Budget Committee
BUILDING INSPECTION COMMISSION (BIC)
Department of Building Inspection (DBI)
BUDGET & ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE
Thursday, January 24, 2002 at 1:30 p.m.
City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 416
Adopted March 6, 2002
MINUTES
The meeting of the Budget & Organization Committee was called to order at 1:45 p.m. by President Fillon.
1. Roll Call - Roll call was taken and a quorum was certified.
COMMISSION MEMBERS PRESENT:
Alfonso Fillon, President Bobbie Sue Hood, Vice-President
Esther Marks, Commissioner
Ann Aherne, Secretary
D.B.I. REPRESENTATIVES:
Frank Chiu, Director
Amy Lee, Assistant Director
Taras Madison, Manager Administration & Finance
2. Public comment: the Committee will take public comment on matters within the Committee's jurisdiction that are not part of this agenda.
There was no public comment.
3. Report, discussion and possible action on the proposed budget of the Department of Building Inspection for Fiscal Year 2002-2003.
President Fillon asked for a staff report. Ms. Taras Madison introduced herself as Manager of Administration and Finance. Ms. Madison said that at the last full Commission meeting the budget was presented to the Commissioners and at that time the Department was projecting a $5M deficit in revenues. Ms. Madison stated that at the instruction of the Commission the Department was asked to go back and look at some additional savings in order to reduce the deficit. Ms. Madison said that the Department would be using surplus funds to balance the budget, but the Commission had wanted the Department to find even more savings so that less surplus funds would have to be used. Ms. Madison said that the package in front of the Commissioners addressed the suggestions that the full Commission brought to the Department's attention. Ms. Madison said that the first was to look at permanent salaries to try and get some reductions as salaries make up about 70% of the budget. Ms. Madison said that the Department had identified some eighteen positions that could be deleted from the budget at a salary savings of $1.6M. Ms. Madison stated that an additional $200,000 was reduced from the temporary salary's budget and that was also at the request of the Commission. Ms. Madison said that there were some questions regarding work orders concerning the funds that DBI gives to other City departments to provide services. Ms. Madison said that to date, the Department is still negotiating with City departments, but it is really busy right now because most of the departments that provide these services are meeting with all of those departments, but to date DBI has identified three additional savings from the Police Department, Public Works and the Department of the Environment which amount to about $275,000. Ms. Madison said that there is an additional savings of about $500,000 for the surcharge fee because in this fiscal year instead of increasing the fee by 1% the Department left the percentage at 3.5% and DBI decided to eat the additional cost so now the Department is going to reinstate that and actually charge the actual amount of the surcharge fee. Ms. Madison said that those were the savings and they amounted to $2.6M in savings and an additional $2.4 would be needed from surplus funds.
Ms. Madison said that there were additional items included in the Commissioner's package such as information about three program areas for the Department and an annual report which were Attachments 3 and 4. Ms. Madison said that the draft annual report for 2000-2001 had all of the information about divisions and their accomplishments.
Ms. Madison said that Attachment 1 showed all of the positions, the divisions that the positions are in, and the programs that show how the Department arrived at the $1.6M in savings. President Fillon asked if those were the positions that the Department was going to be cutting from the budget. President Fillon asked if these were permanent positions. Ms. Madison said that they were permanent positions. Vice-President Hood asked if it were possible not to fill the positions this year so that they remain as unfilled positions. Ms. Madison said that the positions were not being filled this year and that is the way that the Department is going to get the salary savings from this year. Ms. Madison said that for next year, because these positions were not filled this year, they would be cut from the budget to actually realize a savings up front. Ms. Madison said that this was done at the directive of the Commission who said that they know that permit activity is down by 6%. Ms. Madison said that the Department went through each of the programs to see which positions have been vacant for this fiscal year or even longer and decided to cut them from the divisions to recognize the savings. President Fillon said that he wanted to clarify that these positions did not represent people who are now employed that would have to be laid off. Ms. Madison said that they did not. President Fillon said that these were empty positions. Vice-President Hood said that she noticed that there were two Building Inspector positions that were empty and stated that she remembered in the recent past when the Department was overburdened there was difficulty getting Electrical Inspectors, Building Inspectors or Housing Inspectors and asked how difficult it would be, when the Department needed these people again because the work load increases, to reinstate them. Ms. Madison said that the Department could always do temp salaries and that is why some temporary salaries are kept in the budget because if things pick up someone could come in during peak times such as the summer months. Ms. Madison said that in order to get a new permanent position the Department will have to go through the process all over again and come to the Commissioners again to justify the position for the next budget year or whenever business picks up again and then go to the Mayor's Office and the Board of Supervisors. Vice-President Hood said that she would like to ask Director Chiu, because she remembered that it took years to get the two or three Plumbing Inspectors that were needed, why the Department was not just keeping these positions in and not spending the money as it ended up being the same thing in both instances. Vice-President Hood said that to her it seemed like the Department would want to keep flexibility in this because even though DBI is down now very suddenly and very sharply, the Department has been desperately seeking people for the last couple of years. Vice-President Hood asked Director Chiu to comment on this. Director Chiu said that Vice-President Hood was correct in saying that it is easier to cut rather than request additional staff. Director Chiu said that in the past when the Department tried to request additional people it has always been difficult, not at the BIC or the Mayor's Office, but with the Board of Supervisors' Budget Analyst. Director Chiu stated that it has always been tough to try to justify why the Department needs additional people and said he agreed with Vice-President Hood that it is tougher to get them back. Director Chiu said that he wanted to let the Commissioners know that for the last few months, the Department has been watching some of these vacancies as a result of monitoring the revenue and the workload, and this is why these positions were not filled. Director Chiu said that one of the Commissioners suggested that the Department go back and look at the workload and the Department felt that this is what should be done, but if the Committee feels that it is not necessary, Director Chiu said that he felt the Department could watch the money the way it has been doing and if the work is not there, these positions could be kept, but not filled. Vice-President Hood said that really appealed to her because she heard so many complaints from the public last time and stated that she got phone calls about problems on the jobs. Vice-President Hood said that as she understood, the main difference is that if the Department left these positions in the budget and did not fill them that would mean that the money sits and never gets spent and just goes back into the coffers. Vice-President Hood said that if the Department takes these positions off permanently the same exact thing happens, the money doesn't get spent and it sits wherever it is, but in the second case when the Department needs those people they could be hired right then. Vice-President Hood said that she was trying to people bank so that the Department does not get caught short-handed. President Fillon said that he thought the alternative would be to get rid of people that are actually in a position. Vice-President Hood said that these positions were vacant right now. President Fillon said that if the Department keeps these positions money still has to be budgeted for them even though there is no one in them, so the money would have to be gotten from somewhere else. Vice-President Hood said that it would come out of the surplus funds, but it is not going to be spent in either case. Vice-President Hood said that if these positions are taken off now, the money is not going to be spent, but if the Department shows the positions still available it will just show that the Department is reaching into surplus funds. Vice-President Hood said that the Department would still have the empty positions ready to be filled with people if they are needed two years from now; otherwise, these positions are gone and the Department would have to fight for them. President Fillon said that the Department would still have to take money from the surplus. Commissioner Marks said that would be only if the positions were filled. Vice-President Hood said that no money actually flows in either example. President Fillon said that the way he understood it was that this money is part of the budget so it is money even if it is not spent. Ms. Madison said that there is another option where the Department would not actually cut the positions, but would cut the funding for the positions and that is an adjustment that could be made in the budget. Ms. Madison said that the Department would increase or decrease its attrition savings; for example, although the Department would have one hundred positions to fill there would only be funding for ninety. President Fillon said that in keeping the position designation the Department would still have the option to hire next year. Vice-President Hood said that is way she would like to see it done. President Fillon said that then the Department would not have to go back to DHR to get a new position and go to the Mayor's Office and Board of Supervisors. Vice-President Hood said that it is almost impossible to justify hiring people. Director Chiu said that it is tougher to get those positions back. Director Chiu said that because of the difficulties a few years ago, the Department was recently able to hire the temporary, as needed people, and that process has helped. Director Chiu said that the Department would continue to use this if the workload increases, but if the Committee decides that it wants to keep these positions, the Department would look into it. Vice-President Hood said that she would like to retain the positions because temporary is always a difficult position for really good people to be in because they don't have reassurances that they are going to be kept on. Vice-President Hood stated that the busier it is the harder it is to find good people and if the Department can only offer people a temporary position it is not in a very good hiring position on the market. Vice-President Hood said that she would like to see the Department in the happy medium where the positions are kept, but not funded. President Fillon asked if this was going to be done with all of the positions or only with a certain amount. Commissioner Marks said that she would agree with Commissioner Hood to do it with all of the positions, but said that for the Committee she would still like to go division by division to see what people are doing. Commissioner Marks said that she did not feel that this was the best way to develop a budget by not filling those vacant positions and said that the Committee should look at the needs of each division and make decisions based on that. Vice-President Hood said she would agree. Ms. Madison said that the Department would hold the positions, but not fill them and make the necessary adjustments that way. President Fillon said that they would not be budgeted this year. Commissioner Marks said that they would have to be put in the budget, but not fill them. Ms. Madison said that they would be in the budget, but the Department would not have spending authority for them.
Vice-President Hood asked if the Committee would like to go through each section. Commissioner Marks said that she realized that there was a tremendous time problem, but for her the information that she received was not that helpful. Commissioner Marks stated that for example, several of the divisions did mention implementation of the Controller's audit and a couple of the recommendations of that audit involved consolidation and reorganization. Commissioner Marks said that when this would be accomplished she felt that it would have an impact on staffing needs such as in automation and technology where one of the recommendations to which the Department responded was to separate and consolidate DBI's core business into three major functions: permit intake and triage; plans approval and permit issuance. Commissioner Marks said that another recommendation to which the Department responded was to reallocate the existing One-Stop and the Central Permit Bureau staff to fill the functions of the two major permit processes. Commissioner Marks said that she did not see any indication of these items in the information presented and felt that this would have an impact on staffing.
Assistant Director Lee said that in answer to Commissioner Marks' first question about the MIS, that was done with supplemental appropriations in the current year, but has been put on hold due to the City-wide contract problems and this was budgeted previously and won't be reflected in this new budget. Ms. Lee said that there was about $700,000 remaining unspent MIS dollars that will be used to do that once the Department gets the go ahead and the contract problems have been solved. Commissioner Marks said that even though this is not included in the coming year's budget, because it has been allocated for this fiscal year, it is set aside. Ms. Lee said that was correct and this amount would not be reflected in the new budget. Ms. Lee said that a lot of the findings in the Controller's audit were things that the Department could do without any monetary impact. Ms. Lee said that as an example, even though there is a reduction in 6331 with inspectors for BID, the Department did promote a lot of senior people to the positions of Senior Building Inspectors so that the Department could improve the quality control measures. Ms. Lee said that was done with little budget impact and a lot of quality control measures were implemented that did not require any additional funds at all, but just required more responsibility for employees to balance and because of the reduction in the volume of activity they were able to do this. Ms. Lee said that she did understand Commissioner Marks' concern about the division justifications, but some of the things that were required by the Controller's audit would not appear in the budget because they did not require additional funding. Ms. Lee said that another example was the IVR, the Integrated Voice Response system that was a recommendation in the audit. Ms. Lee said that this was already done with the Department's existing savings or savings from prior years that was closed out in August, so the Department was able to capture some money and were given approval from the Mayor's Office to use that savings for the IVR. Ms. Lee said that this would not be reflected in the budget at all, but the Department has already moved forward to implement that program.
Ms. Madison said that most of the information that was included in Attachment 4 was actually the annual report for last fiscal year so the goals are for this current fiscal year. Ms. Madison said that a lot of what is mentioned in Attachment 4 are the goals for fiscal year 01-02 and that is what Amy is actually saying, that although these items are not seen in next years budget, it is because the Department is addressing a lot of these things in this current fiscal year. Ms. Madison said that the attachment that includes the goals for each division is basically what the goals are for this current fiscal year 01-02. Commissioner Marks asked what were the goals for the coming year.
Ms. Lee said that in a memo to the Commission dated January 11, 2002 the Department listed about six goals and a lot of those goals were not going to add any cost to the Department. Ms. Madison said that she could go over them again and stated that at the full Commission meeting they were discussed briefly. Ms. Madison said that one of the goals was to make sure that the Department would provide effectiveness of inspection and permit services by formalizing quality control measures. Ms. Madison said that basically, as Ms. Lee said a few seconds ago, although that is a goal for this fiscal year, it isn't actually costing the Department any more money as a lot of those quality performance goals were already established, but it just wasn't formalized. Ms. Madison said that the Department was already doing spot-checking, but did not have it as a formal quality control measure and now it will be documented. Ms. Madison said that other goals were to ensure the efficiency of the Department's services and ensure the safe and fair provision of its services; all of those things are things that the Department has been doing, but are now trying to do a little bit more and it isn't really costing any money. Ms. Madison said that one thing that she highlighted at the last meeting is that the Department is still committed to all of the training because one way that the Department will ensure that the services are fair and efficient is by making sure that there is qualified staff. Ms. Madison said that although the training budget has gone down, it does not mean that it is not still a goal for the Department; it is just that DBI has increased its training budget so much over the past two fiscal years that the Department is still able to meet those requirements, but at a lower budgeted amount.
Vice-President Hood said that she wanted to clarify something and asked if the Department was eliminating the One-Stop permit division. Commissioner Marks said that in the Controller's audit for the MIS automation they recommended reconfigurating the different functions and then combining them. Director Chiu stated that the Department was doing this. Ms. Lee said that several months ago she met with the Commission to draft a strategic plan and said that she attached a copy. Ms. Lee said that one of the ultimate recommendations of that strategic plan was to have a core group of in-house staff review the needs of each program in terms of efficiency and stated that it would all make sense once the strategic plan is finalized and the budget is completed. Ms. Lee said that it would especially make sense for next year's budget because there will be a strategic plan on which the budget will be based. Ms. Lee said that the Department is looking into how to revamp and looking to implement new procedures plan check wide. Ms. Lee said that it might not be a goal for this year to redo the way that the Department intakes permits, but it may be a goal over the next three years.
Vice-President Hood said that one thing that has come up in the Code revising Committee, in looking at major remodeling and demolition code revisions, that would greatly simplify that process is one permit form where boxes are just checked off that put the permit into different patterns of permit processing. Vice-President Hood said that she hoped that was part of the strategic plan. Ms. Lee said that the Department already has a draft that is a page and one-quarter on the back, so the Department is trying to work on how to do it on one page so that it could be put on the Internet. Vice-President Hood said that was fantastic.
Director Chiu said that Commissioner Marks was concerned about some of the recommendations that were made by the Controller's Office. Director Chiu said that the Controller's Office was at DBI for the past two years and unlike other departments, DBI did not wait until the audit was put in writing and then act upon it. Director Chiu said that he would like to thank Ms. Lee, the Deputy Directors and DBI staff because as soon as the Department found out that there were deficiencies and areas that needed improvement, the Department took a proactive approach and began to address these issues. Director Chiu said that as a result the Commission was not seeing requests that in order for the Department to comply with the Controller's recommendation one, the Department would need x number of dollars or x number of people. Director Chiu said that the Department did not work that way and at DBI if staff found something that really needed to be fixed, and if it could be corrected without asking for more people or more funding, the Department is very creative in trying to deal with those issues. Director Chiu said that the IRV, One-Stop and reorganization were examples because a lot of these things were already happening by the time the Department received the Controller's audit report. Director Chiu said that this was why the Department was not being too defensive with the report because in a lot of the areas, the Department had already dealt with the issues. Director Chiu said that DBI always takes the proactive approach by listening to the customer. Director Chiu said he wanted to reassure the Commissioners that a lot of the things that were addressed in the audit report have already been taken care of and this is why there is nothing in the budget asking for more people or money to take care of these items. Director Chiu said that in speaking of reorganization all of the Managers are being challenged to deal with the budget shortfall and stated that he has asked each Manager to look at ways to reorganize or merge to make the Department more efficient. Commissioner Marks said that she would like when the Committee went division by division to have Director Chiu report on those activities. Director Chiu said that he would be happy to report.
President Fillon asked if there was any public comment as the session was probably going to go on for some time.
Mr. Michael Hammon introduced himself as a member of the National Association of Remodeling Industries. Mr. Hammon said that he was present to comment on the budget and said he was first going to start by reminiscing. Mr. Hammon stated that he remembered when Commissioner Hood was inducted into the Commission and said that he remembered the speech that Commissioner Hood made at that time about how she was going to change the direction of this Department towards more customer service for the people who use the Department. Mr. Hammon said that unfortunately, the way the budget was designed goes in exactly the opposite direction. Mr. Hammon said that he did a little poll of his members before coming to the meeting and said that he called four contractors and asked them what their experience was in getting inspections in the last year. Mr. Hammon said that it is the policy of this Department to have inspections within a 24 hour notice and including himself, the four contractors have never, never in the past twelve months experienced 24 hour inspections. Mr. Hammon said that most recently, this week, he had a four-day wait to get an inspection. Vice-President Hood asked what kind of inspection it was, electrical, plumbing or building. Mr. Hammon said that he had a three-day wait for a building inspection and a four-day wait for a plumbing inspection. Mr. Hammon said that somewhere in the literature it stated that the Department was doing 100% of the plumbing inspections on time and stated that no one he knew was experiencing that and said that he did not know where those numbers were coming from. Mr. Hammon said that they don't come from the world that he lives in. Mr. Hammon stated that the Department was sitting on a lake of money and in the four or five years since the Commission has been in existence the Commission has never heard anyone from the building community ask that rates be lowered. Mr. Hammon said that all the community has asked for is service. Mr. Hammon stated that the lines at the Central Permit Bureau are no shorter than they were four years ago and said that it should not take a person a day to get a permit. Mr. Hammon said that no one should have to waste this much time. Mr. Hammon said that the budget was cutting clerks, cutting building inspectors and plumbing inspectors and these are the people that the customers need. Mr. Hammon said that he was asking the Commission to please don't do this; please try to orient this Department more to serve the people that pay for the Department. Mr. Hammon said that he has gone to most, if not all, of the Public Advisory Committee meetings for the past four years, and has heard lots of people talk and complain about different things the Department is doing, but has never heard anyone complain that the Department charges too much money. Mr. Hammon said that he constantly hears that it takes too long to get a permit. Mr. Hammon said that Mr. Bonnacker would testify as to how long it takes to get the attention of Plan Checker once plans are submitted. Mr. Hammon said that it is ridiculous and stated that everyone from BOMA to NARI to every organization using the Department has asked for more personnel, for the very people that the Commission is talking about cutting. Mr. Hammon said that he was not complaining that the Department has not done anything well; it has done a number of things exceptionally well. Mr. Hammon said that Commissioner Hood insisted that the Department get more involved in Code formation, and it has, and it sends people to ICBO meetings that it didn't used to. Mr. Hammon said that the budget line item for those meetings was being cut. Mr. Hammon said that Commissioner Hood asked that the Department get more involved in Outreach to the Community, and it has by sponsoring a series of excellent brown bag lunches that sometimes draws one hundred people to talk about various issues in the Department, and that is a line item that is being cut. Mr. Hammon said that the very things that the Department does well are being cut and asked where could the Department cut. Mr. Hammon said to look around the Department; there is the One-Stop shop and asked how many permits the One-Stop shop issued. Mr. Hammon said that there are things that are done in this Department that don't make any sense in terms of the cost benefit ratio. Mr. Hammon said to look at people and said that the Department does not need to cut the budget at all, as DBI is sitting on a lake of money. Mr. Hammon said, if needed, the Department could have a surcharge or increase fees and no one would complain if the Department would provide the service that the customers pay for everyone would applaud the Department's efforts. Mr. Hammon said that San Francisco is the lowest price for permits in the whole Bay Area and no one is complaining about the cost of this Department. President Fillon said that Mr. Hammon's time was up and said that today the Committee was going to talk about raising the cost of building permits. Mr. Hammon thanked the Commission and said that he hoped they got the gist of what he was talking about.
Mr. Bruce Bonnacker said that he was equally as passionate as Michael about this budget. Mr. Bonnacker said that he wanted to talk about the impact that some of these approaches might have on how the customer deals with getting their permits. Mr. Bonnacker said that Michael talked about how the customer deals with getting inspections once the permits have been obtained. Mr. Bonnacker said that to the extent that the customer expends the time that it takes in order to get a permit, to the extent that it is made more difficult to get a permit within the Building Department, it causes the public to depend on permit expediters. Mr. Bonnacker said that he did not think that this was the direction that the Department wanted to go in, but the Department wanted to make it as transparent, as customer friendly and as easy and not time consuming as possible, to avoid what seems to be a lightening rod right now and that is the issue of permit expediters. Mr. Bonnacker said therefore he wanted to give a very, very simple message to the Commission as they go through the budget and look at what it is that the Commission is going to direct Frank as to what he is going to do, please think about making permit procurement less time consuming. Mr. Bonnacker said that time is one of the most expensive things a project sponsor has to deal with, even when the project sponsor is not a developer because a loan is pulled out whether it is Mr. & Mrs. Jones who want to add a family room or Chris Meaning who is doing the Ferry Building; time is one of the most expensive parts of getting a permit or doing a project. Mr. Bonnacker said, therefore, please identify ways that the amount of time could be reduced as the Commission goes though the budget. Mr. Bonnacker stated that the process that the Committee is going through, because there is such a dramatic change from one year to another in terms of the numbers, gives the Commission the opportunity to reevaluate where there are successes and where there are not such strong successes, where there are challenges regarding the structure of the Department and where the Department is doing an excellent job and where it is not doing such an excellent job. Mr. Bonnacker said that he would tend to agree with Michael that the One-Stop shop is not the best place for the Department to maintain services. Mr. Bonnacker said that he thought that if there could be one simple way of getting permits rather than a whole multitude of different ways depending on the choices that the applicant makes and that of course requires that the applicant be knowledgeable ahead of time. Mr. Bonnacker stated that people who are neophytes are coming in without the knowledge that someone else might have about how best to approach it; those people must then be very, very steep on the learning curve in order to understand which choices to make. Mr. Bonnacker said that if there was one simple way and if it wasn't time consuming to get a permit that would probably serve the Department's customers best. Mr. Bonnacker thanked the Committee.
Vice-President Hood said that she would like to comment on one thing that she notices and stated that she has often come into the Department and sat in the chairs where customers wait and has looked at how the various Departments are staffing their positions. Vice-President Hood said that whenever she is there and sees a backup she calls the Customer Service Department in DBI and tells them about it and the Department will send somebody else down. Vice-President Hood said that she thought that it would be helpful for the Department to post a sign telling customers that this is an option. Vice-President Hood said that she has also noticed that people come into DBI that don't know anything, such as how to read a plan or do anything, and staff has to walk them through everything. Vice-President Hood said that there are other people who come in with drawings that have been prepared by a professional, they know the Code and the Plan Checker looks at the plans and it is very easy to process these people. Vice-President Hood said that she hates to see those people who have gone through all of the trouble to do things in the right way, by hiring architects and engineers, waiting and those are the people who need to be facilitated. Vice-President Hood said that the Department is very good at hand holding for the people who don't know anything, but they take an enormous amount of time. Vice-President Hood said that the Department might think about this to find some way of doing it, but said the idea of speeding service is very much a goal of the strategic plan of the Department and the Commission should look for very creative ways for that to happen. Mr. Bonnacker said that he wanted to follow up on something that Vice-President Hood had mentioned when she indicated that when she had gone in and there had been lines that she has made a call and the problem has been facilitated. Mr. Bonnacker said that most people don't have the ability to get through on the telephone like Vice-President Hood does and most people don't have the understanding that all they need to do is to make the call. Mr. Bonnacker said that the system is not designed in such a way to self-regulate and to recognize that there is a problem and there is a backup. Mr. Bonnacker said that right now Vice-President Hood has a way of dealing with this, but Mr. Smith doesn't. Vice-President Hood said that she tells Mr. Smith who is sitting there that he could do the same as she does and gives him the number. President Fillon said that the point was well taken. Mr. Bonnacker said that it is fortunate for Mr. Smith that Vice-President Hood is there when she is there, but the point that he is getting at is that the Department needs to institutionalize the ability to respond to the customer. President Fillon said Mr. Bonnacker and Mr. Hammon were not at the last meeting and stated that he wanted them to realize that the revenue for the Department is down by 40%, so obviously the Department has to make some cuts and pull back in some areas. Mr. Bonnacker said that he disagreed with the conclusion that President Fillon was making. Vice-President Hood said that Mr. Bonnacker was saying that fees could be increased. President Fillon said that the Committee was going to that, but 40% is a lot of money and it is not about little changes here and there, but it is about big changes that have to take place. President Fillon said that he understood the point that both public members were trying to make and said that the Committee would look to make changes that would not make service worse. Mr. Bonnacker said that he would like the Committee to even go a step further and look at ways to improve service as they were looking at ways to reduce the Departments budget, and look at ways to streamline the Department so that it isn't so bulkanized and so fractionalized. President Fillon said that the Commission was due to have another workshop on permit efficiency, but that is a separate topic. Commissioner Marks said that the Committee should be considering that in its evaluation.
Commissioner Marks asked what Mr. Bonnacker would propose instead of the One-Stop Shop. Mr. Bonnacker said that is was his understanding that the vast majority of the One-Stop Shop work is quality control rather than customer service. Mr. Bonnacker said that he might be wrong about that, but said that he believed that there needs to be a single way of getting a permit that doesn't take a great deal of time, rather than to say the way that a permit is obtained takes too long and then come up with this parallel system for specific permit types. Mr. Bonnacker said that this just confuses the issue rather than solving the infrastructural problem. President Fillon said that the reason that the One Stop Shop was created was actually to deal with the infrastructure problem because one of the things that adds to the amount of time that it takes to get a permit is the hand carrying from one department to the next, and the One-Stop Shop was put together to try and get rid of that. Mr. Bonnacker said that he would like to see if the One-Stop Shop had statistics that show that it is working much better and the public is running to it because it works so much better; and if in fact, it is providing the good customer service that he doesn't think it is providing, and Mrs. Hood thinks it is providing, great. Vice-President Hood asked Mr. Bonnacker if he had ever used One Stop. Mr. Bonnacker stated that he had not. Vice-President Hood suggested that Mr. Bonnacker check out the One Stop program before criticizing it. Mr. Bonnacker said that he would see how it works in the future.
Taras Madison said that there were two things, budget-wise that she would like to address. Ms. Madison said that Mr. Hammon mentioned that under entertainment and promotion the budget is going down. Ms. Madison said that the budget is going down, but that does not have anything to do with the brown bag lunches or the workshops, but it going down because the Department is not going to be hiring as many people so some of that money will be saved on interviewing and doing examinations. Ms. Madison said that Mr. Hammon also mentioned the ICBO meetings and once again that amount has gone down, but the Department is still going to participate in those meetings. Ms. Madison said that every year the Department has been budgeting an amount for x number of inspectors or x number of categories to be certified which is done every three years and that is why some savings were found there. Ms. Madison said AB717 is very important to the Department so no one is being denied going to ICBO meetings. Ms. Madison said that with the travel, the Department would still be participating in functions; however, instead of four people going maybe only two people will be attending those out of town meetings. Ms. Madison said that the Department does understand how important those things are. Vice-President Hood thanked Ms. Madison for clarifying those items.
Ms. Lee said that she wanted to clarify that the surplus that people believe that the Department has is not a surplus in the budget. President Fillon asked if this was the lake of money that was talked about. Ms. Lee stated that the Department does have approximately $18M, but according to general accounting procedures, that for example is being seen with Enron and that Arthur Anderson did not follow, the Department cannot spend that money because it has not been earned. Ms. Lee said that gap procedures require the Department to earn the amount that it is able to spend, and that money reflects money from large size projects that have a life cycle of more than two years, and for the Department to even suggest spending that money, it can't be done. Ms. Lee said that she wanted to explain that the surplus that everyone is talking about is really the deferred credit and every year the Department does recognize approximately $3M-$5M of that deferred credit fund into the operating fund because after the year ends the Department has earned that money. Ms. Lee said that there is no surplus and the language should be deferred credit fund and that is the sea of money that everyone is talking about. Ms. Lee stated that it is a lot of money, and the Department is able to spend the interest on that money which is great, but DBI cannot spend that money unless it has earned those fees. Ms. Lee said that those fees are for projects like Mission Bay or large projects that require plan check for a whole year and then inspections for the next two years after and the Department cannot spend the fees associated with those inspections in this fiscal year. Ms. Lee said that is another reason why, even though the Department is reducing its budget for the next fiscal year and will see a significant reduction in revenue, the Department is going to use $5M of that deferred money because DBI is recognizing that money. Ms. Lee said that this is going to help the Department for those days, even next year, when construction will still be down, but there will still be some source of revenue because of the life cycle of these large permits. Vice-President Hood said that Ms. Lee had mentioned at an earlier meeting that there are some of those permits that become abandoned and people don't come back for their money and there is some time period after which it becomes available.
President Fillon said that for the record, that would conclude the public comment portion of the meeting. President Fillon asked if Commissioner Marks wanted to get into the different divisions in the Department.
Ms. Lee said that she would take care of the Administrative divisions, Deputy Director Wong could talk about the Permit Inspections and Deputy Director Hutchinson could talk about the Inspection divisions as a whole to answer any questions that the Committee members might have.
Vice-President Hood said that she felt it would help if each of the Deputies could give a quick overview and then specific questions could be asked about specific divisions within his or her purview. Ms. Lee said that this would help because the budget is done by program and not by division.
Ms. Lee said that under the Administration program there is the Customer Services Division, Management Information Services, Personnel and Records Management. Ms. Lee stated that DBI has relied heavily on temporary salaries especially with the Customer Services Division, with the Pathfinder Unit, as well as in the Records Management Division. Commissioner Marks said that the last organizational chart that she had was a draft dated November 2000 and stated that there must be one that is more recent. Director Chiu said that it was pretty much the same. Ms. Lee said that as the Director said, the organizational chart was pretty much the same, but as the Director had mentioned the Department is currently thinking about consolidating some of the Administrative programs as well. Ms. Lee said that in the past two years with the volume in activity and inspections, the Department has seen an enormous increase in the amount of customer service requests, general information and in Records Management, in that more people are seeing more buildings so they want more documents associated with those buildings. Ms. Lee said that is why the temporary salaries were used in those divisions in particular. Ms. Lee stated that with MIS the Department had made significant expenditures especially moving the Oracle platform in the year 2000 and even though there is no significant increase in next year's budget for MIS, the Department does have some salary savings and some surplus transfer funds that are already available, but unspent, until the COIT, DTIS and GCSI contract is settled at the Controller's Office City-wide. Ms. Lee said that as Director Chiu mentioned last week, DBI did get caught up because one of DBI's sub-contractors got caught up in the GCSI bankruptcy so to date all of the Department's MIS expenditures have been halted. Ms. Lee said that in the past DBI did a lot of consulting for its Oracle needs, Oracle professional services, as the Department only had one Oracle person on staff because the Department did not have sufficient positions, as well as the fact that DBI was not able to hire people because the economy was so well and it wasn't attractive to work for the government. Ms. Lee stated that now the Department is seeing more people who are interested and as a result, in this current fiscal year, an existing Business Analyst position was TXed to an Oracle position so to date the Department has another Oracle person. Ms. Lee said that the Department is moving forwarded to try and obtain a third Oracle position and stated that it is hoped that by the end of this year the Department will have three permanent Oracle DBAs on site and that would require the Department to do less contracting for professional services. Ms. Lee said that this would also assist the Managers in approving efficiencies because these people will be available to create reports that are needed or make sure that changes in the PTS system are captured in terms of being able to collect data. Ms. Lee said that the Department has been working on these measures and a lot of it has been done within existing resources by TXing positions and moving funds around. Vice-President Hood asked what TXing meant. Ms. Lee said that it means Transfer Exchange and is for exchanging one position to another so a position that was budgeted as a 1023 Business Analyst, the Oracle DBAs are classified as 1054s, so the Department requested DHR and the Mayor's Office to transfer exchange or TX those positions into the Oracle positions. Ms. Lee said that the Department was able to use a portion of the temp salaries to get someone on board because one thing that temp salaries allow the Department to do is to get someone on board tomorrow until a permanent requisition is available. Ms. Lee said that it often takes two or three months to list and post a permanent position so the Department used some of the temporary salary funds to get a person hired the next day, and hopefully that person would be selected to the permanent or provisional employment. Ms. Lee said that DBI has been very creative in that regard.
Ms. Lee said that with Personnel Services, the Department in the past two years did increase their staffing because there was an enormous amount of hiring and for the past three years, Personnel were not familiar with the temporary salaries. Ms. Lee said that a requisition and paper work is required with each individual person and now that Personnel has that experience one of the positions that was recommended to be cut was a clerk. Ms. Lee said that this would be fine because the duties placed upon Personnel Services was probably going to be reduced in that they will not be required to do as many exams; DHR had a backlog so DBI stepped up to the plate and tried to conduct a lot of the exams, even though it was the responsibility of DHR. Vice-President Hood said that if she understood, the clerical positions that are out at the Central Permit Counter are not the ones that are being eliminated and all of those people are going to stay. Ms. Lee said that was correct. Ms. Lee said that she felt that there was a lot of misunderstanding, but stated that she wanted the Commissioners to be clear on what was happening.
Ms. Lee said that the staffing at Administration and Finance has been pretty much the same and that division was just trying to follow up on some of the financial findings and stated that every six months that division has an audit of its paperwork. Ms. Lee said that the division did very well in that audit and that audit checks to see that there were sufficient signatures and looks to see that the Department followed appropriate City processes and vendors.
Ms. Lee said that with Customer Services Division, some of the staff while they answer phones, also input information for the Electrical Division to help out with some of the clerical work. Ms. Lee said that Department-wide even though an employee may be assigned to a certain division, a Supervisor could ask a person to help out in another division to balance demands for services. Vice-President Hood said that she would request that employees don't start to get nasty with people on the phone because one of the things that she has heard that is really positive, and wanted to give the Department feedback as she has heard from people who don't know of her role on the Commission or anything, talk about how nicely they were treated at DBI. Vice-President Hood said that is just music to her ears and shows that there is a real spirit in the Department, so that when somebody calls up they are treated as a human being and there are not all of those numbers to be punched like when someone calls other places. Ms. Lee said that the Department was fortunate in the past two years, when a lot of revenue was available, to be able to send a lot of administrative staff to customer service training classes. President Fillon said that there has been an incredible, noticeable change at the front desk. Ms. Lee said that was wonderful to hear and said that she would have to acknowledge that the fact that a lot of the temporary salary people, because they had a fresh attitude, really incorporated a new mentality and it was refreshing to see the enthusiasm of these new people. Ms. Lee said that the Department is trying to balance the needs of the Department and trying to keep these people on as well, but sometimes the need is not there in terms of the demand for services. Ms. Lee said that she has been working with the Deputy Directors to try and get compliance with AB717 and also working to follow up on the audit findings.
Ms. Lee said that the Department has already moved forward with the IVR implementation and actually signed a contract. Ms. Lee said that the Department was probably looking at implementation in the next couple of months. Ms. Lee said that people would be able to press "one" if they want to talk with inspection, or "two" for another division. Ms. Lee said that this would help in terms of the phone level volume and clerical requirements because a clerk may not have to answer that phone every single time. Vice-President Hood said that this is just what she hates. Ms. Lee said that this was a recommendation in the audit. Vice-President Hood said it was okay as long it is clear where the human being is. Ms. Lee said absolutely. Vice-President Hood said that there has to be a 0 on it to reach a human being. Director Chiu said that the Department's goal is to always give the customer the option to speak to a live person. Vice-President Hood said that she would ask that the first option be to speak to a human being and then give the other options if the customer wants to save time. Ms. Lee said that she has directed her staff to make sure that every division person has input as to how this IVR program will be developed. Ms. Lee said that with all of the new things that the Department is doing management has tried to incorporate as much staff feedback as possible and follow up on their recommendations. Director Chiu said that when the Controller's Office did the audit there was one area where when San Francisco was compared to other cities it lagged behind and that was in implementing this IVR system. Director Chiu said that every other city had already implemented it and DBI was dinged on that area for not utilizing the technology. Vice-President Hood said that was one thing that she would challenge because she thought that the customer ends up spending more time, and by the time a person gets to an employee they are so angry that the person responding to that call has to spend more time on it. Vice-President Hood said that she was sorry that the two public speakers had left and could not hear her comments, but stated that recently she had submitted permits in a number of other cities in the Bay Area and said she would have to say that they are very time consuming for very small projects. Vice-President Hood stated that the one thing that she finds that is superior to San Francisco is the ones where a customer could call up a number and if they want to get a building permit form or some kind of information; a customer could call up, dial in their fax number and punch a code and get the form right out of their fax. Vice-President Hood said that in most cases the technology is another layer of irritation and said if there was any way that DBI could study, or humanize, that punch three if you need some oxygen it is just important that the Department does not go down that technology path. Vice-President Hood said she felt it was anti-people. President Fillon said that it has been his experience that there is good and bad systems, as some systems are very frustrating and they send the customer in loops without ever getting what you want, but there are other systems that are very quick, clear and helpful. Director Chiu said that he would agree that the customer should still have the option to speak to live person. Director Chiu said that the Department wanted a system that would be evaluated in six months to make sure that it is meeting the needs of the customer. Vice-President Hood said that there are some municipalities, and Emeryville is one of them, that use those numbers just so that nobody ever talks to anybody from outside and DBI wants to make sure that it doesn't fall into that pitfall.
Commissioner Marks said that she had commented earlier that she did not feel that the information provided to the Committee was that helpful. Commissioner Marks said that the goals that have been established for 2001-2002 and the highlights and accomplishments are, by and large, talking about two different issues. Commissioner Marks stated that for the Administration and Finance division Ms. Lee did cover most of what the goals were except Commissioner Marks asked if Ms. Lee could comment on providing an effective service level to DBI customers and employees. Ms. Lee said that for the Administration and Finance division especially for the employees, that division processes reimbursement to staff and is responsible for doing all of the paperwork associated with training or any sort of purchase, so basically this division is in charge of making sure the Department complies with all of the City rules and procedures on anything from the purchase of a pencil, to thepurchase of a vehicle, to following up with Central Shops. Ms. Lee said that when the division lists effective service to employees it means to make sure that all of the divisions' responses are done in a timely manner. Ms. Lee said that in prior years some reimbursements did not happen for months on end, and now the division tries to make sure to reimburse employees within seven days. Ms. Madison said that goal was pretty general, but the specifics would be in processing 100% of reimbursement requests within ten days and that is the way the division would provide an effective service level to DBI employees, or for example, processing 95% of training requests within a week. Ms. Madison said that with the customers it is a little bit more distant, as the division does not deal that closely with the customers, as the division's customer base is normally DBI employees. Ms. Lee said that the division does have to process refunds and manages the cashiering so when there are problems with that, Administration is the division that CPB would have to call. Ms. Madison said that the division provides training on the cash registers and on the credit cards, but for the most part this division focuses mainly on DBI employees. Commissioner Marks said that for the future, and said that she believed that it was mentioned in the audit, it would be better to identify how the Department is measuring the accomplishment of its goals. Ms. Madison said that would be better, however, the goal of providing an effective service level to DBI customers and services is like the general goal and the way that the division is showing that it is accomplishing that is by doing other goals. Ms. Madison stated that maybe some of the goals should be more measured. Ms. Lee said that once the strategic plan is completed she felt there would be a clean tie between goals and accomplishments.
Commissioner Marks said she had some questions about the Customer Services division. Commissioner Marks said that again it was presented in such a way that one would have to figure out what has been accomplished in terms of the goals. Commissioner Marks referred to the goals of updating the Frequently Asked Questions, finalizing Chinese and Spanish translations, Getting A City Permit, Implementing Spanish and Chinese bilingual brochures and said that those were things she could not identify. Ms. Lee said that this would be more of a measure and the Department has been doing these things and that is why this is being reported. Ms. Lee said that that Department has translated all of these things into different languages and they are available to public members. Commissioner Marks said that maybe it would be easier to go over what has been done in specific areas, for example, the shuttle service is not going to happen. Commissioner Marks asked if Ms. Lee could identify what has been done. Ms. Lee said that the Customer Service division was charged with surveying DBI staff and DCP staff in trying to figure out the usage level of an employee shuttle service, however, recently DCP has requested a new variance and DBI does not know if a shuttle service will be required by the new variance. Ms. Lee said that this item had not been completed, but had been halted. Ms. Lee reported that Customer Services division had been developing, and already implemented, a draft format of the IVR system, which the Department will be testing in the next couple of months. Ms. Lee said that the Department did participate in every community Outreach program, such as the Chinese fairs, the Latin American fair and all of the other various fairs. Ms. Lee stated that the Department pays for a vending booth at a cost of about $500 and has staff work overtime, if necessary, on the weekends and the Manger of Customer Services coordinates this. Ms. Lee stated that the Department did add additional new questions and made changes to Obtaining a Building Permit booklet and the new version is now out. Ms. Lee said that these new brochures are available in multi-languages. Ms. Lee said that there is designated staff to help Chinese or Spanish speaking customers. Ms. Lee said that entering emergency orders is an ongoing process and Customer Services has been working on that as well and changes are made to the website as needed. Ms. Lee said that this is an ongoing goal and has been completed.
Ms. Lee said that as for the MIS system, the Department did complete the database merge project and the PTS is running a little bit faster. Ms. Lee said that one of the things that the Department was not able to complete was the application merge, which got caught up in the contract issue process. Ms. Lee reported that MIS completed a survey for system enhancement input and met with all of the divisions to ask them what they needed, so there is a document that has all of the different requirements by all of the users. Ms. Lee said that this was actually given to the vendor and they were supposed to finish implementing these changes, but once again it got caught with the contract processing. Ms. Lee said that the Department is hoping to get those issues resolved within the next couple of weeks. Ms. Lee said that there has been a new system hierarchy security scheme to make sure that certain Managers have security access unlimited, and other people's access is limited to view only, to make sure that someone cannot change the system if it is not logged in as a change, or if they do not have the authority to do so. Ms. Lee said that the Department has upgraded and enhanced its system to include a wireless backup so if something should happen to the system, the Department has the ability to pull information back. Ms. Lee stated that even if the building got destroyed the Department would have some capability to get a backup of the system. Ms. Lee said that the Department has launched a simple building, electrical and plumbing permit and are in the process of working with 3-R reports. Ms. Lee said that the Department was required to work with BAI and the Tax/Treasurers office on this initiative so there was some delay with the 3-R report. Ms. Lee stated that the Department is issuing electrical and plumbing permits. Vice-President Hood asked if the 3-R reports were the reports that list all of the permit history on a piece of property. Ms. Lee said that was correct. Vice-President Hood said that most of those records were now still in the form of microfilm and asked if there was a strategic plan in place so that those would become available on the computer. Ms. Lee said that right now the Department is getting them scanned on microfilm and also paying additional costs to get them put on CD-Rom. Ms. Lee said that the ultimate goal would be to get these records accessible by the Internet and that would take approximately two to three years.
Ms. Lee said that the Personnel the Department did perform a job analysis for the 5217 and this is an example of where Civil Services was supposed to perform a job analysis and develop a Civil Service examination, but the Department did so and that is why the position was vacant for two years. Ms. Lee said that the Department is now realizing that this position might not be needed and even though the examination has been completed it has not yet been determined that the position would be filled. Ms. Lee said that one of the criticisms in the audit was that the Department did not have a centralized mechanism and the Department did implement a mechanism in that the Managers will be responsible for their staff person's training and certification documentation; the Manager will provide that information to the Personnel Officer and it will be maintained on a centralized basis. Ms. Lee stated that the Personnel Officer provided quarterly reports and this is being formalized on the PTS system for Personnel use only; to provide specialized training to all DBI staff the Department is in the process of doing a lot of Q and A sessions. Ms. Lee said that a number of staff do not understand the Civil Service process so the Department is doing an in house team of training in that regard. Ms. Lee said that the Personnel Department does work with AFD (Administration and Finance) in approving and registering staff for all sorts of training whether it be AB717 or other types of training.
Ms. Lee reported that the Records Management Division was to improve access to microfilm through conversion to digital format and that has been completed. Ms. Lee said that, for example, staff could now access two documents on the computer by a thing called pay per vision and this is where the CD-Roms are loaded onto the network, but there are hundreds and hundreds of CD-Roms, so in the budget there is an equipment purchase of $27,000 for MicroDaq. Ms. Lee said that MicroDaq is like a network storage system that holds hundreds and hundreds of CDs so that when a staff person, and eventually, hopefully a customer, looks for a record on a property and it is a microfilm record, it could be loaded on the network. Ms. Lee said that then the customer would not even have to ask staff to do that. Ms. Lee stated that the division had not been doing the turnaround time of 85% within two days as required by the MBO and in fact, the division has been very poor in that performance in that most of the records are not obtained until after four days. Ms. Lee stated that a lot of this had to do with volume and the fact that when people do not know what they are looking for they request everything on a property only to find out that they did not need six hundred pages and only needed two pages. Ms. Lee said that one of the ways to address this, because of the failure to achieve this goal, is to try to educate the customers and staff people with a little bit more information. Ms Lee stated that the Department had been having some inter divisional conversations and meetings with RMD staff, Plan Check and Inspection to find out exactly what someone is looking for to let the RMD staff, instead of doing a manhunt for hundreds of documents that may be buried over in Sacramento or wherever documents are stored, they are able to better locate exactly what they need. Ms. Lee said that there have been a number of public requests from the newspapers and stated that just yesterday Ms. Lee had given a newspaper over six hundred pages of documentation which microfilm staff had to address. Ms. Lee said that because the division had not been completing the MBO the Department has had additional temporary staff, but most recently there has been a drop in some of the activities and as a result a plan has been worked out to make sure that the turnaround time is three days or less. Ms. Lee said that she expected the Commission to see a big change in terms of achieving this goal.
Commissioner Marks asked how many staff were now in MIS. Ms. Lee said that there are a total of ten; two are vacant and eight remaining. Ms. Lee said that it was likely that she would fill one of the vacant positions and delete the other position from the Department. Ms. Lee said that a lot of the staff is made up from service users meaning that DBI staff has questions about the computers staffing so two to three persons are directed to go to staff's desks to see what is going on. Ms. Lee said that there are one to two staff working on securing the network, the backup and the two new Oracle developers, DBAs. Ms. Lee said that with the one position that is being deleted there will be nine staff members in MIS.
Deputy Director William Wong introduced himself as being responsible for the Permit Services Program. Mr. Wong reported that this function is to basically do plan checking, permit processing and permit issuance. Mr. Wong stated that there are four major Plan Check divisions: Commercial Plan Check, Major and UMB Plan Check, Residential Plan Check and Mechanical Plan Check. Mr. Wong said that there are three other divisions that support these divisions: the Technical Services Division who are responsible for providing technical support for these Plan Checkers, as well as Inspection Personnel; the One-Stop Division that handles the bigger projects that require major permit coordination with multi agencies; and the Central Permit Bureau which does the intake of the projects and issues the permits. Mr. Wong said that this year the budget has caused some concerns as to how the Department should continue to do business within the Permit Services Program. Mr. Wong said that the number of permits has been pretty much the same, but the key thing is that the valuation has gone down substantially as the Department is no longer getting the big jobs, the high rises and major projects. Mr. Wong stated that although the number of permits is basically the same and there is a similar amount of processing time, for example, Residential Plan Check's numbers have not gone down. Mr. Wong said that the Department is not getting the major projects coming into the Major Division and the Commercial Plan Check, and as is being reported, the commercial office vacancy rate has gone up. Mr. Wong said that the division is looking at ways to streamline processes at no cost, as Director Chiu mentioned earlier, and also looking at how to address the audit concerns that Commissioner Marks mentioned. Mr. Wong said that within the Permit Services Division several things had been identified that the Department needs to look at: 1) being the most important which is quality control and how is that going to be done in Plan Check; 2) another being compliance with AB717 for the Plan Checkers. Vice-President Hood asked Deputy Director Wong to summarize AB717 once again. Mr. Wong said that it is basically a State Assembly Bill that requires Plan Checkers and Inspectors to be certified within their respective fields. Mr. Wong stated that AB717 actually has two parts and one is the certification requirement, for example an Electrical Inspector has to be certified as an Electrical Inspector or if someone is a Engineer doing Plan Checking that person has to be certified as a Plans Examiner. Mr. Wong said that the certification is one part and that is a one-time thing and the other is that the certification has to be renewed every three years so the second part is the training. Mr. Wong stated that every three years the required staff has to have a certain number of training units. Mr. Wong said that this could be done in a couple of different ways, as the Department could have the training done in one year or the better way would be to divide the training into three equal parts so that there is a certain level of training each year. Mr. Wong said that the training is an ongoing thing so even though there are things that need to be cut from the budget, the Department cannot deny an Inspector or an Engineer to attend these required trainings. Mr. Wong said that with these situations he has consulted with Director Chiu, Assistant Director Lee and Deputy Director Hutchinson to look at ways where the Department could streamline the operation. Mr. Wong stated that one of the things that the Department is doing right now is to take the opportunity to rotate the Engineers and the Inspectors because what has happened over the past year is that the Department had Inspectors and Engineers who have left and because the Department knew that the economy was going down those positions were not filled. Mr. Wong said that because of that, there are gaps in certain divisions that DBI wants to somehow replace. Mr. Wong said that for example, if one division is not as busy or there is some personnel that could be used somewhere else, the Department wants to take the opportunity to do the rotation program to move people around so the Department does not have to fill those vacant positions in order to save some money. Mr. Wong said that the other positive aspect of doing the rotation is that it allows staff to get training in other areas. Mr. Wong said that if an Inspector has been working out in the field for many years, it might be beneficial for that Inspector to come inside to do some plan checking and permit processing type things so they could utilize their experience from the field to be more efficient in doing the plan checking or vise versa.
Mr. Wong said that another area that the Department is looking at as sort of a no cost thing is a reorganization within the Permit Services Program. Mr. Wong said that one way to do that to look at the different classifications of Engineers. Mr. Wong stated that there are Associate Engineers, Full Engineers, and Senior Engineers. Mr. Wong said that in looking at the organizational chart it shows that each Managers actually has, in each of the divisions, maybe ten to fifteen people reporting directly to him or her and that ratio is huge. Mr. Wong said that when the Department implemented the quality control each of the Managers was asked to spot check the work of each of their subordinates. Mr. Wong said that in itself created a substantial amount of work for each of the Managers. Mr. Wong stated that since the Department has these Engineers already in place at these different kinds of levels, DBI is looking to create another tier of supervision so that perhaps each division might have two or three team leaders with maybe three or four Engineers or Inspectors reporting to that person. Mr. Wong said that this would increase the quality control because there would be more people that would be able to do the spot-checking, along with doing plan checking as well. Mr. Wong said that he thought that this would go along way with addressing some of the major concerns in the audit report on quality control. Mr. Wong said that the Department is looking at better ways to position these Engineers so that they can provide this kind of quality control.
Mr. Wong said that another thing that he heard extensively earlier in the meeting is concern over the One-Stop Permit Program. Mr. Wong said that the One-Stop Program was started a few years ago as a pilot program to allow people the option to come forth and say that they wanted to use that process for parallel plan checking or they could use the self-service. Mr. Wong said that the self-service is basically the residential counter on the ground floor and the second floor is the commercial. Mr. Wong stated that the Department has gotten some pretty good feedback about the service that people have received from One-Stop; they liked it. Mr. Wong said that most of the projects going there are the bigger projects such as Mission Bay or projects that are more complex and involve many agencies, for example the Health Department, DPW and City Planning. Mr. Wong said that smaller residential projects do not go there because they usually deal with only two agencies like City Planning or DBI. Mr. Wong said that he is looking at ways to see if the Department could have the Permit Coordinators and the Permit Clerks be more of a support to the Plan Check divisions by actually making them accountable to each of the Plan Check divisions. Mr. Wong said that the Coordinators and Clerks would be assigned to a particular group and told that they would be responsible for all of the projects coming into that group and when a customer calls looking for their project or asking why it is taking so long, the Department could have the Permit Coordinator actually look into the problem to see how they could move the project along. Mr. Wong said that he did not want to eliminate the One-Stop Program because he felt that it is needed because it is customer friendly, the permit coordination is there and staff is really the single point of contact, which works well in this unit. Mr. Wong said that he is looking at ways to see if this could go throughout the Department and use it for all the Plan Check divisions. Mr. Wong stated that he is evaluating ways in which the Department could provide that kind of service. Vice-President Hood said that she constantly finds people who don't know that they can use this service and just as she had asked Bruce Bonnacker if he had ever used the service; he never had. Vice-President Hood stated that she knew Mr. Bonnacker had projects where it would have been very helpful and said that there is a kind of fear, or people are under the impression that they have to have some kind of an in with the Department, to use this service. Vice-President Hood said that she felt that this program performs a great service, but does not draw enough customers because people just don't know that they can use it. Director Chiu said that it is not that people don't know about it, but a lot of the designers and DBI customers are used to doing things the old way because one thing that the One-Stop program asks for is that the customer has at least four sets of plans and copies of plans are cheap. Director Chiu said right away the customer thinks that they have always only given two sets of plans and why should they now submit four sets; additionally, for One-Stop to accept the plans they first of all review the plans to make sure that they are accurate and some customers feel threatened that three or four technical people, who have expertise in Planning, DPW or DBI are reviewing the project and the designers get nervous of that process. Director Chiu said that Bruce Bonnacker admitted that he has never used the service, but is already saying that it is no good. Director Chiu said a lot of people, like Vice-President Hood, who have used the program have continued to use it because they have found that it is much more helpful and is a more proactive approach in dealing with the plans. Vice-President Hood stated that it saves her so much time because all of these experts tell her everything that she needs to do and said that she felt that every permit should be done this way. Vice-President Hood said that usually the customer does not think through every single thing that they need because the customer has to see so many different people, but said that with One-Stop they all get together and tell you what you need in one shot. Vice-President Hood said she thought that there is also a little bit of fear when people have their clients come with them, that is it going to seem like they didn't know what they are supposed to be doing. Director Chiu said that a lot of people are used to just dropping the plans off and hoping that things are missed, but then at the field stage the customer pays dearly. Director Chiu said that at One-Stop the staff tries to catch everything before the client even submits the project and the overall result is much better. Vice-President Hood said that she would like to write an article on One-Stop and work with the Department on that to try and get it published in the AIA Journal and a couple of other things. Vice-President Hood said that she felt it was overdue for someone to talk about what One-Stop really is doing from the point of view of a person who uses it. Director Chiu said that he would appreciate that.
Commissioner Marks said that she would like to follow up on the fact that the larger projects are being handled at the One-Stop and asked what was the staffing level at the Major Projects division. Mr. Wong said that there is a Manager, one Inspector who is responsible for carrying out the implementation of the UMB Program and then there are ten engineers, so that is eleven staff members plus the Manager. Commissioner Marks said that since major projects are pretty much non-existent now she questioned the need for ten engineers in that division. Mr. Wong said maybe not, but under the plan to do a rotation of the engineers the Department may be moving some of these engineers to another division where they would be busier, such as Residential Plan Check or Commercial Plan Check. Mr. Wong said that the Department is being very flexible and it will depend on where the economy is going. Ms. Madison said that those are ten positions, but in looking at Attachment 1 and the original discussion about the eighteen positions that would not be filled, this is where the Department would cutting back due to the slow down. Commissioner Marks said that aside from the position in charge of the UMB there are still eight engineers in Major Projects. Mr. Wong said that when he mentioned the positions he did not include the vacant ones. Ms. Lee said that there were eight and there are two recommended cuts so there would only be six remaining. Commissioner Marks asked if there weren't ten to begin with and then two to be cut. Director Chiu said that there were several temporary positions as well. Ms. Lee said that there were eight with the Manager and two to be cut. Commissioner Marks asked if there were seven filled positions right now, one UMB and six engineers. Mr. Lee said that there were nine. Commissioner Marks asked if that were nine engineers and one UMB. Ms. Lee said that there was one UMB Engineer and one UMB Inspector. Ms. Lee stated there are nine and the Department is recommending two to be cut. Commissioner Marks said that there were nine with Major Projects. Ms. Lee said yes. Commissioner Marks said that it will be down to seven. Ms. Lee said that with Major Projects there is still talk about certain projects coming on board with the School District, the UC Project, and Mission Bay is still going to move forward to some extent, and potentially the PUC and the San Bruno Jail as well as Moscone expansion. Ms. Lee said that the Division had staff for these major citywide projects. Ms. Lee said that the Department was hesitant to cut even more and believed that these two cuts would allow for sufficient staffing as well as a potential increase. Director Chiu said that in addition, in the past, when the workload peaked, the Department utilized temporary personnel. Commissioner Marks said that the 2000 draft showed thirteen positions, filled positions, in addition to the Manager. Director Chiu said that the organizational chart included temporary people as well as permanent. Mr. Wong said that was correct. Director Chiu said that today the Department was only speaking about permanent positions as the Department had already stopped filling temporary positions. Commissioner Marks said that she wanted to clarify that for the short term the Department was going to explore rotating some of the Engineers in this unit. Mr. Wong said that management had a meeting with the employee and told them about the budget situation and the possibility of people being assigned to different places whether in the program or outside of the program. Mr. Wong stated that this was going to be done for both the Inspectors and the Engineers, which would cross into Mr. Hutchinson's program. Mr. Wong asked if Commissioner Marks wanted to go over each division. Commissioner Marks answered yes.
Mr. Wong stated that in Central Permit Bureau there was a process going on to upgrade some of the clerical positions. Mr. Wong said that he was working with MIS to implement some of the audit recommendations to get the process automated and some of the items would be long term. Mr. Wong said that he was working with Amy Lee's program to get the MIS support for Central Permit. Mr. Wong said that for the Commercial Plan Check Division the Department continues to meet the permit process time and the number of approvals per Plan Checker. Mr. Wong stated that filling the vacancies was one of the goals, but as discussed that is not going to happen until the Department sees how the situation develops. Mr. Wong said that improving the parallel plan checking is something that the Department would like to do for all plan check divisions, and as mentioned earlier, the Department is looking at ways of getting assistance from the One-Stop Permit staff to help accomplish this. Mr. Wong said that goal of developing a permit tracking to accurately calculate and produce reports is something that he is working on with the Administration group and MIS to get the computer system to do that because one of the items in the Controller's audit was that the Department was doing much of this work manually and probably inaccurately. Mr. Wong said that it is very labor intensive to do this manually and it is something that the Department wants to stop doing because it is taking so much staff time. Mr. Wong said that he is looking for MIS support on that. Mr. Wong said that one thing that he wanted to mention that he felt the Department was doing very well was the ride alongs that were implemented last year. Mr. Wong said that the Plan Check personnel actually ride along with the Inspectors and came back with some very positive feedback letting Management know that some of the things that the Plan Checkers approve were very different from what they thought when viewed out in the field. Mr. Wong said that there were a number of reasons for this, one being that the Plan Checkers were not given correct information by the designer and another thing was that there might have been items that were missed. Mr. Wong said that this experience has been very good and the ride alongs are taking place in Commercial, Residential and the Major Plan Check Groups. Mr. Wong said that the goal to develop a criteria for plan review quality control is already in the works as each of the Managers are responsible for doing their own spot checking and by reorganizing the team leaders will be helping to do the spot checking. Mr. Wong stated that when they do the spot-checking a log is kept and the areas that the Plan Checkers are missing is identified for Management. Vice-President Hood asked if the spot-checking is done for places that might have been missed or are they measuring that the Plan Checker has incorrectly interpreted the Code or the drawing didn't have something that they were supposed to have or what is the criteria. Mr. Wong said that it is actually both and it depends on who the employee is, because if it is a newer employee the plans would be completely reviewed for a few months, but for more experienced Plan Checkers they would select just a few projects, probably the more complex ones. Mr. Wong said that the spot-checkers look for everything, such as major areas like exit requirements, fire rating, occupancy load calculations, adequate structural system, major things, mechanical systems and such. Mr. Wong said that if major things are found then the spot-checker will go into more detail and they do meet with Plan Checkers to tell them what the problem areas are. Mr. Wong stated that a big improvement has been noticed because it has improved the process. Mr. Wong said that another thing that is being done very well is that a Plan Checker would actually bring a set of plans into a staff meeting and have everybody comment on them. Mr. Wong said that the items in the Controller's audit recommendations have been identified in all of his programs. Mr. Wong stated that he made the audit recommendations part of the performance evaluation for each of his Managers. Mr. Wong said that he was pleased to report that within this program they are over 94% in compliance with certification. Mr. Wong said that there were only two or three people in this program that have not met the certification and the Department is dealing with them on a case by case basis. Vice-President Hood asked if there was anyone who was unable to meet the certification, as previously there were one or two people who had failed. Mr. Wong said that he encouraged those people to take it again and the Department is paying for all training. Mr. Wong said that they did enroll in some classes and filled out applications to retake the examination. Mr. Wong stated that one employee was very close to passing and it was a matter of one or two points.
Mr. Wong said that some of the goals in the other Plan Check divisions might be redundant so he would go over ones that apply only to that particular division. Mr. Wong said that for the Major and UMB divisions it talks about the certification and the quality control. Mr. Wong said that this division is working on the Mission Bay project and there is a team to review those projects when they come in; with the Mayor's Office Housing Program the Mayor's Office is very pleased with the service that is provided to them in coordinating the Mayor's Housing projects.
Mr. Wong stated that once again with Mechanical Plan Check there is the issue of quality control aspect that the Department is focusing on and looking for ways to streamline the process by providing checklists for the customers so that the customer does not have to recreate things from the Code.
Mr. Wong said that the first goal for the One-Stop Program is to fill the four Senior Plan Checker positions and that has been done. Mr. Wong said that the goal of cross training is in progress as the Permit Coordinators are being sent to the Plan Checking division to actually sit at the counters at intake and observe how the Engineers and Inspectors take in the plans. Mr. Wong said that one thing that he wanted to address about the One-Stop is the earlier perception that they don't do anything, and he wanted to state that they actually do a lot in addition to doing the permit coordination, the parallel plan checking and being that single point of contact; staff also does extensive quality control as there is a comprehensive list of numerous items that are checked. Mr. Wong said that they check to see if the violation is collected; are there multiple sets of plans and things such as that. Mr. Wong stated that this came about because of concerns that neighbors had about plans going out without being looked at by one person making sure that there are three sets of plans being sent out that are all the same and that the description is correct with respect to the project and are the plans signed; One-Stop checks for all of those things. Mr. Wong said that complaints about this have gone down and the Department does not have this problem anymore because now there is a coordinated set of plans going out. Mr. Wong said that all of the projects are taken for internal review and before they are issued they have to go through One-Stop so this is something that people might not be aware of and the One-Stop staff continue to do a good job in that area.
Mr. Wong said that Residential Plan Check continues to meet the goals of approving the number of plans per day and turnaround time. Mr. Wong stated that with cross training the Residential Plan Check staff is working very closely with the field personnel. Mr. Wong said that Chief McNulty has done an excellent job with getting his staff cross trained with the Inspectors to understand what they are doing. Mr. Wong said that Mr. McNulty has gone one step further because he is also cross training staff with Commercial Plan Check. Mr. Wong said that with the continuing education, he had mentioned the AB717 earlier.
Mr. Wong said that the Technical Services Division is working on many Administrative Bulletins and there is a small earthquake program that is being worked on in the program. Mr. Wong stated that TSD was working very closely with BID on that. Mr. Wong said that TSD was working on the CAPSS program that the Commission has been getting regular updates on. Mr. Wong said that there was one position to be filled in TSD and that was the Building Codes Analyst and there are two positions there, but TSD already has a 5217, Building Code Analyst. Mr. Wong said that, at this time, the Department does not see a need to fill this position, but maybe the Department could look at it when the Code cycle comes up again. Mr. Wong said that the Brown Bag Lunch meetings have been very successful and there has been very good attendance and good feedback from the public. Mr. Wong said that concluded his comments on the Permit Services Program. Mr. Wong thanked the Commission.
Vice-President Hood left the meeting at this point.
President Fillon asked Deputy Director Hutchinson to speak about his program. Mr. Hutchinson said that he appreciated the opportunity to speak to the Commissioners mostly on behalf of the employees because it has been very tough for them hearing the bad news relative to the budget. Mr. Hutchinson said that he appreciated the Commissioner's help and some of the comments as far as holding positions so that the employees feel that there is some hope if the economy does turnaround. Mr. Hutchinson stated that the message would be taken back to the employees and said that he felt it would be very well received.
Mr. Hutchinson said that, as a starting point, he would like to say that everyone talks about Mission Bay and Mission Bay going away; there are three major public works projects that are going on right now. Mr. Hutchinson said to recap those projects are the Port of San Francisco that is undergoing retrofit, the new jail in San Bruno and Moscone Center. Mr. Hutchinson said that those projects require dedicated personnel from Building, Plumbing and Electrical and the Department is lucky in having worked with some of the project managers by being able to, instead of using three inspectors from each discipline, utilizing only one to two inspectors. Mr. Hutchinson said that these are still full time jobs and these jobs have taken away from the staffing required to do other duties. Mr. Hutchinson said that even though the economy has turned around there are some large projects that do bite into staff. Mr. Hutchinson said that in line with that there is another major project, which has been in front of the Litigation Committee that is located out in the Bay View/Hunter's Point area, which is managed by AIMCO Properties. Mr. Hutchinson reported that there are about six hundred units that are basically funded by HUD and those projects are requiring a substantial amount of maintenance and time, and there is a Building and Housing Inspector that are dedicating probably 50% of their time to that project. Mr. Hutchinson said that was the big picture on some of the special things that are going on.
Mr. Hutchinson said that when going into the Districts the Department does show that there was a 6% drop in activity, but where the most was lost was in revenues because the big projects are not coming in, yet the things that the Department needs to do and the service levels that need to be provided are still there. Mr. Hutchinson said that the 6% is fairly large and could get larger, but for now people are still demanding the same amounts of service. Mr. Hutchinson said that he listened carefully to the public comments earlier and said that the Department really did want to have a 24-hour turnaround time for inspections. Mr. Hutchinson said that right now it is 48, and the Department is almost making 48, but from the comments today, it looks like the Department is not making some of those. Mr. Hutchinson said that with some of the cuts that the Department has been forced to make, he would really think that the Department would stay at a 48-hour turnaround time or still continue to be a little bit beyond that for the present. Mr. Hutchinson said that given the way things are, the Department had to look at the budget and look at some cuts and it is a hard thing to do. Mr. Hutchinson stated that some of the things that could be done to increase efficiency across the board are as follows: based on the Controller's audit report a big part of that was that they want to make sure that there is quality control and Mr. Hutchinson said that he had to give Frank and Amy credit for drilling that into him. Mr. Hutchinson said that upper management went back and talked to all of the managers and instituted across the board as seen in the goals and accomplishments where a standard is set for the Seniors and the Chiefs to get out into the field to look at x amount of jobs and report back in writing to management. Mr. Hutchinson said that he could then see what they found in the field, what needs improvement and where the training needs to be done. Mr. Hutchinson said that part of the other efficiency that is being looked at is could some of the districts be merged. Mr. Hutchinson said that this is possible, but the downside of that is when two or three personnel from BID for example are lost to dedicated projects, it is harder to say that somebody will fill in. Mr. Hutchinson said that one of the key points in housing, and it has been talked about in the Commission that housing's main goal, or at least two goals, are improvement with the SROs and routine inspections. Mr. Hutchinson said that the Department has been very serious about the SROs and said that for years he thought that they did not get the attention they required. Mr. Hutchinson said, as a result, the Department took a lot of hits in the paper and stated that he felt that was justifiable as the paper was right to point that out. Mr. Hutchinson said that what has been set up is dedicated personnel for the SROs that include a Senior and one Inspector and the Department is hitting these places almost on a day to day basis. Mr. Hutchinson said that with any SRO complaint or a heat complaint there will be an Inspector out that day, guaranteed. Mr. Hutchinson stated that the priority items are being done. Mr. Hutchinson said that one concern on the routine inspections is that the Department would like to have a shorter window on the routines as the Department ran all of the numbers and found that there were a lot of buildings that were outside of the approved window which was five years. Mr. Hutchinson said that the Department went along with the five years, but said that he felt this was too long and would like to change that back. Mr. Hutchinson said that in order to give the Inspectors flexibility to do more routines, yet not lose the ability to follow up with the SROs, the Department is looking at shifting some of the illegal unit complaints and some of the one and two family complaints back to the Building Inspectors. Mr. Hutchinson said that this would make sense because it would allow, without increasing staff or asking for more money for the Department, to take the existing staff and making sure that Housing performs the mandate to get into these buildings to check decks, window bars and gates that have double keyed entries. Mr. Hutchinson said that it would allow the Department to do the things that everyone knows it needs to be doing and getting done on a timely basis. Mr. Hutchinson stated that this is in place, but the Department is just finishing up putting that work back with the District Inspectors. Mr. Hutchinson said that one of the other things that the Department wants to do, is that the Housing Inspectors handle their own Code Enforcement cases, and in line with taking away some of this work, the one and two family complaints, the Department also wants to look at taking away some of that Code Enforcement work. Mr. Hutchinson said this is work on the back end where there is a case that is ready for the Litigation Committee and it should be pushed more over to the Code Enforcement Division and once again allowing for more time with the same monies and the same staffing to do a better job getting out to inspect these buildings.
Mr. Hutchinson said that he would go through the individual goals for each program. Mr. Hutchinson said that first he would go to BID and it is indicated that the response time should be improved to 100% within 48 hours. Mr. Hutchinson stated that BID will continue to work on that, but once again depending on the cuts that have to be made and depending on where the staff has to be on special projects, he would tend to think that the 48 hours is going to be the goal and stated that in the future he would like to see this go to 24 hours across the board. Mr. Hutchinson said that he was pleased with what the staff does with complaints as complaints are taken seriously, but the one thing that the Department is going to find is that previously personnel were available on Saturday on an overtime basis, and given the revenue situation that will have to be eliminated for right now. Mr. Hutchinson said that the Department did not want to do that, but it is a harsh reality.
Mr. Hutchinson said that the training for the Inspectors goes along with what William, Frank and Amy have been saying and that is that the required training is going to be done; in addition to that the Department has started cross-training which isn't costing anything, just a couple of down hours. Mr. Hutchinson said that what will more than make up for that, is when there are Building Inspectors who haven't done Plan Checking and haven't done the customer service at the counter to answer the hard questions are really learning that job. Mr. Hutchinson said that the Department is continuing to do that rotation. Mr. Hutchinson stated that part of what William and himself was working on was to continue that training by putting all of the Inspectors in both programs in CED and DAD and letting them likewise learn those jobs to get a feel for what is going on there, so across the board rotation right now is underway to where the Department is looking at the staff to make sure they are all cross trained. Mr. Hutchinson said the Department would not be reliant on a single individual in a single department for their entire career. Mr. Hutchinson said that the Department really shouldn't just have one person in a department that has all of the institutional knowledge because if they are sick or whatever it is a real problem.
Mr. Hutchinson said that moving on to spot check that is being done across the board in all the programs. Mr. Hutchinson stated that transit improvement is ongoing and a new complaint tracking system is an ongoing process with MIS; the program is also working with MIS on temporary permits. Mr. Hutchinson said that the Department wants to go back to all of the temporary permits of occupancy to make sure that the buildings that are now operating under temporary permits, maybe for years, are recaptured and have them be responsible for finalizing their permits. Mr. Hutchinson said that many times the Inspector will go out and find work that should have been completed is not there and this is a process that the Department needs to tighten up.
Mr. Hutchinson reported that radio procedures ties into the emergency procedures overall and Senior Building Inspector Ron Tom has been working with Laurence Kornfield's group to really put together a comprehensive plan for emergencies. Mr. Hutchinson said that when there are staff meetings staff is reminded, especially the people who weren't at the Department in 1989, how important it is to be ready. Mr. Hutchinson said that staff has to keep that thought in their minds, to be trained and to know what to do, and to be strong enough to be out there on their own. Mr. Hutchinson said they have to have the abilities and knowledge to operate in the event of a disaster and the Department is trying to impart that knowledge to them.
Mr. Hutchinson stated that one thing he wanted to talk about was that Building, Plumbing and Electrical are all very similar as far as the goals that the Department would like to accomplish, but Mr. Hutchinson said that he wanted to talk about Code Enforcement. Mr. Hutchinson said that a big part of his focus, certainly with the Litigation Committee, SROs and three unit and above buildings, likewise on single-family dwellings, is to answer the calls of customers who call and say that they pay their taxes and they are not dealing with permit issues, but are dealing with complaint issues. Mr. Hutchinson said that someone had recently called him about an illegal unit and as the Commission has talked about, it is something that would have probably stayed on the back burner, but there were some extenuating circumstances. Mr. Hutchinson said that the Department reopened the case for this person who really felt that they had extenuating circumstances with the neighbor's building, gave them the time and attention and were going to push this case forward to the Litigation Committee based on what the customer told the Department. Mr. Hutchinson said that a lot of what the Department does is to be responsive to complaints in BID, Plumbing and Electrical, but in Code Enforcement the Department also has Disabled Access. Mr. Hutchinson said the Lead Abatement Program is an ongoing process as there is the exterior legislation and interior legislation is also being worked on. Mr. Hutchinson said that the Department is trying to work on having the abilities and resources to do a good job on the enforcement of that. Mr. Hutchinson said that it will probably be six to nine months down the road before that is implemented. Mr. Hutchinson stated that in line with Louise Kimbell, who manages that section, sitting on the Citizen's Advisory Committee for Lead, there is also another committee for asthma that she has been placed on and they are going to be looking at things the Building Code addresses that might relate to asthma issues, such as dust, construction debris and all sorts of things that are a large part of construction work. Mr. Hutchinson said that these groups are asking DBI to be part of a taskforce to develop legislation to better deal with this problem. Mr. Hutchinson said that there is a lot of legislation going on and a lot of committees that the Department is part of right now that the Commission might not be aware of as the Department has not had the opportunity to tell the Commission about, but it is all important work and all resources that the Department has committed to the community.
Mr. Hutchinson said that with Electrical and Plumbing being fairly similar to Building, he would ask if the Commissioners had any questions. Commissioner Marks said that she had a question about the Building Inspection unit. Commissioner Marks stated that for 2001-2002, and said she did not know if they were filled, the Department did add four additional staff members, one permanent clerk typist and one building inspector and then one temporary in each of those categories again, and yet it is not a substantial decrease, but there was a decrease in the number of inspections this past fiscal year. Mr. Hutchinson said that the reason the Department has looked at that is because when there is staff that is dedicated to specific public interest projects, the Department has to look at maintaining the level of service in the field. Mr. Hutchinson said that the complaints are not going to drop off, but will probably get worse as those remain fairly consistent and the Department would like its response to remain consistent. Mr. Hutchinson said that if he has three inspectors that are now dedicated to City projects, if he has an inspector that is dedicated 50% of his time to a single, large scale, public project out in the Bay View that decreases the resources and that is why the Department looked at the staffing it needed to improve the turnaround time for the inspections and also to make sure that the Department keeps up on responses to complaints. Commissioner Marks asked if these positions were filled. Mr. Hutchinson said that when the Department went back and analyzed this in-house, there were a couple of positions that were put aside for right now and the Department was looking at merging some of the districts and having people help each other by putting in a little bit more effort; therefore, it was recommended that two positions be put aside right now. Mr. Hutchinson said that the temporary positions were retired employees that were brought in on an as needed basis and the Department is not planning on bringing them back. Mr. Hutchinson said that the Department has the abilities in temporary salaries, but are not planning on calling those individuals up as they were used for peak periods and vacations. Mr. Hutchinson said that additionally the Department approved a requested one-year unpaid leave for an inspector. Mr. Hutchinson said that there is another individual who is going to be on unpaid leave and that will help. That concluded Mr. Hutchinson's report.
President Fillon thanked the Deputy Directors and the Assistant Director for making the presentations on a last minute notice. President Fillon said that since Vice-President Hood was not present, there was another meeting scheduled for this committee. Secretary Aherne said that the Committee had the room next Wednesday from 9:30 a.m. and President Fillon said that he would call the Secretary to let her know if the meeting would be just the Committee or the full Commission.
Commissioner Marks said that it wasn't talked about, but stated that she agreed with Commissioner Guinnane, and has said publicly before, that the Public Information Officer is a position that she could not justify keeping in the budget. Commissioner Marks said that was one item that she would want removed from the budget. Director Chiu said that the Department has talked about this position. Ms. Lee said that the Department is not going to completely delete the position because this position is still needed, but the position will be transfer exchanged to a principal analyst and the person who is existing in the PIO position will not take that position; the position will be vacant until an analyst is needed in terms of the workload. Ms. Lee said that this position was going to be TX'd from a Manager V to an 1824 principal analyst which is consistent with the salary and depending on the need of the Department it will either be kept vacant or filled. Commissioner Marks asked what a principal analyst would do. Ms. Lee said that the person would have several administrative responsibilities to analyze statistics or gather information and could even work in the capacity of helping to get public information documents together. Ms. Lee said that it is a broad classification that requires some financial background, legislative analysis, and statistical analysis as well as program analysis. Ms. Lee stated that there was a broad range of duties the person in this position could perform and that is why she appreciated this position because it gives her flexibility because she will not have a PIO officer anymore, but assistance is still needed in this area and this position may be able to do that without going beyond the scope of the classification. Director Chiu said this new position would be a Civil Service position rather than an appointed at-will position. Director Chiu stated that the Department is working to eliminate this position or TXing this position. Ms. Lee said that the Commission would see this as a substitution rather than a deletion.
President Fillon said that he did not believe that there were any other items to be discussed.
4. Discussion and possible action t set a meeting and identify items that could be placed on the agenda of future meetings of the Committee.
President Fillon said that he needed to think about whether or not there needed to be another meeting. Taras Madison said that she had one follow-up to the budget discussion and that was that her understanding was that the eighteen positions that the Department said that they were going to delete, the vacant positions to find savings, the Committee was saying that they prefer that the Department hold those positions. Ms. Madison said that she would try to hold those positions, but said that she mentioned attrition savings and said that she would try to do as much of that as possible, however, she did not think that anyone would approve of the Department having a 20% attrition savings. Ms. Madison said that there might be some need to do some cuts, as the Department may not be able to capture the entire $1.4M in attrition savings. President Fillon asked if Ms. Madison could look into that and asked if Ms. Madison could report on that at the next Committee meeting.
5. Adjournment.
Commissioner Marks made a motion seconded by President Fillon that the meeting be adjourned.
The motion carried unanimously.
RESOLUTION NO. BIC-001-02 BUDGET
The meeting was adjourned at 3:30 p.m.
_______________________
Ann Marie Aherne
Commission Secretary
SUMMARY OF REQUESTS BY COMMISSIONERS
President Fillon to let Secretary know if additional meeting is required by Committee or full Commission. - Page 27