z. >> the meeting will come to order. this is the monday, december 10, 2012 meeting of the land development committee of the san francisco board of supervisors. it's our last meeting of the year. my name

is eric mar, chairman of the committee, our clerk is miss alisa miller. miss miller, are there announcements for us? >> please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices. items acted upon today will appear on the january 15th board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. >> thank you, i'd like to thank sfgtv which televises us each meeting. i'd like to say we have 7 items on the agenda today. madam clerk, please call item 1. >> item 1 is a resolution granting a street encroachment at 54 peralta avenue for construction of a driveway ramp. >> sponsor is david chiu and

from dpw we have david qwan >> my name is eleanor tapk and i am with the department of public works. our office received a major encroachment request from sia consulting on october 26, 2011. the request is to remove and reconstruction a portion of the city-owned maintaining wall to construct a concrete driveway ramp with transition slope to conform to the existing sidewalk grade in order to provide vehicle access to the property at 54 peralta. we have reviewed project, the project has been routed to city planning for them to review on the conformity to the general plan and we receive a letter

from them in december 12, 2011, stating that the project conforms to the general plan. we also referred the project to transportation advicery staff committee for them to review and they approved the project on march 22nd, 2012. the project subsequently referred to our department, structural section, hydraulic section, and to the disability sf (inaudible) for their review and they approved the project. we conduct a public hearing on june 6 and the project was later recommended for approval by the director of public works. i'm here, you know, if you have any question i'm here to answer any questions and also the project sponsor is also here if you have any additional

questions that you may have. >> thank you. if there are no questions, let's open this up for public comment. is there anyone from the public that would like to speak? please come forward and line up against the wall if there are any additional speakers as well. we're going to limit it to two minutes per person. there's a buzzer, a light bulzer -- buzzer at 30 seconds to go. >> i received a notice about this meeting saturday. there was virtually no time to prepare a statement of objection to this. in other words, i got the thing one day ago, essentially. i think we ought to be continued to a later date to give the group of the neighbors -- most of the neighbors couldn't show up at such short notice, a 1-day notice for a meeting. i think

it's absurd to get notice so late. i think it should be continued so we can get our people together and come up with our arguments against this project. >> sir, your name for the record. >> carl pastor. i do -- okay, this is what i'd like to say. because anyway, it's a physical impossibility to make the driveway to be constructed across the sidewalk without making the already very steep sidewalk even steeper than it is. at least two residents on our block are more than 70 years old. some have disabilities, changing the sidewalk would be an inhuman situation for the people so aged and disabled. the existing barrier wall was constructed by the city knowing the space on the other side would not and absolutely should not be used for housing. please honor our city officials who knew the barrier wall was in the best interests of the city of san francisco. they

knew the space on the other side of the wall should not be considered a buildable site. please spare us this development and send compassionless people, money-oriented builders elsewhere. there must be a city department that should look into with this sidewalk issue to determine if it's detrimental to the elderly and handicapped residents. some people on our block require a walker, somebody else a cane, somebody else a wheelchair. nobody could tolerate, none of these people could tolerate an even steeper sidewalk. but anyway, thank you very much. >> thank you. i do have some cards that i didn't see before. michael mccabe, lou randell and michelle kimmel ?oo . >> i'm michael mccabe, i live

just downtown in the hydrologically significant location from the development. first i'd like to echo the request that this project be, this hearing be continued for at least a month because we need to get together and get -- present our case and as it turns out, we had very little notice of this. so we'd like to -- and also specifically, hampshire street and peralta street, draining into hampshire street, is a significant drain area. it's not obvious from

here, but this is the retaining wall, the hill goes down to the north quite steeply and there's very important hydrological considerations. rochelle, who is going after me, has another photograph that shows how the water might flow as it hits the curb cut and we're quite concerned that the water might go into the sidewalk and subsequently into my house. that's all i have to say for now. basically, we're just seeking a continuation at this point. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, thank you for your time today, my name is rochelle kimbell, i live at 51 peralta avenue. i also request a continuance. we appeared before dpw on june 6 and we were told there would be a

verdict two weeks later. we have been waiting since and we being a dozen people showed up for the first hearing, 10 people showed up for the second, none of us were notified with the exception of mr. bob bessa who last week received a phone call from supervisor campos' office. dpw promised to let us know in two weeks and this notice arrived saturday for this hearing today. there are fuer russ people in our group and the northeast slope who were unable to rearrange their work scheduled for monday to be here. we definitely need a continuance. that's the first point i'd like to make. the second point is one illustrated by the overhead, if you would please switch to the overhead.

now, this is the proposed garage and the proposed cut for the driveway. what you are not seeing is the existing wall and the existing curb, which stop the water from flowing into the houses down on hampshire that is our main objection and has always been our objection. we have seen this curb cut. it is not going to be adequate to stop the water from flooding the housing down on hampshire, we say this over and over again and no one seems to notice nor do i see any kind of drainage system install i had here. i urge all of you to come out. >> thank you so much. ma'am, your time is up. thank you so much. next speaker. >> i am lou randell, i live at

52 peralta, everyone who is working on the development is going to have to make a u-turn in front of my house with a stairwell, no stop sign, no yield, no slow down. i've asked twice to have the city put in speed bumps and they didn't do it. it's already a traffic hazard and putting construction crews around that corner is going to cause damage to people and the property. thank you. >> thank you, is there anyone else that would like to speak? then public comment is closed. can i just ask miss tang and mr. kwan if you can respond how the flooding can be mitigated or some of the other issues brought up and how the project sponsor has tried to mitigate

that if at all. >> john kwan, department of public works. the citizens did bring up these concerns at the directors' hearing. based on those concerns we did inform the applicant to do an engineering analysis. that's why it was evaluated by a hydraulics group who evaluate the storm water. it was evaluated by a structures group who evaluated what was happening with the wall and eventually a disability group. in the engineering analysis it was determined that in times of heavy rain, the rain water will be contained in the road way itself, that there was not going to be a way where rain water would jump the curb on to the sidewalk and entering the back sidewalk in these specific cases. it was evaluated based upon the design of a standard driveway cut and it was

reviewed by design engineers, licensed engineers, and determined that it was appropriate, that this situation that is being described by the concerned citizens will not happen. the disability access coordinator did review the design and determined this satisfies the accessibility requirement related to the sidewalk area. so while i recognize that the concerns were brought up, it had been addressed through the design. >> and i know this meeting was properly noticed but i'm just wondering how dpw generally follows up with residents with these concerns. i think there is some comments made that the department's hearing was in june and that the first they had learned of this kind of was a few days ago, but i'm just wondering what's your general process of following up with residents. >> thank you, commissioner. thank you, supervisor. normally what happens is usually within 30 days of a

hearing, we would provide a finding or notification to all the people who attended that hearing. in this specific case, because there was additional review required, it delayed -- without that information we could not make a final decision and that delayed it. we were unable until approximately early to mid-november to generate the final finding in this case and i think it became a timing issue of getting it to the citizens and the people who were at that hearing and then as it relates also to supporting this to this board at this point, but we normally do try to inform the people at the hearing and the applicant within 30 days or once a decision has been made in this case it was kind of unique because there was additional studies that needs to happen and it wasn't completed within that 30 day window. >> it does sound like supervisor campos' office

notified some of the residents but it sounds like dpw didn't notify them after the hearings that you held. >> i have to go back and check. i don't know if we did or not and for that i apologize. >> there's a question from supervisor cohen. >> one of the speakers raised a request for a speed bump near his residence. i was wondering if dpw -- not dpw, it's mta that usually does traffic calming evaluations, is that correct? >> that is correct, supervisor. >> do you guys ever work in coordination with each other? >> yes, normally on something like this it would be reviewed by the mta and we would work with them to find the appropriate permitting to issue. we have to figure out in this case whether it was something that's going to be requested from mta or through the project sponsor. >> so i guess to the neighbor,

i don't know if you -- did you request speed bumps or some kind of evaluation through mta? no, no, i'm not worried about them, the agency that actually does the evaluation, puts in the speed bumps, is mta, the metropolitan transportation authority. my question is did you apply for a speed bump through that program or a traffic calming evaluation? yes? >> so, supervisor cohen, instead of having this dialogue, we've closed public comment but i guess we could reopen and allow the gentleman to respond to your question. >> okay, sure. please come to the podium. >> sir, if you could come to the podium and without objection. >> thank you, john. >> issue of developing the property. the main reason we're here today is because we had one day's notice. saturday we all got letters that this

meeting was taking place and that the chair would entertain a motion to have the full board review it tomorrow. that doesn't give us any time to give our objections that we were supposed to give after the meeting on june 6th, which never happened. how can you go from june 6 to december 7th and send a letter out to the people that are being affected by this without telling them a word in between? that's what we got from dpw >> let me ask a question. if a continuance is granted, what do you expect to happen in between the period of time --. >> well, the neighbors can be notified there's going to be a meeting. >> i'm sorry, can you speak into the mic? i can hardly hear you. >> the neighbors can have adequate notice to attend that meeting and voice their concerns that despite what it said in the email from eleanor tang have not been addressed to the neighborhood. we've been fighting this for two years and at the last meeting they said

they would in two weeks get back to us with answers on our objections. the answer was saturday we got a letter saying this meeting was taking place today. >> so my next question is, have you had any conversation with the project sponsor? >> not since june. >> not since june? so you've been waiting on a response from dpw >> yes. never got it. none of us. >> (inaudible). >> so i know miss tang said the project sponsor is present. supervisor cohen is asking if we could hear a response from the project sponsor. thank you, sir. supervisor wiener. >> when the project sponsor is done, i was unclear from dpw's response about whether the normal procedure for dpw would

have resulted in the specified notice. that was a little unclear to me. >> sir. >> good afternoon, (inaudible) consulting. we started working on this project on july of 2008. we had two, two-unit buildings proposed on this site and we met with the east slope design review board, the design review board, we did a number of meetings with them, initially before they even filed the building permit. after we filed the building permit we made modifications to the design and filed with the planning commission and we were asking for a parking variance so we could keep the square footage of the building so it could accommodate the two,

two-unit buildings. we were asked at that meeting to avoid doing a variance and reduce the size of the building. we have gone from 4 units to 2 units and now it's single families, we have lost over 1700 square feet, we have gone through a number of meetings with neighborhood and all that discussing the facade and the bulk of the building. . >> so when were those meetings that you held with the neighborhood. >> initially on july 28, i actually have a chronology, i can share that with you. july 28 of 2008, we meet again on august 11 of 2008, we filed a building permit in december of 2009, then, you know,