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today is august 17, 2011. this is the regular meeting of the building inspection committee. the first item on the agenda is roll call. [roll call] commissioner clinch and commissioner romero are excused. we have a quorum. the next item on the agenda is president's announcement. >> good morning those of you in the chambers and welcome to the monthly bic meeting. first off, i want to start off with some categories in which i could -- i would like to commend some of the staff members who were recognized by a guest in the city, a realtor, who had basically sent a letter of

appreciation to our director saying that raymond barrios, cheryl aldridge, and others did a great job providing all the services and everything that she needed. everything that she had anticipated, and exceeded, for her, those services. next would be my apologies for the lack of timely posting of the bic meeting minutes. it was during the transition in the early part of the summer where we are getting up to speed. we will begin to deliver those in a more timely way in the next few weeks. last but not least, the categories and by which the

information on our packet has seemed to have fallen off in being delivered in a timely manner, the material content of that should be in our hands early enough so that we can review them in a timely way so that we can properly give it the right attention. that is my opinion and would like for other members of the commission to express that. >> i have been on the commission for over six years now. i remember a time when we had our meetings on monday morning and our agenda packages would come to us on friday, as they do now. the agenda packages were really

thick. i spent a lot of time on the weekend just reviewing the package getting ready for the monday morning meeting. i remember at that time the agenda item package was so big, we decided we needed to move the meeting from monday to wednesday just so that we have time to review, ask questions, and get some answers based on what we had read over the weekend. i have noticed in this past year, the agenda packages have been getting smaller and smaller. today's package was actually eight pages, and i am kind of surprised. some of the items on the agenda, i would think, we would have some backup information, documents for us commissioners to review. i appreciate that we have got

something today, but i would like to see if we could include the friday agenda package. for example, the capss program. it is not a new program. the status of the mou with the housing authorities. that should not be new. we should have the mou ready, and it should be in our package. i even asked about the heat complaints filed with dbi, asking for the past two meetings. we finally get it today at the meeting. how about the q-matic? we keep hearing there is progress, but if this is such an important program for the city and our department, and we are trying to implement it and get our customers to go through with

it, is there any paperwork, instructions, even something to announce this program to the public? i would like to see some of that. are there brochures telling people what to expect? something like that would be helpful to commissioners to review over the weekend and then we can come here on wednesday and debate and discuss this intelligently. that is all i'm asking for. i do not know if my fellow commissioners have any other comments. >> commissioner walker? commissioner walker: thank you. i tend to agree. especially on issues that we routinely have -- i think the capss program we have gotten a lot of back of material. maybe we will get more information about current

programs. it is really important, especially -- i could talk about the mou agenda item with the housing authority. there have been some real issues. i hope this is just a first step in the valley witting our partnership with the housing authority. but i do think we need to have details -- sorry about that. in order to make advice, decisions about the things before us. so i agree. >> commissioners, any other comments? commissioner clinch: one thing we have been getting, we get a proposed agenda. we have to look at them more closely. if we think there are things missing, i think it is incumbent on the commissioners to let the

secretary know if we need more information on the proposed agenda items. there have been cases where we have added and ask for things and we have done it in the final package. commissioner hechanova: any other comments? commissioner murphy: yes, i do not know where to start. commissioner walker mentioned the capss program. i think that is moving along pretty nicely with the people that are running with that. i happen to be on the committee -- have not been to meeting place -- lately because of scheduling and stuff. i am happy that some of the commissioners are beginning to wake up to what is going around here. i have been talking about it for two years. nothing happening.

there were many promises made to me, projects to be carried out. but when it came to ringing the bell, it did not come out. it did not happen. here we are, seven months into our current presidency, and the same old. nothing getting done. q-matic, i believe they got it going this morning or afternoon, just to satisfy me, because i made demands a couple of months ago about getting in going. -- it going. i see it as a waste of time. it is not going to work, especially with the people running it.

i had a call a week ago from a stickler -- stakeholder. they are one of the people's writing the checks, the customer. he was waiting in line for someone to take his check. there were 25 people behind him. if we cannot coordinate the cashiers, how can we implement this q-matic? it is just horrible. >> commissioner murphy, that item is coming up in the agenda. if we could limit our common to the things that the president raised. commissioner murphy: i believe if we have great people in the department that want to change, that want to help, that want to

move the department to the next level, but they are afraid to step up. they have absolutely no support from our director. no support. when is all of this going to end? our director is going out on leave for a couple of months. i wish you well with that. but this e-mail that came out last week -- you have held this department hostage for two years. with this e-mail you are sending out, you say that the guy that is going to replace you for two months is handcuffed. he cannot do anything. i am just very disappointed in all of this.

very disappointed. i am to the point where i am ready to just get out the door. i am sick of it. that is what i think i will do because there is nothing happening around here and it is very disheartening. that is it for me. >> i want to speak in this agreement. i understand commissioner murphy has been frustrated, wanting to have more say in the day to day activities which we were actually precluded from. i think the point here is the more we are informed about the specifics of every project, the better it is, the more it will reflect a good bird the department is doing. -- the good work the department is doing. considering the weight of the bureaucracy, our department is

moving forward on a major i.t. reform. maybe we need to have more specifics about it. we are going to be updated in the director's report. i think that we have had brought the department through a pretty hard time financially, keeping in the black. we are now looking at a budget that has a positive on and when other departments have to cut. the point of needing more detail in these projects, even if it is frustrating to continue to answer the question from the commission, it behooves us to get as much information in our package at a time as possible to avoid the frustration and actually be able to work together on these major

projects. all the projects we have had been working on are coming to fruition. commissioner hechanova: thank you, so let us try to -- commissioner walker: it is not related to the fact that the more information we get the less frustration there will be. commissioner murphy: just to get back to one thing. the big projects bring the revenue in. what frustrates me is, over the last two years, we have raised these four stakeholders, double permit fees, and they are not getting the service. i am concerned about the stakeholders, home owners, not getting the service they should be. commissioner hechanova: we know

you are frustrated. commissioner walker: we have an agenda. >> is there any public comment on item 2. seeing none. update on the capss program. >> acting city administrator for the city and county of san francisco. i want to start by thanking the department and commission for all the support that they have given to the capss process and now implementation process that we find ourselves in. i know many of the commissioners have attended meetings and given input on not only the capss, but now as we go into implementing the 17

recommendations with all of their various subparts that bring us new 250 goals as part of the capss process. thank you for your support. thank you for allowing me to hire lauren to direct this project from within the city administrators process. we would not be where we are without her. we owe him a tremendous amount of gratitude within the city. as your president knows, lawrence, assisted by a team of enthusiastic in turns over the summer, have put together a draft work plan, taking the 17 recommendations and breaking them down, plotting out how we best go about implementation. it is a 30-year implementation plan horizon that we are looking at. there is a very detailed timeline. many of these things that you

see in phase 1 -- it is listed from being from 2012 until 2015. many of those things are now in process. we are working closely with dbi staff to work on these processes. we are well on our way, but obviously, it is a long-term project. a lot of things will happen over the course of 30 years, we anticipate. we are very fortunate to have strong support for mayor lee, as well as key members of the board of supervisors. we are certainly moving ahead as fast as we can, but in a very deliberate if manner -- delivered iberative manner thats the public informed. we are working on this draft.

we were fortunate to have input from the president at a meeting this week, so we will be making some changes to this initial version. we will be getting copies to anyone interested, certainly. i think we have to order some more. as soon as they are available, we will distribute them. i will be happy to take questions. lawrence is here to get into specifics, should you have questions. commissioner hechanova: commissioners? commissioner clinch: i was happy to be able attend some of the brown bags organized. i would like to see more of that information more widely disseminated. i know that some things are still in draft form, but the more the home owners and professionals get advanced education, which has been

discussed a lot in those brown bags, is important. i wonder if there are any plans for us to roll this out across the city? >> absolutely. an excellent question. lawrence addressed the apartment owners association this week and there was a strong turnout from that group. so we are certainly actively looking for those opportunities to talk to more folks. and also, a big part of the program is educational and publicity. we would love to talk about how we can do some of that. some of the education would be best started at the counters, at dbi. that is definitely built into the program. we have talked to lawrence about getting cameras on him, doing more demonstration projects, other thing that we can put on the web, sfgtv, and other

places. so for those who cannot attend meetings, they can access the information and learn simple and cost-effective ways to make their homes more seismically safe, for example. commissioner walker: thank you very much for the implementation work you are doing. a lot of us have been working on this for a decade or more. it is really gratifying to see some of this move forward. i also want to remind commissioners and folks that heidi and i actually were invited to present in vancouver, canada to 150 professionals from the building industry there. their city is, unfortunately, dealing with some very challenging buildings, a lot of

cement construction there that is problematic. their risk is maybe less of happening in the near future than ours, but they have expressed interest in partnering with us, that we could share our process that we have worked on for so long, and provide them a template to help them define their inventory, setting forth a similar recovery program. that is really what, i think, this is about. we have focused on our own inventory buildings, making it safer, but because of the process, are able to share that template with other cities that are at risk. i think that is an exciting part of this, that we can be one of the folks at the cutting edge of this, to try to get then head of an event, preparing for an earthquake. this is a wonderful complement

to our city, that vancouver has asked for our assistance. thank you for taking it on and making it available, and for making our cities save, as well as for cities that face similar challenges. >> we are happy to share information. we gain as much as that -- from that as we give. commissioner hechanova: additional comments? thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to address the commission. more importantly, working with you. with this commission where we had two years ago passed a green building policy, the greenest in the country, and recently, san francisco being recognized as the greatest city in the category of building codes and also practices, is terrific.

i think we could merge that effort with the resiliency and safety of our citizens. that is paramount to the health and welfare of our citizens. i think we could be the leading edge in all categories. not only for san francisco, but for the bay area. thank you very much for your efforts, commission, department. if we can help in any way, we are on call. >> thank you. i appreciate that. we will definitely be taking you up on that offer. it is really a partnership and so much of the leadership has to continue coming from your department and commission. i agree with you 100%. i see this going hand in hand with sustainability and green practices to make sure that as

many of our building stock as possible could survive the anticipated earthquake. we will not have all of that debris to haul away, new building, co2 emissions that go with that. i see this as very much a green practice to try to go about an increase our resilience. commissioner hechanova: thank you. any further questions? thank you. >> is there any public comment on item 3? commissioner leeseeing none. item 4. public comment. the bic will take public comment on matters within the commission's jurisdiction that are not part of this agenda. >> good morning, city resident

for 39 years. first of all, i want to wish ms. day with her medical issues. i wish her a speedy recovery. i have been here four times in the past. three times in the past i have accused ms. day of malfeasance and lack of communication to staff. let us make it four. you guys have done nothing. the taint of malfeasance is now on you. accordingly, i have sent a letter to the mayor and the president of the board of supervisors requesting all of your replacement. maybe in a normal year they ignore me. as this is an election year, i think they may be inclined to do something about it. i have also cc;ed:ed numerous ma

organizations regarding this issue. i am sorry that you have not listen to me in the past. i will see if i can fix this problem on my own. and i will not be back. thank you very much. >> good morning, commissioners. i just wanted to come to say goodbye. i am ann aherne, secretary of the commission for 13 years. i recently retired. i was on medical leave before and i did not get a chance to say goodbye. i want to say how much i enjoyed working with everybody. i worked with over 30 commissioners. i have seen all kinds of personalities and all kinds of different people, and have worked with all of them. some of them you might think for

the most difficult were some of my favorite. i would also like to say that i enjoyed working with everyone in the department, and i thank them all for their help. they really do help behind the scenes. the commissioners do not see all of the crazy calls that come into the commission that sonya will now be taking care of, and customers that come in. they do not see the day to day of what goes on in the department and how much the department really helps everyone in the commission. they save you a lot of time and a lot of the aggravation -- sometimes they just need somebody to listen to them. i know vivian does not like the term clerk, but i would like to thank all of the clerks in the department that do a really good

job, and who helps to take care of the customers. i do not think they get enough appreciation. well, i would like to say i'm very much appreciate those people that helped me. the people here at city hall are absolutely wonderful. they are so great to work with. i should not mention any names because i will forget somebody. i have also worked with the city attorney's office and i can say that they have all been professional. i just want to say good luck. and i do love dbi. i like the department of building inspection. i will be forcing my opinion. good luck to all of you. i know there are quite a few seats up in december. sonya, you will probably reach 40. we will see how many commissioners wish to stay on. good luck to all of you. i hope to be back once in

awhile. i have a few question that i would like to ask from this side. thank you. [applause] commissioner walker: i have been on this commission for almost 10 years. the presence of secretary aherne in providing continuity through all of the different politics that exist in san francisco, at dbi and city hall, to provide us with comments, helping us to advise the director, as far as the department running, making sure that the staff is taking care of, thatur