welcome to the may 22, 2013 meeting of board of appeals. commissioner frank fong, darryl honda and commissioner hurtado. to my left is city attorney who will provide any legal advice

tonight. i'm cynthia goldstein the executive director. we are joined buying the -- by the department who have cases before the board tonight. representing the planning department and planning commission. and department of building inspection and director of environmental health of the department of public health is also with us tonight. at this time mr. pacheco if you can go over the board meeting guidelines. >> the bored -- aboard request that you turn off all cell phones. item 1: at this time, members of the public may address the board on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board except agenda items. with respect to agenda items, your opportunity to address the board will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting with one exception. when the agenda item has

already been reviewed in a public hearing at which members of the public were allowed to testify and the board has closed the public hearing, your opportunity to address the board must be exercised during the public comment portion of the calendar. each member of the public may address the board for up to three minutes. if it is demonstrated that comments by the public will exceed 15 minutes, the president may continue public comment to another time >> -- request that you turn off all cell phones. item 1: at this time, members of the public may address the board on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board except agenda items. with respect to agenda items, your opportunity to address the board will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting with one exception. when the agenda item has already been reviewed in a public hearing at which members of the public were allowed to testify and the board has closed the public hearing, your opportunity to address the board must be exercised during the public comment portion of the calendar. each member of the public may address the board for up to three minutes. if it is demonstrated that comments by the public will exceed 15 minutes, the president may continue public comment to another time >> -- request that you turn off all cell phones. item 1: at this time, members of the public may address the board on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board except agenda items. with respect to agenda items, your opportunity to address the board will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting with one exception. when the agenda item has already been reviewed in a public hearing at which members of the public were allowed to testify and the board has closed the public hearing, your opportunity to address the board must be exercised during the public comment portion of the calendar. each member of the public may address the board for up to three minutes. if it is demonstrated that comments by the public will exceed 15 minutes, the president may continue public comment to another time during the meeting. 1234 >> there are customer satisfaction survey forms on the left side of podium. if you have requestes about requesting a rehearing, board rules or hearings schedules, please speak to board staff or after

the break or meeting or call the board office tomorrow morning. the board office is located. this is tell cast live on sfgtv and dvd's are available for purchase directly from sf gov tv. >> please note that any member of the public may speak without taking this oath pursuant to the sunshine ordinance in the administrative code. thank you. >> do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony that you will give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? >> thank you, mr. pacheco. moving for public comment that is not on the agenda tonight circulate anyone who would like to speak under general public comment? >> seeing none we'll move to

item no. 2 which is commissioners comments and questions. seeing none, we'll move to item no. 3 which is the adoption of the board meeting minute for may 15, 2013. >> i will move their adoption. >> thank you, is there any public comment on the minutes? >> seeing none, mr. pacheco can you call the roll please? >> on the motion to adopt the may 13, 2013 minutes. commissioner fong, hurtado, lazarus, thoughts -- those minutes are adopted. >> item no. 4 is a special item and with the president's consent, i invited patrick to come speak to you. he's the

director of earthquake safety an here to provide background information on new legislation requiring retrofitting of any buildings. he may assist us in information regarding retrofitting. >> good evening. this is for information only. you are not asked to make any judgments or decisions based on what i'm going to tell you. what i wanted to do is give you a brief overview of a quick implementation program that i'm doing now and most importantly something that is very relevant today is mandatory soft story retro fitted. the caps projects was funded by the building inspection commission, it was

almost a ten year project and coming out of the events of the 1989 earthquakes we were asking what are our vulnerabilities with reference to earthquakes. very complicated question and answers. different stake holders that represented a slice of the community of san francisco. we were all talking about different groups and came up with a set of recommendations. those recommendations were taken and put into a 30 year work plan which is what you have in front of you now. that outlines the next slate of task for the next 30 years. the first one is the mandatory soft story ordinance. it affects buildings that were built before 1978, wood frame construction, has five or more residential units and two or more stories in height over a

soft story condition. so over an above basement building. in mid-september this year the department will send out notices to property owningers. owners. what we had to do is create a data base based on several different data sets. one being the assess ors information to establish date and the housing inspection records and the permanent tracking records to establish construction types and number of stories and units. that's been highly refined with the team and they have been helpful during this process and they are going to carry us forward and get us ready for september mailing. this becomes operate

iv on june 15. we expect mid-september for these noticed to go out. the regulation itself deals with the caps process an how it was handled. i before i came to work for the city i was part of the mayor's soft story task force and to be in that process and to have to take our time to make sure we take our time and address these issues with regard to public safety. some of you have seen a list of soft story buildings. the list that you might see on the internet was a list that was taken from the cap study. this was done on a voluntary bases from people walking on

the street. there wasn't detailed evaluations on these performance. someone may have identified a soft story building but none listed as dangerous buildings. there is roughly a 50 percent opt out. we believe about 3500 buildings already will be buildings that require retrofit. it's a very simplified form. this can be completed by any licensed architect or structural engineer and will basically clarify the scope of the ordinance fits within the ordinance type. type 5 wood grain construction, with five or more units and built before 1978. if they are determined to

meet that criteria and subject to the scope of the ordinance, they will be placed in one of four compliance tiers. they are divided up to tier one and has a senior care facility or any kind of educational facility with the association of the criteria i described before. if a building collapse it's a potential for these structures. that's why those buildings have four years to complete the work. moving down to tier 2 with residential units and tier 3, catch all there, tier 4 with any ground collection base. two complex

there. map books areas are of concern and we are not going to mandate through ordinance that they reach any higher standards but they will try to mitigate those standards and we've listens to the small businesses community and they understand having these commercial spaces there may be some disabled access to the department as well. they are subject to chapter 11 b which requires the cost of construction to be spent on accessible up grated. grades. everybody has one year to complete the simplified screening form. because we are going after a slightly larger universal building we want to give people the ability to opt out if they received the notice

in error. on the screening form, if you have complied with dbi administrative and 94 which is the voluntary program and you have completed that work, that's an automatic opt out. all you have to do is put your permanent application on the form. dbi looks at the permit number and the permit is fienld -- final and you are out of the program. some people will say i did retrofitting after 1989 or my building is fine the way it is. this is between the screening form in asking for applying for a permit. this is where they evaluate your property and make a derjs determination and that can be from yes it's fine or needs additional work. so another opportunity to opt out. that

was a very important part in our discussions. we didn't want people to get caught up in the city program when they shouldn't be there in the beginning. the ordinance that passed amended the building code and added section code b which is the language of this ordinance. all of this information can be found on our website. there is a link to the ordinance and the documents. we are working in conjunction with the department of inspection to handle the procedural elements of this ordinance and the technical stands of this ordinance. we have a bench mark study using five different standards that we use and trying to develop a consistency among them to any standards used would use any of these

standards. any of these that are being developed now oftentimes when we hear from people about the building process is they have an administration beard -- board. we've been reaching all the departments and also working with dpw, san francisco fire department, basically anyone who is going to have a say in this permit process. we invitation this administrative bulletin to have appendices from all the organizations. when they walk in the door they know exactly what is expected of them. director has very adamant that we can develop a program to issue the permits over the counter. the issue of having to comply with a mandatory ordinance maybe hard enough for some property owne

and stream lining it is a huge advantage to it. as far as the port appeals goes, where we might have some is the evaluation stage that i mentioned if dbi comes back and they can't reach a conclusion at the department level. we are changing the code that will require the board of examiners that will a point a small subcommittee to hear these matters specifically. we are making some amendments to the fire code and provide relative data bass on that that's basically all i have for you. there is complete information on our website. i didn't want to get too detailed here but i also want to answer any questions that the board may have. >> i have a couple questions. are there any notice requirements? >> yes. the notice will be sent

out to those 6300 buildings in early september. >> let me rephrase that. >> you are talking about the other notices. the retro fits happen behind the exterior wall. these are simple over the counter approvals. of course we have to plan for the one off where someone has an out of the box with a structure that has a facade. it could potentially trigger neighborhood notification of that. the large majority will not have those requirements on them. >> and the standard of upgrade is it for safety standards >> that was developed by the policy group and by the mayor,

is if a major earthquake happens and these buildings collapse we have 58,000 who are essentially renters. we have the potential katrina effect on our hand. they may leave and may not come back. the social implications of not having a place to stay are huge. if we want to be a resilient city we need to focus on this. you may not have power or gas or water, but you can sleep in your own bed. that's the goal of the performance of this ordinance. >> a very basic question, soft story, understand the criteria that this ordinance is supposed to get at in scope in terms of what they are looking at. does soft story mean wood? >> you can have a wood like. but what it is is a lack of partitions on the ground floor so when you have a massive

earthquake you have so many opens with garage opens and when you think of these buildings with the first floor level. so that's a loose definition of what a soft story building is. >> wouldn't a soft story also be a concrete or steel where a concrete column comes down at the middle of the bay. >> correct. >> where is that on the website? i was flipping through the materials hoping that i will be able to read a description for the regular lay person. is there material? >> yes. you can go there by going on the website. >> can you direct me to that? >> that information in front of you will have a few pages on it because it's simplified as a directive to create the ordinance. the real background is in the caps report. i would

love to bring that to you but it's a binder this thick. it's available on our website. good. >> a silly question about word choice. when you say opt out, that makes me think of something that is volunteer, like i don't want to participate in this. is this going to be clear to people what that means? >> it will be readily apparent that this is a mandatory ordinance and when i say opt out, it's a way of showing that you shouldn't have been there in the beginning. >> a compliance of something in >> exactly. the way this is we've seen mandatory retro at which -- fit. so this was kept in a binder in department of building inspection. if you were on that list you would have to go down there. this is

2013. this is going to be a live document that lives on a website and has a list of addresses. also for tents information if you are anatomy -- in a building that is dangerous. but it will be actively updated. so you are going to see this building taken off the list. as far as violations go, there is a three parts of this where notices of violations could be issued. if they don't comply with the screening form, a violation can be issued. if they don't comply with the permit, if they don't complete the work on time and then they could be issued a third notice of violation. >> i see that the cost of per dwelling unit to do this retrofit is somewhere between

$10-20,000 estimating. >> it's estimating because oftentimes if you had a 70 unit building and 80 unit building it's going to cost the same. generally it's $3200 per structure. >> are there any incentives from the federal government for instance in terms of giving people tax deductions like they do for certain energy efficiency upgrades. is there anything like that to offset this type of cost because it seems like it would be hardship for some people? >> you are right. it's a substantial cost and we've had a tremendous a outreach when we were running the legislation through the process. the negotiation that happened with the tenant groups is in san francisco we have hardship process through the ramp board. we believe that process works, however we hear criticisms from

groups that it's cumbersome and it puts too much own us on the residents to do this. we thought it would be better to do hardship reform for all improvements. so the community gets a big win here because they are able to stream line this process and make it easier for people who can't afford the rent increase. so there is several different option as to how they would pay for it and having them qualify for funds, for buildings that are just recently purchased, a few years ago we passed prop n that includes both seismic work, up to a third of your transfer tax can be reabated to you. it's a help. it does offset it. and when i