still present. plus, they said in the report that everything was clean, but if you look at the lab reports the numbers don't match the claim that everything had passed. a this point after that they've tried several times to do more shotty inappropriate attempts at doing things. they try today hire movers to move our property out which have nothing to do with abatement. they were terrified when they got there, hadn't been told about the contamination and didn't want to put themselves at risk. they hired another group to clean for just mold. as you can see there is lots of mold, not just the led and asbestos.

then they took most of our property out. some of it is still in there and they've refused to clean the led and asbestos and have no intention of cleaning it. they're trying to get around any kind of regulation that they can and they've spent great amounts of time, they've spent from december 1 of last year until november after the director's hearing doing nothing despite us begging. we have never stopped them from entering. we have asked them who is entering these days because we realize the trend whenever they said somebody was going it was someone else. they would say a certified person was going, turns outs it wasn't that person at all. i'm afraid i have to cut you off.

other public comments? anybody willing to come up and speak. thank you doctor how /ard. >> i have a question for you. doctor howard, what is your response to the indication that you have refused to surrender possessions? what does that mean to you? >> so what i think that they are referring to is the because we are still -- after we had to evacuate, we were still -- we're paying hotels an paying the rent and we were paying the rent for months. we went broke and had to take out loans. all of our belongings still remain there because we condition afford to abate the /aeu /pwes asbestos and the led on our possessions. they have also not gone forward in trying to get back possession because they know

that in front of the judge they would lose because the facts are all here. we have all the testing and so they haven't going to route to gain legal possession because they -- it's a bad story. all it is is a story and it's -- so as i understand it, legally we still have possession of it. our belongings are still there accept for what they took away and this is what it looked like last week. except for what they took away and this is what it looked like last week. >> i'm really sorry for your loss. a: >> thank you. >> just a couple things, notice of violation from joe, when was that issued? >> issued? june. >> and so my understanding is they must hire somebody that

has a certification to do it? >> correct. >> does that mean they did not? >> correct. >> i see a detailed abatement plan from forensic analytical dated february 12, just a couple days ago. so before that, there was no attempt to have a certified person clean? >> so before that they hired a person who put their certification there, but the certification is not active. it's an expired entity. >> that wouldn't have taken care of the notice of violation anyway. >> exactly. and mainly because he was willing to not do things the right way in order to let them get away with what they wanted to. and this recent one is also not certified and he had not written a protocol that addresses mold or asbestos. led and asbestos.

>> forensic analytical is not certified? >> to our understanding, based on the department of health. >> i think they are, but rose mary would probably know about their certification. so the notice of violation that joe walsh had issued is for led only, not for asbestos. >> the department of health very compartmentalized and joe is only the led person. we were not able to get the asbestos person because we are only one family. >> if somebody with the proper certification and did all the cleaning for the led -- >> mold. >> they would have to do that first before they touch anything else, they would have to do the led first. are you will be to let them do that if they presented a plan

for that? >> this is -- the ironic part is that we actually obtained protocols and everything from licensed people back last summer because they wouldn't do it. we presented them with multiple bids, multiple people of getting this done, begging them to do this, and they refused and we believe it's mainly because of the threats -- he wants us gone, we're under rent control, and now we've cost him money and that kind of they thing, but all we've done is asked for the led and asbestos to be cleaned properly and our stuff to be cleaned ed properly and they've refused. what they've done is now taken a cheaper route by cleaning mold and getting rid of our stuff so they can try and trick

anybody again into saying okay, it's gone, but the asbestos is still going to be there, the led is still going to be there. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> time check, do we have to go be out of this room at a certain time? >> shortly, yes. >> shortly? >> what's our option here? >> we can go ahead -- we'll just go ahead and try to continue with the meeting. >> i have a question for the department actually. i was just wondering for even the led and asbestos abatement, there's permits that need to be pulled and have the owners

moved on that and our inspectors -- i'm getting confused about where is the led and asbestos coming from? my understanding, at least from the own attorney was that it came from when there was external work being done on the building, whether there was paint or whatever, sanding from the old paint that it blew into the apartment, but in some of that fire department, then we have permits -- once the health department found that there was led involved didn't they have to abate that and take the proper precautions, you know, to abate it? >> well, keep in mind commission erer, that abatement and the appropriate practices under the led ordinance that is

within the department of building inspection are very different things. we're not experts in led abatement. we're the health department. i believe as far as forensic, i think they are, but i have to confirm with the health department. if the commission is interested and you wish to continue this item, we could say to have someone from the health department here to address those concerns as far as abatement is concerned, so i couldn't answer that question for you. any work they do structurally would require building permits, but doesn't deal with the environmental issues. obviously they'd need containment under the ordinance that is in the building code so i don't know if that necessarily answers your question, but to get to the issue of if the tenant is saying they wanted a licensed person to do it and they're willing to have that done,

we're now several months from that. why didn't that happen? i'd be interested to hear what the answer is because at that standpoint whoa would not be in the situation to have the administrative hearing, etc. >> further public comment? e would not be in the situation to have the administrative hearing, etc. >> further public comment? six minutes. >> i represent the civil suit related to the same facts here. i know i'll be very brief and you've heard kind of a lot of the facts. essentially, you know, the situation is not one that the property owner and his counsel attempt to paint in that the tenants do want this to be solved. they've been trying to get it

solved for months. they don't have their property. their property -- some of it is still in the house where it's been completely destroyed. you saw a picture of the mold on the wall, you know, that mold has gone through everything, you know, their clothing their furniture, their bedding. everything has been contaminated at this point and so they aren't getting that back. and they've wanted it back and they've wanted to have their stuff and they've lived in separate housing for months without their belongings hoping this would be resolved and unfortunately it's now february and it's not resolved even now. but just to get back to the underlying violation, the led violation has not been abating and in fact, we've -- instead of preventing them to do any

sort of repair and remediation work, we've actually been repeatedly asking, can you please give us some indication of how you're going to take care of the led? so far we've heard absolutely no plan to take care of the led or the asbestos. the only thing they have been addressing thus for is the mold, which is a huge problem, as you saw, but it is unfortunately not the only matter. you know, characterizing it as our tenants won't let them in is not truly the state of the matter. the state of the matter is that we do want them to go in and do the work, but we want it to be licensed and we want it to be able to pass all of the testing and evening last week i can provide to you some of the test results that we sent to opposing counsel last week showing led contamination,

asbestos contamination and the mold that they have admitted is there. still, absolutely nothing as far as letting us know how they plan on moving forward with the led abatement and asbestos. for that reason, it's just continuation of more of the same. they're painting a picture that the tenants won't /hrepl them in so therefore they can't fix the problem and that just hasn't been the case. we've never once refused them entry. not one time. it's painting a picture of a landlord tenant dispute that certainly is a contingent situation, but is not such that the tenants aren't allowing access because they very much do want this to be taken care of and they have been trying /o get this taken care of and it

wasn't until november that the litigation was filed so that was far after the notices of violation were issued and many months after this had been going for quite a while. i think that's all i have. >> thank you. additional public comment? >> i'm john, i'm one of the cotenants and co-owners of the building. i want to speak to one point that came up earlier, which is we have complete edd the repairs to the external part of the building, which were very extensive repairs to a beam that was rust inging so we repaired the beam, we rewelded

something to that, we repaired rebar in the wall. that's all been grouted in and painted over so the external part of the building, that work has actually been completed so with the question of -- that came up, how much has been going forward, that's been done. thank you. >> thank you. any other public comment? >> i'm the husband of doctor howard and i wanted to address a couple of things. first, i want to talk about the led infiltration when mold, dust came in and they said there's no problem, just vacuum it up, don't worry about it.

even their tester provided a report saying nothing's wrong, there's some /ruplts results here that we provided. the air test they did showed high levels of led. the mold distribution, to compare between the outside and inside shows problems. it's not like they didn't know about this to start with, yet they were trying to send a cleaning crew, one of the construction workers come in from outside and /swaoepb it up with our equipment. they wanted a cleaning lady to come in and clean it up. we wanted to understand the proper way to start with. and then -- yeah. i wanted to address the outside of the building too. today right now if you look at the building today you see holes in the wall from the outside so yes, they stripped out the hole beam, they did fierce work on it. when cbi was there inspecting a place recently they were doing

work without proper containment and there were looms of dust flying on the outside of the building in the open air and that's the same dust that filled our apartment with a thick haze and covered everything and that's the dust that tested for led. oh yeah, and the reason we saw so much inside was not just because of the crack in the roof where everything was coming up, but in the floor boards where we have big cracks. we don't have backs to our cabinets in our kitchen cabinet, you can see the exterior part of the building and it's so bad that when we moved in you can see a bird nesting in the cabinet because there was a hole from the

outside. they haven't addressed this and five years when we moved in they said they were going to address that. that's a negotiation on their part. that's probably why our apartment had so much more dust inside than other tenants. >> any questions from commissioners? typically what we do in these situations is we like to give more time to -- for the appellant to provide the documentation that the tenant wants so the accredited contractor to come in and do the work and show a demonstration in a following meeting, and obviously the tenant, we would hope, would agree to that.

so is there any suggestions otherwise from the commissioner as far as doing something like that? putting it off for a month? >> i actually would not be open to putting it off for a month. i think we should -- i feel i would rather /sroe on vote on it today. >> the only problem i have with voting on it today is that i'm still not very clear on actually what exists there and because the department was not able to tell us definitively whether, you know, that the health department had the -- you know, like, whether the problems have been -- have started to be abated or whether there's permits pulled to deal with asbestos and led, you know, stuff like that. is there any attempt being worked on or not? that's what i'm concerned

about. and -- because the stories are so -- >> i want to hear from you rose mary, because i haven't heard a clear staff recommendation about what you'd like us to do. my understanding of both the health department ordinance and asbestos and led so we're talking about remediation, not abatement. for that you don't need a permit, but you need to follow the code, which is to hire somebody who is properly certified and do it in a certain way. the cleaning is cheap, but compared to the work. they have to do the work later, but the very first thing they need to do is the cleaning and that is what i think maybe is not being done without the threat of enforcement. and i actually would like that to stand so --

>> i want you to issue the order because we can be in protracted ed disagreements between these parties forever and i have to deal with health and safety issues. i think with the testimony that i have heard, i think the order should be issued because that's the very least that needs to happen. we're ordered to make sure that everybody understands the department is serious about this. they can still try and work through their issues, but we're not several months -- a year since we've issued the first notice of violation, and i did not hear from the testimony that the property owner back in may was willing to send a certified person out there to do the cleaning and start this. i didn't hear that. if i was sitting here today as the hearing officer, that would have been the first question out of my mouth.

from that standpoint my recommendation is that the order be issued. i know there are concerns, but that's the role i have. >> that makes it clear. >> i would be interested in hearing from the legal counsel there on the question they have aboard right now and who they're recommending to clean and abate. i don't want to make any misat the misstatement about identifying that person. i know that one of the companies that we brought in, restoration management company, was one proposed by the tenants that we jumped on one of their proposals and thought that would smooth things through. if it turn into apples and

oranges. >> to that point, in the testimony, my understanding would have been they would have been okay, but they were not the people in the building due to cleaning, is that correct? >> initially there was a different company, they go by van brunk and associates. they are licensed. people have known the presence pal for over 20 years. his license lapsed at some point before the project. we do have to present everything to them, but we -- >> we've been talking about communication here. were the homeowners that a different company was going in there? >> we've identified the contractors going in there at every point in the process the whole time. >> obviously, you know, we've

been around this before, and i think everybody's hearts are in the right place. we got off to a really bad start with some tragic outcomes here and right now there is no trust. >> i understand. >> we're trying to find this balance here so if i could get one thing from today is that we need to have an agreed abatement company that set by the homeowners and that by the property owners. >> the department of public health would ultimately have -- right now we're working with restoration management company with their knowledge. >> let's take them then. restoration management company fits the bill; is that correct with both parties? >> no. >> you can come to the mic

because it's a question we need on the record here. >> the problem there is that restoration management company is one of the companies that we had secured bit for, however, when they hired them they hired them not to use the certified -- not to do led or asbestos and only do mold, therefore the personnel is different,