this was an educational building and then the educational academy. we do not have any stability that represent -- if you let this go forward without the defined boundaries. this is the institutional master plan. >> and is there any additional public comment? scene 9, public, is closed. commissioner sugaya: i am sorry, i have to -- i came prepared to participate. i have read the institutional master plan and the enforcement papers that were sent to us earlier. i was wondering what to wear. and i was trying to match myself for the hearing. in hearing one person's testimony, on pine street, it

suddenly occurred to me that i am within 300 feet or 500 feet of the least two buildings. in conferring with the city attorney's office in these situations, usually, if this is something we are voting on, i would have to recuse myself. even though we are not taking the specific actions on this, the way that they are set up, i should ask for recusal. commissioner moore: this is a moving target and we may have to recuse ourselves.

there are implications that would hint that any of us will -- or are already living within a certain radius, which would require us for refusal. >> on the motion on the floor for commissioner sugaya? moore? >> no. sugaya? >> aye. >> fong? >> aye. >> antonini? >> aye. >> olague? >> aye. miguel? >> a reluctant aye. moore votes against. sugaya is recused. commissioner miguel? commissioenr miguel: i

appreciate the comments so far this morning. and i think that i agree with many of them. this commission is not an accreditation board. we do not determine if the university should or should not do, this is the internal governance, with many -- with the curriculum and everything else. this is not an eir hearing. bus polition -- pollution will come out at the hearing that will eventually be in front of us. we are dealing with the institutional master plan.

i support the a original presentation about what the report is to do, and this is an odd type of document in the information, and yet this is expected with the unusual situation. the only unique action. the only action of that kind that i have ever heard of. the only one that comes to the floor of this commission. this is what was submitted. i consider a public relations booklet, masquerading this way. i just saw them come in, to the room.

i have known him for sometime and i consider him friendly. his organization is the document's author. i did not know that he was in the public-relations business. it has been difficult for me to consider what i find as a very pretentious volume, in the commission. admittedly, there are facts and figures buried in there. but going through all of this, i have no other way of talking about this -- this has been quite difficult for me. i am it only going to deal with a few specifics. and i may have more comments later. i refer to page 7. because of the industry needs that the serbs, the university facility needs are unique. this is a specious argument of

the nightly false -- any multi- faceted institution, educational institution is in exactly the same position. the need for physical space for different teaching disciplines. there is nothing unique about them or their needs. this is a public-relations statement. also repeated is the argument that they use the historic buildings. they have lost their public funding, and this is extremely questionable as argument, at best without any relevance. this is pure public relations. if you get to around page 41, and further, the document makes several attempts to gloss over the planning code violations,

associated with the acquisitions and the control of property. these are the violations. these are the notifications and the enforcement. i will not even bother counting them. some of these properties, have formally served san francisco as a form of low-income housing. they call these actions technical violations. my estimation is estimation, thl violations were incurred by a management and associate, completely aware -- and i said this before -- of what they were doing was unlawful. i have previously and again referred to them as scofflaw. you have mentioned this afternoon, at the present time, the lowest availability of

rental housing in san francisco since 1999. we are down to, i believe, just over 3% availability. this is for san franciscans, people we want to live and work here. three different submissions, december 2007, april 2008, and this. both previous time the commission determined the imp denied to satisfy the relevant code requirement, and did not except those imp's. this present overblown submission is a bit better than the others. as far as i'm concerned, given

an obvious and blatant and ability -- inability to resemble anything coherent plan use planning, it is questionable whether this document, probably prepared by the company a month ago, it is even accurate as of today. there is no way to tell. i will have some more comments later. commissioner olague: i would like to call on commissioner fong. commissioner fong: my comments and actions here will explain the overall sprawl and success of the university. i was prepared to participate today and hope that this is a first death in a new leaf in moving forward, answering and taken care of the frustration

that many people have. but i will have to recuse myself and ask for refusal -- refusal, based on some transactions, interactions relates to private events with the business i known, and the university. -- own, and the university. >> this is getting ridiculous. i will move for refusal strictly on legal grounds. >> [roll call] commissioner olague: we are going to be taking a 15-minute recess. >> if it rings, if you would

take your call outside instead of answering in here, we would really appreciate that. commissioners, since commissioner fong and sugaya are reduced, -- recused, you are in the middle of your deliberations. commissioner olague: thank you for allowing us our recess so that we can get a sense of how we report to move forward here. i just want to thank members of the public for coming out and sharing with us the concerns they have. this is nothing new, we have been here before, for several years, and i do again want to acknowledge the comments, students from the san francisco art institute. it is always courageous to be someone outside of the political process to take the time to come

down here and raise some of the issues. what i do want to mention, though, a lot of the concerns that have been raised by the public are one that commissioner miguel mention the, one that do not fall under the purview of the institution a master plan. i know sue mentioned there were some definite issues that pertain to this, but overall, i agree with the planning department's conclusion, that the imp does meet the standards that are set for that. a lot of the issues that people raise around housing, traffic problems, etc., have more to do with the eir.

i know the institution has been working closely with our department now. delay, there will be more discussions with members of the public. -- hopefully, there will be more discussions with members of the public. i am hoping -- i guess i am fatigued. over the past five, six years, the conversation, the tone that it has taken. it has gotten nasty and bitter and did not really lead to anything other than more bitterness. i would rather see us move more into -- maybe the next few years, we can resolve these issues and concerns, and in a fashion that is less combative. maybe we can actually sit down with some members of the community, with the mayor's

office convening, the board of supervisors. the planning department will stay involved. we have christine from our enforcement division. but to do this in a way that is less combative spirit i am not sure it has gotten us very far. i think we are spinning our wheels and are in the same place we were six years ago. i know there has been some legislation recently proposed around student housing that we heard last week. issues around housing, traffic, are issues that, hopefully, we can continue to work with the institution to see if we can get somewhere where the neighbors and others feel more resolved around. we live in the city, obviously. there is a lot that is perhaps

unresolved, but i am at a place where some of the issues that fall out of the purview of the imp continued to be worked on, continue to move forward on. some have been working on this issue for a long time. i am hoping he can help us move forward on some of these things. i do not think i need to reiterate what everyone has already stated, some of the concerns. i believe the imp does meet the standards that are set. my desire is to close the hearing on the institutional master plan. i see other commissioners have their names up. there is no motion. i would like to allow the other

commissioners an opportunity to speak. commissioner moore. commissioner moore commissioner moore: i appreciate the voices that have come to the meeting. i echo everyone's concerns. this group has been sitting since 2008, repeatedly and in accelerated fashion. this is the crescendo. voices are loud and clear. the lack of definition on what an institutional master plan needs to be, as in section 3 04 0.5, makes it difficult to drive the point home further than what is in front of us. i just want to perhaps support and elevate what commissioner miguel said. given the fact that we are here with a very complete,

comprehensive, attractive imp's from other city institutions, i would like to say that this is barely in the lower tier. it looks good, have the right graphics cover, the snappy binding, the heavy cover, heavier than any part of the content that is what is expressed in here. this is basically a light weight pr document, using commissioner miguel's words. since the definition in the code does not require anything other than that, i regret an institution, which definitely is doing some good things, on its own, would not rise to the occasion to show what they are doing. that is, indeed, a more thoughtful description of themselves, more 4-looking mission statement of where minim expressing that they want to be a good citizen in city matters,

which apparently they have not, given the violations. that is all watching old laundry. what bothers me is this imp makes it look like what architecture schools referred to as art 1. it tells me about the codes, the buildings, where they are. i deal with that every week. i do not need to fill the pages of this kind of plan with information which is obvious and accessible to all of us. i do not want to take this further. there is one thing, and i want to hang this out as a question mark. the success of the university. that is accepted, and that has been directed in the proper way, channeled in the proper way, its own benefit. however, while there is growth

at indication relative to what is needed, i do not see a counterstatement with the many students, how and where they would lift. that is basically at the core of the question here in the room for many. the institutional attitude towards future growth and housing, where would students live, in what buildings? and in what fashion? i think that needs to be addressed somewhere. perhaps part of the eir, i do not know. i believe this institutional master plan falls flat on its face because housing, if you just take the sound bites, is one of the biggest concerns. with the increase in housing, there is a major concern about transportation. the transportation has to go hand in hand with roads and housing, including the mission

and rapidly changing the attitudes of our transportation, how the current university operates, relative to what they will be doing in the future. i think that is a disclosure statement need to have as part of this document. commissioner olague: commissioner antonini? commissioner antonini: i partially disagree. i think this imp is comparable to what we have received from other universities and institutions. it is longer because it has to be, a much more complicated situation. obviously, many institutions are very small in one location, so a two-page sheet, with a rough sketch, is certainly adequate for their imp. because of the complexity of the situation, and it points out a lot of things. it is not to be a document with complete problem-solving, but rather, a document that presents what is there and what is

planned for the future. that is what this does. many of the issue will be discussed as part of the eir, which has been mentioned by other commissioners. i think that is entirely true. just a few observations. they make a good point in the document about housing impact. you have a lot of students, they are going to live somewhere. i was a student in san francisco and i made an impact because i took up housing that somebody else could have. it is a zero sum situation whether or not the university owns the housing or is owned by others and the students live there. that is the subject we are taking up. that being said, we have a success story in that we have an institution, as was pointed out , bringing a lot of revenue into the city, employment into the city, students, and there will be impacts. of course, that is what we will

analyze in the eir, but we cannot discriminate housing for students just as valuable as others. students often of the lower income level than some of the other people. it does not mean that they necessarily are higher income people, in most cases. the traffic thing, again, and eir issue. we have to live just beyond the university and the entire impact of buses all over, including businesses that run big buses through san francisco to institutions on the peninsula, such as google and apple, genentech, and our own muni. this is an issue that we have to look at globally as we look at the use of transportation, particularly, diesel buses, and see if we can somehow make them

more efficient. a couple other things that i would suggest, and this is not necessarily part of the plan. i am really happy that this is moving forward, and we should try to reinstitute monthly meetings and quarterly reports. the more we talk, the better things work. also, one of the things in the informational master plan is no duplication of facilities. on this housing issue, working in conjunction with ucsf, the dental school, and all the other institutions throughout san francisco who have lots of students and housing needs, if we can create new housing to accommodate their needs, both for the academy of art university, as well as these others, that is a great idea, and is part of the housing concept, or perhaps conversions of existing commercial or retail space whose needs have changed and are available. another thing that has happened

here is many of the acquisitions of the institution, which are pointed out in the informational master plan, are basically white elephants that were very expensive, could not be demolished. if it was not for their acquisition, they would be vacant. that is something that we do not dwell on often enough. i think we have some understanding, i hope, as we move forward with the environmental impact report, we will stay with the scope of what is in use at this time and will not be any additions before june of 2012, so we can actually get our arms around what is there, analyze the impact of what is in use, and therefore, begin to move forward, after hopefully, and accepted eir, and then move forward with the other steps we need to.

i think there are a lot of things that are not brought up, and that is the fact that, according to their documents, there are a lot of students who are educated, placed in jobs, becoming productive members of society. every institution has students to graduate, and often times, many public institutions, where they cannot find a job. one of the good things about this is a lot of the education here is very practical in nature and is geared toward where jobs are available, and that is an important thing that we do not see too often. anyway, finally, there were some comments we received in writing about the behavior of students that we have to look at, make sure the behavior is appropriate, that neighbors are not disturbed and the same sorts of things that are important to

look at. i will say in general they are clean and well maintained, and i am very frequently on the area around sutter and post, and i have had to make phone calls on a building that is not owned by the academy of art university. it is owned by someone who has market for development, and that developer has done nothing to keep it clean. i've had to make four or five calls to the individual himself, saying we have got to get this thing cleaned up. anyway -- i think we do have institutions to some degree. we of situations like nyu, the university of phoenix, the other types of universities that are not in the historic format of what we are used to. so, i think we have to realize there will be a lot more of that in the future and to move

forward. those are kind of my observations. i can go into those at greater length and we go to the environmental report. commissioner miguel: i did not want anyone to win for i was being critical of the company. -- i did not want for anyone to win for i was being critical of the company. you were doing what the client asked you to do. i to understand. i do want to complement sue hestor as a wordsmith with her term "metastasize." [laughter] i agree with the comments of the other commissioners that we might take a better look at section 3 of 4, because it may become even more confusing in the future. however, i actually want to get

beyond this and into the enforcement action and into the eir and into the conditional use items. that is where the worth of this commission will take place. >> because the closing of the hearing does not require a vote, what i am hearing is a desire to close the hearing? >> [unintelligible] >> which would then allow the acceptance. i use that term very deliberately. closing the hearing and "accepting"the mass your plan does not mean that you are agreeing with. you are accepting the information. i want to give an update on where we go from here and the other processes as a

commissioner. we have pending on many of the properties -- to be able to move up forward on those. the environmental impact report is under way. to be clear, the eir is not required for the master plan. there has been confusion about that for some time. de eir -- the eir is required for the properties. we have asked for the draft eir to be released next summer and we would go from there with the normal process of the eir. the commission has to certify the eir before you can approve the occupancy of any building. we're moving forward with the enactments and the eir. next year will be an important here to try to bring this to resolution. president olague: thank you.