property encumbered even so *, 150 properties on the list is more than 40 percent higher than last year's final total. so we have a lot of work to do there. thanks to the effort of the acting director, and cooperation by david (inaudible) and sfusfd facilities director beginning on september third, and dbi will collect ssu, sd, school impact fees here at 1600 mission street and this will save the customers a trip to the school office. and take the important step closer to providing the one stop service that the mayor wants to see available at our permit center and that is a welcoming news there. and i warm welcome to the senior environment and the inspector who is available at station 20. on the fifth floor. and on tuesdays and thursdays, ten to noon. to answer the customer questions about the new expanded toxic zone that was in

front of us weeks back and another important step to the customer service thanks to the dph's for making this happen and also improved the one stop scenario there and thanks to ed sweney and the review staffers, the motion shake and dany lou for meeting on friday, august 16th with the four, person, japanese delegation doing research on building efficiency and we have a couple more and bear with me. thanks to the chief building inspector, and the new ddi team appointed by acting director, on july 19th, to provide for the board that was effective on july 29, members including ron alan, (inaudible) and monitor and supervisor patty (inaudible) and we are working closely while it was expected

to generate an increase in the condo recommendation and we received 220 applications from the initial 175 received as of july 29th. and dbi's goal is to perform the 60 inspections per week and to complete the final report in two weeks, dpw, which also played a vital role in the conversions is expecting 60 to 100 applications on july 29th, and in fact they received 15. and dpw also stated that all existing tenants and condo conversion buildings are to be authored the lifetime lease as outlined in these legislation. finally, for those of you using a source of media, tools, dbi is now actively using twitter, and daily tweets are being sent to remind the customers about the dbi professional services as well as to alert the customers and the media and the general public to important events. take a look at the twitter and see for yourself and see for

yourself, how many voluntariers that dbi already have. and that is the end of my president announcements. madam secretary. >> is there any public comment on the president's announcements? >> seeing none, general public comment will take the public comment on matters in the commission jurisdiction. >> the members of the public may aaddress for a period of time not-to-exceed, 3 minutes, and they may address to commission as a whole and not to the individual commissions or department personnel. >> is there any public comment? >> seeing none, item four? discussion and possible action to approve and swear in a member of the board of examiners license architect seat. bradley sugar man, seat to expire, september 16, 2016. >> thanks, you can take this.

>> okay. commissioners, very happy to introduce mr. bradley sugar man who we appointed at our last meeting to the board of examiners, for the license architect seat. and we just wanted to invite mr. sugar man to this meeting today to introduce himself to the rest of the commission. and also, to the members of the public. and i would like to give him the oath of office for the examiners today. >> and you want to tell us a little bit about where you work? and a little about about your background? >> my background, i work for david baker and partners architects. and who primarily the multifamily housing for the non-profit groups and for profit groups. and mixed use, and residential, in the city, and as well as all of the bay area. and i have been with them,

since 1999. and it has been a licensed architect since i think, 2003. >> and okay. that is general overview. >> okay. >> and any new questions or comments on the members of this commission? >> so, we really appreciate you stepping forward and taking this position because this probably a lot of work for the board of examiner to do this year with the new codes coming out and everything like that. so with that, i guess, i would like to issue the oath of office with you. >> thank you. >> could we vote on this? >> you have it. >> so... you have it, and the... >> yes, are you going to read it? >> yes. >> so, we just repeat after me using your own name. >> i, i bradley sugar man, do solemnly swear that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california against all enemies foreign and domestic that i will bear true

faith and allegiance to the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california. >> and i take this obligation without any mental reservation and purpose of evasion and faithfully discharge the duties upon which i am about to enter and during such time as i hold the office, of a member of the board of examiners, license architect, seated in the city and county of san francisco. >> that i take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that i will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which i am about to answer and during such time as

i hold the office of a member of the board of examiners, license architect seat of the city and county of san francisco. >> thank you, welcome to the board of examiners. >> thank you. >> could i borrow your pen so he can sign this? >> welcome, again. >> thank you. >> [ applause ] >> we are on item five >> if i may i am going to be doing the restructuring of the agenda and i have spoke with the commissioners and if we may because of i am looking for people that i need for item five and six, are not here yet because we kind of schedule it

for 11, if i may, i have requested from the public if we could go to item 9, and which is the discussion on a possible action regarding the civil grand jury report. >> okay. >> number nine? >> yes. >> on the discussion and possible action regarding the civil grand jury report. >> are we okay with that? >> yes. >> sure. >> okay. >> yeah. >> okay. >> so if i may, i would like to ask bill strong to come to the mic and maybe just give us an overview of where we stand with the grand jury response and report. >> good morning commissioners, bill strong and legislative and public affairs. on the grand jury report, as all of you know, the report came out toward the end of june, and the way that the court works is the department

with a certain amount of time to provide a response and it is the kind of formal response that we have been following where you either agree or disagree with the findings and the recommendation and we explain what the department is doing, to implement the recommendations. i can say that we are on target and we have a basic draft that i have sent to all of you for your review. and we certainly appreciate any comments that you might have, and if you could send to the acting director, and or to me. and then, we will finalize these documents in time for the september 16th deadline. and it goes to the presiding board the presiding judge of the superior judge by that date. in general, i will just say that we do appreciate the recommendations, and some of

the insights that the grand jury has provided us and many of whom address the areas that we have been working on for a while, and we are certainly continuing to work on. and item such as implementation of the business process for engineering, and recommendations that many of you know, will be to begin implementing and then when the recession hit and we had to layoff almost 30 people and a lot of that work got put on hold. but, other recommendations such as getting our policies and procedures fully updated, and where we can put those on lines, and at a number of items regarding code enforcement. and we are certainly happy to address those. and actually we will have the first monthly report, on code enforcement cases, that was one of the recommendations later in

this meeting today. so i would just say from the 30,000 foot level, i think that we are in, pretty good shape with our response. but, we would welcome any comments or suggestions that any of you have and i do hope that you will send those to us, as quickly as you can given that, it is already almost the end of august, and the middle of september will be here before we know it thank you. >> what we have here is the draft and copy. so this is the draft and yes this is not the official possible. >> we have not take be the official position, it is a work in progress. >> you are asking the commission, to read through it which is a nice read of the 200 some odd pages. >> 237. >> okay and then maybe, just kind of agree or disagree or just say, look we would kind of feel that if you are tick ...

articulated it this way. >> since this is a joint response from the department and the commission, then obviously, any specifics that you in the course of your reading will think, we have missed or that we need to reconsider, i certainly would like to know that. and so that the response that goes the official response, is the satisfacorty to all of you and the departments. >> commissioners? >> yeah, i want to thank you, this is... as we know, as was the grand jury report, which i think that all of us really appreciated and it is nice to have outside eyes looking. and so, i am curious that there is a couple of ones that talk

about you know, public perceptions and especially one that we in the draft disagree with. and i wonder how we projected what the public perception is. >> that is probably one of the only public perceptions study that has been done involving the department we initiated with an outside vendor in 2008 and that was published and in fact we are submitting that as an append ix. for many people who may have read it several years ago and have not read it since, we do have in the budget, i knew, the study that we would be doing in the coming year. and which was also actually recommended at the time that the first time that every three to five years, that we would take a look at this and we would take another fee study and mix of a study.

so i think that it is always a little slippery slope to talk about public perception that is not authenticated or based on actual data. and by that, we are all familiar with the newspaper stories about things going on in certain department and our friends of the public utilities commission have been dealing with this fairly recently for those who pay attention to the media. and i just think that it is a mistake to use that as a basis for the decision-making, when in fact, it is not factually founded. and i just think that we all need to pay attention to those kinds of details, before we go off, and make whatever opinions different people may have. >> okay. >> thank you.

>> so i appreciate the department's work on the draft. i think that it behoof us all to read it very carefully and see what we think. i think that this probably no secret that i actually responded to the grand jury report before this, and now that is lengthy and that is because there are pages. and so i am sure that the department and i submitted my views on the report to the director and other commissioners so that people have that and i am sure that some of the points my be repeated here but i have to look to see if i could find them. and so i think that you know, we will go through this, and i think that just to echo some of the stuff about public perception and the department, and i think that what we want to do is to make things as

clear as possible. so there is as little room as possible for the misinformation in terms of the public perception and that kind of stuff. so any suggestions that i think have come from the grand jury in terms of transparency and even technical, better, technical reporting, data, i think is very helpful. i think that some of the things honestly that this commission and some of the staff have been working on as well. which i think that you have alluded to that we want to update some of our data, systems, and we want to make sure that things are much more accessible to the public, and in terms of our processes. >> thank you. >> and i appreciate your response on the topic about perception as well. and you are right, if there is no facts supporting those accusations, i mean, i don't

know how to respond to it or i would know how to respond to it. but, maybe, in discussion of how to change that perception, maybe, our department, ought to go out and find those facts and maybe we ought to go out and do the audit and do the interview and get the data to support the fact that there are no problems or there are no what do you call that? >> perceptions. >> yeah. >> so this has to be submitted by september 16th so we will not have an opportunity in public to review >> your next meeting is the 18th and the court required deadline is the 16th. so, apart from any comments that you can send us, and so that we can finalize and submit the document, i think that is about the end of our time. >> or maybe, we have a couple of meetings, where we are going

to be doing something else. if it is possible, we could add an agenda item to review the further draft, on the fifth or the tenth. >> well, what is it a requirement that we take action on this draft? before we submit it to the court? >> john alma from the city attorney's office, in order for the letter to represent the position of the building inspection commission, you would have to take a vote and have at least four members agree to a direction where ofttimes, a commission wants to respond, they may, be con census and can the president or someone on the commission to write a letter or give some direction to the staff to write something. or there is a letter before it,

like you have today. and it has already been prepared and there might be some tweaks around the edges but in order for it to stand as a statement and a letter from the building inspection commission, you would have to vote. would it be enough without the commission taking a stand? >> yes. the thing that i want to say this morning after the initial review is that one, i appreciate the methodology that is used for making the response, and namely the taking on of each. and laying out a review plan outline and bringing forward the past work that has been done as evidenced and i appreciate that methodology and i will give it more scrutiny as we go. but thank you. >> i just have a little bit of a concern with the time frame,

and want to get more input from the city attorney about how we should address it. because i feel like if we are going to do a collective response and that is when i wrote my initial response, i did it individually because i don't want to violate any sunshine rules by communicating with the majority of my fellow commissioners which i am sorry that i was not able to do. and i feel concerned about this too, because how are we going to have a discussion, about an issue whether we agree or disagree if we don't have a meeting. before the date when the response is due? >> because, you know, if two of us, feel that this is a great recommendation and the other five may not. i would certainly like to be persuaded and otherwise, but how do we work that in? >> so i am wondering if, sorry.

may i? >> please. >> and i am wondering if it is actually we are all ready to take the position on this? are we not? so, i did read this over the weekend. and that the commissioner mar's response as well as, your wording was stronger but the positions that you took is consistent with what the department's response is. but you know, i do think that it is a responsibility, whether we are legally required or not but i think that it is our responsibility as a commission to vote on it and to know, to answer the court. >> commissioner walker? >> i read the grand jury report, we have had that longer and we just got the draft, more

recently, and i want it on record, just to say that i really appreciate the work and the hours and the interviews that the grand jury did in presenting their position on some of the things that have been perpetual issues with our department, this is not, our first rodeo with the grand jury either. so, what i will say is that they in that grand jury, they acknowledge that we are moving in the right direction. and i think that as with many of us on the commission, the pace of the changes that need to happen is slow sometimes. but, i feel like as a commissioner, i embrace, almost entirety, the commission, the grand jury, recommendations and positions, because it basically says that we are on the right

track and we need the time from the specific department in order for me to sign on and i do think that we do have an opportunity with a couple of meetings that we are intended to have specifically, around interviews, that we could actually have some time to incorporate any recommendations that come from the commissioners to the department to add, or amend. and either on september fifth or september 10th. prior to the deadline, i want to thank the department for the work that they are doing in the grand jury for pushing this along, and i know that there

are grand jury members here who might want to say something to us. >> could we have the comments by the fifth. >> we could look at the schedule that we could look at the schedule and i see no reason why we could not accommodate that. >> with the commissioners with the goals for have the proofreaders and if you have comments, is it okay to send them directly to sonya, and she will send them to you. >> is there any more discussion there, before the public comment. >> i wonder if we could hear from the grand jury if there is anything to address in the public as part of this agenda

item. >> i have no objection to that. >> no. >> susan tucker and (inaudible) as the forewoman and i would like to read the statement and the point of the clarification about the process of response. >> and i just make this one point, first and it is kind of a legal point, but in our findings and recommendations, and response required, and i am sure that you will get excellent counsel from john here. but, if some of the responses required are responses from both the bic and the department because obviously you wear two separate hats and although you may choose to file joint responses, that is not required

and in some situations with respect to, for example, the recommendation one, and only the bic is required to respond. and so, it seems that, having the department respond for you, might not be you know, in your best interest, and so, the law requires that you agree in part solely, however, you choose to respond, and so, it is, it varies from recommendation and finding to recommendation and finding to each of these as whether the bic responds or whether the department responds. >> the bic and the department are not identical. >> i want to thank you from hearing from directly from the former grand jury and the

committee members that drafted a report that we think is appropriately titled building a better future at the department of building inspection. let me say that a committee was very committed to an approach that made a positive contribution to a department in the city and we were very impressed with that business process, reengineering report which has been referenced or provided and still does, an excellent road map for the department and we were also impressed by the many, dedicated individuals that we met during our interviews. we had only one year to do our work and our charge under the code is to be the eyes and the ears of the citizenry, to be a watch dog, to examine the county departments to see if they are operating efficiently and effectively. we interviewed over 50 people and a number of them multiple times and we reviewed documents

many, many times taller than i am. >> i believe that our analysis, methodology is solid. as set forth in the report and has been heard today, the themes that we have been heard was the need for transparency and efficiency and leadership. and we believe that the citizens of san francisco want a department with those qualities, we believe, and we note that the current acting director has been acting director for more than a year, putting him in a genuinely difficult position to implement needed changes with his long term tenure in question. in addition, two of the deputy directors are still acting, and we are obviously aware as you are, of the increasing demands on the department, in the light

of the building boom. we have seen the press, of course, and we can understand that the department might be defensive. and there is no question that much progress has been made since the dark days of 2006 and 8 and 9 recession. we try to make a point of that. however, we believe that our report is spot on in some key areas that indeed we found general agreement with our findings. and our recommendations flowed directly from our findings. so let me just make a few examples. it must be clear, to this commission, and it is your responsibility to address this to get stable, professional, independent, leadership in place, at the helm. and it is critical for such an over burdened department undergoing this great technological change. why has it taken so long? when can a permanent director be in place?

there is a big backlog of unresolved building violations. and you, saw the press about 308 turk regarding these. and the district attorney office has even formed a special multidepartment committee. something in the process is broken and stuck and there is something that needs to be fixed and abatement appeals board this morning heard two sets of notice of violations dating to 2009. and so, we also noted all of the tao*uls tools available have not been used, enforcement has not been consistent and fees and costs consistently collected. this sends a dangerous message, and could smack of favoritism or that those who could afford the attorneys can get better treatment than those who can't. >> the excellent technology will only provide its benefits which are many, if the people