director: good afternoon, and welcome to the may 16, 2012, meeting of the board of appeals. to my left is the deputy city attorney. she will provide the board with any needed legal advice this evening, and we have the board legal assistant, victor pacheco, and joseph duffy is here, as is john kwong, and scott sanchez is the zoning administrator. at this time, mr. pacheco, i would like to wish you a happy

birthday. and ask if you would go over the board meeting guidelines. secretary pacheco: the board asks that to turn off all pagers and carry on a conversations and a hallway. appellants, permit waters, and department representatives each has three minutes to present their cases and three minutes for rebuttal. people affiliated with them must complete their comments within the seven-minute and three-minute guidelines. member is not affiliated have up to three minutes to address the board and no rebuttals. to assist the board and accurate preparation of minutes, members of the public wish to speak on item are asked but not required to submit a speaker card or business card to staff when you come up to the podium. speaker cards and pens are available on the left side of

the podium. the board also welcomes your comments and suggestions. there are customer satisfaction forms on the left side of the podium, as well. if you have questions about hearings scheduled, please speak to board's staff after the break, or call the board office tomorrow morning. the board office is located on mission street, room 3 204, between two avenues. this meeting is broadcast live on san francisco government television, sfgtv, a cable channel 78, and dvd's of this meeting are available directly from sfgtv. at this time, we will conduct our swearing in process. if you intend to testify and wish to have the board give your testimony evidentiary weight, please stand and raise your hand and say "i do" after you have been sworn in or affirmed.

please note that any member of the public may speak without taking the oath, pursuant to the sunshine ordinance in be administrative code. thank you. do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, it will trick, and nothing but the trick. thank you. director: president garcia, others, we have two housekeeping items, and the first has to deal with item number eight, protesting a decision on laguna street. that has been withdrawn and will not be heard this evening. the next is item number 9, protesting a letter of determinations associated with geary street. the parties and join the requested a rescheduling. they are working on it. and with a motion, we can move it to that date.

president garcia: so moved. director goldstein: anything? mr. pacheco, could you please read the roll? secretary pacheco: we have a motion from the present. on that motion, commissioner fung, vice president hwang. that matter is rescheduled. director goldstein: we will move to item number one, which is public comment. is there anyone who would like to speak on item not on tonight's agenda? >> commissioners, my name is rodrigo santos, and i have been coming to our commission for the last 20 years, and i want to recognize all of the hard work and dedication on behalf of the

city. this is a very complex commission in the sense that you deal with technical issues. as a structural engineer, i have to bring these to the board. i want to tell you that you have done a tremendous job in deep politicizing this -- depoliticizing this. it is just a fad. i also want to thank the work and effort of mike garcia. it is my understanding that this is his last night as a commissioner. every time i have had an opportunity to present to this board, commissioner garcia was always prepared. commissioner garcia was always willing to find a common ground between parties. he had a tremendous knowledge of engineering architecture. more importantly, he was a

professional architect. he was able to bring a consensus. i think he will be sorely missed. and the mayor has asked any who have run for office to step down, even in the way commissioner garcia has as it has been quite graceful. he recognizes that he serves the mayor at his pleasure. this is precisely the character that i want to salute. mike garcia has service commission with great honor for the last eight years. prior to that, he wasn't ethics commissioner, so be served two years, and we are talking about

10 years that he has served, pro bono. every wednesday for 10 years. commissioner garcia, i want to thank you as a member of the structural engineering committee. thank you. president garcia: thank you. director goldstein: is there any other public comment under this item? seeing none, we will move on to item number two, which is commissioner comments and questions. commissioner garcia: anyone watching this will know that i will have some comments. thank you. those were kind words, but i will take issue with one thing you said, and that is that i have done this pro bono.

i have not done it pro bono. i have received a great deal, nothing monetary, but i have derived a great deal of pleasure from serving on this board, and i am pretty sad, pretty said to be leaving, and the mayor, by the way, was very gracious about the way he handled ball situation, and i'm going to assume he did it with every commissioner. he was certainly gracious the way he handled my leaving this board, but any rate, let me talk, if i may, i will limit for a few minutes. i have been here for quite awhile, and i have some thoughts about these proceedings, and i have some thoughts about the people i have served with, and -- said back. what i have really enjoyed about this board is that we get to deal with so many different departments.

we have dpw, dph, sf mta, buf, planning. i am sure i have left some out. dbi. we get to deal with those issues, and what that does for us is we'd get a bird's-eye view of city government. we get to develop and i that gives us insights -- developed an eye with insights. in some ways, things sent been unworkable, and we get to make them more workable. and if you will allow me to say some personal things about my family background, because it is relevant, i am a great believer. my mother was a lancaster, and her family came to the united states from 1634 because they were attorneys for the calverts,

and recently, a brother of mine wrote a book about our grandfather, so i noticed looking at this particular branch of my family and their generation has there been anyone, has there been a generation was there not someone who was an lawyer or a judge or legislature, and that continues to this day. i have two brothers who are lawyers. i have nieces and nephews who are liars. the grass -- the law means a lot to me. it is embedded in my dna. -- i have nieces and nephews who are lawyers. the law means a lot to me. it is embedded in my dna. this is to pervert -- to be preferred. on this board, we get to apply equity.

there is one section i believe. tax good relations -- tax board regulations gives this a great deal of discretion. while i have enjoyed this, i hope i have never abused it. the use of that discretion to help individuals who have come up against whirls of legislation that are unreasonable that we have been able to bring reason to. i've talked about st. augustine. i have stated that an overly narrow perspective renders it ridiculous. in that same vein as applied to law, chief justice marshall talked about something similar.

to do this would be absurd. it would create injustice. so we have gotten to do that here. and so i and derived a great deal of pressure from that. we have solved problems. there are lawyers who have advocated for their clients and advocated. sometimes they need to be year because the issues are complex, but we would not want them to come here without being able to advance the cause. and then we shipped to the incredible people i have got to work with. the word bureaucrat, i am a love of words, as some may know, but the word bureaucrat is a combination of a french word and a greek word. bureau means "desk" and "crat"

means power of. typically, a bureaucrat is thought of someone who misuse is the power of the desk, somebody who is overly rigid in carrying out his or her job. well, i have not seen one here. the people who have come before us to have represented departments, mr. john kwong from dpw, dr. ojo who i am going to miss terribly from dph, i in trying to remember. others from taxi. these individuals have been ghly professional. and then we have people from dbi. we have laurence kornfield. now we are lucky to have to duffy. i think when i first came from

planning, we had jonas, sometimes larry banner -- badiner, and we have mr. sanchez now. we have victor pacheco, or vincent, as he prefers to be known. he is the rock of this board. there are only two people who have been here longer than me, and that would be viktor and frank fung. as for other people who have been here, we had bob. if anyone would ever ask me, what did you think you accomplished when you were on board of appeals, it is an easy answer. i was president when we hired cynthia olstein. i take a lot of credit for that. -- cynthia olstein -- goldstein.

we now have francesca. the commissioners i have served with -- bill sygaya, frank fung, and then no particular order, we got kendall goh, tanya peterson, takie -- katie albright, rich hillis. and i guess i am going to finish with talking about frank. i hope i do not embarrass frank, but my brother in law, my sister married a man, jack, who was a fit generation architect.

and he was the only architect of that family left, so he got most of the books in that family, and i used to enjoy a quiet moments, reading through those books, and i ran across something, and i had already known for it, and i thought it was an inscription, so i wrote it down, and if you will forgive me, i'm going to read it. it reads, "while it is a great thing to be an architect of buildings, it is a far greater things to be an architect of affairs. a man of affairs who, with the broadening of his mind, looks to other sources of human endeavor, the telling of a story, and the enjoyment of drinks with friends, the unraveling of political situations. the designing of some method to equalize the burdens on every

member of the human family. thank you all. commissioner fung: may i say a few words? commissioner garcia: may i say a few words -- i think so. commissioner fung: i will correct one additional comment made by the speaker. it was not 80 years. it was seven years that commissioner garcia came here, and i first met him when he came to my office to discuss what it is that the board looks up, the type of processes. he knew that i had gone through multiple tenures on this board, and i had shared some of the thought that i have.

needless to say, i have been much shorter in my dialogue then my compatriot. however, he has caught on extremely quickly, and i think he epitomizes for the care of those that we want to seat at this board, so i wish him luck in his future endeavors, and hopefully he will bring the same type of reasonableness to his future office. commissioner: i cannot think there is a better time to and joined the board. you've been extremely supportive.

and there are some words that you had to say that either had to look up later or a " that you have given off of your head. i want to thank you for all that you have done to support my work and all that you have done for the city. director goldstein: is there any public comment on this item? the minutes. president garcia: seeing there are no comments, i move that we adopt these as written.

director goldstein: either any comments on these minutes? seeing none, mr. pacheco, could you please read the roll? secretary pacheco: [reading roll] thank you. the vote is by-0. the minutes are adopted. -- the vote is 5-0. director goldstein: ok, we will now go to item number four, protesting the issuance on march 15, 2012, to nextg networks of california, inc., a wireless box permit, and you will have seven minutes. >> thank you.

thank you, president garcia, for your service. a tough act to follow. i have a lot to say in a short amount of time. my name is jeff cooper, and my wife and i own the house at 156 27th ave. it is nextg's third attempt for a permit. there is the application withdrawal after we protested the approval of the second permit. we are now doing the third application to the board of appeals. this is unfortunately a case with a lot of twists, turns, and history, and i will welcome the opportunity to answer any questions you may have. we have based our appeal on the failure to meet public of compliance standards, the failure to meet the tier 3 standard, and the compatibility standard.

first, let's discuss the public health standard. the legislation states that noise at anytime day or night from a wireless facility described in an application must not exceed 45 dba when measured 3 feet from any building façade. this is part of the standard. and there is the equipment they are using, that it would violate the public compliance standards under certain conditions. in fact, dpw concedes that it could eckstein the noise threshold. next, try to sidestep the whole issue by saying they included the sound study by mistake and that the study was actually for different equipment. however, i found it odd that nextg provided information on how it is different in the study and no assurances.

as a result, i reached out to the equipment manufacturer. i have been told that the sound produced by the equipment will be similar to the sound produced by the equipment tested by the manufacturer. i can discuss this in detail. they have taken in the appropriate stance -- have taken an inappropriate stance. they are talking about the public health compliance standard. but dph and dpw argues that they can fix any sound issues after the installation. and after the permit is issued. this is disappointing for three reasons. first, there is no evidence that they can fix it after the installation is complete.

second, we all know that once a permit is issued, it is extremely difficult to get them to adjust that side, as evidenced by the fat they maintain things on that block almost one year after the permit was revoked by the appeals. third, they have a horrible track record. all around the city, they do not comply with the city requirements that they pay to match the color of the polls. i have repeatedly informed dpw of these violations. and yet, the problem is still widespread. dpw and nextg should not give the benefit of the doubt that it will fix these problems after. we should deal with this before. and then the sound testing is better than a comprehensive impartial studies done by the equipment manufacturer. i reject this argument.

in addition, nextg references tests that have been submitted by dph, but they have not been included. i immediately reached at 2 dph and others to try to better understand what was used. i did this multiple times and received no response. our streets is one of the quietest in san francisco. i include something in exhibit two. incremental noise has a noticeable impact on our block. the noise should be appropriately considered. my next argument is on the necessity standard. but it is also an offshoot. dpw seems comfortable approving a permit of not one unit but two. the equipment in closure