5510. you can also write us at permits and reservations. or walking in and say hello at old log cabin, golden gate park. and of course you can find more information at sfrecpark.org. >> >> a moment of silence for the giants, please. [ laughter ] >> remember it's not how you start, it's how you finish. >> oh yeah. >> we are believers. >> all right. good evening, it is monday april 13th, it is the small business commission meeting and it's 5:34. mr. president, shall i call roll call? >> yes, please. >> all right. commissioner

adams, here, commissioner dooley, here, commissioner dwight, here, commissioner ortiz cartagena, here, commissioner sarkissian, here, commissioner white, here, commissioner riley? here. >> mr. president, the members are here, you have a quorum. >> all right. ready to roll. first order of business is general public comment. this is general public comment for anything that is not on today's agenda. and it's the purpose to suggest new agenda items for us to consider in the future. does anyone have public comment for anything not on today's agenda? seeing none, we'll move on. public comment is closed. >> item no. 3. mr. president,

shall we call item 923 -- no. 3 and 4 together. >> yes. >> item no. 3 possible action to make recommendations to the board of supervisors on file no. 141302 health code regulating massage practitioners, establish thement and associated fees and file no. 141303. there is already consideration for this. >> before the updates may i just remind you we will have public comment after this. the purpose of public comment is to state for the record things that you want to enter into the record.

i would encourage you while you are listening to this to boil your thoughts down to very concise specific thoughts because it's very easy to get up here and get agitated and go off script. it happens all the time. we do it up here too. you will be better served because you are stating things for the record. they will be recorded and written. if you keep it short and sweet to the point everything goes into the record properly. okay? be formulating your thoughts. we'll gong you in 3 minutes. we have to as a matter of process. so let's roll. >> public, supervisor tang. >> thank you very much. good evening, commissioners, we have some handouts for you this time. i think that probably where i'm going to start off with talking about is mostly to

do with the planning code changes. we have an update for you in terms of what we are thinking of in terms of moving forward. so we had a lot of questions come up so i will, let's see if we can do that. >> sf govtv. >> we have to address some of the common scenarios that we've been asked about and will most likely include. we are going to be holding off for about a couple weeks because we do want to get this right. first of all in terms of the sole practitioner establishment. per the health code the definition is that you can either have 1

person practicing themselves or up to shared space with three other practitioners. this is per the health code definition. what we are proposing as i stated from the beginning of this process is i want to be able to exempt the practitioner spot whether you are alone or up to four. however each practitioner will be required to have a dph sole practitioner massage requirement. i think that's something that folks are in agreement with. >> all right. >> now, in a situation for the next slide massage establishment where your fixed place of business with more than one individuals who administers massage for compensation you have more than one employee. again this is moving away from the full practitioner situation but we have multiple, this will

require conditional use approval on our planning code legislation and will require a general massage establishment permit. >> this is the owner if you will, the head hon cho may or may not be certified. >> right. >> this business form requires a conditional use? >> right. this will be for moving forward and after this legislation passes to all new ones. next slide has to do with a massage as an accessory use. we felt it was important to clarify this because we worked on this legislation as well as with my predecessor. the accessory use component is something that preceded me and not contained in my proposal. ng code. for example if you are a child the care, educational facility or

religious facility or hospital center. in this situation if a business wants to employ a massage center. they don't own their own business , they just simply employ an individual to practice massage in their business. this would require a conditional use approval. also the establishment where a massage is not a principal use, they would need to establish a permit. >> what determines the principal use. what if you had a massage practice and you brought in a chiropractor into your practice. would that then could you then characterize the massage as the accessory use. how do you determine what is the principal use? >> you are talking about the order? what if the massage comes first?

>> yes. let's round out our business with one of these approved health care things like chiropractor or acupuncture or several of them. and then you sort of you said look, now i have got business that has this in addition to massage. would that obviate the need for conditional use permit? >> i know you said the word chiropractor and there is the condition of the health care provider. >> because we talked last time about the possibility of acknowledging a class of certified professionals as health care professionals and now this accessory use to principal use. what if you brought in a colleague that was a practitioner when it was a

primary use that allows for exemption. >> i can't answer it straight off the bat because it also depends on the zoning. for example if you brought in a massage and wanted to bring in a different type of business later afterwards. if you need a conditional use to bring on a chiropractor, this is an example, then you would have to go through a conditional use permit and aside from our legislation it's required because of the underlying zoning. it depends. >> if you were in an area because that zoning is less restrictive. if you are in an area where that was not a restriction, would you then be able to operate the massage portion of the business without a conditional use because as part of a business you have

approved this non-conditional requirement? >> we don't have our planning staff here so i don't want to speak for them but from my understanding the reason why the massage as an accessory use legislation was passed anyway, those scenarios regardless of the order people were pairing up different types of businesses and able to get a counter permit which led to a lot of problems. my understanding the legislation came about is to make sure that you cannot disguise yourself in those kinds of situations. >> okay. i think it would be interesting for all of us to know what the accessory use qualifications. what is the formula for determining if something is an accessory or not. >> in terms of the order for example. >> i have a quick question, what about a building like 450 sutter or one on van ness that my chiropractor

is in which is strictly a medical building and i'm a sole practitioner or there is a group of us that want to goen, would that be exempt from a cu? >> i wish planning staff were here but in a large building as that there are individual offices as well. in those individual offices you can have other offices. if you are a sole practitioner by yourself no conditional use permit required you can show up in those offices within 450 sutter. the best way to visualize it is that there are separate offices within them and what is entailed in each of those offices. >> that follows under those conditions. >> correct. a business establishment where a massage is not a principal use

could also share space with someone who is a sole practitioner and they own their own business or they can share space with an actual massage establishment. you can have an entire business in there as well. in that case the massage establishment they would be responsible for the permit if they share the space. >> they would not require a conditional use permit? >> they still would because it's still an accessory use. >> okay. >> in ferms terms of the next slide, massage service. for out call massage service they provide services at a designation by the client. this will continue to be under our legislation. it also requires a dph out call massage service. again, that's already required

unless you have an exemption. next one has to do with a home base massage. someone who provides massage in their home. this will be exempt for conditional use process and does not require a dph permit however whoever is practicing must present a massage practitioner permit. we hope those slides clear up some of the common scenarios. the second thing that was really important to the community that i wanted to provide to you is the amnesty program. what are we doing about all the establishments or practitioners who have been in existence already and for the most part have an exemption. this is different from what the planning staff presented to you last time. sf

govtv if we can have the screen here. all right. so we want to be able to allow existing massage establishments that are operating without proper land use approval to legalize as a massage establishment and this would also be dependent on zoning controls where establishment is located at the time of the application. so we would allow them to continue in operation to continue the land use approval and participation in the amnesty program is dependent upon the massage establishment having the following. these are the same criteria. a valid business license prior to january 2015 and valid certification practitioner permit prior to that same date. they have been functioning in the state before that same date. there are no open violations. enforcement issues, 53 dph, department of planning at the time of permit approval and they must

have submitted an application for the dph permitting process for their site within 90 days of the effective ordinance. of course we would outreach to as many establishments as possible. this is important. we felt this was the most easy clear way to be able to grandfather in all of those existing establishments without making it too confusing because originally there was a proposal that would change to medical use and this would capture the bulk of the businesses in existence right now. the issue that will arise though, however is that there are some neighborhood corridors that they flat out prohibit massage uses in those commercial corridors. you know that ms.

drikzey sent out that information to you already. we wanted to visually show you that in many neighborhoods medical use maybe allowed but massage is not allowed. when establishments received the exemption they became under the definition of medical use. but in some of those neighborhoods, again massage was flat out prohibited. so whoever was the district supervise at that time made a very conscience decision. there was a very conscience effort to prohibit massage in certain neighborhoods. we wanted to show you that as a visual. >> it's possible that was a neighborhood group that went to their supervisor as well, right? you don't really know what the original -- origination of the zoning restriction was. if you realize that a massage that

they didn't object, suppose there is a business that is open and objectionable to anybody because it's completely legitimate, the process to amend the zoning requires a typical process where a community group would come to their supervisor and say this is zoning prohibited and they can take it to their planning? >> yes. we are going to be doing a lot of that outreach to the district supervisors. we are going to be pointing out where there may be issuesch we're going to give them full information so if they decide they want to allow in certain areas, they have the opportunity to do so. just as a visual to sf govtv to show the spreadsheet here. as you can see where there is a c pound, one

column is establishment for permitted and some are not permitted and the next column for medical services. for the most part they are permitted but there are other exceptions as well. we are going to be combing through these list to show that in those neighborhoods they are appropriately district with their supervisors and make them aware of the situation and if they decide they would like to take additional steps to zoning they can do so. it's complicated in terms of the amnesty program. this is the best solution to come up with to capture the most people and they would be allowed to continue in operation. >> depending on how this goes, if we get to this point where

legislation is enacted and the zoning precludes it, what happens day one. am i out of business or do i have 18 months for remediation. what happens? >> that is something, the legislation does take effect within 30 days right after passage of the board. i think we are going to do our very best. we are still trying to comb through the list of what businesses those involve. so once that happens, once we have that information we are going to try to figure out what that plan will be. you talked about or you mentioned non-conforming uses. we actually thought about can we just lou -- allow some of the establishment grandfathered in for non-conforming uses. these businesses had to have been legal at the time than whatever the current zoning was in place.

unfortunately some do not have the proper permits. so again, we believe that what we just presented will be able to at least capture the majority of establishments. >> right. i commend you in your efforts to work your way through this. you can't break laws in the process because there are laws. so you would have to change the law in order to accommodate the exception or you would have to not be breaking the law to accommodate the exception. you are weaving your way through all kind of exceptions here. thank you for that. it's complicated. >> yes, very complicated. so that concludes the general direction of whenever we are -- where we are going for the planning substitutions. we'll get staff to answer your question about if massage came first and another use

came afterwards, but my understanding is it still would require a conditional use permit because you are no longer a principal place of business, you are now an accessory. >> commissioner adams? >> i want to thank you tonight for giving the presentation on this. i really like your common scenarios, this is what i actually needed to grasp it all. so, i just want to say and i know you've been talking and working with the massage community out there. i totally understand why you are doing this. and i really appreciate your outreach to that community because when we heard this item last month, the one thing they did say is she is reaching out and talking to us. i really appreciate that, so thank you. >> okay, thank you very much. >> any other questions? >> okay, in terms of the health

piece. we will have to make a few tweaks. there is nothing major changing. we are just making a set of amendments that again have been suggested by the massage community. one of the outstanding issues that we had not yet made a final decision on has to do with the requirement for education. right now dph requires 250 hours of training. camtc requires 500 hours. i was approaching this with more caution because i did not want to create more barriers for practitioners to become more certified, however this is to require 500 hours. i think you can speak to that but that would be amenable as well. >> all right. should we have

ms. conford give herpes? -- her -- piece. >> good evening. department of public health. last month there were proposed changes about the 500 hours and we are going to put forth that as amendment into the health code. we do want the practitioner certification to the equitable. we want them both to be held to the same standard. one seemed severe than the other. we'll uniform that. the other couple of changes that we are going to make was also suggestions from the massage community around our enforcement practices. so these originally we had a set time of a year when we had -- either revoked a

permit and people wanted it to be 3 years. we will propose if something had a suspension or revocation of any health permit with grounds for denial that a business could not locate in that area for 3 years instead of 12 months. those are major changes right now. when we spoke of it last month with the planning commission that we would have a permitting system for all massage establishments is what we moved forward with. those are the only changes. i also can answer a little bit about the accessory and principal use if you want. >> yes. >> normally the principal use is the first use of business and the accessory use is the use that support the same kurms and the accessory use is determined by the bulk size and density. so the planning

department would have criteria. if that were to become based on that criteria and maybe parking, floor space, if that becomes bigger then the principal use, then it switches and that becomes the principal use. that's how they are defined within the planning code. >> okay. that clarifies it for me. >> the one other thing that i would like to talk about is the implementation of the permitting process. one thing we heard that the massage community thought it was very cumbersome that we have to get the referrals from the fire and police department. i did speak to those departments and unfortunately they are not willing to wave those inspections. it's when they go to the facility and inspect safety and fire and with respect to electrical and plumbing and the police department does want

that background check. unfortunately we are not able to wave those deferrals or fees. if we had a business that was previously permitted by dph and tax exempt and now coming back into system that we would try to reduce the fee it would be nominal because we would have to recover our cost by 10-15% to help them out a little bit. >> okay, has there been any further discussion of this notion of the door being unlocked or locked for security purposes. single family house --? >> there has not. we have changed the rules to the doors. >> some conversation whether the police have a means to communicate through a locked door for security reasons because obviously there are

neighborhoods where someone whose there alone with a client is going to feel at risk. that's a totally different. >> if they are -- alone with a client they are permitted to lock the doors. if they are there with one client they are allowed to close the exterior doors. >> okay, if there is no other questions, thank you very much. >> thank you very much. city clerk: shall i call for public comment? >> now we have public comment. city clerk: public comment is 3 minutes. i will call the first three names. so there is sasha cardenas, corey howe's, and amanda lightner. come

up, but i need to get the timer going. okay. my name is sasha card no response, a cmatc massage therapist and owner of in line body establishment for other practitioners. i have dedicated my adult life to the legitimate body work and treat chronic and acute pain disorders, many of them referred to me by physicians and surgeons. i have invested thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to my training and certification and on going education and study. yet because i

provide hands-on therapy, city officials that despite going through background checks and certification, i'm a prostitute otherwise and it can seem to have a negative impact on the community. i have witnessed firsthand the laborious process can be for a business. i went into business myself 5 years ago after the place i worked with struggled to get a conditional use permit. it forced to assume the burden of hours and to obtain this permit. i will most certainly lose my business and livelihood and as more legitimate establishments follow suit.

although i don't condone illegal businesses. i should be able to operate my legitimate business. it's discriminatory and wrong. i asked the small business commission's assistance to protect my livelihood and my community for what i have worked so hard to work. i ask for the grandfathered program for established businesses. >> thank you.