the opportunity. >> yeah, i mean it is... if he is trying to the inspector through the complain of command to the chief in regards to the circumstances for modifying some of those costs. can we do that, if we take and we up hold the appeal, and this

appeal before us, can he then and can we then deal with the costs on a separate case. >> i am not sure. >> i am sorry. >> okay. >> but i do think that you have the power to wave the cost. if that is sort of with hearing that is where you were going. >> yes. >> yeah. >> so, i think that you do, and i mean, that you are fairly certain that you have the power to do that. >> can we wave. >> yeah. >> if it is done in 60 days. >> yeah. >> the forward costs. >> right, the back costs. if there is any back costs that are. >> agreed. >> agreed. >> yeah. >> i think... >> so we need to take that into the motion. >> yeah. >> so, maybe if you good to read back the motion because we are all on the same page here. >> good luck. >> and madam, secretary, may i suggest that we do this motion and then come back to the other motion of proposing the assessments. >> it is all in one.

>> will it all be one? >> it is all one motion. >> so the motion is, i believe that the motion is to approve and up hold the order of abatement and allow the 60 days to get the work done. >> and during the 60 days that there be some advisement with our code enforcement out reach program representatives? >> we can do that, but i don't think that is part of the motion. >> okay. >> and just to clarify, and that motion is based on your finding that the conditions are as stated in the nov. >> yes. >> and based on the testimony that you have heard today. >> correct. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> let's call the roll call vote on this motion. >> president clinch? >> yes. >> vice president melgar. >> yes. >> commissioner mar? >> yes. >> commissioner mccray?

>> yes. >> mccarthy? >> yes. >> commissioner lee? >> you know, i think that is what we are doing is a fair thing because if the work does not get done, it effects the tenant, i mean the tenant really should allow access, and if he does not allow the access he is actually hurting himself. and if the property owner can't do it, then, yes, you are right. the order of abatement should stand, so i vote yes. >> okay. and commissioner walker? >> yes. >> the motion carries, unanimously. >> and on to item s, general public comment, is there any general public comment for items that are not on the abatement appeals board agenda? >> seeing none, item g, adjournment. is there a motion to adjourn? >> motion to adjourn. >> second. >> second. >> okay. all in favor?

>> aye. >> aye. >> any opposed? >> public comment? >> and we are the motion carry and we are adjourned it is 10:03 a.m. and we will take a five to ten minute recess and reconvene as the building inspection commission. >> yes.

>> today is august, the 21st, 2013, this is the regular meeting of the inspection commission, the first item on the agenda is roll call. president mccarthy? >> here. >> vice president, mar? >> here. >> and commissioner clint? >> here. >> commissioner lee? >> here. >> commissioner mccray? >> present. >> commissioner melgar in >> here. >> and commissioner walk sner >> here >> we have a quorum and the next item is item 2, president's announcements. good moefrng and i hope that everybody had a good break, we took last month off and so it has been two months and so i have a lot of things to read into the president's announcements and so bear with me and i apologize for mispronouncing half of these names and forgive me. keep an eye as i go through them. >> edswe. eeny, and pamela

leven received letters individual dbi staff for outstanding customer service. and cora ella who works with the technical staff and (inaudible) who work in accounting administrative services. thank you, cora and kristine for do everything possible to assess dbi customer and a big thank you to the records management division and who received the thank you letter from mrs. jennifer (inaudible) thank you all for your excellent customer service. >> thank you to the dbi staffers, whose staffed dbi booths at the annual china town festival held on the 18th. there was an excellent community out reach to inform and it was an klent community out reach and gave us the opportunity to inform the public about the dbi., services, the special thanks to the acting director, tom hewe y who not only attended the festival but also played a

match against mayor ed lee, who he let win who was very sharp with his padal. and congratulations to the ping-pong team led by the team captain (inaudible) and it is an excellent showing against the top talent of the multiple departments that he have. >> acting director, also joined supervisor david chiu and the mayor's office, in a term of the discussion on july 31st, for the asian american contractor association and provided the important tips on the new, mandatory seismic law for the soeft story buildings and the audience of more than 100 contractors working this information from the city, and on july, they approved a total of 150 properties on 2000 delinquent properties. the properties are lien

properly listed and they were submitted to the board in june at 242 properties meaning that 84 property owners active and took, the required step required to the board's final vote to pay an overdue cost of assessment and code violations on those and code violations and thus, avoiders having their property encumbered even so *, 150 properties on the list is more than 40 percent higher than last year's final total. so we have a lot of work to do there. thanks to the effort of the acting director, and cooperation by david (inaudible) and sfusfd facilities director beginning on september third, and dbi will collect ssu, sd, school impact fees here at 1600 mission street and this will save the customers a trip to the school office. and take the important step closer to providing the one stop service that the mayor wants to see available at our

permit center and that is a welcoming news there. and i warm welcome to the senior environment and the inspector who is available at station 20. on the fifth floor. and on tuesdays and thursdays, ten to noon. to answer the customer questions about the new expanded toxic zone that was in front of us weeks back and another important step to the customer service thanks to the dph's for making this happen and also improved the one stop scenario there and thanks to ed sweney and the review staffers, the motion shake and dany lou for meeting on friday, august 16th with the four, person, japanese delegation doing research on building efficiency and we have a couple more and bear with me. thanks to the chief building inspector, and the new ddi team appointed by acting director,

on july 19th, to provide for the board that was effective on july 29, members including ron alan, (inaudible) and monitor and supervisor patty (inaudible) and we are working closely while it was expected to generate an increase in the condo recommendation and we received 220 applications from the initial 175 received as of july 29th. and dbi's goal is to perform the 60 inspections per week and to complete the final report in two weeks, dpw, which also played a vital role in the conversions is expecting 60 to 100 applications on july 29th, and in fact they received 15. and dpw also stated that all existing tenants and condo conversion buildings are to be authored the lifetime lease as outlined in these legislation.

finally, for those of you using a source of media, tools, dbi is now actively using twitter, and daily tweets are being sent to remind the customers about the dbi professional services as well as to alert the customers and the media and the general public to important events. take a look at the twitter and see for yourself and see for yourself, how many voluntariers that dbi already have. and that is the end of my president announcements. madam secretary. >> is there any public comment on the president's announcements? >> seeing none, general public comment will take the public comment on matters in the commission jurisdiction. >> the members of the public may aaddress for a period of time not-to-exceed, 3 minutes, and they may address to commission as a whole and not

to the individual commissions or department personnel. >> is there any public comment? >> seeing none, item four? discussion and possible action to approve and swear in a member of the board of examiners license architect seat. bradley sugar man, seat to expire, september 16, 2016. >> thanks, you can take this. >> okay. commissioners, very happy to introduce mr. bradley sugar man who we appointed at our last meeting to the board of examiners, for the license architect seat. and we just wanted to invite mr. sugar man to this meeting today to introduce himself to the rest of the commission. and also, to the members of the public. and i would like to give him the oath of office for the examiners today. >> and you want to tell us a little bit about where you work? and a little about about your background? >> my background, i work for

david baker and partners architects. and who primarily the multifamily housing for the non-profit groups and for profit groups. and mixed use, and residential, in the city, and as well as all of the bay area. and i have been with them, since 1999. and it has been a licensed architect since i think, 2003. >> and okay. that is general overview. >> okay. >> and any new questions or comments on the members of this commission? >> so, we really appreciate you stepping forward and taking this position because this probably a lot of work for the board of examiner to do this year with the new codes coming out and everything like that. so with that, i guess, i would like to issue the oath of office with you. >> thank you. >> could we vote on this? >> you have it. >> so... you have it, and the...

>> yes, are you going to read it? >> yes. >> so, we just repeat after me using your own name. >> i, i bradley sugar man, do solemnly swear that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california against all enemies foreign and domestic that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california. >> and i take this obligation without any mental reservation and purpose of evasion and faithfully discharge the duties upon which i am about to enter and during such time as i hold

the office, of a member of the board of examiners, license architect, seated in the city and county of san francisco. >> that i take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that i will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which i am about to answer and during such time as i hold the office of a member of the board of examiners, license architect seat of the city and county of san francisco. >> thank you, welcome to the board of examiners. >> thank you. >> could i borrow your pen so he can sign this? >> welcome, again. >> thank you. >> [ applause ]

>> we are on item five >> if i may i am going to be doing the restructuring of the agenda and i have spoke with the commissioners and if we may because of i am looking for people that i need for item five and six, are not here yet because we kind of schedule it for 11, if i may, i have requested from the public if we could go to item 9, and which is the discussion on a possible action regarding the civil grand jury report. >> okay. >> number nine? >> yes. >> on the discussion and possible action regarding the civil grand jury report. >> are we okay with that? >> yes. >> sure. >> okay. >> yeah. >> okay. >> so if i may, i would like to ask bill strong to come to the mic and maybe just give us an overview of where we stand with the grand jury response and

report. >> good morning commissioners, bill strong and legislative and public affairs. on the grand jury report, as all of you know, the report came out toward the end of june, and the way that the court works is the department with a certain amount of time to provide a response and it is the kind of formal response that we have been following where you either agree or disagree with the findings and the recommendation and we explain what the department is doing, to implement the recommendations. i can say that we are on target and we have a basic draft that i have sent to all of you for your review. and we certainly appreciate any comments that you might have, and if you could send to the acting director, and or to me.

and then, we will finalize these documents in time for the september 16th deadline. and it goes to the presiding board the presiding judge of the superior judge by that date. in general, i will just say that we do appreciate the recommendations, and some of the insights that the grand jury has provided us and many of whom address the areas that we have been working on for a while, and we are certainly continuing to work on. and item such as implementation of the business process for engineering, and recommendations that many of you know, will be to begin implementing and then when the recession hit and we had to layoff almost 30 people and a lot of that work got put on hold. but, other recommendations such as getting our policies and

procedures fully updated, and where we can put those on lines, and at a number of items regarding code enforcement. and we are certainly happy to address those. and actually we will have the first monthly report, on code enforcement cases, that was one of the recommendations later in this meeting today. so i would just say from the 30,000 foot level, i think that we are in, pretty good shape with our response. but, we would welcome any comments or suggestions that any of you have and i do hope that you will send those to us, as quickly as you can given that, it is already almost the end of august, and the middle of september will be here before we know it thank you. >> what we have here is the draft and copy. so this is the draft and yes this is not the official possible. >> we have not take be the

official position, it is a work in progress. >> you are asking the commission, to read through it which is a nice read of the 200 some odd pages. >> 237. >> okay and then maybe, just kind of agree or disagree or just say, look we would kind of feel that if you are tick ... articulated it this way. >> since this is a joint response from the department and the commission, then obviously, any specifics that you in the course of your reading will think, we have missed or that we need to reconsider, i certainly would like to know that. and so that the response that goes the official response, is the satisfacorty to all of you and the departments. >> commissioners? >> yeah, i want to thank you,

this is... as we know, as was the grand jury report, which i think that all of us really appreciated and it is nice to have outside eyes looking. and so, i am curious that there is a couple of ones that talk about you know, public perceptions and especially one that we in the draft disagree with. and i wonder how we projected what the public perception is. >> that is probably one of the only public perceptions study that has been done involving the department we initiated with an outside vendor in 2008 and that was published and in fact we are submitting that as an append ix. for many people who may have read it several years ago and have not read it since, we do

have in the budget, i knew, the study that we would be doing in the coming year. and which was also actually recommended at the time that the first time that every three to five years, that we would take a look at this and we would take another fee study and mix of a study. so i think that it is always a little slippery slope to talk about public perception that is not authenticated or based on actual data. and by that, we are all familiar with the newspaper stories about things going on in certain department and our friends of the public utilities commission have been dealing with this fairly recently for those who pay attention to the media. and i just think that it is a mistake to use that as a basis

for the decision-making, when in fact, it is not factually founded. and i just think that we all need to pay attention to those kinds of details, before we go off, and make whatever opinions different people may have. >> okay. >> thank you. >> so i appreciate the department's work on the draft. i think that it behoof us all to read it very carefully and see what we think. i think that this probably no secret that i actually responded to the grand jury report before this, and now that is lengthy and that is because there are pages. and so i am sure that the department and i submitted my views on the report to the director and other commissioners so that people have that and i am sure that some of the points my be repeated here but i have to

look to see if i could find them. and so i think that you know, we will go through this, and i think that just to echo some of the stuff about public perception and the department, and i think that what we want to do is to make things as clear as possible. so there is as little room as possible for the misinformation in terms of the public perception and that kind of stuff. so any suggestions that i think have come from the grand jury in terms of transparency and even technical, better, technical reporting, data, i think is very helpful. i think that some of the things honestly that this commission and some of the staff have been working on as well. which i think that you have alluded to that we want to update some of our data, systems, and we want to make sure that things are much more

accessible to the public, and in terms of our processes. >> thank you. >> and i appreciate your response on the topic about perception as well. and you are right, if there is no facts supporting those accusations, i mean, i don't know how to respond to it or i would know how to respond to it. but, maybe, in discussion of how to change that perception, maybe, our department, ought to go out and find those facts and maybe we ought to go out and do the audit and do the interview and get the data to support the fact that there are no problems or there are no what do you call that? >> perceptions. >> yeah. >> so this has to be submitted by september 16th so we will not have an opportunity in

public to review >> your next meeting is the 18th and the court required deadline is the 16th. so, apart from any comments that you can send us, and so that we can finalize and submit the document, i think that is about the end of our time. >> or maybe, we have a couple of meetings, where we are going to be doing something else. if it is possible, we could add an agenda item to review the further draft, on the fifth or the tenth. >> well, what is it a requirement that we take action on this draft? before we submit it to the court? >> john alma from the city attorney's office, in order for the letter to represent the position of the building inspection commission, you would have to take a vote and have at least four members agree to a direction where

ofttimes, a commission wants to respond, they may, be con census and can the president or someone on the commission to write a letter or give some direction to the staff to write something. or there is a letter before it, like you have today. and it has already been prepared and there might be some tweaks around the edges but in order for it to stand as a statement and a letter from the building inspection commission, you would have to vote. would it be enough without the commission taking a stand? >> yes. the thing that i want to say this morning after the initial review is that one, i appreciate the methodology that is used for making the response, and namely the taking

on of each. and laying out a review plan outline and bringing forward the past work that has been done as evidenced and i appreciate that methodology and i will give it more scrutiny as we go. but thank you. >> i just have a little bit of a concern with the time frame, and want to get more input from the city attorney about how we should address it. because i feel like if we are going to do a collective response and that is when i wrote my initial response, i did it individually because i don't want to violate any sunshine rules by communicating with the majority of my fellow commissioners which i am sorry that i was not able to do. and i feel concerned about this too, because how are we going to have a discussion, about an issue whether we agree or disagree if we don't have a

meeting. before the date when the response is due? >> because, you know, if two of us, feel that this is a great recommendation and the other five may not. i would certainly like to be persuaded and otherwise, but how do we work that in? >> so i am wondering if, sorry. may i? >> please. >> and i am wondering if it is actually we are all ready to take the position on this? are we not? so, i did read this over the weekend. and that the commissioner mar's response as well as, your wording was stronger but the positions that you took is consistent with what the department's response is. but you know, i do think that

it is a responsibility, whether we are legally required or not but i think that it is our responsibility as a commission to vote on it and to know, to answer the court. >> commissioner walker? >> i read the grand jury report, we have had that longer and we just got the draft, more recently, and i want it on record, just to say that i really appreciate the work and the hours and the interviews that the grand jury did in presenting their position on some of the things that have been perpetual issues with our department, this is not, our first rodeo with the grand jury either. so, what i will say is that they in that grand jury, they acknowledge that we are moving in the right direction. and i think that as with many of us on the