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 about how the developer would or would not be able to

complete that early transfer and complete their clean up. so, i want to speak from that experience. there's a tremendous need for notification and there actually is a precedent around where we have approved the e-i-rs that actually were illegal and where judges had to intervene to ensure that we were doing a legal process. thank you. commissioners, [speaker not understood] local 2. part of my work with our union is to keep our members abreast of developments in a range of different industries, hotels, restaurants, as well as affordable housing and other projects. for years i've been baffled, especially in this day and age, by the complexity of both the notification and the -- and the process of public input. you know, i have to go through a dozen pieces of mail from the

planning department every day and yet still i manage to miss key determinations because right now to the best of my knowledge, it's impossible to tag projects by particular industry or by zoning or scale or what have you. you have to do it geographically. so, the proposals in term of public notification contained in supervisor kim's legislation are really quite welcome. you know, they build on what i think was a big advance and i want to commend you for it for putting data nightly up on the data s.f. sites. it's been a big improvement. this legislation only builds on that big improvement and will make it that much easier for people to stay on top of and give timely input to projects they have an interest in. i want to take issue with some of the stuff, analysis about the added burden and the

staffing requirements. you know, given that i have to go through a dozen pieces of mail every day, i don't want to, i've got to believe that putting a better system in place for public notification is actually going to save some time. in the public input process the requirement, for example, to do a mandatory scoping of e-i-rs just seems like common sense to me, you know. just as an example, hotels have a very particular character when it comes to being workplaces. and when there are scoping sessions, which sometimes there are for environmental impact reports on hotel projects, we can come with you with some expertise about some of those very esoteric aspects, how the trash is taken out to the street and loading zones and things like that that don't ordinarily come to some

planners' minds, but have a big impact on people's day-to-day work environments. so, i think it's going to save staff time and save money if that process is in place up front. you can get comments up front and not wait until late in the day comments and even the appeal process to correct omissions. that's just one example, but reflective of the thought that's gone in this legislation. and i want to urge you to approve this legislation. so, thank you. >> thank you. any additional public comment? speakers? sue hester. i've been dealing with this since c-e-q-a existed. i'm going to go through all of

the various drafts looking for a couple issues. one is the amendment of the section has got to be included in the legislation. the process should be that for the planning code plus. 90 days of review instead of 30 days and a mandatory workshop for major amendments. there is no requirement now -- any supervisor can draw any legislation and it would have 30 days' review. this, pardon me, sucks. secondly, the notice process for projects post c-e-q-a needs a major change. and it's a upn peter cohen talked about it. the notice of projects is how i found out about things because the c-e-q-a notice only comes to the same people who get the project notice.

on a conditional use it only goes to property owners and tic owners are excluded and tenants are excluded. and until the upn process, it got to be taken out of the planning department. if you're going to sit on it, it should be done outside of the department. there is no notice of projects to tenants and to tics, period, end of the story. especially [speaker not understood] are the hardest projects. area plan notices is an additional problem. i'm going to be looking for that because we have basically said the eastern neighborhoods can tier off the e-i-r for the eastern neighborhoods and they don't have -- a lot of projects are eligible for cat ex's. there are projects that go

through -- someone before the planning commission, i know we'll give you one. on valencia street, shadowing over park that has -- mission playground. went through three years in advance, rec/park, before it ever came to planning. and rec/park evaluated the configureerition of the park as different from the configuration that exists today. ~ and i don't get any notices of rec/park. and i was kind of surprised that they had made a determination on shadows on a park facility long before it came to planning. i'm looking for a bunch of issues and a couple of them are major. and i get every notice. ~ and read every notice.

good afternoon, commissioners. thank you for this hearing. i'm speaking in support of supervisor kim's legislation which i was part of drafting along with 41 other organizations. this is tes well born speaking on behalf of neighborhood council. i'd like to say some of the names of organizations that were represented in this extremely thorough redrafting based on the alioto-pier as a template. black right -- the black human rights leadership council, the golden gate park preservation alliance, the center for biological diversity, the san francisco green party, cathedral hill neighbors, the eastern neighborhoods united front, save muni, san francisco architectural heritage, green action for health and

environmental justice, north mission neighbors, telegraph hill dwellers, and seiu, [speaker not understood] valley improvement association. that gives you some idea of the breadth of the people that worked with supervisor kim in crafting this legislation and i urge you to move it forward. i would like to also support the idea of -- on some items it would be great if we could have more than 30 days. again, when you're working as you all know having another life, it's very difficult to fit in something very quickly. we want to make sure that projects get reviewed by the community. and we've seen that that review by the community and input from supervisors can make them a lot better. planning certainly deserves more resources as it's needed. we look forward to that process of making sure getting the right mix there.

more development is coming, at least it's being told we're going to have it whether we like it or not. hopefully we'll be able to work with the bay area council on that matter. but i urge you to move supervisor kim's legislation forward so that we can get the best of all of this and without any tricky stuff in it. thank you. commissioners, ron miguel. i told ann marie i wasn't going to talk, but i'm back in my activist mode. i can't help it. for a city that is absolutely for us to be obsessed with process, it's amazing that we were unable to put a process in place when it came up in '06 and 2010, and i was please today hear one of the early speakers on this admit that and come forward to put a process in place now. this legislation is obviously in flux. i've been working mainly with

supervisor wiener's office, many public meetings which nearly everyone in the room who has spoken today has been, both sides well represented. i urge you to move the matter on to the board of supervisors with the department's recommendations. the department has been wonderful in working with us. the amendments that board president chiu put in at monday's hearing started to bring things together. it's my feeling they will come closer together. as far as the web-based notification system is concerned, i was one of the authors in 1997 for the grand jury that highly criticized the city's i-t system. we were guaranteed by the board of supervisors at that time that things would change

unfortunately. in all these years it has barely moved for some city that is so dependent on i-t now for its economic recovery. it is absolutely amazing. but i know the department is working on that. it will be a boon to all of us. so, as i say, i hope you will move this forward with the department's recommendations. thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. rose hillson. i'm glad i have three minutes today instead of two. thank you so much. i'd like to recommend supervisor kim's legislation for many of the reasons stated earlier, but mostly because of notification. and in line with this notification issue, i would recommend and request that the i-t support for this

legislation be fully functional between both dbi and planning department so the public knows when something is approved to start the 30-day clock. currently at d-b-i, the project permit tracking system is still in its testing stage and they're going to have people come in and do hands on and that's not set for completion until august of 2013. so, that also needs to be considered. on the current planning website, you have something called the active permits in my neighborhood link and i was playing around with it for about a couple hours. and sometimes it works, k1 sometimes it doesn't. so, i want to make sure that the details that show up in these permits ~ for the public to know are all there. it's not just going to this active permits linkses, but also to the san francisco property information map and everything else. as you know, department of building inspection permits descriptions are based on this

application at d-b-i as it shows up on the overhead. it shows the free form text that the developer will put in there. and i showed a part of this at the board of supervisors land use meeting. here's something that shows that the description is about vertical and horizontal addition. that's the description of the project. if that's all the public knows, then if i put a deck up there, that is a vertical-horizontal expansion, but so can be a whole first floor -- i mean second floor. so, it's very important that we look at all these things about scope definitions and modifications and what can be appealed, especially if we're considering this legislation as predicated on building code 106 a3.4.2. thank you. >> is there any additional public comment? okay, seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner antonini. >> yeah, at the beginning i have a couple questions for

city attorney elaine warren, if you could answer something because, first of all, prior to january 1st, 2003, where were environmental appeals, that was when the state law changed that made the appellate process to the elected body of a particular county. do you know what was pre-january 1 of '03? >> yes, commissioner antonini. elaine warren, attorney. prior to elected decision making body, where the elected body had not signed off on e-i-rs. so, on certifications of the e-i-rs, but that was the only provision that was in the state law. so, what happened in -- [affectedeffected]} in 2003 was that provision that was already in the state statute was broadened to also include appeals to the elected decision making body for negative

declarations and exemption determinations. >> yeah, that's very significant and that's why there is so much interest in this, because i don't know if you know this answer, but is the level of appeal as great in other counties in california as we see in san francisco or -- >> i can't answer. i'm sorry, i can't answer that question. >> and the other question that might be a technical one, in san francisco, the level of accepting an appeal at the board of supervisors is simple majority, 605. whereas overturning a project in most instances where it's a 309 or cu is a super majority. is that the case in other counties? because we have discretion over that level within the county of san francisco. ~ >> well, there's actually one case that addresses the action taken by the elected decision making body on an appeal of an e-i-r. ~ 6 to 5 it's not exactly analogous because that case concerned a

situation where there was a tie vote and the court said that the decision making body must act. it must make a decision. it can't uphold the c-e-q-a document based on a tie vote. and that is why our current -- actually both of the proposals clarify that the board must act by majority vote on each of the decisions that comes to it. but the problem with the majority vote is that it -- a super majority can result in effect i havely not perhaps being consistent with that case law. ~ effectively our advice has been we should stick with the requirement that a majority of the board does need to approve, but there is no clear case law guidance on that issue of a super majority. whether you could require a super majority. >> okay, that's very interesting because --

>> it does appear potentially problematic, but we haven't opined on that issue. >> i find it interesting. thank you for your information. the reason we see so many appeals is because the lower hanging fruit. you only need six supervisors to appeal if you appeal a project itself, you need a super majority, and, therefore, and if a c-e-q-a document has to be redone, it usually is a very cumbersome process. in some instances it's something that will kill the project. so, i think that we have to look very carefully at what we're crafting here. i'll give you some of my thoughts on what i've seen so far. we've heard about the executive officer, environmental officer making the call on exemptions and it being appealable to the planning commission. i mean, i think that should remain with the executive office. they have the -- he or she has

the experience in this matter. it would not hurt for the planning commission to have an informative session as to the determining factors cat ex to negative declaration, and we pretty much know negative declaration to e-i-r, but that wouldn't hurt either, but we should not be making those determinations, but it wouldn't hurt if we had that situation where a commissioner could then see a negative declaration and just say, well, or see a cat ex and say, yeah, i kind of question this one. what's the story here? but allow the public to appeal these i think would be cumbersome. and the next part of my comments has to do with that same issue. i think that all the noticing should be about the project itself, not about the exemptionses or negative declarations. in other words, we want the public to be totally notified with a project that's within their neighborhood that has effects on them potentially

even environmental effects, even if they are exempt. but it should be about the projects. it shouldn't be about the environmental piece because the environmental piece is about the adequacy of the analysis. it's not about whether you agree with the project or not. it's has the staff done an adequate job or whoever is providing the environmental piece in analyzing the effects of the project. be they cat ex, be they negative declaration or be they e-i-r, it really is all about the adequacy. if you're really opposed to the project, unless there really is a strong case to be made about the thing not being adequate, i think the focus should be on the projects. but particularly in negative declarations and cat ex's which are smaller things usually. i think skiming for all the projects which has been proposed in part of the drafts, i'm not sure if that's still on the table. i think that might be a little bit too cumbersome.

there are levels of which require a scoping for projects. i think general plan amendments , over 500 units, coastal -- there is a whole list of things that require a scoping that i think for having scopings on all projects, i'm not sure if it's every single project that's in there. but it would be cumbersome. the part about buildings over 50 years of age, certainly i agree with supervisor kim that character defining would make it a little more narrow and might be willing to consider that sort of thing because the vast majority of buildings or many of the buildings over 50 years are not necessarily even potentially historic. so, i think if they're not reasonably changing the character defining parts of the building, they're doing something interiorly or something that's not character defining. questions about printed versions of e-i-rs, i think i would still like to see that.

i mean, downloading an e-i-r or even any other environmental document, maybe a cat ex, but some of these longer things could be quite a download for one's computer. even if you're not going to print it out. at least as far as i'm concerned, i think you should have both. then there's the question of the notification period for, i guess, whether it's 14 or 10 days. i think i'm fine with the shorter period as it is now rather than having to go to -- i've seen many appeals where at the 11th hour, something, you know, appeal is made and it's based upon the timeliness. and many projects have been delayed at great cost to the city and cost to the commissioners' time by, you know, a technicality that it wasn't there exactly in time. so, what, you know, i think that if you're serious about the issue and you've got the

material 10 days ahead, you should be able to read it and digest it in time. i don't know about notification of over the counter permits. i think that would be -- if they have no significant environmental impacts, i think that would be a pretty hard thing to do. there might be a way to do it electronically that would be simple and cost-effective, but i think you've got to find the method first and demonstrate its expediency before putting it into law. because it could end up being a very expensive and time consuming thing. and then the other thing about noticing to all residents within 300 feet, i think staff has wisely put forth the difficulty in locating all the people that live within 300 feet because property owners, of course, are a matter of record. renters it's a little hard to tell who is there, if they're registered voters, you could find a registration list. but oftentimes it's really hard to find out who lives there. maybe you could be resident at

someplace, but it sounds like it would be a search. and then the other one that i find is really important is a modification of a project and the environmental officer makes the determination that the modification is consistent with the original project. i still am in favor of that. i don't know that that should be appealable. that's a technical matter that, you know, has to be done by people who really understand environmental law, really understand what would be enough of a change to require a new analysis, which is very expensive. if a member of the public pops up on every single issue that they don't like to request an appeal, then it could be very expensive process and delay us a lot. so, and i think it's fairly clear. normally if the project is

smaller than it was when it was first approved, certainly we don't need a new analysis. if it's larger, it's a matter of judgment. and, let's see, i have a couple of other things. the final thing it was there was some provision for fast tracking 100% affordable projects. and i think when we're talking about environmental issues, everybody should be treated the same. if i'm a resident in an area and somebody's building 100% affordable project, it's probably still going to have the same impact on my life as a market rate project, and maybe even more so. so, i think that for the benefit of the public which we're trying to benefit in these things, i don't see fast tracking projects because on environmental -- i mean, if you want to do some fast tracking for other parts of the process, the approval process that you feel are more beneficial to the city, then that's a different story. but on the environmental piece, everybody has to be treated the

same because the impact is the same no matter who you are if you're in the area. so, generally those are my feelings. if i misrepresented anything that is consistent, if there have been changes made since i i read the material earlier today, if i misrepresented anything, certainly i would be open to any corrections on that. but those are my general feelings on what i've seen so far. >> commissioner wu. >> thanks. so, thanks to the public for coming out again today. i know this has been a long process for everyone. i'm happy to see that i think that there may be modified legislation that everyone can agree on and really encourage everyone to continue to work together and hope that, for me, i hope that the commission today sends this legislation to land use to really have the compromise be determined there. so, there's a couple issues that i want to talk about.

i'm very supportive in this legislation of the fact that i believe the e-i-r process more or less stays the same within this legislation. i think something that we were still figuring out as we were hearing the other c-e-q-a legislation was that although focused on cat ex's and negative declarations, the fact that the board of supervisors was the determining body about environmental review made it so that there was a de facto fast tracking of e-i-rs. something i've asked staff about and still don't fully understand, but i believe it was in there. and, so, you know, what i've been hearing from the public is really folks are concerned about these big projects the most. cpmc was used as an example, hunters point was youed as an example. those were all e-i-rs. so, i just want to make sure we're focused on maintaining that process as is, to really have the public dialogue about the bigger projects. so, i agree with i believe emory, there was staff recommendation that the board

should not be the -- should not essentially automatically hear environmental documents. i'm also supportive of the 30-day appeals window. but i also wanted to ask a question of staff. so, can you give me an example of whether environmental approval is not the same as the first approval? because there is kind of a distinction of where the 30 days starts. >> good afternoon, sarah jones, planning department. for a project that is not reviewed over the counter, often the environmental determination will be made and, in fact, we review the project for whether or not a it qualifies for an exemption. ~ and that occurs before the 311 notification on a single-family project is even sent out. so, that notification doesn't even go out until the environmental determination has been made.

so, then, there can be a lag actually of really several months between the time that the environmental determination is made and when there is a project approval. >> and, so, then, my question is in supervisor tang's legislation, so maybe you can answer this or the supervisor, is it put forward that after the environmental decision and then maybe that's noticed on the website, then an appeal can be -- can be made at that time even though the first approval has not yet been made? ~ supervisor kim >> yes, supervisor kim's legislation would allow for an appeal to be filed at that time, and that is actually -- at the time of the environmental determination. and that is also part of the amendments that supervisor chiu proposed on monday. >> but then where does the 30-day clock start? >> the 30-day clock would start after the approval has been

made under c-e-q-a. it is stated in order to appeal an exemption an approval needs to have been made. >> okay. >> change of captioners