certification of tagalog. i also want to mention that we had called for a hearing on a review of other language access ordinance and i hope we can consider these items together to figure out how to move this forward. again, i want to thank supervisor avalos for introducing that hearing request. >> supervisor avalos. >> thank you. i wanted to mention the co-sponsors for the hearing request on certification of tagalog and the supervisors who are co-sponsoring supervisor campos, supervisor kim, supervisor mar, supervisor chiu, and supervisor yee. thank you for co-sponsorship and sorry i neglected to tell you that. thanks. >> thank you, mr. president. and thank you, supervisor avalos. supervisor tang, thank you for waiting. >> thank you. i'll be very quick. today i'm introducing a piece of legislation that really seeks to address the issue of commercial vacancies here in san francisco and it really builds upon the work of the vacant abandoned building ordinance that is currently in existence that was passed by this board in 2009 by introduced by supervisor david

chiu. we found that there have been issues when we're trying to address the issue of vacancies when there are buildings where there are commercial spaces below and residential spaces above. so, we've been working very hard with dbi and stakeholders to make sure that we address this in our current existing ordinance and so, i do want to thank the stakeholders and look forward to working with our city departments to ensure that we cannot only better track these vacancies, but also provide them these businesses or property owners with better city resources to help them either for vacancies or attract new businesses to their commercial corridors. so, with that, i submit. thank you. >> thank you, supervisor tang. supervisor cohen. >> thank you very much. i have a request, a hearing request that follows up on a motion adopted by our very own youth commission, and it will focus on the city's efforts to address the needs of young people with incarcerated parents.

in 2011, a dcyf needs assessment found 17,933 youth and children in san francisco have a parent -- had a parent who has spent time in either county jail or state prison in 2010. 17,933 children. however, there is no comprehensive data available about the number of youth who have experienced parental incarceration or the support services that they may need. now, the board -- as this board recently took historic action to end discrimination against formerly incarcerated people with the passage of the fair chance ordinance, this hearing request is pretty timely. it's forced to consider the impacts of parental incarceration on the well-being and life outcomes of young people in our city. this hearing will be an opportunity to invest the following issues. i have four of them.

efforts to collect data on needs and outcomes of youth with incarcerated parents, additional support services needed to support the mental health, housing stability, and educational success of youth with incarcerated parents. visiting policies affecting the ability of youth to see and speak to their incarcerated parents. and finally, considerations of family impact at the time of sentencing and placement in out-of-home detention. i am pleased to introduce this hearing request with the support of supervisor avalos, supervisor breed, and supervisor kim. the rest i submit. thank you. >> thank you, supervisor cohen. supervisor kim. >> thank you for re-referring me. difficult want to make some comments about the hearing that supervisor avalos had just mentioned. ~ i did want really excited to support this hearing. i think the office of i am grant affairs finally to

certify tagalog as one of our languages, district 6 and district 11 does have the highest population of filipino and filipino-american residents and i think there is often a misconception that filipinos fully and clearly understand all aspects of the english language and that while many of them do come to the u.s. speaking english, that they often feel more comfortable in their native language, in tagalog. so, we would like to push the office to keep this going. we know that department and organizations can track data based on this language need once this language is certified and looking forward to this hearing and also to president chiu's overall updates on our language access ordinance. >> thank you, supervisor kim. supervisor campos. >> thank you. thank you very much, madam clerk. and i have a couple of items. and the first one is an introduction of a resolution to

add the honorary name rescue row to alabama street between 15th and 16th streets. and this is in recognition of the animal services organizations that are located on that block, including the san francisco spca, the mutt world senior dog rescue. and the northern california family dog rescue, as well as, of course, our very own s.f. animal care and control. the san francisco spca was founded in 1868 which was the first humane society west of the mississippi and remains a community supported nonprofit organization that is dedicated to saving, protecting, and caring for cats and dogs. the spca provides immediate care of animals that are homeless, ill, or in need of an advocate. additionally, the sfpca works to educate the community and improve the kalt quality of life for animals and their companions.

mutt ville senior dog rescue is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2007 that is dedicate today improving the lives of senior dogs in need of care by finding them immediate homes or providing hospice care. northern california family dog rescue is a nonprofit organization that provide proper care and socialization of rescued animals. additionally, it strives to make a great connection between dogs and humans, urban shelter network of foster homes. the san francisco animal care and control is responsible for san francisco stray, injured, abandoned, neglected and mistreated animals, and it also additionally enforces all state and local animal care laws. together these nonprofit organizations work to improve the lives of animals in need. the care of these organizations

provide that these organizations provide make the difference between ~ neglect and nurturing for these animals. this honorary rescue row title will help these agencies and their co-marketing and the individual efforts to adopt more animals, and it also recognizes the valuable contribution that they're making to the welfare of these animals in the city and county of san francisco. you know, ghandi said you can tell a lot about a society about how it treats its animals. i think by that measure we are proud -- we should be proud of what san francisco has done and this is something that recognizes that, that effort and, so, i ask for your support. and the second item is a hearing request that recognizes that here in san francisco we

are facing an affordability and housing crisis. as we know, the median home price in san francisco is a million dollars and city-wide the median rental cost for a unit is more than $3,000 a month. hundreds of tenants are evicted each year and thousands of rent control apartments have been lost in the last decade. and during that time, we've seen luxury condos spring up in every neighborhood. because there is no vacancy rent control in san francisco, when a san franciscan is evicted from his or her home, this city lose he one of the most significant source he of price control housing that is not vulnerable to the market. more over, because of the enormous cost of housing, when tenants are evicted today, many if not most of those tenants are forced to leave the city ~. finally, studies show that tenants in eviction proceedings are far more likely to remain in their homes if they actually

have legal representation throughout those eviction proceedings. for these reasons, legal representation for tenants facing eviction is more important than ever. so, in light of that, i request a hearing on the availability of legal assistance and representation for tenants facing eviction in san francisco. i specifically want to know how many housing attorneys are supported by city funding and how many attorneys would be needed so that every tenant in san francisco who is facing eviction will have access to legal representation. i'm asking that this hearing be referred to the budget and finance committee, and i also request that the clerk of the board refer this request to the mayor's office of housing. the rest i submit. >> thank you, supervisor campos. all of those items will be appropriately referred. mr. president, that concludes roll call for introduction of new business. >> thank you, madam clerk. before we november to our 3:00

p.m. special order, colleagues, supervisor mar would like to rescind the consent agenda vote so that he can vote. with that's correct supervisor mar has made a motion to rescind, seconded by supervisor farrell. without objection, that vote will be rescinded. [gavel] >> and madam clerk, could you call the roll on the consent agenda? >> on items 1 through 8, supervisor campos? campos aye. president chiu? chiu aye. supervisor cohen? cohen aye. supervisor farrell? farrell aye. supervisor kim? kim aye. supervisor mar? mar aye. supervisor tang? tang aye. supervisor wiener? wiener aye. supervisor yee? yee aye. supervisor avalos? avalos aye. supervisor breed? breed aye. there are 11 ayes. >> colleagues, those items are passed. [gavel] >> >> and with that, could we go to our 3:00 p.m. special order, madam clerk. if you could call items 19 through 22 ~.

>> item 19 through 22 comprise the special order -- >> supervisor campos? >> thank you, mr. president. i was wondering if we could go back to item 18. my apologies. >> okay. before we do the appeal. >> mr. president, that item has already been approved by the board. it is a resolution that was adopted. >> are you looking to rescind that vote? >> yes. >> okay, supervisor campos has made a motion to rescind item 18, seconded by supervisor farrell. without objection, that item is rescinded. [gavel] >> supervisor campos. >> thank you. and my apologies, colleagues. this item was voted on right after the special recognition, but i want to take this opportunity to simply acknowledge that there are a number of people who are here because of the city college resolution, and this is a very important issue for many people, not only in my district, but throughout the city. and i want to thank the co-sponsors of that resolution,

supervisors mar, avalos, wiener, yee, kim, chiu. and the resolution, i think, sent a very clear message about the importance of restoring democratic decision making at city college. it's one of the most treasured and important institutions we have here in san francisco. the resolution urges the state community college chancellor brice harris to restore the voice of san francisco voters and to bring back transparency and public accountability to city college by immediately reinstating the duly elected board of trustees and by removing the special trustees as soon as possible, but no later than july 2014. at a time when san francisco's leaders are coming together to support preserving state funding for city college, if we are able to maintain access to quality education in san francisco, we he need to ensure that we do not lose sight of the importance of transparency and open government. as we know, back in july of 2013 the california community

colleges board of governors changed state law to take away the board of trustees power to put in place a special trustee. since this individual was given this role, what we have seen is sole decision making for the college without any transparency or democratic process. we cannot allow this to continue. the lack of transparency has now reached, i think, proportions that raise questions including ethical questions. recently the san francisco chronicle reported that pay increases were quietly given to administrators without any oversight or meetings public knowledge. these pay increases were given to administrators while faculty have suffered a 4% wage cut and many staff have been laid off and, in fact, students have seen classes and student services eliminated. this could not have happened under board of trustees that

has to meet on a regular basis and that is ultimately accountable to the public. as an elected member of the board of supervisors, i think that i have a responsibility and we all have a responsibility to allow the will of san francisco voters to be respected and to not be swept away by an elected body. i would like to thank city college students, faculty, labor, and community members for all the work that they have done to preserve city college and for engaging all throughout this work. i especially want to thank the members of save city college coalition, to move city college forward coalition, the work of aft 21 21 and so many others that dedicated their time and energy to make sure city college stays open, democratic and inclusive. thank you. >> thank you. and with that, the last vote being unanimous, colleagues, can we take this item same house same call? without objection this resolution is adopted. [gavel] >> now, madam clerk, let's go

to the 3:00 p.m. special order, items 19 through 22. >> items 19 through 22 comprise the special order 3:00 p.m. public hearing of persons interested in the negative declaration and project approval of january 23rd, 2014 for the recreation and park department's proposed sharp park pumphouse safety and infrastructure improvement project. item 20 is the motion affirming the approval of a final mitigated negative declaration under the california environmental quality act by the planning commission for the sharp park safety, infrastructure improvement, and habitat enhancement project. ~ project. item 21 is the motion reversing the approval of a final mitigated negative declaration under the california environmental quality act by the planning commission for the sharp park safety, infrastructure improvement, and habitat enhancement project. item 22 is the motion to direct the preparation of finding reversion of the commission's approval. >> colleagues, today we have an appeal of the final mitigated negative declaration for the sharp park safety infrastructure improvement and habitat enhancement project. ~ our consideration for this appeal involves our analysis of the adequacy, [speaker not understood] sufficiency and com policeness of the negative declaration. as we took a good [speaker not

understood]. first the appellant will have up to 10 minutes to present their case for this appeal of the final mitigated negative declaration. next, members of the public that support the appeal will each be able to speak for up to two minutes, followed by the planning department who will have up to 10 minutes to present its findings for certifying the negative declaration. followed then by the real party in interest, the recreation and park department will have 10 minutes to present their case for certification. that will then be followed by members of the public that support the issuance of the negative declaration who may speak for up to two minutes. and then finally the town will have up to three minute for rebuttal in support of this appeal. unless there are any questions to proceed in this way, why don't we start with the herebition? with that i'd like to ask [speaker not understood], if he could please step up. you have up to 10 minutes for your presentation. if colleagues have questions, they can ask them and we will hold the time during those answers.

mr. porter. >> [inaudible]. >> if you could speak into --

>> s.f.g. tv, please. >> just wanted to make sure the presentation is ready to go for the board. >> should be ready to go in 10 seconds. ~ sfgov-tv sfgov-tv? there you go. >> i'll put it on the other computer here. thank you very much.

[speaker not understood]. i'll put a copy of my presentation in for the record and i can do the presentation over here. members of the board, my name is brent slater. i'm the executive director of wylie institute and we're leer to ask you today to order a full environmental impact report for the sharp house pumphouse project. this is required under c-e-q-a

because there is significant environmental effects that have not been addressed or mitigated through the environmental analysis that has been conducted to date. the [speaker not understood] decision for to you make because there are cheaper more environmental benign tournaments for the city to implement and these are all turntives that have not been presented either the commission that has reviewed the project or to this board because the department has taken the position that there are not enough significant effects out there for them to either bother looking at these alternatives. only if you look at a full alternative report will this be considered by any member of the city and county of san francisco. now, we're talking about an area called sharp park and sharp park is, without question, the most ecologically important unit of land that the rec and park department manageses. the most ecologically important for a number of reasons, because there are a very rare wetland complex in this area called the [speaker not understood]. these complexes have been destroyed up and down the coast

because of agricultural urban development. the rec and park department is [speaker not understood] one of the last units, very last within system like this anywhere along the coast ~. i'm sure you all remember there have been several votes here at the board of supervisors regarding the golf course at sharp park over the years. you have voted on five different occasions with a simple majority or better to consider different uses for sharp park. that is not the issue before you today. it may come before you later this year. it is not before you today. what is before you today is a specific question about a project called the pumphouse project. and what the rec and park department is proposing to do, what they are proposing to do with this project is to scrape out or suck out a large amount of aquatic vegetation from an area called horse stable pond in a connecting channel that connects horse stable pond to a

larger water body called laguna salada. there are several issues about this project that have not been addressed by the rec and park department to date. one of them is when you disturb the sediment, the bottom of horse stable pond for this project. acids will be formed. there are several compounds that are in those sediments that will be transformed into a type of acid that would be harmful to life in that aquatic environment. dr. peter bay who is an expert -- he's an expert coastal aloe kohl gist, he's written plans for the [speaker not understood]. he submitted comments on this proposal and he said he has provided direct observation of both of iron sulfide and hydrogen sulfide components that create these mere [speaker not understood] sediment and expose life to these condition if these sediment are in fact dredged. [speaker not understood] the rec and park department has created a different mitigation measure.

it's called mitigation measure m bio2b, 2b. and this mitigation measure imposes several duties on a third-party. the united states fish and wildlife service to mitigate for those significant effects. they don't contradict that this is a significant concern. in fact, they actively and affirmatively mitigate for this concern. they claim their mitigation is good enough to reduce the [speaker not understood]. what it requires is for them to establish, review and approve site specific toxicity standards for the acid soul fights that are going to be released into the environment. it requires the fish and wildlife service to review and approve a remediation and monitoring plan to address those issues. and it also requires the fish and wildlife service to review and improve specific remediation measures when they select a particular mitigation option out there for these acid condition. now, the fish and wildlife service has been consulted about some aspects of this project.

mitigation measure m bio-2a, 2a has been submitted to the fish and wildlife service. and we've all known this for a long time. but that does not address the acid issues that are of concern to the appellants here. dr. bay looked at that mitigation measure several months ago in october and submitted comments and said, "this mitigation measure requires reliance on resource agencies with no evidence that they have the staff resources or commitments to comply with that mitigation measure." as you know a lot of government agencies are underfunded these days. the fish and wildlife service is no exception. they have an extraordinary amount of federal obligations under the endangered species act and not enough sources to implement them and dr. beah lerted the park and rec department about this potential concern in october of last year. in response, the rec and park department has been claiming that the fish and wildlife service is in fact a partner agency in the approval of this process and suggested through

both commissions, the rec and park commission and the planning commission, and now before this board with some of the materials that have been submitted by their department, that the fish and wildlife service has already looked at and approved mitigation measure 2b. on march 19th, a series of several environmental groups including the wildlife equity institute that i'm a part of had a meeting, a regional meeting with the fish and wildlife service regulatory department to talk about a lot of wetland disturbing activities across the bay area and they asked them about these proposals and asked why they thought they were useful for mitigating the acid reelisse issues we've raised. and the response was, we have not heard about these proposals. they heard about the mitigation proposals for 2a ~, but they had not heard about the mitigation proposals for 2b. and they went on to say that even if we had heard about them, because these are requirements that are derived from c-e-q-a, a state law, they are so constrained implementing their own federal acts, that they would not be -- it won be possible for them to implement them. they don't have the staff or

the funding to help local municipalities to comply with nonfederal laws like c-e-q-a. we were shocked to hear this and, so, i followed up with an e-mail to kay goody, assistant field supervisor for the endangered species program for the fish and wildlife service. i attached the provision of mitigation measure 2b to that e-mail. i highlighted the relevant parks that include duties on fish and wildlife services. i excerpted portions of it and asked if they had funding to implement these measures and she responded, no, we do not have resources identified to implement these measures at this time. and you should all have a copy of that e-mail correspondence before you. now, under c-e-q-a agencies must provide measures that mitigate or avoid significant effectses on the environment and ensure that they are fully enforceable through permit conditions, agreements or some other measure. this mitigation measure does not meet that standard. it does not meet that standard because the very agency that they are relying upon to implement it has expressly disavowed its ability to implement that measure on behalf of the fish and wildlife

-- on behalf of the rec and park department. under those circumstances we have a very significant environmental concern that is unmitigated and that requires a full e-i-r to be considered. there is also an issue raised about cumulative effects. the aquatic vegetation at the rec and park department wishes to remove from this area is dependent on shallow water. they can only grow in shallow waters. the purpose of this project in part is to increase the rate, the flow that waters are moved through this complex, this wetland complex. the theory is that all of that aquatic vegetation creates friction that slows water towards the pumphouse and if they can eliminate that friction, the water will flow more rapidly to the pumphouse and they can pump it out of the system in a more advanced rate. our experts, including dr. mark hayes who is an expert who wrote the recovery provisionses for the california red legged frog when it was first listed

for the state, they have explained that if you ~ -- that the encroachment of this aquatic vegetation is really a promotion of what's called the succession and coastal lagoon system driven by the golf course's ongoing pumping at horse stable pond in laguna salada that causes the growth by maintaining artificially low water levels. dr. peter bay, i rendsed before, said the same thing in the record. increasing drainage of the lagoon will increase the spread of cat tails over the open water. what it means is if the city goes forward with this project and does in and either scrapes or sucks out the aquatic vegetation, a lug the water to flow more rapidly they will grow back, in short order. they will be required to implement a similar kind of project again and again and again across time. but they have refused to consider the cumulative impacts of that question. they have not been reviewed in this environmental document. we believe that that cumulative

impact requires an assessment. as i mentioned, there is an alternative. there is an alternative that has been proposed by our experts. the alternative is to simply allow the water levels in the laguna system to rise a little bit critically during the spring and summer months. the months the aquatic vegetation grows, not during the wintertime when the golf course typically flows. the alternative will not increase [inaudible]. [speaker not understood]. >> thank you, mr. potter. let me start off with a first question that i know you and i briefly discussed this. we know that the planning commission reviewed this matter and supported the decision of staff with the 7-0 voting, members appointed by this body. i want to ask you, is the information that you just

raised about the potential lack of funding or analysis on the part of, of the federal department around some of these mitigation measures, what you discovered over the last few days, that is the crux of what you think of as new information since the planning commission's decision? >> that's correct. that information did not become available until march 19th, after both the planning commission and the rec and park commission votes occurred. >> thank you. i certainly want to ask the planning staff if you can address the set of concerns that were raised by the opponent. supervisor kim? >> actually, i was going to ask mr. porter was he upset at the end about the alternative [speaker not understood]? if you could finish your sentence. >> i'd be happy to. the alternative proposed by the expert is to allow water levels in the lagoon system to rise a little bit in the spring and summertime. doing this will have no impacts whatsoever on how often or the extent of flooding at the golf ur