the masonic temple site. recently i sat in on some a.d.r. relating to that masonic temple. nobody really wanted to talk about conditions. there were 57 wonderful conditions but nobody wanted any of them except the few little people who went in and bargained with the planning department. that is the kind of thing we need to avoid. there are organizations like public conversations project if they still exist that have really helped. i think an open communication, neighborhood disputes and so on, people understanding -- >> thank you. >> good evening, commissioners. this is in response to the very new document that the planning staff put out.

march 24, 2011, the h.c.d. approval of draft -- etc. this is very new. i had put in a public records request, also known as sunshine request for communication tass go back and forth from h.c.d. to the planning department and i never received this in advance so this is first time i've seen it. in fact, the entire language in ishing is pretty much underlined to show that it is all new language and i think that -- i request that this ceqa finding not be adopted today because this is all rather new. thank you. >> good evening, commissioners. i'm rather disappointed and dismayed because the basis of the housing element, a lot of it

is based on smart growth, transit policy and it was interesting because last month, february, february 24, as a matter of fact, it was -- there was a hearing regarding 375 and stated the importance of collaborating with the transit agency to have transit and land use, consider it together for the future and in this case, it has not be been done. the housing element, unfortunately, as i said, the basis is on transit first. and the major problem is that muni is not reliable. i think you know that. the transit agency knows that and yet you build as foundation

that we have an effective transit system, which we don't. and it is hard to fathom that you can vote to proceed and to build on this ineffective system. and to compound that, we now have the subway coming online and i'm not sure if you -- well circulated, that the central subway is going to take a lot of funding away from the other muni operations and i think you need a transit department to explain that and if that is true, then perhaps, we have a major, major problem going forward. the other thing i don't like about the housing element is that the workforce housing issue has not been addressed, will not be addressed, cannot be addressed. it is one of those problems that

are stated but there is no mitigation. and that's one of the major issues i sigh. -- see. the other thing i need to bring up, i mentioned before, the planner, michael stated that even though you may have a nice village and have walkable neighborhoods which you shop and do your business, that you may need on occasion to have your own automobile. you may not use it all the time. you may use public transit when it is there. so, you know, i do have to object to policy of trying to reduce parking completely. thank you. >> thank you. >> hello again, commissioners in.

george the twin peaks council. i just have one brief remark ooble transit and reliance on muni in terms of housing developments. getting rid of or living in cars, cars represent 38% of muni's total income so without cars there would be no muni. i'm glad that people want to reduce cars. they want to comply with sp 375, reduce v.m.t.'s. this is great, but if there are no cars, definitely there is no muni. there is no transportation villages and this whole model will die under its own weight. muni is not effective. the vehicles there, miles per hour have increasingly declining. there are several problems with muni right now. problems that are going to be representative of not getting funded by $40 million a year less by the state.

projected over $1.8 million in deficits over the next 20 years. people who are riding muni right now want to get off the bus. they don't want to get on it. this whole transit concept is basically a myth and this whole reliance on taxing and getting rid of cars and eliminating cars will just lead to hurting your transportation model. thank you. >> thank you. >> is there additional public comment? >> good evening, again, commissioners. judy berkowitz. i too -- the community advisory body. meetings, i would like to comment that it was called body and not board or commission.

it has no power. department receives such funds and is not dependent on developers fees, we're going to have real problems and dissension such as we're having now. for some reason, he had decided he knows what csfm wants. i don't know what source he has received this erroneous information that he has attacked coalition with this evening but we are indeed used to his provocation and attacks. we do not have a problem with growth, per se. but we wish to make sure that everything is done according to process. we don't want to streamline things. and -- nor skirt the process. we are not beholding to the developers nor their dollars. therefore this is our basis on how coalition for san francisco

neighborhoods operates. thank you. >> thank you. is there additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> thank you. thank you for indulging me in my comments. usually i wait until after the commissioner's commends. if i may channel doug schumaker for a moment, it is time to move on. i believe that we have struck an exceptionally good balance with this proposed housing element. we will not get agreement from folks on which -- on the issue of neighborhood character, if i can use the worse versus growth. an argument that will go way beyond the bounds of this housing element and will continue for decades.

to beat a dead horse, the housing element is not code. it is a policy document. it is not guidelines. it is policy document. the notion that it is just guidelines is also not true. but it is also not code. and so the housing element does not raise height limits or lower park retirements or do any of those things. it sets a policy direction for you and the board of supervisors and the mayor to make decisions on these things if and when they come up in the future. that's the promair purpose of the housing -- i struggled. you know, staff has really struggled with that message. because no matter how many times we have said that, people come back and say you're raising dense tiss. you're raising heights. you're adding secondary units. housing is doing none of those things. there are only souments we can say that without me -- so many times we can say that without me

throwing my hands up and say people are getting it or choosing not to listen. we can emphasize how we feel this is a document and its time has come and we respectfully ask you to approve this tonight. thank you. >> commissioner miguel? vice president miguel: yes, for a moment there, i had to look at my agenda. that's where most of those comments should be addressed and urge you to do so. because they are the once who should hear what you're saying. they are the ones who are involved in all of these transportation transit problems. that we -- you and i think all of us know san francisco has. aside from that, i would like to compliment the department. i had the opportunity to sit in

on a few of the meetings at the department of the advisory group . they were not always content, but they were well-rounded with the number of people who were there and the comments that came through. i really think the department has done a marvelous job on a very difficult task of wordsmithing. i only have one comment and i had missed it before, truthfully. that is on policy 1.4, there is a phrase involved several parcels or blocks. several can easily be interpreted by anyone from wester on down meaning three

with no sizes attached and to do a community planning process for three small parcels would be a bit much having gone through entire better neighborhoods 202 plan. that's what it was supposed to be have been finished, by the way. not when it started. i would suggest just eliminating the two words, parcels or. so that it would read zoning changes that involve several blocks. other than that, i'm satisfied that this is a high-end policy document whose time has come. commissioner antonini? commissioner antonini: thank

you. i have a few concerns. guess in the beginning i want to raise something that has been raised often. the increased density is not required to meet a housing reallocation within an existing housing stock. in other words, the way we have -- the entimements we have made, or the various areas where projects have already been entitled and if, in fact, they follow through with building the units that are projected, that -- and we use infill housing that is appropriate to the present zoning that we don't have to change the zoning density in existing neighborhoods, that in order to meet the quota. >> i think what you're saying is to meet our allocation we don't have to rezone. that's right. the housing element does not call for rezoning or changing density anywhere in order to meet the --

commissioner antonini: that's an important point to make. there is a lot of concern about that. i'm concerned about that too. a couple of particular policies. i guess policy 11.2 and we dealt with the ccnr's that certain neighborhoods have and i think there is a caveat there was sbrood in there and it says something to the effect that although only these guidelines that are only guidelines if documents approved by the planning commission can be legally enforced by the planning department. we know that. i don't know whether that has to be in there because it is a complicated situation. there are a couple of neighborhoods. westwood park and bernal heights has some codified things in there. however i think we have to be supportive of them and i think there were some concerns by many people about this being, you know, an invitesation that these

documents don't have some -- any authority and i think they do as far as commissioners are concerned, that we, you know, we look at these and certainly would consider them when any kind of approval was going on. so i don't know how the other commissioners feel but i would like to see -- maybe -- i understand what you're saying but i don't know if it is necessary. >> i think the point, commissioner, was simply to say that you should consider these documents but the city can be in no position to legally enforce them because they are private documents. >> right. maybe we can change the wording but not eliminate it entirely. more to that effect. they are important and should be supported or whatever you want to say. they are not legally supportable by the city or something like that. that might help. and then the other thing was this issue about policy 1.6 and there has been a lot of discussion about this. and i brought this out and it was a question about consider

greater flex kt in -- flexibility in the size and number of units. at the very end it does say some areas such as rh-1 and rh 2. protecting neighborhood character. does that mean you stay with the designation of one unit of 150 square feet in an rh-1 footprint or does it mean that you can have two unitses if the character of the neighborhood allowed for that? >> i believe in your case there is actually a proposed amendment to this but that particular sentence talks about maintaining the existing built envelope patterns. the existing pattern or we were kind of responding to prevailing existing, we changed from limit to pattern to try and talk about

how we want to see a reflection of what is actually there. a lot of rh-1 and rh-2 districts, you're allowed to go to 40 feet but that is not what is actually on the ground. we talk about patterns, rather than limits. but it is to get to the point of maintaining the existing uses or the -- in terms of density, it would be rh-1 or rh-2. >> we talk about this when we look at mergers and look at the actual zoning and what the pattern is. i think what a lot of people are concerned about is if it is an rh-1 zoned neighborhood, and the whole neighborhood is rh-1 exclusively, that should be one family residence only, you could not put two residences on a single lot unless there is a weird zoning thing where there

is a single lot that you can split. >> this is talking about the prevailing height and bulk. it is not saying we should or should not do secondary units. >> ok. so i'm understanding from that that, you know, i think the public should understand too, that we're not talking about allowing zoning change changes in rh-1 or rh-2 districts. ok. that's clear. i have a few other little things that i wanted to just bring up without getting into too much detail but i think we have to realize that housing allotments are only goals and this is something having been through this once before but sometimes we do have speakers come up here and they say well, you can't approve that because you have to have more affordable housing. you can't approve a market rate

housing. that is not restrictive on what we approve or don't approve. these are merely things put out and targets for us to try to and the range has changed because as populations change and income levels change then the numbers change, even as we're in the process of addressing the quotas from -- not quotas but allotments, that came from the last housing element, things have changed significantly now. so we're always a little bit behind it so i t important to understand that's the way things are. and then this neighborhood community-based process versus neighborhood process. i understand they are kind of the same thing. is that -- are we talking about the same thing here? >> i think we have been using the term somewhat interchangeably. we did in the last draft trying to come up with terminology that

we felt balanced everybody's concern and then we tried to use the same term throughout the document and defined it in policy 1.4, so we are talking about the same thing. >> i've always been a believer that we're all san franciscans and we all have a stake in what happens. however, i think, you know, we do not need to have, you know, a consensus of all possible commentors on something that is in a particular neighborhood. those closer to it have the highest impact. we have to defer most directly to those who are closest and feel the impact most and i think that is kind of what we have always done. and this has been pointed out as a flexible document. i know there is a lot of talk

about different density changes and that is not -- today is not the day to talk about ways that i think this could be obtained but that is a discussion for another day. and then -- let's see, the only other things i had here were, you know, we talked a little bit on a couple of sections here, a little bit of language, when we're talking about protecting industries, 101.5 and we're talking about industrial service sector jobs must be protected from displacement and i would like to see some kind of language saying viable industrial and service sector jobs. if that is possible to put that in there. because you know, we often -- it just is a better general statement. we have been down that road a lot on eastern neighborhoods and i think we have kind of solved

that problem already. >> can you repeat that number? commissioner antonini: the section was 101.5. am i protect on that or not? >> i'll find it. commissioner antonini: ok. and then i think the other thing was we talk in policy 1.10 and it is support new housing where people can rely upon public transportation, walking and bicycling, which i think there was a lot of interest in putting that statement in there. but it talks about, especially affordable but i think it should be, you know, both affordable -- all housing i think, should, you know, have this preference toward situation where if we have a chance to site it closer to available transit probably is the best place to site it.

i didn't want to make it exclusive only to affordable housing. i don't think there is too much else here. one important thing in section 9.1, where we're talking about building -- preserving affordable housing and i think i would like to see, you know, the idea that we make sure that as you mentioned earlier in your comments that, you know, the housing that we preserve, existing housing, that it be safe and seismically sound and functional. and that we make sure that we're not just preserving housing just because it is there. obviously the there are histo rinch cal -- historical changes. just preserving it just because

it is there in a dilapidated fire hazard state is something we have to look closely at wand the seismic concerns and the earthquake in japan, it becomes more of a concern that we come up with a strategy and the transportation element objective number 11, it is -- i think i would like to see -- it talks about public transportation being the primary mode. i'm not quite sure if that is the case. i would say improve public transit to allow it to become a primary mode in san francisco, because you're making a statement that i'm not sure is accurate but i think we would want to improve public transit to allow it to become a primary mode of transportation. and the last one is policy 8.2

and enencourages employers to employee existing residents and i think we also should -- am i going too fast on this? >> i'm sorry? commissioner antonini: that's ok. policy 8.2. encourage employers to employee existing residents or residents who agree to relocate to san francisco. i mean i think we should also, you know, put that in there too. >> i don't, but we'll have that debate later. commissioner antonini: we can have that discussion at a later time but i don't think there is any reason why if somebody wants to move to san francisco. >> we're not discouraging it. we are just simply saying -- encouraging people who live here. >> i think some of the policies that you were reading from are part of the resolution and one thing that we do is make findings of consistency with the general plan so they are actually in other elements that were not --

commissioner antonini: ok. so they are not in the current element. >> no, if you want to direct us to rewrite the whole general plan. commissioner antonini: i don't think so. you're taking it from other parts of the whole general plan. we won't get into too many more details. we're dealing with something that is not before us on these things. thank you for your comments. i think we have cleared up a couple of areas of concern. >> ok, great. >> commissioner boardon? commissioner borden: yeah, it is funny. i wund here when the original battle started with the housing element. for me, every time i'm thinking where is the zoning map that shows the new density. i'm having a hard time because we have this discussion and people are really upset about words and then i remember that the planning commission has something called discretion and that every week we see projects and we make decisions that are right for the neighborhood character and community or are not right and i'm not really sure how this document changes that.

it doesn't seem to me that it does. and i think that is something that, you know, we all would recognize. the other issue is something calledizeology among people that have discession. there are some who want more density and cars and less density and less cars. it doesn't really say anything in that regard. it says both but it doesn't say that neighborhood x has to have density and neighborhood y doesn't. it doesn't exclusively say that. people would like to have a firmer statement in one camp or the other. the truth is we have hard enough time with it being in the middle. the other thing i think that gets lost in the debate again is that numbers are -- yes, about housing numbers but also about population growth and to the extent that we in the planning department, when people decide

to move to san francisco, they don't say let me check out the planning department and what housing opportunities there are. unfortunately it doesn't work that way. if it did we could control people who are boarding muni and calibrate the housing that we would build and for the people that we would know that are coming or people that already live here, etc. but the problem is not how decisions are made. when the dot.com boom happened a lot of people moved in and drove up rents. the housing element had anything to do with it. they were not aware that we had one. what we're trying to deal with is overarching policy how we deal with all of these issues. it is very frustrating as a person who does not own a car, extraordinaryly frustrating taking muni and how crowded and crappy that it is right now. do i think we shouldn't build any more housing or make any

policy decisions because muni sucks now? no, this is a temporary circumstance that we're in but it is not the permanent circumstance that we're in. hopefully by 2014 when we're looking at the next level, we'll be in a different situation. the thing is the housing element is -- take that out of the equation. it is not changing -- it has nothing to do with what muni is the way it is today. it is the way it is because it is underfunding period of time it hasn't always been very well managed. so there are a myriad of issues related to muni, which is what everyone brought about in the e.i.r. document that are bigger than san francisco. bigger than the state. bigger than government. it is a big issue that we had to deal with it and i think yes, we need to make decisions about prioritizeation about transportation but a lot of that needs to happen at the m.t.a. and board of supervisors because they have the ability to make some decisions and the truth is