure access to justice. Our courtrooms will be open. We'll make sure all of our judges are staffed, and any matters that

are filed, will go forward. Okay. This is, you know, to the

budget chair, you know, and to

the budget director, I think we have a real problem on our

hands, you know, and this is

something that came up during

the hearing on on the safety in

the jails. The balance is off

and we're not we're not treating it as seriously as we should be,

the fact that the balance is off

and, and this is a policy choice that I know the mayor really supports, you know, these additional prosecutor and, and,

and, and supporting the charging of felonies instead of

misdemeanors, not using the, diversions that have been

historically used, if that's

something a policy that I personally have a disagreement with. But but that's not my decision to make. That's the prosecutor's decision to make. And something that the mayor very much supports. But if that's going to happen, then we need to make sure the entire system is functioning. That means we need to make sure our public defenders have enough attorneys to do proper defense.

We need to make sure that the

courts are able to handle the spillover that comes our way. We

need to make sure that we have enough employees in our jails so that our inmates and our employees are not being

assaulted and, and dangerous.

And that's it's not happening.

It's not happening. The balance is off. And I do not believe

that that that has been taken

care of in the mayor's budget. I believe the mayor's budget is

off, and it's a big issue. And it's something that I'm really

hoping, you know, I'm just here filling in for supervisor or PRESIDENT. Peskin today, but it's something that I think

really needs to be looked at

seriously by this board and by the mayor. And I'm planning on

calling the mayor and talking to her about this. I, I am that concerned. You know, the sheriff came. I'm the chair of the of the rules committee, and the

sheriff wants some, you know,

documentary film company to come

in and do a documentary about the sheriff's office. And I refuse to schedule it because

I'm like, oh, so you want the

world to see our sheriffs being beat up by inmates? Like, that's

that's what you that's what we want to portray, you know, of

san francisco, absolutely not. I

will not give my permission to

that. And I will use my power to stop it. We have a serious

problem, and it's being ignored, and it's dangerous. And we have

to address it. So I just want to I want to make this point. I wanted to make this point, to,

to the courts as well, because because you play a very

important role in this. And I just want to make the point that the public defender is on the

verge of saying conflict. We

can't staff these cases. It's going to go to them, and they

don't have the, the, the, you

know, the attorneys to, to fulfill those cases. They're going to come back for a supplemental. So we have to solve this in this budget. It is

incumbent upon us to solve that

in this budget and the budget we have before us is not doing

that. So thank you, budget chair

chan, for listening to this. This is something I will be continuing to come back to during this budget process. thank you, supervisor walton.

Thank you, chair chan, just a quick question. Can you be a

little bit more specific about

the backlog, like you've had this many cases, but now it's

this many. I can't be that

specific. But I will tell you

because because it is subject to litigation what I. And so you're

not allowed to tell us how many cases we used to have and now

how many we have. I can tell you

that our felony backlog due to

covid is all but eliminated and

misdemeanor, backlog is,

significantly lower for, than it

was last year. And all but

eliminated is how many and I

believe within we are within in

the case flows. We were within

this, the time frame all of the

cases that were filed during, covid and had a covid order have

now been heard, felony caseload.

Thank you. Thank you. And we

most definitely have not only our public defender, we're also going to have our sheriff's department as well as district

attorney here today. So I'm sure

this is sort of going to be a I think that it will require a

comprehensive discussion. I think I concur with supervisor

ronen that it is not a simple,

at least in where I stand, that I think it's not just about the

money and the budget. This is

part of sort of this. It's a policy choice that we end up

allowing this to happen and

make. And those are not our

policy choices, but I would like

to hear about those policy choices from our district

attorney and from our sheriff's department. I mean, I think

that's a that help us understand how do we make sure that we

create a criminal justice ecosystem that is equitable and

balanced and not overtaxing for

the entire system? So I I'm

eager to hear that not just from our public defender, but definitely also from our district attorney, which I think we will have the opportunity to do so later today. Thank you,

colleagues and thank you so much for our superior court's work. I

hope that I do not see you, you know, the next six months when you come back for a potential supplemental. But in that event, that should happen, we

definitely I want to say, at least as a budget committee

chair, if I'm still there in six months, then I will say, you

know, you have my commitment to really make sure that we uphold the integrity of our court system. It's the right thing to

do. And I think that we need to be prepared for that. So thank

you. Thank you. And with that, the next department is department of emergency

management.

Okay good morning. Good morning.

I am mary ellen carroll. I'm the director, executive director of department of emergency management, thank you, chair

chan. And members of the committee for hearing our

presentation on dms budget proposal, the department of

emergency management's mission is to lead the city in planning, preparedness, response and recovery for daily emergencies.

Large scale, city wide events,

communication, response is I'm

sorry and major disasters. We are the link, the vital link in emergency communication here

between the public and first responders. And we provide key

coordination and leadership to city departments, stakeholders,

residents and visitors. We have five operating divisions and

programs through which we

deliver our core services. The division of community emergency

communication, which is 911, the

division of emergency services, which is emergency planning and

preparedness, our admin and

support division, our street

crisis coordination program, and the emergency medical services

agency, or msa. In addition, we

serve as the fiscal agent for

all homeland security grant funds awarded to the 12 bay area

counties, and then we manage

those grants through the bay area uasi that is part of our

department. And in regard to our budget, this slide shows funding

sources, our total budget amount

for next year, 2020, 24, 25 is

141 million. 99 million, or 70% is tied to general fund. The

remaining 30% of our budget is largely funded through homeland

security grants. And then we

have revenues from msa related

fees and work orders, of course,

by far our largest cost cost center is the 911 operations,

which accounts for about 49 million of the general fund

support. Our, in regards to our

budget by division, we have 310

positions in order to deliver

our core services. And the breakdown of these is on this

slide. And, again, the largest

concentration is in dc or 911,

in which we have 194 ftes, or

63. Our budget request, importantly, requests that we

hold six academies with 15

trainees per class, in order to address our current vacancies and as well as to offset

attrition, consistent with the

mayor's budget instructions, we did not request any new

positions or nor did we propose

any position substitutions as.

And in regard to our vacancies,

we currently have 18 vacant, a little more than 18 vacancies.

This year. That is a has come

down since last year, our

overall vacancy rate is 5.7,

this represents really the

vacancies that we have within

911. And our dispatchers, and

that is why the request for the five academies is very critical.

Part of this proposal will. Just getting a little more detail

into each of our divisions, dc

again, our largest division, is

a combined 911 center, as you

all know, this this, we are able to operate this through a combination of regularly

scheduled hours and overtime,

we, we staff our public safety dispatch channel channels and

call taker positions, our just to get a little into our performance standards, the

standard is to answer all calls.

90% of calls within 10s for emergency calls. Our current

call answering times, however,

hover in the mid 70s range, NOVEMBER 21st, 2021 was the last

time we met these standards.

They're, getting into emergency

services. This is obviously we

have three made. We have three major areas here mitigation and

preparedness, response and

coordination, and that's what,

you know, as our eoc activations

and our newest, sex of this division is community engagement

and resiliency, this is,

includes programs like extreme

weather resiliency program. we're working to make community

organizations more equipped to handle heat waves and poor air

quality, and then we have our street crisis coordination

program, which really serves as

a citywide coordination for all street response teams. We also

are leading operations for soc,

jfo and heart. We also play the coordination role for public

safety ambassador coordination, and have a lead role in data

collection, analysis and coordination for street

response. In the city. This again talks a little bit about

performance, measures and in

general, you know, the reason

for our, our performance, not

meeting or not meeting performance really goes back to,

some covid, the hiring freeze during covid and generally it's,

it's all about staffing, we feel

very, very optimistic that we're on a good path to staffing and that we will fill our future,

academies, we have our largest

academy right now, of 12 out of

15 filled. And it's looking very

, very positive for our next two

academies. That is a quick overview, and I'm happy to

answer any questions. Thank you,

so I think my questions, seeing, I'm going to go first because I

looks like I'm the only one who has some questions right now, just try to understand between

the existing 76% for the 911

call response rate, that it's targeted, that the target is 95,

and I thank you so much for explaining. You know, it's staffing issues. And of course, you know, we are still

recovering from the covid. What we were lack behind. Help us

understand that. How do we and

how long would it take. How many staffing would it take for us to

get from 76% of the response

rate to the target response

rate? So we need to. So first of

all, the timing based on the current schedule of academies,

it's probably about two years before we are what we consider

fully staffed at our kind of

magic sweet spot number is 100 and between 155 and 165, fully

trained dispatchers with 12, or,

I'm sorry, 15 born in academy. Yeah, even within academy,

there's about a 50% fail rate

through academy. So that's why we have to keep those numbers in

order to build back to the

number we need. And, is I know that this could also be a fire

department question, but help us

understand, again, you know, the 87% of response rate for

ambulance that, you know, it's

below, not as significant for

the 90% target rate. Sorry. It's based on your slides for the

slide, for the response times. Could you help us understand

what's the reasoning, for the

ambulance response rate, not

meeting the target of 90. So there's a number of reasons that

go into that, and some of them

have to do I can speak from the

msa perspective. So we know that

we have we have had issues, and

we are working very closely with the hospitals, all the public

health and the hospitals on

this, on, what we call a pot, which is basically the wall standing at the wall. How long it takes to once ambulances get

to the hospital to offload a

patient, also, diversion times

for hospitals is very high or has been high, we've been able

to see that come down to a

certain degree, and again, these , these, these problems are

created by similar issues that

we all have when it comes to

staffing, sort of across the board. So those are some those are two of the reasons that we

are focusing on in dm to help bring those calls down. Those rates down. Yeah. Thank you. I

agree, I think the last time we

heard from sf fire, if I remember correctly, we have

asked about that. Similarly to I think it was really the handoff

between the ambulance to the

emergency room, particularly has

extended to almost up to 9918 one nine, 19 minutes. And that's

really extensive for each call,

and, and we understand that is quite challenging if, you know, on top of your head, I don't expect you to do, you know, the diversion rate at this moment. I don't I don't have it at the

moment. But, it's something that

we can certainly provide to you. And it also, of course, it

changes quite a bit, but, we

tend to see that number go much higher. For instance, during

winter, during flu season, I see

it's come down. We're lower at

the moment, but then you have a we have a lot more fun things

that happen during our warm months. Right. So, fun things

that get people in trouble. So

lots of events, many visitors, lots of things that, naturally

will end up in some, increased,

calls for medical service. So thank you. That can be part of

it. I feel like it's kind of like I hope, hope, hope it doesn't happen for us in the

richmond for outside lands, so I kind of know what you mean, for

the summer. I don't I want to

bring this up in, in a way that first, thank you for all the dms staff for stepping up when that when that incident happened. But

I want to just kind of help me understand a little bit about when the center after renovation

opened. You have a time period. I don't know how long. So if you

can educate us how long that time period lasted was that I

believe that, and I don't really know exactly what happened, but it sounds to me that the system wasn't working and that it

requires you to sort of go back

to, I mean, according to the you're talking about cad. Yeah.

The cad and I want to say though, that contract actually

came before us and that I think that your team was very

thoughtful. I believe that you have about two years of time period overlapping between your existing system software system

and the new one, because I remember when we approved that contract, it was it was thoughtful. It was like, hey, you know, we we're not just going to turn on the switch because we know it takes some time for it to transition. But could you actually walk us

through a little bit about what happened there and what can we do to prevent that from happening? And do you have enough resources, for the time being, especially not overtaxing

the system. So I would say to,

to start at the end, the last of your question, I think we are it's not a resource issue, at

this point, but but we are

working on a software system, so cad is a software system that

sits on hardware systems, and

that system is really beyond its

life, we are behind on cad in

part last, largely in part because of covid. We were asked

to sort of delay for we had

about a two year delay. So so that's part of, you know, we're

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