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tv   [untitled]    October 11, 2011 5:00am-5:30am PDT

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appropriate. i would, however, like to note when correction that will be made in the document which may clarify some comments received today. page to erroneously identifies the restoration alternative. it determined at the maintenance alternative is the environmentally superior alternative. page two will be corrected in the comment and responses document. this is not a hearing to consider approval or disapproval of the project. comments today should be directed at the adequacy contained in the draft. commoners should be -- should speak slowly and clearly so the
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court reporter can produce an accurate transcript. commager's should state their name and address of a can be popped -- properly identified. after hearing comments from the general public, we will take any comments by the planning commission. the public comment time for this is august 31st and extends until 5:0this concludes my presn on this matter and unless there are any comments, we suggest the public hearing be opened. >> i would like to extend the commentary until the end of october, for a couple of weeks at least. we can discuss it is people want to send it beyond that in the hearing.
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we have a few speaker cards. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm from the recreation and parks department and i briefly want to put this plan in a little bit of context for you. we own about 14% of the land in san francisco. of that, about 1000 are what we refer to as natural areas. they are made up from 32 distinct areas, including colonel hills, 20 and sharp park. the natural areas management plan was established through a decade-long process. it was published in 2006 and about 10 years of research went into creating the plan. it creates a road map for us at the department for how to manage our sensitive habitat,
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including threatened and endangered species. it directs as how to prioritize our scarce resources and volunteer time. our job at the recreation and parks department is to balance a variety of needs. sometimes those needs are competing. we feel this management plan does this through a very carefully crafted process. what is before you today is the edge drafteir -- the draft eir. we look forward to your feedback and continuing to work with your staff. they have been exceptional throughout this process. i would like to point out that we have -- required to study a variety of alternatives, but the plan has not changed. i think there has been some confusion as it pertains to the dog play areas and wanted to clarify that. >> thank you.
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>> i'm the chair of the san francisco dog owners group. urban parks are for people. there are collective backyards were good to play with kids and simply sit in the sun. we have so little open space we cannot afford to lock a third of the way in plant museums where you can look but not enter, which is what the restoration alternatives would do. we support the maintenance for maximum recreation alternatives because it protect existing areas for people. the -- they are actually 29, which covers about 120 acres total. 80% of the total is located within or adjacent to a natural arianna and is at risk for closure.
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many were designated years before it came around, but with eight simple stroke of a pen, they can be gone. if you're going to force people out of the parks, you better have a good reason. the eir says stocks may have impact, but there is nothing that says stocks are now or have done so. eir's must be based on documented in packs, not conjecture. details must be added. give us unbiased, proven facts or do not kick us out. it's become a way to get rid of it in city parks since the only impact is closure of the dea. it must be considered on the human and urban environment, not just the natural environment. dogs are described simply as nuisances.
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theeir does not consider any the benefits of dog walking. it must consider the physical and emotional health of people who can no longer walk their dogs in clothes dpa and must consider what would happen if there are closed or reduced. as is important with the maximum restoration alternatives, it would close dpas that constitute roughly 75% of the legal off leash area at city parks. it does not adequately analyze at that level of closure and other nearby parks, especially when combined with the golden gate natural -- golden gate national recreation area. the dog and dogs people are not going to go away or be quietly forced out of our parks. thank you.
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>> good afternoon. i am a lifelong san francisco resident and, i'm sure you can imagine, with a last name like mine, i'm a very passionate golfer. i have been playing bashar park golf course for 35 years now and have served as a volunteer golf historian for the city and county of san francisco. what i wanted to convey to you and i have submitted written comments as well, my friend and colleague will speak later on behalf of the san francisco public gulf alliance which we co-founded, but i wanted to add some historical words, specifically to say the staff guided 100% correct in the draft eir. this is the legacy of john mclaren. this was his vision and he
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brought in one of the greatest architects of the history of the world to create this very special asset for the city and county of san francisco, even though it is on property in pacifica. it is the equivalent of a rembrandt that would hang in a museum and the fact that it is old and a little faded does not take away its luster. people come from all over the world to walk it, play it, see it, admire it and understand it. it is a symbol of golf possible and asian part of our historic legacy just the way the cable cars are. the habitat restoration in the works and subject to this eir is in no way incompatible with maintaining the golf course. the series in question are freshwater species. this property was a salt marsh before it was transformed into the oasis it is today.
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it is going to celebrate its 80th anniversary next year. the process under way in this draft should continue without interruption so the city can move forward into what is needed to do and is to implement irresponsible habitat recreation protocol. this is one of the biggest birth years for the frogs in recent memory. that evidence is on the record. what the city plans to do, we support. it's consistent with maintaining the property in a way that serves a variety of interests. thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you. thank you very much. >> good afternoon, commissioners. the hypocritical oath says first, do no harm. this seems to be a good approach
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for any person, and especially for government. i do not think this applies to the natural areas program. as a senior whose only exercise is walking with my dog, i fear that increased removal of our shared open space is by the natural areas program, which is a single purpose and exclusionary program and it will drive more and more local residents into an increasingly smaller area for exercise, access, and enjoyment of our san francisco landscape. i live near glen canyon. too many times i have not been able to walk there because the natural areas program was engaging in another round of toxic warfare, laying waste to new generations of hapless and helpless flora and fauna and
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exposing local neighborhoods and everyone moving through the neighborhood to these poisons. i oppose this unfettered increase of the natural areas program into more and more of san francisco's park land and open space. i ask that you all as members of the planning commission recognizes program removes shared space from the community on the basis of sharply and scientifically contested assumptions about what is needed for natural pant and makes equally unfounded assumptions about what actions, such as walking with one's pooch can or cannot occur in our shared and all too limited and san francisco open spaces. please oppose any expansion of this program. thank you.
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>> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is linda shaffer. i'm currently the vice-president of the local chapter of the california native plant society. i would like to thank you for this opportunity to address you. i have three points i would like to try to make in this limited time. the first one as i have to admit i was very curious to see what an environmental impact analysis would look like given it is of a program that is environmental in nature. in the time i have had to read it so far, i have been very impressed. i think those involved have done a good job, a wonderful job, particularly with respect to the 31 natural areas located within the city of san francisco. i would like to commend those
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involved and i would also like to add the native plant society is in the process of having people who have volunteered in a lot of these natural areas for many years read over the section's that pertain specifically to the projects proposed for this natural area and make sure based on their knowledge of the area, that the report is accurate and complete. i am delighted to hear there will be an extension to the public comment because it has been very difficult. the same group of people who have been involved in commenting on this has been involved in commenting on the recreation and open space element. this overlap with the last 30 days of that, so it has been kind of crazy. thank you for that. that was the second point i wanted to make. the third point i would like to make is that i'm still in the process of reading this.
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the complexity in this document has to 2 with bashar park. this is a controversial program. i have so far identified one factual error in the portion of the document that deals with sharp park. i will be submitted comments -- i will be submitting comments in writing but i do not have ms finished yet. i do not want to receive a copy of the comments and responses. i had that happen to me once when i was not expecting it, said no, thank you. thank you very much for your attention. >> thank you. -- thank you.
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>> i know that there has been comments about the golf course as whether or not the golf course is going to be preserved. i would like to say i am speaking highly in favor of the golf course being preserved. it seems as though mr. antonini and perhaps the rest of this board has been okaying any request that has to do with children, such as in our beautiful park being defaced for this child sparked. it is very important a place like this golf course, which is for teenagers and elderly and older people to get exercise and
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enjoy the environment, that this be maintained for san francisco residence. thank you very much. >>president olague: if i did cal your name, please come up to the microphone. >> good afternoon. i'm a resident of the city and county of san francisco and an employee of the county of san mateo. our counties have worked clarity and cooperatively to come up with a plan that does address the issues of habitat preservation and to protect the species enumerated in the of the draft. specifically the red legged frog, the garter snake and others. those are freshwater species. the original geography was
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called away the colonial time meaning a still body of water that is salty. those frogs do not exist in those environments. this is a construction. it's a historical construction by one of the great architects of golf courses ever. it is also a cultural value. if you were to go there on any day, you'd find old people, young people, students and people from every group and nation playing and as individuals. it is also affordable relative to other golf courses in that area. in the county, we do not have a lot of inexpensive golf courses. in the city and county, we have even fewer. this is an opportunity for people of limited income to play in an area that is
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stunningly beautiful and aching to be restored. this plan will protect those species. without it, it will become a rather dry and difficult place for the species to exist. particularly creating the condors for the snakes to exist where they can go down and feed on the frogs is nothing short of engineering brilliance on the part of the park groups. finally, it is a recreational. even for those like myself who do not gulf, it is a wonderful place to go walk. president olague: i would like those of you standing in front of the door to either take a seat or move aside because it is creating a fire hazard. if you have heard your name called, please come up to the microphone.
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[reading names] >> it good afternoon, commissioners. i was a member of the citizens advisory committee in the natural areas program. i see this draft environmental impact report as a continuance of the efforts in past years. we need to move ahead with this study itself to define and give the park and recreation staff the wherewithal to begin to improve our ruler -- are recreational facilities and petrol areas in san francisco. i want to comment on the great work skit -- the great works staff did. we are never going to be 100% happy. there are some elements of the city you want to occupy everything. there are places that have impact on every area of our
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facilities. exponential growth and requests for a soccer fields and what not. these are 32 areas. it was called down and those areas have been looked into significantly. it's important to move this forward. it is a 20-year project and i'm sure it will be tweaked in the course of the next 20 years. it's an important opportunity to see what san francisco can be and how good our facilities can become. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm a resident of san francisco and a project of its streets and
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environments, and i'm also a golfer. i'm not sure what the protocol is for this hearing, but i would like to read into the record a copy of a letter the bay area golf association has submitted to the board of supervisors in san francisco and san mateo. it says -- dear congressman spire. sharp part is well known as the people's golf course. it's a public course where racial minority as a retired dehere seniors, working men and women, school children, and these days, even the unemployed can play golf. because of its modest fees, all of these groups play golf in sharp part.
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the bay area club represents such golfers. we are a mostly african-american club formed in 1954 and based in san francisco. we are a founding member of the western state golf association, one of america's oldest african- american golfing associations. we were the host club for the western state inaugural championship and tournament in 1955 where founding members of the club med and played golf together for the first time. the tournament was held at sharp park. it's significant sharp park was built by history's greatest golf architect, alistair mackenzie. most of his courses include the most famous ones like augusta national here, the side of the annual masters tournament and cypress point.
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these are private and inaccessible to common people. sharp park as part of san francisco's elegant carian -- this is the spirit of san francisco. is that my donna? -- [tone] i would like to submit this into the record. thank you very much for your time. >> if i called your name, please feel free to come to the microphone. i called a few other names. please feel free to come up. faugdeath >> commissioners, i aa
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resident of san francisco. this program is offering the city a major expansion into maintenance area 3. the statement on page 2 says the eir considers the maximum restoration alternative as environmentally superior. however, if you weighed the do it back to page 5, it says the maximum recreation and maintenance alternatives are at the environmentally superior alternatives. it ends with the statement that the maintenance alternative, on the other hand, would preserve the existing place for biological resource, including existing habitats.
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for this reason, the maintenance alternative is the environmentally superior alternative. that is not what is being proposed. uthe eir is proposing a program that is environmentally least good. this proposal is a violation of sequence. sequence as the public agency -- cequa says this should not be proposed if there are the alternatives available. there is the maintenance intervention into the environment and it says so. this eir is not a good one and it's a bad policy for the city. with the environmental destruction, the use of toxic spray, i walk on 20 almost every day more morning and i do the
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sprain of -- them there -- the members that should be wearing respirators. what i point this out to them, they say it's not of your business. it is important that you realize this eir is not the direction we should be going into. we should be going into maximum eight months. it also decides the number of trees is a gross violation and a san francisco has barely 13 per citizen in this city. this proposes to turn down a large percentage of that. thank you very much. president olague: any additional public comment on this item? >> i agree with my husband that the maintenance alternative
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would be the best way for san francisco to go. [tone] >> i am a user of these parks and i feel recreational funding and open space for people is being hijacked by this plan. san francisco has taken extreme positions of excluding people from the san francisco watershed. it is surrounded by 7 foot chain-link fence and this plan ignores that has already been allocated to natural areas. the san francisco park sites are only one-tenth of the size of the single refuge. this extreme plan takes 40% of that space for more native plant projects. for me, the gardening project will provide little benefit and destroy the do ecosystems that have been developed over the past 400 years. and it will destroy this treasured san francisco landscape that is part of our future.
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this costly plan is not even the environmentally superior plan as has been mentioned and it's not even improves the beauty of the park or quality of life for residents. introducing new and expanding habitats will personally highjack the small but precious recreational areas. for example, the historic sharp park recreation area is under attack even though manmade the freshwater habitats that was not previously used there. neither the endangered snakes or endangered frogs would live there of the salt water habitat was restored. this plan does not take into consideration these plans. people with dogs are only allocated freedom in 3% of the city park areas and the plant treats us like a nuisance and takes away an additional 20%. the monitoring plan will probably eliminate the rest. i resent being treated like an invasive part of the comedian
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and art treasured city parks. -- part of that community in our treasured city parks. thank you very much. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i have lived in san francisco all my life and i volunteered with the natural areas program and the natural park -- national parks service is doing habitat restoration. i started a san francisco native plant nursery in golden gate park because i want to propagate san francisco native plants that can be used for habitat restoration throughout the city and would complement the natural areas program. i sent my written comment into the environmental review of a serb. that will be on the record.