. >> good evening and welcome to the september 16, 2015 meeting of the san francisco berd of appeals. the presiding officer this evening will be the board's vice president, dairl honda. he is joined tonight by commission frank fung, commissioner rick swig. to my left is robert brian, he is a deputy city attorney and he will provide the board with any needed legal advice. at the controls we have the board's legal process clerk and i'm also very pleased to welcome our new legal assistant, gary cantera i'm cynthia goldstein, the board's executive director. we will be joined tonight by city departments that have cases before the court. senior building inspector duffy is here, representing the department of building

inspection. the board requests that you turn off or silence all phones and other electronic devices so they will not disturb the proceedings. please carry on conversations in the hallway. the board's rules of presentation are as follows: appellants permit holders and responders each are given 7 minutes to present this case and 3 minutes for rebuttal chl people affiliated for these parties must include their comments within these 7 or 3 minutes. member members of the public have up to 3 minutes to address the board and no rebuttal. please speak into the microphone. to assist the board in the accurate presentation of minutes you are asked but not required to submit a speaker card or business card when you speak. the board welcomes your comments and suggestions. there are customer satisfaction survey forms on the podium for your convenience. if you have questions about requesting a rehearing, the board rules

please speak to staff during a break or after the meeting, we are located at 1653 mission street. this meeting is broadcast live on sfgovtv, cable channel 78 and rebroadcast on fridays at 4:00 on channel 26. dvd's of this meeting are available for purchase from sfgovtv now we will swear in or affirm all those who intend to testify. please note any member of the public may speak without taking an oath pursuant to their rights under the sun shine ordinance. if you intend to testify at any of tonight's hearings and have the board give your testimony any testamentary weight, please stand. (sworn). >> thank you. commissioners, we'll start with item no. 1, which is general public

comment. this is a not item for anyone here who wishes to address the board on an item that is within the board's subject matter jurisdiction but is not on tonight's calendar. is there anyone here for item 1? okay, seeing none, item 2 is commissioner comments and questions. commissioners, anything? >> i'd like to welcome our new staff member. >> thank you very much. any public comment on item 2? seeing none, then we will go to item 3. item 3 is the board's consideration of its minutes for the meeting of september 2nd, 2015 and we can wait until commission fung gets back up to his seat. commissioners, those minutes are before you for your consideration ?oo sfoo commissioners, do we have any additions or changes to the minutes that have been presented? >> no. >> may i have a motion? >> move to adopt.

>> thank you. is there any public comment on the minutes? seeing none, we have a motion from commissioner fung to adopt the minutes. vice president honda? aye. commissioner wilson, aye. commissioner swig, aye. that motion carries 4-0. the next item on the calendar is item 4, which are two jurisdiction requests, the subject property is at 721 beach street, the board received a letter from greg holzman, requestor, asking the board take jurisdiction over application numbers 205 and 201404707 which were issued on january 15, 2013 and june 24, 2014. the appeal periods ended on january 30, 2013 and july 9, 2014, respectively and

jurisdiction requests were filed at the board ofrs. permit holders are jeff sears and bj real estate. a new structural system along east property line, new stair configuration at rear property, new elevator, lobby layout, update occupancy to b, m and r3. i understand there may be an agreement that was just reached on this matter. we can hear from the attorney for the requestor and the attorney for the permit holder. >> prior to that, i need to make a disclosure. i wish to disclose that i have a prior business relationship with rubin rubin pars3 m. jun junius on a separate project and will not have any effect on my decision today. >> do we need to start the clock?

>> no. as you may remember, this is about a very large penalty house on the roof of a building by aquatic park. it though the permits are very expensive this is the settlement or the agreement between the parties is just about the penthouse and we have just heard that the developer is going to not bring an elevator to the roof. there will be a small penthouse, maximum of about 6 feet, going -- just to house mechanicals and our understanding is the roof deck will be made permanently residential, not just, you know, currently approved as residential. >> so is there something you need the board to do? >> we were going to -- we were hoping that you would put this over for a couple months so that permit holder could draw a new plan, get a permit, everybody works at it,

everybody nods and then we can drop this request for jurisdiction. >> okay. >> thank you, commissioner, john kevlin here on behalf of the permit holders. we listened to the board's emphatic concerns at the last hearing in august, we spent some time exploring other options for taking this elevator to the roof. it really was because of the various state and local guidelines it really was going to be impossible to get it down to even 9 foot 6 inches, so ultimately considering both the board's concern as well as the neighborhood's concern we have decided to take it to just the fourth floor. it's a 4-story building so it will just go up to the fourth floor as mr. vinoles mentioned there's about 6 feet or so of mechanical penthouse above that, but the elevator won't be stopping at the roof any more.

procedurally speaking we've got a jurisdiction request here tonight. we've got a suspended original building permit that mr. sanchez at some point is going to have to unsuspend and also be filing an amendment to that original building permit to modify the elevator penthouse. so what we would be happy with is if the board tonight continues this matter for two months so that we can file the amendment to the original building permit for the new elevator design, take it through the process, get it issued, hopefully it is, meets the needs of the neighborhood. we don't have any appeals of either that building permit or mr. sanchez' unsuspension of the suspension and then mr. vignoles can withdraw the jurisdiction request. i'm here for any questions, thank you. >> mr. sanchez? >> thank you, scott sanchez,

the permit holder did correctly outline the process that needs to happen in terms. permission revision and with regard to the roof deck and in response to commissioner swig's concerns about the roof deck, i did review all the plans, very clearly label that as roof deck but certainly we would expect that that be continued on any revision permits that it is noted that that is the says depx open space. >> anything, mr. duffy? is there any public comment? seeing none, commissioners there has been a request to continue this matter. is that your wish? >> commissioners? >> i think so. >> counselors, november 18th?

i would move to continue this case to november 18th. >> that's to allow the parties to take the various steps they just outlines to resolve the issue, right? >> right. >> on that motion then from commissioner fung, vice president honda, aye. commissioner wilson, aye. and commissioner swig, aye. okay, thank you. that item is continued to november 18th. thank you very much. item 5 is next, another jurisdiction request, subject property is at 4631 to 4633 irving street. the board received a letter from marco estrada and ascencion landeros, asking that the board take jurisdiction over appeal no. filed at the board office on august 26, 2015. permit holder

is chad doyle and the project is to demolish a kitchen in an illegal in law unit and legalize a half bath and we will start with the requestors. you have three minutes to present your case. >> yes, thank you. good afternoon, my name is racquel fox and i am here with the tenants who have resided there since 1997. i wanted to make a correction to my brief where it says 1978, they have been there since 1997, exhibit a, the rental agreement, reflects that. they have been there almost 20 years. they have their own separate pg&e meter, they do have gas service, they do have their own water, both cold and hot, they have smoke detectors, they have separate bedrooms. they have a kitchen and refrigerator, stove, the ceiling heights are somewhere

around 9 to 10 feet, somewhere in that range. first i just want to point out that there are 3 separate mailboxes. there isalso 3 separate meters at the property. there are separate bills that come to the family, they pay their own. this is the upper unit, 4633. this is 4631, and this photograph here reflects 4631a, so they do have their own separate meters. pg&e said that if there was

more evidence that needed to be it submitted that it would be something that would need to be actually subpoenaed but i do have the tenants here that can testify as to their own payment. pg&e recommended showing you the numbers to the meters. this one ends with 69, the smart meter. this smart meter ends with 68, and then the next meter ends with 70. so basically the family received a notice that was sent june 23rd of 2015, it's in english and unfortunately it went to the upstairs unit, 4631, but the tenants did bring it down and they saw that there was an intent to apply for demolition. however, the notice also says that they were going to immediately upon the issuance

of the permit get a notice of termination served on them. the way this was strategickally placed they didn't get notice until after the notice period had expired. also if you look at the section dealing with demolition, the land lord is supposed to give notice to the tenant that they have in fact applied, not of a future intent. there's nothing we can do about it. those are kind of in 3 minutes the most i can get in at this point. >> thank you. miss fox, you indicate that the notice was not received by them until after june 23rd? >> that's correct. the notice of termination of tenancy that included the actual permit was received august 14th. it was mailed probably at the end of the day on august 11th. but june 23rd, the landlord's lawyer did send out a notice

that says there is an intent and i believe it's their exhibit --. >> exhibit b >> yes. if you look at that, it just talks about, that the land board intends to apply and with an intent to apply, that's not enough, we can't move for discretionary review and unfortunately these tenants didn't come to me until after everything had happened. otherwise we would have done the block notation which we since have done, but in this notice it further says that the owners obtained a require that they will promptly thereafter serve all occupants with a 60 day notice. that wasn't done. i believe the permit issued july 21 but they didn't serve this until after the time period had expired and it seems pretty clear to me that they had a lawyer involved so they could have just as easily served their notice. they

weren't in pro per and they should have given notice because they sepbltd this premature june 23rd notice. >> that was going to be my second question. there was two names mentioned as attorneys for them before you came on? >> yes, there was -- let me backtrack. now we're in august. so they received the notice of termination of tenants august 14, two lawyers were at the property that sunday, august 16th and i don't remember their names, i have their card, but they met with all the tenants in the building who each received some notice of termination of tenancy, i think it was owner move in and relative owner move in. at that time these tenants were told there was nothing to be done with their case. >> who were they representing? >> hold on. the upstairs

tenants. they invited them to show up as well. >> okay. >> so that's it in a nutshell. thank you. >> we can hear from the permit holder now. >> hello, my name is chad doyle, i grew up in san francisco along with my brother. i have a wife who is a high school councilor at lincoln high school and we have been searching for a place to purchase. it became quite clear that inc. single family residences went to a point where we could not afford them so i found a property where i could do a owner move in and i could also do a relative move in so my brother could move

back to san francisco from oakland and i could move closer to where my wife's work is and also my mother, who lives in west portal, looks after our two children. and so in june i went ahead and purchased the property, finally purchased the property, then i had my attorney, because we were going to be doing owner move ins and relative move ins, and so at that point in time my attorney went ahead and sent the california civil code notices to the different tenants. and then at the property -- so there's two flats and it shows on the 1978 plans that there's two flats and storage area down below. and on everything that i have, including the inspections and everything else, said that this was an unpermitted illegal unit and there's notes from the inspectors and everything else

saying that the electricity used in the illegal unit is tapped off the house meet *er and that there is just two gas meters. i am removing it because it's not supposed to be there. i see it as a liability in many different ways but i also have always envisioned it as a place where i can use for storage as well as a place where my kids can play. i went ahead and went to the city and after numerous visits i finally obtained my over counter permit, took me like 4 visits down there, and, you know, i waited for the appeal permit to end, to expire, before serving notice to terminate. that's what i have. >> good evening, commissioners, jamie bombard, i represent the permit holder and property owner chad doyle the

issue is whether the city caused the requestors to be late in filing this appeal. they have not cited anything in their brief (inaudible) we did provide the tenants with notice as we are required to do under the california civil code of our intent to dmraulish their unit prior to us doing so. >> are you finished? >> yes, and that is attach toad my brief as an exhibit, along with a report indicating this is in fact a nonconforming unit. >> jurisdiction requestors indicated they did not get notice, it went to the upstairs tenant. >> i can't speak to that. i can tell you i drafted the notice and instructed my office to mail it to these tenants and i have a proof of service

indicating it was mailed. it's addressed to 4621a irving street. >> that was clear in your documentation. >> and i do know it was sent out as part of a packet of other required disclosures that we must give because my client is a new owner of the property. one of those disclosures contained my client's phone number and address and i do know that the tenants received that because they subsequently mailed a rent check to my client and they were all included in the same envelope as far as i know. >> have you folks looked at legalizing the unit under the new city ordinance? >> i mean as right now i have not. right now both of the flats need extensive work. they are both at the end of their life cycles. i am going to be spending money to go ahead and bring those up to

date and honestly i don't want to be a landlord. i didn't buy the property to be a landlord, i bought the property and that downstairs area because it goes out to the yard and everything as an indoor/outdoor place for my kids to play and to have just for storage of christmas stuff. >> mr. sanchez? >> thank you, scott sanchez, permit department. this does appear to be on our records, it was constructed in 1978 as a two-unit building. the zoning is rh2 which would allow a maximum of 2 units and it would have been rh2 since 19 78. since that time no third unit would have been able to be added legally. there is a klek lift and review process for that to ensure there are certain requirements that would be met. if they do go ahead

and remove the unit now they cannot restore it and try to legalize it later, they would lose that opportunity by removing it now, which would be their choice. the planning department reviewed this, approved it, there is no bbn note is on the property at the time that we did review it, there's no notification requirement. subsequent to the issuance of this permit a bbn request was made on the property so that would be applicable for future permits reviewed by the planning department. there is pending legislation i believe at the board of supervisors that would require notification for removal of illegal units. it seems to be both a planning and building notice process so there could be discretionary reviews even filed on the requestor of illegal living spaces but that is not yet in place and not yet law. so with that i'm available to answer any questions. >> mr. sanchez, we see single family residences that are allowed, they can legalize the legal nonconforming unit,

basically the in-law. the question i had is regarding the two units, so that would be, if they were to be legalized it would be a legal nonconforming but i heard there are other things that apply when legalizing a third unit rather than just a unit to a single family residence. >> under the planning code, i think you want to talk to the building department in terms of when additional building code requirements may be triggered and if it is --. >> sprinklers. >> it may be when you go from three or from three to 4 but i would let building inspector duffy address that. >> if these people are evicted they will give up their right to have the illegal non-warranty unit. >> once the unpermitted unit is removed it cannot be restored, not under the current zoning. >> thank you, inspector duffy.

>> good evening, commissioners, joe duffy, dbi the building permit application was filed on the 3rd of july and approved and issued on the 21st of july. it did go through our intake, it went through building plan check, mechanical plan klek and we also routed it to planning, as you know. the building was reflected as a legal two unit two family dwelling. the description was to demolish kifrp enand in law unit and legalize a half bath. it appears the permit was properly issued. mr. sanchez, i heard him say there is some pending rules coming up i think about future notifications from dbi on single family and two unit buildings whenever the units are being removed, so that may take care of this in the

future. that's not in yet. i haven't, it hasn't appeared anywhere in front of me where it has been brought in yet but i do know there is a lot of talk about it as dbi i'm available for any questions. >> thank you. you know, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it might be a duck so i look at a separate water meter, i look at a separate pg&e meter and that would mean to me for the number on it that says it's a separate address and that would mean it would be a separate address. and i understand from the zoning administrator that it's zoned for two units and i understand that it was permitted for two units and maybe you can educate me on something. you know, pg&e is not a random off the

grid electrical supplier and yet there is a brand spanking new meter that was obviously put in recently, significant electrical work is there. that would be -- that wasn't done by some random street electrician, that was done by somebody who is associated with pg&e. where was the permit -- how did the permit, how does a permit for that occur with a separate address? that was one question. the same thing with a separate water meter. the city department that supplies water is not a random department that brings in water by buckets, it's a real entity and that was, it was obviously a sophisticated hook up and a permit was issued to separate that as another address, i am

assuming, so how does something like this happen? here are two very valid recognized supplier of services who put in sophisticated real legal stuff and then they label it with a separate address, yet when it's convenient for it not to be a separate address, and believe me i am sympathetic to the home buyer who thought they were buying what they thought they were buying, but i don't understand -- but i'm also really sad about throwing a family out on to the street. and i don't understand how something cannot be recognized as a separate dwelling unit when two important vendors of city services or whatever have been there, permitted and

installed meters. how does that happen? >> commissioner swig, that's a very good question. i am not, don't work for the water department or pg&e. i don't know how that happens to be honest with you. >> how is a permit --. >> which permit? >> i'm asking to be educated. how does a pg&e unit which separates electrical service into a separate, into a part of a building that is recognized as a separate address by somebody because it says it, how is that permit issued in direct conflict with what the building is zoned as and in direct conflict as what dbi recognizes? >> a lot of times we have two unit buildings and we have three electric meters and three sometimes water meters. the third electricity and water is for the common areas so if they are owned separately and billed

to two separate units that is the separate one is . >> is that labeled as a separate address, that's what is making me scratch my head, that that is billed in that case as a separate address, we saw a separate address and i'm sure the occupant of that space can provide us with a bill that says a separate address. instead of a common area it would link those addresses together or the one address -- this is what's confusing. >> i don't know what permit, a pg&e permit, i'm not sure what that is. the meter would be put in by pg&e. there wouldn't be a dbi permit for an electrical permit. if it's just putting in a meter i don't think the electrical, i'm not sure if there's even an electrical permit issued for that. i don't work for the electrical inspection division.

i could find that out for you, there's no problem with that, but there's the address i'm not sure if that's a legal address or not if it was sought. if this was a two unit building on the cfc for two units, i don't know that dbi would issue a third address for that. i don't know where that address would come from. a lot of times you do see the addresses put up there by people, a or b, something like that, but i don't know that there's an actual legal address for the third unit. but it's a very good question you are asking me as well with the water department. i do see and i've said it here before, you can have multiple meters. the number of meters doesn't always reflect the number of units. i'm not saying that in any way on one side or the other here. the electrical work, obviously the work done to create the

unit wasn't done with a permit. we give a cfc, that grant for storage probably got converted. it's been like that for a long long time. it sounds like with the ceiling heights and all of the attorney mentioned a lot of the things, it certainly sounds like it's not, it sounds like there's enough room in there to make a unit if they wanted to legalize the unit is that i'm hearing if there's ceiling heights and all that kind of thing, they would need to apply for a permit to do that. >> it's just very hard for me, i know i'm going to get tripped up potentially by the law or some regulation or the zoning or that it's a two unit building, but it's just very interesting to me that since 1997 a family has lived there, it's very interesting to me that it isn't like many of the other items that have come in front of us where the

electrical service is off of a 17 principal meter, where the water service is all a central meter and a central hot water heater. this one, this one is interesting to me because clearly actions were taken to make this really, like i said , quack like a duck and look like a duck and yet -- and with a separate address and with bills that are paid by somebody at a separate address, yet when it comes time 18 years later and somebody buys the building then the tenant is given the heave-ho, unfortunately. something is kind of wrong there but i can't figure it out. (inaudible) the law. >> pg&e water department and dbi went together on all this happening. if you put a unit

together and call it a unit, pg&e would flag the unit but that may not happen. i don't know enough about it, to be honest about it. maybe i could bring in the senior electrical inspector, chief electrical inspector in here some night to explain that, water department might be to see him. you can get a meter for a unit without actually having a legal unit but i would imagine that conversation would come up as part of it but maybe that meter was put in, as commissioner honda said, for a common area and then used to supply the illegal unit, so to speak. >> i mean renters, i'm probably going on too long, but again this bugs me and i think it should bug other people, too, especially when families are being tossed from tenured places where they have had tenure, that a renter renting in good faith, understanding they are going to pay separate water bills, separate

electrical bills and therefore making the assumption, which is a dirty word, unfortunately, in some cases that they are renting a legalized unit, stick around for 18 years, are responsible renters, pay their bills, pay their rent, and then are tossed because in the process of a sale, you know, they are gone. i mean the renters don't do the same level due diligence as you and i would if we bought the building but there's something makes me scratch my head. >> i'm not here to give advice but i agree with you. >> is that it? >> thank you. >> is there any public comment on this item? seeing none, then, commissioners, the matter

is submitted. >> not particularly. >> i'll start, then. as commissioner swig expressed, i particularly don't like this placement, especially in this time that we have. at the same time we have a new home owner coming in with his family and the permits look like they were issued correctly as well as the fact that he is a new owner, the work that was done prior to this was by the previous owner. and so i am leaning towards, you know, approving, or denying the appeal. >> unfortunately i'm of a similar opinion, that the city did not err in issuing the permit and that notice was not required from the city and notice was provided to them. unfortunately their resources

in terms of finding out certain types of legalities may not be as great as others. >> commissioners? >> i said my position. again i am tripped by, i acknowledge my diatribe, my fellow commissioners are correct in their observation. it's unfortunate and also that which we have already sent to the board of supervisors which they got to take action, they have got to take action on fair notification of tenants of illegal units that are placed in this position. that's, you know, it's unfortunate. but i have to go along with this and i can't find any way to make a motion to deny the appeal.

>> commissioner. >> motion to deny the appeal ocean on the grounds that the city and county did not err. >> this is a jurisdiction request, so this would be a motion to dough nigh the request. on that motion then from the vice president to deny the request, commissioner fung, aye. commissioner wilson, aye. and commissioner swig, aye. so that motion carries with a vote of 4-0, thank you. the next item is item 6, which is a rehearing request, the subject prompt is at 333 pennsylvania avenue. the board received a letter from robert gonzalez, aplenty, requesting rehearing of appeal 15-101, jaromay and gonzalez versus dbi at that time the board voted 3-1 to uphold on the basis it

was properly issue and the permit holder is ed maiello >> i've done my homework. >> so we can start with the requestor, then, mr. gonzalez, and you have 3 minutes. >> good evening. my wife reminded me to smile. as you know the 1932 charter created this board and charged you to provide an efficient fair and impartial hearing for the residents of sfax as the last step in the city's improvement process. the chair reminded me that some 47 years ago i sat on this board and the issues seem to be the same and those years they called us the people's court because we dealt

with people issues and it seems after 47 years not too much has changed, you hear people's issues and they are tough issues. it's up to you to deal with your commitment when you come to serve on this board. as is stated in your own rules, section 5, the board is a quasi judicial body whose decision are rendered based on the evidence that is before the board in the public record. on august 26 this board voted 3-1 to, quote, deny the appeal and uphold the permit on the basis that it was properly issued and code compliant, unquote. there is no evidence in the public record to support such a ruling. you will recall that the zoning administrator, mr. sanchez, specifically told the board in answer to commissioner fung's question that the plans approved by the planning

commission on october 9, 2014, were not before this board for review on august 26. mr. sanchez also told commissioner fung that he did not know what changes or revisions, minor tweaks, he called it, were made to the april 2 plans to make them code compliant on october 9. it is an extraordinary circumstance when this board of appeals makes a decision based upon evidence that admittedly was not before it, or in the public record. it would be a manifest injustice not to be granted a rehearing on the state of the public record here and that's what i am urging. again there were no facts presented to this board on august 26 that could form the basis for this board concluding that the plans submitted to the

planning commission on october 29 were, quote, code compliant. the burden to present evidence of a code compliant project was on the developer. they did not bring plans to you that day, as you recall, there were plans given to you that day dated july d 28, some 20 pages of plans that almost verbatim the first page showed the same defebts that were on the april 2 plans. several garage doors, no landscaping in the front, entrance on the side, the very same things that were wrong with the project from the beginning. so i request that you grant my request for rehearing and let's go ahead and get the matter before you properly and you can rule properly. i believe at this time your ruling was without foundation. thank you. >> thank you, and i apologize,

mr. gonzalez, i needed to make a disclosure prior. i wish to disclose that i have an existing relationship with the law firm of rubin and junius. their representative of the entity before the board will have no effect on my decision. >> pardon me, did you just tell me you are represented in a private matter by the lawyers that represent the developer? >> correct. >> and you are telling me that you can be fair and impartial to both sides? >> correct. they had a case here before this evening as well. >> i'm sorry? >> they had another case before as well earlier in this hearing. >> well, i just wanted to be sure what you said about this case. thank you. >> mr. tunney >> good evening, members of the board, i'm tom tunney, rubinson, junius and rose on

behalf of the permit holder. we acknowledge that plans that were submitted with the brief were dated july 28, 2014. i don't believe that the appellant has presented any facts or circumstances that are new and that change the board's decision. the question before the board at the previous hearing was whether the 311 notice and the process was proper. we spent a great deal of time and that was the focus of the hearing, talking about whether those requirements were met. and in this case we submit they clearly were. the changes to the project were talked about at the hearing, we talked about the garage door, talked about the landscaping, talked about the change to the light well, we talked about the curb cut that was later shown on the plans.

there's no requirement in the board of appeals rules about the approved plans being provided. the fact is that the site permit was issued because the plans submitted to the department of building inspection complied with the code and the fact also is that this board's decision the 311 process was proper was supported by substantial evidence. the fact that mr. sanchez may have talked about different changes in the project and it wasn't -- did not describe the changes the way we did doesn't mean that the board's decision was not supported by substantial evidence. so we're available for any questions the board may have. this really is not a dispute about whether the proper plans were provided to the board but it's whether the 311 process was proper and we submit that it was. thank you. >> thank you.

>> mr. sanchez? >> thank you, scott sanchez, planning department. don't have too much to add. i did request the approved plans from the project sponsor, i received those about 4:00 today, had a brief moment to take a look at that, did see the permability and landscaping on the approved plans, plans stamped approved by the department of building inspection as well as the garage door, single garage door meeting the code requirement. planning commission direction to have the rear stairs incorporated into the building envelope, those are also on the plans. but in regards to having approved plans at the hearing certainly it does, i know it doesn't follow the board's rules explicitly but everyone, certainly it does help the commission to have that information available and i would encourage the board to look at whether or not that can be mandated, i don't know if there are certain issues that prevent that from being a requirement but definitely

encouraging that of project sponsors would be great. it's an issue not only on this case but it was an issue on the 721 beach street which we had earlier as well as other projects so i think the more that we can require in terms of having approved plans, the better. thank you. >> thank you. anything, mr. duffy? no? any public comment on this item? okay, seeing none then commissioners the matter is submitted. >> you know, commissioners, the -- as mr. gonzalez knows, the process is one where we hear a case and we render a decision the same night. we don't spend, you know, a certain amount of time afterwards, which is like different than certain types of hearing with planning where a

decision is rendered subsequently. the question of being able to accurately and comprehensively respond to the major points of an appeal or a case is one that's quite difficult to do. it's not always possible for us to be entirely eloquent in doing that. i find that an issue sometimes where i'll think later i should have said this, this and this, but it doesn't mean that the process that we go through in terms of arriving at a decision doesn't take into consideration all of the things that were stated, all of the things that were provided in the briefs. so as far as i was concerned, in this particular case the

various issues both procedural and those that related to legalities and to the actual issues with the physical development i believe were things that we took into consideration in totality. therefore what has been presented in this rehearing request has not provided anything new and therefore i can't support it. >> i concur with my fellow commissioner. the grounds for rehearing are quite strict and i believe that the merits that were presented were all heard before us. >> like my fellow commissioner fung, i did have the opportunity of getting to sleep overnight with it because i got to review the materials, i got to see it on tv, albeit on recorded, and it became very

clear to me, one, that the changes had been made as requested to the plans, became very clear to me that proper notices were given as commissioner fung talked about in the previous hearing and so i see no new material that's been presented here tonight that would cause a change in the ruling. >> move to deny the request for rehearing. >> okay, thank you, commissioner fung. on that motion from commissioner fung to deny the request, vice president honda, aye. commissioner wilson, aye. and commissioner swig, aye. that motion carries with a vote of 4-0 with the president absent. thank you. the last item on our calendar then is item 7, appeal 15-101, irving zaretsky versus the zoning administrator, the property is at 2835 broaderic

street proof a rear yard variance, replace existing rear stairs with new decks and stairs on second and third floors of the three story 3 family dwelling. and we will start with the appellant mr. zaretsky. 7 minutes to present your case. >> i'm going to split this time with my sister, so about halfway through please let me know. >> actually, mr. zaretsky, you should manage your time yourself. i don't think the staff can let you know halfway. >> no problem. board members, i am irving zaretsky, coowner of 2845-47 broaderic street and i am here

to address the issue of my next door neighbor to the sought, mr. jaeger. about three years ago on a random meeting in front of the property mr. jaeger called me over to show the renovations he was doing inside of painting, changing hard wood floors, et cetera. we looked outside his living room and i suggested to him if he wanted to create a deck similar to ours we would fully support it. we did then and we do now. he asked me if i could recommend anyone who could do the job, and i recommended an engineer who could do the deck. he went there and for the next couple years he worked with him, i was pretty much out of the picture except to get emails of different proposals that he was working on. and at that point he told us in may of 2013 that he has issued a letter to the city requesting for a variance and would he

support it and would we support it and we said we would. he wrote the letter, he signed it, he left it in the mailbox of his place for me to take it, i took it to my sister and we both signed it, as did my niece, the trustee of the trust and we submitted it to the city. the letter said that he wanted the identical dimensions and construction as the deck that is on our property. these properties are historical properties, they are on broaderick street, the lots are extremely short, they are 80 feet in length, very small back yards, and we had then received a number of emails from him thereafter showing alternatives until april 17, 2014, at which point the emails stopped. we had nothing else from them at all. on april 17th we had a chance meeting at a plumber at the property, i saw him, he came

downstairs in the morning, he asked me to come up, he showed me what he had done, i thought it would look very nice. at that time we really didn't talk about the deck at all, he just gave me the name of a yoga instructor and i was waiting to hear from her further. he said he was going to take the material and show it to our neighbor on the south and never heard from him until until 2015 a neighbor on ours wrote to me and asked me if i knew anything about what was going on with 2835 broaderick street, i said i didn't and she said she received a 311 notice. we received no notice whatsoever and we didn't receive any notice for the preapplication hearing, for the variance hearing that occurd on february 25 or for the 311 notification. i contacted the city planning department and after back and forth going about it david lindsay and scott sanchez

extended the 311 notice until 3 and mr. lindsay wrote to me as indicated previously the zoning administrator has yet to make a decision on your variance request to have a new variance hearing held. his decision is pending the expiration of the 311 notification period. we waited for the 311 notification period, at which time the zoning administrator issued his decision and never responded to us at all on what was supposed to respond, whether we were going to get a variance hearing. therefore we are before you for the first time rather than before the planning commission because there was nothing for us to appeal. we were waiting for the zoning administrator to let us know exactly what he was going to do with our request to have a variance. we did express to him what our concerns were. i should add that not only did we not receive any 311 notification, the cow hollow association didn't either and after correspondence between planning department and (inaudible) it was made clear they had no record the 311

hearing was ever sent to the cow hollow association, didn't receive any information. at that point we appealed to you, we asked to meet with mr. jaeger to discuss what can be done to alleviate the problem with the deck is he was expected to do a 5-foot deck with a staircase enclosing. he went between 7 and 8 feet and the stairs are attached to it so it is within just about touching the property of don moorhead to the west so that the entire back yard is covered. this is fundamentally against the rules of the cow hollow association to leave the quarter back yards empty to open and public space. we requested to meet with him on june 2nd, he said he would meet with everybody but not with us and he has refused ever since to address the issue so we come to resolution. we support his deck as we did

originally on the dimensions that he requested and we accepted on a 5 foot deck and the stairs attached to them. what the cow hollow association suggested is that he move the stairs closer in to the building which is what we suggest as well. he has refused to address the issue. i will let my sister take over from here. >> i'm zeva cardos, i am owner of half the building. i have never ever goten any notices of anything. i met with my brother and mr. jaeger only once at which time he showed us some plans. it was very small type. i asked him could i have a copy of it to take home and look at it and he said absolutely not. he was very belligerent and we left the building. that's all i have

known. now the deck that he is proposing to build, besides being on a very short lot, it's a 3-unit building. each one has one bedroom and the two top ones have two bedroom units. he wants to come out in the back on the second floor and again on the third floor 7 to 8 foot deck. you can imagine that takes away all your light that comes into our little tiny garden where we have some fruit trees and we are looking at a yard of all the building between filbert and union street. our lot ends but you see all the open space, that's the beauty of cow hollow. by building these huge decks you take away all our light, all we have to look is the floor of one deck and then a floor of another deck and also his lot is higher than ours. the hill comes down. so it makes it even taller. it's not like

building a large deck over the garden and taking away the garden because it's on the ground, this is second and third floor. >> thank you. >> what i have to ask you to approve a 5 foot deck and not a 7 to 8 foot deck and to make sure that the stairs are incorporated and doesn't come --. >> i'm sorry --. >> over the yard. >> i'm sorry, your time is up. you will have time in rebuttal. thank you. >> thank ta you, we can hear from the variance holder now. >> good evening, commissioners, sydney kanolitz, project sponsor. obviously if people are concerned they would be here tonight and they are not. the deck was supposed to

be similar to what the neighbor has got. the issue that came up about his deck and mr. jaeger's deck is the neighbor's deck had spiral stairs that were permitted back in 1982 when his deck was built. today it's not permitted any more. so what we have to do is leave the landing at the top so we wouldn't be required to have a fire wall and move the stairs in to make this work. but honestly otherwise the deck is pretty well identical to what mr. zaretsky has got. i want to remind you nobody else is opposed to this and he has gone for about 3 years, commissioners, to do decks that are identical to his. >> dear members of the board of appeals thanks for letting me speak tonight. as sponsor i submitted this board to implore the board of appeals to approve the variance that has already been made. it's already taken place with

respect to this small rear deck and renovation plan. no public process is ever likely perfect. however in this case the sponsor and zoning administrator have taken great pains to more than clearly satisfy the spirit and letter of this process, especially with respect to the appellant. the appeal process started in may of this year, as you know. they asserted planning, the appellant did, that they did not receive notice of the sponsor's project and therefore we must start the whole process over again. nothing could be farther from the start. as related in sponsor's brief, which i submitted, we have worked repeatedly for several years. sponsor clearly planned the rear deck and stair renovation plan from the start to be consistent with the one enjoyed by appellant and its renters of many years. sponsor has the only deck and

dilapidated stairs that is original. of particular import in this case is that sponsor clearly presented its variance plan to all in 2013 and they signed off in writing prior to sponsor's submital. sponsor then worked with appellant for an additional 6 months more on multiple iterations for the location of the code compliant stairs and to build around the existing deck. the code compliant stairs were ultimately as far away from appellant's property as possible and embedded as much as possible under current 3 foot minimum requirements. finally on an on site meeting i snited an iteration, appellant signed off on the revised stairs prior to resubmittal

again as evidenced in an email from sponsor to appellant that same day. they also verbally approved this plan again on site. appellant brought the resubmitted plans to the meeting and said these were the last plans which appellant had signed off but now appellant had additional changes and wanted sponsor to start the project again. based on appellant's history of blocking plans, their plans are clearly ever changing. this is likely where their deck and stairs rlt only one still vacant. the house still sits vacant marchred for appellant in litigation more than 3 years after a tragic fire. (inaudible) make further mostly unspecified changes. the assertion that members of the

project is patently false as appellant was clearly directed from the start and even an assertion of no formal notice cannot be affirmed. several notices were sent to appellant and be went to his rental property instead of his address. they verbally confirmed they were directed by appellant to hold his mail. appellant was then given a special 30 day extension to provide comments to the project by the zoning administrator but no formal comments were submitted. this i surmise is likely due to the fact that appellant had already signed off on the plans that were submitted. while no public review in common process is ever perfect in this case appellant has been involved from the start and signed off from the plans prior to their submital once submitted and again verbally. the appellant has already been given 30 days to make comments and did not

submit any formal comments. only after the variance was approved almost 5 months after the hearing and the appeal period was set to expire did appellant file his notice to block the project. sponsor believed appellant's repeated approval of the plans, requestings for delays and calls to start the process all overagain are not only opb outrage us hardship but make a rockery -- mockery of the public process. sponsor implores the board of appeals to stop the process. sorry, i know that's a little bit confused but --. >> must be fun to live on your block, hunh >> yeah. i've also brought pictures to show the board all the houses on the block on both sides and the status of our

project, aplenty's rental unit and then the burnt-out house on the other side. >> would you please show us those? >> especially the rear yard photos, if you have them. >> i don't have the rear yard photos. i'm happy to refute (inaudible) but the stairs go to 6 feet from the property line. they are code compliant stairs. they are a requirement of the project. the deck under the circumstances self is 5 feet, that's all it ever was. i have a one to two foot bay window, so it's 5 feet from the bay within door. appellant would like us to build a 3 foot building width deck and would also like us to stagger back the second story deck, which would require a multi structural -- would require significant additional structural costs and it's not buildable. >> would you show us the pictures, please? you are out of time. i want to give you that opportunity.

>> so --. >> as you are looking at it, put it on as you would look at it. >> this, as you can see, is the other side of the block, broaderick street, east facing. all the houses are renovated. it's kind of hard to see here but you can see from basically this is on the left-hand side is the north side of the page, all the houses are renovated on the block. there's some multi unit buildings on the south side of the east side of the block. this is the west part of the block. and this starts here on the south side again and goes north. sponsor's house is the brown house right here in the middle. appellant's house is to the right of sponsor's right covered in trees and then it's really impossible to take pictures of the other house but i tried to take it in the third selection here. this is the

boarded-up house next to the appellant's house. >> we are quite familiar with that address. >> this is appellant's house and then the other locations. and that's from the other side, the corner house on the north end of the west side of broderick street. >> there is in the brief some reference to existing deck. >> there is an existing deck and stairs, yes. >> where is it? >> that's in the back of the house. >> in the back of the house. where is it, what floor. >> the deck runs all 3 floors. >> currently? >> currently, yes. >> your drawings which show existing conditions doesn't show any deck. >> yeah, it shows a small deck. >> no deck on your existing condition drawing. >> i'm sorry, commissioner,

but i can check but i'm almost certain that they do. >> i looked at it 5 times. so my question is how -- is this a replacement of existing deck and stair that comes under a different section of the code, the replacement of a nonconforming deck and stair, or more stair. >> well, commissioner fung, i'm looking at the plan right now and it does show the existing balcony and stair. >> would you like to show us that? >> yeah. >> is that drawing a-1? >> a-1. >> a-2. >> a-2 is what you are proposing? >> no, a-2, the unit itself

has 4 layouts. there's a subbasement, that's a garage and studio, a second floor flat and a third floor flat. >> i'm looking at a december 5th, 2013 date. is that the same date you are looking at? >> i'm looking at november --. >> it's in there, just later on. >> okay. all right, they are not appropriate to the case, the other drawings. >> i'm sorry, sir. >> i submitted as part of the brief earlier submitals to the appellant to show that i had been working with the appellant for a period of time after the code compliant stairs were determined to be required. then i just submitted that as additional --. >> your existing decks are how wide? >> my existing decks are

approximately 5 feet deep and probably close to 5 to 6 feet wide. so what was being proposed was a full building width deck similar to what the appellant has. >> you know, maybe that's why i'm confused because i think the reproduction wasn't totally accurate. all right, i'll figure this out, thank you. >> mr. sanchez. >> thank you, scott sanchez, planning department. the subject property is located

within an rh2 district, the building contains, as has been stated, three dwelling units. there is kind of a shallower lot depth than typical at 80 feet. the rear lot requirement is 20 feet and the existing building wall is build out to that required rear yard line. the subject property has an existing stair and landing that go to all floors of the building so what they are proposing is to remove those stairs, keep the landings and then have a new deck build more to the south of that and the stairs that they have will be located on the south side of this away from the appellant's property and about 6 feet away from the adjacent property to the south, which is on a deeper lot which extends deeper into the lot's open space than any of the properties to the north or the proposed deck and stairs. you heard a little bit about

the process of this, had a variance hearing on february 25th of this year. part of the variance notice process in addition to the mailed notice of owners within 300 feet there's also a large poster on the property about 3 feet tall by 30 inches wide so it's a pretty substantial poster. we did have a variance hearing on the matter, there was no opposition to the project on the hearing, i intended an intent to grant the variance. subsequent to that the section 311 notification was performed in may, beginning on may 6. about 20 days into that mr. zaretsky made known that he did not receive notice or proper notice of the 311 or of the variance hearing notice. we asked him to hear what his concerns would be in response to our initial request about what concerns he had, we did not receive any concerns, it was more concern about the process, about the neat --

notice, about the hearing. we did extend the time by 30 days which is from the when the notice went out to when he contacted us saying he did not know about the project. also at that time when he stated he wasn't aware of the project, we contacted the project sponsor. he provided a signed letter from mr. zaretsky saying he had no issues with the project. there were no attached plans, there were concerns in our mind and we felt justified in extending the notification period. we asked for comments with regard to the project, i generally understood the impact on the block open space. cow hollow ended up stating that they had concerns about the extension into the block open space, not of the deck, the deck they felt, the 7 foot 1 projection from the rear wall was acceptable but they had concerns about the stairs which were on the south side of the property away from the appellant and closer to a

property which already extended further into the midblock open space than the stairs were proposed. they suggested looking at alternatives, it was our understanding that a spiral stair would not be an option here. also given the fact that there is a bay window at the rear it's 7 foot 1, the deck projection from the main rear wall but when you have the bay window, a shallower bay window, it's about 5 feet from the outer face of that bay window, it would be very difficult to manipulate a full set of stairs in this envelope without causing further harm in somes on way. by setting it back from the side property line they are avoiding the need for a fire wall. one of the things when i first saw the project i questioned why they were doing this proposal as they are because it's, they are notching the deck so if i can show here on the overhead, these are the proposed plans.

you can see more clearly here, the portion where the door is, that's existing and we are retaining it, not rebuilding it and not triggering a fire wall requirement then the expanded deck really begins when you go further to the south away from the appellant's property. and the set back here is about 5 feet 4 inches from the side property line to the deck expansion. >> so the area of the appellant's property really isn't being changed from the existing condition? >> no. and -- so that's where we are. again the issue being, the issue came down to the stairs, it didn't seem that there was another alternative for the stairs, they put it in the best location possible to minimize any impact to the neighbors and in particular to the appellant's property and

it's up against the property that does extend further into the required rear yard. i think that is all. i'll be available for any questions. we have outlined my reasoning and the 5 findings for the variance and they are stated in the materials that you have. thank you. >> thank you. >> is there any public comment on this item? okay, seeing none, we will take rebuttal starting with the appellants. you have three minutes of rebuttal, mr. zaretsky. >> quickly, a lot of what you heard from the sponsor is not accurate. the existing stairs are 5 feet, they were supposed to go straight across the back with a 5 foot deck and add the stairs on the south side. they are extending it further into the back yard.

with regard to the notification there was absolutely no 311 notification to us at all and that was confirmed by the planning department after they researched out that nothing was sent to us at our address, we didn't know anything about the preapplication hearing or the variance hearing or the 311. in fact, for today's hearing i contacted miss goldstein. we did not receive the post card that you sent either and as we looked at the list of people that you sent it to, it was sent to the project sponsor both to the residence and to him as an owner, it was only sent to our occupants but not to us. and we have our tax records in which it says irving zaretsky, 3111 jackson street, apartment 5. this is both at the assessor's office and the recorder's office. so the process used to resolve these issues was never made available to us at all, including today.

we knew about it because we are the appellant. so the question is that the notification for all of these things, when brook sampson on blafr of the cow hollow association asked to meet and resolve this issue, he refused. and we say again that the 5 foot deck is what they asked for, what we agreed to when we sign on to the variance and this has not been extended with the stairs going all the way to mr. moorhead's house. the stairs can be brought closer in, our deck has the exact same bay as he does exempt our bay is square. it's a 13 inch protrusion into the deck. the same thing as his, it's a 13 inch protrusion in the back. these are narrow balconies, they are unique because the lot is so short and once you start to build into the lot we lose the open space that we are entitled to have and that cow hollow wants to have. we are requesting once again that he

remove the stairs closer to the building and make it a 5 foot deck as was originally intended by him when he requested the variance. it was not an 8 foot deck. thank you. >> thank you. >> we can take rebuttal from the variance holder. >> we have no time left. >> was there any time left on the clock? there was 30 seconds. do you want 30 seconds? okay. can you set 30 seconds? would you let us know when 30 seconds have passed. >> i'd like to say it happens in all these cases. you allow something in detriment of the neighbor next door, a year or two later, those people sell. the building remains the way you allowed it. i've seen it time and time again. asking you to leave us with some sunlight and do a 5 foot deck and not a 7 and 8 foot deck. mr. jaeger always said i'm

going to spend money, i'm going to get the biggest deck that i can. this is not right. >> thank you. we can hear from the variance holder now. >> dear board of appeals, members of the board of appeals, sorry again to be (inaudible), there's a lot of inaccuracies with regard to the case. i think that regarding the 311 notice, as soon as i heard about this, i checked with the noticing service. they immediately reconfirmed all the addresses that were submitted so they confirmed that the data base they used was correct and sometimes pricing does change from what i've learned, pricing does change in the noticing in the data base pretty regularly but other certain aspects do not. we went through the appropriate notice process, that was confirmed. the addresses were confirmed, we used an appropriate notice provider and

they used an appropriate data base. there is potential he did not receive notice but he was given an additional 30 days to comment and did not comment. in addition he had been involved from the beginning of the process very clearly and the sponsor puts forth a set of plans were shown at the time the letter was signed. there's no way anybody would have signed an approval of a deck without a set of plans and if you check the original submital dates i think you will see that. so in addition for the cow hollow association, i reached out to brook many times, i'm happy to meet with her as well as anyone in the association. i take this responsibility very seriously of historic preservation. i restored the white oak floors in the house, i restored the plaster walls, i even restored some of the windows. there's nothing i would do against that. but there's just a tremendous amount of nit picking and i think there's an abuse of the public process.

but again i have reached out to brook and what she told me in emails was that her main concern was getting resolution with the appellant and the sponsor and when i met with irving at that time on june 2nd and he had brought the plans that he approved prior that were resubmitted and said these are the last plans i approved and what did you submit since then and we couldn't get the planning submital material because the original structural material on the project wasn't able to put the details in place that we needed. there was a recommendation to bring in an architect which we did and that's why i took an additional 6 months to get through the process. there's no scheming or anything from our perspective but again i reached out to brook but again her view was that it was primarily her main concern was in reaching agreement with the appellant. also our other neighbor who indicated concern for the open space. as part of the

preapplication meeting one of the neighbors commented about the railings and we're going to upgrade the railings to make them glass and use as light material as possible, not the plywood and decking, to make it as light as possible. so we did take it very seriously. >> any rebuttal from mr. sanchez? no? okay, unless there are questions for him, commissioners, the matter is submitted. >> based upon all the discussion that has occurred i would have thought there was a dr case, not a variance appeal. nobody spoke to the variance. the question was whether one side was right or the other side is right, versus was this variance justified. i don't know whether i want to take

that on because nobody seems to care, you know. the fact is both sides support a variance. the da supports a variance. i'm not sure i support a variance. >> it wasn't brought up. >> i'm not sure what's before us any more. . >> i feel the deck has been vetted. >> may i say one last thing? part of the issue is the notice that -- using dimensions. five feet is the dimension with the deck at the top floor, third floor. that's measured from a bay that sticks out. >> a foot and a half, yeah. >> and the floor below that second floor is going to be wider, it's closer to 7 feet. just to make sure everybody understood that.

>> so although the appellant has pointed out that there was a flaw in the 311 notification, i think he has had adequate contact, more than adequate contact with the project sponsor and the fact that i almost feel this has been over vetted. i am in the opinion of denying the appeal and upholding the permit. >> no comment. >> commissioners, just as a reminder, as commissioner fung stated, this is a variance and your task is to decide whether or not the 5 findings under planning code 305c have been met or not. >> you know i'm a hard case on variances. >> yeah. >> but i do feel that one is a

little bit different because if you look at the ones that are more specific to the property because these quite clearly are always very general, i've said that, i don't know, hundreds of time. but the one that strikes me is that a property right that is given to adjacent neighbors that you don't have and i think that strikes me quite heavily in this particular case. the one that doesn't strike me so generally is the last and most general one is the question of general plan. filling in the rear yards i don't think is the general plan's desire. >> so what are our choices again? >> if you want to deny the appeal and uphold the variance you need to state that's your intent and it's because the 5

findings have been met and if you want to grant the appeal and overturn the variance then you need to state a reason why you do not believe the 5 findings have been met. i figure attorney wolf will say that better and more ak raitdly. >> you can modify the variance as well but then you'd also have to find, state why you think the 5 criteria still met with the modification. >> i will make a stab at it. i will deny the appeal, approve the variance that the 5 criteria have been met. >> okay, thank you. so from the vice president then is a motion to deny the appeal and yul hold the variance on the basis that the 5 findings under planning code section 305c have been met. on that motion, commissioner fung, aye. commissioner wilson, no. commissioner swig, aye.

okay, with a vote of 3-1 and one absence, that motion carries and the variance is upheld. and there is no further business. >> we are adjourned. thank you. (meeting adjourned).

>> let's get started. this meeting will come to order. this meeting is the government audit and oversight committee for september 17, 2015. to my right is vice chair julie christensen and president breed has appointed supervisor mar in her place. could i have a motion to excuse president breed for the meeting. >> so moved. >> without objection the motion passes. [gavel] supervisor mar will join us briefly. he's in traffic right now. the committee clerk is erica major and the committee would like to recognize the staff from sfgtv who record each

of our meetings and make the transcripts available to the public online. madam clerk do you have any announcements? >> please silent all cell phones and electronic devices. completed speaker cards and copies of documents to be part of the file somebody submitted to the clerk. items will be on the september 29 board of supervisors agenda anyplace otherwise stated. >> okay. can you please call item 1. >> item 1 is a hearing to discuss the city's response plan in the event of a forest or brush fire within the city and county of san francisco. >> okay. so colleagues i have called this hearing today to discuss the response plan and the event of a urban forest or brush fire taking place in san francisco. i want to make it real clear my intent here is to

really listen, just to the fire department, and to emergency management department to really see if we're really ready for this type of situation. i know there's been some confusion on this issue. people are thinking that this is about cutting down trees and it's not, so i want to make it real clear to the audience and watching this on tv that this is about being ready for forest fires that can happen in the city. as you know san francisco has many areas that consider many forests. there are places like telegraph hill. russian hill, mt. davidson. golden gate park just throughout san francisco you have these small areas of heavy

vegetation, and i grew up in the russian hill area and i remember as a little kid on the backside of the home basically is a big huge area of everybody's backside in which there were no fences. it was basically vegetation back there and one day it caught fire, and about seven or eight homes got heavily damaged. this was in the 50's, and one of the things that i didn't when i was watching as a kid the firefighters i realized how difficult it was them to get in there to the back, climb up the hills and so forth and that left a mark on me in realizing that fighting that type of fire is really different from fighting a fire of a building, so and here we are. we're faced with a four year drought. vegetation

throughout san francisco, throughout the bay area, throughout california is rather dry. even san francisco is blessed with what we call the natural air conditioning, the fog, it doesn't take that much, that many days -- like you have two weeks ago when the weather was very hot. a couple of days of hot weather, low humidity will just provide or give you the condition that can be very, very awful for fires, and today is not about let's hope there is going to be a fire. i hope there never be a urban fire like the oakland hills in the 90's or if anybody has been around long enough there was the beverly hills fire in the 70's. we don't want that to happen in san francisco but the question today we're trying to answer is if there is a fire that catches, whether it's a brushes or trees

or whatever, are we ready in san francisco? so that's what we're going to answer today. as you know we have seen the deftation just this week of the valley fire in napa, lake and sonoma counties with 61 -- probably growing. it's more than 61,000 acres of burned area with almost probably i would say 600 homes that got completely burned down. this is just really a reminder we must prepare in san francisco. i hope this hearing will be fruitful in the discussion how our city departments and how our constituents can work with these departments to do their part to ensure that families and loved ones that safe and our city remains resilient, so first up i would like to call on chief hayes-white to maybe have some

opening remarks and call her staff to talk about this issue. >> thank you. good morning chair yee, supervisor christensen, joe an hayes-white san francisco fire department. i would like to applaud you supervisor yee and not only you're in my district but i don't recall in my time as chief we had a discussion in the legislative branch of government on this topic so it's very timely as you referred there has been great devastation throughout our state throughout the last several months including the fact that we had 30 firefighters deployed. we just had 22 return last night from the butte fire and then we have remaining eight at the valley fire, and so everyone loves to come to san francisco, but it is challenging from a firefighter perspective. i was a training director for four years and the bulk of training

is in relg to structural fight fighting but we have things in the city as you mentioned and the golden gate park and the presidio and a whole number of areas. also under the freeways there is vegetation as well, so we pride ourselves on training. we have componentos wildlife fire fighting and we have groups able of the master mutual aid agreement with the state and we deploy our firefighters per that agreement throughout the state to help battle fires so what we prepared today is a presentation on our resources that we have, some of the training that we have, and then we're certainly able to answer any questions for you. i am very appreciative and sensitive to the fact that we have beautiful open space here in san francisco. as a mother

of three boys we've enjoyed many of the parks and so forth although as fire chief i have children just to make sure there is a balance between vegetation as well as good solid urban forestry management to mitigate the fuel load as we would call it, and proper attention, and forestry management, so i would like now to introduce the deputy chief of operations, mark gonzales and give you an update on the vegetation fires in the city and followed by lieutenant mary shea from fire prevention and talk about the collaborative efforts with department of public works and recreation and park department and a good partnership existed and we're going to continue to remind everyone including our partners at ucsf. we went through a process two years ago where they

did significant training and creation of defensible space and we're looking at those things as well with them so at the end of the presentation we're happy to answer any questions. good morning supervisor mar as well. deputy chief gonzales. >> good morning supervisor yee, supervisor christensen, supervisor mar. this is my presentation. it's on the urban wild land interface operations. can you pull it up? okay. thank you. so the first slide is just showing from 2012-15 the types of calls we've had. the list of call types they're

including graphs, brush and vejingtation and -- vegetation and forest and including trees. this shows some of the specialized equipment we had for a while. right now they're stationed in the southeastern part of the city. as chair yee mentioned we have fog and even during the drought the rest of the city, the west and the northwest gets the fog. the best weather is in hunters point southeast so that's where it's driest and one of the concerns is mclaren park so the four mini-pumpers are in that area and we have front line stations in the city and a lot of those companies have been trained with immediate need and trained with wild land operations and the chief mentiond that we have over 200 firefighters that do that.

the main prusmers able to access areas not accessible by the engines and carry water and equipped with smaller hoses so they're maneuverable and get in and out quick. we use the mini-pumpers at special events and get in and out of crowds for trash fires or vegetation fires within the events. some of the tools that are carried on the mini-pumpers and some of the engineers one is a pulaiivegy and it's on one head and rigid handle of fiberglass. it's a versatile tool for fire breaks and dig soil and chop wood. often time there is is a little fire up on bush or brush they can knock it out with this and just smoother it. second

specialized tool the mccloud. this combination of rig and tools used by firefighters to cut through things and declare loose surface material. the next slide we have five of these engines that we bought from the state for a pretty good price a few years ago. when we send a strike team out as we did to the butte fire this is the five engineer engines we sent out and it was assistant chief franklin and brought an assistant with him so they're assigned by the state to the fire whether it's structure defense or setting up a defensive line. a lot of the other equipment is wild land use and shovels and the things i mentioned before and wear different personal protection equipment so the turn outs and

pants that we wear in the city are a lot heavier and these are lighter and there is still fire protection but you can imagine being in the heat all day long and going through a diagram yoga class and the training as the chief mentioned. >> >> happens every year as part of our training. we adopted the state interface wildlife manual and be consistent with the state and we work with them on the operations. >> could i ask a quick question? >> yes, sir. >> in regards to the 200 firefighters that's been trained how many of them have actually gone taken part in these strike teams or had experience find fighting these fires? >> i don't have those stats in hand. i would say most of them. definitely with the last few

seasons we've had they have all gotten to experience it i would venture to say. i do know that 20-25 years ago when we went out not as many were trained at all. we were city firefighters. we did some of the things if parks or guards got caught we sent them out but we didn't have the mini-pumpers and training. i am comfortable that all of the firefighters went through this need but as well as this component it's 200 so they're planned to go out on the strike teams and like if oakland hills happened again we would pick from the 10 engines we have trained in that specialty as well. >> thank you. >> the next -- i skipped ahead too much. so the next slide is 2014 is just a grass and outside fire responses. you could see

it better on the map here. i thought it show up better on the screen but it's denoted by the red flag icons and dispatch called for multiple units is by the blue icons and you can't tell by the size of the map. i apologize by that. if they're bigger we went to the same area more than once. the little red engines and you can barely see them (off mic). bought from the state. they're also in the southeastern part so whether we get called for the mutual aid deployments the process is the engines go to 19th and forsom and meet up with the strike team leader and assistant and grab the equipment there and take off whether going north, south, east --

>> supervisor christensen. >> can you bring the map up? when we see it closer it's easytory read so understandably it seems like some of these are occurring under the edges of golden gate park, some of the open land, but i am seeing clusters of them along major roadways so are those dots that i see and bay street or the embarcadero in the northeast? >> yes, where there are patches of open land but actually there is a big correlation if you noticed near the freeways, so a lot of open lands that caltrain has and -- caltrans excuse me. 101, 280, 80, all along and open patches of lands that we respond to do knock those out. >> so i am imagining your tracking probable cause for these as well. the roadway could be cigarettes or automobiles but we have encampments in some of the areas.

>> if it's not obvious to the officer if it's a single unit or a multiunit we send out the task force to find out what the cause is. >> would you hazard to guess what the most frequent cause is? >> i could guess and say you're probably on the right track. >> yeah, so it's inhabitants -- >> or a cigarette and at the off ramp and a bush to the right they throw it out, one or the other. >> thanks. >> we had a pretty good size fire that i consider urban wild land interface but we're not considered that type of city. it's a different definition. it's forest near a city. with the fire on the east side, you may remember that and affected the bay bridge traffic a couple of years ago and pretty significant and as i mentioned mclaren park can get going

pretty well. the last slide is from 2015 same call types, the imagines are in the same. >> engines are in the same place but our objective is protect lives and civilian and department and members and protect the structures and mitigate the situation and i am proud of our teams and they have done a really good job. these fire conditions are -- [inaudible] members haven't seen. they're creating their own weather systems and imimpressive of the job and i am proud of them. if you have any questions i am glad to answer them. >> you talk about other areas of mutual aid and i assume it's reciprocated also if we ever needed help? >> that's correct. >> okay. which i guess county

that would be -- >> we're in region two. there are six regions in the state. we're in the 1/2 of the region two and it's made up of 90 counties. we have an agreement with them. more immediate need we go to front line engines. everyone else and mutual aid sends five engines and strict -- strike leaders and we will send out what we can but we have to maintain the fleet in the city. the concern in the city is we have wood buildings in the districts and they're all next to each other so we need to keep our fleet of engines up to partoo and we're trying to get that done as well. >> do you know if these other locations, other counties, whether or not they're as well trained as our firefighters? >> i would say some -- i would say most just as or sometimes

more because that's what they do predominantly. that's primarily what they do. >> and in regards to we have engines here and again there's some freak thing that happened and something gets out of hand do we have access to air lift of water -- what do you call those airplanes that dump the water? >> we can order on anything we might need from the state and if the state has the asset we would get it. >> do you know where the closest plane would be? >> i have heard -- this is pointed out. last i heard moffett field. they're close if we need them. >> so they can get here within 30 minutes? >> now, i would venture to say

no because most of the planes are busy at the other fires. >> right. >> but historically throughout the city's history we have never done that. >> okay. supervisor mar. >> quickly i wanted to ask about the golden gate park dispatching and also there's an area in central heights where the cliff house is where there have been a number of incidences according to the maps and old houses with big backyards that butt up against city and federal property but i see there are single unit dispatches and multiple unit dispatches and there has been some changes in patterns from 2014-2015 but when it's multiple unit dispatch my guess is that's a more severe fire so you're using more units?

>> they're want final call types the way it was pup pulled up and initial call types and what they said to the 911 taker and oftentimes they're people camp fire down by the beach but we had a good fire there i remember in the last two years that was going pretty well and actually some of the companies were asking for mini-pumper engines over there and it's a compromised area and it would entail getting another mini-pumper which is a little bit of money. >> right. and most of the golden gate park is in district 1. i see that the katy tang district site had significantly more for an increase in a year of the single unit dispatches

along lincoln way and do you see patterns and changes like that as the homeless shift isn't park? >> i would agree where you're going with that maybe. i haven't been around golden gate park lately. my travel is from bernal heights in that area but i don't know if the homeless population has increased in golden gate park. i don't know. >> the last thing i wanted to complement you on a tie clib and it looks like a pulaski and it's cool. >> i can give you one. >> let's make sure we all get one. >> okay. >> lieutenant booshay for the rest of the presentation.

>> hi. good morning. lieutenant mary shay with the fire prevention at the fire department. as you can tell i'm trying to prevent fires so from my end i try to do what i do to prevent fires. regarding the management of forest and brush fire in san francisco from prevention we got a look how the city is like. although we cannot really say we're totally a wild land urban interface area supervisor as you know we have pockets that we consider so. one of the main and important things about san francisco we're

a urban city that doesn't fall under chapter of the city code and deals with other zones and the other important thing that the fire protection of responsibility of san francisco falls under the local authority, not federal and that's the fire chief and san francisco and based on cal fire the topography and the fuel we have the city falls under a rating for fire hazard severity and our main concern is through the maintenance of over grown weeds, grass, vines and other vegetation. the fire department's weed abatement program. we enforce the code of the california fire code. that section specifically states that weeds, grass, vines and other growth that is capable of being ignited and endangering

property is cut down and removed by the owner or the occupants of the premises so some direction that we get or the building owner or occupants of the premises could get is from title 19. some of the examples i list here is a safe fire break of at least 30 feet is maintained around any buildingoir occupy eansz. any portion of a tree extending within 10 feet of outlet of chimney or stove pipe shall be removed. any dead or dying portion of a tree adjacent or over hanging a building should be removed and free of needles and leaves and dead vegetative growth so those are the guidelines that we provide owners when we identify a hazard. our weed abatement program one of the agencies we work is with the department of

public works. with them annually we send out a joint later to building owners who own problem buildings that we know and a history of complaints of weed, grass hazard over grown vegetation. we send this later two weeks prior to july 4 and instructing them they need to abate -- inspect the property and abate any weed and grass hazards. the department also conducts inspections in neighborhoods and areas where weed and grass problems have been reported. reports of weed and grass problem can be received through the following channels. some of the examples are 311, a report can call, email or through united postal mail send the complaints to the fire department to headquarters. a report can do a walk in.

they can walk into our headquarters and report it. they can walk into fire house and report a problem. one of the biggest group of reporters are actually field firefighter, staff because they know the area well and respond to and if they see something they would notify us. once a complaint is received and inspectors is sent out to do an on site inspection to determine the validity of the complaint. if there is merit to the complaint we notify the owners and occupants of the premise to abate the hazard and if a owner fails to comply with that request to abate we have the option to issue them a violation. although the first course of action is get the owner to understand the danger of the weed and grass hazard and get them to comply. now we have any owner that refuses to comply which is very seldom, or we

cannot locate an owner -- that is more likely the case and it's an abandoned lot or it's determined who owns the space or whose jurisdiction it is. we would send a referral request to the department of public works asking them for assistance and once we ask for assistance and we try to work -- now this time with the department of public works and get compliance. if we can't get compliance for whatever reason within 10 days then dpw have the option to abate the hazard first and bill the owners later. the main goal is abate the hazards first and the fire department -- oh sorry. (paused).

more than anything and as fall comes around it dies off, but i can't give you exact number. i can only tell you where the peak season is and usually around summer and peaks around summer and towards fall it tapers down. >> i am actually less interested in the exact number. i am just curious about the scope. is it in the thousands or hundreds or tens? >> i would say it's in the hundreds. it's not in the thousands. that's for sure. it's in the hundreds and it's kind of isolated in certain areas we can tell. like we won't see anything downtown but we see a lot like near the hunters point bay view area where there is more open land and a lot around freeways.

>> yeah. >> yeah, kind of like that. you can see a trend. bernal heights gets a lot, like that. >> okay. and then when you get these complaints do you feel -- again when you get the hundreds would you say that most of them are legitimate complaints or do you find that a certain percentage really aren't hazardous at all? >> i would say about half. a lot of time it's more like a neighbor does not like the other neighbor's tree hanging over their yard, hanging over their roof than anything and i hate to say that a lot are like that. people usually keep their property very well unless they can't upkeep it like the seniors. they might have trouble and we work with them rather than hitting them with a notice of violation. we try to find people that could help

them like locate their children and guardian. problems that we have a lot more abandoned or empty lots and we don't have any in san francisco totell you the truth. >> okay. any other questions? seeing none thank you very much. >> thank you. >> so next speaker i would like to bring up is from the department of emergency services. >> yes, sir. >> supervisor yee and supervisor christensen and supervisor mar thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to speak. ip i am the assistant deputy director with the department of emergency management. when we think about disasters in phases. we have prevention, mitigation, preparation response and then recovery. lieutenant shay was talking about that prevention piece, what can be done? chief hayes-white talked about mitigation. what we try to focus on is some of the perforation. how do we work

citizens to talk about public safety? and preparedness and we direct them to a website to what they can do if a disaster happens, in this case a significant fire, and we're are responsible on the preparation size for the large planning and something happens and when we behind and to the right of the fire department and the police department to support whatever happens. it starts with the 911 call center. when the call comes in deputy chief gonzales talked about the coordination of resources and once on scene we're there to support the fire department with the appropriate response. we take care of warning and notification system and if there are directions to give to the residents we can do that and once if the event is large enough we may then open

the city's emergency operations center and coordinate agencies and department of health and human service agency and like the red cross or salvation army and the idea is that we create that common operating picture for all city agencies so we know if there is some support needed from fire or law enforcement we can provide that. one of the big places where we come in is in the recovery phase and have individuals misplaced and think back to the mission fire last year and after the blaze was put out law enforcement was securing the area but we have residents displaced and we brought togetherlet task force and the homeless groups to find places for our residents to g we're also the connection between the state and federal agencies. we

brought in the small business association to help the businesses in the bottom of that structure affected, and when needed similar to when fire may deploy we have our own assets deployed right now to the valley fire to help with the operations center and learn about the sheltering needs they have and how to coordinate it so we're there to before the event help the citizens get ready. during the event to support law enforcement and fire, and then after the incident to make sure that we get our citizens back to a state of normalcy. >> okay. if we do need help from other jurisdictions, other counties in terms of this mutual agreement who actually contacts them? is it the fire department or your department? >> it depends on the type of resource. the chief could probably explain specifically and correct me if i'm wrong.

there is a master mutual aid agreement that deputy chief gonzales mentioned and it's exercised regularly and they have protocol in place to order the resources. if it's not fire, emergency medical then it would come to the department of emergency management and we go to the coastal region of the california office of emergency services and make requests to them for the need, whether it's sheltering resources or whatever the need is. >> okay. so if the fire department needed mutual aid then i assume it would be from -- their request would come from the fire department to other jurisdictions. is that correct? >> that's correct. >> okay thank you. >> i am glad this coordinated. >> that's the idea. >> other questions? seeing none. thank you for coming

here. next up i would like to finally invite the fire marshal from ucsf and present on what they have done to prevent a forest or brush fire occurring in the area surrounding will campus. >> [inaudible] >> chairman yee, supervisor christensen, supervisor mar thank you for inviting me for this and i am former cal fire department chief and have a lot of experience. i wanted to discuss the efforts at the mount sutra mountain reserve and i am responsible for the fire assessment at ucsf and we're the responding agency as you heard if a fire breaks out in that area. we have an excellent working relationship with chief hayes-white and her

staff. san francisco fire department is one of the premier and happy to have them here. we own the 63-acre reserve and maintains the open space and originally planted in 1886 and there are a primarily tree species there and we maintain the reserve, ensure the safety of visitors and buildings and neighboring homes. several buildings including the hospital and the central utility plan behind the report provides the power for the complex. the regeneration medicine building built on the cliff -- it's the unique building on the side of the mountain and the adjacent to the reserve. ucsf [inaudible] san miguel housing complex is in the area and houses students and families and adjacent to

neighbors hopes. we are committed to have the reserve as a resource and staff is responsible for the maintenance and collaboration with other departments. daily maintenance is performed in house by two full time forestry technicians and professional landscape and tree companies and regular maintenance includes maintaining and establish the trail system, addressing hazardous or fallen trees. every two, three fiscal years we have aar boshist come in. >> >> and maintaining along road and roadways building adjacent to the reserve. our non-profit partners build and maintain trails and a nursery and provide thousands of hours of trail work each year. our fire hazard

mitigation efforts in 2013 we were concerned about this and collaboration with forest experts and the san francisco fire department to look at the risk and we aggress that these conditions existed in the reserve (paused) shrubs and mowing non woody plants. we continue to monitor the area and ensure the safety of structures and visitor to the trails. in the two years since we performed this work much of the vegetation has grown back and we plan to repeat this work this fall. if the department agrees with our agreement we plan to revisit the work that was done two years

ago. in conclusion ucsf understands the value of this open space reserve that brings to san francisco and we're committed to maintain the reserve as a public resource. our priority is protect the hospital, neighbors and visitors. we want to work with the san francisco fire department and stakeholders and mit giet any fire risks and keep it safe and accessible. you can see on the over head -- can you see that? okay. this is an indication of the work we've done. it's little hard to see on this screen, but you can see it's a buffer mitigation effort around the reserve itself. and do you have any questions? >> i can't tell by this map, but the reserve that you're

talking about doesn't cover all mount sutro, does it? >> it's the wooded area up there. >> even on the other side of the hill. >> yes, sir. >> i didn't realize that. where would the sutro tower be on this map? >> i don't know exactly where it's at. >> [inaudible] (off mic). >> okay. >> [inaudible] (off mic). >> on the east side. >> [inaudible] >> okay. >> and there's a private section. >> right. >> [inaudible] >> okay. >> [inaudible] >> i mean -- >> [inaudible] >> where is it? >> [inaudible] (off mic).

>> right here. >> the tower is -- on the legend -- the tower is where the legend is placed so you can't see the tower. >> yeah. that gives me a better orientation of what i am looking at. i don't have any questions but thank you for being a good neighbor in san francisco. sounds like you're doing the right thing in terms of preventing -- doing the things that will prevent any disasters and working closely with our city departments. thank you very much. >> and we enjoy your trails. >> thanks. >> actually those trails -- a lot of people don't even know about. okay. are there any public comments on this item?

>> [inaudible] >> on this item, fire prevention? >> the valley fire because 17,000 -- for the restrugz were destroyed. as a holy leader, holy representative of [inaudible] human disaster -- [inaudible] from the -- families and structure natural order and management and [inaudible] from holy practices. mission parkway and concentrate too much on the [inaudible] of gloria -- glory and economics and [inaudible] great disaster.

>> denise louie. i am here as a san francisco native voter and taxpayer and i want to say thank you to everyone for bringing attention to this problem of stands of trees around the city that have been unirrigated, stressed and are now dying that represent a hazard because they can fall over and hurt us or they can fuel a fire storm so i would like to say that i will -- i would like to ask rec and park department and the rest of the city officials for example what about those trees along o'shaughnessy in glen canyon that can hurt or trap people on the new handicap access path that parallels o'shaughnessy? what about the silver tree

preschool? have those families been alerted to the fire risk, the danger? do they have an evacuation plan, fire drill? what if the children are trapped in the canyon? these are all things to consider. okay. >> thank you. >> i think that this is a phenomenon in san francisco and we need to think about the real risk to our housing stock, our use of water in case of a big fire, and the liability to the city in the case of people and property get hurt or damaged. thank you. >> thank you very much. any other public comments? >> good morning government and oversight. it's going to be a cool night and we're going to see this item by the fire light, and i hope it works out right. i thought you should know.

it's going to be a cool night, and we're going to work out this item. make it work out right, and it's going to work out and i hope you give it a go. it's going to be a cool night and we're going to make this item work out by the fire light, and it's going to work out right, and i thought you should know. thank you. >> nice seeing you again. >> it's always hard to follow a song. my name is sally stephens and i just wanted to talk about two things. one is there's rec and park is in fact has plans to cut down trees just because they're not native and replace with grass land and we know it's flammable and that's

where the fires start and spread rapidly so i hope in all the discussions that the fire department is having on managing things whether they talk with rec and park that they're focusing on some of the changes that are going on and the transformations of the landscape that are going on that could potentially creating a greater fire risk especially with ignition and things like that, and the other thing that people forget about is the golden gate recreation area is also doing major landscape transformations. you have the fortthumbsom and covered with ice plant and mitigates fire because of the water in the plant. that's all taken out. ocean beach -- a lot is taken out and replaced with grass lands so i hope when the city is working on response plans and things like that that they're working with them as well and make sure they're not doing things that might negatively affect the people around lake merced or inut

outer sunset in god forbid a fire should start there or take off in that sort of thing. thank you. >> thank you. any other public comments? come on up. >> my name is [inaudible] and i live in district 7 right at the foot of mount set ro. i think one of the things we heard -- first i would like to thank the fire department and yourself for organizing this. it's been a very interesting morning for me. one of the things that we've heard is that the western side and the northern side is less vulnerable because of fog and i just wanted to talk a bit about that. living where i do i see the fog coming in to mount sutro all through the summer and in fact very often the forest is wetter in summer than it is in

winter. there was actually standing water there a few days ago even before it started raining because what is happening the trees precipitate the fog. they precipitate the fog moisture and the under story holds the water so in some cases reducing the vegetation increases the fire hazard because what happens instead of having vegetation that holds the moisture you end up with flammable vegetation that dries out more quickly and it's one of the things we should take into consideration rather than applying these rules. thank you . >> hi. my name is anastasia

[inaudible] and listening to this presentation and people generally know that brush and shrub and -- dry grass are much more flammable than trees especially [inaudible] trees, and you know the plan which is coming up for certification soon and replace [inaudible] with something called native grass and shrub habitat and i don't think it's a very wise thing to do and mclaren that has more fire danger than where i live and 800 trees are going to be removed and something native is planned. this native stuff is very flammable. okay. what is happening on mount davidson and [inaudible] and area program. what they do is they kill --

they use herbicides very toxic and they kill the vegetation and leave it there so you can walk there and see the [inaudible] which was killed and left in place and i don't think it's good for the fire, you know, for fire safety. just recently posting -- limited posting all the [inaudible] eastern side of the mount davidson are dead, brown. there was posting say i they were going -- i didn't see it again. they didn't post and use toxic poisons. one was just recently classified a probable carcinogen and this program should be changed with the forest management for fire safety thing. this is really dangerous what they're doing. >> thank you. >> thank you.

>> any other public comments on this item? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] i want to thank the fire department and the emergency management department and ucsf for being here and giving your presentation. i wasn't too sure -- as i said in my opening remarks that i wasn't sure where we were at in terms of being prepared for one of these rare urban forest fires, and after hearing today's presentation i feel very confident that san francisco is very prepared and i feel also that this corination between the departments to make sure that we don't have something happen where one is pointing a finger and saying "wow i thought the other department was going to take care of this" and i think ucsf

is a good example how to take care of a certain area and working with the neighbors to do this, and in regards to the message here i am hearing is all of us in the city, the residents, play a role in preventing any disasters to happen. the reporting mechanism that we have to complain about certain things we shouldn't look at it as a complaint, but more of a good neighbor pointing out something that maybe dangerous to other neighbors, and that's a good thing, so if there are residents that feel like there's some areas or a lot or whatever that seems to be in a position of starting -- being a fire hazard they should really report it. what i heard is that not all of them are going to be

considered dangerous, but let the experts here, being the fire department, remember whether it's dangerous or not and not us as residents that know less about this stuff so that's my comments. any other comments? seeing none -- okay. seeing none so this item is closed. again i want to thank the public for coming out and making their comments. [gavel] >> mr. chair would you like to make a motion? >> oh yeah, can i have a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair. >> so moved. >> so objection so the motion passes. go ahead madam clerk could you please call item two. >> item two is a hearing to present the comprehensive annual financial report, single audit and management letters prepared by the city's external auditors. >> good afternoon mr. chair,

supervisors. ben rosenfield city controller. i will describe what this hearing is and turn it to others in the staff and the external auditor to present. as you're aware each year at the close of the fiscal year we work with departments to compile statements that reflect the city's financial health and required disclosures and those documents are compiled by us which in this sense we're serving as management, and then each year the audit committee of the board and the board of supervisors itself retains an external financial auditor to review those statements and comment directly to you, the audit committee of the board of supervisors regarding their findings and a normal check and balance that exists in governmental accounting and management practices so we're here today to interviews those external auditors to you and talk you through their findings for the last year's cafr, our

comprehensive annual financial report and to talk you through their audit plan for the fiscal year end process that we're in the midst of so thank you for your time today. i will turn it over to carmen lafrank in the controller's office that leads this office for us. >> thank you. >> hi. good morning supervisors yee, mar, and supervisor christensen. so as ben mentioned we have this hearing every year to allow the auditors to present their findings and their audit plans, so before you have a list of the speakers. it's going to be kpmg our external auditor, the senior manager will present the audit plans and results of last year's audit and have mgo and annie louie is the partner and present the findings and plans. and then we also have a

representative from the airport who received a finding this year, wallace tang and miguel [inaudible] from the department of technology and we also have other speakers available from departments for the single audit find focusing you have questions and i am available. >> >> i will turn it over right now. thank you. >> thank you. >> okay. good morning. my name is jamie and a senior manager with kpmg and i will be presenting -- we are performing right now. >> okay.

>> we will be presenting kpmg's audit plan for the 2015 audit as well as recapping the 2014 audit. you will see here we will start with our engagement team. overall we have a lead engagement partner nancy rose and concurring review partners. the managers including myself are assigned to each of the departments that we're responsible for auditing. overall we have good continuity. each member partner as well as senior associate and manager are repeating over the past three years on the engagement. so to just to the audit objectives our objectives is express an opinion on the financial statements prepared by management. we provide reasonable but not

absolute assurance that the financial statements as a whole are free of material misstatements due to error or fraud. what this overall means that we audit to a materiality level. we audit and test the design of key controls of the accounts with significant risks . to move on to the responsibilities the statement of auditing standards require us to disclose roles and responsibilities within the audit so the next slides you will see here are the responsibilities of management, the audit committee or governance as well as the auditors so i will not go through all of these in detail, but i will point out key once of management, so the key ones being the fairly presenting a financial statements in conformity with the general accepted accounting principles

and maintaining control of reports and the statements do not relieve those of auditing and management of their responsibilities. as far as our responsibilities as your auditors we conduct the audit in accordance with the professional standards to obtain a reasonable assurance whether the financial statements are free of misstatement as i indicated earlier. it's not designed to detect error or fraud material to the financial statements and overall we will provide a communication of significant deficiencies and material weaknesses of internal control to management and those of governance and contact the audit with professional skepticism and governing auditing standards. one thing to note in regards to other information and documents containing audited financial statements several reports may

have an introduction or statistical data which we do not opine on this information. we do read the data for reasonableness and identify inconsistencies or misstatement of facts. anything that is not resolved account lold up the -- could hold up the issue of the report or modify the opinion. to move on to the audit plan our scope of work for the 2015 fiscal year consists of the following departments. the san francisco health services system, the municipality -- municipal transportation agency, mta, the public utilities commission and the san francisco international airport. we perform the single audit for mta and sfo as well as additional agreed upon procedures for mta and we issue an additional

report for puc on the balancing account of the water enterprise. these audits are performed with general accepted accounting principles and auditing standards as well as government auditing standards. to re-cap of the 2014 audit results all of the departmental audits we issued opinions for were clean, unmodified opinions. we did have one deficiency that we have reported for the airport in regards to timely reviewing of monitoring of capital asset records. this finding the management recorded adjustments of capital assets related to items that didn't meet this definition of capital assets, assets no longer considered existing and assets which appreciation was calculated using this formula so an

adjustment was made. we provided a recommendation to management to perform the annual reviews of the fixed assets and focus on the appropriate accounting and transactions. at this point in time as we're in midaudit we're are testing the remediation of this and that is still in process. one disclaimer in regards to public offerings if it should be the case that the city wish to incorporate the financial statements in our report into offerings securityings we are required to perform procedures to events and updates and consider whether the manner of the presentation is appropriate. the procedures would be under a separate engagement letter compared to the engagement letter of the audit financial statements. in regards to the

audit timeline and key dates so we completed our planning and interim filled work of the departments in may and through august. final field work is start. we started here in september and that will go on through january. our deliverables and target dates so the puc we plan to issue that audit report on october 16 and have that be the first one out and the remaining departments will follow the following week of october 23. we will issue the significant deficiencies report on october 23 as well, and then the single audit and other report will fall in line to be issued by january 31. and lastly we always like to disclose that we are independent with respect to the city as defined by the terms of the

professional standard. so i will stand for any questions or comments. >> colleagues any questions? seeing none. i guess in terms of the deficiency from the airport mr. tang is going to address that later? >> yes. >> okay. no questions. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> so next we will have andy louie of mgo present her results and plans and have the two departmental representatives speak to the findings and one for the airport and the other for department of technology. >> thank you. >> good morning. i am from

mgo, one of the partners on the city's engagement. i am here to present the fiscal year 13-14 audit results and the plan for 14-15. so first i would like to go over the scope of audits for mgo and annual financial statements or the cafr for short. . the single overall audit is for the federal awards, the retirement system, the [inaudible] agency of the redevelopment agency, the two hospitals, the port of san francisco as well as the finance corporation. i adopt to point out that the city's cafr incorporates separate financial statements audited by kpmg as mentioned in the previous presentation. in terms of the audit results for the previous fiscal year we issued opinions

on both the city's financial statements as well as the single audit. that is the highest level of assurance you can receive for these. we issued reports related to the internal reporting and compliance and i will go over later in the slides. we issue a separate report directly to this committee and that report includes communications under professional standards as well as our audit authorization from the various audits. so in the next two slides i will go over the required communications. 22 of the. >> >> two of the items that we're required to communicate to the governing body is the professional standards and timing, scope of the audit. we communicated those two items in the previous audit plan that was presented last year. the remaining required communications which i are list

on the slide are included in the report to and report to the gao and these are standard items that require to communicate. what i do want to point out in the report is under number 3 qualitative aspect of accounting aspects under this item refer in the report talks about new pronouncements that are required to be adopted by the city in terms of accounting treatment and accounting presentation so during the fiscal year 13-14 the city did implement a significant standard gasb 65 which changes the classifications of certain balances or certain account on the financial statements so compare 13-14 financial statements to that of the prior year it will look a little different because of the new pronouncements that were adopted. in terms of the audit implementations we had one

recommendation that we have with the audit relating to the city's overall information technology governance and we considered a significant deficiency which is defined to be something we believe is a matter of concern that would be useful to the gao. what the find was that the comment related to the overall governance of the city whereby each department has their own policies and procedures regarding the systems that they use, and there isn't a centralized body for the city that would issue policies and because of that each department has different processes, if you will, to govern their own system, and we believe that a centralized oversight body would be necessary. in terms of prior recommendation as part of our audit we do have recommendations that we have made in prior year

that we made outstanding. one of the outstanding findings in terms of the financial statements related to a comment we made in 2013 and this is for the payroll process. during fiscal year 12-13 the city implemented a new payroll system called emerge and while the system transition took place some of the policies and procedures by departments were not updated so our comment relates to that. during the 13-14 financial audit we went back and revisited this particular situation and found that corrective action happened implemented. and other prior years recommendations that we made outstanding was from fiscal year 11-12 and this was an informational item so it wasn't a deficiency. in 2012 the gasb which is the body that makes accounting standards for governmental agencies

nationwide they issued two significant accounting standards, 67 and 68 which relates to pension benefits, and the accounting and financial reporting requirements relating to such benefits. 67 is the requirement that we have the retirement systems and the planning and 68 is the [inaudible] benefits for the employer for the city as a whole so we just -- at the time we made a comment to communicate with the city and inform everyone this is a significant standard that would drastically change the financial reporting of pension benefits. 67 -- statement 67 was implemented by the system during fiscal year 13-14 and the city as the employer will implement statement 68 in fiscal year 14-15. next i will go on to the recommendations relating to the city's single audit which is

the audit of the city's federal award compliance. sorry it should say current year. so the first comment that we have again is consideration of [inaudible] c and [inaudible] monitoring and we found this situation for two different federal programs that we had audited. the first is the work forcement act cluster and [inaudible] research and demonstration projects. both programs are administered by the office of economic development development and we found when the city passes on federal funds to other agencies outside the city, what we call separate recipients and communicate the title and number and other information. we found when the city provided funding under these programs to their

recipients such information was not communicated at the time of the award as required but they were communicated during the award. the second financial -- the suddenly federal award finding is for the programs listed. the first is the continuum of care program and served by the human service agency and the second one is the pilot demonstration and research project by the office of work force development. this finding related to you a report that was required to be submitted anytime awards are made and has to be made at the time of the award and we found that the reports were not filed. this finding on procurement and suspension debarment is also a significant deficiency and relates to the child support enforcement program that is administered by

the department of child support services. for this particular finding it relates to the contracting process. for contracts that are funded by federal awards there is a requirement to make sure that the contracting entity is not suspended or debarred. in one of the examples we selected for testing the department of child support services utilized a blanket contract that was procured by the city, but because the blanket contract was procured for the city overall at the time the procurement occurred the contractor was not checked against the federal suspension and debarment listing so we listed this as a finding. i'm switching now over to the recommendations that were made in previous single audits. the first one result relates to the fiscal year 13 and. >> >> with single monitoring and for the agent clusters.

similar it was about communicating required information to the city at the time of the board and during the follow up audit in 13-14 we found that the corrective actions have been implemented. so now i will switch over to the audit service plan for fiscal year 14-15. i'm not going to go over all the items in detail but i do want to highlight the three items that are listed. the first one is the plan scope, so as i mentioned in the previous slide we will be auditing the same components including the city's cafr, the single audit retirement system, the successor agency and the port as well as the finance corporation n terms of the timing of the audit we provided a timeline on page five. although the plan you can refer to for more details but overall we expect to issue the city's financial statements by

mid-november, the week before thanksgiving and the single audit will be issued by january of 2016. lastly the [inaudible] relates to our responsibilities as well as management's responsibilities. these are required communications that are provided to you in our audit services. with they will take any questions and comments. >> okay. thank you. any questions? seeing none thank you very much for your presentation. >> thank you. >> wallace chance will come up and -- chang will come up and give status for the airport. >> thank you. >> good morning chair yee, supervisor christensen and supervisor mar. it is wallace tang airport controller from

san francisco international airport, business and finance division. relating to the fiscal year 2014, the findings regarding the untimely real and monitoring of capital asset records that happened as part of the airport's continuous improvement effort starting fiscal year 13 and 14. the airport was taking a proactive approach to start cleaning up the fixed asset and capital asset data base for getting ready for the upcoming city wide financial system replacement project. our goal was to clean up the data and make sure that the good data will be wrote into the new system. as part of that clean

up effort we had a capital assets account to see if they met the policy and we reviewed the reasonableness of useful life of fixed assets and through that effort in fiscal year 13 and 14 and we worked closely with the airport project managers and we identified certain adjustment and we were the one that initiate adjustment and show it to the auditor that should be the adjusting entries in fiscal year 13 and 14, so to address the findings and to strengthen the internal control the airport has taken multiple corrective action to address the witnesses related to untimely

review and monitoring of capital assets records. one of the action thases we took was on the top of the annual review for year end close purpose we schedule the project manager to confirm the reasonableness of useful life whether the accounts met the capitalization policies and also and the items that are supposed to be capitalized versus expense and we identified in our second quarter close and third quarter close during the fiscal year, so that has been implemented in fiscal year 15. and also next at the airport we created and updated the new set of construction in progress policies and procedures to make it clear to the project manager

what's supposed to be the requirement for booking capital assets. regarding the suggestions from kpmg's recommendations from last year's finding related to reassessing the resources, the airport has created a fixed asset accounting group in fy '15 to strengthen the resources to focus on the accounting. with that i am open for any questions supervisors. >> in regards to implementing this new system to look at the fixed assets has that been completed yet? >> yes. we have completed the 100% confirmation of all the

fixed assets and value of fy '15. >> so there were additional resources put in there for that effort to make it happen? >> yes. >> so my question is moving forward -- >> yes. >> -- will you continue championing of resources to keep everything updated on an annual basis? >> yes, we do. at the interim we have already hired one additional staff to focus on the fixed asset and we have the starting plan when we do the upcoming two year budget we're going to put in requests for permanent positions that will focus on fixed asset accounting so we have the interim solution and the long-term plan. >> okay. thank you very much. any other questions? seeing none thank you very much for your presentation. >> thank you chair. thank you supervisors. >> so next up would be miguel camino. >> good afternoon. i am from

the city and cio. i just wanted to respond briefly to a couple of points regarding the information technology governance finding. we have been working really hard on a city wide chief information security officer recruitment. what's different about that than previous situations is that departments have had and still do have security officer functions but this is an actual city wide authority. we are getting very, very close. we had engaged in executive search firm and close to have finalists to review and select from so i see this position being filled very soon and instrumental to making progress on some of the concerns, and also at the committee on information technology we have an architecture and policy review board that is a working group

that functions to collect the stakeholder groups from various departments and organize the conversations around technology policies, priorities and recommendations, and then bring those back forward to the official governing body of coit for consideration, discussion and approval, so that is also a city wide cross departmental coordinated effort and discussion. that body has been officially instituted and has had its first working meeting, and we're making progress there pretty rapidly, and again once the city chief information security officer is in place i think that will also accelerate the outcomes of that policy review board so that's the departmental response to the findings and the concerns. >> may i ask a question? so

are there departments exempt from participate something. >> exempt from participating in which component? >> in being over seen by chief inform security officer? >> no. the city will have responsibility and authority for establishing the federated security policyo the umbrella security policy and departments have departmental authority to kind of take it from there just like a federal law type of structure. this city's staff person reports to me as the chief officer with a dotted line to the controller directly so it's very clear it's a city wide purview. >> thank you. >> okay. any other questions? okay. seeing none thank you for your presentation. >> thanks. >> and that concludes then the

presentations for this item? >> yes, that conclude the presentation unless you had questions for any of the other speakers? >> no. i don't. supervisor christensen? no. okay. >> thank you very much. >> thank you very much for your presentations and now are there any public comment on this item? >> airport commission group, a policy as standard procedures please elaborate, communicate, connect to the world with perfect open window to the world. >> any other public comments on this item? seeing none. public comment is now closed. [gavel] . colleagues could we have a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair? >> i'm sorry? >> could i have a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair? >> [inaudible] >> okay. any objections? seeing none the motion passes.

thank you very much. madam clerk item number 3. >> madam clerk could you call items 3- 17. >> items 3- 17 are ordinances and resolutions with various settlements and agreements with the city and county of san francisco. >> okay. before we entertain a motion to convene in closed session is there any member of the public who wishes to speak on items 3- 17? seeing none public is now closed. [gavel] colleagues is there a motion to convene in closed session. >> [inaudible] >> moved and seconds. motion passes. [gavel] so members of the public we will no covers. actually there have been some utilities completely punched in -- >> we are now back in open session. >> deputy director john gibner. the city voted to amend the ordinance for number 14 to reflect in the body of the ordinance that the lawsuit was

filed in san mateo superior court and voted unanimously to forward items 3- 17 to the full board with positive recommendation. >> okay. thank you. colleagues can i have a motion to not disclose what happened in closed session? second? okay. no objection motion passes. [gavel] madam clerk is there anything else on the agenda? >> there is no further business. >> okay. if there's nothing further the meeting is adjourned. [gavel] thank you very much.

>> call the roll. commissioner bueller, commissioner low, commissioner harrison >> just as a reminder if anyone can turn off any sound devices. we are going as briefly as possible

today. we have a 10:00 joint meaning meeting with the planning commission at 11:00 a.m.. we have plenty of time. >> yes. so we are going to make one switch in the calendar at the beginning of the meeting. we are going to put the general manager's report at the end. we may have to move another thing depends on how far along we are. we are going to move to public comment to 2 minutes a piece. in order to allow for all neither staff nor the commission will respond to public comment until public comment is done and at that point the commission may ask staff to respond afterwards. with that, commissioner buehler. do you have a president's report. we have an

. item 5 is the consent calendar. any public comment on the consent calendar. seeing none. public comment is closed. >> we need a motion. >> all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> so moved. >> item 6, san francisco zoo. >> good morning, commissioners. general manager's report. >> yesterday was an interesting day at the zoo. it was a nice day to

see the rain first of all. we had about 400 disabled veterans come to the zoo. >> i know you are all wondering how is it going. of course this is the young cub that was born august 30th. so that just puts it under a 3 weeks.

our 13-year-old liones and cub continue to do well. it's starting to take real steps and walk and not just scoot around. we still don't know the sex. they are opening up and he, she is is vocal in wanting something from mom. staff continues to monitor them remotely in the cameras as well placed outside of adjacent room. it's still building up the trust with keepers when they are in the rooms neeshl. she stays with the kubs anytime protecting the newborn. we continue to secure it's comfort level with them during this delicate early days. we are very excited. a knuble next slide.

grandparents day. she was born in 1971. she's a black rhino. she has 14 children. 15 grandchildren, 6 great grandchildren and 1 great great grandchild. it was a fabulous day. fun was had by all. that leads right into a world rhino day. it was really an important day because it highlighted the illegal trade of wild life products. you are all familiar with ab 96 that the state senate passed which is going to limit the trade of ivory. a lot of information is not out there about this animal and the crisis this

animal is facing with the legal trade. the horn is harvested for all kinds of reasons. this animal is in big trouble as the elephant. it's important to highlight how important this species is to the world. the san francisco zoo is really important because we have two of the five species on this planet. we have the very large asian rhino which is absolutely a gorgeous animal if you haven't seen it in a while and of course the black rhino. again, we have representative, contribution representative including wild aid making presentations to highlight the illegal trade of ivory. >> next, we are so fortunate. let me start off by saying august 27th, a collaboration of efforts by the sequoia king national -- the two sierra

yellow frogs out of the canyon and basin and safely deliver them to the san diego zoo. this salvage operation was deemed the highest priority by the u.s. fish and wild life services by the action. the native species of frogs were under going a severe disease event. they went in there and rescued these guys that were heavy infected with fungus and we treated them with the protocols and they are recovering. no adult frogs remain of the salvage population and the second population was likely not going to have any surviving adults at the end of the summer. it was the only way to secure the offspring of

this population. the 190 tad poles and frogs were delivered to the zoo. we were honored by the ab conservation fund to support the mountain lake turtle project and we also received a national science foundation plant in santa barbara in a biome study. we received two conservation grants. the yellow frog project is one of the keystone projects that help safe that population of animals in the sierra. i'm delighted to say we were approached by yosemite national park to partner with them on the mountain yellow legged frog and the pacific pond

turtle project to help populate their animals. they are working hard to slowdown the river and to create the areas for these animals to thrive. if you are tracking this, we are working with kings canyon, sequoia national park and yosemite national parks on conservation actions. those are the three seeds care conservation. it's really a very important moment for the san francisco zoo and for the citizens of the bay area. it's really important working with these partners. neural -- turtle fest. we worked with the presidio trust, the san francisco gardens and

sonoma state and we released them into mountain lake. one of the grants we receive are going to work on the population at mountain lake. here is the partnership establishing some neighboring cities at mountain lake. next slide. this is coelacanth. this is one of the large new sculptures in the plaza. there are about 100 sculptures in this plaza. this animal chosen we'll never have it as a living representative at the zoo. it's about 140 million-year-old fish. they found it off madagascar. what makes it an interesting animal is that it's that big, 6 feet

weighing 200 pounds. evolutionary biologist believe it's close to becoming a land animal. has primitive bones to be able to walk on the bottom of the ocean. again, the coelacanth. scientist come together to creatine expiration. it's a really interesting exhibit. you should come on up. we have another slide. this is a local artist who has been inspired by the learning plaza and you can see a bunch of other images or statutes or sculptures in the garden. come oun out. thank you very much. that ends my report. >> is there any public comment on this item?

>> good morning. it's great to see the zoo is actually getting something done and the parks. what's nice about it is the -- they got it in

madagascar. >> on the other part. i guess i'm going to have to refer to the other time. i want to try to look at the zoo, the water issue and what they are going to be doing and the recycled water

from the sewers. i wanted to even bring up that i had spoken on this itch and i'm not that in favor on the zoo ground. we were hoping that they can move it to where they had planned before. the two high school length and washington. they can just flow rates 16-degree with piping. it has to have great elevation. all right. thank you. >> is there anyone else who would like to make public comment on this item? >> being none. public comment is closed. we have been told that one of the presenters for item 7 is not here yet. so we will be moving to item 8. the open space fund undesignated contingency reserve golden gate

park west and sense replacement and land improvement project. >> thank you. good morning, commissioners. dan cowell. the item i have before you today i went to the committee a few weeks back and obviously because we are look to open space for reserve funds. i will give a brief presentation. i will read the discussion item. what we are looking for today is discussion of possible action to approve use of open space contingency reserve funds for the golden gate park west and landscape improvement project. in a nutshell what we are looking to do is at the far west of the golden gate park on the highway there is an only wood link chain fence

and fall into disrepair and in addition to that sand blown from the beach has caused a lot of land blown and damage to the equipment and disease over time. because this is face of the park and the master plan thiefs -- identifies this as an improvement need, they want to move forward with the project and do so the chain link fence with a little bit lower in height and doing some additional plant to give a little bit more to the edge of the park. so with that, we are trying to move this project forward aggressively and trying to complete this work with the completion of the projects so we can open that end of the park up as one complete project. that's our

task at hand and hopefully you can open these funds for that effort. >> thank you. c'mon up, richard. public speaker: this project i was looking at. the first thing that came to my mind is rainfall. the problem with the drainage. when i first walked out there and started to go to the meeting. what happened is there is different patch areas the slopes don't leave too big a puddle. it works on with the trail way so you don't get the water to try to get around. we look at

the consideration to get to this lotion in san francisco. it is a very touchy area. it's required that the plants that are put in there are native plants. that's only one part. another part is when they put in these chains. i always thought if we put a nice decoration there and if you have a nice aquatic park and character that we are a sea bearing city and countywide and possibly put in such type of an ornamentation to the chains. these chains i don't know what they are going to do with them but classically they are not the black color but navy whites. i don't know if they have the extra letter or not.

>> is there anyone else who would like to make public comment on no. 8. >> is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> move it forward. all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> any opposed? >> are we ready to go back to item 7. okay. garage renovation conceptual plan approval and commissioner low needs to reduce -- recuse himself. >> i need to recuse myself. >> move and second to recuse commissioner low. >> before we get started he meets the to be physically out of the room.

>> good morning. i'm here to discuss the renovation of the portsmouth garage. it's approved by the san francisco administrative code chapter 31. it's located in chinatown above the garage by the plaza parking corporation. the corporation is designing a large area of the garage that includes health and safety upgrades with improvements. most of the improvements are occurring

within the garage there are handful of items that require modifications to the park. i want to orientate us to the project. it's on the south on the west to kearney street on the east. we'll be talking about the levels and kearney street to the bottom of the east side off the vehicular entrance to the garage and you have the mezzanine parking on the top level. the main entry parking level along kearney street and two basements below. i also want to introduce beth morris

from beth morris architecture. she is going to be speak bg the design of the projects and members from the renovation committee from the parking corporation >> good morning. my name is beth morris with bma, the architect on this project. the design team focused on various categories of work. areas of water intrusion, security and emergency preparedness, interior improvement and systems upgrades and building

repairs and general -- refurbishment. it's the areas to address the problems. there is little or no protection from rain water that enters into the building. the east wall of the mezzanine level is enclosed by open slates. the plan drawing shows we will be replacing them. this shows the existing planets and louvers. there are open mechanical shafts. we

propose to cover these openings. the memo -- mechanicals to one side. at these areas of construction we'll replant areas disturbed and at some areas we have new planting as recommended by recreation and parks to prevent erosion. at the upper park plaza level there are three elevators to serve ada access from the garage. this does not protect the elevator doors and water gets into the shaft and sometimes with

trapped people inside. that's not a good idea. >> this would not extend beyond the existing roof line. another project goal to responsible in the event of an emergency. at the interior we will add card readers and security cameras and have an emergency power camera at the garage and replant to enclosed the open stairwell and at the interior we would like to open up an exit stair that is currently enclosed. we will propose to provide security gates at the kearney street main entry. there are three

emergency exits. they are subject to inappropriate graffiti and unsafe. we are proposing to enclosed these stair wells and minimize intrusion to the stairwell. gates will allow exiting from the inside. the metal lattice material shown here maximizes daylight and visibility into the stairwell is durable and not as surface subject to

vandalism. inside the garage all three exit stairs are enclosed by solid walls. without visibility they are subject to the same visibility to the stair wall. we propose to the garage at the main level. the same lattice material at the en closure to the stairwell. therefore reducing maintenance and improving security. the main kearney entry is fully open and there is no way to close off the garage. in the event of an

emergency, from the couple days a year the garage is closed, port smith need to be able to secure the facility. in this project we plan to add roll out shuters at the lanes and gates at the pedestrian path. this slide shows the gate closed and the more typical open position. we've included interior improvements to a few areas to support staff functions and increase parking. we located administrative offices in staff break room. we planned to convert an existing office area into a conference room and info and open bay for increased parking. on this slide, the yellow areas

are showing increased parking. and the purple shows the new staff break area. relocated from the main level. on the main level it shows you an area of increased parking where the staff area has been moved and the program areas for the staff. throughout the enter -- interior we'll make improvement for safety. ada upgrades and fire alarm. and we'll replace damage and deteriorated items including concrete structure, fire exit stairs, exterior stucco wall and plumbing drains upgrades to

mechanical structures. this will replace the existing fixtures at the exterior of the garage. the project will meet requirements of title 24 and san francisco's green building ordinance. carol will discuss the project schedule and milestones. >> thanks. i want to show you a current update. we have received a categorical exception and from the arts commission design review. our next for the rest of this fall is to complete a detailed design and the plan is to go to out to bid at the end of the year. before doing that later this fall we'll be returning to you to present the financing package

for the project. then we are hoping construction will begin in 2016 and expect it to last a little over a year to be completed in the summer of 2017. i want to make sure everyone understand to contain the operational instruction and stageing the work so improvements can be done with the less impact as possible. we are back sharing the different stair cases that will be getting the enclosure roof. one 1 case will be used at a time and only limits to that one area for construction security. if you have any questions on the schedule and project, please let us know. thank you. >> we have public comment. sam, c'mon up. >> good morning. members of the

parks and recreation commission. my name is sam quan and board member of the parks and recreation commission. on behalf of the garage i'm here to urge your support to take this first major improvement since the 60s. back then we had a central freeway connecting the city with chinatown and neighborhoods with sunset and richmond did not exist. chinatown had three movie theatres and lots of nightlife and plenty of parking. but things have changed and in order for the garage to continue to meet the needs of the community and operate officially and be energy efficient it's time to renovate

the garage and replace the items that have worked tirelessly over 50 years. our engineer consultants has completed the renovation design and we are working hard to a arrange for financing moving forward. throughout the process we appreciate the hard work and cooperation we had with the preservation and commission staff and looking forward to geting the project moving. let us not forget that you still want to continue a good revenue stream so that you can maintain and improve the park for everybody to enjoy. renovated garage and community, a new city college campus. a new chinese hospital and completion of the central freeway. we look forward to seeing chinatown to become a

magnet at it was over 50 years ago. hopefully we'll have more visitors and the merchants will finally get their economic stimulus they have been waiting for. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> is there anyone else who would like to ma'am public comment on this. richard? public speaker: the china restaurant was closed and the infrastructure was laid out when i was a kid. that building is quite heavy concrete and steel. when i look at it as this project of this shield

technical requirements and ceqa. i think we should approach it a little bit more cautiously. it doesn't have a strong steal or extra concrete reinforced back in the wave between buildings. it doesn't have that stabilization. when you look at the picture, there is a big building and there is a slope. you have 20 degrees and you have all kinds of problems. or topple. so when i look at that, you have to be more cautious from the engineering aspect. that's why i want to be geotechnical aspect to look at the engineering. that's an old building that's been there. that area is also known for landslides and the type of groundwork. another point i want to see if there was a faster way that you

cannot take up all that floor space in front of the elevators. so there is a railway in the doorway and you have a frame around the map that will keep the water out and you can also keep your feet clean and the operator can operate regularly. to say the rain is causing it, it's not true, there is a lot of other things. >> thank you. >> would anyone else like to make a comment on item no. 7? is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> any opposed? so moved. >> i will be right back. i need to get commissioner low. >> we are on item 9. open

contingency reserve san francisco botanical garden. powerpoint, please. >> good morning. general

manager. i'm here to present discussion and possible action to allocate up to $75,000 on undesignated contingency reserve to support the san francisco garden at san francisco botanical garden. the exhibition garden is a 2-acre site located in a very high profile area adjacent to the main entrance outside the botanical garden. it opened in 1965 and celebrated it's 50th anniversary. as part of the botanical garden the original master plan was a place for the public to learn about landscape styles, plants and materials to utilize in their home garden landscapes.

with initial design and structure by garden magazine by notal architects. the garden is distinctly comprised with demonstration and workers' and landscape areas that contain fine examples of garden design and treatments and woodwork. despite it's high profile location a variety of improvements are needed in order for it to fill it's potential. painting, and irrigation systems are all a major need of repair. this 75,000 allocation would provide funding for hard scape, water conservation improvement and planting areas greatly in need of

upgrade. the specific project would include $45,000 for paving and restoration, irrigation upgrades for approximately 20,000 and landscape planting for 10,000. a couple images. the garden is a diamond in the rough and there is spaces in need of improvement. as far as the botanical garden, allen low requested that funds in the open space undesignated continue to utilize to fund the afterorementioned improvements. this would

provide great potential and unique gathering for the public and the garden. the proposed improvements would bring in greater diverse set of visitors to the botanical gardens to one of the san francisco's greatest public assets. so that's it. thank you. >> do we have public comment on this item? c'mon up. >> thank you. good morning. my name is sue an shift. i'm executive director of san francisco botanical garden society. i'm here with our board chair don bill daukey. i want to thank you so much for considering this allocation and especially want to thank

commissioner low for recommending this. it's been an amazing 75th anniversary year for the botanical garden. this is even better. it will give us a head start of revitalizing this park. thank you. >> thank you. >> good morning and thank you. i too am here to say thank you. this part of the garden t exhibition garden has enormous potential forren -- enhancing visitor experience and the programs. we are very grateful and thrilled that the commission is considering this allocation. thank you. is there

anyone else? richard? good morning. i'm in favor of this project and spoke to the commission a while before. i would like to include the capital improvement fundings which you call slush funds or the mayor's funds. when i liked it as a little boy, we would do it on a sunday when we would get around there. that might be capital improvement funding and we get that kind of funding or stuff like that to get it working again as a capital improvement project. the grounds seems to be getting to be more hollow from that type of work they had there a long time ago. even

though it's a drought year but the layout work to it might be the right timing when it starts to have rain power pouring in the city of san francisco. >> is there anyone else who would like to comment. is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> i would like to say thank you to the botanical garden society for pointing out someone who does not have a green thumb and pointed this area out for an area which i never knew existed and thank you for pointing out that this area could use a little bit more tls and if we can do more to inspire interest. this has a tremendous potential. the landscaping is just absolutely fabulous. so with that, i would move for

approval of this item. >> second? >> it's been moved and seconded. let me add my congratulations to both sue an and don for this second anniversary. it's one of the city's greatest gems and you are making it even better. with that, i will call for a vote. all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> any opposed? >> we are now on item 10. closed session. is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. we need a motion and a second to go into closed session? >> so moved. >> moved and seconded. all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> any opposed? so moved. >> before we go in we need to ask all staff and members of the public to step outside and we will >> >> okay. we have returned

into open session. so item 10 e, there is not a report on actions taken. and on 10 f, commissioners, we need a motion as to whether or not to disclose any or all discussions in closed session. >> i move not to discuss. >> all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> any opposed? item moved. we are now onto item 11. general public comment. anyone wish to make general public comment? >> not yet.

item 12. commissioners matters? any commissioners matters. any public comment. being none this item is closed. item 13. new business agenda setting. any public comment? this item is closed. now to communication? public comment public comment is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. now we'll go to the general manager's report. >> i'm going to give her the opportunity to give her report. >> good morning. >> we have in your packet two

resolutions the reason we are bringing you the resolution of a joint parks and recreation and planning department t reasoning we are bringing thank you resolution is with all the development going on is there is an agency missing a table and that's parks and recreation and we think there is a position to be at that table during the conversation at the early stages to help the developing organization or the non-profit to properly design or creatively design space. not necessarily that the recreation and parks would manage it by

creating an oversight committee to deal with the different agencies creating spaces and alleys that are not under the jurisdiction of recreation and parks. with your permission i would like to read this. the recreation and parks open park committees request the recreation and parks commission to work in consultation with the planning department work on and devise and complete a strategic plan for open space in district 6 and 10 and create a working group to -- in fact a strategic plan. it was passed by our community and in our neighborhood there is an advisory committee but there job was to identify properties and hopefully get them before they are sold somewhere else. this is different. this is a strategic plan that should bring agencies

together on a more or less regular basis to talk about how the big scene is to be. it's good open space? is it workable open space. is it space that will really serve the community. so, that is our first resolution. the second resolution is the recommendation of the recreation and parks commission to propose the following project. that's also in your packet for the next joint meeting. where as the san francisco recreation and parks open space advisory committee has not had a formal presentation of the open space component of this major project and whereas district 6 has been identified as the most open space deficient in the city and to identify suitable open space parks is on going. whereas the shadowing impacts on the newly park which requires

impacts are not significant and whereas the parks are currently scheduled to join the planning on september 17th to join in the project and to approve the raising of the cumulative shadow for planning code section 295. be it hereby resolve that the commission postpone their vote and the ground level and open space is poorly cited and not visible from any streets. the location at the highest level wind and shadows identified in the eir and will be primarily heart escaped in the eir and to the plaza is tucked at valley ways that is non-functional and currently a haven of the antisocial behavior and

detriment to its behavior and neighborhood. in fact request removal of the open space. it's a rooftop. put forth by toby level district 6 and jane wild and passed unanimously of district 6. we do appreciate your time and hope you will give consideration to a join strategic committee to work on overall planning and open space issues. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, phil. >> that concludes the general manager's report. >> we have two cards for public comment public speaker: hello commissioners. it's nice to see all in person. my name is jane wild, i live on 11

street in district 6. i'm here to present to you two letters that have come to you recently. i want to reiterate it. the first is from the park and asking to you deny the exceedence of the shadow to the park under prop k. they discussed this at thur meeting and unanimously wrote this letter at the meeting of september 9th for the shadowing of the park. the city's shadowing of the park has been rewritten. neighbors have expressed concern that making exception for the project shadowing the park will set precedence for other parks in this city. this shadowing is not insignificant. it will cover the community garden part of the

park several months a year. this park as you all know was fought for hard in the neighborhood and a great deal of money has gone into making it a beautiful park. so it would be a pity to compromise it in anyway. the second letter is from the sierra club. also the sierra club urges the planning commission not to certify the eir on the project and encourages the park to not -- the level. >> is that the san francisco chapterer of the sierra club? >> yes it is. >> thank you. >> there was no noticing at the park about this potential shadowing increase to give the neighbors any say at all about whether this was important to them. they only found out about it in the papers and so on. we recommend the

recreation and parks have a separate hearing. >> you are out of time. >> thank you, i appreciate your listening. >> linda? >> public speaker: yes, good morning. hardworking commissioners. i wrote out a bunch of comments and then i listened to linda and basically what i have to say is what she said. [ laughter ] >> convenient. >> i would like to just add briefly the reasons why i voted for both of the resolutions that you just heard read into the record. my name is linda schaffer and i have the honor of being one of the two representative in district 10 on prozac and i'm very aware of the public parks and open space that are included in the development projects and therefore planned presumably operated by and maintained by the developers. as linda said, there is no role right

now for rpd to be included in any of those stages of the process and the fact that rpd has managed to get themselves included anyway is a testament to their -- >> intensity? >> yes. initiative. that was the word i was trying to get. and the fact that there are some responsible developers in the city. the other thing i wanted to bring to the attention is that there seems to be no requirement when ceqa, when eir's are done under ceqa that parks and open space that are located within the project, we subject to the same analysis as is done in connection with the effects that the project itself would have open space on it and that's a gaping hole in some process and since you are the folks, we

hope you can suggest an approach to dealing with this. i don't know if we need to change the planning code or what. anyway, thank you. >> is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. we are on item 15, adjournment. >> move to adjourn. >> second. >> all in favor say, "aye". >> aye. >> any opposed? so moved. >> thanks for waiting all that time. [ meeting is adjourned ]