they get that additional support that we were referring to. >> you're right, all illegal unit cases are not created equal. one of the biggest things for us is is that unit occupied and does it have a imminent hazard. what we're looking at right now, if somebody files under that legislation to try to legalize a unit, that action is hild in advance, unless there is a substantial problem. therefore, one of the things we're looking at and i started doing on letters to property owners where we're asking them for permission to look at an illegal unit is to say you don't let us in you need to understand that it's your sole responsible to deal with hazardous conditions so that if

you have a fossil fuel appliance in a sleeping area or if you don't have smoke detectors, it's on you, if you don't want -- that is one of the things we're doing, realizing we have open cases and cases that will be open as people come through this process, but those are the two keys. is that unit occupied and secondly, is there some kind of imminent hazard. those are the two things we're looking at. >> commissioner walker. >> it opens up the discussion of what is a reasonable amount of time to let things linger, and i won't go to purgatory, but we have had situations where it's two years later, three years later, we've seen those, you know, come before us and -- i mean, a violation is a violation, whether the resolution is one or the other

[inaudible]. >> there were egress issues and the work was all done without permit and we couldn't tell necessarily if there was a problem or not. in this particular instance, a lot of these open cases have orders of abatement. they've been taken through the process short of being returned to the city attorney. now the policy is more complicated because the mayor's

directive is basically saying we want to have rental housing preserved even if they're illegal units. these are the things we are looking at with the property owner. obviously it has not been the will of this commission or department to do a bunch of inspection warrants on these property because that would be very expensive when the property owner doesn't let us in so we're adding things to the letters to let them know. that if they don't let us in, they need to take care of this. we're really trying to give the property owner notice that there are more tools to try to deal with this particular issue. if they don't avail themselves of the legislation and say it's one dwelling unit and they're eligible for that, then the issue is what do we do with those if we have an order already issued, do they go to the city attorney? that will be some things that we'll be discussing as we bring those forward to you based on the analysis of the information

and discussion commissioner melgar just has, we'll let you know where those are and whether or not they've availed themselves of those tolls. >> we have had the issues related to illegal units or inlaws, but there are other violations that happen that get rereferred to planning so i'm thinking it might be good to have a policy on how long we let things linger no matter what. we could have one set of criteria for illegal units. people have built beyond a scope of a permit and it has to go back to planning and remains illegal for the entire time it's being evaluated. it's not illegal units, it's building beyond the scopes, it's the envelope, all of that. i think it's a good ming to

thing to have a policy about it rather than have it be case by case because it weakness or argument when we let things linger. >> the thing we need direction from the commission on is if we have an order of abatement and we categorize them, the question is going to be do -- what do you want to do with those once an order has been issued? are those cases you want to send to the city attorney? what we're going to do is hone those down and categorize them for you. that's part of the process we should have for you by the end of the year. >> thank you for that. we're going the right direction here. just a question though, do we -- and this is to the director, should we set up and ad hoc committee on this or -- i mean, we kind of have something going on in the background, but it's not official.

>> okay. thank you for rose mary to find out how many cases, so open cases is only 79. that's not that many cases on our hand, but you and me know [inaudible]. we don't know how many. that's why we set up the team to answer question and then when they come and then we will put additional staff to [inaudible] check once planning can meet to get [inaudible] approve over-the-counter the timeframe like commissioner walker talking about my timeframe use and what her money should be a good time before [inaudible] because when i know we give to city planning they don't assign to

[inaudible]. that's difficult from that part too, people make complaint, but we need to work close in the planning to see how to speed up their process. from my side i can -- you know, to speed up my plan check and inspection, but the [inaudible] department i have no control. that's why i want to have some cosign information sheet with them. they need to commit to speed up the process. >> commissioner walker. >> i know we have an agenda item talking about our joint meeting, but this is one of those issues it would be good to have our joint commission sort of provide some guidance and direction to the staffs of both planning and building to commit to a process that gives us a better sense of timing on -- especially the illegal in law unit program so we can deal with this. because i think it's going to

be an issue, that period of time pending between illegal and legal is -- >> mm-hm. >> -- is going to challenge us a bit. >> oh. commissioner lee. >> i'm listening to all your comments and i'm just hearing how to get from point a to point b. i'm thinking maybe there ought to be middle ground somewhere, some interim solution to the whole propress. process. there might be design material to relieve an egress problem and maybe we can negotiate with planning and say hey, would you allow us to do this in the interim.

maybe something as simple as not having smoke alarms. put it in right now or -- you know, something like that. something that they be a little bit more difficult to do, which is maybe not enough ceiling height, i don't know how you'd do that, but -- some of the things you can think about, maybe work towards protecting the tenants and protecting the homeowner as well because they're liable. they're liable for the condition of their building. they cause a problem that affects the health of the tenant, they're going to be liable. >> you're suggesting a stamped -- >> maybe there are some -- because like you said, we can't let things linger for years and then the tenants living in an unsafe condition, but maybe there are some areas we can look at and say there are intermediate steps we can do to hold off the problem. >> we have our assessment appeals -- excuse me -- our access appeals committee does

that with accessibility issues of getting equivalencies. maybe that's part of process that could happen. >> i think rose mary wants to weigh in. >> the good news is that what supervisors choose legislation before the planning commission, the planning department recommended that instead of only allowing one [inaudible] so definitely their thinking is they also want to see the opportunities for these to be legalized. now, at the time supervisor chiu felt he didn't want to take that on, which i completely understand, but they actually -- this is unheard of in the last 20 some odd years, the planning department's recommendation in the staff report was why just one?

on the basis of that, in those situations where someone has more than one they're trying to legalize in that type of situation, the planning department's thinking was perhaps we should look at that as well. i wanted to make you aware of that. >> yeah, commissioner lee, it's a good suggestion by you. i've been thinking about to have people apply to get the legal unit and ask the homeowner -- we don't want to step in, but we should ask them install the smoke detector and [inaudible] detector at the same time while they applying for the permit because apply for the permit, i don't know how long this planning will take, but right away they can install those. [inaudible] >> okay. i think we've had a full

discussion on this. okay, thank you. >> thank you. is there any public comment on the director's report, item 5a through e? seeing none, item 6 discussion of possible meeting between building commission and planning commission. >> as i promised to try to keep this on track to see if we could get that sit down with the planning department, we had to come up with agenda items, commissioner mar talked a little bit and i'll let commissioner mar lead off on that. >> i tried to, you know, truncate some of the discussion topics so i only really have one really main one that i would like to put forward to our colleagues on the planning department, which is i would like their feedback of how to discuss a criteria for

over-the-counter plan check versus submittals of plans to their department. you know, what views does planning have on how to set this technical criteria because i think that's been an ongoing discussion for our department so this is kind of in the spirit of having the two departments collaborate a little more closely. now, part of that discussion, i'd also like their feedback on -- is that we've gotten a lot of complaints against from citizens, neighbors about kind of serial permitting process, which a lot is done over-the-counter. because whether it's a single family resident or commercial building where they're doing a massive amount of tenant improvements, a lot of owners

have seen it's to their advantage to pull out multiple permits through our over the counter process and sometimes they file multiple addendums through their permits, which get handled over-the-counter. so those are some of the discussions i would like to have at planning. what are their ideas of -- you know, and i'm a big proponent of over-the-counter work, but i

want to have a clearer separation of what is a big project versus a small project and i'd like planning's feedback on that. >> have you got that madam secretary? okay, all right. commissioner walker and commissioner melgar after that. >> okay. so i just want to point out it's taken over six months to schedule a meeting with planning and to set an agenda. so i mean, i have submitted this to you and verbally many times so i hope that we can schedule a meeting. code enforcement is a huge issue that oftentimes, like we were talking about before where things get referred back to planning for issues that stem from a notice of violation, and

the same is true really for any kind of permitting that has to come through and go through planning to be evaluated so it goes along with warren talked about that when we have a project we're evaluating or assessing, that we get some sort of time certain from planning and from our department to be able to tell the project sponsor when it's going to come out. i feel like that is probably -- if we stick to that topic, we could talk about that topic as it relates to every division in our department as to how we connect up with planning and our partners over in planning, so we are now in september going to be using a system we share with them so i think if we could get a commitment to

have the meeting before then so we could have these discussions before we actually activate our joint computer system, maybe we could speed up their interest in having a meeting with us. so, i don't know, i mean, i think we've talked about it over and over at every meeting what the issues are that we have with planning and working with them so -- >> yeah, and -- >> i don't know how many times or ways we have to say it. >> commissioner melgar, [inaudible]. >> i've got several issues, but they all have, like, a common thread. i think it would be a good idea if we would all consider having, like, a regular meeting once a year. it doesn't have to be often because i don't need anymore meetings, but there's a bunch of stuff that touch on both planning, zoning and also, you know, how we then enforce the building code. so i will just point out for

example, you know, the mid market changes and the conversion of office -- office space to housing and then our involvement in it, which could have had it [inaudible] to the displacement of people. that's one example. another example is the rezoning of the eastern neighborhoods, which created the category of pdr. now, i'm not going to tell you where exactly they are because i don't want to get people in trouble, but there are [inaudible]. that's the point. there's a bunch of folks i know with pdrs have set up new live work spaces. not really live work spaces, but that's all over the mission and south of market now and people living in alternative family settings, artists, people in the tech industry so sort of the -- i think that when that designation was set up, we didn't know how it was going to be applied on the

ground. and in terms of the building code, we never really thought, you know,, like, how are we going to get these units to be, you know, up to code, not present a hazard and at the same time, allow people to live their lives and thrive so that's another issue. a third issue would be sros. all over the tenderloin and china town we have sros coming to the end of their lives. there are buildings that have been around for sometimes over 100 years and we don't really have a plan for how to deal with them. they provide housing for the lowest income folks and the anchors of the communities like china town and tenderloin. it's a planning issue more than a zoning issue, but we have to deal with both.

so those are just some of the things that i think we could use some joint thinking together, but, you know, this is a lively city that's very dense and all sorts of things going on all the time and i'm wondering if it wouldn't behoove us to create a subcommittee to tackle issues like this that come up. >> commissioner walker. >> yeah, just to riff off a little bit of what you're talking about, the code enforcement aspect requires that our inspectors are out there helping planning enforce their codes and that's something that's been an issue since i've been on this commission and it's something we need to sort of come to an understanding about, rather than to guess or just not enforce. and i think that it goes to

that point. it's any kind of change of use. i mean, even the pdr to office that, you know, we don't evaluate the parking needs and the -- you know, when we do housing we don't evaluate all of the fees that we get for transit and education and so we fall short. so i think it's in the purview of the planning folks and we're just trying to help. if it's the expectation of the city leaders that we are the enforcement arm for planning, that needs to be agreed upon and that's where, you know, i think the commissioners can really set the tone for that. i think it's a really good recommendation. >> so as i figured, strong opinions. we sent out a couple of emails asking people to articulate these opinions and put them in writing because our fear was that if we got too much items that we couldn't be able to set

this meeting up. what we had agreed on the last time we met with planning was we'd get back with them with items. we've also outreached a couple times since then and haven't gotten any feedback . my street starts told me this would probably be the situation because i'm finding out it's quite difficult to put these meetings together and scheduling and there's a lot of people i have to go through to do this. i have to go through certain channels. we're going to take these comments here. commissioner mar will get together and pull out bullet points on your comments, maybe just send it out to everybody have a quick look and we'll get it to the planning department week or so. >> [inaudible] >> and i do think it behooves us to do this sooner rather

than later in advance of our roll out of a new computer system. >> and i -- to your point -- that was, you know, you brought that up the last time when we talked about this three months ago. i'm with this in regard to getting this done so what i'm going to follow through in very detailed manner and give you updates an responses back and -- >> or just schedule the meeting. >> the problem is, we'd be scheduling with ourselves. i can schedule the meeting, but nobody would be showing up and that would defeat the purpose. i'm going to go back and we'll try to meet commissioner mar you were at the last meeting. it went very well. everybody was on the same page this would be a great idea, but the scheduling part was when i got the blank look. i couldn't get a commitment one way or the other. i think we'll go back and try again and get a scheduled day. >> that'd be great.

>> i know. and you want results, not excuses, commissioner walker. i understand. next item. >> is there any public comment on item 6? seeing none, item 7, review and approval of the minutes of the meeting of february 4, 2014. >> moved to approve. >> second. >> are all commissioners in favor? >> i. >> any opposed? is there any public comment on this item? the minutes are approved. item 8, review and approval of the regular meeting on february 19, 2014. >> i approve the meeting minutes of february 19, 2014. >> second. >> any public comment? okay, are all commissioners in favor? >> i.

>> any opposed? minutes are approved. our next commission meeting is scheduled for june 18, 2014. if there's any changes we'll let everybody know. >> yeah. >> so would like a motion to adjourn? >> adjourn. >> do we have -- can we have agenda to add some things to the agenda -- >> i neglected to put that on the agenda. you can contact me and let me know what [inaudible] for the next meeting. >> and no questions to the director or anything? >> let me -- >> you want to have questions to the director? >> that's usually on the a jean da,. agenda

>> it's usually on there, it's just it was mistakenly not including. >> if you want to make questions to the director, you could reopen the director's report portion of the hearing if it's related to some of the items that are shown there as updates and reopen public hearing on that as well. . >> it's not related. it's fine. thank you commissioner mar. there's a motion to adjourn here. >> did someone make the motion? >> i thought you did. >> i didn't make the motion. >> i'll move to adjourn. >> okay. >> second. >> motion and a second. are all commissioners in favor? >> i. >> and opposed. we're now adjourned, it is 10:35 am. >> in the interest, we'll all meet back here at ten to 11:00, is that okay with everybody?

that gives us about 20 minutes and we'll go into -- >> we'll meet back in approximately 10 minutes. >> that's 15 minutes. >> oh, 15 minutes, sorry. no worries.