intend to introduce over the next week. the first was what i had mentioned. we're already committed to changing the language to 50 year -- building 50 years or older that alter character defining features. the second, we understand the concern for multiple appeals. the language that we have currently for exemptions are a little bit vague on that, and i know that in speaking with one of the commissioners this week that there was a concern of allowing two appeals on one exemption project when the ero hasn't determined that that project has been modified in scope. i think there's just a lot of concern from members of the public what a modification and scope means. and i think there has to be a greater discussion either an objective set of criteria that everybody knows, this is what changes the scope of a project. so, some things that we know for sure, the change in the size of the envelope, like that's pretty well known. but what else is it that changes a project to the point that you need to issue a new

determination which would trigger a new appeal window? we're open to having an amendment that says not that there's another c-e-q-a appeal on that exemption, which i think our ordinance language is currently vague on, but that we would -- that the ero determination that modified exemption does not require a new exemption is appealable. so, it's not a second c-e-q-a appeal on that exemption. the last amendment that we're interested in introducing is how to help priority projects, projects that our city considers to be a priority for our city. we've currently been working with council of communities housing organizations. for example, on an amendment that projects providing 100% affordable housing will receive a prioritized assignment from environmental review beyond what is currently in place. since that is streamlining the review process for them, we have actually increased certainty on the timing of notification for what type of

review would be required, whether it's a cat ex or a negative declaration or full blown e-i-r. that's some of the feedback that we heard from our affordable housing developers. so, the language that they've suggested that all applications shall be assigned, reviewed, and completed in the order received except that applications for projects that provide 100% permanent affordable housing of dwelling units, and funded by the city and county of san francisco shall be given nod, a notice of determination within 60 days of receipt. so, we would love your feedback on that. another type of project that we have heard over the last couple months that is incredibly important to community members are, of course, pet safety improvements and bike lanes. we don't actually have a suggestion for how we would prioritize those projects, but we're certainly open to departmental feedback and of course, commissioners, on that on how we might be able to do that. so, just in concluding remarks, i had talked about how there are two perspectives of c-e-q-a that are being considered

before the commission and the board of supervisors. our legislation intends to place a process into place for exemptions and negative declarations that make it easier for member of the public to be engaged and participate in projects occurring in their neighborhood and community. admittedly, our legislation, as you've read in the planning department, response does not necessarily use planning staff to administer the c-e-q-a process. we understand that, we know it's a question of whether we need to provide more resource he than not. i think i have heard at least over and over again that community would like to see a process that's understandable to them. so, if we are going to have a process that is clear or more transparent, then we should provide those resources. after all, we are planning for people, real people who live in our neighborhoods and our city, and we live in a city that -- where people do care a lot about what development occurs. they want to stay in our parks.

they want the same developments that will be built across the street from their house. and i want to emphasize it doesn't mean that they get what they want. it means their voice and concerns are heard in the process. notification is an important piece of this. as a member of the board of supervisors, i probably have been one of the more pro development members of this board. in fact, as i said over and over again, i sit on the other side actually of members that worked with our office on -- in putting this legislation together and are now supporting the legislation. so, i'll just have to say while we may not all agree on the outcomes of the project, whether we approve or not, we all as a whole agree that there should be a robust process that allows members of the public to easily participate and voice their opinion. now, it's true that there are horror stories about how this process has been abused. i think that in any process that we put forward, there's always going to be a small minority of individuals who

figure out a way to quote-unquote game that process. that goes to both residents and developers. but i want to be real about what the problem is. out of over 5,000 exemptions that we get on any given year, only five are even appealed to the board of supervisors on average. and as i had mentioned before over the last three years, we've only heard one negative declaration appeal. so, i think it's important that we not penalize the larger, more responsible community who just wants to know about a project. they usually support the project or are able to improve the project before it even comes to an appeal. but we do want to create a process, but if we want to create a process making it harder for the crazy, smaller minority, we do hurt the majority of community members who just want good projects in their neighborhoods and are responsible actors. i also don't want to confuse other approval processes with c-e-q-a. c-e-q-a's only a part of that approval process. so, i don't believe our legislation makes the process

more arduous for developers, however, we do raise the bar for the city in terms of what we expect of ourselves. i think -- i know i've taken up quite a bit of time, but this legislation is a complex process and i really wanted to be able to explain our intent in drafting this legislation and some of the thinking that came behind it. we're open to any questions. i know that planning department also has a presentation, and me and danny who i forgot to thank, spent quite a number of hours the last two months working on this. i just want to appreciate him for all of his work as well. we will both be here to answer questions. >> great, thank you very much. >> thank you, supervisor kim. as i mentioned i'm joined today by our acting ero sarah jones, and you have a detailed case report before you that describes our department's recommendation. the recommendation before you is to support certain portions

of the proposal, but not all of the proposal. as i mentioned earlier during my board report this week, on monday when the board committee heard supervisor kim's proposal and supervisor wiener's proposal, supervisor chiu made some amendments to supervisor wiener's proposal which he felt responded to the community concerns. as a result of those amendments, supervisor kim's proposal and supervisor wiener's amended proposal are much closer in content than they were at the time this case report was originally written. therefore, the commission secretary is now providing you with a supplemental memorandum today which compares and contrasts the two current versions. while staff will be available today to go over our detailed analysis as provided in your first case report, for this presentation i'd like to focus on a little bit higher level of review. our department, like this commission, trixv to ensure that the local application of c-e-q-a benefits all of the people of san francisco. as parties on all sides have

stated, our current process could use some improvement and we welcome engagement of supervisors wiener, chiu, and cam pos in helping to codify these procedures. so, let's get started with the discussion with the supervisors at hand today. supervisor kim's proem sail provides much more noticing about c-e-q-a. this proposed approach is not on noticing the specific project approvals but rather to notice the publication of a c-e-q-a document. historically, planning notices have focused on the projects and associated review and approval of the news for those projects. we feel that additional notification about c-e-q-a on the very smallest projects is a level of notification that is not commensurate with associated projects. the projects that are currently not noticed are generally projects that have no potential impacts to the environment. and in your first case report, the very last page of your first case report, provides a list of all the different types

of projects we currently do notification on. [speaker not understood]. in today's supplemental memorandum, we describe how the wiener proposal emphasizes the approval action as the vehicle for informing the public about the project. this is the concept that is already embedded in c-e-q-a. and in chapter 31. it's the project approval that's key. the department believes that the information about the c-e-q-a determination and the associated appeal rights should rightly be tied to notification and information about the approval of the project. state law establishes that in allowing for administrative appeals, c-e-q-a itself ties the appeals to that single approval. on the other hand, supervisor kim's proposed ordinance emphasizes the c-e-q-a determination itself. there is no added information about the approvals. and the connection between the c-e-q-a appeal and the project approval is not substantially strengthened compared to the status quo.

codifying appeals after discretionary approval disregards the aspect of approval, that pivots on recognized approval. the reasons stated in our case report, our recommendation to you is that this commission evaluate supervisor kim's ordinance for what it brings to the table. the beneficial elements of this proposal should be forwarded to the board of supervisors. some of the elements the department would support include broadening the appeal window to allow for appeals on the front end of the process as opposed to a longer appeal window after the approval. we would support the elimination of the board as a c-e-q-a decision making body and the identification of associated approval for each c-e-q-a determination, something that is good public policy. and lastly, a robust posting system for all c-e-q-a determinations is a necessarily pro. that y improvement that should be on our website. that concludes my presentation today and the acting e he ro

are available in case you have any questions. >> thank you. i'll go ahead and open it up to public comment. and calling some speaker cards, dr. espinola jackson, erica brooks. bernie, sue vaughan. michelle meyers. and peter cohan. good afternoon, dr. espinola jackson, bayview hunters point. i want to make sure it's part of the record, and that you're able to read what's here. in recent years we have [speaker not understood] impacts linked with the projects [speaker not understood].

we must also factor in the precautionary principles as the ordinance that permit us to have a project and impact, be it [speaker not understood] animal or humans. the san francisco planning department [speaker not understood] because this has been going on for sometime and you might not have been here. but san francisco planning department again and again has sent a wrong signal to those that want to circumvent a holistic planning practice, not giving credibility to c-e-q-a and precautionary principles. this department did this with lennar and partial a at the san francisco shipyard as well as the recent approved wellness center [speaker not understood] in san francisco. all this was done without

giving consideration to seniors, children, and more important, quality of life issues. and as i mentioned -- i didn't mention it before, but i'd like to say this process should be your process, not an individual supervisor. you need to look at everything that is going on and what has happened and compile it and it becomes city planning's process for all of us, not a wiener project -- process, not a kim process. let's get things done for the citizens of san francisco. thank you so very much and you all have a blessed day. >> thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. eric brooks representing san francisco green party, the local grassroots organization, our city, and here as the coordinator of the c-e-q-a community improvement team.

first of all, stand in strong support of supervisor kim's excellent legislation, very well thought out. partly the reason that we feel it's well thought out is we helped to think it out and there are now 41 organizations including labor, parks, you know, all across the spectrum, historic preservation, environmental groups, social justice groups that have all worked for the last few months to come up with this language that's now before you. and as you heard, in committee the direction that things are going is to harmonize the approach of supervisor wiener and our approach together to the best extent we can. but definitely heading in the direction of the kim approach. and, so, we would urge you to support supervisor kim's legislation with the modifications that supervisor kim is willing to accept as far as comments from planning

staff. but otherwise, we need to stand firm and send this forward with your approval. the key here is that in 2006 we opposed any changes. and in 2010 we opposed any changes to this process. because, quite frankly, with a little bit of hubris on our part, this is working well enough for us. let's just stop any changes from going forward and keep it the way it is. but since 2010 what we've seen is that it's not working for us either because the staff and the city attorney and the city, county clerk have to make up rules as they go along. so, we finally have come to the table and said, yes, we are willing to do this with the developers, with project sponsors, with city sponsors. we agree now that it's time to make changes. and the key things that we are giving up are the ability to appeal a project multiple times . under kim's legislation now, it's essentially going to be

once unless there is a major change in the project, after which as you heard, if there is a major modification, we'll be able to appeal the decision of the ero if the ero decides it's not a major food modification. so, we'll be able to have one bite at the apple, but not all these extensive appeals that happened in history. ~ and we're also very importantly accepting a clear deadline for negative declarations and other -- and exemptions. and those are big things. it would be better for us if we could appeal every single permit . but it would be better for the environment. but we're willing to accept that. in return, we need planning staff to accept that it's going to take some more work. and i will guarantee you that my groups at least are willing to come forward and fight hard to get more funding to planning, if it can do this extra work. but we need to you support this and send it forward so that it can be considered alongside the wiener legislation and we can

get the best [speaker not understood] project put together from both versions. >> thank you, mr. brooks. you can move this forward, if you would. my name is bernie sheer don. i'm with san francisco tomorrow, and we strongly urge your advisory approval of supervisor kim's proposal so that it necessarily must be ameliorated at the proper authority at the board of supervisors. let them stand beside themselves. in improving notice of appeal, you lessen the apprehension of those who would make spurious and unnecessary appeal progress that is lessening the cost overall for the department's inclusion.

secondly, it does sustain the necessary right of appeal and the need for appeal regards substantial evidence for impact in accord with the state's mandate for ceqa. some of these mandates have not been properly attended to by this commission or this staff. and this is a correction. especially with regard to cumulative impacts. thank you for your attention. >> next speaker, please. good afternoon, commissioner. sue vaughan. i am with the sierra club, and i am here to recommend that you advise -- that you vote to send this piece of legislation on to the land use and economic

development committee at the board of supervisors so that it can be heard side by side with supervisor wiener's legislation. we've been working on this for months, months and months and months. and it's finally gotten to a place where there's a lot of things in there that we are very excited about. and we understand that the planning department is very concerned about increased work load. but that's coming. san francisco is going to take on 150 to 200,000 more individuals between now and 20 40 and the work load is going to increase if that's actually going to happen. and i fully support expanded resources for the san francisco planning department so that you can take care -- so you can deal with that expanded work load. and i'm also especially excited about the geographical notification part of supervisor kim's legislation, item number 13 is about my neighborhood. and i didn't know about it until i came here to this

planning commission. i can't wait to be able to get an electronic notification about things that are going on in my neighborhood. so i don't have to go every week and look at the planning commission agenda. anyway, please do support this legislation. we've been working hard on it for months, and we're so excited that it's finally come to this place that it's before you and you can approve it. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. peter cohen with community council organizations. we have submitted to you for your record just yesterday recommendations and proposals that we gave to the board of supervisors a couple of weeks ago and i'll have a paper copy of that in a minute. want to use it for my notes here. i wanted to point out to you that the affordable housing community, if you will, the choo choo representatives has a range of perspectives.

we're thinking about this as affordable housing developers. so, we have that particular perspective. but also we're involved in community development work, if you will, community kind of empowerment and involvement. so, we understand the community perspective on environmental review and the entitlements process as well. so, our approach is from those two lenses or two angles and it's important that we not just think about this through the septments process from a developer standpoint. it seems to us that the very low hanging fruit is now uncontested, that there needs to be some time frame to file an appeal, 30 days seems to be what everybody now agrees to. so, that was the primary need and that seems to be solved. we had also opined that changing to a more modern system of notification may be fine electronically. this was discussed ad nauseam under the universal planning notification process which still director ram needs to be brought back to life. so, there's no, again, disagreement, but carefully considering that some folks still are not in the new

technology era and if they need paper notification, that request, that opportunity should still be available. a number of the other more fine points that have been discussed and debated, we have in our recommendations taken a position or made some suggestions and they're slowly but surely being ironed out between the wiener and chu amendments and wiener and kim ordinance. i think you heard from your own staff that increasingly the two ordinances are starting to look less and less dissimilar or for that matter more and more similar. ~ chiu so pieces of the puzzle are coming together. and we're encouraged to see that those -- our suggestions are being incorporated in some harp or form. the final piece we put on the table is what supervisor kim mentioned and we're glad to hear that she's working on fine tune thattion amendment, which is for affordable housing development, we have fairly few projects. ~ shape we have maybe a dozen projects that come through each year. there is that uncertain time period at the very p front end of submittal of an environmental evaluation when you simply don't know whether you're going to get your cat ex

or you're going to have to do a negative declaration or for that matter what happens in affordable housing. and it's that period of time of uncertainty that locks up city funding and often leverage funding, tax credit cues that we would like to see hardened up. and our recommendation is to do that within a 60-day window. that is a starting point for conversation. but that initial determination, what is going to be your environmental review process is what we're asking for. we think it's a good amendment, good policy and would help us a lot. in closing, we suggest that you move this forward with positive tim recommendation to at least allow the ordinances to be considered together at the land use committee and kind of a nice little match up in the next committee meeting. thank you. >> thank you. come on up, sir. i'll call a couple more names. howard wong. robert pull. and dick mull et. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is dick mull et, [speaker not understood] neighborhood association.

potrero area is part of the eastern neighborhoods and we are being densified [speaker not understood]. like other neighborhood organizations, our concerns are crime and land use. those we are quite an active neighborhood organization, we meet once a month. and a lot of neighborhood organizations meet once a quarter. sometimes the executive committee is the one that meets and members don't meet very often at all. so, that we're always pushing forward notification, notification, notification, and right to appeal. and if we don't get these things, these things get away from us. we're slow to react. we're a bunch of amateurs. developers are a bunch of

high-powered professionals. they go at this a lot faster than we can and get away from us. so, that's why we want notification, notification, and right to appeal. we want to support supervisor kim's ordinance and we want you to look at it. we try to be as responsible as we can. the boosters were formed in 1926, so, we've been around for quite a while. and we've been ignored [speaker not understood] has been ignored until the eastern neighborhoods hit the fan, so to speak. so, i would like to support supervisor kim's ordinance. thank you. >> thank you. good afternoon, howard wong. we want to commend supervisor kim for reaching out to as many people who wanted to participate in her process, and

the over 40 organizations that helped guide her current legislation, which is still evolveinging. as several people mentioned, the two pieces of legislation are coming together. we'd like to see that the two legislations be moved together to allow them both to continue to evolve. in particular, many of us feel that the primary goal of an environmental review and public processes is not professional architects like myself, commissioners, legislators, or official, but for the average citizen and for the disenfranchised and disadvantaged communities. at monday's land use committee, i was struck by some testimony from people in low-income housing projects, people in the bayview and hunters point said,

mr. mill et said they're not professional people. they have a very great difficulty even learning or understanding about development projects. many people in low-income don't even have computers. there needs to be as much robust notification processes as possible. as an architect looking at critical path schedules as you have, you've seen that projects have many, many components. for most projects, c-e-q-a doesn't apply. c-e-q-a is a small part of projects. there are milestones that are very critical to projects. the city for decades has talked about how do you make the total project process better? that's where the focus of city government should be at this point. the projects that often are held up are not -- are very particular milestones. there are planning codes,

building codes, building permits, a-d-a reviews, fire and egress requirements. many things and projects have much more delay, much more impact on the project. the city needs to look at its total process for [inaudible] to facilitate them. thank you. hi, my name is [speaker not understood] brown and i'm here with power, people to wip employment rights and we're a community group in san francisco. and i'm here to support and to thank supervisor kim for bringing forward a really important alternative to wiener's attempt to amend c-e-q-a. and i just want to speak from our experience as a community group. we organize low-income family and children with bayview hunters point and the mission. as some of you are familiar with, we were able to bring a successful challenge to the e-i-r that was put forward around the development of the

hunters point shipyard in candlestick. that was an incredibly burdensome process. as a community organization, it was over 4,000 pages to read the e-i-r and we focused specifically a superfund site, contaminated superfund site and we had to deal with really trying to understand what was being analyzed to what extent human health was being impacted by the approval of a development on top of contaminated land and all the way through we were being accused, oh, you're just trying to delay the process. there was tremendous pressure from the high-powered developer that has all kinds of relationships inside city hall. but the reality was nothing was included in the e-i-r about the effort to do an early transfer of that land to the developer before the clean-up process was complete. it was nowhere in those 4,000 pages and it was through the appeal process of the e-i-r that we were able to stop that transfer because it had not been adequately talked about. when you're talking about completing a circle process, clean up process by a developer

and advocating the responsibility of the navy to do clean up, there is serious impact and risk at hand. we are still participating in the navy ongoing process that's going to go for many years where we actually really need to protect and look at how can we make sure this clean up is thorough. speaking from that experience, the level to which we need to be really adequately protecting our folks, i mean, right now san francisco, as others have mentioned, developers are looking to come in here and move as fast as they can. and the reality is that it was really important that we brought a challenge. it was really important that we had the opportunity to thoroughly do that and it was really important that it was actually upheld and that a project would have not been adequately reviewed and contained risk was stopped. and many in the city didn't even realize that the e-i-r didn't contain information