speak during rebuttal. president goh: we are going to take public comment in a minute. that we are trying to make an assessment for how long. >> we will give two minutes to each person. i would like to invite the director of the small business commission to speak first. president goh: absolutely. >> regina, director of the office of the small business commission. our office was involved in creating the new regulations for the mobile food, so i will be here to make myself available and i have been monitoring the permit process and the hearings.

i have written a letter to you and it should be in your package recommending that the board of holvis the recommendations for these permits -- the board upholds the recommendations for these permits. many of the comments that you heard any concerns from the appellants that we have heard in other hearings fall in a policy matter as it relates to how the program is structured and is not so much how dpw is interpreting the regulations. because of this, supervisor wiener has convened a couple of meetings and we have put together a task force made up of my office, his office, golden gate restaurant association, mat

cohen and la cocina. i want to let you know that high a lifted out some of the areas that we are addressing. here are improvements that can be made to the program. since the program is new, these are new permits and should not have a bearing on the issuing. and with that, i will leave it at that. president goh: i have some questions about the letter. the paragraph you wrote about noticing and how applicants are going for full days when they want to-four hours, that affects the noticed. -- want 2-4 hours, that affects the notice. >> it causes great alarm and we are seeing this and many of the

permits. because of the noticing requirements, they are fairly cumbersome and not necessarily knowing because the program is new, just exactly what will be issued, they are noticing that they would like this particular location and i will notice a full window of hours knowing that it will be scaled down because they may not know at that particular time, if there were other trucks that applied for a permit in that particular location. the notice things that are going out are noticing multiple days, long hours of operation. it was expressed in the hearings as a concern for many businesses and property owners. i think one of the commitments

-- and how can we help the applicant to narrow down what they are asking for so that when the notices go down, and they are reflective of what the permit is requesting. i would say that as more of a flaw in the system as opposed to how the regulation is written right now. president goh: could you also talked about the zoning modification and the financial districts? >> as the legislation was written, in terms of where the permits are currently allowed to operate, it is -- do you happen to have a map? it is targeting commercial

areas. things we have seen where trucks have been interested in operating but are not available, that is around hospitals, medical institutions, city college, and those are surrounded by residential areas. currently, they are not allowed to operate and issue a permit. also, at the time that the legislation was written, supervisor dufty agreed with the school board not to allow mobile foods within 1,500 feet of a middle, jr., or high school. from 7-5 monday-friday. it has also resulted in significant areas, commercial areas that trucks are not allowed to get permits monday- friday.

what we are going to be opening up the areas around hospitals, the higher educational institution that we are drafting the legislation for that now. we need to have a new discussion with the school district. president goh: i imagine that will be interesting. your letter, when you talk about the zoning modifications, you say that those areas the you just name, they should take some of the pressure off of the downtown financial districts. that is something that i don't quite understand. if you bring services into areas that are needed, it doesn't -- the way this is worded is that

there is some finite number of mobile food trucks met you want to get out. >> i don't think the program was designed to specifically say that mobile foods was only to be in areas where it is needed. it was not designed from that perspective. what we see, because of a pretty narrow area of the city, that is where applications are going. >>it is hard to see but there we

the circular areas where the mobile food trucks were not allowed to operate during monday-friday, 7:00-5:00 during the school district areas. that is a large part of mission streets. this is the area in the financial district south of market where a great number of the first permit applicants applied for their permits. as you can see -- where sf state is, city college, ucsf, the hospitals, st. mary's, they are in residential areas. it is hard for me to pinpoint it out on this map. president goh: i understand your point. thank you and. vice president garcia: when i

read your letter, i was struck by the 1,500 feet radius and no consideration given to whether the school had an encampment. do you know what the radius has to be for an mcd? food is far more dangerous to kids than drugs. [laughter] >> that is one of the reasons by the working group is interested in re-reviewing this. >> thank you for your patience. go ahead and myriad >> thank you for your time to be here. i am ken cleveland with the building and managers association. i am disappointed to see the small business executives here tonight to side with one set of

small businesses against another set of small businesses. i am here supporting the appellants. there are tenants in office buildings and as has since stated earlier tonight, they employ a lot of people, they have been here for many years. and they enhance the value of the properties in the city that are paying about 20% of the entire city's budget. we have to look at the big impact here. i have to disagree with mr. paul who stated that boma was at the table. when this was passed unanimously, they were not involved. this was to bring vitality to underserved areas of the city where there are not restaurants, cafes, sandwich shops. we have a plethora of them downtown. we are not underserved in any sense of the word. if you look at the list of firms that have been applied for, over 50% of them are downtown locations. why? that is where the customers are.

we had these constraints around the city of not being allowed, not allowing mobile food trucks to operate in hospitals or near hospitals and schools. that needs to be changed. we need to make some modifications to look at density. how many are too many? right now, we are saturated downtown with mobile food permits. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. i am the owner of the gaylord

restaurant in the financial district. my restaurant is within a short distance from the subjected location. i have operated this restaurant for about 30 years and i have faced all of the economic challenges over the years. i offer an extensive take-out menu. along with a full line of buffet lunch. i serve the same items as proposed by the applicant, an assortment of indian cuisine. i pay $12,500 in rent and employ about 15 people. employees are fully dependent and so is my family and this business. it is the only source of my income. if this permit is issued, it will directly negatively impact on my business. i ask why this injustice is done

to the financial district restaurants by permitting them to operate at a fraction of my overheads. and yet, they have total freedom to steal the customers. my sales are down 26%. compared to last year. i thank you so much for listening to me. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hi, my name is deborah sellers. i am the owner of seller's market. i operate multi-unit operations

in the downtown financial district. what i want to speak about is the fact that, as of 30 days ago, we had a board meeting and we were discussing an expansion plans to expand fresco minister of the financial district. we have located three or four locations that are on the docket for 2012. each one of those locations have available parking spots where permits are being requested. the question that we have is how do we assess their market value and what kind of business we can do their when somebody can pull up another quick service restaurants in front of us? what we have decided to do is look outside of the city at this time. we do not feel that the legislation is there yet. in order for us to understand what market value is in the marketplace in san francisco. in doing so, where we could have employed 40 or 50 falls had

additional revenues come in those locations, we are going to look outside the city for expansion because there is not enough legislation and rules surrounding this in over populated areas. the mobile food trucks, the entire intent, as i understand from the golden gate restaurant association, the intent was to have mobile food trucks in underserved areas. the downtown and financial district, all of my business would not be done in 1.5 hours each day if we were killing it right now. less than 10 hours a week is when we make all of our money. there would be lines out of the door for four or five hours if the area was under certification. that is not happening for anybody. we are all in survival mode right now. i want to emphasize to you that there is an impact.

thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> hello. my name is matt cohen. i am coming to add a little bit of context. i was involved in the legislative process from the beginning all the way to now in implementation. the golden gate restaurant association was also involved in this and the type of food was always described as an ethnic food type rather than a service place. it was never discussed in the legislative process about service type. that was not the intent of the like food conversation going through the legislative process, as well as density, location, and financial district.

the composition was there was always a limitation for any neighborhood other than the restrictions and zoning as well as restrictions around schools. to add to the context of how the legislation was created, i would say that it was always known that food trucks would be permitted in the financial district, soma, other highly dense areas. other people involved in the process, from the board of supervisors all the way down, understood that when they enacted the legislation. thank you. >> any other public comment? seeing none, we will start rebuttal and we will start with the first appellant. >> on behalf of 50 california, we have heard a lot of discussion in the last few

minutes about legislative intent. we all have lawyers and people interested in policy and could spend a lot of time on that. what is critical about this legislation is location, location, location. is it fair to brick-and-mortar businesses? it would be hard to say that the board of supervisors intended for brick-and-mortar businesses to take a backseat to mobile food trucks. it is weighing the factors and weighing the benefits and arms. it was intended to be the job of dpw. i appreciate that dpw is overwhelmed by this. it is a large program they are not used to. it has been in the city before. the police department had it. it is not completely new for them to implement it. they have failed to implement it and consider the factors that they have heard. have you all heard what the officers told you tonight and as

you have noted, we do not have a record of the hearing officer, what she did, and how she weighed things. another interesting thing that was mentioned is that we should allow this conditionally approved a permit to go for because we can always revoke it. it is not the purpose of issuing permits and going through a process where you involve the public and have a protest hearings to say, we are going to let this happen. and then we will decide to revoke it. the purpose of this program and the oversight exercise is to identify the impact of front and come up with conditions to address them or decide that the permit was not proper to be issued at this location. they have other locations and that is what this portrait modify the permit to take away v.k.'s right to be at 50 cal. it is not my understanding there

have been any denials regarding to their request, just overwhelming opposition at two locations. those are things for the board to consider. i wanted to ask a question -- the parking space could be a moving target. does that mean that if a parking space is available, somebody has to find another space on there. the last point i want to reiterate is the truck that we have seen has windows on the wrong side. again, the service will not happen on the sidewalk. is it the intent of v.k. to do a mid-circle turnaround so they can get the windows on the sidewalk side. an incredibly dangerous situation and it seems like you in a parking control officers out there. there was a lot of impact that were not properly evaluated. we would ask you to modify the permit and not allow trucks at

this location. thank you. >> thank you. next a rebuttal from miss smith. >> hello again. i will make it short. the brick-and-mortar restaurants do not have the luxury to pick up and move their restaurant to another location that the food trucks and do. this location at 50 california doesn't need to be moved. the business that needs to be moved is the food truck, since they have the ability to do that. the dpw and dph has admitted they do not have the power to regulate the food trucks ordinance. they do not have the manpower for it. everybody is cutting jobs in this economic time. bless the dpw for taking on this horrendous issue. no one else has stated that the old ordinance covered by the police department -- the permits were $10,000 per year. under the new ordinance, and

they are $500 per year. a big difference. maybe that is why there were no food trucks operating prior to this amended ordinance. there are grandfathered food truck set a $500 -- rather, $10,000 under the police department. the new ones, it is pretty cheap. the dpw nor jeremy paul addressed the fact that the truck would be part of the wrong way. he also said that chipotle is opening another restaurant. they are owned by mcdonald's. deep pockets. these are not mom and pop restaurant. there are owned by mcdonald's and can afford the competition. he also mentioned that there are food trucks at city hall. city hall is not the financial district.

when you open a restaurant, whether it is a restaurant or a office, you need to get a certificate of occupancy with all of the permits sign off before you can even open your doors for business. this includes ada, health, her everything that it takes to open a restaurant. you need a certificate of occupancy. why is this ordinance allowing permits to be issued without all of the proper permits? why are the -- what are they allowing these conditional permits with these sign-offs to follow? thank you. >> ok. appeal 11-105. no? 106?

>> i will begin with trying to address some of the comments that were made. it should be made aware that i did challenge the environmental review issues that were raised earlier. i got one of the most curious opinions i have ever seen from the city attorney's office in that what they have said is that the ordinance itself was not a project and therefore the discretionary acts to approve the ordinance did not require environmental review. that was not so much as curious as the second part of the opinion which said that each one of these permits that gets issued does not need an army to review. because it does not need in our mentor review, there is no way to appeal it.

we tried to appeal it before the board of supervisors. i am hoping to avoid litigation on this issue. i would rather see this get done administratively. but there are environmental impacts. and they are serious environmental impacts. the traffic and the communication. i do not want to get further into that. i want to address a question that president goh raised about parking regulations. the discussions that dpw had with dpp were not with regard to a specific location. it was asking them are you going to enforce the parking regulations? the answer was yes, that is my job, i am going to enforce the parking regulations. none of these locations would ever run by somebody to do that. that is what needs to be done in order for these permits to be operable for everyone.

some comments were made about the ordinance. the board of supervisors took into consideration all of these things about one year ago. no locations were ever discussed. there is nothing in the record that talks about specific locations. in fact, most of the discussion was off the grid. let me tell you -- the financial district is not off the grid. it is the heart of the grid. the approval of these permits will destroy the people who are in this grid and it will create an impact that ripples throughout the grid. the one other thing i found amusing in the permit-holders testimony is that there is going to be all of this new business.

a new vitality that is going to come for us. i do not know where this is coming from. people are not going to be driving in from the east bay to go to a food truck. they're not want to be landing from another planet. we have the people that we have. there is a fixed economy here. the notion that there is going to be a task force that is going to straighten some of these issues out -- by the time that task force makes any conclusions, many of these businesses will be dead. i am urging you to deny these permits. >> ladies and gentlemen, i will be very brief. dpw representatives have already a knowledge -- have already

acknowledged that no assessments or economic surveys were conducted to assess the impact the mobile facilities will have on businesses. ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about people's livelihoods here. this is not a small matter. they cannot be issuing permits without having any idea of how it will impact people's livelihoods. thank you very much. that is all i have to say. >> thank you. appeal number 11-107. just to be clear, you have three minutes total for everyone in this group. >> thank you. i want to address the board of

supervisors. the argument that they are using. i come from the marina. mark farrell, our supervisor, met with the marina association. he is very personable. i asked him about it and none of this information was given to the board of supervisors. nothing about going into the financial district. the board of supervisors were given a kool-aid and he told me they had no information. there were told it was a great thing. if you go down to the tenderloin, the food truck would be great there. you are afraid to eat in places. to bring it into the financial district is crazy. before you can open in the financial district, they would kill you on the 10th ada grimsson. -- they would kill you on the ada