DBI budget proposal stalls after commissioners raise staffing and Qmatic concerns

The San Francisco Building Inspection Commission on Feb. 2 declined to approve the Department of Building Inspection's proposed budget for fiscal year 2012'13 after commissioners raised concerns about staffing, hiring delays and service changes tied to a new customer-queueing system.

Pamela Levin of DBI told commissioners the department must submit its budget to the mayor's office by Feb. 21 and that negotiations with the mayor's office and the Board of Supervisors follow that deadline. "We have to submit the budget to the mayor's office on February 21," Levin said, underlining the limited window for revisions before the mayor's review.

Commissioners pressed DBI on several fronts: whether the department has allocated enough plan reviewers and clerks for the Fifth Floor permit counter, how many of the roughly six new inspector positions will perform field inspections versus plan-check work and long-standing delays in filling approved positions because of civil-service and human-resources backlogs. Vivian Day, DBI's director, said some inspector positions will be assigned to permit services and that requisitions and civil-service lists are being reissued. "We've asked for that list and we will be filling the vacancies," Day said, but she acknowledged processing delays in human resources and civil-service testing.

Commissioners also asked about the department's customer-queueing rollout. Levin and Day said DBI will implement the Qmatic system the week of March 5, provide training and public outreach and monitor the system; Day said the department would give the commission at least three months to evaluate whether Qmatic is speeding up permit processing. "We plan on starting it on March 5, and it would be before the end of this fiscal year," Day said.

The proposed budget includes expanded temporary salaries to accommodate rising workloads and an overtime line that increases from $20,000 to $100,000 to cover high-rise and off-hours inspections. Levin said the travel and training budget is $324,000 and that DBI plans in-house CAPS inspector training for 40 staff as part of multi-year training efforts.

Commissioners debated the appropriateness of certain line-item descriptions and whether the budget document should explicitly state that some new inspector positions will be deployed to the Fifth Floor for plan checking. After discussion, Commissioner Walker moved to approve the budget; the motion failed on a roll-call vote, 4 to 2 (Yes: Vice President Moore; Commissioner Walker. No: President Hetchanova; Commissioner Clinch; Commissioner Lee; Commissioner Murphy). The commission then voted unanimously to continue the budget hearing to the next meeting so staff can correct clerical errors and clarify position assignments and justifications.

DBI also reviewed community outreach contracts funded from an RFP that Levin said equalized units of service among community partners and allocated about $1.7 million to code-enforcement outreach and SRO collaborative programs. Levin identified providers in the RFP awards that serve non-English-speaking communities and said reporting requirements (quarterly and annual reports and site visits) are part of the contracts.

The commission did not adopt the budget; it continued the item for further editing and to allow DBI to provide clearer supporting documents and staffing breakdowns at the next hearing.