>> we are ready to begin.

>> good morning, today is wednesday, november 19th, 2014. this is the regular meeting of the building inspection commission. i would like to remind everyone for please turn off all electronic devices the first item is roll call. >> president mccarthy. >> here. >> commissioner lee? >> here. >> commissioner mccray? >> present. >> commissioner melgar is expected. >> commissioner walker? >>... >> commissioner clinch. >> here. >> and vice president mar is excused we have a quorum and the next item is president's announcements. >> good morning and welcome to tuesday november 18th, 2014, building inspection commission. so, just with that and

president's announcements congratulations and thanks to dbi director, tom for his clear and formative testimony on october 9th to the seismic safety commission, the state commission is responsible for the seismic safety issues throughout california and the commission held the first meeting on the city's board of supervisor's chambers and invited testimony from the director and the capitol planning committee and the mayor's earthquake safety implementation and sfpuc and the san francisco effort to improve the earthquake safety in our buildings and critical infrastructure as well as ongoing planning by the city policy makers to insure, resil ans and recovery for the next major earthquake or other disaster. congratulations to the director, too for his new article on the mandatory seismic retrofitting program that appeared in the sfapartment magazine, entitled

tick tok, retrofit, very appropriate. and the effort to bring as many soft story building owners in compliance as possible, hats off to robert (inaudible) and his excellent staff for the efforts to reduce the non-compliant numbers of 107, which we heard last month to 99 percent compliance achievement and so that is well done there and so congratulations and a big thank you to two members of the technical service staff for the professionalism and the responsiveness on working on the office of the recently published sheet, g19 and the guidelines for the play areas and the play components and so kutos for a job well done >> a special thanks to the soft story retrofit, team, lily madis for helping to generate, excellent media coverage for code enforcement phase which began on october 7th and additional coverage and with the additional coverage and the

wake up call provided by the napa earthquake or the non-compliance numbers have fallen greatly and so it looks like we are going to have the complete success when it comes to the retrofit here, so that is great. also, well done to the numerous staff who served as mentors to the past summer project, the high school interns and pol high school inturns excuse me, dbi staff receiving the special certificates of appreciation for the (inaudible) and so please forgive me in i mispronones, ben mar, sardan and maret, tesa, adora, maria ascochez not even close. katherine bird, and terry salt, and rick and kevin ipp and

sherry brown and ben yee and andy eu and so this concludes my president's announcement and so i believe that next is public comment. >> yes. item three, general public comment. >> yeah. >> the bic will take public comment on matters within the commission's jurisdiction that are not part of at again da. >> i would like to acknowledge, commissioner melgar. >> okay, thank you. >> good morning commissioners my name is john (inaudible) from the concerned neighbors in the valley i brought a letter to a copy of it to all of you and the supervisor board. and no actions have been taken.

it concerns the project at 3450, third street and you need to place this on your next meeting, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> is there any further public comment? >> seeing none? >> if there is no more public comment, if it is okay with my fellow commissioners i would like to, because in respect to the people that have come here, and at my request, and to go to items 7 first, and take that out of order if that is okay with everybody and there is no objection from my fellow commissioners. >> on item seven? >> hold on a second i think that someone from planning has a question. >> you are waiting for karin

cohen? >> okay. so, why don't we do this then and since she is important part to this equation and this might be... okay. so, on that, could then all right let's go back in order if that is okay? >> item's four, director's report. >> let's go straight to, yeah, let's go to the director's report. thank you. >> 4 a, update on dbi finances. >> good morning, commissioners. tira (inaudible) deputy director for the department, and before you is the finance report and i will just take a few minutes to go over the highlights and basically so much of a prior report, and we only have about 4 months of data and so these are preliminary estimates but i will go over what we have so far of starting are the revenue

and similar to last month, the revenues were projecting to be about 3 million dollars under budget and that is based on the 7 percent reduction and temporary fee reduction as well as what the year to date collections are and we will be monitoring that and updating that once we get more clarification on the proposal for the fee study and i will go over the fee study update and after i am done with this to let you know about that and for now, we are basing it on the 7 percent fee reduction. and so, basically, over all, we are about 8 percent lower than we were last year. and part of that has to do with the 7 percent reduction, but also part of that has to do, if you look at the valuation of the permits on page 2, we are, we actually have more permits this year, issue more permits but the valuation is slightly lower and so the valuation is down by 8 percent or so and that is where that reduction

comes from. on the expenditure side, if you look at the year to date it actually is that we are under spending because we have a huge amount placed in projects for a variety of projects that has not been transferred already and if you take out that 30 million for the project funding we actually are spending more than they were last year and that is similar to what we have been doing in the other months and a lot of it has to do with the hiring of staff and we are about one million more than this time last year because of the staff hiring and we have also been doing a lot with our contracting, a lot with purchasing, and i mean the emergency supplies so we are getting our spending up and i would be happy to answer any questions if there are any, if not i can go on to just an update on the fee study. >> can we go a little deeper into why we are or our income is less, even though our projects are more? are we looking at smaller projects or do we need to go and audit our evaluations.

>> director of the department of building inspection and later on i will report, regarding the major project, and it is level off with remember last month it was increasing, and the is bigger project is pretty welcoming in a steady pace now. but the small project is coming back because to be modeling and to model and all of those, you know it will not generate that much revenue. actually, the fee study they want to put more on the project, but i intend to be you know, cut from the small project and to help the small home owner and all of those, and it will be detailed. >> and that is being included in the fee study. >> yeah. >> to look at the man power required, yeah. >> the person power, excuse me. >> yeah, we have a study on how much we spend on the planning wheel and how much we spend on

the, you know, the inspection. because also, the smaller the project and it will not bring in much revenue. >> right. >> i just want to make sure that we capture that in our fee study, because it looks like we are under water every month with the 7 percent. >> right, okay. >> and so i want to follow that up, to sort of follow up into what we discussed in the joint meeting and we will do our evaluation of permits and so, let's make sure that we have the permits. >> yeah, we have the quality control on the variation, and we have the minimum of 10 percent, to, you know, verify

by the supervisor, you know, in the different division. >> okay. >> and i was just looking at page 2. and seeing that in our bread and butter areas, if you will, the zero to 500,000 range, we, and up to about 50,000, they seem to be holding study and they are doing very well up to 100,000 and they seem to be the bread and butter so if there is any evaluation around the change and they will be effecting the permits and costs. >> you will pick those up and those down and we will look at bringing up those that are not the bread and butter. >> yeah, so right now most of the concentrations have been on the larger projects. and so, there are providing things that happen and it just

depepeds and there is not, there is not a pattern, per se. and so for instance, in some evaluations we will be under covering, or we may be over recovering but the focus has been what the consultant and this is a good segway into the study on the larger projects because that is where a lot of the funding has come from in the past few years and we really do collect a lot of revenue from the larger projects and so that is what we are focusing on now, part of the reason why the consulting has not been back to the body yet, because dbi is an anominee from all jurisdictions and so his methodology from even having small to fall back on, looking at 100 million dollar projects and he is accustomed to doing that and we have to work with him as well as the controller's office as well as coming up with the standards of how we are going to measure that and i don't have a date right now, and because at issue

now, or it would be for those, and the department as well as the controller's office and we do have the questions about the methodology in general and, about the source, data and so, the controller's office analysts are actually combing through that and then they are going to go through that and then meet with both us and the supervisor to kind of go over those things and so that is what is really taking a long time. but, on the actual, of course, this is just only focusing on these permits, right? and when we talked about the evaluation we are talking about the building permits and the plan review, and electrical and this should not be a surprise to anyone, electrical and plumbing for the most part, we are under recovering as well as in housing inspection, too. >> and so, that, the primary wild card here is actually the permits that are based on valuation. and those permits that are based on valuation and because the consultant's model is based on an hourly cost of recognizing the revenues in the

same year and as you all know that for us a lot of our revenues and we collect a lot up front and it is supposed to last us over the life of the permit and that is why we are trying to reconcile those things. >> so a permit on a, so a permit on a million dollar 100 million dollar gets spent over how long of a period verses a 500 dollar or $1,000? >> so normally the it is that once you get over to like five million, i think the life of the permit would then go to two million, and when you go to 100 million dollar project we are going to two and a half and three and a half four years or so. >> four years. >> so it is just depends on all of these smaller permits when the permits come in, we earn the revenue during the same year, because the work is done within that same year. >> right, okay. >> one other question. >> yes. >> as we are doing our study,

are we anticipating a continual growth on the bottom two lines? the 500. >> the larger project? >> to 1 million? i see a growth, are we expecting and that is where the money. >> so actually we are not anticipating and part of the issue is that our valuation table is very, and it stopped at 1 million right? and so we, and a long time ago when we did this one million seems like a lot, and we know that one million is not a lot any more. even though you see 149 verses 85, in that one million, what is happening is that, i mentioned this before, last year, we had 6 projects i believe, over 100 million dollars. >> we are not seeing that this year. and so that is the difference and so even though you see and this is a little, it is not really accurate, yes, 1 million or more, it does look it and it is increased and if you go through the big money ones and 50 million and above, that is not increasing and so that is part of the things that we are working with the consultant

right now is that the table is based on a long time ago, when now, you know, a lot of things can be caused to be valued at one million dollars and that is something that they are looking at is looking at the table and if there needs to be more of a break out to capture some bigger projects. >> right. >> commissioner walker. >> just as a follow up, it is clear over the last few years the building has been phenomenally high after a pause in development and we are factoring that in because we are counting on the high categories to make-up for the fact that we are under charging for fees in some of these other departments, housing, etc.. smaller ones, which take up as much if not more time, so i just want to make sure that we capture that in our evaluation going forward. that we estimate for a normal year, rather than, yes, i agree. >> good point and the

department has been making that point throughout our negotiations with both of the..., well, us working with the consultant as well as the controller's office that this, yes, we are doing this study now, but, probably by the time that the fees go into effect, we may not be looking at the same type of economy and so we have to take that into consideration. and they recognize that. we also have to into consideration that there are some items that are not meant to be cost covering, right? and you know, we are taking into consideration that we want to encourage and we want to encourage home owner and for the people to get permit and there is a safety thing involved in here too and we don't want to price the permits out of people's reach that they will not want to come in and get the permits and so we are having the negotiationwise them too. >> right. i mean that is important because a lot of what we do is insensitivize through the reductions and we want to make sure that we cover it. especially if we are not going to be counting on these, 100

million dollar projects to you know, help us a bit. but, that is my concern. >> is there anything else from the commissioners? >> thank you. >> thank you. >> item 4 b, update on proposed legislation? >> okay. >> good morning commissioners legislative and public affairs and i know that we are going to be addressing both the enhanced ventilation item in a few minutes, and possibly an item on the short term rental and so i will just mention the retrofit program, as president mccarthy alluded to, where we are actually even in better

compliance than, these numbers i was told before coming over this morning, where we are probably about 85 who are non-compliant out of the 6700 who were notified and so we are at the 99 percent compliance level on that first element. and as the director frequently reminds all of us, that is only the very first phase of having people submit the screening forms and they still need to get the permits, and we have actually issued about 75 permits and of course, do the work. and that is where we are achieving in the system. >> commissioner walker? >> i am just curious, percentage wise of those people responding how many actually need to work? we were anticipating that some of these might fall off if they have already had work done or if they indeed had sheer wall and the bottom floor, or do you have any ideas or is there any estimate yet? >> sorry, i don't have those numbers. >> okay. >> i don't think that we know that break down yet, but we can certainly look into that. >> that will be important especially as we try to set the budgets for the next few years, because those are going to be

the legal and illegal unit legization sxil be time consuming as well as the short term rental issue. so. >> yeah, this is 6 years program. >> i know. >> our budgets are two years and we need to think about that. >> i think that the good news is of course, that we are getting better compliance and that is very good. and i also want to mention the legislation that deals with the legalizing the illegal inlaw units. and because, we are just now, at about the 6 month point after the adoption of that legislation. which was about the middle of may. and we still only have the issued one permit, and on that. and even though we have had quite a few inquiry and range about 130 and some of those are still in planning under review,

and so that number i do expect will actually increase but it may take another couple of months to actually see that realized. >> actually, there are 6, and the dbi, and they are at right now, and i think that five of them can be approved soon except one of them because it is added, you know? and that will be in the coming of the expensive review, because, the number of story change and the seismic thing coming in. and there are totally, roughly, 50 of them submitted one on the issue. and but the rest of this is receive the planning right now. >> and will you remind me of what we are estimating is the number city wide where of these units. i think that we have, estimated something, correct? >> like... >> yeah. >> i think 30,000. >> 30,000? >> i think that was supervisor chiu's estimate.

and i don't know if that was based on actually. >> the problem is lots of home owners are arguing that they on and we try to encourage them is issue is the rent control and another one is the tax increase, and it is the same thing as number one i try. >> yeah. >> and at which, you know, >> this is a really challenging issue. and not, unsimilar to the short term rental issue. and we are going to have the same kind of challenges as a department. >> yeah. >> and, i think that we will all agree as commissioners that it kind of talks to these legislations when we just implement them. >> yeah. >> without thinking them through and that is one thing that the commission is going to be, and we are going to be before it, and before we even gets voted on and agreed on, we are going to say, how do we implement these things? >> we are trying to be more proactive about that and the legislative review committee that the director has set up,

has taken a look and we have identified four or five pieces of legislation right now, that we are watching and discussing with supervisors to make sure that we are part of that conversation. and that includes supervisor weiner's proposal to add an inlaw, and if it can be done in the existing building envelope, when you are doing a seismic retrofit. and that legislation has not yet been heard in planning. and but we expect that to happen, maybe by the end of this year, or earlier in the new year. and dbi has agreed, in meeting with the supervisor to do a public notification where we will make people aware that this legislation is about to be introduced. if they are considering doing a retrofit. just so that they are aware of this. so we will do a mailing about it to our data base from the

soft story group where, of course, we know many people are looking into retrofits and then we will have the same notification at the public counters so the people again can be at least aware that this opportunity may be coming once the legislation gets through. >> i just mentioned two others that we are paying close attention to and that is the mayor's office of earthquake safety, and as you know, it has been promoting a facade inspection phase, for a building and that could be a very large universe of building and we are trying to find out how many buildings are five or more stories that may be included in this facade inspection. and the other engineers tell us that that could be a rather complicated type of program. so, it may require additional staffing as that moves forward

and right now we don't have a plan for where that is going forward any way. >> commissioner walker? >> so that is a facade to make sure that it is secure and isn't going to... >> fall over. >> yeah. >> yeah. >> and there was a redevelopment agency. they used to do it down in the redevelopment agency was, i know, in their district. they used to do those types of programs. >> yeah, they did that and yeah, a lot of it was just how it looks, and kind of spifing up. >> it is a real problem. >> yeah, we did a similar program to the parapits originally the things on top that enclosed roof tops are often times not attached and will fall. >> commissioner walker, we have a way before we start the program. and then this is at a park on the umb building.

but this front story, but i don't have the order or the definition yet is still not going through the az is included or the cost panel is included? and there are a lot of building and i estimate about 10,000. >> yeah. >> maybe the building. >> wow. >> and the dbi staff and how many companies out there can do that kind of a job? >> yeah. >> that is my concern. >> yeah. >> somebody suggested maybe a big type of a machine could be scanning, but i don't know how we work. that is why i have a lot of questions on that ordinance. i am worried about it but how to handle it. >> i understand. >> and i wanted to mention that supervisor tang has been meeting with a working group that dbi has been part of and that is looking at mandatory disability access improvements. and we are continuing to work closely with her to just make

sure that whatever legislation that does come out of that, is enforcable and manageable and does not, end up putting especially small businesses at some risk given what might be required in a way of investments. >> is that for commercial? or residential? >> it is city wide. both. >> everything? >> all commercial, (inaudible) only. >> okay, got it. >> and the final one, the department of the environment and the mayor's office is looking at requiring on all new construction, installation of solar panels and we have a couple of our staff participate ng that working group and there is a meeting and a second one schedule in that month. >> thank you. >> thank you for that update. >> item 4 c, update on major projects.

>> tom, director of the department of building inspection, as you can see from compared to last month, the major project is just about level off and only 0.3 percent in increase and but i expect some of the project we will come up like the basketball arena, and actually they want the construction next year. but about candle stick park also but those are not in there yet but the ventilation of the park and they are want to start issuing. and i expect the treasure island will be coming up soon. and they are going the groundwork on that part also. and we project that it will be some what with the project coming in, but not as substantial as the 200 million or those projects that we are watching for it, yeah. >> any questions?