>> ms. olague. for me this is old san francisco values you represent the more 67ive district and you obviously take a lot of pride in your catholic upbringing the fact your irish heritage and i think you represent a lot of those old fashion values that i think are many and a certain kind of add horns to tradition or respect for tradition that i think is admirable, actually and i was reminded of that when you were giving your comments about to mike 97ian last week when he excellent on what his values was and when i sat next to you at the cans committee i would look over and see pictures of you with your son and very cute and so i think it's kind-of cool

that we do have those very traditional values that are still important in this culture, so, even though, i think you have helped me resolve my identity crisis and so, i guess i'm progressive. and but i just admire your values and i admire your family values and there is something to be learned from those values. so thank you., thank you supervisor olague and, last by not least supervisor avalos. >> i didn't relevancy i was going realize i was going to be last and i do not generally stand up accept for these koondz of thing. and stylly i was a

legislative aid watching you as a supervisor and watching you to get into a lot of debates with my former boss chris daily and i always came in to the board knowing i would have to work with you and how am i going to do that his game is really really strong and my first committee meeting on the budget chair was with you serving at one time it was a whole debate around the public defender in the central services for and actually i thought i did the right thing i thought i had some approval for you on how i managed that meeting and that approval meant a lot to me and then the next year, you were my i'm not sure if you ever my vice chair and i thought if i can survive this year with sean elsburnd and his approval we can accomplish a lot and i did survive that year and it was

not until john fourth when we almost came to blow around the discussion a around the marital appointment and i did i exaggerate but one of the thing that i felt that you did really well here apart from or including your ortory is that you were always -- it was really important that we be consistent about who we are and highway we represent ourselves and discuss policy and what we want to do legislativey that was something that i feel you helped me whether you intentionally did it or not you worked really hard at being consistent and so when you told me on january fourth that i was not being consistent i i had to walk across and let you know that i truly was. but, i just -- it's very complicated for me to be up here and talk about my feelings about you because they are very complicated. i see you coming from a similar background as me growing up catholic i'm

not so catholic anymore but there is something that i had with you about that in some way in my mind that has gotten me caught up with how i admire and respect you so much and come out @you at the same time and so i want to saw thank you for your work and i appreciate the time that you are going to have moving forward with your family and it's exceptional and it's something that you valid and i valid my work as a parent on the board of supervisors and i look forward to seeing what you are doing in the future best of luck. >> supervisor elsburnd? the floor is yours common and both microphones.. >> well thank you. thank you to all of you for your kind words. geez i remember my first board meeting over there, i cried, and then my last board

meeting better keep keep this quick first i couldn't not be here with the the voter and is district senate. thank you to them, my staff, john gavin who worked like a crow my maternity three system carey black stone and -- the last four years alex and of course, i brought my own packet and of course, for the last eight and-a-half years but truly as a colleague for the last ten, 11 thank you clerk and the board she is not here rick, an gel lay, you guys have been amazing. you are the reason why we have our success, thank you. city attorney, controller budget analyze, the fire chief and

other city staff, thank you. i probably won't get through. my wife, parent, sister and thank you. you know i had a few jokes in here but i'm not going to be able to do them. i'll just keep it simple. thank you everybody. i admire the way you all represent your districts and work to give san franciscoians to give san franciscos what they deserve but i do it my other way you fight do it my other way you work and i look forward to watching you do that into the future. you will not see me at public comment, but, i'll certainly be fascinated to see how you all do and i hope you do keep in mind that general

principal that i have heard you all articulate in different ways we absolutely live in the greatest city in the world and to represent the greatest people in the world san franciscoians and you have a tremendous aren'ts in living up to that honor and i wish you all the best in that endeavor. (applause). .

. >> again thank you supervisor elsburnd and supervisor olague but know that you will not be here in the champ next month but you will be here with us in spirit and with that colleagues i want to get back to the people's business and it we could go to our four p m special order. if you could read the items please.

. >> colleagues west front of us today the appeal of the review exceptions for the proposed project on each street and we will consider the sufficiency of the project's determination that the project has the project has

>> so i took a look at the plan that was in the city bicycle map that you could buy at hardware stores and other places, and it showed that the recommended pass through the panhandle, once you got there, was to go north one block, up to hayes street, and take hayes to scott and scott down into the wiggle. as we looked at how to route that traffic that teeme seemed e

way to do this. traffic engineers would never mix different -- substantially different speeds of vehicle traffic on the same piece of pavement. and that's what this plan does, that's faulty. so when you look at -- when you look at the eir for the bicycle plan, that was approved finally in 2009, this sentence jumped out at me, and that says, when you implement plans like this, it's not just exclusively for one set of constituents or users. you have to look at the entire picture and present a balanced plan that addresses all the needs of all of the people of the city. and clearly again this plan doesn't do that.

as president of the haight ashbury improvement association i worked on this initially and this was the chart that i had gone to with the mta and they refused to listen. so what this proposes is that for people living south of the panhandle and the park they can make their way to the wiggle, eastbound that is on pave street which is a downhill descent into the wiggle. for those living north, coming down hayes street makes a lot of sense. likewise to avoid going up paige street, that one block hill on paige, returning from the wiggle, they can go scott to hayes, and then three blocks west, and turn left again, and into the panhandle at baker.

the reason i would propose that is you can see is visually obvious. this is at rush hour, looking down hayes street a block over, actually two blocks away traffic moving in that direction inundates the street at this hour. >> president chiu: supervisor wiener has a question for you. >> supervisor wiener: welcome. so one of the things i think i sometimes struggle with in these appeals and i'm sort of seeing it here, is -- and this is an appeal under ceqa, it's not an appeal on the merits of the project. and so i think there are times when appeals -- ceqa appeals come before us, and you sometimes arguments about the merits of the project get mixed in, and that may be because that's the only way for the item to come to us. and whether -- agree or disagree with it but in 1999 the voters

gave the policy authority over these kinds of issues to the mta board of directors and took that authority away from the board of supervisors. so i'm hearing, both in the written submissions and also in what you're saying today, rernss references to what's good or bad engineering, what's a better route or a worse route, references to disability access, to fire safety. those are all very legitimate and important policy considerations to weigh and coming up with any plan. but how should we think about this distinction between what is the right policy decision, which is not within our power, versus whether this project was categorically exempt or not from ceqa. because i think it's really important for us, regardless of what anyone's personal opinions are, to keep that distinction. >> yeah. well, let me cut to the chase with that and say that this lays

the foundation for looking at the environmental -- potential environmental impacts of the proposed plan. and this alternative has a way of accomplishing the same result of moving cyclists through the panhandle to the wiggle, without any of the environmental impacts that we see as jumping up in this plan. the congestion that will come from decreasing levels of service on intersections on oak street, from the unique structure of putting up plantares on oak street that will make it hazardous for cars, using their curb cuts and driveways to get in and out of their garages, et cetera. so all of the potential problems that are there, that have been

categorically eliminated, just by wave of an assertion go away if you come up with a better plan that doesn't cause -- doesn't disrupt the status quo on oak street. >> supervisor wiener: but if the issue here is whether this kind of project is exempt or not, whether it falls into one of the -- or i guess two of the exemptions or not. as opposed to there could be a better plan, or a kind that's not as good. so i just think it's important to focus on whether it falls into one of the exemptions. because if it does, then regardless of our view of what's a better plan, it's exempt or if it's not exempt, then it's not. but i think that's the real key. >> and my colleagues will talk about specifically to that very point. >> supervisor wiener: thank you. >> about the categorical

exemptions. >> president chiu: thank you. why don't we continue and continue the clock as well. >> howard shaf ner president speaking to the nuts and bolts that supervisor wiener asked about, first of all, in our briefing i think we've dealt with that quite a bit, and also briefing from our council. but first of all, you can't have categorical exemption when there's cumulative impact with another project and that would be the case with the masonic -- project. the planning department itself sis in their brief the cumulative impact is the streets and their vicinity affected by the project. masonic is the major north-south thoroughfare and fell and oak are the major east-west thoroughfares. masonic has 32,000 motor vehicles a day it's a few blocks from baker street.

in fact, they were going to remove a bus stop on central, which is only one block from masonic. the masonic project would remove all street parking on both sides of masonic for over half a mile including through fell street around 171 parking spaces reduce travel lanes on masonic during morning and evening rush hour just as the fell and oak would remove -- on rush hour and reduce lanes on baker which -- between fell and oak. many motorists basically, and pedestrians, turn north on masonic from fell and oak. many who are proceeding southbound on masonic turn left on oak. so the masonic project will have environmental impact on the same neighborhood which will be compounded by this particular project. because of that there's no categorical exemption. >> supervisor wiener: do you think that if the masonic project didn't exist, would this

project be categorically exempt? >> the answer is no, it would not. it would still not be categorically exempt because the two exemptions they rely on really don't apply. one is existing facilities, which is minor alteration of existing facilities involving negative liberal or no -- use. and one of the examples is cited of an existing facility can be a bicycle trail. well there is no bike lane existing on oak so the exemption doesn't even arguably apply to oak. there are no buffer strips on either street nor are there raised plantares. so it wouldn't apply to that piece of it. and i guess getting out to the idea of raised plantares this is also a unique circumstance which is one of the other item -- one of the other categories that takes you out of the exemption because -- this is the first time in any project in san francisco where you can actually have these raised concrete plantares in the middle of the street in effect which

will be safety hazard and so forth, plus all of the parking lots, when you combine the two, would impact each other. but getting back to the -- >> supervisor wiener: do you think any time you add a bike lane does that require an eir? >> any time. >> supervisor wiener: if you add a bike lane to a road that didn't have it before. >> i think there's a pretty good argument that's the case but we don't have to get to that here because you've got the plantares, you've got the fact that -- well what i would say is this particular exemption would not apply if you're putting a bike lane where none exists before because it's a -- it's for existing facilities. the other one is minor alterations and again this is not a minor alteration. you're putting raised concrete plan tars along fell and oak for three blocks of a densely populated congested area and turning it the other direction,

if the removal of parking lanes or travel lanes and replace it with bicycle lanes were automatically categorically exempt which seems to be what the planning department is saying then you could remove every single travel lane in the city or every single parking lane in the city and say it is categorically exempt and that would be ridiculous essentially the city tried a similar argument several years ago with the overall bike plan saying it was categorically exempt and the court said no and the city lost time, and money, and was, you know, judicially criticized for doing that. may i have another minute or so? so -- >> [timer sounding.] >> so basically the two -- >> supervisor wiener: i'll let you continue since i took up some of your time, if you could continue. >> thank you. so the other thing is that there are unusual circumstances. so basically both of the

exemptions claim do not apply. the minor alterations and existing facilities. but even if they might have otherwise applied there's two reasons why you can't use categorical exemption. one i just dealt with in terms of the cumulative impact of masonic plus this project. the other one is simply unusual circumstances. and if there's a reasonable possibility that the project will have significant effect on the environment due to unusual circumstances, you can't use a categorical exemption. a lot of our submissions, and those of -- in support of us which are part of the record talk about the congestion that would be increased, the circling of parking, the density of the neighborhood, the fact that there are wood framed structures in the neighborhood, fire safety would be impeded. i mean they remove the bulb-out at filleti's market because the

struks can't get by. if a delivery truck can't get by what about fire trucks. when you look at the entire neighborhood as a whole and combined with the fact that you have these raised concrete plantares which are totally new and unique and they are a part of the permanent physical structure, and the fact that you have about 29 or 31 driveways on the scott -- i mean on oak, that would be impacted, just again getting to the density of people having to back in and out, past this bike lane, and when you consider that not many bicycles don't use lights, day or night, many of them blow through red lights, they -- you know, they just drive recklessly, a lot of them. so when you add that situation to the existing density, the complexity of the neighborhood, the fact that it's a lot of pedestrians, tourists, a lot of

businesses, there's a hotel on divisadero, the big sp, former sp hospital building, which is a senior center, there's an orthotic and pros at the timic center servicing disabled people on divisadero, when you combine that, any change to a neighborhood like this, that is might even seem small, would have a major impact and i think there are -- so there are unusual circumstances in this particular neighborhood that would preclude using a categorical exemption. >> supervisor wiener: let's talk about bulbouts, let's say there is no bike changes but we were to say for 10 blocks in a row we were going to bulb-out all 10 intersections could that trigger an eir? >> i don't think we have to get to that here because, again, this whole project has 15 different elements. i can read them all but i think

everybody is familiar with that. i don't think we have to look at each one piecemeal and say would that element, in and of itself, require an eir. we're not -- to get to that. the point is we have this complex cocktail, this complex mixture of things that are all part of this project, and all together combined require an eir. >> supervisor wiener: and i ask because, when we're -- even though each ceqa appeal is unique in some ways, we do set a precedent in a way because, in the planning department, next time they evaluate something, will look to what we did in a particular case. and so when you talk about things like a bulb-out or adding a bike lane, even though i understand your argument, you're saying cumulatively in this situation it trichs into an eir in terms of determining whether a categorical exemption applies i think it sets a certain precedent because we do, you

know, try to improve pedestrian safety in the city and try to approach streetscapes in different ways. and if everything is going to trip into an eir, which is enormously expensive and time consuming, it really changes the way we make policy in terms of our streets in the city. that's why i'm really pushing on that. >> well i don't think we -- i mean this is the result of this particular appeal is not going to be a binding legal precedent. so i don't think you really have to get to that issue. but if you were -- if you're saying if they did 12 bulb-outs in a row would they need to do an eir, probably not. but i think it's a huge safety impact if you do that many in a row. let me also just add that the tpt which is the predecessor of this department doesn't have a good track record in our neighborhood when it comes to things like that. a number of years ago the paim