requester's concerns and delayed by months to work with the drr, although they didn't respond to us after one meeting. we twice redesigned the project solely to address their concerns, specifically we created setbacks and square footage and eliminated an entire floor of expansions and lowers the floors among other changes. the dr applicant has failed to demonstrate any exceptional or extraordinary circumstances to justify the dr. contrary to the points, there is no dramatic impact on the mid-block open space. we're merely building on top of an existing concrete deck. the expansion is not uncharacteristically deep or tall and falls behind the dr requester's home. it breaks the rear line of buildings to the east, and falls behind the buildings

creating a more harmonious line. it creates a home on top for my family that is smaller or comparable to other homes in the neighborhood. with regards to the petition, we don't know what the dr requester told the people who signed this. if they have concerns, they should have expressed them in the nine months since we had the 311 meeting. we haven't heard from any of them. we made efforts to reach out. we are a family of six and required by code to maintain two units. it's not a superunit. we believe we have been more

than reasonable and we request that the project be approved as submitted. >> thank you. are there any other speakers in favor of the project sponsor? >> dear commissioners and president, yasir and i are husband and wife. we are working parents. we have four children. so i hope this actually works. it's on my iphone. we have four children. our oldest son is right now attending city college and taking courses from there. we have two daughters going to city public elementary school. and we have a little boy who is 4 years old going to preschool and if we stay in the city, he will be going to the same school as our daughters. so we have been renting in the city for ten years.

last year, around this time of year we bought 27-29 sutro with the hope that we can build a home for ourselves and to raise a family in the city. as property owners we understand the requirement when we purchased the two units that we have to maintain the number of units and cannot combine them and cannot reduce footage. so we worked with the architects to meet the city requirements. we are the new family on the block and don't want to be in conflict with our neighbors and we're putting in tremendous time and effort and money to address neighbors' requests to the point that nothing we can do to make the project viable. if you can see the plans is not to build a luxury home, to

indulge ourselves, but simply to be the family of two parents and four children, so we can grow as a family and raise our children in the family and maybe we can finally give our children the dog they wanted for so many years because as a renter, you cannot even have a pet. this has been an emotionally and financially draining process for us. i just hope and i trust the commissioners can judge our case by the facts, and assure us when we followed the requirements, followed the rules, followed the process, did everything that we could, that there is an end to this and there is a justice to the end. and the process is not being abused. thank you is all for me. thank you. i really appreciate you staying so late and taking this case. we have been waiting this for

days. >> thank you. any other speakers in favor of the project sponsor? okay, dr requester you have a two-minute rebuttal. >> thank you. i think what we need to look at here are the decks. and the staircase. the staircase that walks right up and looks into the ramblin's back patio. the decks that have nothing to do with living space. and nothing to do with whether or not the proponent will have space for their family. they want to put decks with glass railings. what they want -- what they are doing is early creating a nice little spa-like environment that allows them to peer into the privacy of their windows.

they look into bathroom windows and bedroom windows and have a facade around the top of the building that is not necessary and shades an area that now has saxon saxon solar panels. assume threat of of the -- assume that the rest of the neighbors want do the same thing, what happens to that mid-block space? it goes away. if everybody starts doing this and suddenly as i say the open space goes away, if everyone decides that they need to have decks on their back, with glass railings, then there is going to be no privacy for anyone whatsoever. thank you >> thank you. project sponsor you have a 2-minute rebuttal.

>> >> thank you. president fong and commissioners, i will be very brief. objective third party planning department has looked into this and they don't see anyway extraordinary privacy issues. they spent their time looking at the drawings and they did not see those privacy issues that the dr requester is mentioning. with regarding to the solar panels, they weren't there -- they added them after we proposed the project. and didn't take into consideration the project regardless at our own expense, at the request of the dr requester, we did a solar study. the reason why you are not hearing mention of the solar study because it clearly shows that it doesn't shade their panels, regardless of the fact

that they used them as leverage against us to say we don't want this. and finally with regards to the stairs looking in, it would be remarkable to be able to look into a slanted bay window with the stairs. these are issues being brought up now. there was six months of silence from the dr requester where we continually asked them to talk to us and they didn't. thank you. >> thank you. >> okay. the public hearing is closed. and opening up to commissioners, with comments and questions, commissioner sugaya? >> just on the privacy issue, i don't think people stand

around on decks to look into bedroom windows. i'm sorry. i live in a condo, across the street from me, there are bedroom windows. you know, i don't think people in my condo building stand there and try to look in other people's windows. i suppose if you are having coffee or having a drink or something, you know, you might glance around and there is that kind of thing, but i don't think that most people on these kinds of decks. this is a family. it's like -- it's just not going to happen. i don't consider that to be an extraordinary circumstance. >> commissioner antonini? >> i would agree with commissioner sugaya. i know in "rear window," there

this was a lot of that activity in that building being a hitchcock movie. this is different, because the people on the decks would have to turn, instead of looking at the garden and green space, actually look back to their east and to the east windows and again, we're in a city that people are always going to have windows. i don't see any other impacts. the dr request's home is the one that goes furthest into the open space as far as this project is concerned. so i don't see anything unusual or extraordinary in this project. >> commissioner moore? >> move to approve. >> second. >> i'm sorry, the proper wording is not take dr and approve >> commissioners on that motion to not take dr and approve the project as proposed.

(roll call ) so moved commissioners. that motion passes unanimously, 7-0. and puts you on your final item on your calendar, public comment -- have i have no speaker cards. >> is there any general public comment? if not, it's been a good year. >> thank you. >> it's been very productive. thank you everyone. and we'll see you next year. >> thank you. meeting adjourned. [ gavel ]

>> a great man, is that what you called me? she has to be reminded. -- would you tell that to anita? i congratulate you and thank you for coming to san francisco. hopefully you also become a disaster --- we would be glad te

to open up our minds and communities to receive ideas from across the country, if not the world as to how we can improve it. it never is about what just san francisco is doing. a lot of our ideas are homegrown. the ideas are transplanted and that is the greatness of our city. we're an international city. we want to show what ideas are coming out of the far east, china, malaysia, the philippines, singapore as well as all over from europe. perhaps from africa and south america. we can learn from that just as we have done with concepts like sunday streets where people take back the streets and start having fun in our urban communities and bringing out the children to enjoy the

environment. this is our future generations so we have to have the best ideas. how to keep our environment and our strong. i want to tell you that there are a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for keeping our city grain trade we have at least three different projects that we have been focused on for a number of years. i have had the privilege with working with mohammed and our city engineers to accomplish this. most importantly with our community leaders and volunteers throughout every part of our neighborhoods. i hope that you do you is your time and take advantage of our wonderful weather to go out and do as many doors as possible of all the -- tours as possible of all the community gardens. we have a committee challenge program, one that i am proud to have headed up when we were at

public works but also the city administrator. this program today funds almost $900,000 this year in programs that are all committee pushed. it is attacks checkoff for corporations and individuals. the fund this through the tax system to provide almost $1 million every year and is put into a community-driven process where community leaders will apply on behalf of themselves or their own streets or gardens and they can get grants of up to $100,000 or as small as $5,000. they could be groups that have never done anything except to start talking to each other about how to increase their neighborhoods's interest in reading and the environment.

we have associated ourselves with the parks alliance and the clean city coalition to provide administrative support to any group that forms. as well as those groups that have school -- school themselves and gotten well organized and know what they're doing in their communities and want to increase their gardens. there will be gardens and a small ones, a few hundred square feet to those that are thousands of square feet large. i am taking over -- and taking over alleyways and the median strips, taking over long- abandoned areas and blighted areas. community groups and volunteers will form those alliances most of the time in concert with either dpw or our public utilities commission or our parks, recreation and parks department and we're open to those kinds of collaborations'.

the committee challenge grant is an excellent model. without anybody's knowledge, i still call the director and say what is going on. dpw tried to keep out of their business. now our city [inaudible] i am reaching in to find out, what are those great things the neighbor rwanda to do and i would like to go out there and visit them. i signed off last year in 2011 the urban agriculture " ordinance. the ordinance for us was another reflection of city policy with the board of supervisors that we wanted to increase the opportunities for folks to grow crops. to grow agriculture, to be able to sell it if they so wish to to

so we could have folks that already have that experience, but not necessarily at the corporate level. our urban agriculture is important to us. we have identified a number of abandoned lots all over the city and we would love to again excite volunteers and people who are interested in urban agriculture and the ability to distribute fresh produce to people who are in need. allow that to happen, working with our school district to see what can happen on their lots so the urban agriculture ordinance is something that you might want to take a look at. and finally, with our recreation and park department, the community gardens program, another broad program we have. taking lots, whether they are a few hundred square feet or thousands of square feet and activating them and hosting volunteers to be able to build community gardens. we now have 35 and growing

established community gardens in the city. and again, all run by volunteers. some of them that our individual lots and individuals will grow in them and there are lots that are shared responsibilities and shared neighborhood responsibilities to grow crops and to grow agriculture there for not only eating purposes or flowers or any of the things that individuals wish to have. and they are happening in our golden gate park as well as in our neighborhood parks. we're excited that you hopefully, you can see those as well. those are three small examples of hopefully things that you can visit while you are here. i understand you are going through my home time, seattle next year -- my home town. seattle next. i was born and raised there.

and of course, if that is not enough for you to do while you are here, you should talk to mohammed about getting tickets to the giants, the 49ers, or outside because that is -- outside plans because that is happening this weekend. that is the fun we have in our great city. we are a large city. i get to talk and write about the things we're doing, and i want you to know that the internment -- and permit, our commitment to greening are parts of what we're here to do because of the advocacy that you do across the country, keep of that work, keep reminding mayors like me and everybody else we have an obligation to take the greening ideas and put them into the urban setting. give our kids the chance to get

dirty with their hands, but watch things grow as they grow. this is the only way i know how to run the city. i have worked in this alleyways for many years. worked in the dirtiest smelling streets of our city. i come out loving our people even greater. whenever graffiti we have is our challenge. whenever illegal dumping that goes on. it is the ability to excite and organize our communities around these issues that bring out the best of all of us. the investment in our neighborhoods is one of my number one priorities as the mayor of the city. and to have example after example of how we can unite more of our neighborhoods to make that investment, too. not just with money but with their skill sets. with their spirit.

-- spirit of volunteerism. every other thing we can do to build strong communities. i know the guard association has as its core our own collaboration and education of folks to build that spirit out. and that spirit, the collaboration, that volunteerism will push us in government to do the right policies and open up more government were to the ideas that our neighborhoods have about building strong cities. thank you for being here. i want to thank all the sponsors from the hilton who is hosting as here to all the organizations, to our partners in ecology, the think tanks that help keep us going and give us better ideas around the country as how we can do it. today, we are 70% recycling, -- 78% recycling, the highest in the nation.

i hope we will get 2 1/2% with your help. thank you very much. [applause] stupak >> hi. i am cory with san francisco and we're doing stay safe and we're going to talk about what shelter in place or safe enough to stay in your home means. we're here at the urban center on mission street in san

francisco and joined by carla, the deputy director of spur and one of the persons who pushed this shelter in place and safe enough to stay concept and we want to talk about what it means and why it's important to san francisco. >> as you know the bay area as 63% chance of having a major earthquake and it's serious and going to impact a lot of people and particularly people in san francisco because we live on a major fault so what does this mean for us? part of what it means is that potentially 25% of san francisco's building stock will be uninhibit tabl and people can't stay in their homes after an earthquake. they may have to go to shelters or leave entirely and we don't want that

to happen. >> we want a building stock to encourage them to stay in the homes and encourage them to stay and not relocate to other locations and shelters. >> that's right so that means the housing needs to be safe enough to stay and we have been focused in trying to define what that means and you as a former building official knows better than anybody the code says if an earthquake happens it won't kill you but doesn't necessarily say that can you stay in your home and we set out to define what that might mean and you know because you built this house we're in now and this shows what it's like to be in a place safe enough to stay. it's not going to be perfect. there maybe cracks in the walls and not have gas or electricity within a

while but can you essentially camp out within your unit. what's it going to take to get the housing stock up to this standard? we spent time talking about this and one of the building types we talk about was soft story buildings and the ground floor is vulnerable because there are openings for garages or windows and during the earthquake we saw in the marina they went right over and those are -- >> very vulnerable buildings. >> very and there are a lot of apartment buildings in san that that are like that. >> and time to. >> >> retrofit the buildings so people can stay in them after the earthquake. >> what do they need? do they need information? do they need

incentives? mandates? >> that's a good question. i think it starts with information. people think that new buildings are earthquake proof and don't understand the performance the building will have so we want a transparent of letting people know is my building going to be safe in it after an earthquake? is my building so dangers i should be afraid of being injured? so developing a ranking system for buildings would be very important and i think for some of the larger apartment buildings that are soft story we need a mandatory program to fix the buildings, not over night and not without financial help or incentive, but a phased program over time that is reasonable so we can fix those buildings, and for the smaller soft story buildings and especially in san francisco and

the houses over garages we need information and incentives and coaxing the people along and each of the owners want their house to be safe enough. >> we want the system and not just mandate everybody. >> that's right. >> i hear about people talking about this concept of resiliency. as you're fixing your knowledge you're adding to the city wide resiliency. >> >> what does that mean? >> that's a great question. what spur has done is look at that in terms of recovery and in new orleans with katrina and lost many of the people, hasn't recovered the building stock. it's not a good situation. i think we can agree and in san we want to rebuild well and quickly after a major disaster so we

have defined what that means for our life lines. how do we need the gasolines to perform and water perform after an earthquake and the building stock as well, so we have the goal of 95% of our homes to be ready for shelter in place after a major earthquake, and that way people can stay within the city. we don't lose our work force. we don't lose the people that make san francisco so special. we keep everybody here and that allow us to recover our economy, and everything because it's so interdependent. >> so that is a difficult goal but i think we can achieve it over the long time so thank you very much for hosting us and hosting this great exhibit, and thank you very much for joining