this mandatory retrofit program is well conceived and has a broad community and technical support for the engineers and provides the soft story buildings to make them safe and able to support shelter in place. the cost is very affordable from the structural engineer standpoint this is really a good deal for fixing buildings and does not require a relocation of the tenants or the businesses. while this provides obvious benefits to the buildings and owners and occupants the biggest gain is to the city. and i urge you personally and on behalf of the spur to support this legislation, thank you. thank you no your letter of support. >> next speaker. the first time that have you been to the mic i am sure. >> good morning, commissioners, and etunova, the commissioner along with the resident of san francisco for 40 years.

i strongly support and urge action on this to support the mandatory retrofit. the category of great risk at hand is the earthquake, but more importantly is the risk of not taking action. timely action, because what we have here is a land mine. what we will have when that land mine goes off is going to be great damage. the damage to both social, cultural and economic, the categories of our neighborhoods are the most vulnerable within this spector of disaster and it is not just what basically will effect the neighborhoods, but also the economic recovery. because, the ability for people to go back to work is basically the ability to live where they live and if not, in their neighborhoods, and if not, the neighborhood support services, the cafes the restaurants. those that they basically

within the walking distance of their neighborhoods would continue to support. i urge action on this, the action is never too late if it occurs yesterday, but the em pending earthquake is coming at this moment, who knows, maybe the next hour. all of that we can't foretell. but what we could foretell is action. and our action will basically take the responsible role to take the safety, health and welfare of our residents, our citizens of san francisco, and the this is a great city. and please, help to make it even a greater city by having the economic social and cultural recovery that is so important along with this mandatory retrofit. the category of costs? we will make that. we will make that happen, but the category of moving forward with a policy that says, we need to do this, we have to do this, and it is never going to be ever too late if it happened

now. because we can't take that risk because it is not tomorrow, it could be now, and at this disaster could happen, thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker. >> good morning, ned feny and i am the chair of the co-advisory committee. i wanted to make a few comments, obviously we support this, we sent you a letter to that effect the subcommittee as well. i wanted to mention that the reason that it is on the fast track is because it was a collaborative effort everybody was looked at this. and they have all had a voice and so this is when the public policy works and frankly that is the corn fields critd. he put the group together and caps and he has been diligent and i will mention his name and i also want to mention that this is a work in progress and this is new engineering here. it took a while, even the

engineers had to get on board because it is fuzzy engineering you might say. they are used to working on a building and doing the right thing for the entire building. we are asking them to do almost the right thing on the worst part of the building. so it is a little new territory for them. so, just wanted to tell you that the code advisory committee is helping to define that in the coming months there is a screening form and code legislation and femap87 is in the ordinance and there is a lot of discussion in the back channels in what does that mean? when, engineer comes in, what does ha mean? we will help to define that in the coming months, i want to assure that that is a process. two other people that i want to mention is steve harris and david bonowitz those are two names that you should remember. steve helped to get this issue

forward about how engineers could wrap their heads around this and david helps to put together the previous document that led to p807. this is new territory and, we are cutting really incredible new ground here. and frankly we are going to be an example for a lot of areas in the state and the country. thanks for your support. >> thank you, mr. finean and thank you for your service and we are lucky to have you on the committee and all of your hard work. >> appreciate it. >> thank you. >> next speaker? thank you. >> good morning, commissioners, aim's george obelian long time property owner and native san franciscoan and i want to pledge my support for this effort. it is something that makes me proud to live in this city. san francisco is a special place where great ideas and solutions have a chance to come forth and work and this is one of them. when we set out the policy

clearly, we allow the building owners in the city to act. and that is all that they are waiting to do. everyone knows how much real estate has aappreciated in this city and the owner wanted to do the responsible thing and protect not only their investment but also the city. so, thanks for your support in this. and i hope to see it go through, quickly as possible. >> thank you for all of your work. >> >> next speaker. >> i seeing none, madam secretary? >> there is no further public comment, is there a motion to... >> yeah, commissioner walker wants to. >> i just want to make a motion to lend the commission's support of this ordinance. >> okay. >> i will second that. >> okay and just before we take a vote. just a quick comment.

you know, somebody who was in the 89 earthquake and you fast forward to 2013 and i am honored and privileged to be a part of some sort of a solution for the future. but, i had the privilege of sitting in with the mayor and hear him talk and he talked very passionately about this. he actually made the analogy where he was dispatched by the mayor to go to new orleans and he came away with a very, very strong resolution if he was anything that he could do to make sure that the city is prepared for its, you know, difficult day when it comes. he was going to do everything that he can and it is great to see the commissioners here aboard. and i think that commissioner walker, pointed out very important, when we are talking about it earlier, as commissioners we have strong ties into the different communities. we need to get people's support here. not everybody is going to be happy with every aspect of this but we have to do the right

thing for the city and as san franciscoan and so we look forward to working with you pat and micca i want to acknowledge you down there who is hidden in the back and the number two man there to do everything, and he needs support to get this to the necessary time frame that you need it done and the thanks to corn field for all of his work on this and everybody involved. so with that i would second commissioner walker's motion. >> all the count. >> we have the motion and a second. a roll call vote? >> president mccarthy? >> aye. >> mar? >> yes. >> commissioner clinch? >> yes. >> commissioner lee. >> yes. >> commissioner melgar. >> yes. >> and commissioner walker. >> yes. >> and the motion carries. >> our next item. >> item 8, director's report. >> item 8 a update on dbi's

finances. >> >> department of building inspection. this is going to be a very, very, quick presentation. >> yeah, sure. >> and so, as you know we continued to have revenues come in greater than what we had this time last physical year to the tune of 22 percent. our issued permits have continued to come in at about nine percent more than the previous year and the valuation

continues to grow in the terms of the issued permits by 25 percent. our revenues we got in the first enstallment of our apartment hotel license revenues with the tax in december, and they are what we expected which is essentially we get in the majority in the first in december and the rest in april. and i just like to know we currently have and we are only 58 percent of the year through the year. >> thank you. >> >> in terms of expenses, we continue to under spend in our salaries and fringes.

because we are still trying to staff up. i would like to mention that as of yesterday, we have 13 more individuals, or 11 more individuals than we had last friday, we have hired, we have hired nine individuals the majority of which eight of those nine are clerks and their sprinkled through the department. they are in training right now. so, as you know with training mode, any of us remember starting a new job it takes a little while to get the hang of it. we promoted two people from being temporary to being permanent in the clerk positions and we have hired two prop f people who have come

back. one for housing inspection and one for the permit bureau. so, we are slowly staffing up. we are still working as rosemary mentioned. we have issued the job announcements for the housing inspecters. we are having those out for eight, i am sorry, ten business days so people have ample opportunity to be able to apply. we have right now today, we are having some interviews for selecting a list for electrical inspecters and march we are going to have interviews for the building inspecters and so we are moving on, we just have a lot of interviews a lot of

selection process going on at the same time which makes it a little difficult for staff and we are trying to get as much help as we can from human resources. they also as i said before, continue to help us on the exam process for the rest of the positions that we are trying to hire which are some it positions and some senior electrical inspecters and our permit technicians. as we expected the non-personal services are under non-expending because we get a lot of the bills at the end of the year. and then, in terms of the other expenditures, you know we continue with our services of other department and we have gotten the billings for the

larger work orders so this is the... the city attorney services have come in less than i expected so i am going to discuss with them on this because we have referred many cases to them and i am not sure whether those are being picked up. and then, our program expenses, you know, are so small that it would not make any sense to spend a lot of time on those. >> the other thing that i would like to mention is that we are heading into the budget process and it is being submitted on friday and as i mentioned last time, it is kind of at that point there is a lot of discussions between, within the mayor's office and the controllers office and if when, or when i am able to let you know in a broad group like this, about any of the developments i will let you

know. we are working on our waiver for our pacto which is the healthy climate ordinance, healthy climate transportation ordinance. we are or have spent time working and sitting down with the department of environment to really clearly communicate and have them hopefully clearly understand what is necessary for us to do business. we are looking in as was suggested on to having find some extra or actually in terms of our replacements of cars, include, some of the electric cars but there real big impediment right now is the charging stations. so we continue to take the recommendations of the commission and commissioner melgar to try to get more to

the clean air passed the high roads and passed the cngs but i think that the departments are having those kinds of problems of getting the charging stations up. it would be nice if we could buy a parking lot that we could put a bunch of charging stations and we kind of joked around with that with the controllers office, yng that is going to happen. but absent that we are trying to work on what could be done. the other thing is i have told you the controller's office is working with us in coming up with some recommendations for reserved policies and areas that we may want to look at using some of our fund balance. and it would be great if there was some way that i could talk to them about the discussion that is going to occur as you

develop a code change to be able to do some of the lower interest loans, so i am going to try to see if there is a way that i can communicate with that without jumping forward past your process of coming up with policy and taking it to the board of supervisors. i think that anything that comes from the controller's office has a lot of weight in terms of future financial policies. any exacting any change is not really exacting, but encouraging any changes to occur with the mayor's office and our office and the controller's office and so that i think there is a lot of possibility of what we will come out of the work that they are doing in terms of the reserves. >> any questions? >> any questions for the deputy? >> no? >> oh,, yeah, commissioner mar. >> just a quick question on it.

>> if the city pretty much up in terms of their testing in terms of for the electrical inspecters or do we have a list or we waiting for them to do the tests? >> so this is the majority of the tests that we are doing now, all have to do with position-based testing, so we have to work with them and one of the... with the dhr and one of the problems that we have had is that we have not filled the positions in omany years we did not have a good job descriptions and we did not have good specifications. but, we are the electrical inspectors and we are currently working on and the electrical inspectors is what we were having interviews today to establish a list and then we will go through to actually do some you know do the final selection process. so we are, everything takes a lot longer than i ever would

have expected it to be. but as you all know when the department of human resources came in and explained the testing process many of us just closed over because it seems very complicated and very and hopefully, bullet-proof, but, so, the answer is, that we have a list, we don't, we have actually we don't have a list for housing inspectors that is what we are getting right now. we are working on getting through the electrical. we don't have a list but that is what we are working on getting a list. so we don't have to wait for the broad city classification testing like we had to with the clerks. what we are doing is now is really getting our desires, wants, specification and that sort of thing and working with

the dhr and getting that. >> thank you, deputy director. >> >> item 8 b, update on proposed legislation in? >> good morning, bill strong with legislative and public affairs. you have heard about the most significant piece of legislation with the mandatory retrofit. nobody has got a clear idea on exactly how long the process may take. it is on the land use, 30-day calendar, i expect it actually to come forward relatively soon. because one of those co-sponsors is supervisor weiner and he is the chair of the land use committee. so it could in fact go through quite quickly in terms of board of supervisor passage and as he

was spelling out there is this the mayor signs this legislation with 60-day notification period and a one-year period following that so there is almost an 18-month window after the mayor signs the legislation to give the people enough time to be notified and get the craoening done on that initial stuff. so, i would say that the train has left the station but it is going to take a little time and there are a lot of details to yet to be worked out including two more administrative bulletins that will spell out the procedure and so it is very clear to what property owners will have to do in order to comply and meet the building performance standards. >> as was mentioned earlier also, the board did unanimously approve the permit extension legislation that we introduced and the mayor has signed that and i expect that to take legal

effect on march 8th. it was the public advisory committee and the big customers say that we need more time in the economy for the recovery to keep going. and i think that legislation will be helpful that way. as was mentioned earlier, planning, staff, any way has recommended doubling the entitlement period from three years to 6 years, but the planning commission has yet to actually act on that. when they put that to them in 2009, the planning commission turned that down. so, i don't know yet, whether or not they are going to also extend the planning entitlement period as we have done but this will help our customers definitely in terms of the building permit process. >> i think that the only other item that i wanted to mention to you is that as panel i just mentioned on the hacto, that is healthy air, clean, vehicles.

we are in the process as we have been actually for some time now requesting a waiver, the legislation contains language that enables the department in order to fulfill its duties to be granted a waiver. and it has taken the department of environmental a little time to establish a process, they now have a process so that there is a submission, again, of our request for the waiver. they will make a decision by the 15th of march and so we will know one way or the other. we are hopeful based on the conversations that have been going on that we will get our waiver since reality is that the economy refers and rekeep hiring new inspectors. at the moment we are 22 vehicles short of the total number of inspectors that are coming on to do the work and that is in demand right now. so with that. i will take any questions if you have any. >> no. thank you, mr. strong.

>> item 8 c. update on permit tracking system. >> >> good morning commissioners i'm canty project director of building inspection and i am here to report the permit on the tracking system. several efforts are in progress. several efforts are in progress on the project. the system is being developed and the data enter facing and it is happening and scripting and changes and also the test case scenarios are being developed. and the advisory group meeting occurred on january 30th, and very positive. a second meeting to be schedule in march. there is also a larger stake holder meeting that is being planned and this is opened to the citizens who wish to see

the presentation and also, participate in the services that we have planned for the second week of march. the software for the mobile devices is being reviewed and it is the kick off for that is going to be in march. if there is any other questions? i could answer. >> looking for ward to hearing back for you from march. >> thank you. >> thanks. >> item 8 d, update on major projects? >> good morning, commissioners, in your packet you were given 56 projects that we are considering calling major projects, but we are calling

major projects. the criteria for what a major project in this report was any project that was over $2.5 million. as you can see, we are quite busy in the construction is quite robust in san francisco. before you is three billion dollars in proposed projects that are currently on review by dbi. we hope to have most of these out in the next, four to six months. we have some very well known public projects and we have the cruise terminal. right now that is under construction and what we are reviewing is we are reviewing the last of the addendums and we are also reviewing the special inspections that we are preparing to sign-off on the special inspections and that is currently being done as we speak. we hope to have that done in a few more days.

we also have transbay, high speed transit center that has been digging down for six months and it is down there on probably first and main. and they are putting in their heating systems and as we speak. we just gave them an addendum for their training boxes. and we will see if there is any transit that will go to them. and we just started work on central subway. we just received, yesterday i believe, for the removing the boring system out of the built in a theater in north beach. speaking to the city planning, this trend shows that no sign is slowing down as we probably have just as much as we have. the planning process is some what slower, but the volume is higher. so what you see is going to continue for the next year or two years. on the private side we have

similar projects for 41 stories, 45 lancing that has been up and down for the last six years and finally going to build it. that is 39 stories, 8 washington. and just a lot of discussion going on with that and i don't know if they will build it. we have met with pec last week on that something about a side sewe r that is right next to the project that they are concerned with. we have 38 8th, street and 19 stories, 151 third street. which is the museum. that is a world renowned designer and that is going to come out story. and we have 781 bridge which is 16 stories and we have 1420 mission which is 8 stories. in the mid market area.

and notable tenant improvement, the entire building of 1355 market street which has been taken over. and they just submitted. there has been a lot in the newspaper about 26 tower cranes and my estimation it will be at least 22 tower cranes and it is on the list here. and i will take any questions that you have on the projects. >> are you feeling confident that you are getting what you need to process these permits. i know that it is a loaded question. but, it is very important to us that you are going to be able to handle this. >>