stories.

shortly. >> if you would like to speak on an agendized item please fill out a speaker card and when speaking before the commission, do state your name for the record. at this time, i'd like to take roll. commission president fong, here, vice president, here, antonini, here, moore, here, sugaya, here.

commissioners, first on your calendar consideration of items proposed for continuance. item 1 at # 369 third avenue is proposed for continuance to january 24, 2013. item 2, case 2011-at 480 potrero avenue to march 21, 2013. on your calendar, under your regular calendar, 16,(a), b,(a) c for 2011-.00av and x there a request for a continuance. specific so you may want to consider that as well. >> president fong: is there any public comment on the two items, plus the third that was

just added? potentially. >> good afternoon, president fong, members of the commission, i'm jim ruben. i'm here on the item where there's been a request for a continuance from supervisor kim's office. i was advised of that request yesterday directly from her office. i talked to a number of people, including some of you. we are not opposed to a continuance. we would like us to talk to some groups that have been identified late yesterday afternoon and we will do that. i'd like a short continuance as the calendar can provide for us but we're agreeable. a couple of weeks would be sufficient for us. >> president fong: okay. >> thank you. >> president fong: thank you. >> my name is sonya cause, a community advocate for community

owners development corporation. i would like to make a brief statement about 254th street. bear with me please. i am here today representing the bena -- which surround site and some are t todco pronts. the develop has taken into accounts senior representatives concerns about privacy, sidewalk safety and mobility. ben consortium is safety. at times, the surrounding uses at the moscone center, the gardens and the complexes, pedestrian traffic can be

difficult to navigate. with the ongoing central corridor projects and continuing -- and development in the gardens neighborhood, the department and the city must provide a thorough and complete pedestrian safety plan for the gardens neighborhood. with that being said, the yerba buena consortium -- >> this is towards the continuance of the item, not the actual item itself. >> i'm out of sync. yes, i agree on the continuance of the item and the yerba buena consortium does support the project. thank you, mr. secretary and commissioners. >> thank you. >> president fong: additional public comment on the items proposed if for continuance? commissioner antonini.

>> commissioner antonini: i'd like to ask about a, b, and c. do we have availability two weeks the 31st of january? >> january 31 is an extremely light calendar, or agenda for now, because it was added to the schedule so late. >> commissioner antonini: that might be a good time to propose a continuance, if that -- >> it would be. >> commissioner antonini: so i will therefore move to continue items no. 1 and 2 to the date specified, and items 16a, b and c to january 31. >> second. >> on that motion to continue items 1 and 2 and item 16a, b and c to january 31, commissioner antonini, aye. >> bore don, aye. >> hill list, aye. >> moore, aye. >> sugaya, aye.

>> wu, aye. >> president fong, aye. under commissioners questions and matters, item 3, election of officers, according with the rules and regulation his the president and vice president shall be elected at the first regular meeting of the commission held on or after the 15th day of january of each year or to a subsequent meeting. the date, which shall be fixed by the commission at the first regular>)( b5d meeting on or afe 15th day of january each year. pngetsz commissioner antonini. >> commissioner antonini: i would like to nominate rodney fong for president and cindy wu for vice president. >> second. >> there is no discussion. shall i call the roll? on the motion to --

>> president fong: public comment? >> it is an agendized item. you may. >> president fong: is there public comment on item 3(b), election of officers? seeing none... >> on the motion to elect the commissioner fong as president, commissioner wu as vice president, commission yeabt, aye, bore don, aye. >> hill list, aye, moore, aye, wu, aye. >> so moved. that motion passed unanimously and congratulations to president and vice president. >> president fong: let me thank you for for your vote of confidence and hopefully this last year has gone smoothly and hopefully this next coming year will go smoothly and congratulations to cindy wu as vice president and thank you for your time and extra effort.j$&ç commissioner moore. >> commissioner moore: he has to call the item.

>> president fong: you're right. >> commissioners, place you under item 4, commission comments and questions. >> president fong: commission moore. >> commissioner moore: i read an article yesterday about;jpkq reporting congestion on 20 san francisco. and in north america, san francisco, among 20 cities ranked as the 11th most congested city, which was led by los angeles, followed by vancouver, canada, and some other city somewhere -- seattle, toronto, new orleans, san josé, month recall, andu#nnnyñ chicag- month raul and chicago. chicago was much lower congestion than we are. while we are a transit-first policy, we are still struggling with congestion, which is very,

very similar to what other people experience as to not getting to work on time, break down of emergency services, and on and so. i think it's a well-presented point, which we should keep in mind as moving forward relative to discussions on parking, and discussions on transit and i'll pass this article around so people can see the methodology by which to alive is interesting. >> i want to thank my fellow commissioners for the vote of confidence. look forward to the work we have ahead. >> president fong: commissioner antonini. >> commissioner antonini: thank you. i introduced to the commission last week, some -- a plan by captain tang lin,, and it's a matter of public record.

i don't know how much of the public has had a chance to look at it. it shows a lot of promise. on my 11 years on the planning commission it's been very gratifying that we have passed a lot of measures that have provided a lot of housing and provided a lot of commercial space and a lot of other good things but the problems with a lot of individuals who are in need still remains. and all you have to do is go outside and walk on any ar partf the city and see people who are obviously not capable of taking care of themselves. and, you know, we have not been able to deal with this problem. so i think anybody who has a plan that shows merit, and apparently it has worked in other cities and has worked for a while while it was in place here, we do pass a lot of supportive housing, but if it we can't get individuals into support iverg housing, the housing does not solve the problem and these are instances where more than just housing is needed, care for psychiatric

problems, addictions, substance problems, which are really needed. so i would ask that we do advice staff with your consent, we calendar something in the future to hear more about this, perhaps invite people such as bevan dufty who is the mayor's point person on this issue and others to participate, and while there are other forums where this would also should be discussed, i think since we deal so much with issues involvingvczu housig and where people are going to be living, that would dlu people who are -- include people who are living in the streets and on warks parks. i would like to ask for your help in that matter. >> president fong: commissioner. >> commissioner borden: i want to recognize harold brooks bay area chapter in san francisco. today marks the end of his tenure as a ceo. he's been elevated as senior vice president for international

services for the american red cross and will be moving to washington. but he has been a tremendous champion. i don't know if people know but the american red cross bay area chapter is the most generous, better than new york city and greater than los angeles, always stepping up, whether it's hurricane sandy or any disaster around the country in addition to stepping up significantly locally. volunteers, even in sandy, we had almost 200 volunteers from the bay area that lived in new york to make things happy. we're lucky because we have a very skilled staff who know how to manage things. the operation on the ground in new york was largely managed by gregory smith out of the bay area chapter, he was there 30 days working on that. i wanted to recognize him and what he's done for the american red croz cross. they bought the building on

market street, and they'll be moving in, in a couple of months revitalize the neighborhood and do an adaptive reuse of a great older building. i wanted to recognize him for his great work and make sure everyone knows the work happening with the red cross. >> president fong: commission antonini. >> commissioner antonini: i met with a group of people who i think are quite knowledgable on this subject yesterday and the subject wag illegal in-law units which are present throughout the city and one of the group in the specific area in the city indicated it was his feeling up to 80% of the units there had illegal -- or housing individual housing units there had an illegal unit in it. and i think this is an issue that we have to confront eventually because it's got a lot of -- it's a lot of effects on the entire housing stock. and one of them that came to mind for me is the fact that when there are two units in

building it raises the price of building significantly and you really have prices based upon two units, not on one. and it might explain why, when i and starting to practice places in modest homes in the sunset and richmond victor were around 40,000. the increases each in the most pricey areas are 10 times what they were in those days, 10 to maybe 12 times. in places like the sunset and parts of the richmond, they're 20 times. these houses are selling for 800,000. so i'm not saying the total cause of this is secondar secony units, but it does detract from the affordability of units, and i think it's something that's out there. i'm not sure whether the solution is to figure out some sort of legalization, or whether it's elimination, or what we should do, but this group seems quite interested in exploring it so i wanted to throw that out as

something that i don't need to schedule a hearing on it but it's something i think we should be cognizant of and look at the events that occur even though they're not units that are a part of the -- they're not on record, but they are there. >> president fong: i wanted to update the commission on the permit tracking system that's being worked, a new program that the department is starting to implement. they will -- starting in february, there will be monthly updates and reports given by director rahaim. it will fuse the planning department as well as the building department. they have asked and called for a very small citizens advisory group of which i volunteered to sit on that committee for a couple of meetings essentially to sort of get a preview, maybe sort of beta test it, if you will. and trainings and more outreach

summer of this year with a fall rollout implementation. so we will have updates as time goes on. >> is it a place under director's report, item 5, director's announcements. >> director rahaim: let me add my congratulations to president fong and vice president wu. beginning of the year is a good time to look back and look ahead. if i could refer to my written director's report there were a couple of items to bring to your attention that i think are interesting to look at how the department and the commissions are doing right now. the first is that we have now adopted -- you have now adopted and the board has adopted nine neighborhood plans and we have two more coming on the way. and those plans cover about 20% of the area of the city but cover about 80% of what is being built in the city. we now have plans in place that

will cover a vast majority of the city where building is happen. if you compare the kind of projects that come to you and the types of controversies that come to you and to the department, it is pretty striking that the projects within the plan areas tend to be less controversial than the projects outside of the plan areas that are requiring -- asking for some kind of change in zoning or change in procedure. so i would argue that the intent of the plans is working, that the plans are doing exactly what they intended to do. the other reason that i believe that is because within the plan areas we have not had to do one full eir for any single project. it's always been community planning exemptions or other type of lesser environmental review which saves time and money and means those projects are generally consistent with the plans, which is what the the intent was all along. so i feel pretty good about that. as i say in the report, we are also more involved now in a

broader range of implementation of those plans. secondly looking ahead at the year, i do think we are -- it is unlikely that we will take on a major new neighborhood planning effort of that same type in the coming couple of years. rather, i think -- as i point out, we are looking at an unusually large number of publicly owned sites that are in play, the port, housing, ucsf, laurel heights property on the market. so it's incumbent on us to look at those sites -- if those sites play out as intended by the owners today there could be 10 million square feet of development on those sites. it's a huge site of development. those will consume a lot of our time over the next couple of years, on the environmental and entitlement side and urban design issues, and it's incumbent on us to look at the

policy implications putting those public sites on play for development. secondly, the second piece of the work that i think is interesting is the work in the neighborhood commercial districts, partially related to the mayor's invest in neighborhood strategy which is looking at not necessarily upzoning those districts, but looking at how we invest in those districts, support businesses, and encourage investment where it can happen. so that is also, to me, a very interesting part of our upcoming work plan. there's a lot of work on our plate. our revenues as you will hear are way up, and we are looking at how to kind of catch up with the workload because we are seeing substantial increases in development application. but i just wanted to give you a flavor of where we were thinking we're heading over the next year or two, and also ask for your input on the kind of things we should be doing, and i'm happy to have a broader discussion or even hearing on that topic in the coming weeks.

thank you. on director and point out for those who don't have it available to them, over the last five years, neighborhoodkqihuáñ plans, markt octavia, eastern neighborhood, potrero hills, eastern soma, western soma, and transit center district will be completed in a five year period. that's an impressive list. commissioner moore. >> commissioner moore: i would like to acknowledge the strength of the neighborhood plans but the commission to support the neighborhood plans because we had our fair share of people who do want to overturn some of the basic ten et cetera of these neighborhood plans because they want project which don't operate within the general guidelines and ideas which these plans had a larger scale put forward. so it is in that particular case the thoroughness of this

commission and the predecessors who sat in these chairs that there is a strong uniform support to use strong neighborhood plans based on community input and community collaboration to move planning in this city forward. >> commissioners, item 6, review of past week's events at board of supervisors, historic preservation. >> amy rogers, planning department. this week we heard thible progress report on the inner agency plan implementation committee, a hearing required by both administrative code and the planning code. you heard presentation from the staff in november of this year. this week, the board receives the same presentation. this presentation allows the city to begin their annual funding allocations for the plan area infrastructure needs. this hearing was informational only. moving on to two -- hearing at the full board, this week the full board unanimously approved

two landmark designation for the twin peaks tavern and sam jordan's bar. these were the first designations since 2010. jordan bar is significant with the late african-american business owner. he was also the first african-american candidate for mayor of san francisco in -- and he opened jordan's bar originally constructed adjacent to corrals associated with butcher town in the late 1880's. this bar is still in operation as one of the oldest continuously operating african-american businesses along the third street corridor. sam jordan's bar was known as an organizing space for community based initials and was part of the network for african-american bars and restaurants that served dual roads