that addendum item took a very long time. the present at any time can change the agenda in turn it upside down. -- the president at any time. president peterson: what they can try to do is something.

this has to deal with a new rule on draft findings. piss is more guidance on what the board protocol is. this would be the draft that was distributed tonight that was dated 12/15. a letter may be submitted. this is from somebody who wants to comment on draft rules, that there is a three-page limit, and no exhibit will be allowed.

and then, a new section eight. this sets up a policy that i would distribute the draft findings prior to the party is, prior to them being disunity to the board. if the parties are not satisfied, they can provide comments, and if the comments are not incorporated to their satisfaction, then they can submit a three-page brief, outlining their objections, and, of course, they also get three minutes at the hearing. so if there are no further comments from the board, then i open it up for public comments. president peterson: ok. >> good evening, rick gladstone. this is not an adversarial hearing, so i wonder if we need

to have the three-minutes rule apply, just as a question of the point of order. president peterson: why do you not just start? >> thank you. there are many who do not do this as well, and staff has thought through it really well, but a couple of comments and questions. if you're going to create a section about it, i think it should say that a site visit should be one where both parties are given notice of it and a chance to be there, not necessarily at the same time, but both would have a chance to show their location to the commissioner, whether it is the same moment, i do not know. it may not be good. that does not work out too well.

second, note -- commissioner hwang: sometimes, a party has not visited the site. sometimes they are not always allowed by the project sponsor. >> i did not mean that they be allowed on the project sponsors sides. what i mean is that the appellate be allowed to share their side or talk on the street what they see about the development, as the developer can bring the commissioner to their sites. i am not talking about trespassed on private property by one side going to the other. this is so they have a chance to visit both people's property. that is all.

and that is generally what the practice is. >> what do you mean by both peoples parties? >> let's assume there is one appellant and one permit holder. there may be two or three appellants. if the each one decisionmaker to see it from their point of view, they have the opportunity. probably, they will not. they get together and decide. what is the one place the decision makers should be visiting to the point of view of the neighborhood. but that is what i was getting at. president peterson: sorry. let's say that someone goes to the site.

>> anyone can walk by a site, drive by a site, and many do, and that is not what i am talking about. i am talking about a schedule decided it isn't -- piped -- i am talking about a schedule will decide to visit. -- a scheduled site visit. animosity in issues of fairness. -- and issues of fairness. commissioner hwang: you want both sides, the appellant and the project sponsor, to have notice of that in an opportunity to go to the other side? >> no, i am not suggesting. to have the right to go to the other side's side.

commissioner hwang: you just want them to have notice? >> that the commissioner is coming out to see one side, and if they want the commissioner to view their side, they can have that. they may choose not to. commissioner fung: i will determine which side i want to visit. commissioner hwang: what you're going to say is that if we want to. the board will maintain, again, the discretion to go to whichever we want to.

>> i think in the interests of making sure the process is quick, and people get into their hearings quickly, it really should be neither. there should be an opportunity for rebuttals during the actual session. sometimes there were held back from the paperwork. there are some very complex cases, including one where i think it would have helped both parties have a rebuttal. just moving on, i think there should be items for continuance on this calendar. to wait around and ask for a continuance.

they may agree to it anyway. i think it would be better if you had a request for a continuance. in the case of the project tonight, that would give them a chance to request it. we're hearing from them what it is that is compelling. we may have voted to do the continuance, this is something that the planning commission does. i thought i will throw that out for consideration.

speaking as an attorney for my clients, my clients make a decision. my clients make a decision about whether they will agree. this is to not grant the continuance. i just wanted everyone to understand my point of view.

commissioner garcia: what is our practice? >> if there is a request, that is handled offline tyrian if there is a conference, that is something that i bring up to the board, usually with the president's consent early on in the meeting so that the parties can argue as to whether or not it should be granted. commissioner garcia: i think this board does a good job, may be too good of a job, of flushing up the issue. i think enough questions are asked that we are better off, but i think the only thing left is for us to vote on it.

commissioner hwang: i feel that the seven-minute opening is rather a long. it is a regurgitation. i would suggest that people did not regurgitate their written material in their oral presentations, and that could signal mcginley reduce the time. i think having a rebuttal would be a good idea. >> one thing to remember is that briefing is not mandatory, so the party 7 option to not submit any briefing and choose to make their arguments solely to the board. through oral presentation. something that supposed to be done. >> we have the opening brief or if they decide to hear someone

reading their opening papers. i am just kidding. i would be inclined to extend the time for rebuttal. this is pretty short, especially on complicated cases. >> we to extend this by asking questions. >> you can't always do that. if you can extend by simply saying that you -- >> ok. >> do you think that seven minutes will be too long.

>> i might have a tangential issue. sometimes the way that we wind up? it is that certain people get much more time than others and that is not necessarily fair. maybe those are necessary. they did a lot of questions and therefore a lot more time. >> if i was an advocate, i would

want that cut down. >> can we move on from that? i was wandering what they heard on the site visit. i remember going on the visit for them. we did was to take measurements. then the appellant and he had to hear those too late. he was not able to be prepared with his own expert.

it seems like there is a trust issue. can you talk about that. >> some of those had bad results. >> they had a lovely funeral the next day. they have always respected the wishes of the property owners.

[inaudible] as compared to the old days when it was hard to get a photo. >> i still think that they are useful and important. i remember another situation where i did a site visit for the building. i wanted to see this from the appellate property because i had the sense that this was about a few and not about the building. i was told by the departments, neither of the two people here, that it was irrelevant and i was not permitted and i was a new enough commissioner to see whatever i wanted to see. >> one of the points is to articulate that if the commissioner does go on a site

visit, their responsibility is to come back and report on what they saw and learned which is before the proceedings began so that the parties have an opportunity to rebut. if they had to do with measurements that was informative, the put that on the record and during the hearing, the party that objected to raise their concerns. >> i've done several site since. they are used to doing this because they have a planning commissioner and they are allowed to. >> do you want to change something? >> i think i was addressing the comments about the site visit.

>> [inaudible] >> i cannot think of any way to accommodate this. >> there is the outstanding issue of the reply brief and a couple of other revisions that you have agreed to.

i have an appellate practice, that is all idea, especially now. the appellant brief, the reply brief, that is it. >> we should try not to be as legal as not. >> after the discussion, we

need it in motion. >> the new rules will be effective tomorrow but a briefing schedule wouldn't pry going forward. it appeals said it -- it appears that these are already in the pile. >> so moved. >> that was my motion. >> [inaudible] on the hearing pending further information by the city. >> we can amend our rules at any

time. >> there was a key changes to the draft and i will refer to this as the draft and tel. >> i will vote no but i don't want to vote no because so much work went into these.

>> please call the roll. >> on the motion is to adopt the proposed rules with those two changes and the effective date is december 16th but this will keep the old briefing schedule. >> aye. >> aye. >> do you need to say the date of the proposal? this is dated 12-15. >> thank you. the vote is 4-1.

>> thank you for your comments. with that, i think we are returned -- adjourned. i'm the president of friends of mclaren park. it is one of the oldest neighborhood community park groups in san francisco. i give a lot of tours through the park. during those tours, a lot of the folks in the group will think of the park as very scary.

it has a lot of hills, there's a lot of dense groves. once you get towards the center of the park you really lose your orientation. you are very much in a remote area. there are a lot of trees that shield your view from the urban setting. you would simply see different groves that gives you a sense of freedom, of being outdoors, not being burdened by the worries of city life. john mclaren had said that golden gate park was too far away. he proposed that we have a park in the south end of the city. the campaign slogan was, people need this open space. one of the things that had to open is there were a lot of people who did a homestead here, about 25 different families. their property had to be bought up. so it took from 1928 to 1957 to buy up all the parcels of land

that ended up in this 317 acres. the park, as a general rule, is heavily used in the mornings and the evenings. one of the favorite places is up by the upper reservoir because dogs get to go swim. it's extremely popular. many fights in the city, as you know, about dogs in parks. we have 317 acres and god knows there's plenty of room for both of us. man and his best friend. early in the morning people before they go to work will walk their dogs or go on a jog themselves with their dogs. joggers love the park, there's 7 miles of hiking trails and there's off trail paths that hikers can take. all the recreational areas are heavily used on weekends. we have the group picnic area which should accommodate 200 people, tennis courts are full. it also has 3 playground areas.

the ampitheater was built in 1972. it was the home of the first blues festival. given the fact that jerry garcia used to play in this park, he was from this neighborhood, everybody knows his reputation. we thought what a great thing it would be to have an ampitheater named after jerry garcia. that is a name that has panache. it brings people from all over the bay area to the ampitheater. the calls that come in, we'd like to do a concert at the jerry garcia ampitheater and we do everything we can to accommodate them and help them because it gets people into the park. people like a lot of color and that's what they call a park. other people don't. you have to try to reconcile all those different points of view. what should a park look like

and what should it have? should it be manicured, should it be nice little cobblestones around all of the paths and like that. the biggest objective of course is getting people into the park to appreciate open space. whatever that's going to take to make them happy, to get them there, that's the main goal. if it takes a planter with flowers and stuff like that, fine. you know, so what? people need to get away from that urban rush and noise and this is a perfect place to do it. feedback is always amazement. they don't believe that it's in san francisco. we have visitors who will say, i never knew this was here and i'm a native san franciscoan. they wonder how long it's been here. when i tell them next year we'll get to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the park,k,

>> i work with the department of environment and we are recycling oil. thank you. we can go into a refinery and we can use it again. they do oil changes and sell it anyway, so now they know when a ticket to a. hal>> to you have something you want to get rid of? >> why throw it away when you can reuse it? >> it can be filtered out and used for other products.