of the smaller projects, if they run out of funds, they can sit there for a while until they get sold or refunded to complete the job. >>supervisor scott weiner: if i have a building and start to work on it and i remove half the building, i'm not exaggerating but the entire building is removed. it's no longer a structure, obviously with the intent to rebuild, for whatever reason i run out of money. it's not habitable, at what point, okay, 6 months, a year, what if it's 5 years or 10 years later. what is the ultimate way of addressing that situation. i agree we should be very tolerant with people to give them an opportunity. we want to give people every opportunity to get their building in shape

and give them resources and help but at some point, the balance tips a little bit. so how do you address that eventually? >> it's very complicated in those cases. if there is no movement on the building and the permits expire we can issue another issue notice of violation and we can send another notices and maybe to the city attorney. that's a long process in itself too. >>supervisor scott weiner: how many complaints a year do you refer to the city attorneys office? >> we only can take it so far. as code enforcement division, we will issue the notice of violation, second notice of violation, bring it to sharing, bring it to an order

of abatement. at the time of order of abatement, the city attorney will decide to accept the case. >>supervisor scott weiner: how many of you plural, dbi how many cases a year? >> we referred two last year to the city attorney. >>supervisor scott weiner: out of how many violations did the department determine, how many of those total? >> complaints filed for last year were 202967. code of violations were 120, new cases shall cases for director was 1238. order of abatements issued were 298. you have to look at this last statement, cases closed were 1161. we

were able to work with them to get compliance and close the cases. >>supervisor scott weiner: is referral to the city attorneys office last year do you think that is low or do you think there should be more? >> it's low, what we did is we doubled now the director sharing and code enforcement. during the budget cut we lost 1/3 of our staff. now we slowly got our staff back we doubled code enforcement and doubled the hearings to be heard and we issued more order of abate ments and working with the city attorney now. >>supervisor scott weiner: is two referrals to the city attorneys office lower in the past years. and by the way, the way we fund your department is ridiculous. you

lay off a bunch of people when the economy slides and you don't have enough people when the development activity picks up. it's a bad way to fund but unfortunately it's the way we fund. how does that compare to other years? >> back in 2012 we had 7 referrals. 2011, 8 referrals and 2008 we had 4. >>supervisor scott weiner: okay. how many cases are currently unresolved and pending? >> i don't know how many cases the city attorney has. >>supervisor scott weiner: not the city attorneys, but how many cases are unresolved right now. >> if you take for 2013, we received 2967. of those, we

had 1078 that have orders of abatement issued and of those in total 1078, 970 went to -- about 400 of those would be vacant buildings. >>supervisor scott weiner: but my question is not how many are a result from a time period. because presumably if something isn't resolved for one calendar year, it will keep on the books. i'm saying currently today whether it was filed last year or 10 years ago how many current unresolved or pending matters are there in the building division? >> in the code enforcement division where all the electrical and plumbing cases referred there is 1078

outstanding now. the balance then at the various stages where they have permits issued they could be held in planning and if they are not resolved, then they are going to be referred to the city attorney. some of them will be minor issues, but anything that involves major issues they are going to be referred to the city attorney. >>supervisor scott weiner: that's about 2 or 7 or 8 a year. >> you maybe aware of the last year or so there ma has been a major focus that have developed as a result of the down turn. we had inspectors laid off. we have inspectors over the inspection smaller in complaints. now our balance of inspectors are back. we are anticipate over the next 2014, we assuming that you approve

our budget, we are anticipating anne enormous number of referrals to the attorney. in the number of 12 months clearing the backlog, wait for all of those resources towards for the city attorney which receive a lot of staff time. i'm really glad that we are having this hearing today because that will give us a launching pad to justify referring a lot more to the city attorney. >>supervisor scott weiner: as part of the budget process i will refer dbi to work closely with the mayor's office to ensure that that particular need is taken into account. because as a member of the budget committee knowing that if there are any challenges, because we work with the mayor's office budget a lot in a collaborative way and i think this needs to be a priority. >> and things we can do to

encourage to enormously increase the budget for the city attorneys we really appreciate that. >> we also work with the city attorney right now. they come to help us review cases that key be reviewed for future litigation. >>supervisor jane kim: i don't have a copy of the presentation here. did you say that 2,000 cases went to directors hearings? >> cases scheduled for directors hearing was 1248 last year. >> as a directors hear you heard 1200 cases. >> last year we heard 1238

cases. >>supervisor jane kim: that's a lot. >> we doubled the hearings. we had housing and building on 1 day and now we have separate days. we've increased it to the point that as much as we can do at this point. >>supervisor jane kim: that's a lot of cases. >> that's why we are working with the city attorney to see which are preferable for litigation. >>supervisor scott weiner: i don't think you need to go through every single step. i think we have a general understanding of that. >> okay. do you want me to continue? >>supervisor scott weiner: you can continue. i think mr.

sanchez has to lee shortly. we are going to get to him after you are done with your section. >> in non-compliance code violation? if the property opener owner fails to comply a notice is scheduled for the directors hearing. the directors hearing is a transition to enforcement which leads to inspection and potential order of abatement. directors hearing for monitoring fee review. outstanding fee review. filed reviewed by inspector for directors sharing and date chosen. the hearing packet at least 10 days prior to packet imposed and property. after the directors hearing and order of the abatement imposed at the property. if improved

the case can be referred for the city attorney referral. finally when all permits are complete and assessment cost are paid the order of abatement is revoked. complaints received 2013, the number is higher to this if you have any questions. tip cass types of complaints. work without permit, work exceeding the scope of the permit, unpermitted change of use of occupancy. construction sites, vehicle damage to the building, building fire damage, landslide from storm impact. problematic cases, cases where adjacent neighbors are not willing to assist and filing multiple complaints and cases with serious impacts on properties. night noise

impacting residents from construction sites. access would not be likely. home owners do not have the financial means to comply with the violation. vacant building cases where the owner doesn't have the resolve or interest to comply. the steps to refer to the city attorney. notice of violation issued, referral to code enforcement, order of abatement issues, approval by litigation and obvious and serious life safety impact. recordkeeping: complaints are tract. mandated time frames are adhered to in order to adhere to expeditious

compliance. maintaining records electronically. what's being referred to as the city attorney, cases with serious life safety impact when enforcement is stalled or no longer effective. where building structures and failures involve immediate action the city attorney legal direction. landslides where there is a serious potential for imminent hazard where the city has potential liability. >>supervisor scott weiner: i think we covered the city attorney referral. great. i think supervisor cohen has a question before we let you go. >>supervisor malia cohen: thank you. okay, so we've actually as i mentioned before in my remarks had a very detailed report for the civil grand jury and i'm going to refer back to some of the issues that were raised. in particular, while i didn't agree with everything that

the grand jury reported out, their findings did warn some of the findings did warrant a follow up. i have two questions, my first one is the grand jury report found that only the dbi housing division was collecting monthly violations fees in the fees in the effect of $52. the code enforcement, the building and plumbing and inland empiral e -- electrical side were not. are you now collecting this fee? >> the fees are now collected after the report. >> can you tell me how much the fee is? >> $52. >> the same? >> yes, we work with the city attorney on that. they are

the city code enforcement and monitor the case. >>supervisor malia cohen: do you have any notices of violation longer than 12 months? >> i don't have that. >>supervisor malia cohen: okay the report i believe found that approximately 28 percent of the nov's were open longer than a year. >> what we've done with notice of violation, we looked at all the notices of violation and looked ought those that we can. we currently monitor those on a monthly basis. we do a spreadsheet and if we see those behind we ask the inspector to follow through on the notice of violation. as far as the numbers we have right now, -- >> the grand jury report is a very good report, but there was one major concern i had

with it and that was if you put down in any report the department an open case, what is an open case? an open case could be a case that came into 2 days ago, we could have our inspector out there today. he could discover that the case wasn't merited and the case could be closed tomorrow morning. we can have another type of open case, it could be 8 years old and construction done 8 years ago. they may have permits and the permits expired and we could take an order of abatement and collected fees and referred to the city attorney. a permit expired that they could have renewed it yesterday and today we would not be able to serve that case to the city attorney. so to use the word open case, it's meaningless

unless you know what particular address you are talking about and you look at the complete history and you see what the time lines are in that case. if you have experienced along the viewing cases you can tell will be slow, were we quick, did we drop the ball anywhere, was there an occasion for stalling. you would have to do all of that research before you can make sense of any number with regard to open cases. i hope that gives some overview. >>supervisor malia cohen: no, but thank you for semantics on nov 's. how many remain open for longer than 12 months. i noticed the department has been able to provide this information before. >> if i just speak to code

enforcement, right now regardless of time whether it's 1 month or 10 years in our code enforcement now we have 10150 open cases. of those. 982 have been sent to hearing, but the balance then naturally they are still open, all of them are open, but like over two-thirds of them have been processed to hearing and our procedures are exhausted unless some are referred to the city attorney. if that answers your questions. with regard to the building inspection division, they maybe able to answer that for you. >>supervisor scott weiner: okay. thank you. >>supervisor malia cohen: do you have an answer? >> i can come back with that number. i don't have that number today. we comply with violations. there were almost 8,000 complaints. we look at

every complaint and we are able to move on these complaints. we have probably over 4,000 complaints. we take the notices of violation and we look at them and move them to code enforcement. some of these have to do with planning but they take a long time. some of them are complying and we have to wait for the work to be complete before we an abate the notice of violation. >>supervisor malia cohen: thank you, we are not calling you here to embarrass you or beat you up, we are just calling on information that is important to us and want to convey that the department is taking care of. thank you. >>supervisor scott weiner: thank you for your presentation. i'm now going to ask the zoning administrator, scott sanchez to come here on behalf of the planning department. >> thank you, scott sanchez for the planning department.

i want to provide the overview of the planning code. zoning code, as such the code enforcement for the planning department located within the division i supervise the zoning and compliance division. within that we have a small code enforcement function that kristin hob is the manager of and many of you have worked with miss ha and worked with outstanding enforcement. code enforcement has a general violation which is a discrete section of our code enforcement work and general code enforcement which we deal with landscaping and signs and advertising and formula retail uses and we work with mayor's office of housing with those matters and illegal commercial units, toeb -- tobacco and

paraphernalia, etc. afc 2008 we didn't have a robust mechanism to deal with enforcement matters. with 2013 we have a planning code which gives us strong tools to deal with this. since that we've been very successful in signs. half were found to be illegal and removed. if you look at the area of all the signs that were removed it would cover the area of a city block. there are quite a few signs that were removed. many of these were smaller signs as a large number but a large area of signs. in addition in 2008 we mentioned 76.1 to give us

more robust tools for penalties. other than that we didn't have penalties without referring to the city attorneys office. this has greatly improved our efficiency and beginning in 2008 we started using tools successfully and on occasion where someone does not come into compliance have assessed penalties. our project begins with a complaint and the complaint can be made by e-mail and made to the planning commission counter and by fax where we have a website for code enforcement. initially as we get a complaint, we started over the last couple of years to send a postcard informing the property owner that a complaint has been filed on their property and this has been quite successful in getting people to compliance. with our backlogs complaints would get filed and people wouldn't know that they have a complaint until people do

work on their property. this helps us get cases resolved. if there is no response to that, tl then there is an issue of code enforcement notice and a penalty issued of $250 a day. then the violating can demonstrate how their property is in compliance ora appeal to the board of appeals. >>supervisor scott weiner: how many in enforcement staff does the department have? >> i was going to get to that. thanks for prompting me on that. for code enforcement

staff members beginning at 5 and we have one staff member devoted to working on general advertising signs. right now we have six planners as of today and going into our office we have six enforcement planners and we have one manager and one support staff for that function. >> and i know it's been a challenge in terms of staffing. i know we've had situations with the billboard, the illegal billboards that go up. it's really completely as you know out of control. and i know that there has been litigation and the billboard companies are awful and litigious in terms of their behavior in getting to legal time down. how long does it take to get an illegal sign down once a complaint comes

in? >> for now the turn around time is pretty quick especially if we have a repeat violate or provision. if someone is repeating the violation, the penalties can be higher. in terms of general turn around time, i think we get that notice out within 30 days and we've had really good success within the last couple of years of getting the signs to come down and this has been a result of getting these down and in the last decade of this. we have the a survey of all the signs. it's very difficult for someone to argue that a sign they just put up yesterday is somehow an illegal sign. we have good enforcement on that. it could be like where a sign would go up on a property and we initiate enforcement and it

may be somewhere else. if it's somewhere else on the property, they have violators and we are on it. >>supervisor scott weiner: generally for example, in my district on the northwest corner of castro and market, it seems there is a new business opening. it's a little bit out of control at this point. i know complaints have been filed but for the average resident looked into it and nothing changes and there is seven or eight businesses logged. how does this comply with, how do you deal with situations where a property owners if it just doesn't seem to care enough about whether or not to violation. >> they did have a proposal there to have a development

project. so, i think there is on going litigation on that and their attorneys have contacted our department about the enforcement history. it has been problematic. it's getting more designing issues and if they had parking that was illegal there, they had even a food truck that was operating in violation. >> they have had almost every violation going on at one time usually out of control. >> in terms of having to find new ways to violate the planning code and we do our best to try to resolve that and issue enforcement notices. it's not generally through the general advertising sign program there, it's through our regular enforcement means. >>supervisor scott weiner: it's a continuing on going issue. >> they have come to compliance and come out of

compliance somewhere else. we don't have repeat violence for regular planning code violations. it's one thing to look at if the property owner continues to violate the planning code in different ways, that if we have the ability to have maybe stronger enforcement actions. >>supervisor scott weiner: i would be happy to work with you on that. >> to finish on our process. we have the notice of violation issued can be an appealed to the board of appeals or administrator hearing. then we issue a final hearing which can be sent to the board of appeals, if the appeal to the board of appeals and they uphold our decision, then the penalty is $250 a day and we refer the matter to the city attorneys office. we can show some of our numbers and in terms of the numbers that do get referred to the city attorneys office which is similar to the department of building inspection, there is not a lot of cases that get referred and i would say that

is probably more a factor of people coming into compliance. i think we have a high success rate of complaints. if we go through last couple years of complaints we have a trend of increase number of cases because we have ways for people to find out how to make complaints on our websites and we have seen a number of increased cases closed. they can get an abated through the enforcement process. we also work with the city attorney closely throughout the enforcement process. it's not just a matter of getting to the extent of our referrals and referring to the city attorneys office. for the state of the academy university where we work with the city attorneys office as the case develops and progresses. we do work closely with the city attorneys office

and coordinate with almost every agency in the city. with the department of public health, we work with medical dispensary. and also working with restaurants and entertainment commission, places of entertainment businesses and work closely with dbi, public works, street trees and state department as well, we have worked very well with different agencies. chris ha has everybody on speed dial and coordinating and about coordination, we have our information available on property information. if you click on a property you can see if there are any open or closed planning complaints