SF Public Works is behind in maintenance projects, grand jury report says

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- San Francisco's Department of Public Works is being asked to be more transparent in reporting about city projects.

A civil grand jury found that Public Works has failed to keep up with its maintenance projects and made mistakes during the construction of others.

It's been more than four years since San Francisco Public Work's Director Mohammed Nuru was arrested.

David Anderson, then U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, outlined the charges.

"The complaint alleged corruption, bribery, side deals by one of San Francisco's highest ranking public employees," he said in a January 2020 news conference.

Since then, the Department of Public Works has tried to regain the trust of city residents.

For example, despite a citywide shutdown during the pandemic, the department delivered, describing its workers as "flexible, creative, and responsive."

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But it wasn't enough. Ten months after Nuru's arrest, voters overwhelmingly decided an oversight commission was needed.

A recent civil grand jury report found the Department of Public Works hasn't always been transparent, and for years, its mindset was "what happens in the department, stays in the department."

"The Department of Public Works got an oversight commission in 2020. Up until then, all of their internal reporting and stuff like that stayed internal, there was not a lot of information that you would find on their website that gave you a detail of a project and the way that project changed over time," said Will McCaa, the head of the Grand Jury Investigation Committee.

The grand jury cites a few examples of projects that went over budget and construction that had some defects.

Fireboat Station number 35: during construction, a storm took out power. The station's bay doors were left open, "resulting in water damage requiring additional labor costs."

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The cleats used to secure fireboats "were too small for the size of the securing ropes."

But DPW told us the initial design was approved by the fire department and, rather than replace them with larger cleats, the fire department had kept them as-is.

The mechanized lifts used for small watercrafts "stopped working, believed to be caused by the corrosive effect of salt air," something that perhaps should have been foreseen given that, overtime, corrosion becomes a problem along the Embarcadero.

But with regard to the lifts, DPW told us that the construction "team brought in specialty marine engineers who made recommendations on the equipment."

The equipment is under warranty.

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The report mentions two other fairly new buildings: Fire Station 49 and the Police Department Traffic Company and Forensic Services Division. They, too, went over budget and have reported some structural problems.

McCaa said DPW should have anticipated some of these issues.

"That's what the city auditor should be looking into and seeing if those judgments turn out to be good," McCaa said.

DPW has 90 days to respond to the grand jury's report, but decided to address some of these findings now.

"To say that projects are not delivered on time or on budget is unfair. We deliver a lot of projects on time and on budget. The Civil Grand Jury pulled out some projects that weren't," said Rachel Gordon, DPW spokesperson.

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Gordon says it's not uncommon for costs to run higher than anticipated.

"How much does steel cost at the time, or cement? Is it ever going to be perfect? We know it's not going to be perfect," she said.

On the issue of deferred maintenance, Public Works agreed with the grand jury in that the city has endured years of neglected maintenance because the money hasn't always been there.

"There's not unlimited funding, and it becomes priority and putting projects into the queue," Gordon said.

As the city is dealing with a massive budget deficit, we asked Gordon if she thought DPW would fall behind when maintaining city buildings.

"We've not assessed that that's going to happen. We haven't had that as a red flag that that's going to be happening," Gordon said.

"They do have an idea of what the backlog is. It's a little over $600 million per the last capital plan. The problem is, they don't know the severity of letting that maintenance go unfixed. The longer something goes unfixed, generally speaking, the more expensive it's going to be to fix it," McCaa said.