. . . >> 80% and 110 respectively. this project has to achieve a

greater ability and from the low income tier down to 50. it is even a deeper benchmark. thank you for the question. >> thanks. >> guy place mini park, which is currently under construction is a 4,308 square foot site acquired in coordination with the planning department through the ren con hill plan. due to the lack of open space in the area. with funding through the ren con hill community improvements fund, this vacant property was

purchased by the city in march 2007 following a joint approval by the planning and recreation and park commissions. and subsequently by the board of supervisors in 2007. as i mentioned before, this is a growing, densifying area with a lot of new housing and few parks. the park is currently under construction and is expected to be opening in later in 2019. as such, there is not -- we're not able to analyze activity there is and how people use it because it is a construction site. the park design includes a level site with three outdoor rooms that contain bench seating areas and is framed by a variety of plants and trees that have been selected to be adaptive to this much more shaded location. we are piloting a dog relief facility as well on the sidewalk in front of the park. this picture shows a bird's eye

view just looking over the park from another vantage point giving you a better sense of how it would be. new shadow from the hawthorne project would occur in the late afternoon hours, entering the park between 3:30 p.m. and 4:15 p.m., depending on the day. the shadow would fall roughly on the center of the park. new shadow would be present for up to 16 minutes with an average daily duration of 11 minutes. added shadow would fall in total 59 days early in the year, january and march, as well as in the fall. the largest new shadow would occur on february 16 at 3:56 p.m. and would cover about 12% of the park at that time. the current shadow load on the site is 72% of the total

potential sunlight. and the project would increase the shadow load by roughly 1900 square feet and increasing the shadow load by .01%. so going from 72.34% to 72.35%. this picture shows you only the moment of maximum shadow load, but it gives you a sense of where the project is on the left at hawthorne and fullsome and park on the upper right which is on guy place. and the dark shade is the existing shade and the blue is the added shade. so at that very moment it would be fully shaded. but there are other moments when it's not fully shaded. and this would be on february 16 when 533 square feet of shade would be added.

this gives you more close up version of it where on the day of maximum shadow impact on february 16. the gray area is the existing shade and the blue area is where the new shade would fall. finally, the shadow study also analyzed cumulative new shadows cast by 18 other nearby projects in the development pipeline. not all these projects will cast shade on guy place. those that do add shade including 95 hawthorne will increase the shadow load on the park by .18%, bringing the total annual shadow to 79.70. which specific project this will shade are unavailable because it was studied in aggregate for this area. the shadow analysis did look at a full buildout of all the

projects. since these projects are still being developed, they do not provide a per project analysis on guy place park. any of these future projects that may shade the park in the future could come before this commission. this concludes my presentation. i'll leave you with the quantitative slide. i'm available for questions as is nicholas foser from the planning department. >> thank you. a >> is there any public comment on this item? >> thank you, commissioners. john keppling on behalf of the project sponsor for the project. i wanted to go into the shadow analysis a bit more as this commission is well aware of, typically there is a balancing of the extent of new shadow on a park compared to the public benefit to the project. what the commission will find is the amount of new shadow is very, very minimal.

and the public benefits are quite exceptional. if we can start here with the -- with the projector. thank you. here is the project again designed by s.o.m. and nice, elegant building with 302 housing units and 55 of which are below market rate and we have 42 levels. i want to provide this image to give you a sense of the sense of the buildout and with the awe thorn which the commission considered in 2012.

there is a number of ways to look at how minimal the shadow is. .01% new shading but only 59 days is new shading during a two-month period in the fall and winter, the largest shadow 534 square feet. another way to look at it, there's 1900 square feet of new shadow hours. the park is just over 4,000 square feet, so the project is essentially only casting new shadow for one hour a year on less than half the park. i do want to get to the last slide. this is the mapping impact that would be necessary to avoid any new shadow. president f i could spend another 10 seconds on this. >> finish. >> this is the amount of the building that would have to be removed in order to avoid any shadow on the park, so it is quite extensive. if you take a look at the final slide, the impact would be a loss of 164 units, 23 of those

bmr units. avoiding the shadow impact would be significant for this building, especially the bmr units. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> is there anyone else that would like to make public comment on this item? >> richard. >> good morning again. it was interesting about the median income. and it was lowered from 55 to 50. this particular project is a lot of what is going around the county, steel and glass. we haven't had a major earthquake in a while.

so if it happens, i looked at shanghai and how they built high-rise. they put them everywhere. we are kind of like that right now with a different kind of place. see sandy, sand in the landfill. so a junk area. the taller you make a building, the easier it can topple. it hasn't been test bed i the earthquake yet. when i am looking at this, i see what they presented and the additional amount of shadow seems almost negligent, but look at the structure on the houses and i haven't been satisfied

that it's going to hold. because it hasn't yet been tested. i do agree with what is is not that significant. >> thank you. >> is there anyone else who would like to make public comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> nick, when the existing building is demolished, the office is currently on the site, right? >> correct. >> when the building is demolished, is that office space allocation going back into the mix and helping office developers alleviate the prop m concerns in central soma? >> a commissioner, that is an excellent question. i do not know the answer to that question. if i am not mistaken, there is legislation that has been proposed by the former mayor and

commissioner peskin with the information relink wished and in terms of applicability for this project, i couldn't speak to that, but that is a very, very big question. about 86,000 square feet which is not insignificant. >> all right. i won't push you out on a limb. >> and since this is taking the density, do we have jurisdiction and does the state density bonus from section 295? aawe 295, and john, back me up on this. >> bear with me. state density bonus.

this is layperson speak. there are incentives, concessions, and waivers and they have different meanings and i will spare you that. available to projects to achieve a density bonus and dwelling park and applying for faif wooifrs. and there is limited vurs diction under the housing committee accountability act. and objective standards and are eligible for the waivers and that is the waiver bucket. anything that is not a waiver, a concession, or incentive would fall under different tier which is more in the spirit of ceqa would be an impact to public safety. general public welfare and shadow, wind, and a significant, unavoidable impact and my understanding is the reason they were tiered out of state density

bonus is they could have an impact on general public and safety. so no, it does not circumvent section 295 and further, it does not circumvent section 148 of the planning code which requires wind not exceed existing commissions and no additional hazards be created. so the development code relief sections is a minor exceedance which is existing and not being removed. the wind, the shadow, will go through whatever recommendation. >> if you could show the slide of what a no shadow project would be. >> and counsel for the project sponsor had limited time, but i think maybe this would help

explain to this commission if we were to do a no shadow on guy place mini park, how many affordable units would we lose? that is providing 55 and we would lose 23? >> loss of 32 for a total -- >> fur going to speak, we need you to speak into the mic. >> a total of 32 units, 23 of which would be the b.m.r.s. >> so we would lose -- sorry. >> as proposed, there are 55 and with that, we would lose 23 b.m.r.s and would be at 32. and this was highlighted at the committee and lose how much? >> $7 million. thank you for reminding me of that. >> and there was also a reference to a spring meeting

with west bay and united players and i might be missing somebody. what was the result of that meeting? >> an i would defer to project sponsor. >> and planning staff doesn't generally attend the meetings. >> thank you, commissioners. we are still at a point where we don't see any opposition or concerns from the groups and recently reached back out since ceqa has been completed and conversations are ongoing, but at this point we had that meeting and it was great and said let's touch in before the planning commission hearing and still not heard any major concerns to date. >> you might be the first project to achieve that. so commissioner, the capital committee t struggle, under the analysis of the 1989 memo is that this project would fail the quantitative test since it's a part that's less than two acres. and in any existing shadow load

that is more than 20% the recommendation is that no additional load should be permitted. so it would fail the quantitative test. around qualitative test, though, we're building this park into shadows. we're building it with an existing 72% load and so the additional load -- where i'm headed on this is re're building it into the shadows and the traditional load is relatively insignificant. while we didn't give recommendation from the capital committee, it was primarily because we didn't have the ceqa clearance. now that we have the ceqa clearance, i would move to the planning commission that this additional shadow impact. >> any questions or comments? >> i am prepared to vote. it is to register what continues

to be my actually frustration with the ambiguity in the whole space. and we visited every single time, so i am going to say it every single time that on the one hand we say there is a quantitative measure, and it is what it is. either it passes or fails. on the other hand, we see it as a qualitative set of measures and it gets really squishy. today united players is not here. if they were here, we might have a different conversation. and that whole dynamic, so i will say it every time. i am prepared to vote. >> thank you, commissioner. seeing no other comments, a motion and favor. all those in favor? so moved. we are now on item 8, silver register ras and youngblood -- silver terrace and youngblood coleman synthetic turf project. >> good morning, commissioner, general manager. dan moyer with the capital improvement commission. the item i have before you today is an item for your

consideration on an award of two construction contracts for renovating who of the athletic fields. one at silver terrace playground and one at youngblood cole mon and are synthetic turf arsenal and they have been used to death, and they are at a point now where we need to replace the synthetic turf and the amenities such as fencing and bleachers and trash cans and drinking fountains and such. this item has come before you in the last few month where is we actually project and received one bid proposal which was substantially over the engineer's estimate for the project. i requested that the commission go out with the authority to negotiate a contract under the san francisco administration code. so with that direction, i was working closely with the city attorney's office and determined that the best approach on this

was to break the project into two bid packages. and so i negotiated two contracts with two different contractors to execute the projects at both locations. the first was to go back to the original bid. contractors submitted the bid and broke the project into discrete elements, one being specific to the synthetic turf and the other would be the other amenities associated with the facility like fencing and concrete and a.d.a. improvements and such. the first went back directly related to the turf who has done quite a bit of engineering and got a proposal to do all the other elements around the site. the two sites actually. and so with that, the original proposal that we received came in at $4.7 million

approximately. and the engineer east estimate was $3.3 million at the time. so following -- let me read the exact figure. $2,952,531, which is for the green stuff and for $1,739,5003 following that bid process, we are able to amend the original proposal by reducing by $763,494. essentially, in the report i identify we didn't reduce any scope on the project. this was a more careful hook at elements and trying to refine how they approach the project and to allow different subcontractors to enter the game

and have competitive pricing. i am looking for your approval -- and i will read the agenda wording for the record is to award the following contracts for silver terrace and youngblood coleman synthetic turf replacement project in the amount not to exceed $2,952,531 to robert a. bachman construction corporation and to a construction contract in the amount not to exceed $1,035,570 to engineering. and the goal of the project if approved today would be to move directly into the silver terrace renovation project in early july, completing that to the end of october. a breather in the month of november and move into the youngblood coleman from december 1 through about april. >> thank you. >> absolutely. thank you. >> is there any public comment on this item?

seeing none, public comment is closed. >> commissioners? >> so moved. >> second. >> a moved and seconded. all those in favor? so moved. thank you. >> thank you. >> we are now on item 9, upper douglas dog park operational hours. >> good morning, commissioners. sarah madlin. before you today is a community driven change to the hours of the upper douglas dog park. by way of reminder in 2013, the board of supervisors adopted an ordinance establishing park closing hours for all the parks. the hours are from midnight to 5:00 a.m. the ordinance also did two other things. it grandfathered in existing hours that were established by and your predecessors by resolution. it also allowed for this

commission going forward to adopt by resolution hours that differ from that ordinance, which is the process that we are currently in. in order to provide some clarify to that process for members of community groups that are looking to initiate an hours change, staff issued a memo with guidelines about how to proceed with doing that. those guidelines are intended to ensure that people are aware of the change, that all sides of that conversation are heard, and that there is robust conversation about the proposal. additionally, it places the onus for that outreach on the community group. so the community driven change, proposal i should say, and community must run that engagement process and then it all comes to you and your

responsibility as commissioners is to weigh in, to listen to and weigh in on both sides of the argument, but also to assess to thoroughness and robustness of the community process. that is what brought us here today. i should just note that over 224 parks, 67 of them have hours established by this very process. so this is not new. this is not unprecedented. but it can be a little messy sometimes while we're in it. so to upper douglas dog park which is a fully fenced 3-acre site at the corner of 27th and douglas streets in supervisor district 8. interestingly, thest the site of a former quarry, for those who have been there, you know the rockery slopes that are nearby.

we and supervisor middleman and supervisor shehei with the friends of upper douglas and the advocates for upper douglas have been in contact about the park including parking and how the dog park was established by this commission, the licensing of dog walkers, the possibility of changing park hour, changes to the physical site including fencing and what type of ground cover is used there. i have all this detailed for you if you are interested. but essentially in the beginning in april of 2018, excuse me, we met with the community on the various issues and that continued in august of 2018 and supervisor middleman was involved in the conversations. in november of 2018, we continued conversations and then

resumed them again in '19 with meetings on march 7, march 8, and april 28. that brought us to a point where the staff on site and at the lodge were hearing very different things from the different sides of the conversation, and led us to engage in some surveying on site. the purpose of that was to provide both the community and the commissioners information in making this decision, and if you will indulge me, i want to provide highlights. three months on site with 800 participants. 96% of the visitors to the park are individual pet owners. they are bringing the majority of them, 95% of them are bringing one to two of their own dogs to the site. 63% are immediate neighbors to the park in neighborhoods nearby. and the peak times for usage on

the weekend are noon to 4:00 and on the weekday t most dogs from 10:00 to 1:00 in the park. the conversations continued in may with meetings and additional online surveys from the advocates and the petition as well. and so there were three additional meetings in may and obviously june 6 of this year, the operations committee took public comment and heard the proposal. so, now to the proposal which came from theed a voe t kas for up -- from the advocates for upper douglas which was to originally change the hours which are 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. the original proposal was from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the time that they serviced

that proposal, the steering committee of friends of upper douglas said to them, we understand that you are interested in some hours changed. we actually think 7:30 to dark is reasonable. would you consider that? as you see in the staff report, there was back and forth about whether or not how enforceable a sunset end time is. i should note we have many parks where the hours are sunrise to sunset, but a back and forth conversation and attempt at a negotiated settlement at that point. that did not move forward and came to hear their views. at that point, the committee did not accept the advocates' proposal. and instead they just suggested that the hours are the hours that you see on your agenda,

7:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. [please stand by.

>> next speaker, please.

>> thank you. >> we discourage barking. >> hello again. i want to just comment on mr. ginsburg's comment about how we've become a great area for dog parks and that we lead, you know, in that area. so as a member of the friends of upper douglass dog park, we want to make compromise. we understand our neighbors, and we really think to allow people, not dog walkers, nothing against you, but for people who live in the city, they need to be able to walk their dogs before they go to work and after they get home. so i think that the 7:00 a.m. is really a good time that cat anderson suggested. i'm concerned about the ending hour, because people typically

don't get home till 6:00, 6:30, to be able to go and get to the park and exercise, so we are not in favor of the current hours being proposed. we'd like to have them extended a bit more. i thank you all. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> hi, my name is linda blondis, and as an amateur paleoanthropologist, homo sapiens would not be homo sapiens had he not domesticated the dog. dog is critical to our being human, and if you read the books, you'll find -- i'm reading donald joe hanson now. so we owe them. they owe us. and we need to have them have a place where they could play, be dogs, make friends, and upper

douglass dog park has been wonderful. it has enabled my dog to make friends, me to make friends. it feels like home. and i am blissfully retired these days, but when i was working, i often did not leave work until 8:00 at night, and my dog still had to go do his doggy things. so i don't know what the neighbors are complaining about, but, you know, when you move next to an airport, you don't complain about the planes. thank you. >> thank you. thank you. >> okay. bruce. and then i'm going to call off some more names. i have michael and robert and gene and gregory. go ahead. >> hi, i'm bruce. i live just off port cola drive.

i used to live directly across the street from the park and use the park with my dog betty sue. first, i'm deeply disturbed that the proper rec and park rules for implementing a procedure like this were not followed in the first place. the district supervisor is supposed to get his buy-off on it. i spoke to the supervisor, that did not happen. secondly, they are supposed to give public notice and have a community meeting where both sides can come in and make their case. no public meeting took place. the proponents of this proposal gave a reason that they feared for their safety and they were afraid they would be attacked by the park users. you know, if that's really the reason, then the solution to that is you have a park ranger or police officer represent at e meeting. you don't try to create public

scrutiny and slip this under the radar. at the last meeting, the current proposed closing time is 7:30, and that was kind of picked out in the air arbitrarily and was no real basis for that 7:30 time. i, for one, have to work late often, and i don't even get off work until 7:30, so that doesn't work for me. i spent the last few days at the park in the evenings chatting with some of the other park users to see why they came to the park so late and i found out a whole lot of people have jobs down the peninsula. they don't even get home till 7:30. i spoke with one person who works in a hospital, her shift doesn't end until then and others work in retail. to me, what would be a good time, 7:00 to 9:00, would work for everyone.

>> next speaker, please. >> greetings, commissioners, thank you. so first off, i moved to san francisco in 1999. i purchased my home in 2007. i'm also the vice president of the victorian alliance san francisco, where we have actually pulled together $400,000 in preservation grants. as many of you guys may know, a large amount of that money has gone directly to recs and park. upper douglass park is a rare and valuable asset. it's large and fenced in, and it provides a place for new dog owners and existing dog owners to train their dogs. it's also a safe place for people to walk their dogs late at night, as we've seen the homeless issues growing in

dolores park, my wife doesn't feel safe walking there. she does feel safe walking her dog after work in upper douglass. i'd like to reframe this conversation for everyone here. in 1871 the parks commission was set up to preserve and create public use land and some interesting statistics have come out. per the san francisco animal care and control, there's 120,000 dogs in san francisco. per the u.s. census bureau, the latest one, there's 113,000 children. so the takeaway here is there's now more dogs than kids. if this conversation was happening around reducing children's access to parks, i think it wouldn't even have gotten to this point with the commission, which is what we're kind of discussing here. so i hope that helps you guys in making your decision. one other thing i'd like to

throw out, because we're a city of compromises, here's a couple compromises to consider. san francisco police code section 2909 of the noise ordinance says -- >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> next speaker. >> commissioners, general manager, i'm greg holland, san francisco resident. i never thought i would be in front of you today speaking about this matter, but i'm a fan of upper douglass dog park, and i take issue with the process that's undertaken or not undertaken to make this proposal to reduce the hours. you know, the optics are important, and if you reduce the hours, we face the optics that current home owners are dictating how and when the rest

of us use their parks. those are bad optics. also, if you approve this on the face of it, don't we run the risk of saying not in my backyard? if this wins, it joins all the other negativisms. classism, racism. i realize when i go to the park it's filled with people from all neighborhoods and they are diverse and beautiful and so are their animals, but that's what makes the park so special, so i encourage you to reject the reduced hours for the upper douglass dog park and i encourage everyone here to understand in all of our neighborhoods here, we hear dogs bark. we hear car horns honk, but in every neighborhood, there are people and there are families and people with families and dogs who deserve access to hour public parks at times that fit their job schedules and times that fit their schools and times that fit every family. thank you for hearing me. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please.

>> good morning. i'm robert brust. many of you know me. i am the district state representative on prozac and i've spoken with many of you. i tried to get a handle around this issue early on, but i was thwarted by -- by, i think, a lack of communication from the department. i appreciate what you have done and tried to come up with a compromise. i appreciate what sarah had said about the process, but i disagree. there was not an open process on this. i was not informed of this. the local friends of upper douglass dog park, i had a long conversation last night with george, who's the new president. he does not remember being advised this was going until,

like, a week before it went to your commission, the committee, and it's just -- that is the, i think, the crux of it. the whole process was appalling. i would accept and support a 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. hours, but i think it's just insane that this group of neighbors, advocates for upper douglass, refuse to meet with the dog people. and -- and here we are. it was not ready to go before you. it really was not. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> commissioners, general manager, my name is michael. i'm an, i suppose, well-off

resident of noe valley. i treasure this park. my family treasures this park. my three furry children treasure this park. when my day starts, when i leave for my office, about 7:00 a.m. in the morning, so those that are willing to compromise for later in the evening, i appreciate that, i understand that side of the equation. i'm on the other side of the equation in terms of the day. i enjoyed the woofing from the encouraging director or manager, but when we look at statistics that were cited about how we are such a wonderful city by comparing our 10,000 population residents to the statistical average of dog parks, i don't think that statistic captures availability, and this park is not available 24/7. it's not available during a substantial part of the year. it's not available during

morning hours on wednesday or thursday. there's an odd closure on wednesday for maintenance. when i go, i never see maintenance there on wednesday. if there is maintenance there on wednesday, it occurs during very narrow hours during the course of the day, and yet the park is not unlocked again until 9:00 a.m. or later on thursday. so for me, wednesday's out, thursday's out. there's a long winter closure. we still don't understand why. my dog can get muddy feet. it really doesn't mind it. we support keeping the hours you have in place and not changing them. thank you. >> thank you. >> okay, as jane is coming up, i'm going to go ahead and call some more names. i have david, heather, b.j., richard, and megan. >> thank you for entertaining this today.

my name's gene falk. i, too, use the park at all sorts of hours and can't imagine having those hours limited, but i'd like to address directly the process, and i agree with those who have spoken before me, and i disagree with the way this was presented by -- and i'm sorry, i didn't get your name. first of all, she cites meetings that were held in 2018. when this issue was raised again in 2019, the park's own process, the -- sorry, the park's commission process was disregarded. you look at the memo you received from mr. bishop, and it goes point by point what the process is to bring these to you and -- sorry, supervisor mandelman does not feel like he was consulted.

two, community meeting, no. why? because they were -- they, home owners, felt, quote, uncomfortable and unsafe. well, have a policeman in the room and have an impartial moderator and that takes care of that. but what's even worse is what the rpd agreed to do instead of that meeting, and the answer is it agreed to an online survey conducted by the home owners. that's right in mr. bishop's statement. now, i have a whole list of other things that proceeded from that, including why that survey's a piece of junk, and i could go on.

notice, however way you look at it, feels like there's a thumb on the scale and the optics are already are uncomfortable. >> next speaker, please. next speaker, please. overhead, please. go ahead. >> hi. my name's dave olson. i've lived in san francisco for 30 years, resident of district 8 for 20 years, and i've owned dogs for two years. and i go to this upper douglass dog park all the time. i'm often there in the tail end of the evening. i work traditional work hours. i don't have a horrible commute, so i'm there between 7:30 and 9:00 p.m. i even bought a light-up ball for my dog so we can play in the winter when the sun sets after 7:00 p.m. so closing the park -- and you can see these videos, you'll see

that these are taken at 8:40 p.m. on friday, sunday, monday, and tuesday. you'll see that there's plenty of parking on the street. when you show the videos of the park, you'll see that there are plenty of people using this park between 10 and 20 every night at 8:40 p.m. i have a thumb drive, i'm happy to submit this to the city, if you can have this as evidence, but there's lots of constituents that need this park that late, as other people have mentioned. and the process. i mean, seriously, in terms of there being a fair process here, having a biased survey online that is run by somebody who has a particular outcome, 9:00 to 6:00 p.m., really? so you guys are all pretty smart people. you wouldn't be here, right? i'm a pretty smart guy. i wouldn't be able to live in san francisco. just take a look at this on face

value of it. this is just -- this is just underhanded and tricky. and i have paid attention to these things, and i only learned about this about beginning of june. so there was no fair public comment involved in this whatsoever. so do me a favor, punt this, let's have a community meeting, and there are people that don't want it open until 7:00, there are people that need it open before 7:00. all this should be evaluated. >> thank you. >> next speaker e pleasplease. >> hi, so i'm second generation sf. couple things, estes park and jackson park need some love. i'm here because of douglass. i'm representing six dogs in three households within two blocks of the park, because they are all at work. i'm their dog walker. i should be walking their dogs

right now, but i'm not. i had coverage, because those dog walkers are also all working. unless you're reading all those emails about how important this park is. we don't use it for almost a third of the year because of this winter closure thing, which i still don't fully understand, because it's always muddy in douglass park, so i don't understand how much muddier it can possibly be in december as opposed to august. we need this park. i need you to know that the person and group of advocates who don't like this park are also the people who work -- who started a company that if you remember four years ago at mission soccer field kicked little kids off of it, because they reserved it, and it was more important for them to have a soccer game than small children who play at the soccer field every day. these are the same people.

they don't care. and it's incredibly frustrating to see them walk their dog with no leash and no collar around the neighborhood and say that they are scared of us, because they are not. they are in -- i see them every day at 7:00 a.m., and i see them every evening. they are not scared of us, and they are not scared of their dog getting hit by a car either, so i think that this needs to have a community meeting, because they are not scared of us, because we see them all the time. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> hello, commissioners. my name is richard, and i've lived in the city 43 years. i've gone to this park with my dog. i have two dogs before that. since 2000, both on leash and

off leash. i have difficulty getting around. and this park gives me the opportunity to go there with my dog, let the dog play, and gives me an opportunity to meet new people. i could say something, but i have a lot of issues and people already talked about that. one thing i would say is, i would ask you to question the winter closure, because i look and they don't do very much during the winter. the park is actually pretty good now. we've got involved many times, weeding, and raising monies for the landscaping, the resurfacing of the park. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker.

>> my name is b.j. wilkinson. i live three blocks from douglass park, and i have lived there since 1980. before that, i was in noe valley, but three blocks from this park. when it was available, i always had dogs since i got my dogs in 1980 and needed a place to walk them off leash and a place for them to play. year 2000 i was forced to retire because of a diagnosis with a life-threatening illness, and my dogs have gotten me through it since then. it's difficult for me to drive. right now, i have to drive some place else on wednesdays, and in the winter, when it's raining, i have to drive in the fog and the rain to another place so i can walk my dogs. there's no good reason that i've ever heard why it's close the in the winter, and certainly, there's no good reason now why it's closed in the times of the

best weather, when we have these late summer afternoons, the best time of the year in this city. when it was so hot last week, and my house was over 90 degrees, my dogs and i and everybody else that didn't have air conditioning were suffering. only place we had to go late in the evening was to douglass park, along with other people in that same condition. those people who have to go to work in the morning and those people who can't get home late in the afternoon, they can't with here. they are at work. and it's important for you to take into consideration all those people who use it during those hours. and the complaints that have been made do not sit with those hours. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, and as she's coming up, i'm going to call off a few more names. i have william, laura, nancy,

and rocket. that's all i have. >> hi. my name is megan smith. i'm a 30-year resident of noe valley. i've been using this park since 1994. i like to use it early in the morning. i'm asking you please don't change the hours. i'm also as a resident of noe valley, one of the blind sided people. i found out about -- [ dogs barking ] -- i found out this may, may of 2019. we have a newspaper, the "noe valley voice," next door noe valley, there's been no community meetings that i've been aware of -- >> can you hold up? >> excuse me. are we okay over there? all right. go ahead. all right. see if we can control them all. >> go ahead. >> all right. so i'm one of those residents that apparently this handful of people, once i heard about this, i really took a good look at 27th street.

there's, like, ten houses there. they all have garages. i don't even understand what the issue is. that's how blind sided i am, but i'm asking you, please, don't change the hours, and if there is this process, i'd like to go through the proper procedure with supervisor mandelman and the community meeting. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, william. >> mr. president, commissioners, good morning or good afternoon. i became aware of this controversy over -- i don't use douglass park. but i became aware via social media. and i was hearing things similar to the testimony that these people have been giving you today, so i came here today to

ask you to vote no on this proposal to change the hours of douglass park, but then i heard your rec and park representative talk about community-driven policy, and robust dialogue, but that doesn't seem to jive from what i'm hearing from the people here, so i'm going to suggest perhaps rather than voting yea or nay, to table the project and let more information be let out to the public so we can understand what is going on. but that being said, i'm still going to ask you to vote no on this item. >> thank you. >> okay, next speaker. nancy. >> hi, my name is nancy stafford. i'm an sf dog board member, and i would say please don't change the hours without further public process. not everyone works 9:00 to 5:00.

commuters, retail workers, and other service providers need access. this park is closed every wednesday and several months in the winter with proposals for more closures. would you close any other recreational facility on such a regular basis? this number of closures is unreasonable. rpd has 62 athletic fields, 71 basketball courts, 132 children's play areas, over 200 tennis courts, and 31 dog play areas in 25 parks. approximately 40% of our 358,000 households have dogs, with 24% have two or more. a conservative estimate of dogs in san francisco is 175,000 dogs. we are rpd's largest constituency. we are in the parks rain or shine, yet we are grossly underserved in the city of saint francis.

please have the required meetings required for any changes at upper douglass, and i'd like to comment on the 120,000 dogs that was first proposed, i believe, around 2004 by carl friedman, who was the head of animal care and control at the time. that's 15 years ago. the city has grown, dog population has grown, so the 120,000 is grossly an underestimate, and i have to say, i did all these figures, did all this research on the american pet -- avma who has estimates on dog owners, american veterinary, the pet products population, and i kind of went in between and my estimates are very conservative. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker. >> thank you. my name is laura. san francisco resident for 14 years. i have three to four points i would like