l permit that we've issued. fortunately in san francisco we have depend on the public quite a bit to let us know. they'll call into 311 and say it's been a few months, i don't see a replacement tree so we follow up. there is enforcement. it's not i ron clad sometimes it takes a call into us to see if the property owner has been lagging behind a little bit but we have a mechanism of enforcement and we will fine the property owner if they fail to replant the required replacementment tree. >> how about here? >> in this particular case, park merced, a little pit bit of background from my perspective, i was with the department in 2005 evaluating all removal applications for two years. never once received and application from park merced. in 2007 they were removing trees?

juan circle which was the first time this ever came to the department's attention that park merced didn't realize they needed permits in order to remove a significant tree so they haven't been on our radar since 2007. no one ever called in a complaint so we've been looking at a lot of sites and earlier this year we issued a fine to park merced for the removal of a number of trees on gonzalez drive and it's currently pending. we're currently scheduling an administrative hearing for them to address that. we are going to systematically go through every street in park merced. we've let them knoll that. know that. we expect them to replant all trees and that's where we're currently embarked upon. >> that was along the same lines -- are you finished? >> yes.

>> park merced has been before this board several times in recent years and if they've knocked all these trees down and not replaced them. right now you find them -- >> it is penldzing. pending. they have written an appeal. some of the trees we feel they haven't replanted they feel they have remrapted. . ed planted. there's a number of trooes that have been removed and pretty much didn't require a permit to remove. some of these we can address and some are beyond our jurisdiction. >> arbor well hasn't showed up to this body the last couple times they've been before us. >> i don't know if i've notified them that this is

going to board of appeals, but i'm assuming that as the applicant they're notified it's a occurring. it's a thought i've had, but i believe on the announcement that we're all notified that the matter is going before the commission that they be notified. >> well always call the permit holders to speak to them directly when an appeal is filed. >> your recommendation for replacement would be -- >> 24 inch box size trees. there's no development here currently. i believe the applicant is going through the due process to remove and replace his trees. >> thank you. >> any public comment? okay. the president has indicated two minutes for public comment given the length of calendar and number of people here tonight. >> i actually did spend about

80 hours of my own time doing a reconciliation of the science report and sent john hawkins a template with identified trees that had been illegally removed, add not been replanted, are blocking signs and whatnot. just for the one street of gonzalez. there's several trees in park merced and trees are going like hot cakes these days. this has been an ongoing problem. i did recently, yesterday or today, i just got information requested over a year ago, specifically the letter from chris buck does say that due to

arbor well and park merced applying for applications when removing trees that require permits so in my assessment there's been a lot of improvements in 007. we're actively working with them to make shurl they ref plant all required street trees. regarding accident reports or injuries or property damage, we don't manage the urban forest and wait for someone to be hurt before we make a decision to remove a tree. that's not a sound management practice so we don't expect

someone to be hurt by a dead tree that's full of decay. when trees fail obviously attorneys circle. they hire arborists and they're going to evaluate the tree and say should someone have known that this tree might fail. when it's full of decay, yes, absolutely. has park merced made some mistakes, should they be here this evening? absolutely. but this application and permit should be issued to the property owner. trees haven't been filled with cement in decades. there's nothing to cable a tree to you need another stem to cable a tree. we're not going to put a cable attaching it to any other pole, street light, street pole or in the ground so in our estimation as arborists in this great city, this country we love to work here in san

francisco and fight for our trees. the tree's full of decay, it should be removed and that's it. thank you. >> what is the significance of the decay. does it con con it's going to fail at any point? >> it does. decay in that point in the tree has no holding capability. the amount of wood they create is redundant. they don't need it all. you look at a helen keller tree in germany with a lot of decay throughout it, those are extraordinary circumstances. street trees and cities are very active urban environments and they hooer not museums. we have people coming and going, we have trucks, we have to keep a safe right of way. the significance of decay is that decayed wood has no

strength holding capacity and if there's too much decay it hold itself up. the tree split in after and it could have been the remaining section that split, it happens it was the other section that split so did it survive the last storms? yes. did the section that failed earlier in the year fail in a rainstorm? probably not. it could have been a calm quiet, sunny day. nature and trees

issuance on august 22 2014 to 834 44th avenue building with two off street parking spaces. public hearing was held on november 19, 2014 and the matter is on for further consideration today. it was continued to allow time for dbi to conduct a site inspection and for the permit holder to submit revised plans. no additional briefing was allowed. perhaps we will start with mr. duffy then from dbi. >> i have a financial situation with the law firm on a separate matter but i'm prepared to hear this case with no prejudice or bias. >> thank you.

inspector duffy. >> good evening. the case as you know was deferred last night. i did a site visit, been out there twice since the last hearing. i was out there yesterday and last week as well. so one of the reasons i was out there was because of the existing walls that were to remain and the concern about the demolition of those walls so i went there and then we measured the wall, chief building inspector was also there as well. we met with both sites, contractor, attorney, neighbors, their consultants so there was a lot of people there. there's two remaining walls at the property that are left, one is on the north side

property line wall, 79 feet high, consists of 2 by 6 studs with redwood siding on the ground floor only. the only remaining is on the south property line, 27 feet long, 7 foot high, 2 by 6 studs with redwood siding on the ground floor. we basically have two actuals on the property line. my recommendation on those walls is, we've done this on a few projects and the walls lack any fire resistant construction and water proofing so you have siding nailed on to the studs. it's the old style. now, the rest of the building is going to be demolished down to those areas, that's showing on the scope of work already approved on the permit and if it would be a recommendation from dbi would be to dismantle the existing walls along with the other walls, incorporate

the existing lumber into -- along with some new framing. at the same time we will have the minimum of new siding with jet board or equivalent and a vapor barrier. so we have basically on some existing lumber it will be incorporated with new lumber and will also give the fire resistance and water proofing the rest of the building will have. that's my recommendation on that. i believe both sites are okay with that. i've spoken to them and there are other issues on the appeal that probably you need to hear from the permit holder's attorney on that. . there was discussions as late as this afternoon. i saw plans in the hall in while other cases were going on.

one issue that dbi will have an issue with, i think, or we will need further verification at this time with the building being there it's hard for us to tell the foundation. there's some concerns from the neighbors that there's an issue with the foundation being over property line, touching their foundation. i couldn't determine if there was any separation. typically when you put in a new foundation you should keep it separate from neighbor's foundation. in san francisco with the lot lines the foundations are close together bull they should never be touching. that's not a building code, i believe. i can't tell if they're touching. that would need to be determined when the building would be demolished. we'd be able to see much better and more analysis is needed on that. that is something that we can deal with that dbi, a respect i of the appeal. i think we'd get that and know how to deal with it with

regards to getting engineers involved and bring out a dbi engineer, figure out what needs to be the fix for that. so one thing i did notice is on the inspection history on the previous permit that got revoked and then because of the unlawful demolition we did have three reinforcing steel inspections by a building inspector back in 2005 and 2006 so that's encouraging from a point of view is that at least i'm pretty confident there's the proper rebar in there but the contact with the other building could be a concern but it's something i think we can deal with when they do construction if the permit shh upheld and the work goes on. i'm available for any questions. >> there's an old story about rebar cages being inspected and once they leave they can

move to another part of the site. i've heard that. that's never happened to me. i hope it never does but i've heard of that happening. we do special inspections as well so i think the engineer of record on previous permits is long gone at this point. this building's been sitting for seven years and that's pretty close to what they need to. there's some issues they need to figure out. they made some good progress since the last hearing. maybe it's a good idea to hear from both sides now if that's what the board wishes. >> i've got a question, inspector. so the two walls that are remaining, if they're replacing or partly replaced, if you take those two walls down doesn't that require a demolition permit to put the property back together again? >> no. >> it doesn't? >> no. >> okay. >> because you're

incorporating that back in there again. in this case i think that's what we're going to do. >> okay. >> it wouldn't be typical. it's a very thorny issue in san francisco. i think here it's a very unusual case that's gone on for so long, that you just stated there could believe right. maybe in this case we should have had a demolition permit and a new construction permit, but i think it's gone that long -- >> yeah, eight years. >> to put them back into that process again, i think would be a little unusual. sometimes we deal with driel rot issues, inferior lumber size. sometimes we do have the

situation we let them do a revision on an alteration permit for some of the walls that need to be strengthened to -- in this case the lack of water proofing is actually i think it was last week, or maybe one of the recent rainy days and you could see the water coming through the siding so you're going to have a building then if we didn't do this we've got a building 99% that has proper walls, you need these two walls as they are, you don't do anything with them you have water coming through there so i think it makes sense to do this. that was my recommendation. >> best of two evils. >> the demolition on the new construction, that's anotherish shuch that i don't think we want to go there. >> thank you.

>> commissioners you want to hear from the permit holders next? >> thank you. i'm here on behalf of the permit holders. we have made progress in the last month, happy to say. i believe we've gotten agreement tonight. we've had a lot of conversations late into the day and also want to hear from the appellant as well but we did do a site visit two weeks ago, determined a number of things. first the pre2000 walls that were in place do match what was in the plans so we did verify that. we are able to remove those panels to get access to the

exterior walls of the adjacent buildings and replace them in a cocompliant matter with today's standards of the building code. the foundation issue is inconclusive at this point. we have a number of folks with a number of opinions and it's not something we can get into before we start taking down the walls of this building. we were seeing definitely a separator at the front and back of the building, somewhat inconclusive. there's only so much we can get into at this stage of the process. and then the last -- i think i mentioned that we did determine that the north light well only goes down to the second story before there's a wall on the first floor of the north light well so like i said fortunately, i believe we've come to an agreement and i think it shows the permit holder's flexibility in this situation. we've agreed to provide light wells on the north and south

side down to the second story. that matches the south light well in its entirety and matches the north light well to that first floor wall that's in place. we've also agreed to provide 5 foot side setbacks on that front third story deck. there was some concern from the neighbors about access to the top of the their roofs. we provided 5 foot setbacks on either side of that. what we're asking tonight, and i believe the appellants are in agreement with this, is to defer the foundation issue to the building department and their structural engineers who are experts over there. like i said, there are folks saying this is adequate folks saying it's not and we have a foundation that we can't see right now until we get into the work so i believe we're in agreement to defer and if you'd like to put this on the record and say dbi would confirm that is a cocompliant

foundation before they'dish issue any site permit a den that. addenda. some sort of reasonable notice period two weeks in advance we let them know the walls were going to come down to paint and give them two weeks to whatever they need to do to their walls. like i said, i'm happy we've made this progress in the last month and believe we' all on the same page and i would say certainly listen to what mr. has to say and i'm here for questions. >> what do you mean by separators? >> i'm sorry. >> you used the term semiray tors. semiray tors. separators. what do you mean by that? >> there are these boards that we can see in the front and back. there's a board in between the