transportation investment portion of, it is very similar plan, but it has [speaker not understood]. number 5 equity jobs [speaker not understood]. focuses on job opportunities [speaker not understood]. in terms of e-i-r alternative number 5 is what we call the environmentally preferred alternative. it results in fewer environmental impacts in the plan but i think what's important to note about this is that it really is marginally better in terms of impact on the environment and that's really key. just in terms of overall impacts of the plan, you know, it's going to result in 39 significant unavoidable impacts on the environment and then about 42 total impacts would be less than significant or we are going to be able to mitigate them in the region. one of the things that is

important to note about the significant and unavoidable impact might strike you, 39 significant unavoidable impacts, but actually great proportion of those are determined significant and unavoidable because mtc and abag have no ability to control local jurisdiction and positions the mitigation measures and project sponsors in different projects. for ceqa purposes and conservative analysis they say, well, we really can't control if local jurisdictions are going to implement these mitigation measures. and because of that we're going to say that plan results in significant and unavoidable impacts. so, with that just wanted to focus the discussion a little bit on the potential of c-e-q-a review implications of the draft e-i-r. so, one of the goals is to provide for modified c-e-q-a review with the intent to encourage land use planning and development that's consistent with the sustainable community strategies. and specifically what that means is after adoption of the sustainable communities strategy of this plan, certain

projects, mixed use projects, transit priority projects, and sustainable community projects, that meet a very particular set of criteria and do not have additional impacts on the environment like historic resource, for example, may qualify for an exemption under c-e-q-a. now, i and my staff have spent a lot of time examining the various criterias that these projects would have to meet in order to qualify for this particular review under sb 375. and we have spent a lot of time looking at those. it's our opinion that the environmental review under this particular branch under 375 would be very similar to what we performed today under our categorical exemption review standards, particularly exemption number 32, and also under our community plan exemptions that we do for adopted area plans. and i think it's worth noting adopted area plans cover much of the city where we expect a lot of the growth that sarah

has talked about would occur by 20 40 ~. so, having said that, though, i did want to highlight a couple of implications that if the city chose to perform c-e-q-a review under sb 375, there could be some potential benefits that could be gained and those are the standard of review would be different for a negative declaration. right now the standard of review is [speaker not understood] under sb 375 or under this plan it will be the substantial evident standard which defers to the lead agencies and expertise. if we do end up performing an e-i-r, for instance, one of the benefits would be that we would not have to look at off-site alternatives in our e-i-r analysis. it is relatively rare for us to do that in the city, but we do have projects for which we do that and in the future if we opt to proceed c-e-q-a calls under 375, we may not have to do that. similarly, and i think this is probably the most important one, is when we do an e-i-r for

residential project under sb 375, we will not have to look at a reduced development alternative that's driven by the traffic impact to the project. so, oftentimes what happens and as you know, we look at alternatives in an attempt to mitigate the project's impact. as we've seen a number of times, transportation, of course, causes a number of impacts in the city. so, then, the e-i-r forces a look at a reduced project alternative and explore how we can mitigate the level of service impacts that we've see in our local network. if we pursue [speaker not understood] under sb 375, we will no longer have to do that. and then we will no locker have to look at work inducing projects specifically cumulative impacts related to vehicle impacts in global warming and regional network. that doesn't mean that we won't have to consider transportation impacts on our local streets, though, for this one. wanted to highlight that. so, with that, what staff is going to be doing over the course of the next number of

months is once the e-i-r is finalized, we're going to take a look at this again and come up with some guidance as to what is appropriate to use the sb 375 c-e-q-a process. but ultimately i don't anticipate that we'll be using it a lot because our existing exemptions, particularly the community plan exemption, offers many of the benefits that this would as well. so, we're a little ahead of the game in implementing our cpe currently in the city. and then just to go about -- there are a number of draft e-i-r issues that we're working with mtc and abag on resolving. there's a lot of mitigation measures in the draft e-i-r and we're trying to sort out with mtc and abag whether if we do end up wanting to use the environmental review process under sb 375, are we then forced to implement all of the mitigation measures within that e-i-r? can we substitute some of our own that we think work better for our jurisdiction in terms

of applicability and our unique environment and so on and so porttion? we'll be working with them to try and clarify some of these things in the near future. thank you very much. >> thank you. thank all of you for that presentation. is there any public comment on this item? sue hester. not one person that spoke mentioned the fact that san francisco uniquely of all the bay area counties created a lot of plan by filling the bay. they're filling marshes, our entire bay front, starting with the golden gate bridge all the way to daily city's fill land. i have punished you by heming

in my map of fill areas and of sea level rise. the department has them. it doesn't register. we have designated the area for exceeding growth in areas that are marshes south of market and mission bay or bay hill. we have a fascination with creating problems in san francisco. and of all people, the planning department should not be making things worse. they talked about going out 25 years. i will be jane morrison's age in 25 years. and, so, a lot of you will be still around and active. we are going to have a problem. and if the planning department doesn't bring up the issue of the conflict between growth in areas that are bay fill, who is going to bring it up?

second issue, the other thing that really bothers me is that everyone ignores the displacement factor. we cannot build ourselves out of our problem. if we build high in housing next to affordable what is now affordable, what used to be affordable housing, and people decide there is a great opportunity upscale the housing, we wind up with a very expensive city. i don't know what the percentage of the planning department lived in san francisco when i moved here in 1969 and what percentage of it is now. my guess is it has had a decrease because people can't afford to live in this city. we have lost affordable housing. we have lost middle class housing. and we are getting a lot of really, really, really, really high-end housing, especially along the waterfront. people that can afford second

and third homes come into this city and the people that are struggling to stay in this city in a one and only home are displaced. so, if there is no comment from victoria on the map of sea level rise, it is unacceptable from the city and i guess i have to do it. but you make an awful lot of money in the planning department and you shouldn't depend on [speaker not understood] like me to comment on this all the time. >> thank you. any further public comment on this item? hi, my name is gary virginia. i live in the castro district since 1987. i hadn't planned to speak, but i thought i heard one of the presenters say that san francisco does a pretty good job providing low-income and affordable housing. i hope i heard that wrong because i can't believe that's true. we have all this development going into the upper market and

castro area and very little of it is affordable. since i've lived here, i've been evicted from a tenancy in common. i'm a person with aids for 20 some years now. my senior citizen friend who just died this year at 81 has been homeless ever since we were evicted as roommates because e couldn't find anything. we left a $1,300 two-bedroom apartment and i got lucky and found a place, she didn't. and she couch hopped for 10 years. i have other friends that have moved out of the city, out of the state, they can't afford it. and, you know, i just watched a condo across the street on hancock street sell for $6 99,000 six months ago. it's back on the market for $7 99,000. the house that was built next to my apartment that's rent controlled, the top unit went for $4500 when it was built a few years ago. it just rented out at $7,250 a month. if i lose my rent controlled apartment as a person living

with aids, i'm paying about $17 83. that apartment is probably on the market worth about 4500 to $5,000. where am i going to go? and to hear the plan say that you're doing something about affordable or low-income housing is really an insult. all of my friends who are senior, disabled, working, middle class, and i'm talking about friends that are making $75,000 a year, we can't compete with people coming in with high income that can do full cash offers on homes. they can come in and say, i can pay the security deposit, first month, last month, this month, and shell out 5 to $8,000 a month for rent. so, i sort of fell asleep through part of the long presentations, but that part caught my ear. so, thank you, sue hester, for speaking up. and i hope you'll look at the plan appropriately. thank you. >> thank you. any further public comment? okay. seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner antonini.

>> yeah, a couple of comments in regards to public comment. if, in fact, the sea level rise that is predicted occurs, it will be even more drastic in the south bay because that's -- there's marsh land down there that's also been filled below, or is very low. so, that would be an area of concern. that's not something we're talking about, although it's part of this whole plan. and on some of the other comments that were made about the waters, conservation, san francisco does the best and i think they should leave san franciscans alone. we're doing a great job, 108 gallons per day and a lot of our areas look pretty par muched because they're under watered and we don't take care of the areas. a few green areas we do have. so, let's get the rest of the bay area to cut their water use and not penalize san franciscans who are already doing a great job on that part

of it. then there was this talk about the priority areas in san francisco, obviously is one because you have a lot of very vibrant business center and you have a dense population and you have lots of transit in most of the city. san jose isn't really an urban area. it's really a big suburb and it's very spread out. very few people ride public transit by population. almost everybody drives. in fact, i read last year that three of our different seven muni metro lines each has more rider ship than the entire santa clara valley transit authority light rail line. those are probably the l, the m, and the j maybe or maybe not j, i don't know which they are, it doesn't matter. it shows how much more we ride public transit than they do. and as far as oakland is

concerned for priority, there really is thection ~ isn't a lot of business there. maybe there should be more, but as far as business, it's not there. so, actually if the region is trying to locate people closer to where the jobs are, i'm glad they're planning to create a lot of jobs in san francisco where they think they will be created because -- but you can't house everybody in san francisco. but probably wherever these growth areas for housing should be really close to transit, close to bart, close to areas where people can quickly get to business centers such as san francisco rather than putting a lot of housing and quasi-suburban areas where everybody is just going to drive anyway. so, i would suggest that you look at that. then i think the other thing that you have to target, i heard about this targeting predicting we're going to have a lot of seniors, we're going to have a lot of people under 35. i'm not so sure that's entirely true because you're predicting

145,000 new jobs and that's a lot and it should be that way. most of those are going to be business professional, educational, cultural, or tech jobs. so, what that's going to convert to is a lot of people with families in the 35 to 65 year old age group. and they're going to want a little bigger space. they're not going to be in cube ex, they're not going to be in micro units. they're going to want multiple bedrooms, they'll want some individual itity. if we build dense units, high rise units, you're going to reap what you sow. you're only going to get people who will go into those kind of places, but you will have all your work force commuting from someplace else because you're not addressing the housing they need. ~ you need to look at the areas in a western and southern part of the city where there's under utilized open space. i'm not saying we don't need open space, but we've got a lot of area that could be made

individualized family homes that would meet the needs of families. and instead of trying to make those areas dense, too, i think they have to be relatively dense, but, you know, they have to be individual homes. then there was the question about displacement -- well, the one thing san francisco has that nobody else has is rent control. and that is keeping a lot of the housing affordable that would normally in most places would be, you know, raising and displacing people. so, that's one thing we have that is different. and we have by percentage, though, a lot more affordable housing than most of the suburban areas have. so, i think staff was correct in saying we're building -- but we have to really realize that economic factors are going to occur and there is going to be change within cities in areas. it's not always going to be the same socioeconomic demographic. it's going to change. there are going to be

situations where you're going to have different people coming in a time goes on. it's always been that way in san francisco and it will continue to be. but i think you better look to address housing for the projected work force as i was talking about earlier. finally, with transportation, i didn't see a lot of things on your transportation study that i think your important 16th street, nobody has talked about that. that's a major transit corridor. we have to build at least light rail there. preferably a subway to connect mission bay with the bart station. the same is true for van ness, which you're looking at bus rapid transit. but again, it's a -- it's a u.s. highway. i really don't know where you're going to -- those cars aren't going away, they're going to continue there. and i mean, it's going to be a real traffic problem. somebody better look at alternate underground transportation in that corridor. the same, there was some talk about bart to the beach and the

richmond district as one of the heaviest traveled transit corridors in the western united states. we need rapid transit in the richmond district. and nobody spoke about a noe valley bart station around 30th street which had been talked about awhile ago. so, those are some of the areas that i think we really have to address, but i appreciate your report. i think a lot of the things that you're pointing to are good, but i think we have to make sure we are strong in our presentation to get the proper -- particularly with transportation -- the proper emphasis in putting transportation where people actually ride public transit and not having, you know, may be nice to have an irving ton bart station. i don't know if they're going to get the rider ship like we do into san francisco. thank you. >> thanks. commissioner sugaya. >> am i the only commissioner

that's confused about this presentation? there's a draft plan out, we don't have a copy of the draft plan. so, and there are supposed to be comments that are supposed to be made. and i don't know if this is the hearing to make comments since it expires next week. so, i'm a little bit confused. i appreciate the presentation overview of what's in the plan and where we stand as a city with respect to the plan and all of that, but i'm still not -- maybe you could clarify. >> >> commissioner, sarah [speaker not understood]. yes, part of the reason for this presentation is we are very interested in your thoughts on the issues. i apologize we did not put copies of the plan or the e-i-r in your packet because they are enormous and they are online. we didn't expect that you would read it all, although i guess we should have given you that opportunity. i apologize.

but we are -- staff's per spec speculative as we represented today, growth numbers, it's supporting what we ~ as a locality planned in terms of transportation, it is relatively supportive and far more supportive than business as usual would have been of san francisco's transportation system. and environmental terms there are a couple areas where we need clarification on. so, we do plan on at least presenting some comments representing what we presented to you today, but we are hoping to hear what you might like to add to that. >> okay, thank you. i guess without having the whole plan, even big as it may be or not having read it online, at this date it's a little difficult for me to make comments on it. >> thank you. commissioner hillis. >> a question on funding. i know in any plan, it's important to figure out how to implement it and there's

reference to funding for transportation. but funding for affordable housing has tended to come from local sources. you mentioned redevelopment, which is -- was a good local tool for redevelopment funding. has there been any movement on replacing redevelopment with an alternative that could fund local transportation projects and affordable housing or are we still at kind of the same place statewide? >> as far as we know, there has been no movement. there has been definitely interest throughout the region as abag putting this forward as a platform for how do we advocate for supportive funds, but no action towards what that tool or mechanism might be. >> in this plan, though, is there a reference in the plan? i mean, you mention you know, this being a tool for redevelopment [speaker not understood]. >> two things, the last chapter of the plan is called implementation and advocacy piece and they layout a platform. these are the pieces of legislative change and other

types of policies we need to pursue in order to make this plan successful. so, that's where the reference to finding the successor to redevelopment is discussed. the other thing i would mention, this actually came before the current plan bay area, but it receives a funding commitment in the plan. we did something called the transit oriented affordable housing loan fund or toa. and it's revolving loan fund that i think the very first project helps finance affordable housing development in the tenderloin. so, it's not >> aye. gigantic. it's definitely not going to solve the challenging affordable housing crisis in the region, but it's at least something. pretty much the challenge is the region has two tools at its disposal when it is taxed with this very challenging task of doing transportation plan that has a small set of the transportation funds, the region expects 58 out of that 200 some billion is what they

have some control as to where it goes. and then they have the regional has a need allocation where they can tell cities, you're responsible for x amount of housing and affordable housing and you need to zone for it. that doesn't mean it will be produced. and really those are the only tools they have at their disposal. so, considering that, they've done in my opinion pretty well. of course it's not going to solve all of our regional problems that were created over decades, but that's sort of my take on it. >> yeah, so, i hope this could be -- could lead to more advocacy towards reinstating redevelopment. that could be focused in pda's that are extremely useful and tied directly to development and can fund affordable housing. we see [speaker not understood] stalled i think generally because redevelopment has gone away. so, that's in an area we want to see grow. so, i think that's an important part of this is to figure out. thank you. >> thanks. i would follow-up with commissioner h-- so, i did go d

mtc and get the plan and the e-i-r and it was very heavy to carry back. the e-i-r specifically names the placement as -- forgetting the word -- as an impact. and it says -- i don't know how they measure it. says that the increase is going from 21% possibility of displacement to 36%. so, regardless of how you measure those numbers, it's a greater impact on existing housing. and all the pda's in san francisco or most of the pda is all in areas that seems like it already has existing neighborhoods in it. so, i think that concentrating all the growth in the -- most of the growth in the region is going to san francisco, oakland, and san jose. and then most of the growth in san francisco is going to the pda's. i really do think this places a lot of strain on the existing housing and it's not coming with any additional money. it's not coming with any mitigation plans. i think we have to ask the mtc to put mitigations into the plan

. the only mitigations that i read in there right now are about during construction, that they would somehow mitigate displacement impact during construction, but i really think the impact comes after the housing is built. so, i think that's something that this planning department should look at. another impact that i thought was alarming was that it looks like vehicle miles traveled may increase in already dense areas where there is already level service f. so, i think that means basically in very congested areas where we already have bad air quality, there is going to be even more congestion. and i assume that is low-income neighborhoods, communities of color. i assume that is areas in san francisco that really don't have any more tools to figure out how to increase the air quality. and, so, i think again that is something we need to ask mtc to help us think about since we're talking most of the growth through this plan. i do have a number of questions

about what the c-e-q-a exemptions might mean. so, there's been so much attention put on supervisor wiener's and kim's legislation. i think they both have a hundred times the impact of their legislation in terms of c-e-q-a streamlining. so, i wanted to understand, we already have the community plan exemption and the infill exemption. the community plan exemption is like eastern neighborhoods, western soma that was just passed, but it's in the community plan areas, right? >> that's correct. >> but the possibility of getting sb 375 exemption, does that happen across the entire san francisco? i saw the map that was called the tpp map and it looked like it was all of san francisco. >> that is our understanding and we'll be seeking more clarify exaction on that, but that is certainly the way we interpreted that. so, that is correct. >> so, then, does that mean that a project in the richmond or the sunset or, you know, name some other area that is

not in the community plan, can now go through this very streamline process as opposed to the existing process? >> almost. i just wouldn't call it really streamline because it has certain criteria that had has to meet and some of those criterias for an exemption are exactly the same as it would be under a categorical exemption. it has to meet eight environmental sort of criteria that has to do with impacts due to historic resources, hazardous materials, impacts to biological resources, all the very same things we would be looking at under our normal categorical exemption procedures. so, i mean, we have yet to explore really truly under that there are ways we can utilize the sb 375 c-e-q-a, you know, benefits of this particular e-i-r once it is certified and once all the litigation frankly is done on it. and so we'll be exploring that further. from reading it, it is quite complex to be honest with you, which is why i shy away from the streamlining portion of it.

you know, we're not really sure that it's all that much different in terms of looking at other kinds of c-e-q-a area topics that we typically look at out in the richmond or really any portion of the city. >> there has been a lot of discussion about that, and there is an implication that sb 375 creates a lot of c-e-q-a streamlining. our take on it is that it really doesn't. there are certain changes that allows to happen that victoria mentioned earlier, but what i'm understanding is that it's not -- that it isn't a whole lot different from what we do today with exemptions. if it doesn't meet those criteria, it can't get an exemption under 375 and therefore would go into a negative declaration like it would be today or a full e-i-r. so, it's -- it is really complicated and it is very nuanced as to what those benefits might be and whether they're really benefits or not is a question in and of itself. >> it does seem very

complicated, but i think that -- maybe i can pose an example. if there were a project out in the richmond that required an e-i-r but it met what would be a 3 57 exemption, does it mean it would no longer have to go through an e-i-r and it only has to study additional impacts? >> generally that would be true. if that were the case, my interpretation would be that it would be exempt anyway, that it probably wouldn't require an e-i-r to begin with. >> so, the impacts that the sb 375 or the plan bay area e-i-r covers may not be impacts that we would have had to study otherwise? >> you can look at it that way. the one benefit i would just add to -- you know, piggyback on director ram's point is and it's the ones i outlined in the presentation, is that if we do have to do an e-i-r, there are certain things we won't have to look at. and i think that's one of the benefits of pursuing c-e-q-a

review under sb 375, particularly as it relates to impacts cumulative impacts that are acknowledged in the e-i-r, of which there are a lot. you mentioned [speaker not understood] one of them. i'll just say sea level rise, thank you, ms. hester for bricking that up, is felt to be significant in the e-i-r with six pages of adaptation measures trying to deal with that. but one of the benefits i think will be if we pursue environmental review under sb 73 5, we may not have to look at for example cumulative impacts on the regional level, things like that. but it is complicated and what we'll be doing in the near future as the e-i-r comes to conclusion and is certified, we'll be working more closely with our city attorneys and coming up probably with a matrix -- [speaker not understood], but with a matrix of if the project meets certain criteria, what is the best path and what are the benefits of per suing regular c-e-q-a