california maritime academy and get them ready for maritime and plan. so that we are collaborating with the university of vallejo on that program. i do not know the answer to that, but i can get back to you on that. >> good afternoon. i work with the san francisco conservation corps. to answer your question, i do have a full-time staff recruiter as part of our program. word of mouth is is probably still the most successful. young people who enjoy and benefit from the programmer for their friends and we partner with the san francisco housing authority, school districts and a wide variety of non-profit agencies to refer young people

to our program. it is a part of the youth employment training program. there is anywhere from between 10 to 30 young people who go to the program on a regular basis. for this particular contract, we are also subcontracting with walton street youth services. they provide five young people ages 16-17 who are also part of the program as well. supervisor kim: out of curiosity, who do you work with at the school? >> quite a few different high- school. we can go out and make presentations to those schools to see if people want to go ahead and come to the conservation corps. we do citywide recruitment. supervisor kim: so it is

citywide? do you work with the superintendent of high-school? supervisor chu: thank you. why don't we open this up to public comment. are there any members of the public would like to speak to item number five? >> i would like to speak on behalf of the garden project and take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who played a part in keeping this program running. it makes a huge difference in my life and i know everyone who is here, their life, and want to take this opportunity to say thank you. thank you. supervisor chu: are there other members of the public who wish to speak on this item? >> i am obviously in support of

this. i have known kathy for many years and i love the idea of having young people have the exposure to what this program has to offer. thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. other members of the public who wish to speak on this item? >> i just want to also give my thanks to everyone who has something to do with the garden project and keeping the program going and keeping us out of trouble. we have pride in what we do and we all appreciate it. thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. >> i want to say thank you as well to everyone who gives us this opportunity. it helps me take care of my kids, it helps me stay out of trouble and i am learning a new trade that is very useful to my

whole family and everybody around me. helps us eat better and live better and it is teaching us something different and i just want to say thank you. supervisor chu: thank you. any other members of the public to wish to speak on this item? >> i am speaking on behalf of the earth stewards. the earth stored program is a great program for san francisco. it has taught lots of us, given us the opportunity to look at what careers we can have. it teaches us how to work hard, gives us a work ethic and they teach us how to manage our money. it is good to be able to get up and work hard and know you are contributing to the community and doing good for not only san francisco but for everyone by you helping the environment. births to words is a program that sam francis -- births e --

arth stewards brings us together and teaches as we have a lot of opportunities in san francisco that we can find if we look for and strive at something we can do good in this world. it is a program most definitely need in san francisco and our boss is an incredible woman that you guys should be proud that she is the share of. thank you. [laughter] supervisor chu: thank you. any other members of the public want to speak on this item? seeing none, the item is closed. >we have a motion to release the reserves. i just want to say thank you to everyone has cannot today to speak out on this item.

we can do that without objection. do we have any other items before us? >> that complete the agenda. thank yosupervisor chu: we are adjourned. >> special meeting of the san francisco planning commission for thursday, february 24, 2011. please turn off your cell phones, pagers, or any other electronic device that may sound off during these proceedings. commissioner moore. commissioner sugaya. commission olaguey, commission

borden. commission fong is absent this morning. the items on calendar, item one is informational presentation on the advertising program. this is your annual report. >> commissioners, good morning. dan snyder with the planning department staff. i'm here this morning to give you your annual update on the department's general advertising sign program, our written report is included in your packet for today's hearing. and we do have additional copies up front for anyone in the audience today who would like. before we get into the meat of things, commissions are, i'd like to call your attention to the front row, where the key staff in our program are seated today. the entire program staff is here today because among other

reasons, we all wanted to be here to give you some good news. but first, and just to set the stage if 2003 could have the overhead, ms. secretary, please. prop g passed in 2002, a voter initiative that prohibited new advertising signs in the city, passed with 78% of the vote between in then and 2006 the city adopted and defended various regulationses that enabled our program. we kicked off in 2007 and meaningful enforcement activities began the start of 2008. before anything else we do need to talk about what a general advertising sign is. a general advertising signs direct attention to activities or services or businesses which are conducted or located off site. they're also called outdoor ads , general advertising signs or posters, billboards, and so forth.

business signs on the other hand are signs that direct attention to activity on site, on the premises and are distinct from general advertising signs. our program only deals with general advertising signs. the overhead is a bit squished but hopefully it's still legible. what is our program all about? commissioners, we have built and maintained an inventory of every general advertising sign in san francisco. and the program also has a very robust function where we determine the legality of each sign andtaining en format action ifs appropriate. on if first point we have completed assembling the inventory. this was done a number of summers ago. we literally had enforcement teams walking every single block in san francisco taking copious notes and using then current technology to do so. this work was supplemented by inventories submitted by

individual general advertising sign companies. we've built an exhaustive data base of precise locational and physical information on each sign along with permit information and photographic records. we've got a lot of information on those signs that are here in san francisco. the second point, commissioners, and this is where the really big news is, we have finished the review of each of the 1,672 general advertising signs in san francisco. we've done site inspections, crute newsed permit histories, taken enforcement action ifs called for. we've issued 681 separate notices of violations and after three years of enforcement work we're done. and we're done on time and we're done on budget. as a staff we're really, really pleased to see so many years of work come to this great ending.

or really great milestone i should say. so let's check that off, shall we? just because we are done it doesn't mean we get to sort of kick back and relax. i'll run through a few slides that talk about what we've done and how we've done it and talk about the next steps for the program. here's the process that we have gone through here. when we look at a sign we look at its physical characteristics, its height, size, orientation. we make sure it's consistent with the permit or that it has a permit in the first place. if not we issue a notice of violation. it carries a 30-day window during which time a violation must be abated or a request for reconsideration must be filed. this is essentially an appeal of the notice of violation. it's right before an administrative law judge rather than before this body or the board of appeals or the board of supervisors. should no request be filed and no action taken to abate the violation penalties begin to

accrue. these penalties do add up quickly. for example an unauthorized sign larger than 500 square feet will have a daily penalty of $2,500. moving on to talk about this year's progress and really what we've found, i said earlier we have processed 100% of the roughly 1,700 signs in san francisco. commissioners, the top half of this pie chart, the different shades of green comprise about 53% of the city's signs and they're signs that are either in compliance or will be in compliance with the planning code. and it's worth noting here that that roughly 50%, 53% figure of legality has remained constant throughout the program's three years of enforcement work. the bottom half of the pie chart in the red and yellow house, this is 47% of the sign inventory, these are signs which do not and cannot comply with the plank code.

both those that have been removed and those that are required to be removed, let me reiterate that. nearly half of the billboards in the city are illegal. that's a pretty big point we'd like to make. of these, the team has already caused the remfl of about 3/4. so if you're keeping up with your math that means that the work of the sign program has resulted among other things in the removal of 588 general advertising signs, mostly illegal. put that in context, it works out to about four signs down for each week that we've been on the job. but turn -- let's turn now to the program's results before the administrative law judge. again, these are cases where the n.o.p. is essentially appealed and i draw your attention to the single license on the chart on the bottom. that orange slice representation represents

single case where the department's notice of violation has been overturned. of the remaining 28 cases, the department has either prevailed or the matter resolved without a hearing based on new information. so here, too, we are very pleased with the program's results. commissioners, i would be remiss in my responsibilities if we didn't talk about legal matters relating to signs. the program has resolved nine separate pieces of litigation while an additional four cases are outstanding. the yellow color on this chart represents legal actions taken against the planning code or other broad policy positions taken by the city. the blue color represents actions initiated against the city with regard to particular signs, particular sign decisions. we believe that we are over the hump here, litigationwise but we're clearly not done yet. so where are our signs?

one of our legal wins this year was a settlement agreement. this allows us to share with you certain information about our sign ivetri. a number of years ago the city was sued by an association of sign companies alleging that our detailed sign inventory was in fact their trade secret. they did manage to convince a judge their position had at least some merit. because of this in years past we've only been able to show you very generalized information about the location of signs. images like this. we of course have a great deal more information but in years past we couldn't show you. that's changed. as of just a few weeks ago, we've been able to disclose a great deal more information based on a settlement agreement we did enter into, and walk over to the computer for a second, i can back out of this,

-- point your browser to signmap.ss.planning.org and you will see the following. okay. we have here an interactive map of every general advertising sign as defined in the planning code located in san francisco. we can zoom in. let's zoom in, if we can, on venice avenue. we're here in city hall and if we want to take a look at one of these signs right here all we have to do is click on it

and up pops a photo. this can be done anywhere for any of the general advertising signs in the city. it is a google map so you can interface with it as you would any kind of conventional consumer google product, i suppose. satellite views and so forth. i would emphasize that this is a sort of a version that is in testing, a beta version, we continue to refine it in terms of the interface and the information available on it. but i would encourage you all to certainly visit signmap.ss .org. >> did you add the coca-cola sign to this? >> as i said, it covers general advertising signs as defined in the planning code.

sorry, i couldn't resist. [laughter] >> let's move on, shall we? talk about the program's financial -- very big picture of that, issues here, commissioners. on the expense side of the house, we are of course spending a good deal of money on attorneys. about a quarter million dollars, a little more than last year spending on staff costs internally. for us this is the cost of doing business. i hate to put it in these terms but our legal folks are sort of a necessary evil. on the revenue side of the house, sign companies do pay an annual fee to maintain their

general advertising signs here in the city. this accounts for about half of our income. the other half largely comes from penalties. on this next slide you'll see a great deal of those penalties, about $7 million are tied up in court right now. i would point out though, that we have collected cash in hand about $600,000 to date over the past three years of the program's activities. the top-level take away without getting into the minutia, we are solvent. annual income and expenses circle around the $550,000 mark. what's next? the inventory has been processed, the team will move into a different phase of the program. drop some excess weight, it will be staffed by a single full-time equivalent moving forward and it will be foaled into the department's broader

code enforcement efforts. we are going to continue to maintain the sign inventory and use it as a tool to monitor existing signs and certainly to help us take enforcement action against new complaints. last year we saw 65 new illegal signs pop up throughout the city. this year we saw 98. we have been effective enforcing against new signs but it's very important of course we continue to be vigilant and take action when appropriate. we have, commissioners, just sort of wrapping up here, we've got to superb staff -- a superb staff. as i said earlier they're here in the front row. i'd like them to stand up so i can embarrass them. john purviss our program program coordinator and christine la morena, kimberly deronde along with elaine forbes with the san francisco,

helped frame the program and did much of the heavy lifting in years past and mike wynn has been indispensable in building our g.i.s. systems and various web applications. i can't say strongly enough, commissioners, this group of folks is the reason for the program's successes. i'd also add that we've certainly enjoyed the excellent services of what does feel like at times the entire city attorney's office. but certainly we owe a great deal of gratitude to the folks in mr. herrera's shop for their great work. so many are others, too many to name at the planning department and elsewhere. my thanks to you, my apologies for taking up so much of your time this morning but i'm here to answer your questions and probably more usefully, the team, the real experts are here to respond to your questions as well. so thank you. >> thank you.

let's open it up for public comment. >> my name is feeter per fortune on on the board of san francisco beautiful, representing that nonprofit. you may or may not know that in 2002 we were instrumental in getting proposition g on the ballot. as recently as 2006-2007 this report was a dream for those of us who think billboards are a visual blight. it would have been a nightmare for the billboard industry. let me explain why. about eight years ago, a little billboard company sued a big there was some startling deposition testimony in that case. one of the former high executives of clear channel was deposed and he admitted when he worked for clear channel he learned that clear channel had scores and scores of illegal

billboards throughout the city. when he was asked the question when you learned about these illegal billboards, did you do anything? his answer was, why should i? he was thumbing his nose at san francisco. that attitude is no longer. it's gone. and it's gone primarily because of the work of dan snyder and the staff in the 2006 litigation. and we're here to applaud them and to praise them and make sure that they get their kudos that they well deserve. thank you. president olague: thank you. is there any additional public comment? >> good morning, commissioners. my name is terry milne, a citizen of vernal heights and i have to tell you earlier this week the question was asked whether or not the arts commission is in charge of

historic neighborhood murals of the sort that you may or may not know about in bernl heights just because they're a pay ordery of an advertising sign makes in them no less a neighborhood mural that's been there for decades. so i don't know the answer whether the arts commission is really responsible, but i just thought i'd bring it to your attention. thank you. president olague: thank you. is there additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner moore? ms. moore: i'm totally psyched about the thing, i thank the director. i wish we had a strike team and mechanisms for everything else going wrong in the city and we would be just kind of looking great. this is fantastic. i do love the layering of technology, i love the ability that we really put effort and support into this group and the

results really are what they need to be and it's finally saying enough is enough. it is great that technology is helping us, i mean as in other parts, other issues in the world, technology has opened a whole new ability to communicate and really be on target and able to pursue things which need to be changed. what i would like to ask mr. snyder, the whole group, at what time do you generally -- do general signs, general advertising signs are the same as business signs? because in the city there is a very slow and subtle conversion that advertising signs take over whole storefronts and since the stores are empty and they're advertising for other things, they are a different kind of billboard. for example, what comes to mind, again, it never stops, what comes to mind is the

corner of powell and coast, the former disney store which now has a sign by c.b., coldwell banker in their advertising for whatever product, i don't know, besides making the point you could contact them if you want to rent the space. but this is basically advertising not for on site but for off site. it's a very subtle thing. i see this happening because even in other parts of the city, i see signage, something i brought to the department's attention almost two years ago at the corner of california and stockton, i think clear channel has on building signs which are -- which are really general advertising signs. but they sit on a residence. so you don't quite know how they got there in the first place. normally these signs are not on residences, this takes up 35ur of the east facing facade of the building on the corner of

california and stockton. as you look closer with this legislation and these tools in place, there are new challenges. i'd love to continue to communicate with you about it. i think ultimately it's really people talking to each other and saying what does it fit and where does it not fit. i love your financial performance, that is obviously liquid gold to our ears, and again, congratulations to everybody and i hope the director will find other strike teams and other areas where we can do exactly the same team that this group is doing. president olague: commissioner antonini. commissioner antonini: a couple of interesting things that commissioner moore brings up. i don't know what our particular situation is with these window signs that are in vacant storefronts now, but there's a couple ways of looking at it and certainly it would be better to have that in my opinion than to have a

storefront boarded up and covered with graffiti. part of the price might be we'll allow to you advertise as long as you maintain it and of course maybe a fee, i agree. i think that that might be a way to do it where part of the responsibility of the property owner or the advertiser, whomever pays it will be to take care of the building and maybe some kind of a fee. it may be something to look into. another interesting dilemma is the coca-cola sign in bernl heights mentioned by commissioner sugaya. you're dealing with something that might be art, i think this particular sign had been covered by asbestos siding until recently and the siding came off and many of these older signs are advertising products that no longer exist and i don't think anybody would have an objection to those probably, but since it's not, you can't buy the product, but if it is a plod that still exists that will be an interesting question. but i think that it will be one we're going to have to ponder. and finally, thank you very

much for a wonderful job. you didn't speak about in lieu, it was in our report and i don't know if the public is aware of those signs, i don't know whether if it's worth mentioning or not but it was part of our scuggeds during the time we first moved into this field. in lieu signs. >> commissioner antonini, you point out there is a glaring omission on my part. in lieu signs were certainly something we spent a great deal of time on. in lieu applications were made available in i want to say the period of time ending about october of 2003, or until that time sign companies were afforded the opportunity for particular signs for which no permit could be located to submit documenting information to evidence that the sign was in fact likely legally authorized. the commission at the time