Committee News E-mail Update
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Quarter 1 2009

In our on-going attempt to keep members informed of the work of our committees, this e-communication is designed to provide a brief update on current committee activities, accomplishments, events/seminars planned, and guest speakers.  If you have an interest in learning more about a specific committee, please contact the Chair directly via the email links provided.  All members are encouraged to participate on committees.  A member is defined as an employee of any dues-paying entity.

Associate Committee

• plans and orchestrates networking events for the general membership.
• kicked off the year with the Texas Hold’em tournament attended by over 100 members.
• joined forces with the PAC committee for the annual PAC at the PARK fundraiser on April 8.
• Next up is the Annual Spring Golf Tournament and Wine Tour at Silverado on May 13.  Click here to register.
• working hard this year to keep event costs reasonable for our members.  All social event invitations will be emailed to members, and no hard copies will be mailed this year.  This helps reduce event costs and uses less resources. 

For more information contact 2009 Committee Chair, Howard Fish, Skyline Construction  at hfish@skylineconst.com.
 
BOMA-SF-PAC (BOMA SF Political Action Committee)

• Met individually with all newly-elected members of the Board of Supervisors.
• Instituted quarterly meetings with Mayor Newsom.
• Monitored possibility of special (June or July) election and potential measures for same.
• Made three contributions totaling $5,500 - $2,000 to the SF Chamber of Commerce for their CityBeat Poll, $2,500 to the Laguna Honda Foundation, and $1,000 to Scott Wiener, running for re-election to the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee.
• Began fundraising efforts to increase PAC's resources for upcoming elections and agreed to raise $10K for BOMA Int'l PAC this year.
• Five BOMA San Francisco Members participated in BOMA's National Issues Conference in Washington DC March 23-24, 2009 (Ken Cleaveland, Margot Crosman, Bruce Schilling, Stephany Cull and Nancy Gille).

For more information contact 2009 Committee Chair, Nancy Gille, REAL Systems, ngille@msn.com.

BOMA Young Professionals (BOMA YP) Steering Committee 

• Hosted 2  Career Success Workshops to date:  “How Recessions Impact the Real Estate Industry”, presented by Tom Gille, CAC Real Estate Management Co., Inc., and “Communicating with Credibility” featuring speakers Steve Colvin, Boston Properties and Elizabeth Trowbridge, LBA Realty.
• Conducted our first BOMA YP Member Benefit Review on February 3rd.
• Held the first social event of the year with a St. Patrick’s Day themed networking mixer at The Holding Company at Two Embarcadero Center on March 12th.
• The second annual Spring Boat Cruise will be setting sail from South Beach Harbor on May 14th.  Click here to register.

For more information contact 2009 Committee Chair, Preston Richards, Boston Properties, at prichards@bostonproperties.com.   

Codes & Regulations Committee 

• The committee has been given the opportunity to comment and provide input to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission on the Commercial Water Conservation Ordinance.  The ordinance is aimed at helping to meet a goal of reducing water usage by 10 million gallons per day by 2018.  The ordinance has been revised with input from BOMA and is currently in a form in which the Codes Committee is willing to support.
• San Francisco Fire Department has provided regular updates as to issues in particular related to BOMA and membership.  Of particular note is the High Rise Fire Sprinkler Ordinance in San Francisco and the Fire Departments efforts ensure compliance.  These efforts may include the policy of starting to red-tag permits for buildings that have not completed the retrofit.
• San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI) has provided regular updates regarding permitting and building inspections in San Francisco.  One of the major topics of discussion has been the reduction in workforce at the department as a result of the poor economy.  The Codes Committee has expressed particular concern with respect these reductions and has gone on record that some of the most helpful inspectors are being let go.
• Cal OSHA is more actively enforcing motor maintenance on permanent window washing platforms.  This means that the motors will have to be removed and taken from the site for service.  This may increase the cost of maintenance to platforms, but has always been in the Code and until recently has not been strictly enforced.The Codes Committee is in the early stages of planning a “Codes Seminar” for sometime in October.

For more information contact 2009 Committee Chair, Jeff Palmer, Able Engineering Services, at jpalmer@ableserve.com.

Education Committee 

• The committee organized a well attended membership luncheons first quarter featuring representatives from local press, Mayor Newsom, and real estate veteran Jana Turner.
• The committee organized a very successful Lease Escalations seminar taught by Shorenstein’s Paul Grafft.
• The committee joined forces with the Environmental Committee to help Property Managers complete their Earth Award applications at the Sustainability Fair in January.   It was very well attended by the membership and helped increase the number of applications submitted.
• The first Building Tour of 2009 will be held on May 20 at 555 Mission Street, the newly constructed and award-winning Tishman Speyer building. Register by clicking here.
  
• We have some great new additions to our team: a new board liaison, Tim Ballas, CB Richard Ellis; Sandra Litchy, RREEF and Paul Cenni,  ABM Janitorial.  Please contact Sue Rinetti if you are interested in joining the committee. 

For more information contact 2009 Committee Chair, Sue Rinetti, Rinetti & Associates, at sue@rinettiandassociates.com.

Emergency Preparedness Committee 

The following is a list of the Emergency Preparedness Committee’s specific goals for 2009: 

• Integrate committee resources to be more effective in our communications with general membership;
• Strengthen regular participation in our meetings to include more principal members (asset/property/building managers);
• Participate in a “shelter in place” exercise providing a means for membership to observe; a seminar on “lessons learned” will follow the exercise.
• Develop a series of informal training sessions for Fire Life Safety Directors;
• Facilitate a means for neighboring buildings to become informed of their relocation/mass eacuation plans and encourage a “buddy list”.

In order to accomplish these goals, the committee divided into four subcommittees. The structure of the monthly meetings have been formatted so the initial 20 minutes of the meeting will allow each subcommittee to provide an update and other members to make any announcements.  The remaining 40 minutes provide the subcommittees to meet and accomplish the goals of that group.  Below is a summary of what each subcommittee is working on:

• Communication Subcommittee (Chair, John Troccoe):  The communication subcommittee is currently developing an emergency preparedness survey to be distributed, first to the committee members, and then to the entire BOMA membership.  The subcommittee is also updating the committee's page of bomasf.org to include the most up-to-date sources of information related to emergency planning in high-rise buildings.
• Event Subcommittee (Chair, Patricia Rayburn, Equity Office):  The event subcommittee is planning an evacuation exercise that will allow for BOMA members to observe how emergency teams from both the public and private sector shelter tenants in place, and then have them evacuate a building.  This will be the first planned building evacuation in San Francisco.  There will be a follow-up seminar to discuss the lessons learned from the exercise and the best practices that were involved.
• Training Subcommittee (Chair, Sarah Marantette, Cushman & Wakefield):  The training subcommittee is working on sponsoring a series of brown bag lunches that would feature experts on a variety of topics related to fire/life safety and disaster planning in office buildings.
• Neighborhood Subcommittee (Chair, Misa Gidding-Chatfield, PM Reality Group):   The neighborhood subcommittee is developing a model program for neighboring buildings to use in a disaster situation that would pre-establish building to building mutual aide protocols that would function if the public sector was unavailable. 

For more information contact Committee Chair, Ellen Kovach, The Swig Company, ekovach@swigco.com.  

 Environment Committee 

• The committee's primary focus for the first four months of the year was the set-up and execution of the BOMA EARTH Awards Program. 45 building  applications were submitted - 16 more than last year.
• The committee spent numerous hours evaluating each of the top-performing EARTH Award applicants through thorough site inspections and property audits.  This aspect of the EARTH Award Program is a great opportunity for committee members to see best practices put into action at innovative and diverse commercial real estate projects. 
• The EARTH Awards winners were announced at the EARTH Award Ceremony and Luncheon on Wednesday, April 22 at the Hotel Nikko.  The keynote speech was provided by Scott Moran, Director of Project Management for the San Francisco Academy of Sciences, a LEED Platinum Project, and each attendee received an advance copy of the San Francisco Business Times EARTH Award Supplement featuring profiles of the winning properties. Click here for complete event details including winners and special recognition awards.

For more information contact Committee Chair, Zachary Brown, Equity Office, at zachary_brown@equityoffice.com.

Government & Public Affairs Committee (GAPAC)

• The committee  revisited and revised the association’s Public Policy Priorities for 2009 and submitted them to the membership. They are now posted on the BOMA SF website.
• The committee has met each month with a local public official, starting with Jack Sylvan, the Economic and Workforce Director for Treasure Island, who gave us an update in January on that huge redevelopment project there. The city’s Planning Director, John Rahaim, met with the committee in February to update our members on the changes he is proposing there, especially in the area of reforming the wasteful Discretionary Review process.
• In March the committee met with Mohammed Nuru, Deputy Director for the city’s Public Works Department, who gave the committee a report on the city’s fight against graffiti.
• The April meeting featured two speakers. Our City Attorney, Dennis Herrera, gave the members an insight into his office duties and the reforms he has implemented there, and Tilly Chang, the senior planning director for the San Francisco County Transportation Agency, updated the group on the plans to reduce car traffic on Market Street.
• Lastly, the committee has also reviewed a number of pieces of legislation that impact our industry including the recently introduced “Lights Out” ordinance submitted by Board of Supervisor President David Chiu. Members and staff of BOMA are working with him to amend the legislation to accomplish the intent of turning out lights without putting building managers in the untenable position of having to police the activities of our tenants at night.
  

For more information contact Committee Chair, Susan Court, Cushman & Wakefield, scourt@cwpmc.com.

Member Services Committee 

• 2009 membership renewals are very strong.  Principal Member (building) renewals are at 96.4%, the highest in 10 years and the Associate renewal rate is 80%, on par with our historical rates.  Our new Building Members are also at a 10 year high with 18 new buildings joining year to date and we have 26 new Associate members so far for 2009.
• In an effort to continue to grow our membership, the Committee has announced the 2009 Membership Drive.  This year for every new member referral, both the referring member and new member will receive a coupon for a FREE membership luncheon.  This is our way of thanking our existing members and welcoming our new members to BOMASF.  We hope to encourage new members to becoming involved in the association events as soon as they join.The coupons can be used by the member or to invite a prospective member to attend a luncheon.  Our Membership Drive will culminate at the October Membership luncheon at which time one of our referring Member’s name will be randomly drawn to win a Grand Prize (to be determined later this year).  The more new members you refer, the better your chances of winning.  Good luck to all of our recruiters!
• We are always looking to recruit new members to this committee.  If you enjoy talking to members and non-members alike, about BOMA and how it can benefit people and companies, this is the committee for you. 
  

For more information contact 2009 Committee Chair Michelle Donnelly, CAC Real Estate Management Co., Inc., mdonnelly@cacremco.com.