standard? we spent time talking about this and one of the building types we talk about was soft story buildings and the ground floor is vulnerable because there are openings for garages or windows and during the earthquake we saw in the marina they went right over and those are -- >> very vulnerable buildings. >> very and there are a lot of apartment buildings in san that that are like that. >> and time to. >> >> retrofit the buildings so people can stay in them after the earthquake. >> what do they need? do they need information? do they need incentives? mandates? >> that's a good question. i think it starts with

information. people think that new buildings are earthquake proof and don't understand the performance the building will have so we want a transparent of letting people know is my building going to be safe in it after an earthquake? is my building so dangers i should be afraid of being injured? so developing a ranking system for buildings would be very important and i think for some of the larger apartment buildings that are soft story we need a mandatory program to fix the buildings, not over night and not without financial help or incentive, but a phased program over time that is reasonable so we can fix those buildings, and for the smaller soft story buildings and especially in san francisco and the houses over garages we need information and incentives and

coaxing the people along and each of the owners want their house to be safe enough. >> we want the system and not just mandate everybody. >> that's right. >> i hear about people talking about this concept of resiliency. as you're fixing your knowledge you're adding to the city wide resiliency. >> >> what does that mean? >> that's a great question. what spur has done is look at that in terms of recovery and in new orleans with katrina and lost many of the people, hasn't recovered the building stock. it's not a good situation. i think we can agree and in san we want to rebuild well and quickly after a major disaster so we have defined what that means for our life lines. how do we need the gasolines to perform and

water perform after an earthquake and the building stock as well, so we have the goal of 95% of our homes to be ready for shelter in place after a major earthquake, and that way people can stay within the city. we don't lose our work force. we don't lose the people that make san francisco so special. we keep everybody here and that allow us to recover our economy, and everything because it's so interdependent. >> so that is a difficult goal but i think we can achieve it over the long time so thank you very much for hosting us and hosting this great exhibit, and .hank you very much for joining

>> (roll call).

we have a quorum and the next item on the agenda is president's announcements. >> thank you, madam secretary. obviously welcome everyone here today, the last meeting before the end of the year. we will wish everybody happy holidays. so what we have is acting director tom huey participated in a media briefing at the site of the hacker pool house with the director of recreation and parks, phil ginsburg. dbi acting director huey signed an emergency order early letter this month when a fire caused sufficient structural damage to

make the building an imminent public safety hazard. demolition is currently underway. bill pointed out to me a very interesting article in the front of the san francisco chronicle today is good to give you history on that. the fire department and one of the equipment manufacturers have donated new carbon monoxide detections and smoke detectors which dbi will give away to the public during our outreach event. we are delighted to give away these devices and assurance compliance with state law requiring their installation both in single family homes, and that's effective january 1, 2013, and multi family homes also. also we are having a modest

get together, everybody should come, children and family members are welcome, it will be held tomorrow, december 20, after pm and take part in the joy and festivities. >> is there any public comment on the president's announcements? seeing none, item 3, general public comment. the bic will take public comment on matters within the commission's jurisdiction that are not part of this agenda. >> form, commissioners, henry --. >> i just need to read it for the record here. member s of the public may address the commission on items not appearing on the agenda for a period of time not to exceed 3 minutes. speakers shall address their remarks to the commission as a whole and not to individual commissioners or

department personnel. thank you. okay, henry. >> thank you, commissioner, president mccarthy, sorry. i am a member of san francisco for responsible growth and wanted to report to you under the leadership of acting director tom huey, deputy director and tony greco, i want to say thanks, happy holidays and we'll see you next year. >> happy holidays. >> good morning, commissioners, i will read a prepared statement. my name is spencer gash, i have been a building inspector for this department for 22 years. i have also been a resident of san francisco for 32 years. i would first like

to request persons with an interest in this department and its malfunction to come to these building inspection meetings. they are on this commission is responsible for the oversight of that department. to verify that i would like to cite two sections from pop position g, the commission shall organize, reorganize and manage the department. from section 3.698-1, the department of building inspection should be under the management of a building inspection commission consisting of 7 members. your willful refusal to provide that oversight has resulted in the situation i will describe. other agencies aiding and abeting this commission's willful refusal to oversee, the policy of your political appointees is obviously to keep

the department as dysfunctional as possible. this is evidenced by, among other things, by no written directives have been issued for 5-plus years. there are no written policies and procedures in effect. training has been abandoned except in legally hazard area situations, ie the capps program. there is rampant racism. permanent applicants, property owners, business owners and employees. politically favored employees are given positions with less oversight and authority so they can do personal tasks while working for the city. while the situation requires a lack of morality on the part of the employees i also believe this constitutes veting of who is suitable for promotion. those less favored are given poor job assignments, closely watched,

unjustly disciplined and otherwise harassed while also required to do the work of the goof-offs. as hards department's customers in addition to fleecing them of as frp money as possible, evidenced by the department's use of an unauthorized permit routing procedure to see the application everywhere possible to see if some additional fees can't be tacked on to the permit costs. the fees collected are not kept and spent by this department but by the administer of finance with director hue's approval. of course the more money the mayor gets the more likely he is to keep the appointees around. this department leaves little money for the department to function although --. >> thank you. >> i'm going to finish the sentence. >> you are off, you are not allowed -- your 3 minutes is

up, sir. thank you very much. >> handsomely compensated political appointees to keep the lid on the stew pot --. >> next speaker. >> is there any additional public comment? seeing none, item 4, updates and status on capses recommendations. >> good morning, commissioners, my name is patrick odelaney, director of san francisco safety for san francisco, tasked with picking up the capss recommendations. thank you for the invitation to come speak this morning, i am excited to have the building

inspection commission partner with us and be involved with what from our history has been a driving force to make this happen. we are excited to announce we are going to be introducing legislation in early 2013. this soft story ordinance is going to be for wood framed buildings, within that subset of buildings there's probably about 4500 buildings that meet that criteria. of those 4500 buildings we assume that about 2800 to 2900 would be soft stories and would be required to do a mandatory soft story retrofit. what's nice to this as opposed to when the soft story task force finished up their work a few years ago, there were a lot of unknowns. the largest one i heard a few years ago was how

are people going to pay for this? we have met with several private lenders and we have been developing finance products to make sure that people subject to this ordinance have a means to pay for it and have an access to financing. it's really been a neat experience to reconvene some of the players that were involved earlier. there's no longer a soft story task force but what we have now is an earthquake safety working group which president mccarthy is going to cochair with me. now we can get into the meat of the implementation. the policy work done to create this ordinance was due to a lot of efforts by community leaders, and world leaders in earthquake safety. we have a very good product moving forward and my goal as director is to make sure the legislation city hall passes is given to the building inspection in a form they can

implement it. often in the past what was waisted without their input it's a piece of legislation they can't use. i want to be sure this is useful and it runs smoothly through its implementation process and sets the stage for our 30 year work plan. last month we sent out a notice to every private school in san francisco, not accusing them of anything, not saying you are in an unsafe building, saying you are not required to meet safety standards, let's have a conversation. i'm pleased to inform you we have had several come forward and we continue to outreach them and we look forward to working with them. again, those are just two examples of our 30 year work plan. most of you have seen the 30 year work plan, i brought a few extra copies in case any of you haven't seen

it. i only have 3 copies, if more are needd i have more in my office and i'll be happy to provide them to anyone. it takes the task force recommendations and puts them in a timeline. priorities can change but now it's a nice plan and implementation has started well. several of these tasks are well underway and it's nice to see some progress made and to see some support not only from the city administrator but also from the mayor and it's our goal to make sure all san franciscoans are safe and sheltered in place after a multi seismic event. >> commissioner ?oo ?a i'm so glad you guys are this far along, that's really great. i had a couple questions. >> sure. >> is that work plan available online? >> absolutely, it's under the

city administrator's work site. right now it's a very simple work site, right now the only thing there is this and the report. >> in pdf >> yes. >> one of the things we learned after katrina, unfortunately, is that natural disasters affect poor people in a much more acute way because they don't have the resources to deal with this kind of stuff. i'm wondering as you are launching this effort what specifically your department's working, you know, how your collaboratively involving nonprofit organizations and organizations that serve the poor, both the housing side for the nonprofit lending, but also just facilities. have you done work with the mayor's office of community development and housing or how is that working

out? >> sure. i can talk to a couple of those points. as far as financing goes, this was a big deal. when the soft story task force got together, how is a nonprofit operator that can hardly pay its operating costs --. >> for profits as well, right? >> sure, but focusing on nonprofits for a second. while the details haven't been ironed out, we have been in discussions about providing low interest loans which is going to be further discussed at a finance summit we're going to be holding with the mayor in january. that will not only have nonprofit lenders but credit lenders and other lenders interested in being part of this. i was very touched, these are small loans in the grand scheme of things

and honestly they are not going to make a lot of money but overwhelmingly they said we are part of san francisco and we want to be part of this. personally i was very touched and i am excited to get this meeting together. we have been working with ram part, they know that we want to approach this the right way, protect tenants and understand that the best thing we can do is make sure the 59,000 san franciscoans that live in these soft story buildings are able to shelter in place after an earthquake. between meeting with them and other various tenant groups we have got our head around these issues and i think we're addressing them accurately. >> commissioner walker. >> great to hear that you are moving these things forward. you talked about the early 2013 introduction of a soft story program. is it a mandatory program and when in 2013. >> early in 2013,