this is a question of policy that touches on how we create great streets. we have to varieties of public space in the city. we have parks and we have streets. we love our parks and treat them with great dignity and it anybody said the mound to put 700 utility boxes in them, people would be outraged. but streets are a variety of public space we do not treat with dignity. there are a lot of different entities put the stuff into the right of way. a lot of people, including the former planning director, commented on the mean streets. our streets are harsh, ugly and dangerous. it is important we dignify them and make them safer. it will mean changing the way we do business. there should be another hearing on what triggers this. i think the main issue is the

first no harm. do not do something that is point to make it harder to do the right thing later. a great example is valencia's street. when london to the sidewalks, and there were these polls that were too expensive to move and they are in the middle of the sidewalk now. most sidewalks in the city do not meet planning standards. they are not wide enough. even if you put utility boxes in that zone, it is going to be in the way when we go to widen the sidewalks. it is another thing we will have to move at public expense even though that of private facilities, when we bring those streets into compliance. we are working against themselves if we are putting obstructions in the public right of way. they don't allow the sidewalk and would get in the wake of the better streets plan standards.

>> good afternoon. i live in the haight ashbury. my first view of san francisco was in 1940, when my parents took me from the sleepy little village to the world's fair. i looked over at that city and said my god, that is gorgeous. the tallest building it was the ferry building. i said, "someday, i want to live there." our family moved to berkeley. i went to school there, went in the army, went to san francisco state, and have lived here most of my life, ever since. i have seen a lot of changes and have always known that san francisco is by its nature a beautiful city. but a lot of times a man gets in the way of that duty. u.s. supervisors are charged the responsibility of keeping this -- you as supervisors are

charged the responsibility of keeping this a beautiful city. 726 huge boxes will not make this city more beautiful. there is no way you can argue that it will. please keep san francisco but to pull. you are also the economic aspect of this. but tourism is our biggest industry and it is not going to help anything. >> i agree. i'm wanted to thank you very much for having this hearing. i think it is important and timely, and i like your quotation that sidewalks are our most important used public spaces, and need to reflect well on our cities and neighborhoods. i happened to glance at the back

streets plan online and would love to have by street looking as good as the but the streets plan. let us work for that goal. if you can spur on our various departments to integrate their plans, i think everyone in this room would be very happy, including yourselves. emphasizing that there are no pictures of any utility boxes in the buttressed its plan, you may have seen the coils holding up the utility pole. i did not see it one picture of an overground utility box in the better streets plan. the general plan has a preference for the cleaner, less cluttered streetscapes. i thought that was important. but we have platoons of newspaper carriers. we have utility boxes. we have all of this, all within

3 feet of the street, which has a lot of impact on the streets. in my neighborhood, there won't be any landscaping of any boxes. i live in one of the densest neighborhoods of the city. there is no additional cuts area that could be landscaped. 311 will not work for at&t. we will have to call them if there is a graffiti problem. with respect, i would like to ask your help on this, that when there is a notification to the public only neighborhood associations are contacted. with 70% renters, we need to do a better job of contacting all the people. supervisor weiner: thank you. but i do believe 311 is supposed to report to utility companies when there is a utility issue.

they are supposed to relate those reports. if they are not, please let me know. >> good afternoon. on behalf of the community, i would like to thank you for having this hearing this afternoon. i would like to urge you to keep our cities clean. i would like to keep it that way. while it is clear technology has bought marbles to this world, but this is a detriment to the beauty of san francisco. i have read that at&t is constructing all of these boxes from carolina to illinois. they are invading the nation. [laughter] pardon my juvenile speech. i am sure my parents would not be a happy, having crews of men coming in the middle of the

night and popping a box in the middle of the lawn. why should our property values fall? the people who visit the city every year do not like graffiti boxes. they came to see the golden gate bridge or quit power. please work with the other departments and keep our sidewalks people. with the spirit of cooperation, i am confident we will be able to find a solution that will benefit all san franciscans. thank you. supervisor weiner: under our board rules, we request that people not applaud or boo or anything like that, if i could just remind people. you can boo us, but not other members of the public.

>> i have been living in the city for 20 years. having these boxes around would destroy our community, and i do not think it is a good idea to let tourists come to our city and see our environment being graffiti on. if it is graffiti, i feel like it will be more of a trend and more people being graffiti on.

>> there is not much left to say, and there is. dolores park now is being invaded, or has already been invaded, with these boxes. one of the neighborhood groups is the coalition for san francisco neighborhoods. they have, to my recollection, unanimously approved these boxes. you cannot hide behind it -- well, you can hide behind these boxes. they are a big push. this is a major oversight if you allow them to go over to go ahead with these boxes. the public is saying do not do this. i happen to be a small part of the public. the rest of it is against this.

ignoring public opinion against these monstrosities while favoring at&t lobbyists could indicate some transparent act that is outside the view of the public. nobody knows hear how many things have been discussed and transpired. thank you. >> i have been living in san francisco for 20 years. i feel the at&t boxes will make the streets more crowded and will affect the appearance of our neighborhoods. for example, the lot of the pictures we saw were graffitied. one of the recommended changes to the street is a sidewalk

graffiti policy. thank you. >> david troupe. i am going to try not to repeat things that have been said, but there is one i have to repeat. that is the idea that these boxes can be green and screen. utility boxes -- i think they have the opportunity to be screened with foliage. that is a red herring. this is a much bigger issue than any one utility company. it involves multiple city agencies, which is why we are here today. some of these same issues have come up. for example, my organization has worked closely on the rail replacement project.

there are going to be new large utility boxes, and we have tried very hard to look at getting them put underground. i think it was a matter of if they had not done that before or did not know how to. if there are any existing boxes or other things in the furniture zone, it was deemed acceptable to put more of them. that seems like a recipe for disaster. obviously there are not just one company, but many companies that want to put up one of these boxes. if the only aesthetic argument is if you have some, ok, that is just going to lead to a huge growth in the number of sidewalk impediments.

the last thing, regarding notification to neighborhood groups -- there was talk of putting things up on web sites. that is not useful. you need to push things out to people. thank you. >> i am on the ground with field staff working on this furniture zone, planting trees and doing sidewalk and landscape. that permit is relatively new. i have been really excited in the last three years, were department of sharing cooperation, especially with dpw, works with us on a daily basis. we will go over multiple sites that are difficult. sidewalk and landscape has triggered many different utility

companies. a lot of things are in the ground. i have been happy with what we have worked together successfully. we are working with certain grants and the puc. on the ground, in day to day mode,, seeing this pick up, department of sharing with the organizations has been fantastic. that is it. thank you. supervisor weiner: i want to call the final half dozen speakers. jane morrison, raymond holland, ian burke, matthew kaufman, and dan weaver. and if there are any other members of the public who have

not been called, please fill out a yellow card, because we are close to being done. >> i am the president of corporate heights neighbors -- corbit heights neighbors. the first speaker earlier today suggested open spaces are off limits, in my neighborhood and throughout the limit. -- throughout the city. i understand the boxes will be placed on mini parks are neighborhood associations. there is discussion of placing them in the shrubbery. that shrubbery needs to be removed in order to put the box in. aesthetic conformity is something that was mentioned. i always wonder -- conforming to

what? who's aesthetics -- whose esthetics? it is a conforming to the other boxes or the other the street scape? the people who would be able to green boxes suggest there would be able to bring up flowers and plants to place around the boxes. in almost all of the spaces, they will be on the sidewalk, and you cannot plant petunias on the sidewalk. thanks very much. supervisor weiner: ms. morrison. >> thank you for listening to all of us. i am jane morrison, a member of the board of san francisco tomorrow. i recommend everybody sign up with comcast. they give great tv service and do not have any of these boxes. [laughter]

why does at&t need it if comcast does not? put underground. if they want to pay me, i will let them put it in my back yard. many of my friends told me to protest the street boxes of two years ago when the were first put up and got graffiti over them. the same thing is happening now. i am going to give you a quote from a man i admire, a dear friend. it is dated august 17, 2005, but he was head of the department of public works. his name is ed lee. he said the department of public works is concerned that the installation of service mounted facilities in the public rights of way will impede travel on public streets, inconvenience property owners, create light, or otherwise prevent the use of public threats of war by the public. -- public rights of way by the public.

>> my name is ray holland. i am president of the planning association for richmond park. we are appealing this issue with at&t, which is laughing at what we say about it. i applaud using the better streets plan as a vehicle to get to the objectives, some of which we were appealing on. i think basically the better streets plan provides an opportunity to do a more effective and cheaper environmental redo. that is the bottom line. but there is also the danger of being in the forest and not seen the trees. you started this hearing talking about the sidewalks. i think better streets talks about the sidewalks, not just the streets, and the lighting in some sections of our city, and everything in between. one of the issues that precipitated the at&t

categorical exemption in 2008 -- what really seal did this time was the installation in the last few months of last year of those awful-looking wireless data transmitters on the sides of our utility poles. they are black and brown. i think it only happened in the upper richmond district and in cal hollow so far. there are more to come. when you looked at the cumulative effects of what is on the sidewalk, what is on the utility poles, what is overhead, and what is in the street, and you make your determinations -- i think one of the things better streets plan could probably use is more objective criteria. the new set up a project that has to be an impartial process. it started with the notification.

we get all the notifications for building permits in the richmond district. i have never seen one for one of these issues. thank you. supervisor weiner: thank you for coming in. next speaker. >> i am ian burke. i live on clay street. i think supervisor weiner's opening statement was a perfect summary that public sidewalks are our most important public space. installation of hundreds of sidewalk boxes needs to be thoroughly examined as to its necessity and impact. there are already two of these things around the corner on scott street. the landscaping the talk about around them is a forest of 4 inch galvanized steel pipe. lovely, but they do not require much water. [laughter] they are ugly and often tagged with graffiti. 726 more of these needs to be

well studied by a disinterested party, not by at&t. supervisor weiner: again, i do not want to get into eir issues, but thank you for the comment. >> my name is charles and i am a student. i live in the richmond district. i just want to say utility boxes impede pedestrians. even at today's hearing, i believe you will be looking at the issue of widening city sidewalks. there is a need to use sidewalks as community spaces, not just for private spaces to put boxes on. sidewalks are for people, not for boxes. please protect public spaces and prevent installation of the at&t utility boxes. thank you. supervisor weiner: next speaker. >> my name is dan weaver.

i was a member and chair and author of the utilities undergrounding task force report, which i hope the supervisors will look at and consider. of a trip to push you in that direction in these brief comments. i agree that permiting at dpw is often done in a one-off kind of way. this is so different from when the directors order was developed and issued, when i was serving on the committee. all the alternatives to the way it was done 10 years ago are not being looked at. none of them are being looked at in a serious way. we have bus shelters. still no co-location. no testing street furniture that could serve as a col-location. no undergrounding attempted.

dpw should be taking the lead, along with city agencies as well as private companies trying to locate more boxes and facilities. the second major issue -- the general plan, the urban design part of it, calls for a san francisco street lighting plan. it has never been done. it needs to be done. any decent street lighting plan in san francisco beautiful, a simple brief one, would say no decent street lighting can occur with overhead wires. finally, there is a big difference between the undergrounded sections of san francisco and the not undergrounded. we are 67% overhead wires. we are the champions. comcast has battery boxes hanging on polls in literally every block. they have undergrounded sections on ocean avenue.

there needs to be a way to deal with that in the quality. supervisor weiner: -- inequality. supervisor weiner: thank you very much. if there are any final speakers, please step forward now. >> my name is malcolm kaufman. i am on the board of directors of the cal hollow neighborhood association. there is little i can add to the eloquence of the 50 speakers to her and her today. i will add my voice to request to take all of san francisco beautiful, as it may be, into consideration, even though dpw talks about a specific site. we have to look at san francisco as a series of neighborhoods, as i am sure you will. we can live without at&t providing us their new system, whether it is comcast or someone else, and if they want to enter into the city they ought to do it with the idea that they are

going to do it without contradicting what is best in this city. supervisor weiner: thank you very much. is there any further public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. let me just ask mr. allenbaugh to come up again. there are a couple of things i should ever lifted earlier. i apologize for that. in terms of some of the questions the or asked to dpw, it -- that were asked to dpw, can you talk about the site visit and when it would be appropriate for planning to go out and evaluate the esthetics, and also public process, including the public in some of these decisions. >> i think you need coordination, the site visit,

and early coordination amongst the agencies. i had a couple of thoughts that came out of the testimony. i thought it was really useful and appreciate it. i think we all learned a lot from it. i wanted to make clear that when i was talking about the convergence of the general plan and the better streets plan to the directors working order, i was really looking at the adequacy of the guidelines. that was my point. i do think there is a robust set of guidelines in place through the directors working order, the better streets plan, and the general plan. they can always be strengthened, however, i believe. the other point i may not have made clear, but at least in terms of the general plan -- there is not an assumption you have to place facilities, and therefore here is the trade document. it is really a set of guidelines for saying how would you accomplish -- what kinds of good things would you haveand so, i e

point and provides us with tools but it certainly tells us how to place them, but i think you still about the wet weather that plays and ultimately is a good thing for the street itself. i was also chuckling when dan weaver was here because the streetlight master plan, we were talking about that in 1997, but i will say, over the years, and i think primarily because of the result of the better streets plan, agencies really are talking to one another much more robustly than they used to, and i think that is only a good thing, and i think it is getting stronger, and i am up here speaking for the better streets plan, but i will say the better streets plan was developed by all the agencies to gather, and they are taking this back to their agencies and working with the agencies to do that.

that said, i think to your earlier point, a supervisor, we can always strength and coordination, and it can only be good for the quality that we get, it i think your point, it has to come as early in the process as we can possibly make it, but i think there should be some event in of just what is being proposed. i observed a couple of things or heard a couple of points that i thought were very interesting, too, if i might. the first, there was the point about adding sidewalk widening into the tool kit that we might use if we are looking at the sighting of facilities. i think the idea as well, if we are putting a facilities in the street, to use them, to make better streets with the better

streets plan, and as was said earlier, we may want to think about looking at, and one thing i did not do when i looked at the analysis of these documents, about looking at some of the minimum sidewalk standards and see if that might be reflected in future discussions we have, and i think in response to my point, i answered them. >> just one quick question. there was the issue of when you widen the sidewalk. i am sure i in the number of our colleagues would like to do that in various areas of the district, and there are these unbelievably expensive to fire hydrants, so you end up leaving it, but there are other things, for example, the clear channel muni shelters or various utility boxesor