lawsuit gets filed and it doesn't go to court, then we also have to do the reinspection to implement the injunction or stipulated agreement. all of those things are the types of elements that a department has to contemplate whether or not they have the resources and staffing to be able to support. >>supervisor scott weiner: thank you. we'll now move to mr. lourey from the building division. good afternoon

supervisors, dan lourary, deputy director of inspection services for complaint process and procedures. filing a complaint. a compliant is received by telephone, e-mail, referred from another dbi agency, from the board of supervisors office, 311, visits to the counter, department of building inspection, letter of complaint. building inspection. the evaluation occurs within 72 hours of receiving the complaint.

currently within 48 hours. site investigation. building inspector attempts to gain access. regarding the validity of the complaint. if there is a code violation apparent. if access is not possible, leave notice to request access. if adjacent property where access is granted. the case is closed if violation doesn't exist or continue the case for violation. this is a sample of notice for violation. request for access. this is a sample of a door hanger we use when we can't gain entry. results based on investigation, if a violation is verified, a notice of violation is issued. if a violation is not verified, the case is closed.

if documents are requested for enabling appropriate action. if access is not possible, a request for access is left at the property door, door hanger. a letter is also sent to the owner and a letter to gain access is scheduled. if a second attempt is unsuccessful, another request for access is left for the property. another letter is sent requesting access. requirements for compliance with those violation. time of filing, object obtaining work on a permit established, documents, monetary fee documents. >>supervisor scott weiner: i have a question, so i understand you have a very well delineated process, but we've had some situation and i can only speak for my district

where there have been some pretty extreme, i'm sure there could be more extreme but some very significant situations where it drags on. i can think of one at 23rd and castro where they removed a huge chunk of the building with some project that then stopped and it turned into annen campment and i remember seeing it when i was campaigning bay in 2009 and we got a call a few weeks ago that it's the same and we got another call where one portion of a building was removed including the staircase and there was a complaint and seemed nothing was happening. i guess question is, is the process working in terms of getting actual enforcement where you

have these extreme situations where a chunk of a building is removed and a project is started and never ends. i'm not talking about six months later but years and years later. why are those, why do those sometimes not appear to get addressed? >> a lot of the complaints you are talking about is they exceed the scope of the permit and we stop the job. it then gets referred to planning. sometimes it could take a long period of time to be approved through filing process. >>supervisor scott weiner: that's one situation where a project stops where someone exceeds a scope and you order them to stop and refer it to planning. but i know there are other situations where people for many reasons have nothing to did with the scope and they may at some point run out of money, there could be a million other reasons why a project stops in the middle

or there is no project and the building is falling apart where it's a blight to the neighborhood and a danger. there might be a variety of situations, planning may or may not be involved, but regardless, it's just to the outside observer living in that neighborhood, it's incredibly frustrating that years go by and nothing is happening. why does that happen? >> it could happen as you mentioned, supervisor, a project could run out of funds, it could sit there for a while. sometimes they lose their funding. i noticed a couple projects where the banks were going under, a lot of these large projects they sat there for a couple years and they got refinanced. some 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.