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Budget committee backs sending forward acceptance of $14.94 million regional public-safety communications grant
Summary
The committee agreed to send an ordinance to the full Board authorizing the Department of Emergency Management to act as fiscal agent for a $14,941,976.82 federal communications grant, noting San Francisco must advance partner jurisdictions’ reimbursements and provide a roughly $451,000 local match; staff recommended technical amendments to position coding and FTE counts.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee voted to send to the full board an ordinance authorizing the Department of Emergency Management to accept and expand a federal public-safety interoperable communications grant totaling $14,941,976.82 and to serve as the grant’s fiscal agent.
Theresa Serrato of the Department of Emergency Management described the program and said the department had worked closely with the budget office. Harvey Rose, the budget analyst, said the committee should view the grant favorably but flagged several clarifications in his written report, including that the city must advance reimbursements to partner counties before seeking state reimbursement and that the resolution’s personnel entries should be coded to terminate with the grant.
"We view the grant as a favorable grant for San Francisco, but we do have several qualifications that we would simply point out to you," Rose said, recommending that two positions be corrected from 1.0 FTE to 0.58 FTE and that grant coding be added so the positions end when the grant does unless the Board decides otherwise.
Committee members asked whether advancing other jurisdictions’ claims would create a cash-flow risk for the City. Monique Smuta of the controller’s office said federal reimbursements “generally do reimburse very quickly — a matter of days after the claim has been submitted,” and she did not expect a significant cash-flow problem.
During discussion Rose also noted a procurement detail: Motorola was the only bidder on a roughly $9 million contract component of the project, which did not require Board approval because it fell below the $10 million threshold. After adopting the budget analyst’s recommended amendments on the record, the committee voted to send the ordinance forward with the analyst’s recommendations incorporated.
The full Board will consider final authorization and any required appropriations as part of its regular calendar.
