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Public Works warns of surging clean-street calls, asks for more pit stops and staff
Summary
Public Works told the Budget Committee that street-cleaning requests, needle-related calls and abandoned-waste pickups have risen sharply; the bureau proposed about $58 million in direct street-facing funding for FY18–19 to shorten response times, expand pit stops and bolster night/swing staffing.
Bruce Robertson, finance manager for San Francisco Public Works, and Deputy Director Larry Stringer told the Board’s budget committee that requests for street cleaning have climbed sharply and that the bureau is seeking more street-facing staffing and infrastructure to respond.
Stringer said the bureau estimated it could see more than 150,000 street-cleaning service requests in the current fiscal year and that, for the first time, it is tracking "encampment service orders," which totaled about 12,000 through February and often require Police Department assistance. "We are tracking encampment service orders," Stringer said during the presentation, noting those calls are now a visible and growing share of the work.
The bureau reported roughly 1,600 full-time equivalent positions across its bureaus and described a FY18–19 direct-services proposal to the mayor of about $58,000,000 for on‑the‑street labor (Stringer characterized that figure as direct services only, excluding overhead and managers). Stringer said encampment-related cleanings now cost roughly $9,000,000 annually, representing about 15% of the street-cleaning budget.
DPW data showed geographic concentrations of requests in the Tenderloin, Mission, Castro and downtown. The department described six operational zones that run seven days a week (typical zone hours cited as 6 a.m.–3 p.m.) and said day-shift response rates are generally closer to internal goals while swing and night shifts struggle; Stringer told supervisors that night-shift response rates in some areas are often below 50 percent.
The bureau emphasized the pit-stop public-restroom program as a cost-effective intervention. DPW presented two case studies — near 99 Golden Gate Ave and 200 Hyde St — where steamer/"feces" requests fell substantially after a pit stop opened. Stringer said the city currently operates 18 staffed pit stops (about nine portable ADA-compliant trailers plus permanent JCDecaux units) and that the department had proposals to add units and expand hours where data indicate need. Purchase estimates given during Q&A varied by type; DPW staff said a new unit can cost in the tens to low hundreds of thousands of dollars and annual staffing for a unit can range roughly between $100,000 and $200,000 depending on schedule.
Stringer also detailed other initiatives: a trash-can cleaning program ($1.4 million annually to steam-clean about 3,200 cans), "hot-spot" proactive crews that in one example collected more than 121,000 needles and about 700 tons of debris, and a Tenderloin workforce-development cleaning program operating weekday mornings. He said the loss of alternative-workforce programs (GA, Project 20, SWAT) — down roughly 40% over four years — has reduced the city’s manual-cleaning capacity and complicated efforts to sustain equitable coverage across neighborhoods.
Supervisors pressed DPW on staffing, zone allocations and costs for pit stops and ongoing staffing. The department said it provides the detailed data to the mayor and controller, and that funding and hiring choices will depend on what the board and mayor ultimately appropriate.
The next procedural step the chair described was drafting a resolution to formalize the board’s budget priorities on street cleaning for submission to the mayor.
The presentation and the department’s answers provided quantitative detail for supervisors weighing one-time and ongoing funding choices in the coming budget cycle; the committee moved to file the hearing at the end of the meeting.
