being police-driven, community boards is found to be more effective. it would be nice to consider the san francisco local government would not to apply their services in a way that could be budgeted. [applause] president chiu: why don't we go to general public comment? >> at the next item on the agenda is opportunity for the community to address the board including items without on the calendar and items that have not been considered by a board community. citizens using translation would be allowed twice the amount of time. if members of the public would like to have items displayed on the overhead projector, please

say so and remove the items after the meeting. >> [speaking foreign language]

ladies and gentleman, good afternoon. i am here to thank the egyptian leader, who refused to give

forgiveness to former dictator hosni mubarak. he said our government, the new government is going to put him in jail and return him back to us. ladies and gentlemen, i am here in america for a long time, but i think of my country every day and i am happy to tell you the leader of the egyptian young men here in san francisco, i would like to invite him to come here with us. i would like to let you know we have a nice young lady, the supervisor from my district,

jane kim, she came to visit us on the 21st of april. she said she would come back. this was a picture made for her in english and chinese to remind her some people, 110 people live in my building and they love to see her. in by hand, i have a card -- she told me to be sure to give her my business card and let me know when she is coming so we can give her another warm welcome. ladies and gentlemen, open your eyes because she is going to -- [tone] president chiu: next speaker.

>> stop the corporate rate of the public library. a crucial aspect of the corporate rate of the library is how little the private-public partnership continues. i have pointed out in previous presentations of the original program of 105.9 has almost doubled. they have only given one plane $1 million or 7.1% of the pledge. the branch remodeling began in 2000 and because they were required to report money for its benefit, which collected donations over time and find out over nine years, a library has reported receiving $3.1 million. because the pilings from the attorney general look of the same time in terms of revenue,

we can see they took in $31.7 million. the friends have given 10% of its income for the benefit of the old public library. if we compare this filings from the attorney general to the report regarding the branch library improvement program, the friends foundation has given 3.4% of its revenue to the program. the public reports designed to create accountability are ignored because private money is its own justification. friends and foundation would not answer questions about their finances before your finance committee, said there were allowed to operate without any agreement to the city. nothing dramatizes so effectively the domination of private corporate interests and our society and the are not ashamed to tell of a public- private partnership. yet we are supposed to be grateful for the privatization. that is why i always say the

allies cost more. -- the allies cost more. [tone] >> nancy schaefer exposes the evil cps. you see what a large letter i have written to you in mind and. there should be upon every high mountain and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of water in the day of the great slaughter when the powers fall. the light of the moon shall be of the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days. that comes from isaiah 30. god is talking here about the twin towers. the does not establish when this will happen but he says in the day of a great slaughter, the taller -- the towers will fall. as i have said many times

before, months before 9/11, i predicted the sixth trumpet would, on that day even though it was an inside job. there are elements of a government and israel involved and of blaming the muslims and they had nothing to do with it and iraq yet nevertheless because it is in the bible could not be prevented. we read that these rivers are waters of connectivity. we now have the internet and we all know what happened on that day. god is speaking of a light -- criminals onto their crimes and the dark. every politician that says the fires bought the building down knows that the people know that they're lying because the fires could not have brought the building down. but jesus said this -- you think they were worse than anyone else? no.

unless you prevent, you shot -- and the shoot repent, you shall perish. if you are not born again -- [tone] president chiu: next speaker. >> good afternoon. ♪ and i want you to stand tall at city hall. ♪ at roll-call i want you to have a hall. ♪ stand tall, don't you crawl, don't you fall at roll-call come halls of medicine and have it calls. ♪ 1, 2, 3 -- playing golf with mayor lee was not easy for we. ♪ he hit three golf ball hole in

one and it was not so easy. ♪ it was like taking candy from a golf baby. ♪ it was not easy, he hit holes in one. ♪ hungry city is -- i've got a graphics -- hungry city eyes. ♪ won a look at year end i fantasize. i want to be given money and better things. ♪ and -- [tone] ♪ the budget is slip sliding --

the budget is slips sliding away. ♪ slip sliding away. ♪ end of the money and the destination is all slip sliding away. [tone] president chiu: thank you. next speaker. the >> good afternoon. i want to speak on issues involving the environmental impact report and the lack of the simple, old-fashioned aspect of dimensioning, leaving out dimensions and leaving out the whole picture.

in the most recent north beach branch library, there is never one place where an entire width of the street right away is shown. there is never a chance to consider the relative size of the building being projected there. i use this as an example of how from a simple dimensioning system, which as been used for a millennium at least in architecture, what is being called an edge masking in this case is perhaps a misrepresentation of that, given the full width of the street is never compared to the 19.5 feet. when dimensions are given, they

cannot add up to the dimensions included in the text elsewhere. we have a case in that same report where a spotted a group of dimensions do not add to the depth of the projection into the view corridor that this building is going to be making on the mason street right of way. in fact, the dimensions given here in desperate eir which has been moving forward is over 1 foot short. [tone] president chiu: thank you very much. next speaker. >> my name is as washington and i'm coming from a different perspective today.

for all the politicians positioning themselves to move on to higher office, community reform is something that must take place. there is a big disconnect from city hall to the community. how can you say that? i've been in city hall over 20 years, longer than most of you sitting over there. i'm here to tell you there's a big disconnect from city hall. i'm going to bring some solutions -- if you see all of these city agencies infiltrating my community, all of these agencies as the around and make decisions that affect our community -- on the community side, we do not get to sit down with the decision makers. that has to change with this new

generation coming up here. i am going to bring some charts to show you more. there is a community blueprint and going to present -- and informed community is an empowered community. unity in our community -- could i did not know particular, i'd be able to be in city hall as long as i have? that comes from empowerment of information. if i had not been informed, they would have kicked me out and from the under the bus like they usually do. but because i am informed, i am empowered. i am going to empower my community. get ready for a community informed. [tone] president chiu: are there any of -- are there any other

members of the public who wish to speak? seeing them, can we go to the next item? >> items 19 through 21 are being considered for adoption. they will be acted upon by single roll call vote. facially called separately in the matter considered. president chiu: could you call will roll on items 18, 19 and 21? >> [roll-call]

there are 11 ayes. president chiu: those resolutions are adopted. item 20? >> item 20 is supporting california homeowner protection act. president chiu: i have a motion to continue that -- to a have a second? if we could continue this item until may the second, this item shall be discontinued. colleagues, we have five minutes before our

president chiu: welcome back to the san francisco board of supervisors meeting of tuesday, april 26, 2011. colleagues, before we proceed to the 4:00 special order, our clerk informed me that on the last item that we had discussed i was told that we would continue this to may 2. it should be may 3. so could i ask for a motion to rescind that? motion to rescind by supervisor campos. seconded by supervisor mar. without objection, that should be the case and if we can now pass a motion to continue this item to may 3, motion made by supervisor mar. seconded by supervisor elsbernd . without objection, colleagues, this item 20 will be continued to may 3. madam clerk, could you please read our 4:00 special order items 11 through 14?

>> item 11 a public hearing of persons interested in the decision of the planning department dated february 22, 2011, that a project located on la playa street between cabrillo and fulton street is exempt from environmental review under class three. item 12 motion affirming the determination by the planning department that the at&t upgrade project is exempt from environmental review. item 13 is a motion reversing the planning department's determination that the at&t upgrade project is exempt and item 14, motion directing the preparation of findings reversing the planning department's exemption determination. chau chiu colleagues, we have in front of us today an appeal related to the proposed at&t lightspeed upgrade project. our planning department issued a categorical exemption for the entire upgrade project. this matter before us today is an appeal from a permit granted to at&t from a specific location , la playa street, between cabrillo and fulton streets. for this hearing we will

consider the adequacy, accuracy, sufficiency and completeness of the planning department's determination that the entire lightspeed upgrade project is categorically exempt from environmental review. we'll first hear from the apell ants who will have up to 10 minutes to describe the grounds for the 'peel. we'll then take public comment from individuals who wish spo speak on behalf of the apell ants. each speaker will have two minutes to present. we'll then hear from the planning department who have will have 10 minutes to describe the grounds that the determination that this project is exempt from environmental review. following planning we'll hear from the real part of -- party of interest, at&t, who will have up to 10 minutes to present. we'll then hear from individuals speaking on behalf of the real party in interest. each speaker will have up to two minutes to present. final liquor the apell ants will have three minutes for rebuttal. colleagues, are there any objections to proceeding in this way? if not, why don't we proposed to the hearing and, colleagues, unless there are any initial comments that people would like to make, i would like to invite

up the apellants who have 10 minutes. you can divide it amongst however many of you want to present for up to 10 minutes. first speaker, please. >> my name is raymond holland. one of the two apellant. the other is san francisco beautiful. i would like to address the first issue on our appeal is whether or not there are significant environmental impacts from the project that's being proposed. we believe that however the state legislation specifies under ceqa that there are and it vares from neighborhood to -- varyings from neighborhood to neighborhood. are you having trouble hearing? -- varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. are you having trouble hearing? the categorical exemption cuts out the seven historic districts and acknowledges that lightspeed

network would have significant adverse environmental impacts on the seven historic districts. and then it says the alternatives for mitigating those, they would simply put the sidewalk boxes in other neighborhoods outside of the seven historic districts or put them on public right of ways and in doing so what they're doing is they're basically acknowledging that there is an environmental impact. as i said, it varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. in the richmond district, major parts of the richmond district, there's vareying instances there. the portion that would go in the richmond district would be in addition to a numerable number of other sidewalk cabinets that are already there to support at&t's landline telephone system. it would also be in addition to the portion of the 800 can net -- 800 cabinets that are there to support their uverse system. it would also add to the number of wireless data transmission

boxes that were put up, the majority of which for the last three months of last year and resulted in the legislation you passed in january to start regulating the location of those. the whole regulatory structure for those two pieces of equipment are totally different -- different. and the last are the bicycle racks that are going up on our sidewalks. our public right of ways, our sidewalks and the space over them are become withing cluttered, really cluttered in some areas and not so cluttered in others. we'll acknowledge. that but we think you need to have, you have a citywide exemption for environmental review. we're suth suggesting you need to have an environmental review citywide to deal with all of these variances within the city. there are clutters, there are serious environmental impacts that need to be looked at and that is the process where you

look at mitigation and eliminations of those environmental impacts and that's what we're asking. we're not opposing at&t's network with being installed. we support improvements that those. we think it needs to go through a process where you have an independent party, not at&t, actually moderating the process by which mitigations where they're needed are dealt with and eliminations are dealt with. ok? thank you. >> good afternoon, president chiu, and members of the board. i'm susan brant holy, i'm an attorney who has practice on ceqa and i'm representing apellants. since time is short i'm going to jump into talking about the categorical exemption process. it's been confused in this situation. categorical exemptions basically are the legislators' attempt to

avoid unnecessary environmental review. it's been allowed to create categories of projects that normally don't have environmental impacts. so they don't warrant the time and expense of ceqa review which we all know takes time and costs money. but basically categorical exemptions are we but thal projections. -- categorical projections. there's lots and lots of categories. but there are exceptions. and their argument standard think a explained in my letter to you and your staff agrees, the fair argument standards applies to whether there are any exceptions to the exemption claimed in this case. there's a class three exemption that's been claimed and there's dispute about whether it applies or not and we believe it doesn't apply but i think we should just jump right over that for purposes of discussion today to get to the exception. there's an exception for a categorical exemption under 1

5300.2-b. it says all exemptions for these classes are inapplicable when the cumulative impact of successive projects of the same type in the same place over time is significant. there's also an exception for unusual circumstances. even though something's in a category that might be exempt, there are circumstances that in this particular situation mean that it's not exempt and the fair argument standard applies to that. so when you're hearing testimony today or you're looking at your file, at the evidence that's been presented to you, you need to look at whether there are facts or reasonable assumptions that this project may have any significant environmental impacts, despite possibly being in a category. and the key here is that we're talking about 726 of these large utility boxes. if it was one or two or 10, that would be very different. but we have 726. a few years ago when i spoke to

those of you who are on the board about with the same project, they had presented 150 applications and map showing the other 700 proposed utility box locations. at this point instead what's come before you is a categorical exemption for the entire program, the 726 boxes. but with the program itself hasn't been approved. all that's been approved so far is one of the utility boxes and what you're being told is that each time one of these comes up for approval it will be separately looked at. and ceqa doesn't allow. that there are lots of cases that say so, that that's called seg mentation. you can't take a large project and put it into bite-sized pieces and that's actually court language that makes the project look like it's not significant. you have to look at them all together. what needs to happen here is that this be reviewed, the whole program in an environmental impact report, which can look at alternatives including placement

on private property which other carriers do or undergrounding and there were people to talk about that today. only through a process do you look at the scope of the whole project and alternatives. there's been none of that done by your staff because it's exempted this project from ceqa. another reason why the categorical exemption can't be used here is that there are conditions. the staff, based on i think the p.u.c. or d.w.r. order, states that when every -- any box comes before them for review they'll consider aesthetics, they'll consider historic resources that may be in the vicinity, they'll consider pedestrian safety, basically they'll consider all the environment problems that are acknowledged to be possible here. when those kinds of conditions, and they are mitigation conditions, i just saw a memo, i haven't even read the whole thing from staff, the supplemental memo, that talks about the fact that these aren't

really mitigating conditions that are being placed on these projects. but they are. a condition that may say nothing can be over five feet tall or nothing can be a certain width or that no construction can occur after a certain time, those are definite conditions that can be applied across the board. the conditions that are on this project involve the review by staff and discretion as to how they're going to mitigate the possible acknowledged impacts of each of these boxes. you can't have -- there's case law that says, the salmon case says, you can't have a categorical exemption if you need to have mitigation conditions. and the reason is, the very presence of the need of a mitigation condition ac nomings that there's a possible -- acknowledges that there's a possible environment problem and there's always the possibility that the mitigation ncaa may not work and if the mitigation fails you have an environmental impact. so it's a disturbance to the board to have the board even consider approving a -- there's been no approval of this project, number one. that needs to happen