one, 311 notification was duly conducted per planning protocol and notification for the variance hearing. 311 was sept be without existing drawings. the error as caught and notification was redone about a week later and all parties were notified. two, the building built in 1979 is not a historic resource nor age eligible. the status is listed as a c. there. project was reviewed and approved. that was considered a civil matter not under the planning department. therefore not to be resolved by planning issues. number four, pr proposed additin was reviewed. plans department policy. the modest scale of the

horizontal front in conjunction with side separation between the two parties were deemed not to pose exceptional impact to light, air or privacy. it meets the department's standards and guidelines and recommends the commission not take the dr. this concludes my report. i am here to answer questions. thank you. >> thank you. we will now hear from the d.r. requester. >> thank you. i am michael donner. good evening. i represent the owners of 99 st-germain. they add jay sept to the project at 95 st-germain. at 95 and 99 have two identical homes developed at the same time by famed architect in san

francisco a man by the name of lawrence knew for his modern architecture and for developing the diamond heights neighborhood. there is an elevator tower and elevator. he thought so much of this architectural feature which allows ownerses and guests to transit from street level to front door. he gave both owners co-ownership of the elevator tower, landing and elevator and imposed on them an eternal obligation to maintain and repair at all times the elevator tower and elevatortor. now the yees want to comply with

the building code this have to have stairs a certain width. to do that they have to teardown 50% of the elevator tower which they can't do because the part they would teardown is co-owned and subject to the easement covenants. they thought they would push it by disassembling the elevatortor tower and taking away pieces to structurally weaken it then they sepreported to dpi. then on top of that when they wanted to address the novs they blocked the permit to do exactly that. the goty as were in a position to enforce. the judge issued a restraining order prohibiting the yees

from disassembling or tampering or having anything negative to do with the elevator structure and elevatortor. yet, that is what they want to do in this application. it is hidden. there is in a handwritten notation from the most recent version of the plans. i have highlighted which says we are going to teardown 50% that they own by the way. we want to widen our building in order to do that. that act is a legalnulty. it is prohibited because the judge said so. the yees argue this body should ignore the ease net and could have very inapts. you asked for that information in the dr application. it is relevant to your

conversation. what we are asking you to do is consider the fact it can never happen. they admit they scant perform the work under the permit until the litigation is resolved and we believe it will be resolved in our favor. the latest is that ms. yee needs a wheel chair. we have photographs of ms. yee taking the groceries up the stairs and dry-cleaning. let'sagree she needed a elevator. they said you can provide a wheelchair accessible means of transit within the existing easement area. on top of all of this, there is the issue of the expansion of the hole.

light air privacy not to mention the fact it destroys two architecturally prominent homes designed a certain way. we urge that dr be granted. thank you. >> thank you very much. do we have any public comment in favor of the d.r. requester? with that public comment is closed. we will hear now from the project sponsor. >> very good. good afternoon, commissioners, i am the project architect for evidence anedand vicky. one thing to keep clear is that the reason be this project is going on is a reasonable accommodation. vicky does have a disability. i don't think anybody should

question that. she has air doctor's letter. we had to get a variance for the location of the elevate for. that was granted through the board of appeals action. the zoning administrator agreed with it. the design itself has been reviewed by the design team and everything is approvable. all notification speed you ares were met. this elevator design. may i have the overhead, please. is based on some very tight constraints. this is a steep uphill slope on the property. in the garage there is going to be a stack unit. elevator is rotatorred so that

on the upper levels you can use the area in front of the window for transit of a wheelchair. same condition at the bedroom level so that a normal home can be maintained here. the owners have owned the property since the early 80s. it is a logical outcome of their long-term residency here. >> you said it is very steep. there is a 14-foot tall retaining wall here that as the neighbor requests to push the neighborhood to the building will be tunneling and mining the sight to appoint where it might be usable. it is a reasonable expense.

for the protection of limited light and air that the neighbors are concerned about, privacy issues or view, this is a diagram of the two properties. this is 95. you can see the small addition here where the elevatortor is. there is approximately less than 40 square feet per floor in this addition here. it is a very small variance in this hatched area is a variance. this is the view windows for the neighbor. they have essentially this ban apanam ac view to the east side. removing the elevator tower will improve light to the lower level. there are no windows along this wall. no way to look into these

windows. it is physically impossible. i am unclear of the privacy issues. >> using the existing elevator for anything is not possible. >> if you build a code complying elevator shaft there, the amount of space available there is barely enough to stand in. imagine, a disabled person getting out of the garage, going across the sidewalk, over on to that, going up to the second floor, the landing to enter the house on a split level, then you are stranded at your front door. a ludicrous idea. >> what we are planning and

building now as the disability goes forward, we have to plan for aging in place. the historic resource issues, it is not an issue. this is less than four years old. i am a preservation architect. if nov was placed against both properties. i cannot get into the complexities. i am here to answer questions about this issue. design is simple. i think discretionary review approval is very easy. >> any public comment in support of the project sponsor? okay. public comment is closed. you have two minute rebuttal. three minutes sorry. >> overhead, please.

a comment was made there wasn't any light and air implications to this project. i would like to show you the existing structure as it is today. you can see that they can directly view some of the most intimate portions of the home including children's bedrooms and their bedrooms. if you expand the building envelope, there would be a greater view not a lesser view. additionally when you expand the building envelope you willen shroud the staircase in darkness. i am not clear where the light and air implications were ignored. this is the situation. there is a possibility for

disability access to be done with the existing elevator structure, existing easement confinement. here it is. it can be done. what they are asking to be done cannot be done legally. there is an order prohibiting it by their own acknowledgment. this body doesn't approve permits for things that cannot be done. we would ask this body to recognize the easement, covenants that bar this kind of project. they want to use this elevator and they want to keep it and they don't want half of it hacked off and destroyed. thank you. >> project sponsor, you have two minutes. >> thank you. privacy issues. this is a solid wall now in the

current design. the previous design had a bay area here and you could look across to the other window. no privacy issue. the proposal for the repair of the elevator showed the installation of a dumb waiter, not elevator. we have a concept to put the dumb waiter on that side of the property line. it is an incline dumb waiter. the drawings they submitted to fix the problem was for a dumb waiter. i am here to answer any questions. the nov is very complex. i don't believe it is anything for this body to worry about. providing information. the easement as far as i understand is not a topic for

your consideration as far as the hearing on the design through the 311 review. that is my understanding. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. commissioner richards is not here. commissioner hillis. >> commissioner hillis: it was difficult seeing that. can you show the front of the building. show the drawing of the front façade of the building as it is and what is proposed? >> a photograph? >> sure. >> here is the -- pull the mic toward you. >> that is existing. this is shingled. this is plywood. >> can you show it as proposed.

the elevation. >> while you look at that. is there a variance hearing schedule for this? >> the variance is heard and granted, heard and approved. >> you box out basically the front windows. you expand to the front yard? >> yes. i'm sorry. that is the existing elevation. we want proposed. i'm sorry this is not very clear. >> that is what we had. it wasn't the most clear. >> the xerox isn't very clear. >> you showed that overhead. you square off the bay windows

and that is where the variance is needed? >> yes, well the elevator eats a little bit into the -- i need that right there. the elevator eats a little bit into the variance area. this shows the variance. this hatched area is the variance. this piece is asked for to balance the bay. we asked for the smallest variance possible. >> does that help? >> yes. i think that was my understanding. i wanted to see it in a diagram. the issue you have is about the elevator, which the existing elevator and the easement is beyond the scope of our review here. it is extraordinary. it is not exceptional from a planning standpoint. it is a legal issue you have that we don't necessarily have to consider or should.

we don't have the expertise to do it. the project given the approval of the zoning administrator by the variance doesn't propose exceptional variances. i move to approve the project as proposed. >> second. >> there is a motion and second. (roll call). >> so moved. commissioners that motion passes unanimously 6-0. earlier in the calendar you had moved item number 10 to the end of your calendar. do you want to take that item up now? >> yes. >> 35 minutes. >> item 10 record number 2014.

0012e. better market street and informational presentation. >> good afternoon, commissioners, nick perry, planning department staff. since 2010, the programming department is part of the team working on the better market street project. this is an ambitious and complex project for safety for all users, improving transit performance and revising the street scape. four rounds of outreach have taken place since the project began most rent in march of 2018 for the street based on interagency consensus.

it is undergoing environmental review. it is about to reach the impact report. we would like to share the latest design for the street. to share this i would like to introduce the project manager from the public works of san francisco. >> good afternoon, commissioners, as nick said i am christine. i am the public works project manager for better market street. it is a joint effort developed by public works, planning department, sfmta, mayor's office on disability. san francisco pc and county transportation authority. it extends from stewart to octavia. market street is the city's

busiest street for people walking, biking or taking transit. it is a cultural civic and commercial boulevard. yet, the collision rate within the project area is over 20 20 times the state average. it includes three of the top five intersections for cyclist involved and two of the top five for pedestrian involved injuries. there is a high concentration of vulnerable people including children, seniors and people with disabilities living and working on the corridor. one of the key objectives is to improve safety and accessibility on market street. other issues for existing conditions include lack of bike lane east of eighth street, aging infrom structure and transit stops that don't meet

the current ada standards. it is in this context the partner departments developed market street. it will improve safety conditions. .

>> the proposed project is to have a sidewalk level by client. -- level bike lane. that is different than what we have to date which is a transit

taxiway. than we have the curb lanes got 11 feet on each side, so we are leaving the configuration that we have now of two lanes in each direction, and transit in both lanes. then on the right side, we have a curbside boarding island, with a bike lane behind it, but on the right -- left side, we have our typical design, which is a t bike lane. the remainder of the space is left for pedestrian, or for the sidewalk where we are organizing all the street furniture that we have right now on market street, having a very clearly defined furnishing zone. so some renderings renderings cactuses market street today. here is the proposed project. in general, what we are doing is widening the sidewalk, were moving the curb out 2 feet into the roadway on each side in order to provide that bikeway and buffer zone. so repurpose saying the area

next to the curb, and then you can see the furnishing zone, and then a clear pedestrian thruway, and allowing space near the property for tables and chairs or other amenities. one of the key elements is improving vehicle circulation and loading along the corridor, especially for transit. so what that means is that private vehicles will be restricted from using market street. market street will really be for transit, taxis, and deliveries, and the loading zones will be at sidewalk level, were clearly defined and separated from the sidewalk, and those loading zones will be to help mitigate the double parking that we see now, and the crowding along market street. building on munimobile forward

initiatives, transit travel times would improve for all of market street service, as a result of proposed changes to transit only lanes, stop spacing and locations, stop characteristics, the private vehicle restrictions, and bicycle facilities that i have mentioned already. make mentioned our community outreach. we have also a community working group that has been meeting since the beginning of the project. we have had from fairgrounds of outreach since 2011. our last round was in march of 2018, and we will have another round of outreach before our first phase of construction, currently, during the month of february, we have a pop up at the strand on tuesdays from 10:00 a.m. until noon, at their stays until 1:30 p.m. until 3:3. we invite you to stop by and learn about the project. we have different themes on different days like public

realm, infrastructure improvements, loading, transit, and you can find those on our website. one of our key objectives is integrating our public realm and transportation improvements with all of the midmarket revitalization. as you know, pretty much every block within the first phase, which is fifth to eighth street to, every block has at least one new development, in these developments are large. it is trinity that has quite a big portion of the block between seventh and eighth. it is 1066 market, it is the hall, it is 950, and 974 market, so we have been coordinating with those projects and developers to make sure that as they improve the properties, we are coordinating our improvements to the sidewalks and the public realm as well. we are also working closely with the planning department on the civic centre public realm planned, especially at u.n. plaza, where market street will

interface with the public realm plan. as i mentioned, the first phase of construction will be fifth to eighth street. we did that because of the midmarket improvements. we also felt like this was the portion of the corridor that could benefit most from the project, and we wanted to start their. we know impacts during construction, or there are impacts to the businesses and residents during construction, we have already started to talk about possible mitigations for the partner departments, looking at first breaking of the project into smaller segments about three blocks each, so that is how we end up -- ended up with fifth to eighth. and working with a community benefit districts of the project in the city can support them, and they can help us with outreach and working with the small businesses along the corridor door. we had a really good experience

on castro street during the streetscape project there, working with the upper market c.b.d., so we want to continue the partnership to help during construction. we also are definitely keeping market street open for people walking along the corridor door, and that will really be the easiest way for people to get around during construction is during -- his while walking, we will maintain pedestrian access even when we are redoing the sidewalks. and maintaining access for traffic going north and south across market street is also an important piece of the project plan. with that, i am happy to take any questions about the project. >> okay. >> commissioner richards? -- i'm sorry, public comment on the site and. come on up, please, i don't have any speaker cards.

yes, there is one. commissioner? go ahead. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is denise. as we walk the valley of darkness, this room is the worst room in the entire state of california. i am not a canadian, i don't earn my living as such. do i have your undivided attention, commissioners? my husband is working, he is flying, i came here, not because i wanted to, because there is still breath in my body. ucla medical centre was struck

-- i was struck as a pedestrian on the way to high school, that is in southern california. to be clear, concise, and correct. i do not wish anyone harm in this world, but you ate commissioners are the only human beings who matter, you are the winners. do you understand? you have all the money, you have all the power, the privileges, everything. congratulations, i am happy that you are the winners. you have money, hooray, money, money, money, that is all that matters in san francisco, to be clear, concise, and correct. i am proud to have been a junior clerk this past election with the department of elections. both my husband and i, not that you care. why would you care about the elections?

ms. miss deborah does, she gave us a promotion. we worked every single day, every single hour of every single minute to, and walked home from this city hall all the way up to make it to trader joe's because the bus on market street is not going to come. you don't want to know why, and to order the pipes, by the way? who paid for the pipes, the pipes on market street. completely messed up. i went to urgent care on market street to take care of a hand, i ordered a lux our cab company, they drove me perfectly there, and this guy, out of nowhere, in his bike, on a bike lane that you seem to love so much, this is not paris, this is not the tour de france, this is san francisco. i am wearing my father's jacket. he is a united states veteran, seventh army symphony professional musician. do you know what that means?

william carter renee, the same spelling. my time is up, got it, you won, you have all the money. congratulations to the only human beings who matter in this entire city. you guys know how to work the fire engines, do you? do you? i am out. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> conditioners, ron miguel. i have to start out by congratulating rodney on his years of service. i have the pleasure of serving as president of the commission when he came on board originally , and for many years, was able to work with him. rodney, you have a challenge

before you, i was a member of the chamber of commerce some 60 years ago, it is about time it was revitalized. that said, i am actually here because i am chairing the citizen's working group on market street. it is a group of stakeholders, and i am going to just go through the litany of what those -- the groups those stakeholders represent. at its regional transit planning, architecture, disability, historic preservation, market street railway, tourism industry, pedestrians, spurred, land use in general, bicycles, local transit hospitality, business along market street to, the tech

industry, district six itself and civic centre, the tenderloin, environment, real estate industry, the commercial groups along market street, and the central market c.b.d. basically, the largest of the stakeholders are your selves, because you represent the citizens of the city, and this is our main thoroughfare. so when we come before you with the e.i.r., and as this goes forward, at least in its first phase that i will be around for, a fifth through eighth street, we hope you will take cognizance of what market street is supposed to be in 2040 and 2050. because that is our aim at the moment. we can't look to the next five years, we have to look much further into the future. i look forward to working with you again.

if you have any questions in the interim, you all know how to get hold of me, and how to get hold of d.p.w. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> i am a resident of bernal heights and office on market and powell since 1980. i have a little bit of perspective about market street from using it as a pedestrian, as a munimobile writer before i had my incident. so i am very well familiar with the dangers of traffic on market street, and just in the past, i look at the schedule, where they have done around one, 2011,

round two, 2012, round three, 2013, round for, 2018. between 2013 and 2019, there has been upheaval in delivery, in residences on market street getting everything delivered to their house by ups or fedex, or bikes or whatever, and people just doing things and getting permission afterwards. the bikes, the scooters, there has been uber using taxi lanes illegally, there is no enforcement of that at all, and i have a pretty good understanding of how dangerous the corner is at fourth and market. because it was disrupted by the central subway coming down

stockton street, and whenever there is a convention in town, they close howard street to accommodate the convention, and so pedestrians are walking around looking at their phone, thinking no one else is important but them, and they walk across intersections against the light, or they creep up into the intersections, and so it is really dangerous, and there is no traffic control that tells pedestrians to get back on the curb, you can't get off, you can't walk across market street, you can't walk across fourth street like you are doing , so i am pleading for the people from the planning department to affirmatively push the issue of safety and circulation for pedestrians. the scooters don't pay any

attention to pedestrians. the bicycles don't, and the planning department, at some point, has to take on the role of a planning department department and tell d.p.w. this is important, so there's going to be an e.i.r. comment, but i never want to miss an opportunity to remind staff how important it is to deal with circulation. thank you. >> thank you. any other public comment? okay. that is closed. commissioner moore class. >> thank you, the vision is inspiring. the length of implementation is impressed -- depressing, partially as the overlay, i think everybody in the city is fatigued about the entire city appearing like a constant construction site. the ability to smoothly move through a recognizable part of downtown is almost gone, and while market street is the thing we hold onto, we are still

coming to intersections that don't work. we have to spend at least an extra ten minutes to circumvent and cross intersections, and continue on the sidewalk we really want to be on, and it is really hard to want to support this, yet i have to look towards commissioner miguel when he tells us that it will be 2040, and some of us may not be around to wait that long. that is a discussion for another time. what is difficult is if the impacting idea of consulate -- constant inspect -- construction and to continue fragmentation of a city as a whole. this is the most important zipper, the most important protector we have. market street connects it all. and to envision, that while i love the vision, and i love the changes and all of that, to go through another 20 years, that is very hard to take. at the comment i have made before is that construction and how it presents itself isn't

particularly graceful. when i compared to a large construction sites and other cities, or construction sites across the world. there is a kind of heaviness, there's a kind of stay out of my way attitude, and if there is a way to find some way to make construction -- construction sights informative, reveal something about the curiosity of large construction, which for me is fascinating to watch, can be involving some arts element, like the arts commission,, hopefully they would do something which is in motion or helps to create a pictorial aspect that we don't have at the moment. it may lighten the load, and may create a support that is like a civic interview of a project in progress. there is something different in the perception of the project being a dead end, and other obstacles. this is in contrast to something

which has emotion and is exciting to watch. the busiest -- the biggest project, and i'm not sure how many of you have watched it, is the building of the main railroad station in berlin, germany, where they had to relocate part of a river. one of the most fixed -- exciting construction projects i have ever watched in my entire life. if you could make a theatrical event around this, and i think commissioner mccalla knows the project i'm talking about, i will include you as a carrier of this group to speak about that, and start to make this fun, the ideas are great, and i really appreciate all that has gone into it, just lighten the load as we are approaching it, including the comments made about safety for all and everybody. thank you. >> commissioner richards? >> a couple of rambling thoughts in my stream of consciousness. every time i hear 2040, 2050, we

planned for it based on today, the way we view today, i keep coming back and saying, the pace of change is happening at a velocity so fast, and the time is so short, that if we think what we will have in 2040 will meet the needs of 2014, i don't know what the% chance of that will be. it will probably be pretty low kick things will change that none of us can imagine. but it's an ambitious goal, furthering the need to have a city to understand where the world is going. we may not even be walking anymore. we maybe flying, who knows pick a couple of other things. there has to be enforcement, absolutely. i stepped off the curb at fifth, and i had the walk light, and i missed the bike by an inch. it caught my thumb and almost ran me over. he was going fast. he had his earphones in. i am not deriding bike riders,

card writers do it, pedestrians do it, walking with their phones for guy almost hit someone who stepped off the coat -- stepped off the curb, not even realizing i was 3 feet away. there has to be enforcement. the other thing is, i've been to other cities where the bike lane wasn't just a raised platform like montréal. it is an asphalt curve that really delineates the bike lanes from the rest of the street. you may want to think about that, look at other cities. it is an interesting thing. i hope we land where we need to be. but we don't know what the world will be like. it is a long time. one less thing. my neighborhood suffered from a sidewalk widening on castro street. retail is already fragile when we heard about this on van ness with the bart, and stockton street and the chinatown merchants. there will be an impact on business. people don't want -- castro street was dug up, the sidewalk,

and we were walking down plywood planks. people don't want to come to those types of places. if any of you -- if you can make something out of it, to better, because a lot of businesses did close in the castro as a result of that. >> commissioner johnson? >> thank you. i also agree that this vision is really exciting. i'm excited about the future of the market street corridor. i was really delighted by commissioner moore's comments, and just thinking about how we can make this experience more playful as we think about how we make the corridor more engaging. i remember the urban prototyping festival that this department and others were part of to really activate, in any type of programming in play, not only to pull people out into other corridors and protect the city's community fabric as we do go

through the transition. i will say, echoing on some comments earlier that were made by commissioner fong, when you think, as a san franciscan, it is almost a rite of passage that at some point you will have a dangerous interaction on market street. friends that point to scars or lost teeth, or broken bones, and they said they got it from market street. [laughter] it. >> is really unfortunate, as a pedestrian, even crossing between the bike lanes to try and catch a bus, that is incredibly dangerous for everyone involved, and i also just want to agree with some of the comments that we maybe have to plan for the future, and i think it was -- i was interested in recognizing that the lanes would be munimobile only and taxi only, but i am interested in also where pickup happens for

uber, because those things exist, and there needs to be a better mechanism for that, and then also, of course, as everyone has said, scooters, scooters, scooters. thank you so much for this work. >> i wanted to pigtail on commissioner richards' comments, not just the ground floor retail, but you probably have done this, is the building owners and managers up and down market street, have they been included in the conversation? great. >> okay. thank you so much to staff for a really great presentation. may only comments would be that, you know, there is an equity team in the department now, and i am wondering what their input and work has been on this. there is several things, you know, at market street is sort of the spine of the city. it is the place where the pride

parade happens, all of the immigrant rights protests happen, it is really the place where the life of the city just goes through. it is also really dangerous. i am one of those people who has been injured on market street because of inadequate bike infrastructure. actually my front wheel got caught in the munimobile tracks and i flipped over, and, you know, when i went to kaiser, the dr. said, we see at least seven of you every week, every week. so i think that in terms of equity, there is folks who walk down market street, or bike down market street because they have to, and it is dangerous. i want to make sure that we have the lens of looking at what happens down the spine of our

city in terms of making sure that the folks who have the least options are protected, and that is pedestrians, it is bikers, it is folks with disabilities, it is folks with strollers, it is all of those things. i think the interactions and people coming up fourth street going downtown, or down market street going into valencia, all of those points are dangerous, and how folks interact with the street, depending on whether they are walking or on a bike or in a car or in an uber, are different. i wanted to make sure we are sensitive to all those different uses, and also push the policymakers in terms of investing, and the infrastructure, even if things are a little bit more expensive because we need it. as a city, it will live there for the next hundred years, and subsequent generations will inherit what we do here.

thank you very much. >> i know our time is short, i just wanted to thank everyone. i wanted to thank christine for all her work on market street. it is a big deal. just a shout out to neil who is no longer with us, but market street was one of his passions when he works with the department to, so i am sure he would appreciate a shout out from all of us on the us. i think the safety issues, as christine said, are really important in this project. obviously, no matter what the design is, you need enforcement, but the design can certainly help bring cues to the street, get people to think before they cross, all those kinds of issues. i know that his partner for the team has been thinking about in terms of the design. one of the things that was not mentioned, and that has come up in conversations with board members is that the good portion, correct me if i am wrong, to something like 80% of the project is actually bringing

all the utilities and all the infrastructure up to a state of good repair. so when we get to the point where you see cost estimates, you will see a very big number for just replacing the lines on the sewer lines, on the water lines, of the overhead wires, on all the things we have to deal with. it is one of the important thing is, in to make sure that what ends up going on the surface, which is actually a fairly small percentage of the cost of, ends being of highest quality on the city's most important street so we don't lose it when we have to replace all the other infrastructure, which is vitally important. we are really looking forward to the next phase. it has been a long time coming. we had some gaps in time when we were just not being able to move forward to, but we are now moving forward. as was stated, we are a week away from the e.i.r. being released. we look forward to hearing your comments in the next few months. thank you. >> thank you. before we close, since it is commissioner fong's last

meeting, i almost feel like we should sing a song or something. [-left-square-bracket. >> i just want to tell you how honored i am to have sat next to you and gotten to know you, and how wonderful you've been as a human and as a fellow commissioner. i just want to thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. we are now adjourned.

>> 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