supportive services for a larger number. supervisor avalos: ok, very good. would any member of the public like to comment on this item? >> good morning. i have worked in a department of public health for 20 years. i would like to speak out in support of this resolution. i think in california, every available mental health service is necessary, and i think everyone that troubles the streets, especially at night, has seen the obvious need for more services for the mentally challenged people in california. one cautionary note i would like to make is that in regards to the different programs for mental health services, i would like to caution that the providers of mental health services need to use the

services efficiently. one of the projects i have been studying for the last few years deals with the possible misuse of psychological services against whistle-blowers, and i feel that we should make sure that these psychological services are given to the most needy and possibly -- and not possibly misused, especially by local government. thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you very much. any other member of the public who would like to comment? we will close public comment. we can move forward with recommendations. we will do that without objection. item three please. >> item 3, ordinance amendment portions of the san francisco public works code, administrative code, and health could to consolidate and streamline department of public works enforcement, abatement, and cost collection processes

for public nuisances, including amendments to administrative code chapter 80, public works code sections, and health code article 6, revealing public works code sections 1 74.2 through 1 74.13, 728 through 734, and seven 35.1 through 735.4, remembering public works code section 707.1 as 706.9, and making environmental and other required findings. supervisor avalos: bank you, madam clerk. >> good morning, committee members. in a legislative aide in a supervisor mirkarimi's office -- i am a legislative aide. he entered this is this legislation at the request of the department of public works. briefly, i will describe what it does. immense fortunes of the public works vote, the administrative

code, and the health code to streamline the enforcement of public nuisances and lights. it centralizes the of forssmann of nuisance and light through a consolidated citation appeal -- it centralizes the enforcement of nuisance and blight. the city's comprehensive 2008 ordinance focused primarily on the abatement process, but did not consolidate the process for issuing administrative citations for nuisance law violations. supervisor avalos: ok. we also have a presentation from the director of dpw? >> good morning. i have a presentation if you want or need it. otherwise, just happy to answer questions. supervisor avalos: i think briefly if you could discuss the benefit of the ordinance for

your work and the work of your department. if you could briefly talk about that, that would be great. >> it is really -- the enforcement responsibilities that the department has for maintaining the public rights of way to be safe and clean and accessible are scattered amongst a number of different parts of the municipal code and health code, the police code an ad in code, the public works code. we have two pieces of the existing legislation. the blight ordinance and our sidewalk inspection and repair ordinance, which actually work very well. they are very effective because they are designed to enable us to, once we have identified a problem, if the property owner does not address it, it allows us to address it and recover the city's cost. we do not have that ability with the myriad of other aspects of the codes that we are meant to enforce. they have cumbersome processes

and the legal means of cost recovery, so they are, frankly, not very effective. what this proposed legislation does is for all those other elements of public right of way in enforcement that we have responsibility for, it basically holds them into the plight ordinance, allows us to use that process, which we have found has been very effective. just so you know, i know you have had questions about blight, and i think have called for a hearing on it. the plight ordinance was initially intended to address kind of a wide range of issues of non-building code property blight building code issues. what we found in practice is the great majority, well over 90%, of the use of the plight ordinance so far, has been graffiti. we had an existing graffiti ordinance, and we used that first, but when people do not comply with the graffiti

ordinance, we then issue a blight notice. it has been very effective. we are not getting a lot of requests from the public for non-graffiti blight issues here that said, it has been very effective. our sidewalk repair program has been very effective. we want to use the benefit of those ordinances to be able to address all the rest of the aspects of right of way enforcement that we are responsible for. supervisor avalos: ok, very good. just one brief question. you and i met in my office about a month ago. i gave you a few sites to look at in terms of blighted properties. not in public right of way. it was actually the top of edgar street. there were two, maybe three properties, just completely abandoned buildings on the top of the hill that are very visible from a lot of sites

around the city. i'm not sure if anyone owns the property at all, or is just sitting there for a long time. how would we go about getting the property been -- is that where we look at dpw or dbi? >> somebody at the town hall meeting the other night sent me some info after the meeting as well. we would send an inspector out, and the way we design the process is our inspector will determine which things fall within the admen code, the plight ordinance, and if there are things beyond that that are building code related, we have a process set up. there may be both in these instances, and we would be able to move forward and site immediately based on what is under our jurisdiction, but if we identify building code issues, we would allow that to dbi, and they would send an inspector out.

i gave my contact info. he has already followed up. i have already sent it to our inspectors, so they will be checking that out this week. supervisor avalos: very good. great to hear. we will open this item up for public comment. no one coming forward, we close public comment. we move this forward with recommendation without objection. item four please. >> item four, ordinance waiting san francisco public works code section 724.1, which imposes temporary street space occupancy fees on saturday may 7 and saturday may 21, 2011, for certain streets in san francisco, as part of small business week sidewalk sales. supervisor avalos: bank appear this is an item that one of the members of the board of supervisors sponsors every year so we can have the conditions to

have different stands around the city during small business week. i am offering this legislation this year. it came from the office of small business administration office, headed by regina. >> good morning. annually, the small business commission comes before you to request the sidewalk fee waiver for small business week shop your neighborhood day. this is taking place on may 21. before you, you have a list of streets in the legislation that we are requesting the block fee waiver. i have submitted to you a list of the merchant corridors that are participating, and we have a total of 23,000, 100 -- $23,182 in sidewalk sale at the waivers. just to note that the commit -- this is a commission-initiated projects, so if the commission was not initiated the project,

the sidewalk sale at the waivers would not be happening. i have also provided you just a document of this year, the small business week committee, we are doing additional promotion for the sidewalk sale day, the shop your neighborhood day, and i have provided you with a list of the promotional materials. supervisor avalos: very good. thank you. the first day of the sidewalk sale will be in district 11. we are going to combine it with our our walk event, which will start that evening along ocean avenue. our events in district 11 have been really fabulous. lots of great participation from district 11 artists and neighborhood residents. we have had hundreds of people on the streets at each one of our events. this will be our fourth. >> correct. we wanted to make sure that ocean avenue was able to partake in the sidewalk sale at the labor to be able to do their part what -- their art walk,

even though they were not able to join us for the may 21 date. supervisor avalos: very good. thank you, regina. we will open this item for public comments. and we will close public comments. and this item we can move forward with recommendations. so done. madam clerk, do we have any other items before us? >> no, mr. chairman. supervisor avalos: we are adjourned.