experience on the ground. we worked out all these pieces of legislation that protected tenants. we actually -- i remember we had to work out these things. like if we have rent control, do we also need eviction control? it was that basic, that you had to do the same thing i heard in my own field, that they had to figure out originally if it is really a legitimate job qualification for pizza makers to be italian. in the beginning, you do not know, but they found out, and i would also say -- like, nabi hill neighbors had -- we did not have this kind of meeting. it was really wonderful. we had private meetings. something like that would have been helpful if it had happened

earlier where we may be found at the very end and without enough time to respond or get in touch with the people who actually had taken positions on it. we could not get their letters in because we found out too late in the process. in the past, back in the day, we would have found out a lot earlier. i do not know how that did not happen because so much really does go very well. like our height limits, for example. why is it not 40 feet? two things. one had to do with ccdc and conferring with them, confirming that now you have to have garages and maybe it should be higher in order to accommodate more housing. the other had to do with things like having room for stores underneath, and different types of construction that happened at different levels. that made a big difference to us.

it is just really helpful. when we come in here, it is under pressure. also, the out -- may not get beyond a few people. the notification and so on. so i really look forward to this. commissioner wu: thank you. any further public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner miguel: i would like to compliment joanna nad claudio -- and claudia for the work you have done so far. i have had some engagement over the last year's with the department. i conducted two noontime forums for them on basically answering questions, and they seemed very receptive and understood the principles that were involved. what i have a slight problem

with is not your power point presentation -- although, please do not read slides word for word. i am finding in one section community stakeholders. then i am seeing residents and businesses. then public. then department stakeholders. by the way, stakeholders never divide. i think you are talking about the same people, but you are using all different terms, and that does not make sense to me. then i see under the statement of purpose down in the second paragraph -- achieve what is

best for the city and people that live, work, and play in it. i guess i take offense to the term "play." is it visitors you are talking about? people who come on conventions? i do not know what effective community members means as a phrase. you say members of the public are aware of their levels of involvement. that is somewhat meaningless to me. >> can we turn off the cell phone or take it outside? thank you. commissioner miguel: under principles and number four, you say appreciate adverse use. i hope you would say encourage

diverse views. -- you say appreciate diverse views. you use the numbers in program principles but you use bullet points elsewhere. one or the other, please. i know i am criticizing this document and not your power point presentation, but this is what i got. this is what i had to work with. when we go under program priorities on the level of point, you are not saying any method of identifying the groups you are going to work with or what they even are in the city, which is a first principle in my mind, and at no point do you mentioned something that constantly comes before us five people from the public, neighborhood groups and activists, and that is access to materials and the manner in which that is handled and which

involves lin that a great deal. i understand the overarching concept of a public out reach and the engagement principles statement for the department. i encourage it, but i have a problem with the material that was handed me because i do not think that is as clear and edifying as it should be. commissioner wu: thank you. commissioner antonini: thank you. i think you are doing a very good job, and i appreciate your work very much, and i wanted to focus more on some details while you provide a framework. it goes without saying that all of what your doing, as you alluded to earlier, would be more out --.

of course, multi legally, and also utilizing the internet, which is becoming a bigger and bigger part of communication. however, if you look at the studies, as the age increases, the internet utilization becomes less, so i think it is still important to make sure, especially to senior groups, that we still have good representation in the print and broadcast media. and you get out reached through them. i think local radio and television stations -- and there are a lot of those, and we are fortunate we are in the middle of an area that has very strong media presence -- will often tailor their programming to their interest group. they know who listens to their

radio station or watches the television station, and much of their content is created to address this group. i think if you do this research, make some phone calls, you may have some of your work already done. you can reach them through various stations and television stations, which are numerous in all different languages and all different contents, and even within a single content, for example, sports, you will have one station that has a more broad outreach, and then you get into the ticket at 1050, and it is more focus on a younger demographic that is more intensely involved in the details. anyway, some of the work has been done for you, and you might want to explore that. the other thing is as we move

forward into the stages of collaboration and especially empowerment, we have to make sure that the people we have identified are representative of the neighborhood. oftentimes, and this is just human nature, that whoever is the most active and the most engaged is the one who is going to get the most attention, but we have to be pro-active in reaching out to those who may not be able to come to meetings, may not be able to speak out, not just assume the somebody says that the spokesman for a neighborhood or a group that they do in fact represent that area. a lot of this has to do with people's availability and what is going on in their lives. people with young children are really absorbent the raising of children and beginning of trying to make income, and that is a really hard group to get involved because other demands

are so great. so we have to find some kind of a hook to get them involved. oftentimes it will be an issue that affects them directly, such as playing fields. you will see huge turnouts and huge interests, but if it is something that really is not anything that affects them directly, even though they do not realize it, all these things affect them, it is harder to reach them. so i think that' the other thing that is really important is the contact back, where someone has to be responding, answered quickly pirie whether it be a telephone, in response to an e- mail, or a physical contact point. having a quick response is really important. it is irritating when i'm trying to reach a business, and you go through a five-minute predetermined sequence of having to make selections, and everybody has been through this. a lot of times you just hang up,

or you make a mistake. smart businesses who really want to service their customers have a person answering the phone and then distributing -- maybe even distributing it to the same kind of system, but at least that initial contact is a voice, and it goes out from there. and then it gets passed on to the appropriate place. those are just some ideas in general about reaching the public and be and most effective. thank you. commissioner borden: i at least wanted to thank you for your presentation today. i thought it was very clear and understandable, and commissioner miguel pointed out some clarifying language issues with a work on. couple of things i thought -- that of the principles were very good, but i did not know if you wanted the word meaningful or collaborative. or whether the word collaborative should be there somewhere. community plans processes -- it

is more of a collaborative process. in some ways, these are very one way. how can we incorporate something that indicates it is a two-way conversation? i know you have in your program priority developing a program 11 educational, but i also think education is a very important component. i know you have the program guides, but i do not think we can _ enough that many people do not know the basic process -- i do not think we can underscore enough. i think how we incorporate that message around education. and one of the things i have always felt we should do is an hour before a live televised planning commission, where there could be a one-on-one that we could televise so that people could come here or watch on tv at their convenience or look at it on the web to learn very

basic -- ok, this is the order of have the meeting goes and this is one public comment is cured most people watch for a short time and may not see the entire sequence of how a meeting operates, but to do those basic topics and talk about what is ceqa and things like that i think would be very helpful for the public feeling more comfortable and wanting to engage in the process. i think there is the issue of having materials in various languages and reaching community groups in places where they are, but even once they have that information, there is a lack of comfort with -- how do i come to city hall, for this debate in the process, and make my voice heard? i think education is a key part of that. i am not sure if we want to add back -- that took understandable and transparent or if that is another principle we need to

add. that is the other thing i am thinking of. but thank you for your work. i think it is leaps and bounds that we are having this conversation and looking at how we broaden this discussion any participation of people. commissioner sugaya: thank you. what is interesting to me, having read the memo that was presented to us and also in the presentation, is that there is no mention of the planning commission. it is extremely perturbing to think of the department as a separate entity from this commission. so i think the process to me is flawed. from the standpoint that it is the commission that makes the decisions. it is the commission to whom staff makes all their presentations. it is the commission to whom the audience and the public and

interest groups and developers and property owners and others are speaking to, and yet, the entire program we have been presented has to do with department staff, so i am not ready to vote to support or wherever the action is that we are being asked to do today. and i think that it is also -- i do not know if it is telling for -- under program parties, you are using the word " branding." that is extremely disturbing to me, to use that word when we talk about a public department. are we trying to sell the department and commission to the public like we are through advertising a product or something? or are we trying to brand ourselves as some kind of -- i do not know what it is, but that one word if anything should be

eliminated from this memorandum. so it is something that is greater than what you have presented, and i do not mean to be critical, but that is just my view point. just some detail things -- i do not know anything about the mayor's website, but if people are engaged in going to the website and presenting ideas, do they do anything with it, or do they just sit there and people can feel good that they said they liked or did not like the mayor or whatever? some other things i think will also be extremely difficult to address, especially if you are just using terms like "transparent" and "respect" and that sort of thing.

i will give you an example. my view of the environmental impact process and the production of environmental impact reports are supposed to be, i thought, separate and apart from developers who are proposing projects, and yet, we have seen time and again where developer lawyers or others have the exact same language in their letters to us that appear in environmental reports. so my question is, in my mind -- who is writing these things? and i think the public has that same question. it happens a number of times. it happened last week where a lawyer's letter addressed the planning commission, had five or six points addressing the overriding considerations in the environmental document, and the staff report for that environment to documents in the overriding considerations had the exact same five points.

i am not saying who wrote it -- maybe the lawyer took the language from the planning staff -- but in any case, i think if you were a member of the public and had noticed that, that is really, i think, something that needs to be corrected, but it is the way that the department and the process has been working up to this point. it is more deeply rooted, i think, than we realize. commissioner moore: i would share the majority of commissioners' concerns. while i think the intent and what was said in a power point presentation is really speaking to very good ideas, that what is in front of us in written form in the summary memo as well as in the resolution -- there is a big difference between what was presented and what was written.

the writing overall is too much from the top down there are five points where the public spoke of a desire for more engagement. and that there is a community interest in exploring and communicating more information. however, how it is responded to, the department does not really go through the nature of the relationship of how that

relationship changes. they are pretty much the annual tools. there are standard tools mentioned in any professional communication, but they do not really speak exactly to the specific voice of the neighborhood, and i would strongly agree with what is in front of us, given how many community members are showing up, which led to what is in front of us. commissioner wu: thank you. director? >> obviously, we have a lot of work to do, so we will ask for a continuance. i did want to address the point about the planning commission not specifically being mentioned. the whole idea of bringing it to you was to pass a resolution to direct the department to use these principles.

it was based on that whole idea, that you are in charge of the department, and that is why we brought it to you to direct us to do this work. that is the reason why the resolution is what it that way toward the department. but the couple of suggestions i have, and perhaps we can continue it to a meeting in august, is that we would take those principles that we have put forward or others that you have raised and then flush them out in more detail so that it is not just a one-word statement, but there is an intent behind it that reflects some of the issues you have raised and the consistency of the language, so we will be happy to do that and bring it to you at a later date. >> i want to thank staff for their work and remind them of their original intent of this, which i believe now supervisor

olague brought up, very much about the diverse needs of different groups and different communities, and i think it reflects some of the comments other commissioners have made today. in particular, i am looking for language access. i think the resolution is what gets referred to have passed in the future what people look back to for guidance on how the department engages the public. i would love to see some language about people who have not been engaged in the past. i took a look at other cities, similar guiding principles. i took a look at portland, and i think there was much more of a balance between what the department was going to do, what the expectation was from the public, so not just -- i think there is a particular focus on the department in these documents. i agree with commissioner borden's comments about education.

i think it is a huge component of our reach, and i did not see it here, so i would support a continuance at this time -- i think education is a huge component of our reach. commissioner sugaya: just an example. it is a small thing, and i know linda will jump on me for this. let's say we have the commission in here in some fashion. we could have thought about and implementation -- we could have thought about implementation, and we could have had more meetings in the community for example. if that is what we want to do, we have only done it twice in the entire six years i have been on this commission. one was at the community center for an issue that was out there, and that we have one -- had one

for parkmerced in the neighborhood. those of the only to the wheel of times we have left this room. i am not saying we should put it here, but i of the commission were thought of a little bit more as being involved in the program, there might be ideas like that that the commission could engage with as well. commissioner wu: thank you. >> may i suggest a continuance to one of the august meetings? perhaps the ninth? commissioner antonini: continue to august 9. then a second. >> commissioners, the motion on the floor is for continuance of this item to the august 9 hearing. i will assume that the public hearing will remain open because of you are asking for staff to come back to consider

your comments and bring you another document to consider. on that motion -- commissioner antonini: aye. commissioner borden: aye. commissioner miguel: aye. commissioner moore: aye. commissioner sugaya: aye. commissioner wu: aye. >> thank you, commissioners. this item is continue to august 9. commissioners, you are now on items 7, case on mechanical car wash facilities on 19th avenue. >> i would like to acknowledge the aides who are here today. i will give them an opportunity to speak after i go through my presentation for a second. this ordinance before you would

amend the planning code to permit existing automobile service stations to add gas stations, but only along 19th avenue -- did i say gas stations? car washes. it would allow gas stations to add car washes. looking at 19th avenue, most of the properties along 19th avenue are zoned for residential use. i just wanted to show you the colors of the map so you can see. this is showing highway 1, 19th avenue, and the lighter colored yellow is all residential. and the kind of purplish colors represent neighborhood commercial streets that cross over 19th ave. most in the area is residential. in general, commercial uses such as gas stations and car washes are prohibited residential

districts, and this includes gas stations and car washes. he uses that currently exist in the area are considered to be non-conforming uses -- the uses that currently exist. they are encouraged to dissipate over time. while the use of car washes and gas stations is not a use we would typically want in residential districts, it is important to note that in this part of the city, there are no zoning districts that permit car washes, and the western part of the city's south of golden gate park. -- in the western part of the city south of golden gate park. so this is not considered an expansion of the use, but rather it is adding another use. therefore, these service stations, since they are non- conforming, they cannot add another car wash, either by right or to the condition of use

currently. hence, we have the ordinance before us today, which would permit those under certain conditions. the first is that the gas station would provide a standing area on the premises of sufficient size to accommodate at least 1/4 of the anticipated capacity per hour. number two, the noise in the facility would have to comply with existing laws. 3, car washing and drying should occur completely within any clothes portion of the building. four, water reclamation and use must meet criteria established by the zoning administrator in consultation with the san francisco puc. and 5, a traffic study would need to be done to demonstrate that the operation would not cause significant impact on traffic on adjacent streets. lastly, the facility would be on a lot of at least 12,000 square feet. that is the ordinance in brief. we were considering where the

existing gas stations are along 19th ave. there are 12, but only four meet the size threshold. that is in the packet for you. they are on the overhead for the public. and it is hiding in my pocket, so i will not put it on, but i do have it here. we thought it would be appropriate to recommend allowing this use where it is most consistent with existing zoning. as you remember, you recently considered an ordinance that would create new named neighborhood commercial districts in the sunset. specifically so that these districts could be amended to better serve the needs of the people who live in for this reason we recommend changing the new n.c.d.'s so that car washes are permitted that car washes are permitted in conjunction with the service