>> 3 evening, and welcome to the july 13, 2011 meeting of the board of appeals. the presiding officer is michael garcia, and joining him are the commissioners, the board's president will be absent today. to my left is the deputy attorney. she will provide any legal advice this evening. i am the executive director. we are joined by representatives from some city departments who

will be speaking tonight. the zoning administrator is representing the planning commission hearing good sitting behind them -- the planning commission. at this time, if you would go over the meeting guidelines and conduct the swearing in process. >> the board requests you turn off all phones and pagers please carry on conversations involve where curator they have seven minutes to present cases and 3-4 rebuttals. -- 3 minutes for rebuttals. to assist the board in accurate

preparation of minutes, members of the public who wish to speak on a particular item or asked but not required to submit a speaker cards when you come up to the podium. speaker cards and hands are available on the left side of the podium as well. -- and pens are available on the left side of the podium as well. if you have questions about requesting a re-hearing, please speak to board staff during the break or call the office tomorrow morning. the board office is located at 1615 mission streets. this meeting is broadcast live on san francisco government television, cable channel 78, and the these are available for purchase directly from s.f. and -- dvds are available directly from sfgtv.

if you intend to testify and wish to give your testimony, please stand, raise your right hand, and say, i do. please note any member of the public may speak without taking an oath pursuant to the rights under the sun shine ordinance. the solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? thank you. >> thank you. vice-president garcia, commissioners, i have one announcement. the july 20 meeting has been cancelled. that is next week's meeting. our next meaeting will be july 27. this has to do with -- one item

has been withdrawn and will not be heard this evening. moving on to item number one, is there any member of the public who would like to speak on an item that is not in the agenda? seeing none, item 2 is comments and questions. seeing none, we will move to the adoption of minutes. before you for consideration are the minutes of the june 29, 2011, meeting. >> i would move we adopt the findings as written. thank you. >> is there any public comment on the minister? seeing none, if you could call the roll please. >> on that motion to adopt the june 29 minutes -- [calling votes] the vote is 4-0.

those amendments are adopted. >> item 4a has been withdrawn, so we will start with item 4b. we received a letter asking the board take jurisdiction over of plumbing permit. for the purpose of filing of penalty appeal. the permit was issued on june 1, 2011. that ended on june 16, and the jurisdiction request was received on june 24. this complies with legalizing without a permit. you have three minutes.

if you will just pull the microphone up, thank you. >> good evening. on may 25, i went to the department of the building and inspection and paid penalties stemming from a violation citations we received for some illegal and plumbing work that was performed. i wanted to take the necessary steps. we paid off the fees, applied for a permit, and over the next 10 or 12 days, took the necessary steps.

richard came by and signed off on the work, and the citation was then abated. i asked if he knew the procedure by which we can apply to possibly get for the fees are paid during your -- now i've paid. he told me to contact his office. i attempted to make contact with somebody, finally got in touch with a gentle man who it turns out was officer who initially issued a citation. i asked a question about how to go about receiving a refund. he did not have the answers.

he directed me to ken young. after getting bounced around by a few different people, i finally got to talking to victor and learned that i only house 50 -- i only have 15 days to apply an appeal. i am requesting that i've been given the opportunity to apply to have my citation fees reimbursed back to me by virtue of his jurisdiction request. >> who did the work? >> the work was done by a licensed plumber.

>> based here in the city? >> correct. i do not know the name of the gentlemen, but that was the guy who came and reported to work your your region reported to work. >> this is licensed thomas -- this was the guy who reported to work. >> this is licensed amount -- license? >> correct. when i contacted the office, i could not get in touch with somebody i can not -- i contacted.

mr. young is a gentle man that got us in touch with the board of appeals. youhe is from the board, but i o not know his title. >> i have two comments. one talked about this toward vacating. if we grant you jurisdiction, the best we can do is reduce isn't. that is an interesting choice of a teacher at tonight. -- t-shirt tonight. >> i forgot. >> thank you. we will hear from the department now.

>> i am available for any questions if you have got anything you would like to ask me. >> so the department have an opinion about whether this board should grant jurisdiction and? >> i would say there is no objection, because it is going to come before you again. good a contract would do a lot of business with the city. i find it strange there were 15 days. >> that is not too did the original work? >> the violation was given in 2010, and in august, richard issued a first notice of violation, and there was no

action, so we sent its to code enforcement, and he is a building inspector. typically, we would refer to the back of the notice of violation. it is pretty clear it is 15 days, but i do not think the department has any problem with surrounding jurisdiction. it would be up to the chief inspector whether they want to reduce the penalty or not. good >> is there any public comment on this item? c. non, commissioners, the matter is submitted. -- seeing none, the matter is

submitted. >> given the fact it was a reasonably close time to support jurisdiction. >> i feel the same way, especially in light of the comments by the department. ã9qj? arçm5 >> is there a moti? >> moved to grant with the comment. perhaps the department needs to look out whether there is culpability from unlicensed firm that does this kind of work besides the property owner superior -- property owner. >> would that also be based on the fact of the city representatives did not inform them of the right to appeal? >> i would say it is based on the fact of the city process was not clearly made to this particular individual.

>> thank you. you can call roll please. >> we have a motion from commissioner fung to grant on the idea that it was not made clear to this individual. the president is absent. [calling votes] the vote is 4-0. the jurisdiction is granted. you have a five-day appeal period. >> we will move to item number five. this is a special item having to do with the property on market street. the board received a letter asking the board set aside its decision after default of may 11, 2011, whereby the board

declined to take a jurisdiction over a notice of violation of penalty issued by the zoning administrator. that is dated may 7, 2010, regarding non compliance with conditions of approval requiring all new ways to be contained within the facility. good -- all noise be contained within the facility. >> thank you for the opportunity to address you a. on april 8, i filed two appeals. one was the request for jurisdiction for his business, and also for of property on ortega street has been withdrawn. i entered today's date which was for the appeal as a hearing date for both of those matters, so

i'm is the original hearing date, and this was entirely my error and not -- i missed the original hearing date, and this was entirely at my error. i faint it is worthwhile for this board to hear from the -- i think it is worthwhile for this or to hear from the people involved and to hear the actual issues of nine it would be appropriate. there are zero of -- why it would be appropriate. there are a lot of people who depend on trigger. they will not all be speaking today. we will have one speaker representing them, but i would like to point out that if there are some real issues with the way the planning enforcement operations and penalties of crude were they have a different

agency reporting on issues, the entertainment commission gives report and penalties of crew based on those reports. it is not -- now penalties acrue based on those reports. there are several situations, and i would like the opportunity to explain all the measures taken to come into compliance. >> i wanted to tell the people behind you they can get comfortable and sit down. >> thank you so much. please give us the opportunity to present these issues. a lot of work has been done to improve the situation. these penalties really challenge the economic viability of this business, and it would be a terrible shame to see this cause

the loss of the district and another empty storefronts and a very fragile commercial district. thank you very much. would you shed some light on the issue you raise having to do with the process of someone coming from the entertainment commission to file the original complaint on behalf of some citizen who made the complaint? >> when a complaint comes into the planning department about a sound issue, which is all the cases related to this. there have been minor issues, but it is nothing like would you heard about. -- like would you have heard about. he writes of our records --

writes up a report. if he observes no violation, he does not issue a report, and quite often when a report is written, it becomes difficult for a business to get him to come back out. his attention is focused on the more problematic clothes. it is difficult to get a timely response from him, and the nature of the violations are very subtle, and i hope to have the opportunity to describe how variable that is and all the measures we have taken and plan to take to ameliorate any future sound problems. we are doing our best, but please give us the opportunity to do this.

>> when does it go from being nov to novp? >> i am not prepared to answer that. >> thank you, sir. you are asking us to grant the original and jurisdiction to request a hearing? >> i am superior -- i am. >> you want to say that -- why that is required? >> that is not on the calendar. if you grant the request to set aside that decision, he will come back with the request. i want to be clear. >> if we do not grant it. >> i am glad you are interested

in the subject. >> the original jurisdiction request was supposed to be heard on may 11, 2011. >> cracked. >> in the appeal for the original file a -- original violation ended may 24, 2010, so you were coming for our request almost a year after the appeal time and did. >> that is correct. this has been a long process and one that has required a lot of resources. it has not always been as consistent as it should have been. >> mr. sanchez. >> thank you.

good afternoon. planning department. at the prior hearing when it did not show, i did the tell the history, and it is a lengthy enforcement history, so without going over the details, it goes back to 2009. good there was a notification to inform them of the enforcement issues. ultimately, we had to go to the planning commission to have them not provoke a previous authorization but to modify to require them to enclose a smoking area they had established at the front. the smoking area had been the root cause of a lot of noise issues that resulted from the club, so it has been extremely difficult to get compliance from this er