>> >> good morning. today is wednesday april 17, 2013. this is a regular meeting of the building inspection commission. i would like everyone to turn off devices. roll call. president mccarthy, mar, here, commissioner lee, here, mccray, present, melgar here, and commissioner -- is excuse. >> because of time restriction here we would like to propose some changes to the agenda and move them to the next full

meetings. >> yes. >> what i'm suggesting is formula retail in the upper market ncd proposed planning commission policy that would establish a methodology for determining the concentration of formula retail and set the appropriate level of concentration for formula retail in the upper market neighborhood nct and ncd. preliminary recommendation: adoption -- seven and the dbi. i recommend we continue that to the next full commission meeting. >> could i go go ahead and second on that. >> thank you. those items seven, eight and 9 will be continued to the next meeting and mccarthy you are okay with that. you indicated that you are okay with that. i received a note that you are okay with continuing that. >> yes. that one i'm okay to continue with it. i don't have a real detailed update.

>> we can talk on the side about that. >> okay. so that would be what item? >> that was seven. >> okay. >> where are we starting? >> i guess announcements: dbi staff, thank you for coming this morning. we'll again have a bullet at the end of sing codemay sin codemay sing oh demay i don't see celebration. tl total number of issued permits for larger projects jump from 26 in january to 34. sing oh demay -- that is a 24

percent increase. i know the mayor uses that to demonstrate how robust the city is. then district inspect or mark walls continue to head this -- the west portal neighborhood where a water main broke at the end of february and the dbi inspectors red tagged 3 homes. the information center and that's at 383 west portal. dbi is this in this new center tuesday and thursday from 3-5 to respond to questions. the briefing of the mayor's monday. thanks for the work. that was not an easy emergency

to deal with. special thanks to dbi from customers. plan review services and acting director tom hue for his great leadership. thank you very much. the san francisco chronicle published last week where the property owner has hundreds of buildings and housing code violations and whose failure to pay city cost assessment have resulted by more than 75 percent. the property owner oh owes the city. we hope we'll motivate the owner to correct the violations and improve the poor living situations the tenants

are living with. dbi, staff and congratulate christina wong as employee of the first quarter of 2013. [ applause ] . >> it's my recognition committee received six nominations for the quarter of six nominations for this quarter and one award and after three rounds of voting, christina was nominated. bird who has worked for a number of years and now in the enforcing code enforcement. join me in recognizing these great employees. [ applause ] >> i just wanted to thank all

the dbi employees for participating in this process because i know the commission did not give employees much time for this first round of nomination of employee of the quarter but they stepped up and we had nominees and it was very good showing from all the departments. >> i would also like to mention

that i was very happy that i will be hosting lunch in christina's honor in behalf of dbi, i think we did that so we would no violate any rules that the city attorney advised us on. we are not using any funds. we would like you to encourage the next nominees of the next quarter. >> thank you for that also please to the other people who are also where the commission is obviously requesting to nominate colleagues for whom

you were providing outside outreach effort standing performances for the quarter for june 30th. we'll begin accepting nominations on june 3rd for the next employee quarter award and e-mail nominations to william strong at sf , go v.org. >> tomorrow is the nifrz anniversary of the 1906 earthquake. caps, which of course made a lot of the recommendations that are now leading to the new legislation that has just passed for the

mandatory receipt fit of soft story the building is going to be signed by the mayor tomorrow morning at the fountain. that is another good reason if you feel like get ting up early tomorrow to join the events because that legislation will officially take place and be signed tomorrow and that will start the 60-day notification clock at which point the mayor director and earthquake safety will begin notifying potential owners of these types of buildings of what is going to have to happen next in those steps. it is a public event tomorrow and the public and all of you are certainly very welcome to attend it. thank you. >> see you at 5:00 in the morning, commissioners. i have

no further announcements. >> any public comment. general public comment. the v i p will take comments on matters on this agenda. any other general public comment? >> seeing none. election of viep president and vice-president. >> may i start. i think this past year with president mccarthy and vice-president mar, we have been working very well together. i would like to renominate commissioner mccarthy as president and commissioner mar as vice-president. >> i would second that. >> i think the year has gone really well. i think it's good

leadership. >> do we have to do the item separately? it's up to you. >> would you like to vote on the items together? >> one vote. >> okay. >> is there any public comment on the motion to reelect president mccarthy and vice-president mar? there is no public comment. we'll do a roll call vote. president mccarthy, aye, mar, yes, clinch, yes, lee, yes, mccray, yes, melgar, the motion carries, congratulations to both of you. [ applause ] . >> item five directors report

update on dbi's finances. >> good morning. deputy director administrator services. i wanted to give you an update on our finances. right now we are projecting a balance at the end of the year of 14.96 million of which $12.96 million is from revenues and $2 million from expenditures. you can see the revenue is over budget for interest and investments, that's this small one here due to the size of the fund balance and in charges for services and that's 112 percent greater than

bugged budgeted at this point. the license fees are not final. they are due in april with property tax. so we haven't seen what that's going result in, but it typically we are on budget with that also. we'll know more next month. and just as a comparison between the previous fiscal year through march and this fiscal year it's 21.02 higher and that's due to the fact of the evaluation of issued permits is 46 percent greater than last year. in terms of expenditures as you know our greatest expenditure is personnel. right now we are at about 61 percent whereas the

year passed it's 75 percent. they are where we start to see the problem that we have with being able to fill positions. if you look at year to date last year, versus year to date this year, we are tracking just a little less than the same time last year. in terms of position, we are continuing to fill as many as we can. we made offers for the chief building inspectors for 3, they were promotions within the department. we hired 7 building inspectors for the last which started this last monday. the 15th. we hired for the summer engineering student interns. 78 people took the exam for housing inspectors and we are

reconstituting for 7. i don't know how many have passed and then we are going to interview 11, for 11 electrical inspectors for the end of this month. several of those are people that are working for the department as provisional. but even with that, if all those folks were select, we would still have a net gain of 6 positions. other improvements in the next if you months, senior electrical inspectors, engineers, clerks and plumbing inspect or. we are trying to staff up the department of human resources is still working with us in trying to move forward so we can have sufficient positions on board to meet the need to provide services. so at the year-end,

we are projecting to have a fund balance that consist of $29 million that we have rolling into current year, plus another roughly $10 million or a little more coming to about $10 million at the end of the fiscal year. and we talked about doing a review and analysis about our reserve and what would be logical to do with the fund balance, that report is completed. it was in your package and heather mcdonalds from the controllers office is here to give a quick summary for you about that report. i do want to thank the city services auditor's staff,

heather mcdonalds and my staff for working on this report. it was a lot of information that we provided, we poured over whether to have sufficient funding and whether there were other opportunities. so i'm going to turn this over to heather. >> good morning. congratulations on your election. i'm with the auditors division of the controllers office. as deputy director the controllers office was engaged

to conduct the financial analysis to recommend an economic stabilization reserve as well as strategic one time investment in the fund balance in the cyclical nature in the construction industry. our project methodology consist of historic and cyclical revenues, expenditures, staffing hours and defer credits. to support our recommended economic stabilization reserve level, we also perform a bench marking analysis of building inspection agencies across the state given their recent economic decline. lastly our office reviewed documentation in government best practices regarding reserve levels. our office

developed 4 key which i will review individually in the next few slides. first is to create an economic stabilization level, that the be $17 million. the second recommendation is to remain the balance to improve the efficacy of the department's core services. third the department should provide better staffing for the code and, benchmarking analysis of california building inspection agencies reserve levels. create an economic stabilization reserve level of

four months of operating expenses. invest the remaining surplus in strategic one time capital investment over the next few fiscal years. increase staffing living to better meet the current work loads. conduct a fee study to ensure various departments services remained aligned with assessed fee levels. >> these are revenues that are tied to construction cycles. the numerical cal outs on the right of this chart include a shortfall during the down turn year of 2009-2011. we felt that had dbi approximately 4 months of fiscal year 2008 of total revenues. would have been able

to meet cyclical revenue trend line from 2009-2011 thereby an allowing future increases in work. our office also received the government finance officers association for appropriate levels of fund balance. they recommend no less than 2 months of regular operating reserve. the government consider the volt tilt of revenue and other natural disasters before federal aid is available. our office believes that a reserve

of 4 months is justified. lastly pure building inspection agencies around the state. their targeted reserve levels varied from one to six months so recommends levels of operating cost falls within this range. our office second recommendation is the designated remaining balance of approximately 26 million dollars for one capital expenditures for building improvements which will improve the department core services. this is a capital investment opportunity in partnership with dbi and department of real estate, and capital planning and will be used by dbi for further discussions.

our office's next recommendation that dbi should continue to work with the office to ensure the staff positions are approved. this will allow tbi to increase levels of staff. the inspection building departments conduct a fee study every five year to ensure the direct and indirect cost are aligned with the currently assessed fee levels. it should conduct the study of the next fiscal year since the last year it was conducted in 2008 and fees were increased in 2009. the immediate next steps for dbi to incorporate the economic state and reserve for future budget. they should work with capital planning to

strategic plan for these capital investment. in the previous slide conduct the next study for the next fiscal year. thank you for your attention. any questions or comments from the commission? >> i just wanted to say this is really excellent work. thank you so much for your thoroughness and clarityey of the presentation. it's really appreciated. >> thank you. it was a pleasure to work with the great team. thank you. >> i would like to echo that. i didn't even know were you doing this. you were working really hard. there is a lot of questions here answered that we've been trying to get our heads around and it's difficult to get those facts. this cements that. thank you for facilitate ing and getting this done. i know it's words you

live in, but it's easier said than done. thank you. >> item five b, propose legislation. >> public affairs again. as i just mentioned a few minutes ago, the mandatory soft story legislation did pass unanimously 11-0 at the board and the mayor will sign it tomorrow and we are basically off to the implementation stage of that one. i believe you also are aware of this grab bar legislation that was passed and recently signed by the mayor, chief housing has put together notification material that will be on their way out to the owners of the sro buildings

incorporate some of the mayor's office of disability recommendation on how to install them per this commissioners recommendation if owners act in the next 60 days we will wave those building permit fees for these grab bar installations. anything after that 60 day period which i believe is running from early june to around june 14th will then be subject to normal dbi fees. i have mentioned to you before we have with us today another item that you will be hearing on supervisor tang's reintroduction on the awning replacing during the month of may. we did this last year for small businesses to replace and

refresh their business look. last year we had about 10 permits that came in during that fee waiver period. we are hoping that maybe next year we'll have more advanced preparation for this and there will be an opportunity for this supervisors office and myself to do more outreach so small businesses are aware of this opportunity during the month of may. we are observing into the month of may, small business awareness month as well as building safety month that we do every year. one other catch up item is on the toxic legislation that i have mentioned to you in previous reports and the city attorney is coming up with another version based on from dbi and from the puc and b

[!ez dpw and going over this, essentially this will expand the zone for these projects beyond just the perimeter we had for many many years. so we are likely to have many more projects that will fall into this expanded toxic area. the challenge there will be to identify when a project is in this ma har area. the project owner is going to have to then go to dph and make sure their toxicity levels in the soil and ground water meet d ph standards. dph is going to release the letter to the director of dbi so we can then actually issue whatever permit we maybe reviewing on that

specific block. essentially as i understand it the process is going to continue to work as it has been working. it's just that given the building, given the mandatory soft story retrofit and how that may disturb such cubic yard soil which is a key trigger for this dph review, we are anticipating that this could increase the volume of reviews by dph significantly as well as planning and we have especially asked dph to ensure they have sufficient staffing to deal with this. the acting director has made a suggestion that they have a dpa director to sign off authority as one of the work stations to expedited those types of review. that is what we are still waiting to hear

from that. but according to the mayor's schedule for this legislation, it probably will be introduced at the end of april. it will go to the advisory commission in may. it will come back to you probably in may and they hope to have it take effect in the middle of july. so, just fyi, more details are coming on that. i will mention one other one which is supervisor chiu's bottle filling station, that is a piece of legislation we have talked about before where it now will apply only to new construction but as you know the building code requires depending on the occupancy load a certain number of water fountains to provide water to people and they must be accessible according to disability