i'm like, "they're coming for me!" yeah, it was crazy. i just never thought they'd find me. not out here. it doesn't matter where you drive. if you don't buckle up, you will get caught. cops are cracking down all across the country. click it or ticket. >> good morning. today is wednesday, april 16th, 2014, and this is a regular meeting of the building inspection commission and i would like to remind everyone to turn off all electronic devices the first item is roll call. >> president mccarthy? >> here. >> vice president mar. >> here. >> clinch. >> here. >> lee.

>> here. >> commissioner mccray. >> present. >> commissioner walker. >> here. >> and commissioner melgar is excused and we have a quorum and the next item is item two, president's good morning and welcome to our meeting april 16th. last week and briefed them on the roll of the newly passed legislation of the inlaw legislation and director also responded to a wide range of questions from the members about the building code and so thank you director for that and a special thanks to the director and chief building inspector ron tom who completed

a new information sheet, g12 which updates the building prior to processes. for affordable housing projects. in the community and investment and infrastructure and these will be helpful to the staff as well as project developers and so well done for putting that coalition together and getting everybody on the same page director and ron, tom. dbi is working with dpw and consultants in evaluating the existing space and documented needs for the additional 30,000 of square feet of space to meet additional customer demands and we will host a one stop workshop tomorrow april 17th from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in room 201 at city hall.

all of the departments will review and with the goal of knowing the amount of space needed to meet the mayor's goal of improved one stop services with dbi and permit center, and so it is that center and so if we talk about more people, our space is so limited and so i am glad to see that people are looking for the space as they should to try to get it resolved. and dbi responded to the media calls. the fire department investigation is still going on. and we also responded to a call

from san francisco chronicle about band b and the future regulatory legislation tied to the new sharing economy and responded to the calls from the examiner and following up on the 1049 market street and where the owners withdrew their appeal and made a final permit suspension for any converting of rental units that madam secretary concludes my president announcements. >> item three, general public comment, we will take comment on the matters that are not part of this agenda. seeing none, item four, director's report? 4 a, update on the dbi finances.

>> good morning, and my name is gale and i am the managing chief financial officer for dbi and so, our revenue is still coming in quite strong, as you can see from the graph, we are at 110 percent of what and we will end up at 25 percent in terms of revenue by the end of the year. we have not done the transfer of the balance to the operating to the capitol projects and the actual revenue is coming in so high we have not needed to do that and we may not actually need to do that this year. and so with the expenses i am projecting an increase in the

savings and in the salary savings, and we will save about 50,000 in services this year and that is a combination and this is where we budget them and having the positions that are not filled yet and we are looking at space and we are also looking to hire a few more people this year and we are in process with and i suspect that we will have savings in the salary and with the rest of the expenses we will get close to what we budgeted and we will definitely hit the materials and the supplies, and we are working with work orders, and i would not be surprised if you have a little savings in the work orders and right now it is hard to project that and the work orders are billed quarterly and so we are seeing the third quarter now. okay. sorry. so, any way, we are going to

hit most of our expenditure targets and so the last thing that i wanted to talk about in this report is that space stud j and we are getting closer to having the recommendation from the consultants to this body for the space study and i expect that will be in our next meeting in may and give you more of a presentation of what they have determined and what the next steps are and currently we are looking at five options for getting us more space. four of which are combination of the buildings and next to us and possibly taking the 1680 space which is currently occupied by dpw and doing some reconfiguration and the fifth one is ideal floor plate to be located somewhere to be determined. and so they are still doing all of the costing for that and they are still doing all of the looking and feesbility. and i think that they are really going to be ready to come back to you with a more solid plan and we are also going to be taking next month and that same information to the capitol planning committee and we need to do that and put

it in our budget that comes out in june. and so those two presentations are going to happen very close together but i did want to let you know that is coming next month. >> commissioner walker? >> regarding hiring, potential, i know that i was talking with the director yesterday about some ordinances and legislation coming through that might impact our need for more hires, and in the enforcement of the arb&b and there are a lot of different things that will rest on us. so to be projections include that potential staff, or just based on what our current? >> projections do not project the increase and we do suspect that we will hire for those and

i don't suspect that they will have a budgetary impact by the end of june. >> they will next year for sure and we have and we are talking to the mayor's office about increasing our budget ask for those positions for next year and just in terms of this year, they will not have much impact this year and they will next year and in the future years. >> okay, thank you. >> thank you. >> and for b, update on proposed legislation. >> bill strong legislative and public affairs and as was mentioned the legislation by supervisor chiu on utilizing one additional inlaw unit on a 9-2 vote and there will be a signing ceremony, i understand in the mayor's office actually tomorrow afternoon some time.

and so we are continuing to develop a screening for and expedite that process. and there is a way that the director hopes that it will happen is owners interested in doing such a conversion or legalization will hire it for an, engineer similar to what we do with the retrofit legislation and they will get the check on what this might entail. and they can then, actually come and visit technical services at dbi and formally, and get a ballpark idea of what kind of class they might be looking at to do this that could give the owner enough information to make a decision yes, it will come forward and do this, legalization, or maybe not right now, given the costs that i am looking at. and so, we have no idea on what

frame of volume of interest that we may see in this, it actually takes effect on the 12th of may. so, until probably june at the meeting, maybe by that time we will have a little better picture of interest in the level of interest. and in addition to that, i think that you know maybe and nationally it is being celebrated again as national building safety month. and also small business month, and supervisor tang legislation for waving the facad improvements and awning improvements city wide has passed again unanimously and once again we will wave any plan review fees on those types of permits during the month of may. we have done this for the last two years and it really has not exceeded very much in terms of

what is a normal demand, at that time for those permits. i would mention that supervisor tang has some new legislation that she is referring to as vacant storefronts and dbi has met with the supervisor and the mayor's office of economic and workforce development, which has been conducting kind of a survey, and 25, different merchant districts around the city, to identify how many vacant storefronts are there? and those types of buildings were often not in our vacant building list because the housing above the vacant storefront is still occupied and so the building is not a vacant building. but what seems to be the goal here is to try and identify how many of these there are.

and where are they? and what kinds of incentives come forward to encourage the owners to actually release them? and that gets fairly challenging from an enforcement point of view. and based on the conversations that the director had with the supervisor's office, and recently, and we are hoping that the first year of this ordinance assuming that it passes, will be spent in community out reach and education with a lot of support coming from the mayor's office of economic and workforce development as well as from the supervisors offices collectively and even the small business groups and commissioner that is active out there, and of course, we in dbi and out reach and try to make people aware of this. but, at some point, we would issue a notice of violation after 30 days if they don't register as a vacant storefront just as we do with a vacant

building. however, the second notice of violation would not be issued until 270 days after to give them ample opportunity to actually lease the property or make improvements taking building permits and so forth, and that would take it off of that list at any rate. but the director, has a lot of concerns about identifying all of these and even more importantly, i think, one of these incentives are sufficient to have releasing take place by the owner. but, at any rate, we are involved in it and i expect it and the legislation will move forward relatively. and the final one that i am going to mention today has to do with the media briefing, supervisor chiu had yesterday and today about having to regulate the short term rentals

and dbi has the responsibility through this interesting approach that was taken by supervisor tang a few years ago that we should be the responsible enforcing body, even though everything that i am reading or told about says duration of stay belongs with the planning department. and yesterday, at this press briefing, the planning director made it clear that it would be amendments coming forward to the planning code, and that they in fact, are already getting and responding to the increasing number of these types of complaints. we at dbi and interestingly enough, and we have not had that many and we did receive 8 from ted gilikson and his attorney just last week and at the looked like they are primarily buildings that owners have gone through earlier evictions, and turned the building into tourism rentals

for the revenue. whether or not that item from the building code point of view, really remains to be seen. and the press and the grant yesterday that they are prepared to file a civil action suit to try to make that happen. whether they have grounds for that, i have no idea. but the real challenge that we continue to work with the supervisor and trying to find a way to achieve his goals. but, the code enforcement side of this is rather difficult. >> commissioner walker. yes. i think that we run into this with the use issues under the jurisdiction of planning but we are the inspecters out in the field and so hopefully we can work with planning. sometimes we have to act as

their eyes and ears, >> and of those complaints, how are you processing them? what are you doing? >> well the chief housing inspector is reviewing them and it has been that part of the dbi that in the past has been responsible reviewing initially any way the chapter 41 a violations which these fall around. and so, we are trying to sift through that and obtain the information, i guess that would be needed in order to conduct whatever investigation. and i just don't know if that is going to be quick enough

process prior to any action >> i know with the residential hotels we often had an issue with the musical rooms where the people will be terminated before a 30-day period hooked in and there is a process that they used in the housing division to check on that. and the reports, in these buildings. and so, it is not without precedent, it is a different category of use, but i think that it is an interesting delima that we are in, i mean not just dbi but the city and in protecting its housing so... >> commissioner mar? >> yeah. i think that one of the issues that have or has come up is that there are also some land lords that are actually opposed to tenants being able to sublet.

and so i think that that is another challenge and it is not just the tenant community that is worried about it and also it is land lords who feel that they have rented out their apartments to long term tenants and then the tenants themselves are using the apartments to make a little side money and i think that is where it gets complicated and we are in a way planning does have to come in with the zoning issue and it is whether or not it is allowed in the residential neighborhoods and so i understand the fact that dbi and the fact that we do have many more inspecters in the field than planning but there are some that are under the purview of planning. and i want to thank the department and the staff for working with the supervisor on this, because it is important legislation, especially the tax aspect that we have not been getting. and even if the rentals are found to be legal, the city is

not getting any tax basis for it. and so that is an important issue, but at the same time, at what point do we allow just to kind of go on ward? but i had another question and i was wondering if i could raise it on the other legislation and so on the fast track permitting for the illegal inlaws are we also doing that for supervisor weiner's district? ten, because, those are not necessarily illegal units but his district has been ear marked, where there has been kind of the zoning regulations i believe has already been loosened up so that the single family dwellings now can be and they can put in the in-laws and so we are also putting those units in the same kind of fast track? that was one question that i had. >> and yeah, both of them, it was going to go together because it is part of the what

we called, you know, become a legal unit in it. >> yeah. >> and we have been trying to get the information sheet. and we have told them to see what they need to check to become legalized. >> okay. >> and i would say that yeah, we are definitely working with everybody involved in this issue. >> okay, great. thank you. >> just, it will be interesting after the investigations of those and how they played out and the recommendations and everything, and the enforcement i think that we are all scratching our head on how we as a department are supposed to enforce, correct? >> correct. >> and if i got this right bill, i know the quick talk and i know that you don't have the answer and that is fine, about two years the president chiu introduced the legislation and it was passed. what part of that was passed that kind of applies to this here? >> as i remember correctly, and

i can check this for you if it is not correct. but the idea was to tighten up chapter 41 a so that the people could have stand to file the civil suits that had been missing before. and i think that that was the one key element that was different. none of the shared economy element that is announced in the legislation to introduce yesterday, was tied to that particular element. there is one kind of tenant protection in the new legislation if i understand it, which is that if a tenant does do a short term rental, and does not realize that the lease prohibits that, right now, they are subject to summary eviction, and under a just cause element as he explained it yesterday which means that you don't really have much of a chance of not being evicted and in the legislation you would

have 30 days to cure that as not knowing that you have a lease like that and so you would not be necessarily evicted if you stopped the practice. if in fact your lease prohibited you from doing that? >> at any rate, this legislation has a lot of complicated elements and i would say that it is not yet finished is my guess over the next few months we will be meeting and i know the director hopes to meet with the supervisor and his staff some time next week to run through some of our issues about the code enforcement side of this. >> one thing that is interesting what i gathered is that the rent cannot be more than the rent that they are paying. >> that is correct. they don't want and he does not want, what he called profiteering so if you have space and you have permission

to sublet your space you have up to 90 days in a year, the calendar year that you could do short term rentals. >> you might rent your place for three nights, and essentially, charge what your monthly rent is and you would cover your rent for that one tourist rental. >> but you can't do that for 83 years to make a nice nest egg. >> it is going to go through the committees and the board of supervisors. >> if there are additional planning review and planning code amendments and they are not in the current legislation but that is going to say to me that there is going to be a

substitute bill and we will see that in a couple of months and i don't think that this is going to happen on a very fast track but it may happen over the next few months. >> yeah, keep us posted, okay that one is going too, okay. >> thank you. >> item 4 c, a bid on the permit tracking system. >> i have a presentation, reporting. so this is the implementation phases of the project as you can see, the highlighted step three and step four that is where we are, currently.

and we are towards the tail end of step three and we have gone through in the phase testing supporting and so we are pretty much towards the tail end of testing and however we are still getting through data conversion. okay. through the data conversion and like i reported last three, and reporting period, we have four rounds of the data conversion and we are doing the review and logging the issues for the round one of the data conversion, thank you. >> we do have specialized

training that is coming up and again a summary of what we talked about and where we are today is to the big items which is data conversion and round one for review and the testing. we are expecting to be done by june or soon and her we give ourselves extra time and that is going to take the longest and go through the mid august and again, we have some estimates that depending on how the run goes as we speak today,

we have it takes five days to run the data and so it is about five days and the vendor is doing their part to cut it down and so there is a possibility of cutting this down but we want to give ourselves time but we see that the data conversion will go up to the middle of august and the specialized training we are projecting that we will plan around that time where we are stable with the environment and i think that we should be ready for the specialized training and again after the two components are done we are going to go into the readiness and we are going to prepare for the go live, and again, it current

scope that we determined and signed off on and we have it in the last year and we have made adjustments based on the requirements and what we need and how critical it is for the business. from now on anything that is critical we will take into account and anything that can be moved to go live we will place it for bids too. and of course, we are expecting the deliverables to be delivered on time and that is depending on those happenings

and the times projected. we do have the risks in talking about the resource availability, that is the number one risk again it is so far and continues to be the risk and every week we monitor and make sure that we are keeping to the time lines that we planned for. and again, the turn around time, the vendor and the staff are involved so we review the data and give them feedback and fix it and some of them we do right away and the risk is that if one of us does not keep up the time we end up pushing up the dates and scope again is another risk and we just talked about that and we have had the situations where sudden functionality is not available or not adequately available. and we raised that as an issue and in most case wes have found and walk arounds and the functionality and in the cases where there are not, and if it is not critical and then we table it and we find a solution. and so that could be a risk if things come up and we cannot find