tv [untitled] November 5, 2012 2:30am-3:00am PST
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department for asking for everything, including the kitchen sink. i have not received documents. at this point in time i do not have any, any daily inspection reports relevant to the work in the park since august 28. despite i have asked for it in writing repeatedly. and most recently i asked for it on october 15. here is my e-mail to the person i was told to address these requests to. there are additional things i have not received. i have asked for information since june. and i wrote explaining why i want the financials. there are a lot of questions related to this permit without understanding the context. i don't think that we can adequately address these concerns. one example there were limited reports provided to me yesterday in response to my earlier requests. this is one of them. it's showing that all kinds of
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inspections were done related to the 477 permit. i bet those daily inspections reports will reflect those are things done related to this permit. because it didn't make sense otherwise. >> mrs. gallagher you want a continuance? >> i would like a continuance to have the documents i asked for. >> let's deal with this item, this issue first. anything else you want to add to the request for continuance? >> the other issue is that president hwang is on the record at my last request of a hearing on december 19. i asked for a prohibition against work to be in writing. and president hwang said it was better than in writing, it was on the record. i have brought five clips from that hearing that directly
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involve president hwang on this point and given she's not here and of the issue and the presence of work done. and despite her statement that it would not be done. i feel without her being here, that issue won't be properly vetted. >> this is a request for continuance? >> on behalf of the recreation & parks department. i would say that we have provided all documents that exist in our possession made in request of shannon gallagher. shannon has submitted since the last hearing six requests for documents. two occurred in august. one in september. and three requests in the last seven days.
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we did not request that this hearing be moved up. we gave miss gallagher the full amount of time to prepare her brief and collect her information and why she is still requesting documents a week, ten days before the hearing, you know, i don't know. if she finds something new, you know, maybe she can come back for another request. but we're prepared to respond to her brief and with hope that the board will hear it today.
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>> okay. commissioners, any comments on the request for continuance? >> i have two questions, maybe one for the attorney. when documents are requested, which i assume comes under basically the sunshine ordinance. is it appropriate or legal to ask for information in a format that may not be the way a department has prepared it? in other words, ask for a document that then perhaps by that definition does not exist? >> i think we have an obligation to share the documents that we do have in existence. if we have electronic copies and electronic copies are asked, we share those. we don't have the obligation to create electronic documents.
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>> if i may ask miss hobson a question. would you describe the impact that both this appeal and a continuance are having on the project and i guess that is my question. >> the project is currently under construction. it began in june. we were held up with the apellant's appeal of the first permit, which basically slowed down construction progress. this is the second appeal and we are trying to catch up. but at this point we anticipate a delay of one to two months for completion of the project, as a result of the first appeal. to extend this one any longer, would most likely extend that. we're trying to recover by accelerating perhaps, working on the weekends, but a lot of this hinges on our ability to do that given that we're now in
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the winter. our opportunity to speed up is diminished with the winter weather and we're interested in getting this work crapped up. >> is there other work not related to this permit? >> there is other work going on, but one thick that happens this work is in the center of the park. so you can't do a lot of work around the periphery, it doesn't give us the ability to do it efficiently and effectively since we'll have to plan to bring in equipment at a much later date to complete the scope of work. >> thank you. >> we should take public comment on the continuance only. would anyone like to speak just on the question of the continuance? seeing none, then
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>> the there are a number of people here including president hwang and the people you previously referred to my opponents and my so-called opponents sent a letter that was not reviewed because it did not get into the files along with several other letters from people regarding this permit appeal from some sort of administrative mix up that happened at the board of appeals office or some other way. in any event they provided copies of letters in which the pacific heights resident association says they are sore sorry they are not able to be here tonight and to deny the permit and upheld my appeal because of their concerns related to the work at the summit, as well as to the maintenance and container sheds and those are my opponents of it's election time as well and
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there is another bond up for consideration and i think it's a good time for to us ask what exactly is going on with this permit? there is another permit that has not yet been issued that will need to be issued before the containers can even be structured. if you look at the note no. 4 on permit plans that i provided to you in connection with, this you will see that nothing can be done in any event. so i don't know what the delay would have caused. extensive work has been done and shouldn't have been and the question is how and why? i earlier hwang's comments and she said she understand as did i there would be no work done at the summit, that is permitted work, unpermitted work, we're talking no work and the reason why was because i was told there was no worris about the archaeological resources in the park, nor need there be because there wouldn't be any disturbance of anything at the summit that. is
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patently false. this permit should be denied without that work was done without the requisite archaeological work beforehand. this is described betterply the planning department itself. if you take a look at what it would require it's pretty extensive and certainly has not been done here. mary hobson did email me an explanation for that today and said that even though back in september she first contacted a company about doing a review, they decided not to go forward with that review. why she waited until september 18th, speaking of delay, i don't know. she was first told about the ruins that are at the summit by local historianrand richards in july. based on his comments, we had a meeting at supervisor farrell's office july 27th and at that time there was a commitment that they would follow state, federal and city law in terms of the archaeological ruins there. that however has not happened.
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in terms of her own opinion as mr. richards, who s letter i have put up here. miss hobson herself actually suggests that the archaeologist on staff with the planning department might reference mr. richards as a possible source of good information about this park permit. we can see the archaeological review that was required was not done and has not been ordered or commissioned despite being told about this july 17th. we're next talking about why this should be deadline. section 103.a, says information needs to be of sufficient clarity and to indicate the location and nature and extent of the work that is proposed. that has not been done here. how do we know this? on the permit it's described as s-1 that will be used for storage. i don't know how many storage facilitis that you are aware of that has windows in them and advanced design. previously this was disclosed
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as a workshop and storage and described this way to the bond over sight commission and described this way to the people at the park meets projects for the neighbors concerned about this. now it's been told it's going to be simply for storage and why was this changed why do we now need two big storage sheds? we don't and we don't need storage with windows that maybes it more apt to be broken into. what we need is a concession stand that was rejected by the community and therefore not being planed that the planning departments plans on putting in later at some other point in time. this is a sneaky ploy to term what is storage into a workshop without disclosing it to anyone. and therefore, what is now being described as a storage shed is not properly described as required by the section and should be designed. the civic design review that you see we're going to be told
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parks and recreation was completed, but it wasn'tpt miss hobson says she submitted exhibit c to the people at the civic design commission. it's a cute picture, isn't it? it's just not reality. i have two portions of the permit plans. these are the approved plans, page l 2.4. and here you have the original permit plans submitted and taken to the different departments. despite telling the civic design commission that this picture would be what they would get what they had their newly designed shed. they never changed anything. so if this is going to be done, nobody there doing work knows about it. you will see the pretty trees that help to cover things and all of these trees and bushes. these trees however are being removed. so this plan is completely not reviewed by the civic design commission. here is the notes here that
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these are being removed. here is the other note that tree 99 is being saved in response to community outcry to save the trees. and that requires them, according to mary hobson, to move this summit shed five feet to the west. now had a they do that. what is the impact for the civic design commission? we don't know, because they haven't seen anything. i want to show you a few things of what has happened in terms of work at the satdium. the permit issued august 27th and this is beautiful. there is nothing done here. here is what did looked like september 13th. wow, what is going on here? i will tell you, samuel holiday's house has been destroyed and what have they saved of it? the little tiny piece that i showed them that they could clearly not deny. what happened? they sent bulldozers in and knocked it down to put in what? pluming to go to a shed, because we need plumbing in a
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shed? here is the [tr-erpblg/]. here is the beautiful view that is being lost because of this work and here is where we put that nice shed. >> miss hobson? >> okay. good evening board. i'm mary hobson a project manager for the rec and park and department as the permit holder for the renovation of lafayette park. it's our position that miss gallagher has not presented any clear and substantiated evidence that would lead to the suspension of this permit. this permit is specifically for the maintenance facility located in the center of
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lafayette park. here is one component of the project, which you are already familiar with from our previous hearings. miss gallagher raises a number of issues in her brief. i'm only going to spend a brief time going over them, because many of them are simply reiterations of issues raised at previous hearings. the first being that this facility is going to block views. we do not believe that is the case and we believe that our appendix or exhibit b illustrates that. this container storage is only 9.5' tall. it's set into the landscape. shielded by trees. and the top of the roof is lower than the horizon. i don't think in any way we could say this is blocking views. in fact, the site was specifically identified as the location with the least impact of views at the site. second, she talked a lot about
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harming archaeological resources. this is a ceqa issue which you may hear about from our representatives from city planning. we just want to say that we don't have any evidence there is any archaeological resources on the site. it's defined very clearly through ceqa what is an archaeological resource and we have confirmation from city staff and planninging that they did due diligent [kpwr-epbs/] during the planning process and do not believe there is anything remaining on the site. the house that could potentially be historic was demolished 70 years ago. the construction materials at the time were predominantly wood and reinforced masonry. we do see remnants of concrete at the site, but we don't have empirical evidence that is related to the house. the bricks shown in the photograph, those were not
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removed from the summit area. lafayette, like many other park site as round the city is littered with debris, primarily debris collected during the 1906 earthquake when it was common for people whose chimneys collapses to dump it in parks. we took steps to seek outside con silt sales resultation from archaeologist because archaeologist randall deen was on extended leave. he is back and we have not pursued any consultant review. we have relied on randall deen's advice. next so far as the civic design review we believe that we concluded that satisfactorily and we provided a letter from the secretary to the commission confirming that she is comfortable that the review is
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satisfied. and that minor changes, moving of five feet in the field does not constitute re-opening a process that takes a year and a half to complete. the civic design committee is only interested in exterior aesthetics and those will be maintained even with the five-foot shifting of the container storage facility. i'm not going to talk too much about ada design. i have a representative here to address any questions as to whether this meets ada code. as stated in the previous hearing, we have the services of an expert in accessibility code compliance reviewing our drawings. participating in the inspection of the construction to ensure that the project is ada compliant at the completion of the project. i want to spend the rest of my time actually getting at what i
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believe the root of this issue. the appellant's opinion that this facility should not be in lafayette park. lafayette park is one of many parks in the city. we have over 230 park sites. we have recreational and park operations utilizes certain parks across the system as think location as a depositry. there are a lot of sites too small to how's these equipments and we have identified certain site where's gardners servicing the quadrant of the city can go to secure equipment, deposit green waste and do their daily business. we don't want our gardners spending all of their time driving back and forth to golden gate park.
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we have very few resources as far as staff now. every minute we save is minutes that are crucial to the delivery of our parks system and maintaining our park systems. at one point years ago it was discovered that a third of our gardners' time was spent driving around the city. this is why we have these satellite sites. our operations division has said lafayette is the most appropriate site in the northeast quadrant for this function. it's centrally located. it is large 11 acres. mostly undeveloped. and it's easy to access by city. it's not in the downtown congested area. this is a function that has been at lafayette park for a long time. it's not a new function. it's one that we have maintained through -- we had an historic gardner storage and a cargo container there operating in this capacity for
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years. building this facility is our tempt to make it fit better and make it more effective and better for the park system. for that reason, we think in the best interest to allow us to go forward with this. this is a citywide maintenance issue having this facility at lafayette park and we hope that you will support us, and deny this appeal. thank you. >> miss hobson. >> go ahead. >> commissioner? >> would you care to comment on the alleged plans to turn this site into a concession stand? >> there are no plans to turn this into a concession stand. there is an area that has traditional operated as the equipment storage facility. we are now building this container storage facility at an alternative location and that gardner's storage facility
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will remain unused. we elected not to tear it down, because it's actually an historic resource and [rao-er/] restoring it to its historic condition, but it doesn't have a programmatic identity oat this point. there was discussion about the long-term desire to put a concession in that structure, but recreation and parks department does not have any short-term or even long-term plans as doing that. that was a request from the community during the planning process. >> thank you. >> miss hobson, why are there multiple permits for such a small project? >> well, it started out with a direction from building department. typically this is my understanding is that they track building permits issued on a per structure basis, because basically they are in the process of issuing permits for buildings. lafayette park has three buildings on it. so in the
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initial approach, we requested -- they requested that we break our package into three individual permits, one for the work associated with each structure. the gardner's storage, the restroom structure and the maintenance facility. we did request the last -- there was one subsequent small permit issued when be added details that was inadvertently left out. that was approved and constructed and the fifth permit which is outstanding for the cargo containers themselves. dbi will not issue us a permit for the dbi containers until we receive design calculations from the design-builder who is under contract with our construction contractor. we should have those calculations any day, at which point we will apply for the permit for those containers.
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>> okay. thank you. mr. sanchez? >> thank you. good evening. scott sanchyes, sir planning department. i will be brief on three issues here that are planning-related. first the permit at hand which is for the storage shed and the planning department did review this and we do not have issues. we think the project is code-complying. the two other issues relate more to what occurred at previous hearings. first, in relationship to the archaeological questions, at the original hearing for the previous permit, which was i believe in late august, i was here. and at that hearing miss hobson had mention thated she contacted randall dean, who was the planning department staff and does archaeology. i spoke with him after the hearing and asked him if he was contacted by raj goldberg and he said he had and did not express my concerns at that time. he subsequently went on a long
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vacation, and i was on the same. i was not here for the hearing request before the board i think on september 19 and since coming back, i have tried to track down the answer to the question. and i have phot been able to speak with mr. dean directly, but i spoke with tina tam, the board of appeals knows has presented before to this board before. she spoke with lisa gibson, his supervisor and says there were no issues with this. so that is the information that i have that there are no outstanding archeologic yam issues. the ether issue related to the question of work at summit and what exactly that means or doesn't mean. first, the work at the summit, which has been in our term has been the path of the summit. that has not been before the board under any of the
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application because it does not require a building permit. at the initial hearing in august i said there would be no work at summit and part of that was because there were no changes in the path and that is what we understand from rec and park. i believe after that i did learn that the path itself had been removed, but it will be replaced in accordance with the original ceqa determination, which has that path being retained. and so that does not require a building permit. they have been working with our preservation staff to ensure that the path that is replaced there is appropriate and does meet the requirements of the original ceqa determination. so that i s what i have to report and i'm available for any questions that the board may have. thank you. >> is there public comment on this item? please step forward. >>
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