. >> thank you very much, commissioner alioto veronese. at this point, i'm going to be making some comments and questions, as well. is it possible that we could return to the slide, slide three, that shows the transamerica building in the background? also, john, i didn't catch your last name. >> jonathan shum. >> and you are the vice president of -- >> related california. >> thank you very much, mr. shum, and thank you for your presentation. i do really appreciate the comprehensive nature of your presentation. i appreciate the background reminders, the dates in terms of the supervisors original public land housing date of june 2015, ratified by the voters in k in 2015. i think it's really important for you to recite the resolution in 2017 and talk about the may 2018 resolution to take us to this particular point. because the context and gist of this whole proposal is important. as you can hear from commissioner covington, our real estate is on vacation, commissioner cleaveland, he would be asking many, many questions, but i think, again, y

i saw commissioner veronese down in headquarters. so thank you for that. that concludes my report at this time. >> thank you, very much. at this particular point we will ask for public comment on the chief's report. seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioners, vice president covington. >> thank you. thank you president nakajo. you said there are going to be 54 members for the new class? >> yes. >> ok, i know that i pressed quite strongly to increase the number of people that were admitted to the academy every academy cycle. that was due to the fact that so many members of the department were retiring. that has slowed to a trickle now. i know that having a 54 members of one class in training at one time has been quite a challenge for the training staff. so i'm wondering if there is a -- if you can just give me some feedback on the need to continue to have 54 members. >> sure. so we always take a look at our staffing levels. women lacking at mapped tory overtime. we needed to catch up just for that sake. we wanted to match play catch up and also mat

. >> thank you very much, commissioner veronese. commissioner cleveland? >> my comments will be tame in relation to our previous commissioner's comments. the wellness checkup program that you are going to institute, is that going to be mandatory so each member of the fire department is going toff a wellness checkup annually in the future? >> that is the goal, commissioner. we feel strongly that we've had conversations with the members involve and our philosophy is if we start going to the program the more we get out and the more folks we get there. >> you'll gain is what you are saying so it will start out as voluntarily and then it will mandatory. as it was previously but wasn't complied with with. those workgroups you put together, how many different workgroups do you have? would you say 20. >> between 15 and 20, yeah. >> the key ones would you say are the top three key ones? >> the disaster committee is one of them. we have several ems workers too leadership and ems groups. we have mutual aid, apparatus equipment action review committee rules and regula

commissioner veronese? >> commissioner veronese: three items. i know that we had been discussing earlier the ggnra and the cliffs. it's going to continuously become an issue for our department. i studied this issue about a year ago, and it's a complex issue. it's many different stations that respond to the cliffs. it's not just us, so i had suggested the mayor put together a task force to come up with some of the different issues. some of our people are having a hard time finding people. i think drones would be a good idea, as well. i wrote a resolution, and i owe it to madam secretary and i'll get it to you sometime in the next week. it's basically urging the mayor to put together this committee to actually do this. the second resolution i'd like to introduce is -- and i rempsed remp rempsed it earlier -- referenced it earlier, the discussion of cancer has come up a lot of times in this department. what i would like to do is -- and i'll have -- i may have discussed this briefly with you, chief, before, and i don't think it would be controversia

veronese? >> commissioner veronese: can we see the -- >> yes, i will get it to you. >> commissioner veronese: then as far as the chase center is concerned, i'm sure you've run all the scenarios of having different events stacked on top of that one event, right, because you have the baseball stadium there, you have rush hour traffic, you've got, you know, god knows what other you know street closures happening on the weekend there. have you looked at the calendar and kind of run worst-case scenario of what that would be like? >> chief nicholson: yes, we have, absolutely. >> commissioner veronese: i have another thing and i forgot to write it down so i forgot it. i just remembered. in regards to the ongoing discussions you've had with the department of health on the ambulances sitting on hospitals, those are still ongoing? any progress there since our last meeting? >> chief nicholson: so we are gathering data around the time on task stuff and time at the hospital that we were talking about, but m

alioto veronese: thank you. in regards, one kind of new thing i wanted to bring up to you to see if the department is doing, i know a lot of the technology that we use today in what we wear, helmets, hats, turnouts, you know, the pants and the boot. a lot of that technology is older technology. i'm wondering if the department is looking at what other departments in the world are doing as far as updating that type of technology, maybe turnouts for wildland fires that do not have the chemicals and that type of stuff. i noticed when i met with the fire ambassador from france, who is around, his helmet is very different, shaped a different than ours. i am wondering if our department is looking at that, what is out there. i know tradition is hard to break your in san francisco, the leather helmets and things that are historically a part of our history. i wondered if our department is looking at that? >> yes, we are looking at speaking with manufacturers about different turnout gear, and having some of those chemicals

commissioner veronese. >> just briefly. thank you mr. president. i did want to report that, without naming names, i did visit two members of the department at saint francis hospital who were recovering. to wish them well on behalf of the commission. i did, in typical fashion, bring them stella pastries from north beach. that made the visitors happy. and then also today, i did attend the stress unit meeting. which i thought was very informative. they had some guest speakers there that experts that came and spoke to them about stress management and techniques and that type of thing. i'm pleased to report that the support of this chief, that unit has trained in this department has trained, i believe it's 60 members of the department for stress unit -- or stress-related identification and management. i think that it's a great start to where i'm hoping this department will go in developing a peer support unit pursuant to the resolution that we passed back in october. i'm looking forward to the chief's report. i did speak with the chief afterwards. it's

veronese: in regard to the doctor's appearance here on the 28th. i would suggest that we converse with the city attorney on this. it would be unusual to conduct positive employee evaluation in a public forum. i do not know it is appropriate. it may or may not be. . >> v.p. covington: just for him to come and give a presentation on his department that he oversees. his evaluation will happen the following meeting, in closed session. . >> comm. veronese: that is an important clarification. i appreciate that. i don't wanted to seem like an employee evaluation. we are asking him questions and being critical in a public forum. i don't think that is appropriate, if we do it all. i am thankful for that information. i did not know there was a follow-up meeting where we could actually have cause two appropriate back-and-forth. . >> president nakajo: the reason why we instituted that appearance by the doctor is because of the favor of the commissioners in terms of asking questions, see the good dr. and having him respond. the presentation by the doctor is in

veronese: just on commission activities. we had the fire department hosted a pier support training. there were about 30 members. the training was put on by the international association of firefighters. my foundation, the national first responders paid for it. it was a great program. i stopped in the very beginning of the program to say hello. sat through an hour of it. it's a great program being offered. i look forward to doing as many of these as we can. there were three or four different departments from all over the bay area that jumped in on it. which is great. there's more money there to keep doing these things. i hope that the department we'll do some in southern california as well. i look forward to the department and other departments contributing to it and with their people. i was really pleased to see it was a good show. we'll keep doing them as long as people show up to them. the credit goes to the thousands of contributors that contributed to the fund and everything that- everybody that was part of that. thank y

i appreciate that. >> sure. >> thank you very much, commissioner veronese. commissioner cleveland, please. >> thank you, mr. president. i would like to echo commissioner veronese's comments regarding the training of our people in terms of what are the injuries out there and how are they being injured. the more information we gather and the more data we have, the better prepared we are to instruct them on whatnot what not to do. and you need to add ptsd as a type of injury our members get. i would like to commend you for setting up with i assume lieutenant baxter's health fairs. i think that's incredibly important for our members. i appreciate the station visits that you and the chief are doing and the other brass reaching out to the rank-and-file on a regular basis just means a lot to them, more than you probably realize yourself. i appreciate it personally as commissioner. and one question, you talked about the mission high school ems program. what would it take to add a high school, another high school in town to ems training program? >> so what's happenin

commissioner veronese was there. the incident commander was r rex hale, and we had our hands full, but crew did a great job. like to acknowledge all the crews that responded to that fire as well as many members of the command staff, including chief cochran, chief sotto, chief rivera, and chief zanoff. later that evening, after i cleaned up a bit, that was a n.e.n. ceremony. it's a community recognition ceremony. nert lifetime achievement went to miss joanie vanrhine. she's a volunteer out in the m mira loma park area, and so we copresented her award that evening. there was at hsoc meeting on february 7 that i attended. on february 8, chief dicoscio and i attended a meeting where the mayor introduced her new housing delivery, juddson true. on saturday -- this last saturday, i attended a lunar new year's celebration at the request of president yee in the ingleside district. yesterday was a very busy day. there was a chamber of commerce breakfast that i attended. there was a rotary club emergency services day, where thr

. >> thank you, very much, commissioner alioto-veronese. at this point, commissioner hardeman. >> thank you, mr. president. thank you for the clear speaking. your voice carried very good. probably always does. i just noticed how crisp and vibrant your voice was carrying. i just sat back and could hear very good. >> thank you. >> it's interesting, one of the reasons why graphs and charts and just information where you can view it is, you look at the base overview and you go back five years and you look at how it's grown. you look at how the department and the population have grown. that's a very modest growth in the budget. iin my opinion. i think we're holding the line very good. if you just grasp it, the reality isn't the city. if the city would just hold its own and not growing any in population or in workforce, for this department, you would expect anyway. doing this under the circumstances of growth and the 40% that no addresses. is there a collection of any money for the 40%? or we don't even try to collect that. >> we do. we bill, in

[applause] >> commissioner vernoses -- veronese, cleaeland -- we are joined by both of our captains. and all of the members. thank you. [applause] >> they were very patient during the time this is under construction, in this area did not lose any of the members. we just redistributed and we are able to keep up with the response time. everyone is really glad that they are back here. this is our largest station. it houses an engine, which is an officer and three members, and a truck which is an officer in four members. it has room for growth. it also has our division house, and the city itself, and the fire department is divided into two divisions. this is division two, and the other division is 19th and folsom. during the workweek, or 24/7, the city is bifurcated in those division chiefs. we have michael in division today. [applause] >> they oversee the strategy, tactics, and operations for the city under the direction of the deputy chief of operations. it's 21,000 plus square feet. i still haven't visited it entirely since it has been completed. our members just moved in on monday. t

i appreciate there's an update to the drone program that commissioner veronese asked for, so i appreciate that being part of your report. >> chief nicholson: thank you, president nakajo, commissioners, maureen. so the command staff and i, as i told you the -- at -- at the previous commission meeting, deputy chief velo and myself and deputy chief wyrsch have been visiting the fire stations as well as having a town hall at station 49. we're continuing to do that, and we're getting good feedback, good communications with everyone, and as they say, sometimes the best ideas happen over a cup of coffee and we're really getting some good ideas and some good conversations have begun. so we're getting some really good ideas from the stations and once we get that, we'll setup a plan for command staff to go to all of the stations. members have until june 17 to apply for the committee and work groups that we are going to be reorganizing and reestablishing. we've had several committees and work groups over the years, and not all of them have been active. and what we would like to see -- basically, the

commissioner alioto veronese. >> commissioner veronese: mr. coresew, who is -- somebody on behalf of the department advocating for the department in this process? >> we will be involved with the selection process. that has not been -- review of the proposals, and selection process. for what, if there are deemed responsive proposals, we will have a seat at revieg

commissioner alioto veronese? >> commissioner veronese: i understand we're going to be using paramedic larry to retirement, which is a bummer. he's a great guy and he's done a great service for this city. i just want to thank you, chief, for coming up with that program -- under your administration, certainly. it's a great program that we now have paramedics on bikes in the airport. it made me feel more secure in that airport because it's kind of siloed out there in its own little world. great job on that. larry's a great guy. really made me feel and my family feel good about having those paramedics in there. >> president nakajo: thank you very much. commission vice president covington? >> commissioner covington: thank you, mr. president. i just want to say that last week, we had a very reference and acknowledge our commission secretary, marie comfrey who really worked very, very hard on that retirement to make it as nice as it was. it is a great thing to see members come in and actually smile when they go out, as

. >> we have your resolution commissioner veronese within our packet. >> commissioner veronese: thank you mr. president. this commission, we have been talking about a marine dedicated marine unit. it's been on our list every year before we go to the mayor's office. it has been obviously a concern of myself and seems to be concern of some my fellow commissioners that needs to be addressed in the way that we need to put some resources towards our cliffs and marine unit. the chief i believe is doing a job, good job of allocating resources until that's done, we have new station 35 coming. we have a new boat. we're training people to use this new boat. on june 22, 2017, that's a day that i will never forget because that is the day that we lost victoria morocco. i remember that day. my niece, who is in the back row there, she was one of victoria's best friends. i know chief knows this family too. long, historical war family in san francisco, significant at ad big family. i i want to acknowledge my niece. at the time this incident happened, she was the president of the youth commission here

>> commissioner veronese: no. i understand this chart is probably as a result of something i asked for, and a lot of times when you start collecting information, it's not entirely accurate because you're pulling in from different places, and you have to work on those statistics, so sure, chief, let's get together and talk about that because i know that staffing is an important issue, and i'd like to learn more about it and really make sure that we get these numbers down accurately so we can use these numbers to report to people that need to know so that we can then begin a strategy to get these numbers down to -- so that there's no red on this piece of paper, assuming that they're fully accurate. okay. great. thanks, chief. we'll revisit this. chief, in regards to the drones, i wasn't going to let you get away with that. when -- and it is acknowledged that you took all the glory away from being able to announce that this is actually done, you know -- chief, i acknowledge that week after week, he gets up here and t

commissioner veronese? >> commissioner veronese: i just have a couple of questions. i'd like to say congratulations to whoever started this. i think it is appropriately, i think we should get this thing passed under chief hayes-white because i'm sure she had a hand in this as she has a hand in everything that this department does. s very hard working. i had a couple questions about it. are these -- so if a student or, rather, a member of our department wants to go to city college to get their b.a., is that outside of this agreement or is that -- or a.a., is that something that's part of this agreement and how? >> so currently, as constructed, this agreement only covers the initial fire academy and one-year probationary period, so beyond that, there are no classes that are covered under this. eventually, the department would like to expand it, but we're using this as the initial stage of it, so anything as far as the overall a.a. degree, that would be outside of the current scope of the agreement. >> commiss

i see commissioner veronese's name on the docket. >> commissioner veronese: on the drone thing. give us who, what, why it was denied. who denied it and what is the impact much that? >> basically, i think this was started by supervisor peskin in the issue of surveillance, stopping pd and fire department from hashtag the surveillance camera for privacy issues. because of that we had to answer to the mayor and the city on every camera that we have in the department, for security reasons like we have in our drug cabinets that we keep at station 49 even to the cameras on the new apparatus backing up. we had to list every camera in the department. we requested a grandfather clause for this. there is a new privacy issue with the public. now we are asking for a variance and we have to wait for the city attorney's answer. we are up for any assistance that you have. >> there is a new law that was passed that requires us to report every camera including a backup camera on a vehicle that doesn't record? >> we had to list every camera the department has in operation on a vehicle or at a loca

commissioner veronese. >> thank you mr. president. there are two items i'm currently tracking. i know that the commission passed a resolution, i believe it was back in october about the peer support unit and the peer support unit has been meeting regularly. i have been a part of this discussion and they're coming up with some good stuff. i'm not tracking this for the next meeting or the next, but in the next month and a half to two months, i would love with the permission of the chief, to have the department report on the progress from the peer support unit, so we as a commission know. i know that the report was due 100 days from the department, and it's clearly taking longer and it's important work. i love to get an update to the commission so that you all know what's been happening on an issue that we have voted on. second issue as important, we received a report presentation from the fire cancer prevention people, if not a month ago, several months ago. i believe it is important that the department or perhaps the commission act on this particular issue. we have heard from th

commissioner alioto veronese? >> commissioner veronese: thank you, commissioner. i apologize for the late jump-in, but i wasn't going to say anything, but i think this is really important. this is a position that we all know is critical to this department. it'll be interesting to see over this time period of new hire how impacted this office is with -- with the physician missing, but doctor, as we spoke before, it's really important that we're not clinicians up here, we're not doctors. our knowledge base is limited as to exactly what this department needs, so your input is also greatly appreciated in the job application description. it's really important. i'm curious, mr. president, to what our ability is to actually recruit specific people as opposed to -- for such a critical position as opposed to just taking from a list of the willing who apply. i know that i've served on commissions before where we've put together a task force of sorts -- i'm not saying it's needed -- but to actually go out and recruit other people perhaps away from other departments or other

commissioner alioto veronese. >> commissioner veronese: mr. coresew, who is -- somebody on behalf of the department advocating for the department in this process? >> we will be involved with the selection process. that has not been -- review of the proposals, and selection process. for what, if there are deemed responsive proposals, we will have a seat at reviewing and collecting a proposal. >> this is not department property, this is city property? >> correct. >> commissioner veronese: ok. because i en moo, i think that there's -- there would be a reason to advocate for housing for firefighters and i'm wondering if that had become a part of any of these discussions. >> i don't believe -- i think the intent along with the mayor lee at the time's priority was affordable housing. >> commissioner veronese: firefighters can live in affordable housing, can't they? >> i would assume so, yes. but i don't believe -- my understanding of the discussion was not part of the overall goal. overall goal, kind of outlined here is to have funding available for

commissioner veronese. >> commissioner veronese: chief, i don't know when you walked back in from the meeting. you were meeting with the mayor's office. if you caught some of the public comment tonight. can you comment on some of the challenges that the department is facing and reassure the public this is a concern of ours that we are taking seriously. i know if your last budget we ask for 20 hose tenders and we got five hose tenders. i think, frankly speaking, the biggest downfall for the members of the public, the biggest downfall with the san francisco fire department is our ability to adapt and to get the job done in any case of an emergency. now, i know everybody looks at us as though we do a very good job and we do a very good job. that is because we adapt. it is not because we necessarily have the best technology. it is a 100% testament to the staff and the experience they have. that being said when you look at the pictures what happened up in santa rosa with the neighborhoods devastated, the 1906 earthquake is unfortunately too far of a memory for the city and the people makin

commissioner veronese. >> commissioner veronese: chief, that picture of you is priceless. i'm not going to ask who you were on the phone with. >> with the chief. >> commissioner veronese: okay. that's a great picture to be used at another moment. getting to this narcan, july to september 2019, thank you, thank you. this is great information, and it shows that from july of 2018 to september, we've more than doubled in narcan administration, and it appears to be some sort of a spike in april -- straike that. it goes in april from may to 181, a huge spike. i don't know what's going on on the streets, but clearly, something happened at the end of may that could cause that to -- would cause that to spike, and i'm not sure if the department of health has this information but if they don't, we should probably give it to them because it paints a picture of what's going on in the streets, and it would be great to know what the strategy is because these numbers have gone up. it's gone up to 214 from then. is this something that we see once this strain -- is it fentanyl or opioid str