taking of property, and yet, with this knowledge, there was no reasonable effort to notify us to resolve this situation, which would have undoubtedly happened quickly. the question is would you want to be known san francisco is a city that takes care of its citizens or one that punishes them for their technical violations. i am very confident of which one you would like to stand for. thank you. >>president breed: thank you so much. next speaker, please. >> my name is andrew whitaker. i'm the british consul general based here in san francisco. >> can you pull the microphone close, please? i'll restart your time. >> okay. my name is andrew whitaker. i'm the brittic consul general

here in san francisco. it's truly an honor for me to have the opportunity to speak today, and i have the greatest respect for your work. today, over 400,000 british tourists visit california each year, and hundreds of thousands of jobs are the as a result of billions of dollars of trade and investment here between us. it is my great pleasure to work with the people here in san francisco to continue to develop and strengthen that relationship. i am here to offer my strong support of the presidio terrace case brought before you. who owns the streets and how it is managed has a direct bearing on this. the british government therefore considers itself to be a party of interest in the sale of presidio terrace,

however, despite 15 years of ownership up to 2015, we were not informed of the process nor involved of the final sale, if we would have been, we would have worked with the parties to quickly resolve the matter. if the sale were allowed to stand, we have significant concerns about the potential impact on the secure and well functioning residence i need as i go about my duties as the consul general. while i understand the process was followed that allowed the sale to go ahead, that same process allows you to rescind the sale. i hope you agree that we are right to consider ourselves a party of interest, and that our wishes were not taken into consideration. thank you. >>president breed: thank you for your comments. next speaker, please.

>> good afternoon. my name is pam cheng, and my two sisters and i grew up at 15 presidio terrace. unfortunately, my parents, sam and barbara cheng could not be here today. my dad, sam is a retired pharmacist, and together my parents ran the rexall pharmacy in the inner sunset. my husband and i live with my parents, and we recently welcomed our first child, brandon, who is now 20 months old. although my family has lived in presidio terrace for four decades, we never heard that the street was a separate parcel. my parents believed that the street was part of our lots, and all of this time we have paid or h.o.a. dues and property taxes. we never received notice of the sale and were shocked to learn that city has transferred ownership of the common area without notifying us. it amazes me that for the last two years we've been paying

dues to maintain and landscape the common areas that don't even belong to us. the supposed owners have allowed us to pay for all of this work without ever speaking up to say that the property had transferred to them. this is an injustice that has allowed a third party to take part of our home and our property. under section 3701 of the california tax code, the tax collector is required to make a reasonable effort to identify the addresses of all parties of interest. i'm a party of interest, as are each of our neighbors and none of us were contacted. we now learned that the city failed to identify the addresses and geographic location of an entire city block. this is a duty owed to us as residents of this city. i respectfully ask you to reverse the transfer of our streets and common areas that was sold by the city without or knowledge. thank you. >>president breed: thank you

for your comments. next speaker, please. good eveni >> good evening, supervisors. my name is david goldman and i'm the pastor of congregation emanuel, frequent host to events across the city. presidio terrace and emanuel have been good neighbors for as long as anyone in our institution can remember. we have provided parking four our clergy, senior staff and community partners during the high holidays and other special events, enabling them to participating while greatly minimizing the impact on our neighbors. any additions, presidio terrace has been helpful with our ongoing security procedures, much like my colleague of the british general consulate. our general teams frequently communicate on keeping the areas safe, issues which you

can imagine are complex and dynamic. emanuel has always and will continue to ensure that our building is a safe place for people to worship, meet, and build community, and we're glad to have presidio terrace as responsive and accommodating partners in our security requirements. the terrace has also allowed access to common areas of the sidewalk that run along our property. this access is supported and unabled or preschool to play outside for group walks in a safe environment. the walk also serves as a second form of egress. should a third party own the property, we're very concerned that they will be -- will not be interested or engaged in preserving our neighborly relationships or be active partners with our own security and operational matters. as a person ultimately responsible for the safety of our community and minimizing the impact on our area, i ask you to consider the significant

impact and potential harm on the community if the sale is not rescinded. thank you so much. >>president breed: thank you for your comments. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is mark kushner, and i'm speaking for myself as well as my mother who is standing next to me here. she grew up at 35 presidio terrace and has lived on the street for almost 80 years, since 1939. i personally am so local that i was actually born up stairs in that house as there wasn't time to get to the hospital. i want to make two quit points: first, despite the comments in the press about the people living there, i want to make it clear that regular people who've been living there for decades live there, as well. my mother is divorced, and she's on a fixed income. i now live there, as well, with

her kids -- with my kids, her grand kids, as i was recently separated from my wife, and i have many happy memories there from plague whiffle ball in the street to handing out candy to hundreds of people, the kids that came from all over the city, a community tradition that still continues and exists 50 years later. my second point, please consider the issue of fairness. our family isn't paying taxes to san francisco for eight decades, and our family was never personally notified by the tax assessor during all those decades that the homeowners association owed taxes for a separate parcel. my mother assumed that the tax notice she received every year and paid included all the taxes that she owed. it isn't fair that the street that my mother played on as a child, that i played on as a

child, that my kid play on is taken away, so please consider rescinding this sale in the interest of fairness. the city should make sure that law abiding and tax paying citizens like us get at least a minimum notice just like all the other counties -- los angeles, alameda, and other ones. >>president breed: thank you. thank you for your comment. great. thank you for your comments, and next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, president breed and members of the board. >>president breed: please speak directly into the microphone. >> my name is jacqueline young, and my family has lived at number 5 presidio terrace for the last 45 years, since 1972. i was personally named in mr. kopp's brief as someone who ignored her tax obligations. well, i want to assure you that while i faithfully paid my personal property taxes for the past 45 years, i did not know that our street was a separate

parcel subject to property tax. my late husband robert and i have worked tirelessly as members of the association's board in the 90's, and we were instrumental in restating the cc. and r.'s during the middle of that decade. we've invested in the common area. he was a real estate professional and also didn't know about the separate tax obligation for the common area. members of the board, we neighbors love our unique street and are deeply engaged in it. city residents and tourists also enjoy the history and uniqueness of presidio terrace. it is a city treasure, and yet, the treasurer's office ignored our right to due process. his office failed to alert any of us by mail or phone or -- of the up coming sale and didn't tack a written notice on one or

more of the many posts and trees that are in the circle. this would have been easy to accomplish. on behalf of the presidio terrace owners and all of the others who have found themselves in similarly untenable situations, i ask you to overturn the tax sale. thank you for your time. >>president breed: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good evening. my name is carol shearer, and my husband and i are moving from boston to san francisco in order to enjoy the vibrant y urban city, and to be closer to our grandchildren. to that end in 2016, we bought 27 presidio terrace. the house was in serious disrespect and requires a complete interior renovation and exterior restoration.

we hired a team of permitting consultants and a general contractor to help us complete the project, fully complying with all of the city's requirements. we are removing a number of old additions, reducing the size of the house on the lot while preserving the historical qualities of the house. it is a two year project. you can imagine we were shocked to discover through the news in boston that our community has this condition that threatens the safety and quiet environment that we are investing substantial time and resources into. there was no notice in any of our purchase disclosures in this situation. our realtior told us that the street and common areas were managed by the h.o.a., which she believed was true, but surely, there was some obligation on the part of the city, the seller, or someone to disclose this risk to us. more recently, we learned that the narrow path between our back yard and the synagogue was located in the common area.

this gives them to object to our back yard design decisions. we learned this from our builder who was approached by mr. cheng, making inquiries about our plans. it seems this arrangement allows a nonhomeowner to meddle in any event in the community. it seems on the face of it that the nonresident third party -- >>president breed: thank you for your comments. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is matt roy. my husband david and i have two children and have lived at 4 presidio terrace for 15 years. we moved there because of the quiet, friendly street where our son could learn to ride a bike and learn to know his neighbored. a full audit conducted in 2011

by an accountant did not identify there were taxes due or unpaid. while our homeowners association certainly bears part of the responsibility, i assure you we did not knowingly evade paying $14 a year in taxes. none of this would have happened if the treasurer's office made the same effort to notify the residents of presidio terrace that every homeowner is required to do when they wish to make improvements to their homes. in addition, the homeowners must prepare a large orange poster to ensure that it is posted on-site for 30 days. why shouldn't the treasurer be required to follow at least the same procedure before taking away private property? isn't that a much more consequently act than a simple renovation? if the treasurer had notified any resident of the terrace of the back tax issue, the intent

to sell the property or the sale of the property, we would certainly have addressed the problem and none of us would be standing here today. it is truly shocking that the treasurer chose to proceed with the sale of the common area knowingly without proper notice and violation of our property rights. this should not be tolerated by the city officials that take great pride in fairness and equitable governments. i trust the members will see the error of the treasurer and reverse this sale. thank you. >>president breed: thank you for your comments. next speaker, please. >> grch. my name is sarah himewoods, and i live with my husband and four children at 12 presidio terrace. i'm speaking on behalf of my neighbor, virginia chaw. i have been a citizen of this city for more than three decades and have lived at 19

presidio terrace for more than 24 years. in fact i'm ghg oing to retire my current home, as well. my husband and i came to america to go to college in the 60's and became citizens in the 70's. san francisco is where we raised our two daughters. they're now working responsible adults in law and medicine. they were raised here, have many friends here and called san francisco home. we live the american dream as we've raised our family in san francisco, and i am proud that we have been paying our property taxes ever since we moved here in 1986. it would be extremely unfair if my rights to our common property were taken away when we, the community were not properly notified. i am also deeply concerned that we will be subjected to the demands of those who are not even members of the san francisco community. i very much hope that you will consider the fairness of it all and do the right thing in rescinding the sale of our common property to an outside

property. thank you. thank you very much for your consideration. >>president breed: thank you for your comments. next speaker, please. >> supervisors, my name is susan dossider. my husband and our family of seven have lived at number 2 presidio terrace for 23 years. we have raised our five children on this street. we adopted our youngest child at age three from khazkstan after she had been abandoned at two and a nav. clara was born here. she learned to play on the street and ride her bike on our sidewalks. benjamin is in his third year of medical school. he is doing a dual degree in

medicine and public health as he plans to go into global medicine, practicing pediatrics and in particular, pediatric infectious disease, hoping to make an impact on children's health in third world countries. he has called presidio terrace home since the age of four. and four our eldest child who is five years old when he moved here, presidio terrace is the one and only home he will ever know. jeremy died tragically in a helicopter crash on october 16, 2017, six weeks ago. we urge you to see us not only as a street, address, homeowners, but as individuals, a community, with history, connection, commitment, and compassion. thank you very much. >>president breed: thank you for your comments. next speaker, please, and before the next speaker speaks,

are there any other speakers on behalf of the rescission of the tax sale, please lineup on your left, your right-hand side of the chamber. proceed sir. >> supervisors, i am stephen m merill, boorn in san francisco 75 years. born here, raised here, lived my entire life. i paid taxes in san francisco for 50ers i can't, and in those 50 years, i've never been delinquent. we are not tax dodgers, the presidio terrace homeowners association accepts responsibility for inadvertently dropping the ball in the 199 0's, during the han off to a new accountant who failed to file a notice with the tax collector. that could have easily been resolved in many ways in the past 20 years but has remained outstanding. the issue before you today is

the sale of our common area without proper notification that's tot torely required. a -- on its website, the office of the treasury and tax collector describes its missions and responsibilities, including one, facilitate voluntary compliance with the city and tax laws, and to investigate and collect delinquent tax obligations. i respectfully ask the board to determine whether the tax collector carried the letters pertheir mission as publicly stated. fortunately, there is recourse through you. you have the process to right a wrong, and we are asking you for basic fairness from our government, repudiation of

this, and we want our property back. >> thank you for your comments. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is carrie weintraub. i'm the president of the presidio terrace homeowners association. when i received the letter from miss lamb and mr. cheng's representative on may 30th of this year, i was shocked to learn that unbeknownst to me and all of our neighbors, the city had sold our streets on-line two years prior. i have spent six months determining how this could have happened and tried to resolve this directly with the tax collector and new owners. more than 20 years ago, a simple but critical over sight during an accountant transition

was perp waited because nobody was aware of the tax obligation. we accept responsibility of this delinquency and we are making institutional changes to ensure that it never happens again, but we're here today to ask you to rescind the sale of the property which was unconstitutional because the tax collector proceeded with the auction, knowing he had not notified the interested party of the sale, in this case, 31 homeowners. we reached out on a number of occasions to miss lamb and mr. chang. i want to be clear that we do not have a personal issue with them. our interests are simply not aligned and we do not believe ownership by a third party would be good for us or for the city. as homeowners, we have shared interests because we mutually benefit from the common area. this is why the neighborhood has functioned well for over a

century, and we continued to maintain the common area even after it was sold. supervisors please rescind the sale and return the land to the homeowners it was created fore 112 years ago. >>president breed: thank you for your comments. thank you. are there any other members of the public who would like to speak in support of rescinding the sale, now is your chance. seeing none, public comment is closed. [ gavel [ gavel ]. >>president breed: and we will have a ten minute presentation from the treasurer-tax collector. >> good afternoon, supervisors. jo jose cisneros, treasurer. i want to say that a contested sale is not good for me, my staff, or any of the parties

involved. you've heard quite a bit about what the association thinks we could or should have done differently. i don't dispute that we could have done more. we can always do more, and we're certainly -- we've certainly learned quite a bit through this process that is already changing ways we will implement things in the future. what i want to be clear about today is we followed the rules in this case and carried out this auction in the correct way. i focused my staff's time and attention on parcels that were occupied, not on vacant lots and timeshares without engaged owners. in 2015, we used or research and outreach tools to protect vulnerable san francisco homeowners, who needed attention, not a tax auction. our due process right to focus on people in homes is codi fied

in state laws. there is a difference between them, and while we could have done more in 2015 before the sale of this parcel, i believe we acted reasonably with the information we had at the time. i regret this property was sold without the notification of the owners, and i wish our notifications would have caught the attention of the association, and yet the presidio terrace knew about this lot and they were quite familiar with the consequences of this nonpayment, given their loss of the parcel for nonpayment of taxes in the 1980's. in last 15 years, any of the h.o.a. members or their property or management staff could have visited our website, called the city's 311 number or come into city hall to inquire about the taxes for the subject parcel or seen the substance

parcel and the presidio terrace's association's own name in the examiner prior to the auction. under california law, the responsibility to pay taxes and update addresses rest with the property owner. i'll take sometime to review california law and what we did leading up to the auction, and then, i'll answer questions if you have any. as you know, it is our job to collect taxes for all the 209,000 parcels in san francisco. over 99% of property owners in san francisco pay their taxes on time and in full. every aspect of property tax collection is governed by state law, including when bills are due, penalties for late payment, and the process of auctioning property to pay delinquent taxes. auctions serve two purposes. they allow the county to collect delinquent taxes, and

they help secure future tax payments by getting a new owner in place. you've heard a lot about what we didn't do in 2015. i want to explain what we did. when we planned the tax auction. once we had the list of approximately 600 parcels eligible for auction, a team of two to three staff people worked the list. first, they identified any church, nonprofit or government owned property that might be tax exempt and worked with those owners and the assessor to determine if they were eligible for auction. next, they determined any property that could have been occupied. these could be single-family homes, multifamily residences or even undevelop

[ inaudible ] -- up to three times to make sure all homeowners and tenants are aware of the impending auction. in 2015, the taxes on these parcels were paid in full after. i chose to exercise discretion as permitted under the code and with the consent of the city attorney's office to remove these properties from the auction list to serve the best interest of the public and the county. these were not easy cases. all required significant engagement and partnership with social services, including adult protective services and the mayor's office of housing. with the shared goal to payoff the taxes owed while protecting any vulnerable residents from displacement. in one case, due to our efforts

to locate an owner or resident of an occupied parcel just blocked from the discovered parcel was discovered deceased in her home. three properties i removed from the 2015 auction have, due to the collaborative work of many city agencies have since paid off and returned to the tax roll. i explain this because i think it's important to understand the amount of research and notificati notification we do when we're dealing with people's homes. however, the railroad majority of parcels available for auction in 2015 were abandon abandoned -- although the term invoice can't lot to most people would imply a parcel of land that's ready to be developed, that's not the case in san francisco. typical undeveloped pieces of land are called lives, and

underwater lots that were parcelized long ago but cannot be developed because they're submerged in the bay. the vacant lots that reach auction generally have been lacking an engaged property owner and for all intents and purposes seem abandoned. the subject property in dispute matched this description, and there were no tax records of payment for the 15 year period between 2000 and 2015. so how were the included parcels and the substance parcel handles? our office sent notices to two categories of people. first, the owner of record, and second any recorded lienholders for all parcels on the tax auction list. for the owner of record, we relied on the last known mailing record listed in the assessor's data babase. as we now know, the last -- so

identify recordedlene holders, we follow the laws in the california tax sale manual, and engaged two vendors, the same that are used by other vendors across the state to search for the owners on the auction list. their report which was completed in february 2015 identified owners in 2510 through their lot and plot. i want to stop here for a moment because the association's brief lists several reported documents they claim we should have found, however, none of the documents we list were specific to this parcel. i'll go into more detail later about how we can change the search protocol for future automobile accidents. back in 2015, we sent notices

of the auction via certified mail. of the 1,480 certified mail notices, 58% were returned and marked by the united states postal service as undelivered. again, this is not surprising as many of these vacant lots are considered abandoned. we then published the complete list with the block and owners name on march 16, the 22nd, and 26th of 2015. we also posted the list on our website where it remained for the public and potential bidders to view in the list leading up to the auction. 74 owners paid their outstanding taxes after the notices were mailed, and these parcels were removed from the auction list. two weeks before the auction, our contractor for action posted the bids on their website. bids for auction hosts the on-line auction between april

17 and april 25, 2015. all properties were timeshares or vacant lots. there were no occupied parcels offered for auction. 57 properties sold during that auction generating $281,338. of the properties sold, 56 were have a left-hand turn lot vacant lots, and one was a timeshare. our office then prepared transfer deeds to the properties and sent notices of sale and any available excess pros to the prior -- proceeds to the prior owners. parties had one year from that date to the new owners deed to claim any excess proceeds -- >>president breed: mr. cisneros, i'm going to have to stop you because if i allow you

time, i'm going to have to allow other speakers the same. >>supervisor peskin: treasure tax collector cisneros, a few questions, and if you don't know the answer to this, i think i know part of the answer to this because out of the 35 homeowners, as least three that testified today were actually owners the last time that the property -- the street property parcel was taken for nonpayment of taxes. d do you happen to know, out of the universe of 35 property owners, how many of them were around in 1983 when the state took the property for nonpayment of taxes the first time? >> we took a quick look at the assessor's database, and we thought we identified seven of the 35. >>supervisor peskin: okay. thank you for that. and then, relative to the reasonableness standard, can

you tell us, once it came back as undeliverable, what additional steps you or your staff took to attempt to have -- make contact with the owner? >> sure. we rely on state law and state controller's procedural manual. we posted -- we published the list of auction items in the paper, and we made it available on our website, and we brought it here to the board of supervisors in a public hearing, with the entire list of parcels, and -- and those were the items that were available to do at that time. what i think we've learned since then is we certainly could have taken these hundreds and hundreds of vacant lots and timeshares and done more work to find out more. there's actually a procedure that we're familiar with through our debt collection site of our shop called

skiptracing that actually broadens out a search and looks for more information related to either debtors or property owners. certainly, if we had done that at that time, we would have identify the presidio terrace association address. but certainly, we wouldn't do something like that for just selected neighborhoods. if we were going to do that, we would have done that for all of the hundreds of vacant lots and returned addresses for all in the list. and we chose to focus on occupy parcels that year. we are looking into doing that for all of the parcels included in the automobile accidents. >> section 370 of the revenue tax code which clearly says that -- i mean, it states that even as long as you send it to the last known mailing address, you've discharged your duty, even if the party does not

receive the mail notice, but there is another provision that's discussed in the briefs about parties of interest, and interes there's a question as to whether parties of interest are lienholders, whether they're easement holders, whether they're adjoining property owners. can you tell us what you consider or what the law or rules consider to be parties of interest? >> sure. thank you very much, supervisor. parties of interest, as you stated, are parties that have any kind of real interest in the property. that could include debts owed, and therefore executed through alene or parties that have an easement. the way that you find parties of interest is through a search of recorded documents in the county recorder's files. what the association's folks have pointed out is a number of

documents that included information about the presidio terrace association and their current address. what they're not mentioning, though, is that none of those documents included the block and lot of the parcel that was auctioned; in other words, the private street classified as a vacant lot. that is why, in the standard search, those documents were not located. in the future, if we do the broader search and search on more key pieces of information, we certainly could find those documents, yes. >> -- >>supervisor peskin: so what you're telling me is the doctrines, covenants, and regulations of the homeowners association do not include the street parcel. >> that's correct yes. >> and you did that level of

research prior to the sale. >> yes. the parties we contracted to do that search. >>supervisor peskin: thank you. >>president breed: thank you, supervisor peskin. supervisor. >>vice president brandon: -- >>supervisor kim: >> actually, those were my two questions, the standards that you hold reasonable and practical, but i just wanted to make sure i understood your statement in that parties of interest are not only the lienholders, but those that have easement, and you're saying that based on the information you had in 2015, you did look for easement interest holders, and you would not have been able to find that. >> in the time of -- yes, supervisor. in the type of search we performed, which is the only, really unique identifier for any lot, which is its block and lot in the assessor's system, we searched through all of the recorded documents available in

this county, and no, none of them turned up because again, to the previous supervisor's point, even the c.c. and r.'s for the association, which might engage and talk about this parcel did not include the block and lot which are the unique identifiers of the parcel which mean they are not found. again, that doesn't mean they could have been found with a broader search, and that's the type of work we look forward to doi doing. >>supervisor kim: and you mentioned that of the 1,480 parcels that were up for auction. >> notices that were returned, mailed to the 600 and something parcels that were available for the auction. >>supervisor kim: right, but of those, 167 are vacant lots, and is there a process by which the treasurer's office can -- assessors office can

differentiate between those different lots. >> there's not anything that i'm aware of in the system. not to say we couldn't bring more information readily available to us as we prepare for the auction. >>supervisor kim: thank you very much. >>president breed: thank you supervisor kim. supervisor cohen? >>supervisor cohen: what's interesting such a situation happened in my side of town, on the southeast, where there have been notices and vacancies posted. my question is i'm looking to hear of the systematic changes that you're making in your office so that this type of mistake doesn't happen moving forward. can you describe to us the changes that you've implemented

it? >> absolutely, supervisor. so as i was saying, we're familiar through our debt collection techniques is a process called skiptracing. it's something we're very familiar with. this includes looking at plenty of databases, looking at plenty of documents, not just on block and lot, but on name of property owner, searching website databases, telephone databases, all those types of things. these are all the things that we use to find folks that owe considerable amounts of money to the city. if we had taken the 500, say, parcels on the auction list and asked one of our debt collection people to do skiptracing techniques on all of those, we estimate it would take about 25 to 30 days of that person's time and work to perform skiptracing on all these parcels. that's something we're looking at doing in the future that's a significant investment of time, but it's something we can continue to grow our information over time by doing

that work bit by bit over time. there are certainly, as i admitted at the beginning, more we could have done and more we're looking at in the future, but i'm confident we followed all the rules and laws that governed how we were to dpo the tax auction in 2015. >>supervisor cohen: well, speaking of rules and laws, throughout this hearing, there was significant conversation given to case law and cases that were cited. >> right. >>supervisor cohen: could you share your interpretation in particular of it. from what i understand, the cases summarized indicate that when a parcel is occupied, meaning, a resident, it's a different notification process versus when it's vacated. >> certainly. supervisor, the respondent has

brought forward a number of cases as to what should have been done before an auction, including a case decided by the united states supreme court, and what those cases cited, and also which california laws requires, is in all those pieces of property is there was an occupied property on those parcels. clearly, the court was saying you can't stand behind a piece of mail and take away someone's home. california state law set that same high bar for occupied pieces of properties. what's -- i'm not a lawyer, but what's not clear to me is any of those cases, including the united states supreme court case in deciding this and making this clear, about occupied parcels, if that extends to vacant parcels with no structure and nobody residing on them. obviously, a legal expert or a judge would have to determine that. >>supervisor cohen: thank you. thank you. >>president breed: thank you,

supervisor cohen. supervisor tang? >>supervisor tang: thank you very much. so we received a note from an employee who, i guess he's a former employee of the treasurer and tax collector's office. he referenced the state policy manuals, which says that one of the first steps of conducting a sale is to properly identify what is being sold so that it can be correctly processed, and so i'm just wondering, to what level that has been done. i know that supervisor kim asked that -- touched upon that point. >> sure. >>supervisor tang: you know, since development of tools such as the property information map and so forth, i know that we can plug these in pretty easily and be able to figure out what the block and lot -- you know, what they actually correspond with, so i was just wondering, in terms of following this, i guess, protocol that is supposedly in your office, what actually is done to properly identify the property being sold? >> i appreciate the question. again, what that -- i believe

that memo is referring to is all the laws and procedures in the state controller's manual about how to exercise property tax automobilctions. we did that, we did the search i described earlier, looking by block and lot to find all the relates parties of interest. what certainly the law requires for occupied parcels is more, and we also did that more and focused a lot, even more than what the law requires for occupied parcels in the 2015 auction because that really was our top concern, making sure that we did not displace any particularly vulnerable person in san francisco who was occupying their home. however, what this auction certainly signifies for us is we could certainly do more, even fore the vacant lots and other parcels on the auction list. we started to do some of those measures for the auctions we

did earlier this year and will continue to grow those in future ones. >>supervisor tang: i do think that what you just said is really important, that even if you were to rely on the documents from the assessor's office, the issue is their office, they can't change records, right? they are recording documents based on transactions or deeds being recorded and so forth, so -- so i think that there is -- we cannot just rely on that, as well. again, that's, i think where both of your offices are probably challenged is that you are searching for information that other people are providing to you, and so i think that same tool, such as the property information that's been developed in the last couple of years is extremely helpful, and i would encourage using a broader array of tools to really properly identify what is being sold, and it sounds like your office is open to

that. in terms of the conversation around the supreme court cases and the california appellate decisions, i know that you spoke to a distinction between occupied and unoccupied properties, but there -- from my understanding, i -- i did not understand that the -- the u.s. supreme court has a distinction between occupied or unoccupied property when property is -- a property right is being taken away from an individual. and then, furthermore, in the california appellate course case, bonas versus trans-america title, although it's an old case from 1982, it posed a very, very similar situation where, you know, there was someone who had paid property taxes and didn't know that there was another part of their home or a second lot that was not recorded, and then, subsequently, they didn't pay property taxes on that, and the resolution was that -- or at least what was cited was that

it was a constitutionally required as a prerequisite to diverting plaintiffs of their property to actually post on the property. in my mind, reading these cases and the summaries, i do feel there isn't really a distinction, although i do appreciate your office has taken extra steps if you do know that they're occupied. but i -- i would say, again, based on case law that we really shouldn't have a distinction, and if anyone owns anything, there should be proper notice. and of course, the notice thing is a huge sticking point for me, too. i don't read, for example, the paper copy, sorry, of the examiner, the chronicle, i read the on-line version, so if i didn't know that something was -- a tax wasn't paid, i had no reason to believe that there was a separate block and lot, i wouldn't know to go to those publications, or i wouldn't know to follow a board of supervisors budget committee

meeting and punk ch in the blo and lots and make sure those were corp. responding to my property. so i think especially with the case law that they've cited, specific examples of what reasonable notice should be, i do believe posting is something that is -- that should be required. >>president breed: thank you supervisor tang. supervisor ronen. . >>supervisor ronen: it will impact a property owner to lose a piece of property that the notice requirements would be much higher than for a vacant lot, toso i just want to just understand where you're coming from, where you had two separate procedures for property that had an occupied unit on it and higher noticing

standards and going as far as to working with other city departments to provide social services to people on those site. that seems very appropriate to me and makes a lot of sense. we always have limited resources in the city, and we have to decide how we're going to use them, and that -- your discretion and -- and decision on how to use those resources, i just -- i want to offer another perspective, make a lot of sense to me. i just wanted to offer that. but i have a question -- another question to you. if this board decided to undo the auction, what would that mean in terms of the other properties that were auctioned off in 2015 -- and tell me if these numbers are correct in terms of what i could surmise from the documents, that 389 properties were auctioned -- were put up four auction in 2015 a 2015 and 57 were actually sold.

so what happened to those properties that weren't sold, just out of cure i doniousity? >> they remain in delinquent status, and our power to sell status, and likely will be included in the next auction. >> okay. and those other, i guess, 56 properties that were sold, what would you do? would you rescind those sales, as well? i mean, we don't know who those owners are. they got the same amount of notice as the -- as the appel -- or the homeowners in this case. i'm just curious. >> sure, sure. great question. the treasurer's office has the power to undo or rescind the sale only for one year past the date of the sale, so we -- our time in our office to do anything with those sales has passed. state law, however, does allow a county board of supervisors, i believe, with no time limit,

to rescind a sale, which is why this matter is before you all today. with regard to the 50-some parcels that were auctioned, only the one that we're talking about today is before you in this matter, and so the rest would be unchanged. >>supervisor ronen: that's right. that makes sense. i had forgotten about that. since this has all come to light, have you gone back to look at those 56 other properties to see if there was a situation that was analogous to this one? i mean, some aretinely pieces of property that people don't care about, but is there any other piece of property that you think people just really didn't realize that it was sole sold. >> to be perfectly honest, since this matter came to our attention, we've been focused on this matter, making sure we understand what happened, and that's why i'm here to talk to you today. i'm pretty confident that the

rest of the vacant lots are truly small and abandoned. we do work with members of property owners when they contact us, in fact, to a point we've talked about a couple seconds ago, we actually this year, in a list published in the examiner, had a property owner contact us who pointed out that there was a mistake in the causing that -- their property to be shown as delinquent in taxes and listed in the newspaper as a delinquent property. believe me, if we ever find that we've made a mistake, we will do everything necessary to correct that mistake. we did that in this case. we will continue to do research on any of the parcels that are still up for auction and show delinquent opportunities because we don't want to see something like this happen again. >>supervisor ronen: thank you. >>president breed: thank you, supervisor ronen.

supervisor safai? >>supervisor safai: thank you, madam president. the thing that really sticks in my mind about this situation, that jumped out at me is the word association. this is the presidio terrace association, and that was the owner of record. association, to me, implies, just based on the generic definition of it, a group of people with the same interest, and so in my reading of this list, this entire list of people that were sold in 2015, there are only three associations, and so i kind of come back to that. i brought that to the attention of you yesterday. it seems to me like, based on your memo, based on your arguments of doing the additional step -- and i respect the fact that you do additional steps for those that might need additional help based on their income, but in this particular situation, the

word association to me implies an additional group of people. so i would say that it implies additional steps, and then, that kind of leads to the parties of interest. and so -- and i also feel like the improper classification of this land is kind of where it begins for you. you just get a list, and it says block and lot, and it says empty land. i don't see this as empty land. this is actually developed land. this has a street on it, it has a sidewalk on it. it's very unique in that sense, and to see the word association, and then, to see that this has been improperly classified, it seems to me there were a few flags that went up or could have gone up. one thing that needs to happen in the future, i would say, for any auction, regardless of the classification, an assessor map needs to be associated with that, because if an assessor map had been associated with this particular sale, you would have seen immediately that this was a private street and it had a relationship with the

additional properties. so oftentimes, it's almost like you're working or your staff or your team is working with blind information. you're just looking at a number on a screen. it gives you aclassification that says an empty lot, and you assume it's just a vacant piece of land that has not been developed. so i think that the problem began with the improper classification. i think that someone in your office -- there should have been a flag that went up when they saw the word association. again, i only see three of them on this list: knob hill association, and then, there's two more, and the presidio terrace is one, so i kind of lean toward what supervisor tang has said, where the case law basically does not differentiate between vacant skpa no and not vacant, and the fact that this impliez it was an association, other than the one

you were sending it to. there has been no precedent about any flags going up with regard to the word association and implication that there would be multiple parties of interest. >> supervisor, your comments are well founded and i think, again, like i said before, we can learn a lot from this experience. we already are changing our practices, and we will continue to look at these lots, even things categorized as vacant lots more closely. >>supervisor safai: and just to follow up on that, with regard to the improper classification in my opinion, is there going to be a pattern going forward where you would have the ability for all of these sales to have access to the assessor maps? >> i'm sure we can access anything that's part of the city's family of departments available to us. >>supervisor safai: right. and then, what about in terms of vacant lots, has there been

a practice that's been changed to notice adjacent property owners, similar to what we do with 311 notification or 312 notification, not just that there's the immediate interested party, but that the surrounding individuals. >> you know, there's some concern around that, but sometimes, people who are facing financial difficulties, and their property even prochg power to sell and an auction list might be benefited by having their neighbors know about their predicament but others might feel it's ae an invasion of their privacy. that's something we could consider, but i'd want to do more research and conversations with you. >> i >>supervisor safai: i'm sorry. >> that's not to say it's not worth doing.

>>supervisor safai: okay. i don't have any other questions. >>president breed: thank you, supervisor safai. supervisor peskin. >>supervisor peskin: so going back to the previous issue that i raised, treasurer cisneros, because to me, this really hinges on this section 3701 and whether or not easement holders were noticed, and section 3701 of the revenue and taxation code refers to the parties of interest as defined in section 4675 of the revenue and taxation code, and specifically, in that, it says that any person with title of record to all or any portion of the property, and that would be an easement holder, so my question to you is the easements of the 35