supervisor cohen? cohen aye. supervisor farrell? farrell aye. 10 ayes. >> motion by supervisor breed pass he. madam clerk, can we move to supervisor wiener's motion to move this to next board meeting november 25th. >> on the motion to continue, mr. chair, we need a second. i'm sorry -- >> i believe we had a second by supervisor tang. >> i have a quick question and point of order. >> supervisor cohen. >> you said this is a continuance request for one week? on item 41 and 42? >> through the chair, yes. >> president chiu? as i said before, i'm not going to support this motion to continue because of the long process we've gone from both a community perspective, a stakeholder perspective as well as in committee and here at the

board, are there other issues that need to be addressed. supervisor marv and i would love to hear them, but i think at this point i know we have addressed major concern that would be consensus on this board. i hope we can pass this on a first read to next week. obviously if there are other issues that arise -- i know supervisor mar and i both went into continue to do work a we have been doing for the better part of a year. with that, i hope we can at least vote on this for the first read. >> supervisor mar? >> i was just going to say out of deference to our president as well, the staff meeting will be next week and i just strongly urge my colleagues to let us move this forward and don't delay this. thank you. >> supervisor wiener? >> just, again, supervisor cohen's comment and ideally i probably would have asked for a few weeks. the reason i'm moving for one week instead of three weeks is

out of respect for the author of one of the pieces of legislate. it's a very short period of time and i just think a piece of legislation is important, having that extra dialogue, given that for whatever reason there seems to be a disconnect between the various sides would be helpful. >> supervisor cohen? >> thank you. i, too, feel like the process to switch, we brought the discussion -- the legislative process -- it does feel rushed to me. i certainly like the example that supervisor kim and i worked on earlier, really have no solid working group on a round and people work together. however, i will not be supporting the measure. i'm not sure one week of time will do. thank you. >> colleagues, any further discussion on the motion to continue?

okay, madam clerk, roll call vote. >> on the motion to continue items he 41 and 42 as amended to 11/25. supervisor kim? kim no. supervisor mar? mar no. supervisor tang? tang aye. supervisor wiener? wiener aye. supervisor yee. yee no. supervisor avalos. avalos no. supervisor breed breed aye. supervisor chiu. chiu no. supervisor cohen? cohen no. supervisor farrell? farrell aye. there are four ayes and 6 no's. >> colleagues, any discussion on the underlying amendment to 41 or 42? okay, madam clerk, seeing no members on the roster can we have a roll call vote on 41 and 42 together? >> as a medctioned >> as amended. >> 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. supervisor campos? excuse me, supervisor chiu. chiu aye. supervisor cohen. supervisor farrell? farrell aye. 10 ayes. >> 1 and 2 are passed on the first read. [cheering and applauding] >> thank you, colleagues. with that, why don't we now go to our first 3:00 p.m. special order. madam clerk, could you call the item related to 115 telegraph hill boulevard? >> items 30 through 33 comprise the special order of 3:00 p.m. for a public hearing. persons interested in the september 3rd, 2014 planning department's determination of a categorical exemption from environmental review under the california environmental quality act issued on september 3rd, 2014, for the proposed

project at 115 telegraph hill. items 31 through 33 are the motion that are refer or reverse the department's exemption determination and findings to reverse the exemption determination. items 34 through 37 comprise the comprise persons interested in hearing the planning commission conditional use authorization to allow the construction of three new dwelling units for a lot total of four with three off street parking spaces within the telegraph hill north beach special use residential district located at 115 telegraph hill, items 35 and 37 approve or disapprove the decision and preparation of findings. >> thank you, colleagues, and thank you to members of the public who have been patiently waiting. we have a construction project of three new dwelling units with three off-street parking spaces within the rh-3 zoning district at 115 telegraph hill boulevard.

first, there is an appeal of the decision by the planning commission that the project is categorically exempt from environmental review. second, there is appeal from the use authorization forv this project. first we will consider the adequacy and sufficiency and completeness of the planning commission's determination that this product is categorically exempt from environmental review. [speaker not understood] six votes of the board are required. our consideration of the appeal of the conditional use authorization involves an analysis of whether the planning commission's determination to authorize the project was appropriate. this hearing is quasi-judicial nature and we are reweird to provide due process to overturn planning or authorize conditional use with additional conditions eight votes thev board are required. while both hearings involve distinct analysis on our part, they relate to the same project. in consideration of the members of the public who want to speak

on one or both of these issues and in consideration of the appellants city staff and the board itself, what we are going to do today is to consolidate both of these hearings into a single hearing. in order to ensure that the appellant, the public, the planning department and the project sponsor each receive a full and fair opportunity to address both appeals, i propose we conduct the hearing as we often do as follows. first the appellants will have 15 minutes to present their case for the appeal of the categorical exemption and the appeal of the conditional use authorization. next members of the public that support either or both appeals may mean that you request the board to reject the categorical exemption or the conditional use, speak for up to two minutes or either or both of these issues. and we ask the speaker identify the particular appeal they're addressing with their comments. next the planning department will have up to 15 minutes to present its analysis for certificatev identifying the categorical exemption and for

authorizing the conditional use planned unit development. following that the real party in interest the project sponsor will have up to 15 minutes to present its case for certification of the categorical exemption for affirming the conditional use authorization. that will be followed by members of the public who support the certification of the categorical exemption and the approval of the cu authorization who can speak for up to two minutes on either or both of the issues. we ask that speakers identify the particular appeal they address with their comments. finally, the appellants will have up to five minutes for rebuttal in support of the cad ex appeal and the appeal of the cu authorization. at the conclusion of the hearing we will first vote on whether to affirm the certification of the categorical exemption and in the event that the cad ex certification is affirmed, we will then consider the question of whether to affirm or overturn the conditional use authorization. so, unless there are any objections or questions to proceeding in this way, why don't we now begin this

hearing. and with that i'd like to invite a representative from the appellant. and you have up to 15 minutes. >> thank you. good afternoon, president chiu and assembly elect, congratulations. and members of the board of supervisors. i am susan grant holley and i'm here to talk about the categorical exemption and to ask this board to overturn it. i want to underscore what categorical exemption are about. ceqa as you know requires environmental review for any project with a potential significant environmental impact. the legislature ha provided for these exemptions to streamline approval of projects when there is no possible significant impact. the record before you is very clear that we have a project with potential significant impacts.

its location on telegraph hill on a steep slope, on a narrow road, have i ted by tourists, and local residents, the traffic impacts, geotechnical impacts and esthetic impacts are potentially and we think certainly going to be significant. and the project sponsor agrees with much of that and so does your staff. especially the easy question here relates to geotechnical impacts. and what the city is doing and i would suggest the city has an unlawful pattern and practice at the moment relating to its treatment of technical environmental impacts in which it just -- it relies on its staff and on a process whereby it states that it will apply its own studies for pier row view complex issues, and basically mitigate potential impacts to make sure that they are not significant.

~ peer review that kind of approach is called a standard approach in ceqa and there has been a push in years past to try to treat ceqa that way as to all impacts. for example, if you have traffic impacts you could say don't worry. we have potential impacts, public works will take care of them. you have septic or sewer impacts. you could say don't worry, we'll apply our ordinances to make sure those are taken care of. and here geotechnical impacts as conceded by the experts, there are potential impacts due to the slope and very unusual depth of excavation here, 33 feet for an underground garage. but don't worry, we're going to study it, we're going to analyze it, we're going to make sure that we don't have impacts. ceqa doesn't allow that and that's why those things were not passed by the legislature. ceqa has not been changed and what is required is a public process where when you have potential significant impacts they are aired in public. the public has to have a chance to see what's going to be what the impacts are going to be and how those are going to be mitigated. and here you are trying to

propose that by approving a categorical exemption and that is not in compliance with law. there is a belated reliance here. since time is limited i'm going to point out a few problems that are apparent from the staff's rebuttal to the appeal. there is a belated reliance on a new transit oriented section of the public resource he code 21 0 99. it's rather ironic for a project with luxury condominiums of about 4,000 square feet each and an underground 4,000 square foot garage proposed. this is not a transit friendly project. this is a project providing for parking for its residents. and the new line doesn't do away with concern based on adopted city plans and i would point out a lot of the testimony and everyday that you've already received that relates to esthetics, in fact, it contradicts or is inconsistent with arguably the

city's general plan. i did cite in my appeal letter there are priority planning policies to protect parks from vistas from public parks, from developments. here we have a lot of evidence that people visiting san francisco as well as local residents walk up those steps right across from the project site and stop there to take a look at the unobscured vista of the city right there. the way this project is now proposed, that vista, that view will be blocked. people walking up that hill or walking up those stairs in the park will not have the view of the city that they now enjoy. that is inconsistent with the city's adopted plan and we're not arguing necessarily that this can't be approved,. what we're saying is that is evidence of a potential environmental impact that precludes categorical exemption ~. there are traffic problems and

even if this section applies to 21 0 99, that isn't now to allow level of service ~ aspects to be considered so that you don't let any more possibly in the future especially level of service impacts and delays in intersections, you still have to look at air pollution, pedestrian safety, noise, and other issue relating to traffic. and there is a lot of evidence, the record about potential significant impacts relating to those issue, and you're going to be hearing more from i believe people testifying here today about impacts relating to the location of the local school where the staging of the concrete trucks is going to occur. mitigation measures in this record are also significant. categorical exemptions aren't allowed when you need mitigation. i'd like to briefly explain that in that the idea behind categorical exemptions is to streamline projects that have

no impacts. when a project needs mitigation, there is a potential to that mitigation to fail. you don't want a project that has -- for mitigation measures to be approved by exemption. in the cases say that's not allowed. here there are a lot of mitigation measures. project conditions and the geotechnical report indicates a lot of other conditions and mitigations to be added in the future. because there is a potential that those mitigations to fail or not be adequate, we don't know. we don't even know what they are. so, this board can't make a finding that no mitigation is me. by approving a categorical exemption, what this board would be saying is that this project has no potential significant environmental impacts and you've got a record in this particular situation that proves the contrary. so, in this particular situation it's imperative that there be environmental analysis to include the concerned public

and to give the city and your staff the information that it needs to consider whether this project should be altered, whether it can be approved without significant impacts, and if there are significant impacts whether, in fact, this project should be approved or not. just to say a little bit more about the geotechnical report, we've had some reports going back and forth and they're very technical. i'm just a lawyer. i don't understand all the scientific matters here, but it's a classic dispute among experts. you have experts that are looking at similar facts and disagreeing about the consequences. in that situation you need an environmental impact report to assess in fact what the impacts are going to be, whether they're going to be significant and whether they can be mitigated to a level of in

significance. also relating to traffic your staff reports that and esthetics as well, you have a lot of opinions of local residents in this record. that those are not evident that you need to consider ~ because they relate to argument and speculation. and that's not what the law provides. it's very clear that certain very technical areas of environmental analysis like geotechnical impacts, for example, talking about tin khani missions or other technicalities, those are the province of experts. but there are a number of environmental issues that are understandable by lay people and those kind of issues allow lay testimony to be considered substantial evidence and the specific examples given for such types of impacts include traffic or local residents can testify about what they have observed. and here we have local residents talking about esthetics which is a subjective

kind of a category that is certainly subject to layperson evidence and also traffic issues where people are testifying what they're observing relating to pedestrians and vehicles on this roadway. the fact that you've got a landing at the top of this hill that's right where the driveway is going to enter into the street, there's a bus stop there. there was a lot of pedestrian traffic and the testimony and letters you've received and what you're going to hear today from local residents about what they already observe as traffic and pedestrian safety and esthetic issues, all of that is evidences that you must consider when you consider whether in fact there's any evidence in the record and evidences under ceqa are facts or fact-based reasonable assumption or expert opinions. that's evidence under ceqa,

whether in fact there is any evidence at all that would support a finding that this project may have significant impacts. and this is an easy record respectfully for this body to consider. this is not a small project in this location and the evidence before you is substantial. but i ask that you grant the appeal and overturn the categorical exemption, send this back to your staff, take a look at whether in fact there is credible evidence of a potentially significant environmental impact, look at an initial study. perhaps they will find the mitigation measures once they take a hard look at them, the geotechnical and other issue. perhaps they will actually, after studying that and mitigating it so that the public can see what's being proposed, perhaps they will find that there is clearly no environmental impact and they can do a negative declaration. if, in fact, there is evidence that despite mitigation there may be an impact, then an

environmental impact report is required. thank you, and i will turn the rest of the appellant's time over to alice barkly. >> thank you, ms. brett holland. >> you're welcome. >> we'll stop your time until ms. barkley sets up. >> sorry for the confusion. dr. larry [speaker not understood] will go now. >> l.b. carp, i'm a geotechnical engineer. i gave the clerk a handout. this project is very unusual. the excavation almost as deep as this chamber in the side of a hill at the edge of the

roadway, the only roadway to [speaker not understood] tower, below hoist tower. i wrote two reports. yesterday, i guess over the weekend, the project sponsors hired an engineer to find fault with my report and they issued their own report yesterday. i can't go into everything, but that report contains eight pageses of potential environmental impacts, but every one they dismissed as it can be taken care of in the future by the right engineers at the right time according to various codes and procedures. that's not true. but one of the things, the one thing i wanted to address today where they attacked me for stating that rock wall on the northeast side of telegraph

hill was not inter bed are not involved,v inter beds are clay and seems between the rock masses which erode with water. so, this handout contains, because of time limits, contains four pictures i took on january 27th, 19 -- excuse me, 2012 at the request of my client abbott nabor. before the city did any reports, these are the horizontal lines. [speaker not understood]. i mean right next door. and at the bottom of it, that is a pile of eroded shale or the inter bed material. it just grows and grows as water comes out. the second page shows the pile and some more inter beds.

third page shows the same thing, a different view. and the fourth page shows a close up of the inter bed and the pile of eroded shale at the bottom. the curious thing about the attack on me is that not only what i there before the city hired north america to do an investigation, but then they did have a report. they published a year later. and in that report they went through the shale inter beds and the writer of the report that was received yesterday was hired to do stabilization repairs on that hillside and the permit that was granted them to do that was the -- was based on a rough report of 2013 and supposedly they finished

their job on may 2014. so, they're saying something doesn't exist which they were hired to implement repairs to. thank you. >> members of the board, my name is alice barkley and i represent [speaker not understood] and several of the neighbors. i will be very, very short and what i can say in the next 20 minutes or 22nd or so, i'll reserve it for rebull at. ~ 20 seconds in summary, i'd like to [speaker not understood], one of the reasons we do not believe this project is appropriate in this massing you'll have to go through the history a little bit. essentially they started with a project which is on the first floor, but the site plan and that is considerably smaller. >> ms. barkley, i'll ask you to summarize if you can what you're about to present. >> okay.

the project is substantially smaller than what is before the board. [speaker not understood] with the neighbor after they have discussed the project with the neighbor, they submitted a project that is substantially larger than is now before this board. and during the rebuttal time i can go into a little bit more about the details you have which outline extensively all the reasons why this project is not necessary nor desirable for this particular site and this particular neighborhood. thank you. >> thank you very much, ms. barkley. colleagues, unless there are any questions, why don't we now ask for members of the public that wish to support the appellants on either of the appeals. if you could please line up on the right-hand side of the board chamber faceving us. let's hear from the first speaker.

mr. butler. good afternoon, president chiu, members of the board. telegraph hill has always been about orientation in san francisco. the hill offered the most visible placement for a semifour at the golden gate for the practical use of electricity, business [speaker not understood] communication system was based upon line of sight and established its own flag and stick language for communication purposes. telegraph hill has always been in the middle of it given visual orientation and information to visitors and residents alike. over a six year period from 1995 to 2001 several dozen neighbors and hundreds of other neighbors organized and funded a project at hoist tower to

build stairways and ramps and make the site accessible to the handicap for the first time. to do so we sold stair tiles and where we put the stairway were always considered the view. so, here we are at the top of the stairway and we have a little seat here at the bench. everyone can see the bank of america, downtown, the union square portion of downtown. from the overlook you see the ferry building. from the [speaker not understood] you see the east bay, treasure island. from the parking lot we created owe ace ease among the tall trees so you could see through to the richmond center, to alcatraz, to overlook. that's always been what telegraph, afforded the presence where they were and the direction of how to go. to allow this development at the base of this stair without

any view vista is both a violation of the master plan as am i brandt holley pointed out. we ask for a denial of the cu. [speaker not understood]. >> thank you very much. let's hear from the next speaker. good afternoon, supervisor chiu, fellow supervisor. gary neary. i used to live at that property 115 telegraph hill back in the late 60s, 70s. you might have been in swaddling clothes. [speaker not understood] i defer to other people's position on the environmental aspects of it. but that property is occupied by one of the legendary characters of this city, bill bailey. the college we saw suspended in mid air in mid air up there. i think it would be appropriate for the developer to do the

right thing and to commemorate some telling of significant fashion illustrious history. he was a labor leader, he fought in the civil war. there was a witch hunt in the 1950s. the activities committee he was headed for congress. and many of the things, he was a wonderful person because of that. when the college was lifted in the air people got together and in small check. he donated 30, $40,000 which i think is still hanging out in the san francisco foundation. available to do something to commemorate that particular building. it was shipped off to a parking lot by the muni bus track, railroad basin 20 years ago. it's still sitting out there. in some sort of commemorative condition to be attached to this board [speaker not understood] exercising discretion, do it in the appropriate, i think it would

be well suited and in this building if it's going to go forward, and i thank you. >> next speaker. president chiu and members of the board of supervisors, i'm david golden, i'm the chief facility officer for the san francisco unified school district. my presence here is actually neither in support or in opposition, but of concern. we have a school garfield elementary that will be below this development. we've come to learn in the last week or so that there will be work that may need to progress up filbert street past our site. our concern is for the health, safety and welfare and normal functioning of our public school and it's sort of come to our attention in the documents of the conditional use permit that block 105 is required to work with this ev