order to improve the department of public health. çwith the departure of mitch kz @ san francisco general hospital, i would encourage the department of public health to better its performance. i think there has been a lot of discontent of certain aspects. items like item two will give the department of public health enough money to improve itself. çunfortunately, all of us are aware about the news of laguna honda hospital. i feel barbara garcia will support on going whistleblowing activities by employees in her department. çhopefully, that will extend te sand and this could general hospital. >> thank you. any other public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. a request to continue this item to the call of the chair.

so moved. do we have many more items before us? >> no, mr. chaiv >> very good. this meeting is adjourned. ç >> this is the regular meeting of the san francisco planning commission for thursday, february 3, 2011. if i could remind everyone to turn off any electronic devices that may sound off during these proceedings.

[roll call] commissioners, first category on calendar, items proposed for continuance. item 1 is an end up -- a final environmental impact report proposed for continuance of february 10, 2011. 2a, b, c, d, and e are also proposed for continuance to february 10, 2011. commissioners, further on your calendar under the regular calendar, items 12, please note that the d.r. has been

withdrawn, and the matter is no longer before you for your consideration. with that, i'm not aware of any other item on your calendar being proposed for continuance. commissioner olague: is there any public comment on items proposed for continuance? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner miguel: i would move item one and all of two to the date stated, february 10. >> second. commissioners >> commissioners, the motion on the floor is for items one and two as they are proposed on your calendars. [roll call] thank you, commissioners. those items are continued as they have been proposed. next item on the calendar is

commissioners questions and matters. item three is consideration of adoption of your back into the regular meeting of december 16, 2010. following public comment and any commission concerns, modifications, or changes, we ask that you adopt the draft minutes. i would like to open up for public comment on this item. seeing none, public comment is closed. we change looking at project to looking at projects because the emphasis is to look comprehensively at several projects, not just a project. you see that? >> ok. >> page 3, third line from the

bottom. >> move to approve minutes with changes. >> second. commissioner olague: commissioners, on the motion to approve the draft minutes as they have been directed, [roll call] thank you, commissioners. the draft minutes have been adopted as they have been corrected. item four is consideration of the commission rules and regulations. this item is on your calendar for your discussion. you have not identified any component of your rules and regulations, or at least they have not been identified on the calendar. that you are considering changing, and because it is not

identified, the public has no idea what you are referring to. with that, we can discuss -- you can discuss as much as you like, but you cannot change your rules and regulations until there is a 10-day notice and we identify what you plan to change on the calendar. that item is now called into the record and is open for your consideration and public comment. >> if i could just add to what linda was saying, we will keep track of issues that you might consider changing, and we will list those on the calendar for action for possible action at a future date, which has to be at least two meetings away because this is a 10-day notice. commissioner moore: i would be reiterating discussion we briefly touched on last time, tg to cle-- clearly define when we begin and end the meeting. we often sit here for 12-14

hours, the consensus is we are ineffective, when we have difficult things, but because of limitations can't handle. this is to reiterate that we start at 1:30 and we have half a day of work on our own behind us. when it is said and done, we have a very long day and it exceeds our capability to be attentive to the important things in front of us. this is what we all talked about. we could be more time specific, starting at 1:30 and the meeting won't exceed eight and a half hours, which is a full day of

work. this is a suggestion. i recall several commissioners agreeing. and that would be one item to put on our calendar. commissioner and the nih-- anto? >> i don't like being here -- here until midnight. but cirtical -- critical items may come up. unfortunately, that does occur. one remedy is to begin our meetings earlier.

if there was nothing, we could do this at another time. and we would be getting out at an earlier hour. this is one possible solution. you can only do so much with the calendar. you may have short calendars and you can't cut off the public comment. commissioner fong? >> i concur with both of them, to be more effective at 10;3:30 am than 10:30 pm. i don't want to be backlogged because we are trying to cover

certain hours. this may lead to a different discussion about the process and how much public time that takes. and the money. i would ask how much a d.r. costs in comp time or overtime. that is for a larger discussion. we would like that take nup. -- taken up. >> commissioner moore? commissioner moore: to respond, the attempt is to get all of us to perform more efficiently and better. our own efficiency goes down here late at night. it comes as a mutual obligation to work closer together.

instead of having everything come here and take much longer, then participating in the more critical cases. if we scheduled morning meetings aho -- if we scheduled morning meetings, this is obviously affecting the public. we have to look at the sunshine law piroplasmosis -- we have to look at the sunshine law. we would work to formulate this whiff the requests and whatever, these are. -- and whatever these are. these long statements make it hard to keep our focus close to midnight. >> commissioner sugaya. >> did the director want to

touch on this? >> a couple of thoughts. this has come out and the staff raised this as well. the length of the hours we get into. a couple of things we could try to do. linda and i spoke about this. this idea came from her. no item would be called. if you wanted to end the meeting by 10:00, you would have no item called after 9:00. and then, we would make this very clear on the calendar. we would say that this was the situation. we would have to make certain that the items that were scheduled at a later times or not the items of critical importance. we generally know about these items going in.

the other thing, this was related to that. i will think about this in a moment. >> commissioner sugaya? commissioner sugaya: given the recent experience with other neighborhoods, these hearings were we have had where we were unable to meet those. i was wondering if there could be something to list this. that this item will start at 6:00. or concluding every item that came just before this or any item that came after that. i do not know if this is legal. >> you can certainly do that,

but to make certain, the calendar would have to be very clear. if this certain item came up. i thought, in my other item, we have been working under the assumption, because of the morning work obligations, we have no more than one morning meeting every month. we spoke about this in terms of people's time, trying not to have more than one morning meeting. this is your call, when you want to do this. but this is the general working assumption that we have with the calendar. >> commissioner antonini? commissioner antonia d: -- commissioner antonini: we talked about not starting an item after

10:00, and this was abandoned along the way. it was never clearly stated. >> commissioner, this was never a role. -- rule. this is on the calendar every week, that we have the right to not call an item after 10:00. you can still do this. this is in existence. but we just do not do this. >> that i stand corrected. this has always been there but this was not carried out. we feel that we should rise to a level that this is time to -- time to -- timed, and we talk

about thursday. the staff sometimes need time, and i am not certain how this -- we would allow for one of them to be away, or another one to work and this would give them more flexibility to cover the work load. this could be more concentrated, or will this be more spread out under a more gradual amount of time? this is something that i believe that we should consider. and getting the staff -- we will be able to spread the calendar a little bit more. with fewer items for calendar. -- per calendar. >> the board of supervisors, there is no legal issue with

dealing with an absolute time. as long as this remains clear. as long as this is published, this should be no problem at all. and under the brown act, there is no problem with cutting this off, either. as long as this is published in the rules and understood. these can be done with no problems. >> commissioner? >> i wanted to take a comment on this, in an emergency. we're all prepared to step to the line, but on the other hand, in doing this as much as we do, i do appreciate this on thursday, this is more and frequent -- more infrequent, and

sometimes i have not looked into this just yet. this starts to line up on the dining room table. and then this will go on, through monday and tuesday, and wednesday. and then you start to feel guilty about a couple of weeks ahead, there is this new telephone book they are -- telephone but -- telephone b-- telephone book. i say, i don't have to rush. this is very extensive, over the personal lives as well. i would like to say that, if at

all possible, i like to protect the fifth thursday. we are ready when we need to be ready. he will call on us when he needs to. >> i think we are trying to keep it to one 10:00 am meeting a month. commissioner borden -- for some of us, this is a challenge to be here that early. i would like to get a sense from all of you. if the next few months are intense, we hear cmpc, treasure island and the housing element are coming to us. hopefully they will be on the calendar by the end of june. we are looking to march and

treasure island. that being said, i jst -- just want to prepare you. we will have a heavy -- calendar. we will have public hearings to talk about cpmc. we have to lighten up the calendars so we can have productive discussions. these are pretty big projects. the other thing, my concern is that we will try to concentrate on how we calendar items. what i am concerned about, if people expect the project will be heard, and through no fault of their own, public comment goes on beyond a certain time,

we cant' regulate the number of public speakers we will have on a topic. the commissioner has their own way of deliberating. if we are too severe about limiting this to eight and a half hours, we may bump things off that inconvenience the staff. we have to calendar it and this can create more problems. just be careful about calendaring items. and in te-- the past, we were talking about discretionary review hearings. and talking about shortening the amount of public testimony.

commissioner sugaya has made some recommendations and we will look at the different ways that we can be amending the hearings. and we were talking about, this is something that came up when commissioner lee ann commissioner alexander were here. they have been setting up some subcommittees', to meet with the staff to talk about residential design, standardizing the packets. and maybe we will deal with some things with finance, to lessen the amount of time that we would be spending, having to discuss those things. there are a lot of ways to look into this and we could start there. commissioner? >> one of these problems that occurred, even though we get the

cards that are submitted, first of all, people do not have to have speaker cards. we have requested this. secondly, this does not always indicate how many people will be speaking. with 100 cards, you are able to limit the time. you do not think this with three or four cards. it becomes difficult for the chair to handle. and -- falling on what the president mentioned, i have discussed with the department, and this goes to the are, actually, -- d.r. actually.

this goes out to the public and i think that this can be rewritten. there are some things that we can do on that front, on how we present this to the public, and this would be helping things in the long run. >> commissioner? commissioner sugaya: this is not intended to limit public comment in any way. people can say what they want to in this limited time that we have given them, but we may want to think of a more pro-active way of working with the request is and the project's sponsors, and the neighborhood groups with respect to how to more effectively make their presentations. at times when you have 50 people speaking, this is fine, they are exercising their rights.

but at times you could take that same number of people and get the point across, much more effectively. i remember one time, a neighborhood group was organized into, i forget how many people. there was a presentation that was being made and the next person followed up on this, and by the end they had given us a complete presentation. i do not know. this would be more of trying to work with the group's that have come in before us, because there are different ways to approach the presentation. and this may make things more efficient. i am not volunteering to do this. i actually have given some lectures to the other groups about this. commissioner moore: i liked this

idea, but this comes from the top down, rather than the bottom up. we have people who have that ability to, for the first time, to participate in a public decision process and have the ability to really voice something. and you can see what this means, and we have already heard this. we will be taking that away and we will be limiting everything. >> we have to be very critical about how we are streamlining all of this. commissioner fall -- fong? >> from what i am hearing, we are looking at the best practices and the other conditions. taking a look at what has been proposed before, and what has not worked.

with the board of supervisors, this may come back to the process of the d.r.'s. rather than not taking the public's time, or the public task force -- this is great. >> are you good with that? >> regarding the d.r., they had tabled at the package of the legislation. and so, we will be talking to supervisor mar. and they will bring this back to us later. >> are you interested in getting the voices from the volunteers? i am interested in volunteering and helping as much as i can. >> and there is one last thing. if you look at the review

guidelines, the second item has a simple routine that is complex with very little description. and possibly, through the task force, we can look at this with examples of what the sample application looks like. and this may be helping with that to eliminate duplication among those people. >> commissioner antonini? we may end up doing this, however this works. and we will bring the city attorney -- and we will talk to them about how to set this up. i would like to open this up for public comment at this time. this is for the rules and the discussions.

>> in respect to the changing hours on thursdays, and i would ask that you tread very carefully about this expansion. it is very important that this process be acceptable because missing this much work is very difficult. in great sympathy for what was being expressed, on the fifth thursday and the amount of preparation materials that were required to review, much of which i am responsible for. i have great apologies for this. you need to take any opportunity so that you can arrive