make is about [speaker not understood], we're calling it political and it probably is. i'd like to talk about land use sensitivity, sensitivity towards populations which are being served and ultimately location of work time criteria. i happen to live along a line which a large number of older population is living who do not have cars, who also are going to retirement homes along the way, appreciate the block by block ability going to shopping and transferring on the bus. i'm talking about chinatown and the lower part of -- middle part of nob hill and russian hill. so, i think to look at it in a very kind of micro way would be important because part of the attractiveness of san francisco and the transit lies in the ability of convenience. many people over time chose not to have cars because they could indeed within half a block,

walk to a strains it stop. that is important to the dense populations in the city and i hope you're doing a very, very thorough study before you decide to use the stop elimination as a tool to implement savings. i do think you need to give yourself a break and i see complimenting you com pearl speed by city, we happen to be the only hilly city of chicago and new york. you get three bonus points which you can credit yourself for efficiency. >> thanks. i would just like to say real quick, every neighborhood, we're taking a look at grade as well as land use considerations when we were making those -- >> including age of population, for example, you have a large

aging population in the van ness corridor, with large apartment buildings being occupied primarily with older people. i think that needs to have a close look at. >> commissioner wu. >> thank you. i want to echo commissioner moore's comments. i think that obviously consolidation can become very political, but maybe the way to take it out of politics somewhat is to really closely consider the land use. so, when considering where though eventual stops go, where is there residential, where are there schools, where are cultural institutions or small businesses? i think that as transit become very popular which is something we all want, it is also becoming somewhat of an amenity in this city, really fashionable. but there is a population of people that need transit they don't have enough money for a car. so, i think it's important to make sure all of the needs of the people in those neighborhoods are already being

metmet or will still be met. >> commissioner sugaya. yes, on transit times and speeds and comparisons between cities, the numbers you gave out i assume are aggregate all of the different forms of transit that exist in the cities; is that right? we're counting subways and buses and whatever else. is this a break out between the different modes and the comparison -- i don't even know if that's fair. >> so, the numbers i gave were the surface transit -- the surface transit average speed. so, some of those do include different modes. it's not just bus, but it is all transit surface, like the subway was included. >> oh, all right. so, there is a more fair comparison, then, between. and this is kind of a funny question, but you're familiar with pay by phone? >> excuse me? >> pay by phone? >> pay by phone? >> where you -- i have it on my phone.

>> yeah. >> and you can pay your parking meter with it. >> right. >> now, have you seen any information about the effectiveness of that or its success with respect to encouraging more driving in the city? >> actually, i can't speak to that. i'm not sure. >> you might want to think about it because you go to a park and you have to have your 8500 different quarters? in i didn'terglove compartment to feed the meter. ~ if you go to a restaurant, you're always looking at your watch shall to see, do i still have my 30 seconds left to dash back there? ~ the advantage of pay by phone, although they do charge you for it is that once you've punched in the number of minutes, then they send you a secretary message on your phone that says you have like three minutes or two minutes or something left.

and you can add more time to that meter from your phone. so, it would seem to me that suddenly we're making these even more accommodating to the driver through this particular method. and i know i've used -- i don't use it all the time but when i go to a restaurant because you don't know exactly the length of time you're going to be there and it's convenient to be sitting there and get a warning that says, ah, you know, you're going to run out in a few minutes and you can just punch in more minutes. so, it would seem to be an incentive. it's just a comment. >> commissioner moore. >> there is one comment i'd like to add, looking at increasing the availability of adding bicycle transport on the buses, which is at this moment very intermittent and there are certain routes where that might be of help, that is balancing

the need for bicycle, wenttioner changes or people are tired or whatever. and the second thing, that is probably not being able to [speaker not understood] given the current technology we're using which is indeed sometimes not helping the helpfulness. scheduling buses or intermittently serve on the same frequent of routes. >> is there any further comment? commissioner borden. >> [inaudible] making it more than 2 bikes could be on the bus would be helpful. >> okay, thank you very much. next. >> commissioners, if there's nothing further, we can move on to item 11 for case no. 2013.0647t - article 2 simplification and definition consolidation. this is also an informational

presentation. >> while aaron is setting up there, commissioners, i did and fordthv members of the public, wanted to advise that we just received via e-mail from the representative of the d-r requestors for items 16 a and b, that they are withdrawing their discretionary review application. >> good afternoon, president fong and members of the commission. are you excited? i know i am. how often do you get a chance in government to make something more efficient, which is what we're doing today regarding

transit. so, what i have here, i have props, is the san francisco zoning and map and book from 1947. it includes the maps and the zoning code, and the zoning code has four pages in it. i'm going to let you look at this so -- >> what is the date now? >> i'm getting to that. [laughter] >> and then what i have here is the zoning code from 1979. it has six articles, 236 pages, and it's in one handheld convenient binder and a stylish beige. look at that if you like. >> watch your back. [laughter] >> what i have here is our

current planning code. volume 1. volume 2. and volume 3. it has 11 articles, 1,335 pages and three volumes. so, somewhere between 1979 and 2013 we added 1,0 99 pages to the planning code. ~ [laughter] >> thanks for the city attorney for letting me borrow that. i didn't want to bring it all the way from the department. so, to put this in some sort of perspective, 13,000 residents or 4 square miles, that make it about 27 pages per square mile

and 600 residents per page. in comparison, you have new york city which has 2.85 million people spread across 200 square miles and its zoning has 3,595 pages so that's an average of 11.nine-pages per square mile, about half as much as and 275 residents per page. so, what does it mean? it's just a simple way to illustrate that san francisco has a very complex planning code, especially for the size and population, even in comparison to a more complex, although arguably not amazing as the city of save. so, like new york we are a very dense city. and the fact we're the second densest region in the country, i learned west hollywood is denser than san francisco which kind of blew my mind.

and we have challenges and concerns that you don't get in other places. there is a short supply of land which makes it difficult to meet our housing needs. this addresses infarcting housing, inclusionary housing. this includes manufacturing industries in san francisco so that not all the industrial land is used up for housing. we have code -- sections of the code dedicated to improving streetscapes and planting trees. sections dedicated to bicycle parking. of course, we have 38 neighborhood zoning districts as well as formula retail controls to maintain neighborhood character. then we also have unnecessary complexity. and it doesn't mean just because we have a complex code that the code needs to be inefficient and hard to use. we have three sets of these definitions in the planning code. you have to flip through the different sections of the code to find information for the zoning district. we have a lot of redundant information in the code that

doesn't often get updated when it should. and we have significantly different organizational structures throughout the code as well as confusing language. so, how did we get here? well, as you saw, the original code is very simple and it maintained the same basic structure until 1987. all development standards and general definitions were located in article 1 and use definitionses and use controls were located in article 2. region 1 was four-pages, the second one was 200 some pages. 1987 came along and we added commercial districts to the code created in article 7. from the time article 7 was dramatically new way of organizing the planning code and thinking about land use primarily because it uses vertical controls to regulate uses. however, because the structural

differences between article 2 and 7 were unable to use the definition in article 7. shortly after article we added article viii also addling a separate section to the code. so, what we have today is what you could call the rue goldberg machine held together over the years without anyone taking a step back to see how it could be more efficient. the proposal i'm introducing today is an attempt to tackle two of the most obvious areas of infish ~ inefficiency in the code. where are we going? what's next? we want to take something that is very complex and has a lot of functions to it and a lot of information in it and features and we want to make it able -- easy to use by any user, kind of like the ipad. now, the department has been thinking about doing this for sometime. in fact, when article 7 was

added to the code, there was discussion about reorganizing article 2 to mimic it and deliver to local cities, even draft an ordinance that reworked article 2 ask moved definitions into article 1. and this work is the basis for how the department is proceeding on this project. my illustration, though, and kind of excitement about this came from a trip i made to san francisco loma last year for exhibit on [speaker not understood], a famous industrial designer that made everything from record players to coffee grinders. and his quote kind of stood out to me. there were a lot of quotes, but this stood out. there is no room for irrelevant thing. we have the resources. irrelevancy is out. he was talking about the things in your life and the objects. but i transferred that to the planning code, getting rid of irrelevance because we don't have the resources for that.

so, actually, based on the design principles, i came up with four guiding principles on how we're proceeding with this. ~ first one is innovate. i want to create a format that better utilizes web-based access. the second one is to make it useful and accessible and pro side a centralized location for zoning districts that provides an overview of use and development standards. we want it to be sustainable. we want to create a format that can change and expand as we had more complexity to the code. and, of course, we want to make it consistent which is something that's not [speaker not understood] or create one set of use definitions and another format throughout the different zoning districts. so, the main goal of the proposal that we're just introducing today to get your feedback on, we want to reorganize article 2 so it's more useful. create zoning parts or use charts with the zoning control

tables. we want these tables to be centralized location [speaker not understood]. this will not only help planners review projects, it will also help members of the public who have questions about certain projects or their own zoning or developers. secondly, we want to rationalize the youth definition. like i said, article 7 and 8 have their own definitions [speaker not understood]. finally, we want all zoning districts to use those definitions. this last goal will have to come in the second [speaker not understood] project, which brings me to the two phase approach. this large ordinance you will eventually be seeing, it will be larger than the northeast legislation that you so thoroughly enjoyed. and it will also help staff focus on fewer sectionses at a time.

we'll consolidate the definition into one location and reorganize article 2 into a format that is similar to articles 7 and 8. phase ii, we'll delete the use definitions in 7 and 8 and modify so they use the consolidated section in 102. this is the other work we've done in the department to present the concept to you and get your feedback on it. the next step is to host at least two outreach meeting to the public to just explain the proposal to them, get some feedback from them on that, get them family with the concept. then we're going to finalize the ordinance phase 1, transmit it to the city attorney's office for their review and hopefully we'll be able to bring the ordinance to the commission for introduction in september. phase ii will then start when phase 1 is complete, hopefully by the end of the year. so, that concludes my

presentation. there's more in the executive summary about the peril of what we're doing, and i'm happy to answer any questions about my presentation. thank you. >> thank you. is there any public comment on this item? commissioners, andrew junius. i really couldn't help myself. [laughter] only a land use attorney could really love. although i have to admit i'm a little disappointed in not getting another one of aaron starr's fantastic animations that drill forward the legislation around the restaurant definition. this is absolutely an effort long overdue. it's going to be extremely important, i mean, even for practitioners who look at the code every day. it's cues fusinging and frankly i thought the code was going to explode when the eastern neighborhoods passed and they squished another few lines into article 2 that together, it's gotten a little crazy. i hope to participate in it as well. thank you. >> thank you.

public comment on this particular item? at this time i just wanted to be able to discuss about -- because i know it's getting ready closing, this is about various housing for the -- at the end of the sector, i think there was like 1400 block market. i was deeply interested. i was displeased when i saw the information that me and karen had submitted was public information. somebody changed the information and took the "i" out of mima and significantly i am just -- like disgusted. however, i wanted to be able to close about the transit. i had active one before with the drivers, when we were getting to our housing loin indications and they were talking about the reduction of the time. make it short and simple. i requested two of the drivers the exact bus to get to the

pacific heights area -- >> ma'am, i'm sorry, we're talking about consolidation of the planning code, discussion on transit is no longer on the floor. i understand that, but it's significant about the planning in the codes for the new construction. there were three [speaker not understood] that i had built in russian hills and pacific heights. so, however, when i got to the destination, the bus did take a long time getting there. it was with discomfortable. [speaker not understood]. when people make complaints and say [speaker not understood], i let them know there is evident before i enter here. significantly about the planning codes, and i want to refer this to judicial counsel and i'll let judicial counsel represent me for other implementations regarding housing, banking or other [speaker not understood] semisable, i'll have that in writing. i think it is professional practice for me to be able to tell everything about public comment [speaker not understood] leave that for public comment.

thank you. >> is there any additional public comment on this topic? okay. seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioner sugaya. >> yes, it's a great comment, mr. junius. i think the whole purpose is to try to get rid of land use attorneys. [laughter] >> commissioner borden. >> yeah, i know we're not taking action on this today, but i'm fully enthusiastic. there are many people that come on the commission and ask if there is something i can do with the corridor [speaker not understood]. i look at the chart and ask scott and apparently i didn't. it is very confusing. for more transparency for the general public, it makes a lot of sense to be able to look at one chart, figure out the zoning and know the code and not have the confusion that exists today. these were on our website. people could clearly see uses. i think that would also be very helpful as well. >> commissioner moore. >> i shared the enthusiasm and

also want to tag onto mr. williams' [speaker not understood] it is time to curtail these [speaker not understood]. it is a great way to communicate plannings to the public. >> commissioner wu. >> i agree. article 7 is much easier to use as someone that reads the chinatown [speaker not understood] all the time. this obviously is the most technical topic and i am somewhat interested in how the outreach works. it would be a targeted audience that would be interested. the more we can make it accessible to a larger public, i think that's an important goal. and the last thing i want to say is there is a huge body of comes that we're [speaker not understood]. not too long ago -- i can't remember right now, but we saw an item where there was an unintended consequence of the leg asian.

i know that happens, but the more we can catch it on the front end, the better. >> commissioner antonini. >> mr. starr, i have a question for you. i really like the 1948 book and i kind of think it's what we should try to go back to. it actually has, in terms of industrial or manufacture, it has light and heavy, which is sort of what we have now in terms of pdr. and it has the basic things, residential, commercial, and i would think public is probably in there, maybe it isn't, but those would be the categories i could think of. i don't quite understand when we went to article 7 with neighborhood commercial districts. why couldn't they have been a subcategory of types of commercial district under article 2, which existed before, i guess? >> the way article 2 is structured, the use definitions

are integrated into the chart. it's hard to explain without going through it, but it's divided up, even the industrial uses. it's not simply light industrial or heavy industrial. it lists every type of use and whether that use is permitted in the districts. a lot of it is redundant. so, i think the idea was to get rid of some of that redundancy and streamline it. and that's why -- i guess they could have found a way to do it, but it was moving far as and not looking back. it sound like a great idea to me. whatever you call it, 7 or 2 or whatever number you give it, you should have one master list with broad categories ~ and the more detailed explanations you private equity them out into the -- neighborhood commercial would be an offshoot of commercial and certain things would apply, and specific neighborhood commercial may have different rules.

>> ~ it would be ease toy read because your subheadings would become more detailed as you go to a particular place. that means redoing the whole code, but at least you're starting to simplify it a little bit. [speaker not understood]. >> [speaker not understood]. >> following up on commissioner sugaya's comments, i'd say mr. starr is trying to get rid of the zoning administrator and i fully support. >> there you go. >> i want to thank mr. starr for all his work on this, very lengthy, very tedious and he's done an excellent job as he has other large pieces of legislation and i fully support the work he's been doing. and probably note the reference to rue goldberg was appropriate here because mr. goldberg used to work for the city and county of san francisco as a mayor. >> commissioner sugaya. >> i know we're only talking about going so we're not creating new zoning districts. the interesting thing in the zoning map that you passed up here is there is a zone called unrestricted.

and i think we should take a look at the city from that standpoint and then we'd have even less business at the planning commission. >> commissioner moore. >> this was printed in '48 and i didn't find so many areas where unrestricted applied. so, i just want to put that in for the record. [laughter] >> commissioners, if there's nothing else, we can move on to item 12. >> actually, jonas, i think the commission is going to take a short break here. and resume in about 15 minutes or so. [recess] >> thursday, june 20, 2013. like to remind members of the audience that the commission does not tolerate any did you say russianv or outbursts of any kind l and please silence any mobile devices that may sound off during the proceedings. commissioner, you left off under your regular calendar

item 12 for case no. 2013.0160t - castro street neighborhood commercial district use size limits. proposed ordinance. >> good afternoon, president fong and members of the commission. jessica look, department staff. [speaker not understood], the institutions in the castro ncd has been introduced by supervisor scott wiener. afterward i will briefly summarize the proposal and the department's recommendation. [speaker not understood]. >> good afternoon, commissioners. andres power with scott wiener's office. he's at mta authority board. the legislation would authorize the planning commission to consider a larger use size than the castro street neighborhood commercial district than it

would otherwise per milt. the legislation would provide a path forward for the aids foundation and their amazing project. as we all know, the hiv epidemic continues and is particular acute end up in the castro. and in light of the continuing federal cut to hiv funding which the supervisor is working kid gently to backfill, this project is really exciting and a welcome opportunity for the community. ~ this legislation would allow a larger use size to be considered fully by conditional use. currently this larger use size is not permitted. this authorization is carefully tailored and very limited in scope. so, for a larger project proposal to use this new authorization, it must be a nonprofit institution that provides direct services to the neighborhood like these foundations. i understand it is generally the commission practice to consider enabling legislation along with a project proposal and the supervisor respects this common practice. but in this circumstance it is important for the viability of

the aids foundation project that this enabling legislation proceed before the project is considered by the commission. this important milestone is amending the zoning to allow the proposed use is critical for the fund-raising success of the project. the planning code amendment needs to make its way through the land use committee at the board before the board goes into recess in august in order for the project schedule to stay on track. planning staff is working very closely and deliberately with the aidses foundation and with beginsler, the project architect to make sure the project is the best it can be. and planning staff and the project sponsor believe that project will be before the commission should this legislation be ~ approved very soon. as i said, a quick note, the legislation was supported unanimously by the small business commission and the castro cbd, the merchants of

upper market and castro and the castro eureka valley neighborhood association [speaker not understood] enforced the legislation. on behalf of the supervisor, i'd be honored to have your support. thank you. >> thank you. >> so, i'll just go over specifically what the ordinance would allow. so, first, neighborhoods serving nonprofit institutions with the use size over 4,000 square feet can apply for conditional use authorization. again, to operate in the castro ncd. specifically, it would amend section 121.2 to provide for this use size exception, and amend section 715.21 which is the castro ncd controls. this makes reference to the provision that use size generally shall not exceed 4,000 square feet except by the institution other large as defined in section 790.50 that is operated by nonprofit use and in a