this is the regular meeting for

the planning commission of april 7th, 2011. please turn off your cellphone. roll call, commissioner moore, commissioner sugaya, commissioner fong, commissioner antonini, commissioner borden. thank you. following public comment in any modifications or corrections you may have come on these minutes are before you for your consideration. >> commissioner sugaya. >> we will take the minutes.

>> yes. >> will you comment on the minutes? >> i was. >> there was an initial motion to take dr and denied the project. on that vote then, because of the failure and there was no substitute motion, the subject was automatically approved. the minutes say that there was an action in which the commission unanimously voted to approve the project.

>> that is probably an error. >> that should not be in there. >> this is action a key on item 10. >> i will correct that action. >> we received a memorandum from the health commission that took the meeting's minutes during our joint meeting. are those supplemental to the meeting minutes? >> no, those are their. >> i would like to open it up for public comment on this item. seeing none, public comment is closed. >> i move to approve the minutes of the date before us. >> seconded. >> on the motion for approval of

the minutes with the corrections for february 17th. >> aye. >> aye. >> aye. >> aye. >> aye. >> aye. >> aye. >> aye. >> thank you. the motion passes. i would pass the form on the north beach library and joe the maggio park either tuesday or wednesday this week. moderate attendance, good interest in it. this was actually a nice presentation. i have talked to some people during the week regarding treasure island and the new financing. i mentioned previously that i had received a notice that i would be receiving the american

community survey. this is a follow-up to the census which is the best way that i can do it. there was a discussion about here in the commission regarding the number of residential vacancies in the city. i purposely have not filled out the 28 pages. i will do this, essentially. however, i wanted to show it to you so that you will see there is absolutely nothing in this addition that even smacks of any statistical information regarding vacancies. i will start it down and this

then and pass it through and then i will fill it through. i thought you would be interested in the fallout. -- i will start it down and then fill this in and pass it through. >> i met with representatives of treasure island. on monday, i met with representatives from at&t. there was interesting discussions. i also wanted to thank the staff particularly for a very good summary of the census. it is interesting to me that we have seen similar movements as

we saw generations ago with different ethnic groups moving from the inner city to the outer parts of san francisco which is what we would expect. as people, second and third generation immigrants look for, situations where they can have home ownership or a garage or more space for their children and an opportunity presents itself. it is obvious to seek this kind of movement. we are not demolishing the inner city from when they came. we have seen improvements in these areas where areas are being upgraded and there is an interest in there. that is encouraging and i hope that it will continue. people are being displaced.

i think we need a solution to figure out a way to provide incentives probably through changes in some loss in san francisco to allow people to invest into these buildings and upgrade them seismically to make them safe for their inhabitants or perhaps in return for providing some affordable housing at a different site. this might be doable. this is something that would take some work by the board of supervisors. that would be a great way to solve the problems that we have in some of our historical challenged forms. >> actually, the comments are a great segue. i volunteer regularly with the red cross and i wanted to talk about that. there was a fire in the tenderloin. more than 30 units were affected in the hotel. right now, there is a shelter

for 60 people who were in the hotel. we also had 12 people displaced in the mission district. i wanted to remind people that the red cross, in addition to the major national disasters that you know of, our first responders and they are known for the silent disasters. when you hear about the fire in chinatown, the tenderloin, the red cross is there to make sure that people have shelter, clothing, food, and a place to stay. to that point, actually, next friday, on union square, we will be having a new initiative along with the mayor and the fire chief designed to build and model resilient community is focusing on our most vulnerable communities in san francisco and making sure that they are prepared.

i really want to encourage people to come out next friday, april 15th to union square. there will be disaster kids there and there will be other modules for those that want to be prepared. this is very apropos to what commissioner antonini is talking about. the people who need the red cross the most are those that of the most vulnerable population. when the buildings are not safe or sound, this is a problem even if we are not having a major disaster. >> thank you. three things. first, following up, i did read a staff memo and the census and i am looking forward to some additional information. at about the same time, i saw this particular district map with statistics on district 10.

frankly, i could not figure out what it was trying to tell me even though it says this is from the san francisco elections task force. i was trying to compare these numbers to the numbers in the memo. maybe staff can take a look at this. >> i was confused. >> secondly, -- seemed to be in the news lately and maybe we could have a staff report. i think that they were mentioning that dpw had a number of applications and issued a number of permits. there has been controversy over these, of course.

maybe staff could put together a report for us, that would be great. i assume this is a sign of success. lastly, i was put on commissioner lee's had. he is always reminding us of the importance of tourism and we will pass that on to commissioner fong. commissioner miguel mentioned it a couple of weeks ago that tourism is up in the city. this is from the old convention and visitors 0 and now i think that this is the travel association or something. it was up 3% number wise and up 6% in terms of revenues. statistically, that meant 8.3 4

billion was spent. 385 million came to the city of san francisco. interestingly, it says one of the notable positives was a high percentage, 74.3% of repeat visitors. the question, why did they come, the first one was overall ambiance and atmosphere. i think that that speaks to the work that the planning department and the commissioners are trying to do, not just with historic preservation in neighborhoods but overall quality of design. >> i was going to suggest that maybe we have a discussion on the census results that after our calendar is cleared. this would be june or july.

a lot of those people have migrated into the tenderloin. we have seen an increase in some immigrant families in those districts as well. i think it will be really good to have a discussion about all of that. this is kind of interesting. manufacturing is interesting when you see them talking about the twitter deal. it might be interesting at some point to look at just the

economy in san francisco where the jobs are that people are doing. there has been a different tors of different types of manufacturing. they will look at places where certain breweries and stuff, there are other types of manufacturing that has taken place on a smaller scale. later on, maybe we can look at that, where some of the jobs are. also, speaking of tourism and what draws people to san francisco. years ago, it was easy to see life music here in the city and it seems to be like dwindling on some levels. you used to be able to go to paradise lounge and see poetry.

if you are a local band, folk music, metal music, and all these different types of entertainment. i was at -- last week and i was watching dream syndicate. it was really incredible music, i had a good time. it had me thinking about how it was so accessible and i am hoping that there are certain protections when we make decisions appear that we think about how do we make sure that these businesses that are adjacent to residences that have been keeping up due to different reasons, i heard that they even had their liquor license revoked for a couple of weeks. i think when we're talking about protections, we need to be looking about protections for neighbors, protections for some

of these other businesses. >> in -- >> if we can move forward to the director's report, we can review the board of supervisors and the historic preservation commission. class i wanted to respond quickly to a couple of your class. we had to looking at a hearing

date score the census. i can't talk to to reset about that as well. -- i can talk to theresa saws slotback as well. they replaced it with this which actually goes out to a smaller number of people every two years. a number of concerns we have had is that people tend not to take it seriously because this is not coming on regular census years. they're concerned about the accuracy of some of this data. this is one of those things that we are looking at. theresa is really our expert on this.

i think that it is timely to do a memo about the status of the parks which there are about 40 which were applied for. there are some controversy as commissioners a guy and mentioned about how they were used. we can certainly address that in the memo. i wanted to mention that i will be going to the annual planning conference tomorrow which is in boston this year and i will be there from tomorrow until next wednesday and i will be here for next week's meeting but while i am out, bill will be in charge of the department. i will be doing what i have been doing for the last several years which is participating as what is called the faculty of the new directors institute, this is an all-day training session for new and prospective planning directors and in other cities. this is very interesting. it starts at 7:30 a.m. eastern

on saturday morning. this is something i have always enjoyed participating in. for the first time, they are giving us reduced registration rates for the conference. they have never done that before. i will be out the last week in april partially -- possibly for -- and a symposium. a small group of primarily public officials.

>> i january 20th, the commission adopted the street scape plan and a resolution to amend the general plan. the board does need to adopt the ordinance. the land use committee did recommend approval to the full board. at the full board of supervisors, there was four ordinances i would like to share. the first was the first reading of the urban agriculture ordinance. this would ease the regulations for farming and agriculture within san francisco. this commission voted to recommend approval of seven modifications. i will describe each

modification and whether or not it was incorporated into the ordinance. the first three were in corporate. you asked that we further clarify that sales grown on site may occur. you wanted to modify this setback for compost. there's a lot of discussion about fencing. the supervisor chu chose to expandia x?á%v2[5f that is how it reads. you asked that we have continue

working to keep the permit and the change of use fees. and to compare these fees which are temporary and seasonal permit types. staff look into this issue and we shared the cost with the urban agriculture working group. they did not feel that the fees for temporary or seasonal use provided enough relief for a general permit. they preferred to stick with their regular entitlement purpose, which is a little bit easier with the passing of this ordinance. you asked us to look into additional language that would allow the sale of value added goods. in this case, they allowed sales of value-added goods and all districts. only then in the case where the

primary ingredients were grown on site. lastly, you asked that we explore the use of soil testing to clarify concerns related to talk cities. the name was changed from industrial agriculture to large- scale urban agriculture. supervisor: don to the ordinance which now has three says sponsors. -- supervisor cohen proposed to the ordinance which now has three sponsors. the zoning map would be amended

to reflect actions taken by this commission in 2007. when the commission approved the plan on may 5th, 2007, it contained the zoning map approval. the board approved an amendment that merely approved the air. that ordinance proposed by supervisor farrell would remove the prohibition against the restaurants. under the proposal, restaurants would be allowed by cu. you recommended approval.

when the commission considers restaurants in this area, you should consider lunch service uses. with these amendments, the board approved the ordinance on the final reading. lastly, the consistent stre is,d by supervisor mirkarimi. this was a large piece of legislation which included parking news, street frontage regulation.

supervisor avalos requested a hearing on the plans and preparations for the event that the state would eliminate redevelopment in california. specifically, they asked that what the city would do to discuss continuity as community development strategies as far as affordable housing, work force, and commercial development. that concludes my report. >> thank you. >> is there a report from the board of appeals?

>> they did meet this week. >> the historic preservation commission did meet yesterday and the only real items of interest that i think is that they discussed their landmark program and they have 12 properties that staff plans to work with on designations for. in the hearing, they actually replaced two of the programs that staff has had. they are replacing the roof house on it is a narrow street and the forest hill club house. -- they are replacing the roof house on divisedero street. they believe that the houses are sufficiently protected enough and they feel that the other properties could stand a little

bit more protection so they put those forward and that concludes my report. >> the historic preservation commission completed their hearing yesterday in record time. we are now to public comment. members of the public can address the commission on matters that are within the jurisdiction of the commission except agenda items. the entire category has a 15 minute time limit. >> is there