you're using not just the individual's income but a measure of nonliquid assets to determine eligibility for a financial assistance program. in recent years, i think there's a funt amount tall fairness issue -- fundamental fairness issue on that. somebody may own a house, but that does not give them the ability to pay a medical bill. in recent years, medicaid and medi-cal moves away from that to determine financial eligibility for medicare and medi-cal. and then lastly some work that we're doing to make our financial systems as easy and transparent as possible, some of these we've already talked to, but i think this already goes to how do we make sure we're actively working with the patient, because in a lot of

these cases, as i said, the situation ends up being resolved favorably for the patient financially because of -- it's worked out with insurance or they received a bill that's paid by something else, but they go through that process of the stress and the worry of the -- of the bill being sent to them. [please stand by]

>> there will be questions about how these things are working, where they can go to help, really trying to push as much as possible to have this be a

dialogue with the patient pick we even see, in a number of cases, where we are never billing the patient, but their insurance company, because maybe they are on the hmo side or a p.p.o. that is not a balanced -- that is not billable under state regulations, we are never sending a bill to the patient, but their insurance company is sending an explanation of benefits that has a large dollar values on it, and that has the same effect beer get us for a whole lot of reasons that i understand that it is hard to know the difference. patient feels like that's a bill. we can do a better job of communicating with the patient about where that stands, and what the document is that they are looking at. and then we are continuing to publicize our hotline for patient financial services. we are doing additional training for the staff that are in our patient financial services division to make sure that people know, and it is easy for them to find out where to call

for assistance, and they are waiting for them. next steps, we have talked about all these, but we are working over this 90 day period to develop a detailed plan, which we will then to can -- consult with the board on the plan. we are looking at our peer hospitals, our public hospitals to figure out the solutions that they may have developed that we can adopt, or variations of those. we are looking, as we discussed, at rates and charges, exploring insurance and agreements, and then we are, as we alluded to in communication with our state partners, including our state legislature to figure out if there are policy changes that we could help get behind that would make sense to improve this dynamic, and take the patient out of the equation on this. so that is the end of my presentation.

supervisor brown, i know you had raised some questions that i don't think i responded to when you spoke before i was up here. >> yeah, i was just wondering when the hospital dr. that is advising the paramedics where this patient should go. as i was saying, i don't think they realize that saying yes, bring them here because of the guidelines, that was happening. so i'm just trying to wrap my head around what are the guidelines, and a lot of people, of course, if a paramedic or a dr. says you should come to general, or is the one speaker said, ucsf dr. told her to go to general, you are going to go. you will not think about that. so that was just a comment, and just wondering how those guidelines are worked out.

>> thank you for that. i will have somebody that has more clinical expertise provides you with some information about that. it would be -- i would be out of my depth clinically does quickly on the clinical side, but there are guidelines, regulations that determine that, but underneath that is the issue that when the patient is in this situation, they are not in a position to think about finance or insurance contracts, and that's why we need to have the focus of our policy to be to set up a system where the patient doesn't end up falling into this category where the circumstances during their ambulance ride end up translating into a large bill. setting up policies to protect the patient. >> thank you so much. i have a few more questions, but i also wanted to thank you for being here, for presenting the updates, and i appreciate the

department shall show quick and focused attention to this issue so far and the initial steps that you have taken, that 90 day moratorium, the work you are doing to strengthen our patient financial system programs, including considering a limit on out-of-pocket payments, and especially the improved communication with all the patients impacted by balanced billing practices. i would like to engage in a little discussion and questions to explore how we might be able to go further in terms of what we are considering as a department, and as a city to address this problem. i first wanted to acknowledge that you are here today because you are an officer of a safety department that oversees a public hospital. if we could force the directors of private hospitals to testify on price gouging, we would, and actually, i think all the patients that have shared their stories, including president g.,

i have my own story of a major injury that i had years ago, and some high quality care that i received from a private hospital in san francisco, within that lead to a balanced billing situation that i had to, and a really big impact on me and my family and dealing with the collections and the payment of that over years. if we could get private insurance companies to justify their practices, we would, the san francisco general is a public hospital, and is accountable to the public. so here you are, thank you for being here. as a public hospital, you have a unique responsibility to serve the needs of the public, not private profit, and that higher purpose comes with higher standards. as you mentioned, mr. wegner, the california -- california prohibits balanced billing for emergency services, your plans

regulated by the department of managed health care. so i just have a few questions to explore this further pick let's say a patient has a private insurance plan, and it's a plan that the state of california has prohibited from balanced billing practices, i guess that would be an hmo plan. >> or seat -- certain p.p.o. plans that are governed. >> in those situations, you don't have a negotiated rate with the insurer? >> correct. >> and you build them. and the insurance company pays a part of the bill, but not all of it. >> correct. >> but in these cases, you don't bill the patient, there is no balance billing because it is prohibited by state law. >> the patient would pay a co-pay or a share of cost under the plan, potentially, the correct, we are not balance billing the insurance. >> in these cases, i think we could assume that we don't destroy the credit, or don't

bankrupt the patient as some of these examples of balance billing could do for the other patients. and we don't cause undue stress and financial hardship on them because we are prohibited by state law. so is this a case for most of the private insurance plans? >> yes, it is. the majority of the private insurance plans, let me rephrase that, at least the majority of the patients that have private insurance are under the dmh c. plans that do not include balanced billing. >> thank you pics are basically the state law says that we can use balanced billing practices in some cases, but it -- does it say that we must do that? >> correct.

>> the state law mandates that we do balanced billing. >> the state law says that we cannot do balanced billing for that category of insurers. it does not mandate that we balance bill in a certain way for the other plans, and that's where we are proposing policies to say let's restrict the level at which we are filling patients in those cases. >> right. the balanced billing that we have been doing, it sounds like you estimate it might be currently about five to 6,000 patients over the past years, that's been done voluntarily by the department and the city, not by any state mandate. >> correct. >> and have we considered ending this practice, since we don't do the balance billing for those other patients that are covered by a plan, that's where we are

prohibited due to -- to do that by state law. >> yes. so a couple of things on that. i think the reason that we are approaching this from the out-of-pocket patient limit on this is there are a couple of issues. there are some potential legal issues around casting a broad net to say that we are no longer going to collect anything, secondly, administratively, there are a lot of challenges, and i kind of described a little bit of that earlier, but within that 5,000 or 6,000 accounts, we are using that up to it number because a lot of those individuals either are not going to end up in that category, or weak are going to end up resolving the account with the insurance, but there are also a lot of other individual circumstances, and so sometimes, for example, we may find a case,

that for a variety of reasons, there is an individual who received services, their insurance pays for the service, but pays directly to the patient, and that balance is not passed on. that insurance payment is not passed on. and those might be some of the cases that are out there in the collections world, pending resolution, so they are not balanced billing, they are a patient that has a balance on their account, and for us to take that blanket approach of saying, we are going to do numeral -- no more, we are going to say no billing on any of those accounts, we would make it make it -- administratively legally challenging to resolve those individual circumstances. >> thank you for that. i understand it is very complex to consider how we may move

towards more of a comprehensive and stronger solution to this problem. would it be possible for the department to come up with a proposal where we could move towards ending balance billing for practices for cases that aren't covered by the examples that you just raised? >> it is possible. i hear your proposed approach on that, and we are looking at a number of options. i think there are two time horizons that we are looking at right now, too. we have a 90 day? that we have set for ourselves, and under that 90 day? , we need to come up with a proposal that is going to provide relief for those patients, that it was to be -- it will be legally and

administratively feasible to execute on a relatively short timeline. and then we have a much longer term conversation, and i think this goes to what supervisor mandelman was raising, is that this is something that is built up over time, and built up in a way that i don't think we were alerted to the gravity of it. so there is a larger, longer term conversation about how do we stay active, and stay on top of this issue, and that is going to include, as i said, working with state delegation, because a lot of these issues are on balance billing, and how we handle individual accounts, end of the legal level that is above the city and county of san francisco. there are longer-term proposals that we could look at. in the short-term, that is why we are focused on saying that we think that the most easily, quickly administrable, legally

viable, and practical solution is to set a policy where we are putting these limits on out-of-pocket patients, versus doing something larger that would probably interact with state and federal law. >> thank you. i just had a few questions around the budgetary aspects of this. i think, if i remember right, in a briefing, a private briefing that i had with you, you mentioned that the city, or the department collects around $133 million per year from private insurance companies. is that correct? >> 135 million. >> do you know how much we collect from collection activities on privately insured patients? >> there's different ways to look at the data, but i think the relevant comparison -- we have identified that 1,700

people in the fiscal year that are potentially affected by the practice of balanced billing. and there is an estimate on the correspondence that 1,700 people are associated with those accounts click. >> per year? >> yes. >> a couple questions. is the justification for the deep harm that balanced billing does -- if it is revenue, in your opinion, does this justify the means? >> no. that is why we are having this conversation where we are acknowledging that we certainly

have to be fiscal stewards, and we are very conscious of that, but i think we are acknowledging , by this approach, that we see that some of our practices, the impact that they are having on patients, and the impact of how our patients are versus our mission and our values is inadequate, and we do need to do some revisions to those policies. i will say -- and this is part of the reason for the way that we've approached a conversation, on the conversations about insurance, is that $135 million, that is a lot of money, and in a lot of cases, we believe that we are underpaid by those insurance companies, and we do feel it is our fiscal and ethical responsibility to recover that cost as much as possible on behalf of the city and the

health system. that is why our focus has been on trying to protect the patient as part of our mission, but also not come up with a proposal that is going to end up sacrificing that revenue to the department. to put that in perspective, that is $135 million per year. we currently have a 200 million-dollar general fund subsidy and if we lose that revenue, we will have a corresponding growth in our general fund subsidy, which is probably not sustainable for the department. that is really how we are trying to look at the financial aspects of it. i appreciate your question. >> thank you. one final question on this track if you estimated, it is $3 million per year that we would collect through the balanced billing practices. do you feel that we could absorb this cost, as we already do, for

the other privately insured patients? >> what we will have to do as we go through this process, so as -- of that 1700, and 3 million, as we look at the details of those accounts, not all of those will be in the category that we are talking about. his are probably the universe is smaller than that number, but we are trying to not underestimate the number. we will have to go through as we do the development of this specific details of this policy and look at what the impact of our policy is on the financial side, and then we will have to that that with -- through our budget process, and through this committee, but i think we are acknowledging that we need to make some changes in order to protect patients from being in this situation, and that that probably is going to have some level of impact on the revenues. >> thank you so much.

>> thank you, supervisor. >> thank you for being here, mrg this area -- issue seriously. i am happy to see the reaction of the department was pretty swift in this case. i would like the direction -- i like the direction that you are articulating today in regards to how do you look at this issue that is positive for the patients themselves. so that would be a good outcome of your efforts here, and i also acknowledge that this is complicated in a sense that we are the fiscal stewards, and you are the fiscal stewards, and we need to make sure that we don't let insurance companies get away with it, and try to use the

issues that we have, and try to improve the outcomes for patients as a way to get out of paying for their fair share. i appreciate the complexity, and am looking forward to seeing what the outcome of your discussion on the department will be in three months. >> a little over two months. >> okay. i'm looking forward to that. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> supervisor peskin? >> thank you. i want to thank all of the supervisors that attended today and cosponsor this hearing. supervisors brown, mar, and mandelman, and he -- yee, and stephanie. and i want to thank mr. waggoner for taking this very seriously. most of all, i want to thank the individuals who have not only testified, but have gone to the media to tell their stories, and

i really want to thank ms. miss cliff from fox, and missed night from the san francisco chronicle for shining a light on it. this is exactly what the media is supposed to do, which is getting us to do our jobs, and for all to focus on it. i want to recap and restates the commitments we have heard from the department of public health. one which i am thankful for is actively, proactively reaching out to that five to 6,000 patients that are in the retroactive pipeline to let them know what they can avail themselves of during this 90 day timeout, and not to put too find a point on it, but when these things are referred, it up x. people's credit score is, and what have you, and i think it is incumbent on the city to make that right, and to continue to pursue plans to address,

retroactively, and give relief to those folks that are in the pipeline, and i think we are all committed to taking the patient out of the middle, and as you bring in these new policies, we will bring them back to the government audit and oversight committee. i would like to make a motion to continue this to the call of the chair pending the promulgation of those new rules, and mr. waggoner, you might want to avail yourself of the council of ms. miss johns in the row behind you. my neighbor who has some other ideas that she might want to share with you. >> we will be -- our team will be out in the hall at the close of this hearing. >> thank you. and thank you chair mar and supervisor brown pick. >> this item has been continue to the call of the chair. can you please call item five? >> item five -- item four.

>> item number 4 is a hearing on the sedro mechanics and process undertaken by the city's state legislation committee and the city lobbyists when lobbying on behalf of the city and transmitting the official policy positions to external bodies and agencies. >> thank you. once again, supervisor peskin, the floor is yours. >> thank you. i want to make a motion to continue this to the next government audit and oversight committee, the last day for introduction of bills at the state is this friday, so the city lobbyists is engaged in their job, so i'd like to continue this item for 1212 weeks. >> before taking a motion to continue, are there any members of the public who wish to testify? singh then, public testimony is now closed. can we take this without objection? >> i am hearing a continuation

to the date specific of the 7th of march, 2019. >> thank you. mr. clerk, please call item number 5. >> agenda item number 5 is a hearing on the recently published 2017-2018 civil grand jury report. >> thank you. i would like to welcome some people from the budget and legislative analyst office were here to present on this item. >> good afternoon, supervisors. we were asked at the time of the hearing on the grand jury report on accessory dwelling units to follow up on a couple of recommendations that the grand

jury made to the board of supervisors. we did submit a report to the board at the end of january, sort of way that our findings and policy recommendations based on those recommendations, and ms. miss lyndon berry of our office will provide a very brief overview of that report to, and we are available to answer any questions you may have. >> good morning, supervisors, afternoon, i'm from the budget and legislative analyst office, i have a very brief presentation for you summarizing the report. these are the two recommendations that we were specifically asked to address at the request of the board. we studied the correlation between a reduction in a.d.u. permitting fees, and an increase in a.d.u. construction. the first recommendation is the board of supervisors waives or reduces permit fees, and the second is that they structure fees separately for a.d.u. a due use in single-family residences. here is a little bit of

background. they are accessory dwelling units. they are residential dwelling units that are added to the existing housing stock and the existing housing a lot. we also call them in law units, secondary units, they are independent units with separate kitchens, bathrooms, and living areas. they are considered to add to the housing stock by providing small-scale residential infill, in the board of supervisors amended the planning code in 2016 to allow for construction of a due use on any lot that is zoned for residential use. we study two cases, portland and seattle. this graph down here shows the city of portland, in the green bar is the annual number of a.d.u. permits issued starting in 2020. as you can see, the redline his show policy changes biggies or zoning changes, and waivers of development impact fees, and we see an increase in the number of a.d.u. authorizations starting in about 2010. we also looked at seattle. a similar case where we see in an increase in the number of

permits issued, but unlike portland, seattle did not do anything to waive fees or change in zoning laws, they just increased public awareness, and have public reports that were made. we wanted to look at trends in the housing units and construction. these graphs show the total of new units authorized. portland is on the left, seattle is on the right to. the numbers are really small, but in the middle of the graph, there's a dip in each city. and at the bottom of the dip, is around 2009, so we do see an upturn in overall construction, both in these cities. it might be part of the reason we saw so much of an increase in the a.d.u. construction specifically. this increase in 2009, also coincides with the recovery from the recession, increases in population in these areas, and low interest rates in 2010

through 2016. increased the value of home equity loans to financing. we can see that some of the increases in a.d.u. authorizations that we saw in portland and seattle might be due to a more general recovery in new housing construction. in san francisco, the city charges a number of different fees on a.d.u.s. most commonly, they are general permit fees by department to compensate for the cost of reviewing applications, issuing permits, and expecting permitting work. for example, the fire inspection fee. the city also charges service fees and charges, for example, water or wastewater capacity charges, in the city charges development impact fees, which are fees imposed to mitigate the impacts on public services, infrastructure, and facilities. a good example would be the sfusd school impact fee. but not all these fees are charged on the project.

it depends on the parameters of the project. in san francisco, the fees account for nearly eight% of project cost, and specifically, in response to the grand jury recommendation on single-family units, we tried to compare the impact of permit fees on single-family versus multiunit homes, we did not find a huge disparity. it ranges between seven and eight% across the board. in san francisco, the planning department, d.p.i. and the fire department are the three main city departments that always charge fees on an a.d.u. project and receive most of the fee revenue. p.u.c., public works, and sfusd may also charge fees depending on the parameters of the project. rating these fees would prevent the costs. we estimate cost to the city at approximately 2 million dollars

to $2.5 million a year based on permit issues -- issued in most years. they would be spread across permitting departments. primarily -- primarily d.b.i., planning and fire peak these fees would reduce a.d.u. project cost to property owners and that might have a very large impact on property owners because it represents a lot of money. the cost of the department would be higher if there is an increase in annual permit issuances, either of the result is policy changes or as a general trend in the construction market in san francisco. our overall conclusion is that fee waivers would reduce project costs to property owners without a significant fiscal impact on city departments, however, other factors such as the construction market and interest rates may affect a.d.u. construction as well. finally, the report contains a few policy considerations for the board. the first being duration. whether you want this to be a time-limited program and there

is also the possibility of doing a pilot program to assess whether this is having an impact that you want to, and a better determination of how much it will cost the city. there is also a selection of which fees to waive. you could decide to only waive certain fees, or to exclude certain fees from the waiver. a good example would be for if you want sfusd to continue receiving the school impact fee, that could be excluded from the waiver. obviously limiting the fees would decrease the cost savings to property owners, but still allow the city to continue recovering those costs. finally, there's the option of doing single-family focus, in line with the ground jury finding. as i believe you know, last monday, mere breed announced a proposal to eliminate d.b.i. permitting fees for a.d.u.s and 100% affordable housing project. i think proposed language is forthcoming on that. there's a lot more detail in our report. we are here for any questions. thank you for your time.

>> thank you so much. supervisor brown, do you have any comments before we go into public comment while. >> know, i would like to hear public comment first before i have any comments. >> great. are there any members of the public who would wish to testify on this item? thank you. >> i grew up around the trades and real estate industries, lots of contractors, i hold a contractor and a real estate license, which are currently inactive, i have, however worked for brokers, agents, unions, landlords, homeowners, anybody holding property, and i believe that whether you eliminate the further cost, reduce them, or extends the payment period to,

the measure is a significant signal for all, particularly in light of the existing condominium moratoriums, the latter of which i hope you do not intend to extend beyond the initial decade of grassroots economic constraints. >> thank you so much. next speaker. >> yes, a.c. here, you will all see my face quite frequently on the government channel, to avoid you saying i'm not on the subject, whatever, the civil grand jury, my request is, we need a hearing on the civil grand jury for the black folks in this city, because you all talk about housing, you talk about all these different issues, but we, as black folks, are not addressed. i would like to have a public hearing on black folks in housing. we already know that public housing is going belly up again.

people don't realize, they know it is going belly up again, and that is where a large majority of our minorities stay in public housing. so you are all talking about trying to do some initiatives together for housing, we need to check the whole system about housing and the crisis, and you will find out that the city is funding migration, and i have nothing against my brown sisters, but they get millions of dollars for legal fees, for housing, for medical, and all that. what are you doing for black folks that look like me? is any money set aside for us? gavin newsom, our governor, when he was the mayor, he set aside recommendations for the outmigration, dammit, and nothing has taken place. now, hold up. you the commission is doing a pretty good job right now. good standards with them now. , but these other departments

need to be checked. oewd geico cii, and all the rest of you, we need to have a public hearing or have a grand jury investigate them, they call me because i have documents on them. my name is ace, dammit, i'm on the case, and you will see my face quite frequently until i get some kind of action from room 200, or the supervisors in district five and district ten. >> thank you so much. next speaker, please. >> i was the principal writer on the civil grand jury report. i have reviewed all the responses that i got -- that we got from all over the various agencies, and i have a few

comments to make about those responses, and a few other things. i was very gratified to see that a lot of the responses to our findings and recommendations were very receptive, and that people tended to agree with the points that we arrived at. in other cases, they disagreed with our points, and i would like to say that we understand the reasons for their disagreement. however, i would like to start with a letter from the mayor, september 3rd, 2018, which was signed by the heads of all departments. in which she said, meeting minimum production targets in

our age n.a. is not the same as meeting market demand. we know with that developer is in san francisco want to build high end housing, of course, that is how they make their money, and we know that we rely on them to build housing for us, and we try to always make sure that the developers are friendly towards our interests. however, realistically speaking, it is very well known that high-end real estate -- >> thank you so much. can i ask a question. >> you can ask a question, of course,. >> i really appreciate your work on this, on this important

issue, and i was just wondering if you have any feedback or response to the report from the budget and legislative analyst that was just presented. it was on the two recommendations on the waivers of fees for a.d.u.s. >> absolutely. first, i have to say this, because it is so significant. high end housing is a major, major, major target for international organized crime to launder money, and does the city know? what is the market demand, who is buying all these places, these high-end places. one of the members of the civil grand jury was a google engineer , and his partner was an attorney, and they left town because they couldn't to -- afford to buy something here. so what are they doing?

so i think we need to pay attention to that, i think we need to put a moratorium on high end housing, because in 2016, we made 150 7% of high end housing, 9% middle range housing, and 11% of low-cost housing. i disagree that we need more high end housing to meet market demands. but, yes, regarding the issues raised by the last speaker, not the last speaker, but on lowering fees, planning and d.b.i. disagreed with our findings and our recommendations to lower fees, however, i would like to call everyone's attention to a report by the sight line institute of the

pacific northwest, which investigated what happens when you lower the fees. and in 12 cities in washington state when the fees were significantly lowered, suddenly the amount of applications went way up. i understand why the department wants to collect the fees, but san francisco has a budget of $11.2 billion. we have a budget bigger then three of the states in the united states. and it just seems like if our interest is really in increasing the housing stock, that we would lower these fees, i would really like to suggest that that is a very good idea. >> thank you so much. i think that the presentation from the budget and legislative analyst's office was in support

of the recommendations, so thank you for making those recommendations, and i think as you will hear from the discussion, there is already efforts to move on that. thank you again, so much. >> do i not get to comment on the rest of the stuff? >> we are in public comment right now on this item, but you will certainly get your opportunity to talk about the broader housing issue. thank you so much. next speaker, please. >> hi, i'm jim, and i serve on the d.b.i. commission. we had our budget meeting yesterday, so we got our budgets to you on time, or you will be getting them on time. we had a very significant discussion about the a.d.u. issue, and the 100% affordable. clearly we don't have enough data at this point to incorporate into the current

budget request, we have a lot of issues to fully understand the implications of it, but overall, the entire commission was incredibly supportive, especially of the need for supporting the city's efforts to increase a.d.u.s. we have done a lot to eliminate the backlog, that has been successful, and i don't think that there is any resistance to having some revenue reduction, especially surrounding permit fees, or deferral of fees. as you know, fees are usually assessed when you applied that at completion of project. that's one way to really help projects get through as well. so we are looking very much towards working with the city on both of these issues, but especially the a.d.u. one that was discussed in very great commitment, and we believe that

there should be some good and constructive ways to accomplish the goals of increasing a.d.u.s, and we look forward to flushing out all the details with you. as was mentioned, the d.b.i. fees are a very small, or a small portion of it. when you look at the totality of all the fees, that's really what we really need to do. we don't want people confused or feel that they have -- they are at a place where the d.b.i. fee is reduced. >> thank you so much. are there any other persons interested in testifying before public comment is closed? seeing none, public testimony is closed. supervisor brown? >> i want to thank jim for your comments, and then also for the budget legislative analyst

reports. when we were talking about this, supervisor chair mark, we have a lot of people in the city that are interested in taking these units, and putting them on the market, and i've had a lot of people come up and say, it seems simple, but when you get in the process, and how many fees that we have, and also some confusion on our departments as we are moving forward, as they are moving forward to create an a.d.u., it is something that we really need to jump on, and simplify it. i definitely love the idea for a pilot, just to see how it works, and because that way we can adjust it, also as it moves forward, and if it is going to take a certain amount of money away from d.b.i., or any other department, especially d.b.i., we need to look at that too. that was -- i don't thank you

probably put that in there. so we have to be mindful of that, and then look at how we are going to fund it, even as a pilot program. i feel that with the housing crisis, we are looking at every opportunity to include housing, and to give affordable housing, rent control housing available to the residents of san francisco. i think, looking at creative ways to do that is really important. i am definitely not someone who would say, you know, we are only going to do this, and not this, we absolutely have to push forward on all aspects of looking at building housing, especially affordable housing. so i am going to be moving forward to introduce this next week. thank you. >> thank you supervisor brown for your leadership on this issue. i also wanted to think ms. miss

barry and ms. miss campbell for the really good report that you presented today, and just to add, a few weeks ago, i asked the budget and legislative analyst office to explore financial incentives for a.d.u. construction, looking beyond fee waivers alone, because this is an issue that i also feel strongly about, and given the housing crisis, and the versatility that a.d.u. his can provide for infill increases to the housing supply, especially in neighbourhoods like the sunset district, i think doing all we can to streamline and incentivize their construction makes sense, including fee waivers and targeted incentives for single family homes. i also want to acknowledge that as was mentioned before, after this item was scheduled for this hearing, mere breed announced that her intent to introduce legislation to waive fees on a.d.u.s at 100% affordable housing, which supervisor brown

is sponsoring, so given the uncertainty of the details at this moment today, and given that it directly relates to the civil grand jury's recommendations, i would like to make a motion to continue this item to april 4th, at which time we should be better able to give a full and final response. >> great. >> clerk, any further business? >> there is no further a business mac great, we are adjourned. thank you. -- there is no further business. >> great, we are adjourned. thank you.

>> 5, 4, 3, 2 , 1. cut.

>> we are here to celebrate the opening of this community garden. a place that used to look a lot darker and today is sun is shining and it's beautiful and it's been completely redone and been a gathering place for this community. >> i have been waiting for this garden for 3 decades. that is not a joke. i live in an apartment building three floors up and i have potted plants and have dreamt the whole time i have lived there to have some ability to build this dirt. >> let me tell you handout you -- how to build a community garden. you start with a really good idea and add community support from echo media and levis and take

management and water and sun and this is what we have. this is great. it's about environment and stewardship. it's also for the -- we implemented several practices in our successes of the site. that is made up of the pockets like wool but they are made of recycled plastic bottles. i don't know how they do it. >> there is acres and acres of parkland throughout golden gate park, but not necessarily through golden community garden. we have it right in the middle o >> welcome to another episode of

safety on today is episode we'll show you how 0 retroactive you're home let's go inside and take a look. >> hi and patrick chief officer and director of earthquake for the city and county of san francisco welcome to another episode of stay safe in our model home with matt we'll talk about plywood. >> great thanks. >> where are we we if you notice bare studs those are prone to failure in an earthquake we need to stabilize those they don't lean over and plywood is effective as long as you nail along every edge of the

plywood for the framing we'll nail along the sides and top and on the bottom 0 immediately you'll see a problem in a typical san francisco construction because nothing to nail the bottom of the plywood we've got to wind block between the studs and we'll secure this to the mud sill with nails or surface screws something to nail the bottom of the plywood. >> i notice we have not bolted the foundation in the previous episode thorough goes through options with different products so, now we have the blocking we'll a xoich attach the plywood. >> the third thing we'll attach the floor framing of the house above so the top of the braced walls one to have a steel

angle on top of this wall and types of to the top of the wall with nails into the top plate and the nails in this direction driving a nail it difficult unless you have a specialized tool so this makes that easy this is good, good for about 5 hundred pounds of earthquake swinging before and after that mount to the face of wall it secures the top of wall and nailed into the top plate of the with triple wall and this gives us a secure to resist the

forces. >> so you now see the space is totally available to dots blocking that he bottom and bolted the foundation in corneas what the code in the next episode you'll see you appit. >> shop & dine in the 49 promotes local businesses and challenges resident to do their shop & dine in the 49 within the 49 square miles of san francisco by supporting local services in the neighborhood we help san francisco remain unique successful and vibrant so we're will you shop & dine in the 49 chinatown has to be one the best unique shopping areas in san francisco that is color fulfill and safe each vegetation and

seafood and find everything in chinatown the walk shop in chinatown welcome to jason dessert i'm the fifth generation of candy in san francisco still that serves 2000 district in the chinatown in the past it was the tradition and my family was the royal chef in the pot pals that's why we learned this stuff and moved from here to have dragon candy i want people to know that is art we will explain a walk and they can't walk in and out it is different techniques from stir frying to smoking to steaming and they do show of. >> beer a royalty for the age

berry up to now not people know that especially the toughest they think this is - i really appreciate they love this art. >> from the cantonese to the hypomania and we have hot pots we have all of the cuisines of china in our chinatown you don't have to go far. >> small business is important to our neighborhood because if we really make a lot of people lives better more people get a job here not just a big firm. >> you don't have to go anywhere else we have pocketed of great neighborhoods haul have all have their own uniqueness. >> san francisco has to all

>> president chow: ladies and gentlemen, i'd like to call the commission meeting to order. mr. morewitz, would you please call roll? >> clerk: [ roll call ] i believe commissioner loyce would like to say something before we begin. >> yes, i'd like to introduce from the mayor's office. >> president cho >> commissioners, good afternoon. i'm here for one reason. you're rarely ever going to see me here at the commission, but this is important to come to say thank you. to say thank you to greg wagner