and we're also available for questions. >> madame president, commissioners and staff, thank you for taking the time to review us again this evening. my name is robert jacob the executive director of sparc and we heard the commission loud and clear in october to demonstrate support from our future neighbors in the excelsior and outer mission and so happy that the neighbors are here in person to talk about why they support our proposal. in your packets in total turn we have 330 letters of support, 255 of those letters of support are from the 94112 and adjacent zip codes of proposed location and present a letter from the ky neighborhood association that has represented our location since 1939, it states clearly that the cia support our application due to consistent communication with their board of directors and willingness to work together and sparc does not create

negative clustering effects like the other dispensaris and hope it demonstrate our strong support today. sparc is different and how we operate is fundamentally different than other mcds. we adrop thed a street, which is slated to be san francisco's next living alley. over four years' of operation we have never not had one community complaint, code violation or secret threat. sparc is the only mcd in san francisco to be [hro-eupbs/]ed under washington, d.c.-based patient for certification program. sparc is different from other dispensaries in the level of care and service provided to patient and how we relate immediately and to our immediate neighbors. the outer mission neighborhood deserves a quality dispensary and sparc is here to meet that need. i hope the commission had a chance to read the letter by district supervisor jane kim, testifying to sparc's positive presence for the neighborhood around our existing dispensary. sparc is most different pin how hard we work to be good neighbors. we hope that the public

testimony that you hear today will coin vince you to support our project. i'm available for questions any time throughout the hearing and i have some documents to hand out. >> mr. lattimer? >> my name is david latterman and i live in the excelsior and work in the excelsior and although i'm concern certainly no leader of the people who have come here to oppose the clustering of the mcd clubs i think i can speak on behalf of the them, since i have been in conversations with them for many months about this. as somebody who lives in the excelsior and works in the excelsior and owns a house in the etch sellsor and raising three children in the excelsior, i guess i guess as

much say as anyone about this and i am for the record neighborhood. this issue, we can talk legalize on what exactly is "clustering?" but i think all of you have seen the maps of what the outer mission and the excelsior has turned into. there are two adjacent pot clubs already south of geneva, there are two on ocean, there is one a lit more to the north on mission at -- north of silver at green cross and petition for two more coming one next to green cross and yet another one, which is around the mission and geneva area. so this if this isn't clustering i don't know what is. i'm not here to say anything negative about sparc per se, but there is say reason that ceqa for instance deals with cumulative impacts and that is where we are today. when you have so many clubs in such a small radius and the legalize of 500' versus 600, okay. but 600 and 800' you have seen

the map and if this isn't clustering, i don't know what is. there is no neighborhood that has so many clubs so close to each other and after a mile while, you start to work with the cumulative impacts and start to see the blight and start to see the security issues and start to sea all the other neighborhood issues of i bit about the neighborhood. i think most of you have been down there and seen it. this area hasn't been treated as other ones in san francisco. i won't go as far as to say it's blighted. but we haven't gotten the economic impacts that so many other neighbor neighborhoods have. and we are struggling. we are fighting to try to attract restaurants and bike shops and coffee shops and get them to spend $50,000 to $1500,000 for ada improvements. >> please speak into the mic. >> all of these other issues, south of geneva to get them to come in and say hey, we're a neighborhood on the upspinning

swing. that sent what is happening. all i want to do now is introduce all the people you are going to here, nearly all of them are from the neighborhood. i request, i humiditibly request that when people talk, whoever you are, you say what neighborhood you are from. even say what cross street you are from. 94112 is a big zip code. when you talk about adjacent zip codes it's 134 all the way down to the bay view or all the way out to lakeside. we start to move far away. so let's all say where we're from. what neighborhood? what street? i think that would be fair. and the people who have come here tonight, this isn't easy for us. we don't have the resources to hire large lobbying firms, to hire very extensive attorneys, to hire community organizers who do great work in san francisco. we have enough to get a few buses who are willing to come

here in the rain, on a nasty night to state their case as to why this is enough. it's not about sparc exactly. it's about there are just too many of these and it's not allowing us to develop the neighborhood the way we want to. that is really all i have to say at this point and thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. i'm happy that all of the neighbors when have come in are also going to have the opportunity to say their piece and i hope you hear our petition or you hear our side of the petition and understand that enough is enough. and why is it has been the land of the mcd? and especially the southern part? excuse me, part of the 11 become the place where everything else is being sort of dumped onto? why aren't these clubs in the marina? why aren't there five clubs in a half-mile radius of the castro? felon graph telegraph hill, that would be awesome to have

one on telegraph hill, exception for our neighbor, and they don't expect us to fight back, a neighbor of a lot of low-income, people of color, asian, latino, to be able to come here and mount some kind of defense of our neighborhood. with that, thank you again for the opportunity to speak. and and i hope you hear everybody. >> thank you. we're now going to take those who need interpretation. that is correct, if it pleases the chair, we can let our terms go. i believe there are less spanish-speaking or members of the public that need spanish interpretation. oh, excuse me, would you like to hear from -- >> i'm captain joe mcfadden, the captain of inningside department and i'm a native san franciscan and grew up in noe valley, but spent a lot of time in the excelsior and i worked

from ingleside from 91-94 and know the excelsior very well. i'm not here to peak about the benefits of medicinal marijuana and i'm not here to speak about sparc. i have nothing personally against sparc. i'm sure it's a great organize as mr. latterman as stated. what i ham here to speak to you is about the same thing mr. latterman is the people of the excelsior district and the hard-working civil-minded people, long-term residents and merchants and most of them have lived there all their lives and grown up there and generations of these residents that have been there and merchants also. they truly care about their neighborhood. they have a supervisor that doesn't support them or represent them in any way whatsoever at all. and, in fact he stated in a public comment that 95% of the people were against these clubs in that area. and that is a very telling sign to you, the commission. and they feel that they are a

victim of this planning commission. and that is what i get from these community meetings that i lead under my c pap president, who is fantastic. you heard there several merchants in the past meetings about the blight these clubs bring upon the neighborhood and and i'm here to say that they are very true concerns about the clubs that we see. you heard from last meeting sparc supporters none of them who live or reside in the neighborhood. they are businesses. they want to come in and make money, at the behest of some of the people who are there and they are not there and don't live around and deal with the problems of the mcd participants that have come out. i hear about them. the community hears about them and they deal with them. i know that a few representatives off and on from this commission have done some fieldwork on this and have gone out and i applaud anybody that has gone out, christine has and checked on the clubs, but it amounts to a fieldtrip.

we're talking about people dealing with it on basis of 24/7. they might be in compliance on the five-minutes that you are there, stay there for a day, two days, a week, live there and you will understand exactly what they are talking about. what i am requesting more is an overview of the rules and regularations of these clubs. we have talked about the permitting process. some of the proposed conditions that they have brought up is they are only governed by one single representative from the health department. he he say great resource, but one man and how is he supposed to check on all complaints and do compliance checks on all of these clubs? it's ridiculous, absurd to have one person checking all the clubs. when i talked to him he just responds to compliants, but they have to be formal, written complaints documented by police report or something else. what there needs to be is some sort of compliance check with all of them on a routine basis. constant review. and one person from the health

department can't do that. most of the residents and merchants are not anti-pot. they are not anti-sparc. they are anti-clustering and what they want to ask and you heard it before, what is enough? they said there three there and another three in the application process, and they went to get them through. this is a neighborhood that likely latterman said you and you hear from some of the residents who are affected by this on a daily basis, as well as the police department? why can't you limit these clubs and why can't sparc buy out one of the existing clubs? i believe if you put a limit on it, they with find another spot of one that is already exiting. they don't see the impact on a dale litigation basis. they control in and work their business and they are gone. these are the people who work here and these are the people that you want to consider and i request that you don't turn a blind ice eye to what they

say, because they live in it. i live in alfred everydays working as the captain of the ingleside. they are surrounding areas are not geneva and mission and not excelsior, as mr. latterman brought up. i want you to consider these points when you talk about authorizing this club because you are affecting these people and their livelihoods. thank you. >> captain. >> anybody in the overflow room or in this chamber who need spanish translation, please come forward. >> and to ask the interpreter to make that announcement on the mic, please?

>> and maybe possibly announcement also from the chinese term? >> once we have completed the spanish speakers we'll move to the chinese speakers. >> should we start with the chinese translation until we have some spanish-speakers arrive? we do have several speaker cards? >> yes. >> and again, just to reiterate, speakers will be afforded one minute. >> the first speaker --

>> are you in need of spanish translation? why don't you come forward? >> translator: my name is melba and i live in 46 roeder street by geneva.

so i'm opposed to this project mostly because with the last one, the last six months we have had damage done to our car, as well as i have had to raise the gate around my house, because i have people sitting there and using drugs. so i feel like a prisoner in my house because i have bars on the windows everywhere and always have to clean out front and see the remains of the marijuana joints there and always don't feel safe because people are around smoking and cleaning and i just don't feel

safe. i studied child development and had child chair at my place and right now i only have two kids because they are leaving me and don't want to have their kids there with me. thank you. >> thank you. >> is there any other person in need of spanish translation? >> thank you. >> we'll take the piric speakers public speakers in need of chinesetranslation? if we could have first speaker

come to the podium? >> translator: i am a neighbor that is in -- that is in opposition of this proposal i believe that everybody knows how detrimental marijuana can be. and if there is a presence in our neighborhood, it will greatly impact our seniors, children and our working-class.

and there are increasing presence of cannabis in our neighborhood, and every day we actually can smell it, and they -- and we are impacted by it. we need a calm, peaceful and clean neighborhood and we do not need like a medicinal use type of atmosphere in our neighborhood. and we do not need violence,

criminal and drawingbuse drug abuse presence our neighborhood. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> translator: atine is my name. i am a teacher. i often tell me students that we should be environmentally aware. and my students often tell me ways and means to keep the air clean. every time we open this topic, all my students become very

emotional. because we have many students residing in the mission. and they mentioned that there are many cannabis establishments in the mission. and they often can smell and inhale these unpleasant smells. perhaps for those who are used to cannabis smell, they are not impacted. perhaps there are some -- those of us who may need it.

and for us regular folks and their children, we are quite sensitive and actually find these aromas and smells repugnant. and i call upon everyone -- >> excuse me. >> because of our well-being and because of our children, we should try our best to minimize the presence of cannabis in our neighborhood thank you. >> could you please terrupt and tell the audience no clap and no loud interruptions? next speaker.

>> translator: hello everyone. my name is livanlu. i came here this evening braving the elements, the weather, the rain. i come here to oppose the presence of cannabis in the neighborhood. i have three children 10-year-old, 7-year-old and 9-month-old. i do not wish that they smell or inhale these foul smells and

will make the their well-being and healthy development. i have been living in the mission for more than eleven years and i really love the neighborhood. and when i can smell -- when i found out the presence of these unpleasant smells can make the impact our children, i found this a great pity. >> thank you. >> hello everybody, my name is

chou chin lu, i am a mother of three. and they are young children. for their health and well-being, i come here -- i come here to oppose. i do not wish my kids become secondhand smokers. and please, please consider the position of a family member, as well as a mother. our children is the only thing

that matters in our life. that is why i am here. thank you. >> thank you. >> translator: hello everybody. i am a -- i'm in child-caring. i take care of -- the kids that i take care of, i treat them like my own and i want them to grow up and be well. i do not wish the kids be

exposed and inhale these cannabis smoke, and can impact their health. i really do not want them to open up a cannabis shop there. that is why i am here. and i -- it really concerns me to have this many cannabis shops in the neighborhood. for the wellness of the kids and for their healthy development. i vehemently oppose. thank you. >> translator: how are you? my name is cathy wu.

i have been in the united states along with my family members for more than 40 years -- yes. we have been residing these four decades in san francisco. a couple of years ago, there were propositions to propose passage -- to legalize marijuana and my family and i both voted for the legalization. today it's with heavy heart that i come here to oppose this opening up of that many

marijuana or cannabis shops. i have parents that are of old age. my older brother's kids they are very young. we don't want our elders to be exposed to the smoke. it gives them head aches and we wish san francisco to be a healthy place. i don't want my nieces and nephews growing up to think that marijuana is good stuff. >> thank you, your time is up.

>> hello. >> translator: my my name is gloria. i oppose opening shops in san francisco, because there are seniors that are living with us, and we don't want them to be exposed to these aromas and smoke.

and actually if we are opening up cannabis shops, we're just allowing people to profit repatously. i wish to express my opinion and also help other people to -- who feel the same way, to lend support. >> thank you. >> thank you . >> . next speaker. >> >> translator: my name is mae wong. i oppose the opening up of another cannabis shop