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 and we try to have links on there to the department of building inspection wherew -- they have a website to look at complaints. i go often on their website for nov's on the property. that's the basics of what i wanted to present and be available for questions. >>supervisor scott weiner: the issue we were discussing before with miss bossky about

there not being a centralized data base, i would imagine planning would need to look at different departments. do you have any thoughts on how we can move to more centralized code enforcement system in terms of information and data basis but also actual management and running the system? >> i think that's an excellent point and through development of the stella system that we asked about when we went to the expand ability of this, the port uses stella, we are using a system that is off the shelf that is especially for us in our processes. right now it's going to roll out primarily with dbi and planning but in the future with other divisions within the agencies would be great. public health can use that and they would all be in one

system. i think that would be great. right now it's being developed for our two agencies. i think we are going live in march, march 30th. i think we are rolling out earlier than the department. >>supervisor scott weiner: great. seems to me whatever the violation might be and you go into system if it is a more unified system and you see they also had building code issues, health code issues and this and that. i don't know, i do think if you have folks that are repeatedly violating codes that it becomes a blatant disregard of the system and there should be a way of coming down a little stronger with some of these egregious repeat cross code violations. i think it would be helpful that you don't have to look at a bunch of different databases or make phone calls. >> definitely. right now it's

manual. you are having to query a department but if you access at your finger tips, that would be helpful. i know that management is discussing having a management division which would be helpful but would have to be somewhat limited in scope to the housing and house ability issues and some of the functions of the planning department where we have such a wide array of enforcement matters to have that all rolled into one agency that is reviewing some matters that is problematic as the planning code is amended four times a year. it's a constant battle for our department to train our staff and keep them up to date and if someone different in the department is enforcing the planning code is even more challenging. even with the department of building inspection is doing a great

job to bring these things together. maybe something along those lines. reason >>supervisor scott weiner: thank you, i would like to call the fire department and then department of public health. also someone from protective services because especially with the hoarder situations that department can be very helpful. we have mitch wong our fire marshall. welcome. >> good afternoon, supervisors, thank you for having me here today. i just

want to let you know the way the fire department receives complaints is through a phone shall, letter, website or to our firehouse. letters come to the division or to the chief. we respond within 1-3 days depending on the severity or availability of our inspectors. looking with that just a little bit background, what we find as problematic cases are tough for us in hoarding. the second would be the buildings are not complying with dbi's legal use. it's illegal in laws and public assembly. then the third thing that is problematic for us is when we

can't make contact with the building owner using the tax assess or information on using the planning department real estate software, it usually uses the assessor's records. >>supervisor scott weiner: we got a memorandum from chief white at the beginning of this hearing left here for us. i want to read you one of the sentence." " it should be noted the fire department does not have a mechanism at this time to keep data on these or progress of violations at this time "can you comment on that sentence? >> right. our oracle system was designed for us so when it was designed, those

requirements weren't told to the designer and they weren't captured. we have a way to track referrals to us like the department of public health and police department, but we don't have a way to track when we send something to the building department. >>supervisor scott weiner: is there a thought to how to correct that? >> yes. with your hearing of today, that is in the works, i was going to have our it person come today, but he's bids -- busy. we have one for the entire department. if you can see in our office, we have one for transparency and we have one that is going to involve budget and it staff because there is only one person basically that can manipulate. >>supervisor scott weiner: right, i can't comment on the technology. it just seems to me that you are seeing this as a reoccurring theme today

that we want to have really good transparency, easy access by the public and some better centralization. >> right, this has been a new issue for us and we have not had a need to address it, but we will now that it's been brought up. so the way that we move our complaints to the city attorney would be first we usually issue a notice of corrective action with the timeframe. we work with a person if we can get contact with them. even after contact if we still don't get resolution, we'll issue a notice of violation and again since we've made contact, we'll try and work with them at that notice of violation stage and it progresses to a citation stage which carries

$1,000 per incident citation process. after those multiple interactions or non-response we send a complaint to the city attorneys. also we are part of the city attorney's task force so we get called a lot to be a member of that task force from another agency. we are not the ones that are initiating it but we get asked to participate. >>supervisor scott weiner: on your next slide there were 147 cases sent to the city attorney? >> right. those are basically either, we hardly ever refer to the city attorney because we ourselves can handle most of it and/or like in a hoarding situation housing or building takes the lead so

then we are asked as a secondary. >>supervisor scott weiner: what would be an appropriate to bring the city attorneys office? >> from us? it would be illegal public assembly or something in our jurisdiction which is high rises or working with boma. very very few issues working with boma. moving along, you can see in the next slide from 2008-2013. the inspection is less than 8 percent. the most inspections that we do are dbi construction inspections and most of those have to deal with high rises or r 2's large apartment houses and hotels, that sort of thing. so we

have no jurisdiction between 1-2 family homes. a lot of the hoarding issues start with dbi. this is another representation breaking out each year. you can definitely see that it's all less than 1 percent for 2008. last year inspector statistics it's almost 22500 inspections. of those 52 were city attorney related. 19-17 were complaints and 379 were notice of violations and all others

were 89 percent. the question was asked is legislation needed? the fire department feels that memorandum of understanding really adult protective services and department of public health and city attorneys office can start off with our primary issue with hoarding in addition to the other agencies typically dbi, planning and all of that. but the first 4-5 that i mentioned are key to this whole thing. wane -- >>supervisor scott weiner: in terms of the jurisdiction, are they all over 1 and 2 buildings? >> no. >> why is that? >> through the fire code and california building code. also when you are talking about a unified code enforcement

thing, it's very difficult. you have to make changes at the state level because we are given jurisdiction through the state fire marshall at the state level. >>supervisor scott weiner: right. that's a different discussion. i know we've had some different discussions in the past and the local level. i think we have more latitude locally than the fire department thinks. so, are you saying understate law it would be illegal? if there is a fire hazard created in a single family home and someone is creating a fire hazard? >> you have to determine what the fire hazard is. when you are talking about the hoarding situation on grand view. we are concerned we egress only and we make sure it's clear