also, i own a five-unit building on ord street and have for 25 years. i'm very familiar with the area. in fact, my first paint color job was on 17th street right around the corner in 1970. i just want to convey my feelings of support for the project, and and i think mr. maroney has done a very beautiful job. i'm looking forward to it. it's a very positive contribution to san francisco. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is alan. i'm here to support this project. and i hope you will do the same and deny this appeal. thank you. >> members of the board, my name is david hale. i look at 604 newy street. i'm an urban planner, and worked in that profession for 34 years and served as planning director for several jurisdictions

surrounding san francisco. in retirement, i'm now a ceramisist. i find that much more stressful. the time of that work as an urban planner here in the bay area, i really appreciated the value that you get from the information gathered through the ceqa process. valuable information that can be used to improve a project. but also learned that there are people who abuse the ceqa process by those who want to either delay or defeat a project. and it's my personal opinion that we have an example of that for us here tonight. so i hope that this board comes to that conclusion at the

conclusion of this hearing. thank you. president chiu: next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is richard miller, i live on the as a rule can stairway about a block from the project. i'm real familiar with it. there's a similar project on the block up the hill on ord street that had a house set way back, it actually fronted on douglas, and the second house was constructed on that one lot, one facing ord, one facing douglas. i think this is a similar situation. i also renovate and redevelop residential housing in san francisco. and i'm familiar with the strong feelings that people have about their neighborhoods. but i feel that the interesting

texture of old buildings and new together are a great enhancement to our city. so i hope you'll deny the appeal. thank you. >> hello. my name is duncan wheeler. i live at 86 ord. i wanted to come up here and say that i've seen all of the concessions in the original plans. i fully support john's goal to build his house. i think it's really important to live in a city that allows for a mix of new and old architecture. i don't think they always need to say -- i think there's a lot to be said for having sort of mixture that really adds beauty to the neighborhood, and i think his structure that he has proposed would definitely do that, so i fully support him. thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is steven barber. i live in district eight as well. i've had the pleasure of

witnessing john go through this process for the last two years, which has definitely made me have the decision to never try to build a house in san francisco. the only reason we're here today is because a disgruntled neighbor kept getting the wrong answer, so i hope you will deny this appeal so we don't have to go through this again. thank you. >> good afternoon, members of the board. my name is teresa bowmont. i'm an attorney with google inc. i support mr. maroney's project. one, he's been incredibly patient through the process, he's been cooperative. he's been collaborative with the neighbors, and he's made a lot of changes already. i understand that they don't want to change the front of his yard at this point, but that's just something not realistic. two quick points in addition to seconding many of the speakers' comments already. one, again, the planning commission already conducted the historical study and it's

sufficient that they don't do it again and that's what we want our planners doing, creating efficiencies around their work. and second, this is an abuse of the appellant appeal process, or appeal tactic by the appellants and i would ask that it not be allowed. thank you. >> ♪ here comes the night and i hope you fix up ord street right here comes the night won't you fix up ord street right and i hope you don't mind if you don't fix it up this time fix up ord street now fix it up and here comes the night won't you fix up ord street right ♪

president chiu: next speaker. >> i'm not going to sing. shelly bradford belle, formerly on the planning commission back in 2002 when every ceqa case we had was appealed to the body, and you spent hours here. as a commission, we worked to make sure this was a process that was streamlined, so all you got to see here were the cases that really needed your attention. frivolous cases, we did everything we could to make sure they weren't in front of you. this is an administrative issue, just like a building permit. if a building is approveed before planning and there are changes that must be done by staff, those changes aren't brought back to the commission. those changes are done, unless it makes a significant change to the project. what happened with this categorical exemmingts has not made any change at all in the ceqa determination for the project. instead what we have is a very

well designed project because john is my friend, and i worked with him on it. he has a project that really supports the neighborhood. he has a project that he moved back to make sure that there was still some open space of his private property. he also talked to all the neighbors, he did all of the community meetings and the mediation, because he knew that that was the right thing to do. what we come down here now to is something that the city attorney has told you is a clerical change, that is a typical clerical change. so i hope that you will look at that, see that the planning department staff, who i fully support, i know there have been comments about them here, but we have one of the best planning departments in california. and i want to make sure that they're all the supported. they've done their job. this is administrative. so i hope that you will see that you should not accept this appeal. thank you so much.

president chiu: are there any other members of the public that wish to speak on behalf of the real party in interest? seeing none at this time, why don't i ask the appellant to come back for a rebuttal of up to three minutes. >> thank you, mr. president, members of the board. it's hard to do a rebuttal when we haven't heard anything on the merits of our actual appeal. again, what we saw was propped up a lot of straw arguments. we're not claiming the gardens are some historic landmark, pristine that can't ever be built on. we're not claiming that the neighborhood is a historic district. we're not claiming that 136 offered street is a historic resource, which is all you heard. we don't dispute the ability to alter the mistake. they should have told us. that hasn't been mentioned. having the city attorney stand up and say that they could change it, we agree with that. the point is, is that if you'd look at exhibit 2 and exhibit 3,

the analysis doesn't match because the analysis was never done. and the insulting comments that this is somehow frivolous and an abuse of the process, what a bunch of bull. you know what? i didn't represent these parties at planning, but they came to me and shea showed me an environmental review that had wrong project description, it even had the wrong address. for god's sakes, when will an appeal have merit if every single aspect of the categorical exemption is incorrect and there's absolutely nothing in the record to show that the proper analysis was done. there's still is nothing in the record. mr. gladstone stood up here and completely misrepresented. the environmental analysis taken to the planning commission called this an alteration of an existing structure, period. i printed it verbatim in my

brief. this was not a clerical error. this was not something that the department said, oh, oops, we made a mistake. if we hadn't filed the appeal, what would have been approved is a project which was reviewed as an alteration of the cottage. because that's all that's there. that's the only environmental analysis that's in this record. so it's as if they didn't even hear the presentation of the appeal. it's nice that they can show up with lots of people who didn't once address the merits of the appeal. just talked about how great it is to have this project. but the merits of the appeal are that this particular project was not reviewed. as a result of that, the adjacent resources which ceqa requires to be reviewed were never reviewed. that's clear. and ceqa requires that.

it's in the forms that the department has. and to protect those adjacent resources, it doesn't have to be a historic district. and it doesn't have to be historic resource itself. it's adjacent and nearby resources. that review has never been done. this appeal should be granted. president chiu: colleagues, any final questions to any of the parties that were involved in today's hearing? at this time, this hearing has been held and is now closed. items 48-50 are in the hands of the board. supervisor weiner? supervisor wiener: thank you, mr. president. first, i want to thank all of the neighbors who took the time to come out here today. i know that it's very difficult when we hold meetings in the middle of the day for people to take time out of their schedule and out of their work schedule

to come and sit through everything that we sit through here and spend that time, and so i appreciate it, and i think that it shows that no matter which side people are on, there are an awful lot of people in this neighborhood, which is my neighborhood, i live three blocks from this project, who care deeply about our neighborhood. this is my first ceqa appeal as the district eight supervisor, and so as luck would have it, it is so close to where i live, and i know many of the involved people on both sides. in a sense, that makes it easier that people i know are going to be mad at me no matter what position i take, and it makes it that much easier just to do this purely on the merits. i want to stress what this appeal is and what it's not. this is not a discretionary review appeal. that's already happened.

and things like light, air, and view were considered. the setback was increased. this is not an appeal to consider my or our aesthetic views. this is a ceqa appeal. it's limited to the narrow issues of whether this property is an historic resource and whether the development will have a significant impact on other historic resources. in my view, the planning department correctly issued a categorical exemption from environmental review. while the process was not 100% perfect, it was well within the law. and while reasonable minds perhaps can differ on the aesthetics of the project, this is not a ceqa issue. 1/3 of this property is not a historic resource. i think that's undisputed. and the proposed project does not have a significant impact on other historic resources. i won't repeat the analysis of the planning department.

i want to compliment ms. ham for that analysis. and i find the analysis by the planning department to be sound. regarding the lack of a pattern of setbacks that could be considered historic, the lack of consistency among the setbacks, the lack of consistency in terms of architecture among the homes on the blocks, the number of houses on the street without setbacks, etc. i do want to address the procedural issues raised by the appellants. it's, of course, important for people to have confidence in our planning process, because our planning process has significant impacts on people's lives. it impacts people who own property. it impacts people who own property adjacent to that property. the process here was not 100% perfect. in an ideal world, yes, there would be notification sent when

a category was changed. but none of the issues that have been pointed out are even significantly close. frankly, with all due respect to council, it was blown out of proportion and a lot of accusations and allegations or insinuations of impropriety were made that i think were unfortunate. but more importantly, moving past the process issues, in my view, this is not an historic resource and doesn't significantly impact a historic resource. the planning department has provided a full and exhaustive and per -- persuasive analysis, and so i respectfully disagree with the appellant's counsel

about no analysis ever having been performed. the fact is that this board has before it an exhaustive analysis of every conceivable historic preservation issue related to this project by the planning department, by counsel for the appellants, by the architect for the appellant, and by counsel for the project sponsor. no one, absolutely no one was deprived of an opportunity to argue their views on this historic preservation issue, either in writing or before the board today. we received a full analysis from all sides. the issue is ripe for decision, and we should decide it today. according toly, mr. president, i move item 48 and i move to table items 49 and 50. president chiu: colleagues, supervisor weiner has proposed that we affirm the planning department's decision. is there a second to his motion? seconded by supervisor campos. roll call vote on the motion.

>> [roll call] >> there are 11 ayes. president chiu: the motion is approved. if we can now go to general public comments. >> the next item on the agenda is the opportunity for the public to address the board for two minutes on items within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board, including items on the adoption without committee reference. a portion of the agenda yet excluding items which have already been considered by a board committee. speakers using translation assistance will be allowed twice the amount of time to testify. if a member of the public would like a document to be displayed on the overhead projector,

please clearly state such and remove the document when the screen should return to live coverage of the meeting. >> i'd like the projector to show the document i have placed under the projection. as you can see here, we have a picture of a cultural terrorist. this is osama bin leyland. as you know here in san francisco, we have been going through what has been described as a cultural holocaust with regard to western culture and equestrian activities. and this type of activity must stop because people are starting to come to san francisco historically, the paris of the west, and they just don't recognize it anymore. this cannot go on.

tourists keep coming to the city and they say, what the heck happened? what's going on here? and nobody has been more at the forefront of sabotaging our traditional history. yes, wyatt you were lived in this city for a long time, and he was a good gun. and we want to continue that type of a legacy. secondly, here we have another cultural terrorist. [laughter] this is osama bin chiu. here he is campaigning to supervise the destruction of western culture in san francisco. and as far as taxis go, we'd like to see more horses and carriages, and that would really solve the problem. they are more environmental and

they are clean sources of energy. and not only that, they are historical to san francisco. we don't need any more progressive trash like all the segues. are you guys mad? thank you. president chiu: thank you. and thank you for that picture of me with that full beard. next speaker, please. >> first i would like to apologize for my action, but also i ask you why not you believe that my complaint against this guy. that gentleman, he give me middle finger last week. i go up to the office for the

sheriff, i arrived to complain. i have telephone in my pocket. i call to 911 to stop him to harass me. and not one of you read it, or maybe you don't know how to read english, but i know how to read arabic, and now i am going to have my two minutes because i apologize for what i did and i hope to hear for you apologize for what you don't do yet. you give you respect. we like you and they will vote -- and these people vote for you. thank you very much for our supervisor mar to come and apologize and he see everything. enough is enough. now i would like to talk as i

would talk. [speaking foreign language] >> i talk about -- i have in my heart, in my mind, when i left my country, four years ago, -- john kennedy said that here in america, by english, the arabian man, he make the song. the song i have said in my mind

for years. mr. president, i am here to survive like anyone else. but i have something to tell you, but i refuse to get any sympathy for any one of you. the man here around you -- i have many other illness. i have cancer. i am dying, sooner or later. i am very proud to be american-egyptian. i have blessing. to be people like me and to have people around me and to have -- i know that's very hard for me, but that's you.

you run for mayor. i am going to be with you and i want to know. if you want my book, i would like to give you my book. president chiu: i need to mention that no one is allowed to politic or campaign in these chambers. >> i want to let you know, i begin to shout in chinese. at least i understand what you said, what our supervisor said. i would like to start -- president chiu: thank you very much. thank you, sir. thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. stop the corporate rate for the public library.

don't give money to the friends in foundation. don't accept money from the friends in foundation. the private fundraisers are allowed by the city of san francisco to present themselves as benefactors of the public. to do that, the city has to ignore the accountability that exists and refuses to even acknowledge how little the so called public private partnership actually contributes. the citizens voted for a bond issue to remodel all of the branches based on the commitment that it would cost $105.9 million and be finished in january 2010. the public has expended a total of 144.6 million. it's about 2/3 finished. eventually the public expenditure is expected to reach $201 million. the friends in foundation claimed that it would raise $16 million. to date, the friends in town dation have expended 1.1 million or p.1 of its commitment.

but the friends have raised 1.7 million. this means the friends and foundation have provided 3.4% of what they raise. yet in our corporate privatized system, private money is its own reward. the city has to ignore even the minimum accountability of public reporting and required disclosures to protect that private money. the friends in foundation would not answer questions about their finances before your funds committee. as a result the so called friends are allowed to operate without any agreement with the city. everyone knows the program didn't finish in january 2010, so the friends would have more time to raise their private money. yet public money is wasted and we are supposed to be grateful for the privatization? privatization not even expected to justify itself? that's why i always say the whys cost more than the money.

-- the lice cost more than the money. >> hi. by happenstance, i am here today. i didn't anticipate being here. the story is rather long. i first want to apologize for my dresms it's inappropriate for the sankty of this building and for the wonderful room. i have no prepared remarks and i am asking for help. i am going to try to be as brief as possible but if you would like to speak afterward as possible, i'm more than happy to. february 10, 2010, i noticed actually eight months ago some strange things were happening in my computer. four months ago i started screaming from the rooftops. if you're not really listening and not really seeing what you may think of is someone who's just crazy. those who weren't hearing actually listened, maybe indeed

this person isn't crazy after all. three months ago i started complaining about some very big things on my notebook computer, carrying 500 gigabytes were taken. they were being taken by iproject through apple frameworks from russia, japan, korea, as well as italy. after i dismanteled the site, what was announced by the new york stock exchange was that the nasdaq was hacked into. i believe base on the times i was certified, the certificates by the department defense that it was me. no one heeded my call until i started getting calls from the nasdaq. i am now working with the f.b.i., agent jeff graham. i'm working with two people at the secret service. katherine pierce. i am working with -- i am talking to graham bowles at "the new york times." unfortunately, in this process, when the police come to my place and ask the things i'm doing

with regards to unhooking cables and such, they took me for a 5150. president chiu: thank you. actually, everyone gets the same amount of time. but thank you very much. next speaker? >> may i speak in spanish? president chiu: you can if you want to repeat everything you just said in spanish. if you would like to trabs late into spanish, you can speak into spanish. [speaking in spanish]