guidelines say that, yes, we need to find something that is least impactful to the community. that's why you see some disapproved sites. for the majority of them, if there is no alternate site for the community, we don't really entertain that alternate site and we do approve that location because there is no alternate site. at&t is loud to place the cabinets in the public right-of-way. did i answer that question? >> i think so but there are situations where the department. >> there is 9 sites that we disapproved at this point. cohen supervisor malia cohen: thank you very much. at this time i would like to bring up john

quan to answer more questions. let's bring the higher ups up. mr. quan, i know you are not necessarily prepared to speak. i wanted to share with you candidly, the purpose is to air out grievance. i have heard grievances from constituents and i'm starting to hear a couple things on the city side. i want to bring it out into open. i want to be able to solve some of these problems. what i hear is straight up we are never in disagreement between you and your staff and at&t particularly in terms of the permitting process. how is it solved, i would imagine it would be frustrating, but talk to me about this. >> supervisor department of public works. obviously it can be challenging. we disapproved 9 locations for obvious reasons. one of the challenges

is when we provide noticed and receive objections, in the objections we get complaints from the community saying they don't like this site and that stops. okay, you don't like this site but by state law at&t is allowed to place this by this facility. there are many departments that the people who are objecting they don't know they can offer potentially alternative location in these hearings. yes, we recognize and acknowledge that it's not a good location for the community but no alternatives provided to the department. at&t has a right to place these in the public right-of-way which they do and that is the discrepancy that the department continues to face. as lynn has pointed out clearly we have 20 days to evaluate these alternative locations that are very linear as she stated that we either approve it or disapprove it.

that is one of the biggest challenges that we continue to face that this community doesn't want it at that location but there is no alternatives provided to the department in these hearings or box walks. so it becomes for us in many cases very linear as miss fong indicated. >> how do you solve it? >> i think some of it is education that the public needs to recognize that the order as it relates to surface mounted facility already states that alternative locations maybe identified and should be evaluated. there should be in my mind maybe some education from the entities who are supplying these surface mounted facilities. as stated earlier pg & e works with

constituencies to identify the location and so when it comes to us, there is very little objection or the issue has been resolved. >> thank you. supervisor kim. supervisor jane kim: thank you supervisors, i had a question about the box walk. one feedback i got from constituent, they are asked to identify alternative sites and the feel is unfair that they are asked to do the work to identify alternate sites. why should the burden be on them to find alternative sites for them. the process to show case it's work to look for alternative sites. >> that's a very good question. one thing that i must acknowledge that these box walks are additional steps that

at&t had offered as part of their agreement. so really, it's not something that the department can really enforce from that perspective. it's better to answer from at&t in this case. supervisor jane kim: does dpw ask to find for alternative sites in case of protest? >> there are times when we've been asked to also attend these walks to help facilitate the situation and we are doing that. supervisor jane kim: previous to the walk, at any point in the process, dpw doesn't ask what work at&t has done to identify alternative sites on private property? >> as part of the application, at&t after they demonstrate to us they entertain and try to

ask property owners to locate on properties in some cases where the buildings are set to the property line, in some cases there is no opportunity. they are able to demonstrate that they did value it and as part of the packet we'll accept and review that based upon that information. supervisor jane kim: thank you. supervisor scott weiner: thank you. with that -- oh. supervisor malia cohen: i know we want to go on. i have a question for lynn real quick. it goes to the interpretation or when there is a disagreement the interpretation of the guidelines, maybe you can speak to your interpretation as well. >> dpw has frustration in working with the guidelines. we are trying to make it more

clear. for example, supervisor kim asks about alternate sites. why is it on the property owner to find alternate sites. the property owner doesn't know the guidelines and when at&t in terms of trying to reach out to community like they say they do just has a box walk during business hours and the property owner can't attend, how well they know that they are supposed to provide alternate sites, how do they know they are supposed to be within 300 feet. they don't know. i think there is a huge room for improvement on at&t sites to communicating why it can meet or wouldn't meet. there have been many hearings where the public even not knowing the guidelines come up with alternative sites. i will give you an example. 82 rhode island

was a site proposed by at&t. it was against two trees and bordering a high wall which created this tunnel effect to the property owner. he said why don't you go up 30-40 feet. we looked it up and it was a perfect site. it didn't have that tunnel effect. there have been multiple locations where there are sites where a community does come up and provide alternative sites because they know the area well and they didn't even know the process but at&t did fail to be or was not able to tell them, hey, you need to come up with alternate sites. the only response that they do hear from at&t was come to the box walk and we can talk about it. supervisor jane kim: thank you. that was very helpful.

supervisor scott weiner: we'll call mr. blake man from at&t and then we'll hear public comment. we want to thank you for your patience. as you can tell there is a lot of complexity here and we want to know how we can improve it. thank you for being here today. >> thank you, it's a pleasure for being here today. thank you for inviting us to participate for this informational hearing. as we mentioned i had prepared remarks but i'm going to try to abbreviate them so i'm not repeating what you have already heard. the planning did pursuant to title of the ceqa guidelines on february 22, 2011. that was an appealed by the board of supervisors and that appeal was rejected in

july of 2011. they sought relief from the superior court and deemed that the exemption had been lawfully granted and it's being an appealed. since then at&t submitted permits to the department of public works. it should be noticed that we have been able to identify 348. rather than putting two cabinets we can combine the geography into one cabinet reducing the number of over all cabinets we are going to need in san francisco to complete this project. of the 363 permits 181 sites have completed the process and they have been secured. 133 were processed and placed and the

remaining 45 are in construction or will be starting construction very soon. the remaining 180 of those are in the permitting process from the initial submissions or hearing or what not. brought up earlier in the franchise fee in july of 2011 at&t has paid a half million dollars. the gross receipts go to the sf again fund and in addition to the 5 percent go to support sfgtv and the public access channels here in the city and they combine to almost a half million dollars. and that mentioned also what was mentioned earlier on the permitting fees on top of that and while our set fees we also pay for cost so oftentimes our permit cost are anywhere from

$2-5,000 in permit fees we pay to the city in addition to the blanket fees above the cost that we have to reimburse the city for those cost. at&t is excited that we have been able to bring our new suite of protocol to the city. i would also note that we have created 350 full time jobs since the appeal was denied and 10 management positions, most of them are for installers for service. we have created a new garage to house these people, all three of the garages are supervisor cohen's district. at 1336, 13th street and we'll be

hiring another 30 technicians and we have met our goal in the mou at least a third of those are city city city san francisco. we will send notices out and look at the location of the existing cabinet. it has to be paired with the existing cabinet. and we will look up the neighborhood based on the city's website and send a notice electronically to all of the neighborhood associations and constituencies of the record and planning website for that neighborhood. in that notice it's an e-mail that

comes from me. i send it out by e-mail informing the community that we are placing a new structure in their neighborhood and the location is within 300 feet and stresses that i'm interested in working with the community and neighborhood to try and find a most acceptable location to the neighborhood and ask them to get back to me within a time certain. if they do want to work with us we can know that and send our engineers out to work with them. some neighborhoods are in more response and others don't respond at all. we have some with no responses and to yes, we want to find out more and we take that information as we are applying for the actual permit. absence any interaction with the community at any time or after it's taken place we take

our formal application to the city through the preapplication process which the city has a right to review our permits. we submit a sketch and they determine whether we are in adherence with the guidelines that are in with the surface of mounted facilities and the public notice. and then we commence with the public noticing phase in addition to the postings required in that order we do mail by first class mail to all of the residents and property owners within 300 feet of that proposed location. we keep all of those addresses on file so we have a record of what we sent and who we sent them and at any time with dpw or member wants that information we have that

available. once a notice has gone out and if there is any objection to dpw about that, we then will respond in like to how they commented to dpw and they forward all of those issues to us. if you send us an e-mail we respond with an e-mail and just clarifying in the statement, in that e-mail we respond we try address whatever questions or concerns they have. sometimes they have a question of why you are doing this and what's the purpose and the graffiti? we try to answer that question and we mention we are willing to meet with them about the proposed location and that proposed location if it's not to their liking we are willing to entertain any alternative locations about an alternative site as long as it meets the guidelines. we will schedule that meeting. i will tell you we now schedule them during business hours. we've

scheduled them at night, we've had them on weekends, holidays, mornings and afternoons. whenever we have scheduled them, someone comes back and says i don't agree with the time you scheduled this. if we have it in the morning, they want it at night. we try to work with people as much as we can but there is a process we have to follow. we try to make a meeting and tell them if they can't make the meeting we can talk to them on the phone about their concerns and reschedule another time if we can get other people to move it to that timeframe or let them know that there will be a public hearing and they can be noticed by dpw. supervisor scott weiner: when you say the clock is ticking by the dpw order, can you talk about that? >> once the order or complaint or inquiry has been filed, the

order states the city has to schedule a hearing and make notice of that hearing. it's essentially 30 days out from the time the complaint is made. supervisor scott weiner: so if in practice, since there is one on file you get an objection there might be a series of objections for the box within 30 days of the objection that hearing has to occur. is that in practice is there flexibility there. it seems to me that, i'm not saying it can drag onto infinity, if it ends uptaking 60 days because it takes more time than anticipated to schedule a box walk, it seems like it's not a rock solid deadline. >> it is a rock solid deadline and some of our concerns is that some of those are taking 120 days. to their credit they are doing a much better job in

scheduling that in a timely fashion. we can schedule the box walk but we don't want to leave this open into infinity. supervisor scott weiner: i guess what i would say and i know this is everyone that is role that they play in obviously with at&t you have statute of rights and law and you want to move in expeditious matter and the process for at&t. on the other hand for folks living in a neighborhood, this is a permanent visual change in their neighborhood on their block, and so i'm not suggesting the process should be lasting into infinity, but it seems to me if it locks into 60 days, it's not that big a

deal. >> keep in mind, the way this process reads is a hearing will be scheduled. at&t has taken voluntarily upon ourselves to schedule these meetings to try and admit great and -- mitigate and work with the community. again the way the process reaches, the mitigation is not required and the hearing will be scheduled as you come to the hearing with your grievances. we want to work with the community and we've made an effort to try to work with the community and in fact in a number of times we've had locations wherein deed we have been able to work with a community and find an alternative that works and we are happy to move that cabinet to a new location when we have the consensus of the communicated behind us. supervisor scott weiner: this is helpful because when we move the order we know what some of the issues have been. there is

not self-evident or sacred to that. that order can be changed. supervisor? supervisor jane kim: i will try to keep my comments brief because i know there is many from the public that want to speak on this item. i'm curious to how many fte's you have to the graffiti issue? >> the graffiti in fact is everybody's responsibility. it is part of their process that if they spot graffiti on any of our equipment or vandalism or anything that is in an unsafe condition, they are required to abate it on the spot and they have equipment on their trucks that allow them to do that or if it's something that required more than they can handle or if there is a lot of graffiti, they are required to file a ticket and we can send our

crews out. we do submit a report and that report will show the vast majority of time we are abating the graffiti within a time frame. not only what is reported to us, but also things reported internally from our technicians who report those things to be cared for sometimes before our customers even see them. i will fully admit that there are some cabinets that we go out almost on weekly bases and paint because they get tagged over again. i don't know where you live, but there are several in your district that for sure almost on weekly basis, in fact i can have a standing order that we clean it on a daily basis. supervisor jane kim: you can ask a follow up. supervisor scott weiner: in terms of how long it takes at&t to remove the graffiti once it

gets reported to you? >> you shall within 48 hours. anything that gets reported to me. i'm happy to show you on a quarter basis to demonstrate that. sometimes it's done the same day. if it's done early enough in the day we can get that out. i have been aware of things come to me where people had not reported it and for whatever reason 311 miss identified it and it didn't get to us. when we get it, i'm very happy are the track record of abating graffiti. supervisor jane kim: my fault to that is we even heard already with the hearing today it can take two months to clean up the graffiti. i'm curious what the obstacles were? >> i know anecdotally people

have come to a hearing and said that, but i don't know that it has taken two months to clean up. if someone would share that, i don't know that to be true. supervisor jane kim: for the ones that do get regularly tagged, i think it would be a good idea to put it on routine maintenance because it helps save a lot of the energy with the constituents that are frustrated with that process. if you already know there is a track record on that. my last question was regarding when dpw does disapprove a permit. i'm curious to what your thinking was in appealing those decisions. i know the relationship with the city is just as important and for us we wanted at least some level of oversight around the process. of course the boxes are going through and they are in boxes that are really important i think from the city's

perspective and supervisor's perspective to not move forward. i wanted to get your thinking around when you decide to appeal those? >> sure, our appeals process from wednesday is that the city's order is clear on the process that should be followed and i don't believe it was followed. it uses words like "shall" and "will" and we don't believe that process was followed. it's to put on the record. it's that the state law under the act that was passed that created state franchises for providers like at&t that's states that permits should be

viewed within 30 days. we believe they should be reviewed on a timely action. supervisor jane kim: there is only 3 you are repealing of the 9. >> we went out and found another location which was acceptable to the community. they eventually, those other six eventually got built, i believe. i have to double check my records. i believe they all got built in an alternative location that was more acceptable to the community. >> when i look at the number, 185 approved, 9 disapproved. i think it deserves another conversation even when at&t can appeal. just a conversation for the sake of the relationship and kind of understanding the significance that some of these have for offices and neighborhoods. >> some comments about those, i

would be happy to share with you. supervisor jane kim: i think i might save more of my comments and questions for later. thank you very much. >> once the hearing process, to pick up where i left off, the box walk, of the community, any alternatives we look at and see if they meet our standards. a frank conversation, when you are dealing in a city as dense as san francisco and in an urban population, the reality is when you have a cabinet at a fixed location and you need to place another infrastructure within 300 feet and you have a facilities mounted order you find there aren't many

alternatives and that's unfortunate. oftentimes we are hard pressed because we have to keep so many feet away from curb cuts and intersections and fire hydrant and tree roots and it's difficult to go out and find alternative locations. that's something that we are willing to do. oftentimes the narrative goes when we are meeting with the community is will you help us figure out a place that might look good because we want to know what the public is thinking as far as where an acceptable place is and we can investigate if that particular location works under an order and if it doesn't then we can suggest like this place maybe we can suggest some other location similar to it that doesn't have these pediments in the order. when the process is allowed to work we have on many many occasions have been able to work with the community to find alternative locations that

met their needs and desires. i will fully say it doesn't happen all the time but it does happen an it happens with regularity. i believe. also we have addressed some of the communication that we've had, supervisor wiener about the screening and paying for the maintenance. what they have agreed to do with the additional maintenance and that's part of the fee we pay, but i think it's different for rain guards. but after a year or two, that averts to the property owner. supervisor scott weiner: do you think the property owner should be responsible to take care of that greening when it's designed to compensate to have a large metal box near your house. >> the city feels it's fair.

supervisor scott weiner: if it's not fair that the city requires that, do you think, i mean -- >> if that's the city policy to stress that upon their property owners, i don't think it should be thrust upon us, i do believe we should help foster the planting so that it takes and it can survive, but beyond that we are not a landscape company. if the city wants to require landscaping in the public right-of-way we are happy to contribute to that cause but not for on going maintenance. we are required to maintain our cabinet in person and petuity but i disagree with you on that. supervisor scott weiner: if the city would take back responsibility on maintenance of the trees, do you think they