>> good morning. 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