five years since it's been adopted. and talking about that plan and how these projects are or are not consistent with that plan and giving more information to the community about how they can get involved in the process. so, those are coming up on the second and the fifth of october. and that concludes my presentation. thank you. >> thank you. >> commissioners, item 11, review of past week's events at the board of supervisors, board of appeals and historic preservation commission. well, there was no historic preservation commission. >> good afternoon, commissioners, ann marie rodgers planning department staff. this is the first week the board is back with their full schedule of hearings so i'm here to report on those that pertain to planning and land use. at monday's land use committee, the committee heard supervisor cohen's ordinance which would create a formula retail restricted use district for 3rd street. this commission considered that ordinance on july 25th and unanimously voted for approval with certain modifications. you'll be pleased to know that supervisor cohen incorporated all of the commission's policy

recommendations. she did not, however, expand the rud to include a few properties along main street. on this matter the commission merely requested that the supervisor consider this change. and because some of these substantive amendments were made at the committee this week, they amended it and continued it so it's expected to be heard again and recommended for approval next week. also the land use committee, they considered the planning commission initiated ordinance for hotels in certain soma districts. this ordinance would amend the planning code to allow a [speaker not understood] hotel of any size on muo parcels if they have a height district designation of 105 or higher, but only via conditional use authorization. under the existing controls, this sort of cu approval can only occur for hotel with fewer than 75 units.

after a brief presentation by the attorney representing the project that is proposed for 144 king street, the committee forwarded this item with the recommendation of approval. this week at the full board, there were three pieces of legislation introduced and i'd like to share with you the first is a resolution that would recognize the devastating effect of the foreclosure crisis on local communities. it would also support the city of richmond strategy to assist homeowners at risk of foreclosure and remain in their homes and declare san francisco's intention to study whether it should embark on a similar strategy. this included supervisor campos, mar, and cohen. secondly, supervisor yee introduced an ordinance [speaker not understood] proposed child care facility oversight from the department of children and youth and their

families to the office of early education and care. and strangely, it is the planning code that kind of talks about that sort of monitoring and facility oversight requirement. and lastly, supervisor campos introduced an ordinance that would amend the planning code to allow a choice hotel to rent rooms to the homeless veterans for a period of time without abandoning a designated tourist hotel use clarification. so, those last two ordinances will be scheduled for you before you for hearings in the next three months. and that concludes my report this week unless there are any questions. >> commissioner sugaya. >> yes, one comment on the eminent domain in the city of richmond. it's been reported that actually the city council doesn't have a super majority to actually pass that legislation. so, at the moment i think it's in limbo, so to speak. so, it may not actually move

forward. >> thank you for the update. >> thank you. >> commissioners, if there's nothing further, we can move on -- >> excuse me, the board of appeals did meet last night. they had two hearings since the commission went on recess and last night they met. nothing of interest, nothing to report, but at the hearing on august 21st there were two items. the first being 86 5 el camino del mar also known as 132nd avenue and it was the d-r that the planning commission has heard several times over the course of the years. this was -- this item had been heard previously but continued to allow additional time to have compliance with the height. the board on that item unanimously upheld the issuance of the permit and the hearing the planning commission did not take d-r on this item. the second item, 31 66 16th street, which is a building permit application to establish a retail use known as shack spade. this item had lengthy hearing.

it was a jurisdiction request on a letter of determination. the previous week which the board had denied on this one, the board voted 3 to 2 to overturn the permit, to deny the permit. however, four votes are required super majority to overturn a permit so the permit was in effect granted. there has been a rehearing request filed on this permit and i believe that's scheduled for hearing on october 9th. >> commissioner antonini. >> yeah, just procedural question. when you talk about a rehearing, i wasn't aware that the board of appeals people can have it heard a second time. >> yes, there is a process, any appeal that is heard by the board within 10 days you can file a rehearing request. and if you can show that there is either new information that was not available at the time of the previous hearing or manifest injustice, the board can vote to allow a new hearing on the item and it will be scheduled for a brand-new hearing with new briefing and

that is a possibility. >> okay, thank you for that information. >> commissioner antonini. >> i already asked. >> thank you. >> there is nothing further, commissioners, we can move on to general public comment not to exceed a period of 15 minutes. at this time members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission except agenda items. with respect to agenda items, your opportunity to address the commission will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting. each member of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes. i do have a couple of speaker cards. >> jeremy whitaker and linda chapman. good afternoon supervisors -- commissioner. my name is jamie whitaker and i live in the rincon hill neighborhood. i have some public comment about the warrior's arena. i sit on piers 30-32 advisory committee under the port.

on january 7th, 2013, we had a meeting at the cac to discuss scoping for the e-i-r. piers 30-32 arena and the very first item that i mentioned in minutes is that the department of public health's sustainable community index should be used to assess the community health impacts of the proposed project. as you probably know, article 38 is written and helps to protect new buildings with ventilation and filters from air quality issues. but thousands of residents already live in the area and have no such protection. this week on monday, the south beach rincon mission neighborhood association was very happy to host jessica range and [speaker not understood] from the planning department. karen cohen who manages the group that does the healthy development measurement tool. at that time i took the

opportunity to ask karen, has your department been contacted about analyzing the air quality and other health impacts on the community by the proposed warriors arena. the answer was no. so, i'm very concerned that the health impacts are not being evaluated for the warrior's arena. and i have a map that i received monday on the overhead. in blue shows the air pollution problematic areas that i believe the planning department is trying to help protect even more and pay attention to the sensitive use of the area. this is a chart -- this is a graph from sustainable sf.org. it's basically the healthy development measurement tool data available for folks to look at. and you can see the yellow

indicates much worse concentrations of particulate matter. and just last year the world health organization began recognizing particular matter as a carcinogen. in other words, like cigarette smoke, there's no additional amount that's not impactful, doesn't reduce a person's life-span. on june 5th, the budget committee of the board of supervisors -- another overhead, please. harvey rose, john avalos, socioeconomic equity showed that the pediatric hospitalization rate for rincon hill and other neighborhoods around highways is 26.7, 12.2 is the average for other areas. and the sfcpa is showing us 35,000 new pm peak auto trips already [speaker not understood] in the area. so, please have the department of public health get engaged. thank you.

linda chapman for knob hill neighbors. i'm going to bring up the fact there seem to be quite a few people concerned in the neighborhood about not even just 1601 larkin that you heard from me about, but about the slicing and dicing of knob hill in general by these little groups of people who probably are not registered as lobbyists and probably are not registered as permit expediters, but are doing some of those kinds of functions and, in fact, some of them are registered as nonprofits which essentially precludes doing that kind of thing. there is a meeting at the library that i didn't organize. i was there and a few other people from our area. there were also some people who applied for permits. and, yeah, they're quite disgusted. they say here are these groups that come in and say, we're going to place conditions on the permit like at abc hearings -- pardon me, at the board of supervisors hearings, which cannot be enforced in the first place. or we're going to impose that bmr should be on-site in car

share, and then somebody responds like in the blog and said, they didn't negotiate anything. they got exactly the minimum that's required by the city planning code anyhow, you know. and yet the neighborhood gets maybe a big ugly building. it is mentioned in this meeting that, you know, people are complaining that the members often don't know anything about this. they have no idea that, you know, the leaders of one or another group are in there. i think there is either favor or money -- you know, it may be just a party, i don't know. it's memberships like local neighbors, if you join us, we'll help you get permits. we know how to get you the permits in the city. they get 2.46 million for a cbd, they said. does anybody in the neighborhood actually know anything about this? i would see two people in the meeting down below the church and then we're being told, those are the public meetings about the cbd. that 2.46 million was for supporting the large version of cpmc that ultimately didn't pass. the contract was signed, it involved city officials also.

you know, there is a sunshine act and a brown act. you're going to be hearing more about some c-e-q-a -- i probably won't get to stay for it, but we have three e-i-rs on three's projects there in which the developers can find some little group, you know, four people who are leaders of one group or say so, one or two in another. four people in another who, you know, nobody even knew who they were. the knob hill coalition, confirmed to me over and over four people. they will say we represent the neighborhood. we will, you know, take this [speaker not understood]. we want these conditions and so on and be down with c-e-q-a, be down with getting rid of the impacts analyzing the e-i-r, so forth. it's destroying the neighborhood. we have polk street, somebody said the architect has now turned it all into a whole area of drunks and bars and nothing else and now he's going to leave, except, of course, for the cbd. the $60,000 was mentioned again today at another meeting for not having seenier housing and

the architectural treasure. somebody laughed and said it's humiliating somebody would even consider such a thing for so little money. anyway. >> is there any additional general public comment? okay, public comment is closed. next item, please. >> commissioners, it will place you under your regular calendar, items 12 a and b for the administrative code, chapter 31, c-e-q-a legislation, an informational presentation first and then your consideration for that c-e-q-a exemption determination. >> good afternoon, commissioners. sarah jones, environmental review officer from the planning department. i'm here today really as the culmination of the lengthy process to adopt administrative appeals and other improvements for ceqa procedures under chapter 31 of the

administrative code. as you know, from holding several hearings on this topic over the last year, in july the board of supervisors approved changes to chapter 31 of the administrative code. and the overall concept of these changes was that with a set and defined window for administrative appeals of c-e-q-a documents, the planning department should institute new procedures for informing people of environmental actions as well as approvals of projects so that the public can be aware of their appeal opportunities and rights. so, the presentation today is on the steps that the planning department is taking to implement our side of the bargain essentially and meet our responsibilities under this chapter of the administrative code.

so, today -- jonas, can you put the -- laptop -- thank you. so, today i'm going to be covering, in general, the types of new requirements that the planning department is going to be carrying out. we're going to highlight certain steps of that. specifically, what the legislation requires in order to become effective is that we demonstrate our new approach toward posting on our website of cad ex's through a map. and also i will touch briefly on the training of other departments that we'll be doing. so, great. so, new areas of requirement under chapter 31, we have several topic areas that i'm going to go through. we'll start with the exemption map and posting and laura lynch, planner on my staff who has had a huge part in making this map happen which is such a

key part of this legislation, is going to present to you and give you demonstration of how somebody can find cad exs that have been issued. >> good afternoon. i will start by demonstrating how to navigate to our new page. simply go to the environmental planning home page and at the right of the screen you will see exemption. once you click on exemptionses, it will take you to our new exemption posting page. a little background information about our new page. we have been posting exemptions since january of 2012, and we have received feedback that the previous manner that we posted the exemptions was not considered to be user friendly. the new page which was published on july 1st, 2013 is the department's attempt at improving the public's experience.

there are three ways of finding exemptions on this page, two of which are found through the map. the first way is you can search by address. you can type a specific project or your own property and the map will zoom directly to the property and all exemptions in the area will appear. the second way is by panning through the map. so, you can zoom in to a specific district or neighborhood and see all exemptions in this area. once you find a specific exemption, this box will appear with limited information similar to the property address, and two links will also appear. one will take you directly to the permit specific information on the department of building inspection's website. and the other will take you directly to the exemption. the exemptions were posted in two manners, one is a certificate and the other as a checklist. the certificate will address

specific topics and the checklist is mainly used as a property -- the planning information center and for smaller projects. the third way of finding exemptions is through the table located below the map. this table demonstrates all publicly sponsored projects. if the project is associated with the specific block and lot it will appear on the map and on this table. if it is specifically associated with a larger geographic area, then it will only appear within the table. once you find an exemption you're interested in, click on the row and the exemption will appear. and here is an example of our cad ex checklist. and thank you for your time and i'll send the presentation back over to sarah. >> thank you. >> thanks, laura. i'm going to start going through some of the other major areas of changes that the planning department is in the process of implementing or has

already implemented. on the first is we are identifying the approval action for projects and this is something that was -- that is now defined in chapter 31, what constitutes the approval action. it's very critical for the entire ordinance because the approval action -- the occurrence of the approval action is the beginning of the window for ceqa appeals, but it is my belief also that this is in general an improvement in the clarity of our planning process to really have a good definition and understanding of when the city has, in fact, taken the step to allow or commit to a project occurring. so, it's defined -- [speaker not understood] defined for both public and private projects and that approval action is defined on the -- on each c-e-q-a determination that we make.

next area is the content of our exemption determinations. this was not something that was described particularly in chapter 31 previously and now chapter 31 sets out clear expectations for what all of our exemption determinations have to include. either the checklist or certificate or something else that's produced by a department under a delegation agreement. so, we put in the project description, type of exemption because there are many types. as i said, we have to identify the approval action and provide whatever information is needed to support the determination. the next area that is now in chapter 31 is project prioritization. the department actually has a much broader nonlegislative list of the types of projects that are given priority through the department's development review process. but the chapter 31 legislation

specifically defines 100% affordable housing projects and bicycle and pedestrian safety projects as those that are now required by ordinance to receive priority in the environmental review process. the fourth area is electronic notification, and this refers to the subscription-based e-mail system for people who are interested in receiving information to have information essentially pushed to them. there will be several types of subscription categories as to find out. we're putting this system into place as part of our department's larger permit tracking system and also other, other notification systems. so, this piece of the legislation is not ready to be implemented at this time, but we are taking the steps to work towards it. there are also a variety of

requirements in the legislation for the clarity and in some cases visibility of posted and mailed notices. again, so, this is consistent with -- this overall premise of providing the public with clear information on actions, determinations, and appeal rights. and then the final big area of change is in the issue of substantial modification. this is some safeguards within the ordinance to make sure that projects that are determined to be exempt, in fact, remain exempt and that exempt remains valid as a project goes through its development and -- development process and changes subsequent to approval. so, this legislation now clarifies when a new exemption is needed. it also provides the public with an opportunity to ask for reconsideration of whether a project has indeed been changed substantially. so, you may in the future hear

some reports back at your planning commission hearings about those reconsideration hearings that would be undertaken by the ero. just moving on to training which i'll touch on really briefly, obviously all of these new requirements are going to involve some training. we want to make sure the entire department staff is involved in this work is up to speed and doing it. we also do environmental work on projects undertaken by several other departments or in the case of the county clerk they interact heavily with us around c-e-q-a appeals. so, we're going to do individual outreach to the various departments. it's a good opportunity to connect with them in general, but also make sure that their projects are not susceptible to any incorrect procedures. and that's it. i just want to wrap up. first of all, i want to acknowledge the many people who have worked very, very hard on

this effort. obviously supervisors wiener, kim, and chiu and their various aides who put a ton of time into this, ilene warren from the city attorney's office, we heard of her heroism on this effort. also there are a number of people at the planning department who have really thrown themselves into this. i'm going to start with laura because she's gone above and beyond. also tanya shiner, andrea contrayer as, noni [speaker not understood], chris kern who are all in environmental planning, mike wynn and elton chin in our information technology group, and jonas has been a very helpful advisor and really greased things to make things happen and let us make changes. so, thank you very much. i'm happy to take any questions or comments, and then i'll be able to open up to public comment.

>> i'll take public comment first and maybe there are some questions. >> okay. >> thank you. >> i have no speaker cards. >> okay, opening it up for public comment if there's any on this item. sue hester, i had a hard time reading that screen. there are community plan exemptions. and every time this commission adopts an area plan, you adopt a process to basically gut c-e-q-a noticing requirements. major projects in south of market, in the mission, in potrero hill all used to have the notice at the getting of the project. it was an environmental notice and you became aware there was a project.

now there is none because a lot of the projects get exemptions. and they get exemptions at the end and there is no notice of the project. this area of the planning department sequence is down in the weeds in the other neighborhoods, but it doesn't solve the problem for cpes. in cpes are tiered from the transit center plan. you recently had 350 mission and no one was notified. even those who had submitted comments on the underlying e-i-r, the underlying e-i-r for the transit center were notified. i have been trying to figure out how to follow projects along the 2nd street corridor. my voice just disappeared. and it is impossible. no one knows what is happening

in eastern soma at all. there are no notices. you get notices after an approval. the process is a process that starts with the planning commission. every time you adopt an area plan and you adopt the resolutions at the end and basically -- basically say no more notice, it's on you and the board of supervisors. people are not paying attention to environmental notices being wiped out in these areas when we have a large process on an area plan. i know that because i was involved in them. and i know -- i know notices because i'm a person who gets a notice. you haven't solved the problem around community plan exemptions at all. i am not about to scour every single day the entire city to

find mission and south of market and financial district projects. it doesn't work that way. thank you. >> is there any additional public comment on this item? good afternoon, commissioners. rose hillson. i tried the newly refined map with the exemptions, all the green dots, and i don't know if there is going to be an additional presentation with a live feed with this map in 12 b., item 12 b., but i was trying it and i can't get all the cad ex permits on one street sufficiently. sure you can zoom in, but sometimes there's a large parcel. let's assume the large parcel is golden gate park. when you try to zoom in on golden gate park's parcel, you might end up with a message. there are too many permits to

show at this scale. zoom in to see permits. so, you zoom in, but then when you do that you lose perspective and can't figure out where the center is because you have to center the map. those are the instructions on the website. so, basically you can't get information for that. the other thing is it's not very efficient. i like the map. it's very graphic and everything. it's nice and colorful, but the old list, some people said it wasn't searchable but i was able to search it. you have to know how to do it. and i think a lot of people didn't so they were complaining that they couldn't search it. the easiest way in order to solve this problem is to put a link under this wonderful picturesque map and provide like maybe an excel spreadsheet, portable file type, cov file types are actually very useful. they don't get all bogged down by de limiters that sometimes cause error codes when you access these web links. the other thing is you might want to use dvf files but sometimes those are kind of tricky. so, the thing is the old list actually provided more information. it's not too hard to put that link in because all the data

field is being used between the dbi system and the planning system are already there. it's just a matter of what you really want this new mapping system to bring up for data. if it's not efficient, the public may be stirring around different maps including the [speaker not understood] permit maps and the property information map. there's a lot of maps out there under the planning website. if you don't integrate them all, you don't get all the information and it's true because i was playing around with it last night and i played around with it this morning thinking maybe there are amendments that would have made it better before this meeting but it didn't get any better. and a lot of times, here's the other thing. the kicker is these green dots, they vaporize after a amount of time. i don't know what the criteria is when they disappear, but they do. and the old list, it never disappeared. you could still go like in to see memorialized cad exs, but this way you can't. so i think it's not quite ready and that's all i have to say. thank you.