>> we're going to hear updates from the controller's office, public integrity assessment process and from the city attorney's investigations and reports. on monday, the office of the controller released their first public integrity review report, focused on contracting procedures that the department of public works, in that report and its findings are the focus of this hearing. there are a myriad, concurrent investigations connected to the scandal. both locally and federally. our focus today is not on criminal charge or the fbi's work specifically. our focus here is less on individual bad actors and more on the systems and structures that enabled and empowered them to commit bad acts. and failed to provide oversight, accountability and transparency. and today we're looking at public works.

how the behavior in the complaints and the structures that allowed them to -- allowed for them to demonstrate the need for structural reform to preempt and prevent the potential for criminal and unethical actions by public officials. this is one hearing on one report. we have much of substance to discuss today and there will be much more to discuss at further hearings and further reports in the near future. we'll hear today first from controller ben rosenfield and acting director of audits mark delarosa, who will present the preliminary assessments of san francisco public works contracting. we will then hear brief updates from deputy city attorney anne pearson on the city attorney's concurrent investigations. we have not invited departments or other parties to present today. the scope of the issues is broad

and we thought it valuable to focus the first hearing to dig deep into the report and its findings. before we move into the presentations, any initial remarks from my colleagues? supervisor haney. >> supervisor haney: yes. thank you, chair mar. i want to thank you for calling this hearing. and for your leadership on this. i also want to thank controller rosen field and your team for putting together a very detailed set of recommendations and analysis. in this report. and we are looking forward to working together to adopt these recommendations quickly. [ please stand by ]

departments, in terms of its lack of oversight, and i think that is made absolutely clear in this report, but even beyond

that, some of these loopholes, some of these issues around has allowed contracts to go out with no oversight whatever. when we have corruption government, it is the residents who suffer the most. it is the residents who get poor and ineffective city services, and trust is eroded, money is wasted at a time when we need not just good outcomes, but we need trust, and we need resources probably more than ever, so i really do want to appreciate the work that has been done on this, and i think it's critical that this

committee assert our responsibility in oversight and moves forward many of these recommendations to restore oversight and to restore the public trust. >> supervisor mar: thank you, supervisor haney. supervisor peskin? >> supervisor peskin: thank you, chair mar. many years ago, when i was the chair of the board, and i created the oversight committee, while this entire chapter is scurrilous and shameful and an embarrassment to government and elected officials, this is exactly what the oversight committee was enacted to do. so let's get out it. >> supervisor mar: thank you,

supervisor peskin. i'd like to introduce the department controller, who's going to lead the presentation. >> thank you very much for the opportunity and good afternoon to the committee. the first item here from the controller's office is our preliminary assessment on process, procedure, and pros specifically with regard to city contracting with a focus on public works. i'd like to first of all thank you in advance for any questions today as well as welcome those from the public. the important of the public tip line as well as the controller's information line provides important information. we have underway other work for friends of organizations and

outside city accounts. we have reviews underway of commission contracting for approval processes at s.f. go and other city commissions, including revenue contracts, the city's contracts, as well as awarding of permits at d.b.i. and any assessments that we determine is necessary in part of our ongoing coordination with the city attorney's office. with that, i'd like to welcome mark dela rosa who's director of the city services program and tip line. >> thank you so much, todd. good afternoon, chair mar, members of the committee, supervisors peskin and haney. mark de la rosa, acting director of the controller's office. we're just going to give you a very brief overview of the

report we issued on monday, earlier this week. let me begin by providing some context on this slide three. just to provide the -- kind of the magnitude of the contracting activities at the san francisco public works, we chose the scope of july 2017 through march 2020 as part of our assessment. this table before you is the summary of all of the contracts that were led within the department over that three-year period. there were a total of 366 contracts that were in existence during this time period. the not-to-exceed amount of all of these contracts were 1.4 million, and they are the chapter 6 public works type of

contracts as well as the grants category of contracts that we'll also discuss a little later. so this slide basically provides a little bit more detail on those 366 contracts by the different contracting methods that were used by the department of public works to make those contracts effective. so the majority of them, as has shown here, were formally competitively bid or solicited. those are ones of slightly higher value, and we'll talk about the different nuances and categories in this. there were those that fell into the informal solicitation categories. those were a little bit more in the lower value in terms of the dollar thresholds, and those that were not solicited or no

solicitation were required, that included sole source contracts, emergency authority contracts, and projects addressing homelessness, which we're also going to cover. and the last category here is grants. so we're going to cover the seven findings that we covered in our report. there were eight total recommendations that sprung from those seven findings, and the first we do want to emphasize is more overarching in nature, and this is about the construction of public works procurement. we do have a chapter within our admin code called chapter 6 that covers public works procurement, and there are six departments that are basically given the authority under that chapter 6 code to enter into

public works contracts, and that included public works, the airport, port, rec and park, m.t.a., and p.u.c. all of the chapter 6 department except for public works were overseen or are overseen by a board or commission which oversees the department's contracts in excess of a certain threshold amount. in 2011, then-mayor ed lee designated mr. nuru as the director of public works to act on the mayor's behalf in various aspects of the awarding contracts including construction contracts that were in excess of a certain threshold. mr. nuru then in turn designated three deputy

directors to serve as contract aproofe approvers on his behalf. they had the ability to approve contracts without any external oversight of the department itself. our recommendation then, is to, under chapter 6 of the admin code from the mayor to delegate final approval of construction projects to an individual outside of the mayor or director, and per chapter 6, to prohibit the department head from approving these contract activities. the second thing i would like to emphasize today is the ones regarding the projects addressing homelessness. in 2019, there were certain elements of the admin code for the city that were revised, and those were chapter 21-b and section 6.76 of the admin code, and these were basically added

as part of the efforts to highlight the -- the efforts that are going on citywide for projects addressing homelessness. and the admin code basically defines this as projects designed to prevent homelessness through housingfuls, ahousing services and to provide shelter services. it allowed for the departments to bypass the standard competitive solicitation process. therefore, the needed controls that are typically present under our formal solicitation were not always adhered to. some of those are really the minimum solicitation requirements, the vendor qualifications, and the fair selection of the various bidders that were not uniformly

applied when -- during procurement under these two admin code provisions. according to public works, they were awarded 15 contracts with a value of $24.6 million for projects addressing homelessness under the 21-b and the section 6.76 authorities. and of those 15 contracts, 11 of these contracts are worth about $14 million, had no discernible selection process just based on our review of the information we gathered as part of this assessment. back in february, the acting director of public works issued new policies and procedures to address these weaknesses, and our recommendation related to this finding is for public works to continue adhering to these new procurement procedures implemented by the acting director and for the city to adopt similar

procedures for purchases citywide so there's the control that one would expect from regular solicitation. >> supervisor peskin: and can i just jump in with questions or should i write them down and do them at the end or should i do them as we're going? >> supervisor mar: why don't we hold the questions to the end? i think that would be more efficient. please continue, mr. de la rosa. >> thank you. the third finding that i would like to highlight today relates to the prequalified contracting pools. as you may know, and as background, both chapter 21 and chapter 6 of the admin code both allow for a prequalified contracting pools, and basically, this is where departments can prequalify a group of vendors using a

procurement process and then draw from the pool when the need arises. once the pool is created, the city can select its preferred vendor instead of going through another solicitation for the specific scope of work that is needed by the department. what we found -- and this is not just within department of public works, but this is definitely a citywide occurrence is that the city does not have the standard procedure for selecting vendors once they are in the prequalified pool. there were instances in which the same vendors would be selected repeatedly from a prequalified pool at times by the department's former director, mr. nuru. although this is not

prohibited, this certainly presents unethical procedures. the recommendation that follows from this finding is that the mayor, board, and the office of contract administration should establish clear guidelines for selecting a vendor or vendors from a prequalified pool. possible methods that should be included in there should be considered a solicitation of quotes or a description of all vendors in the pool. the fourth finding relates to grants. for the period that we reviewed, which was 2017 through 2020, march, there were 19 grants that were valued at $23.8 million within san francisco public works. these were for a variety of services, including workforce development, job training, and

according to public works, they do follow the competitively bid routes whenever they award these grants. so the finding we had on this was just that there were no clear law or rules that provided requirements or guidance of how these types of procurements should be handled. we identified a couple of findings according to the 1984 city attorney opinion, and there was a 2017 opinion refined based on this guidance. the recommendation that we put forth under this finding was that for the board, the mayor, and the office of contract administration should establish minimum qualifications or requirements to ensure the

competitive solicitation of grants are in place as well as the award of contracts and solicited processes as per code and policy. the next finding relates to centralized oversight and monitoring. as you know, chapter 21 purchases are handled by the office of contract administration, which is under the city administrator. the chapter 6 contracting or procurement fall within each of the six departments that i named as public works authority is granted. because of the -- the spread of the various authority that -- that the different departments and different entities in the city have, there really is no centralized process or an oversight of the procurements citywide, so lack of central

monitoring and central procedures are definite. >> commissioner lee: -- definitely not in place, given that they're spread through the various authorities that i mentioned. the two recommendations that we -- we provided on these are for the city to closed gaps in centralized -- in centralized monitoring of all procurement activities by strengthening and reviewing the procedures of city administration or strengthening and monitoring all procurement throughout the city. we also recommend to promote data driven decisions by the agency to utilize data procurement systems and to enter the needed information so that we capture the information on all the contracts, not just from the time of awarding but also from the very, very beginning of outreach and

solicitation. we wanted to call out the topic of tone at the top, which is definitely a topic that is very, very important, if not the root cause of a lot of the internal control weaknesses that we've identified. in this case, we identify tone at the top by the organization's leadership. and based on the information that we gathered, interviews that we conducted at public works, the tone at the top that mr. nuru had was one that prioritized low cost, expediency, and lack of organizational transparency among staff. this is certainly one that we're going to be highlighting as part of the various assessments that we will be issuing, so more to come in terms of a recommendation on this one. the very last set of findings

or recommendations relate to gaps in gift restrictions and enforcements, and this is basically what we found was that despite certain requirements that are in place, including a form 700 statement, which is a statement of economic interest that is required of all city officers and employees to disclose reportable financial interests, there were some gaps that existed, and loopholes, and i'm certain that the city attorney's office will be covering a certain portion of this. but we basically found that the loopholes should be addressed and that the recommendations that followed on this are that for the ethics commission to follow these to ensure that city laws do not create any sprung unethical behavior as well as follow the requirements of form 700 filed

electronically and following the reviews of such. as todd mentioned in the beginning, we do -- this is just the first of many of a number of assessments that we will be issuing that relates to the various internal control weaknesses that we identified related to the nuru investigations. some of those are the ethical standards at the airport, department contractor process, as well as policies and procedures at the department of building inspection. i just wanted to say before i move forward, i thank our group, our team within the controller's office who worked on these audits, with the leadership of amanda and kay. we also want to thank the staff and leadership at public works who really provided us with

full cooperation and collaboration, and the data that we requested to make sure that we do issue a report that is substantive and that is value led. as far as we want to thank the city attorney office of contract administration and the ethics commission for providing us their input. with that, we're happy to answer any questions you may have. >> supervisor mar: thank you so much, mr. de la rosa and mr. wrightstrom for your presentation and the work, and also, controller rosenfeld for this really important review. i just had a few questions that i wanted to ask and also, i know my colleagues do, as well. first of all, i guess i just want to make this clear. it wasn't clear in your presentation, but it is in the review report. for nine years, mr. nuru had

uni lateral authority to grant contracts of over $600,000 with no oversight. not only did he have that unilateral authority, but he granted that power to three others. so when did this practice end? >> from our understanding, the process is still in place via the designation of the -- of the department head as the primary approver is still in existence, with the delegated authority to the deputies. >> if i could just add to that, as well, in addition to that, i'd like to call out the work and interim controls that were put in place on february 3, also outlining, effective immediately, that d.p.w. staff had to put into place additional controls which

included procuring quotes from at least three qualified contracts, and so that memo was dated -- contractors, and so that memo was dated february 3, requiring five on requirements for approval on contracts, shelter and housing, and public contracts emergencies. >> supervisor mar: thank you. so the acting director did at least put some controls into place on february 23. got it. well, i just want to state in plain language that public officials can accept an otherwise illegal gift if it comes from a friend. to your knowledge, is there a clear legal standard for long-term "personal friend"? >> that's an answer that we don't have today, supervisor or chair mar, so we'll take that

back as a legal question, and we'll be reviewing that as we look at subsequent reports with the city attorney's office. so thank you for the question, but we can't answer them all today. >> supervisor mar: this is a follow-up comment, but it seems to me that long-term friendships would increase the number of contracts and sweetheart deals, especially if that -- [inaudible] >> supervisor mar: so i appreciate you really looking into this issue further. >> thank you. >> supervisor mar: and then finally, looking into the f.b.i. charges that prompted

th th this review -- [inaudible] >> that's a really good question. one thing that we did not have access to that the f.b.i. had is certainly the bank transaction information, wiretapping, and access to the various communication that did not happen. i think that we do have, and it showed as part of -- some of the assessment is that they do have -- that the department of public works do have and have implemented controls that mitigate the weaknesses at any given time. it's never a given that they're going to be weeding out the fraud and waste that we

certainly don't want to be perpetrated. >> i'd like to echo that, as well, chair mar, that the internal control environment is really a balancing of the risks and controls. there's a potential for bad actors to occur, and also, if it's too strong and too stringent, departments may look for shortcuts or other control overrides, so as we're doing our assessments, we're trying to figure out what is enough? where has the world change, and now with transparency and consistency, where can the city have more transparency with the bidding process, the award process to build public trust, so more to come in those areas. >> supervisor mar: thank you. supervisor peskin, you had some questions? >> supervisor peskin: thank you, chair mar. so first of all, thank you to the controller's office, and

were it not for covid-19, i know that we would have gotten this much earlier. so -- but better now than never, so here we go. and i'll just take them in order. you said that the authority that was delegated by mayor lee in the year 2011 to director nuru was then subsequently delegated to three deputy directors, and who were those deputy directors? >> i believe they were the -- the administration finance -- and actually, if i -- let's

see...let us pull it up actually. give us a few seconds. it's operations, engineering, and architecture. >> supervisor peskin: and engineering and architecture was john thomas? >> i believe so, if that is -- because we only have the organizational structure that we can. >> we can confirm, supervisor. >> yeah, we can confirm, but i think it looks like fred sikes was the deputy. >> supervisor peskin: and you

say was? >> actually, no, it was john thomas, correct, at the time. fred was the one at the time, and john thomas was the subsequent deputy director. >> supervisor peskin: right. and this is probably not within the controller's purview, but -- and i don't know if there's anybody who's invited to this, chair mar, but relative to who these three individuals were, if we want to get them to testify, and not necessarily because they misused that delegate of authority, but to the extent that mayor lee was not required to sign any documents, and then delegated that authority to mr. nuru, who did not have to sign any documents. and now we know that $4 million

to $5 million in a certain portion of contracting, that was done with no oversight whatsoever. somebody had to sign those, and i want to know if they were in any undue pressure, and i want to know, for lack of a better term, whether they were conspireing with director nuru. i would like to get information to that -- on that. i don't have the slides. this is the problem with doing this -- but that's okay. i can try to do this relative to the -- what is really, i have to say, one of the most tragic aspects of one of the most nefarious acts that i've

seen in 30 years, to try to increase programs to housing, the board of supervisors grant granted director nuru that authority. but rather than rescinding that authority by undoing what we did -- and i raised questions at that time and expressed concerns at that time, but ultimately, in the interest of delivering services as quickly as possible and getting rid of the supervisorial role that

supervisors play, the checks and balances role, why is the recommendation that we should get the department to adhere to these procedures rather than take those procedures away from them? if you've got a crooked department head, what guarantee do you have that a crook is going to adhere to procedures that are not laws? and i ask that in other recommendations where you say, well, we need guidelines. in certain other places, for instance, around grants, you suggest changes to the code. that's why. but in other places, like the prequalified bidder recommendation, you suggest guidelines instead of code changes, so that's really a question to the controller's office as to -- i in no way mean to be offensive, and i sincerely appreciate the work that you've done in this sordid

chapter, but guidelines aren't laws. guidelines are suggestions. what's your response? >> your point's well taken, supervisor. this is a preliminary assessment of the controls that the current d.p.w. director has implemented. that can be done today, to the degree they can also be codified, we're considering additional strengthening of some of our processes as we learn more, so we are open to every suggestion, as well. not just in that recommendation, but others, as well. so whether it be recommendations, whether it be guidelines, or full codification. >> supervisor peskin: the thing that is just mindboggling is

that department heads, not just in public works, don't seem to use the extraordinary powers for dealing with crooked contractors. why. do you have any analysis of that? >> one of our work products that is underway is the department process, so if i may, i'll take those questions back, and we'll hold off the answers as we finish that work and prepare that for you. >> supervisor peskin: this seems to me that if you're a crooked contractor or a malfeasant contractor, it should not be in the city's discretion. you should be out. the second we find that out, you don't get to work for the city and county of san francisco ever again. and then relative to the tone

at the top, it sounds like the controller's office did interviews of staff. can you tell us how extensive those interviews were, how they worked, whether or not anybody revealed more wrongdoing or collusion to you? how many were conducted? who -- you know, how -- how that worked and whether or not you found a history of complaints? because part of what, i mean, chair mar was asking is -- and granted, yes, i suspect we'll never have the ability to wiretap -- i mean, perhaps the d.a.s office can do that, and the f.b.i. can do that, but that's not in the whistleblower department or our d.h.s., department of human services does, but there are indicators. was there a history of internal

complaints that people like me didn't get to see? >> on the extensiveness of our interviews, we -- we conducted -- it's not the most extensive, i have to say, because we wanted to provide a work product that was going to be available. we conducted a little over a dozen interviews amongst various stakeholders within public works, most of which are on the department and the manager level which were part of the purchasing decision making within the department itself. so we did not go through all of the layers within the organization, so that's -- that's something that we can certainly include as part of our future assessments, but for this one, we -- we took a much more limited approach, given the time constraints at the time. as far as what we knew in terms

of other complaints, one thing that we did consider as part of the assessments, given that we have our whistleblower program within the controller's office, we used information from that to leverage some of the findings and the information that we gathered as part of our assessment. >> and if i may add to that, supervisor peskin, this is a balance -- our focus on these interviews in particular were on the process and the procedures and also on the practices of the department for contracting. in addition to that, we would want to preserve the integrity of the investigation alleged to potential wrongdoing. >> supervisor peskin: no, and i

know that the city attorney's office has been delving deeply, and some of that, we're not privy to, and some of the things are leading to things that we're seeing the federal bureau of investigation and the attorney's office pursuing. i certainly agree with that in that we don't want to compromise any ongoing investigations. with regard to the prequalified bidder pool and the contracting repeatedly with certain vendors, is there any evidence or have we already publicly seen whether those are some of the vendors that have been publicly identified as having done untoward favors for mr. nuru? >> yes, there was definitely one example that we found in

which the contractor was named as one of the subpoenaed under the city attorney investigations. >> supervisor peskin: and just in the intervening few minutes, do we now know who the three deputy department directors were? >> yes. >> we have, for part of the time of the subject time period, supervisor. we can provide those names to you, as well as look at the h.r. records to look at for the entire period that we knew who was acting and/or the former. >> i've actually got them from the team. so the three that they are inquiring about are larry stringer, deputy director of operations, edgar lopez, deputy director under building design and construction and city architect. as well as the third is fred

sykes, deputy director and engine engineer. >> supervisor peskin: and this was what time period? >> the time period -- this is based on data we collected at the time, so i believe this is 20 -- >> in the idea of completeness, we'd like to get back to you, but we're happy to provide that to you, supervisor. >> supervisor peskin: okay. and then, did any of those deputy department heads have to sign off on any of that $14 million worth of contracts that had no demonstrable paperwork of any kind whatsoever? >> our guess is yes, but we will get back to you on a more precise picture of how much

they were involved in these department decisions. >> supervisor peskin: look, i don't think that any of us thought this was going on, but once this was discovered in january, it's now july, and i would love to know, and the public deserves to know, as well as the 11 city legislators that represent $850,000 deserve to know right now who signed off on what when. next, i just want to say that after you released the report, within hours, there was a press release from the mayor saying that she had taken back that delegation of authority, but what you said a few minutes ago, as far as you knew, that delegation of authority was still at the department. >> actually, i misspoke on that one, and you're correct, supervisor peskin, that since monday, that that has been

changed and reflected as you mentioned. >> supervisor peskin: and i know that you're not in a position to answer the close friend exception, but i do note that andrew shen, council to the ethics commission, is on this meeting, and perhaps he can respond to those issues. >> yes. the matter that supervisor mar was referring to, it's set forth in an effeicacy regulation. we would like to the regulation itself as well as these efficacy advice letters. >> supervisor peskin: and as well that the fppc is not the local ethic body, and our body

is the ethics commission, we could get rid of that? >> yes, supervisor peskin, we could be more stringent in our rules. >> supervisor peskin: i here by ask that you draft the closing of that new poll that i never even knew existed. and i realize that you are the ethics commission yourself, and i don't see anyone on here from ethics, but i have to, and my ten colleagues have to, and i think every department head has to file their form 700s electronically on-line. you can find them at the s.f. ethics website. they are searchable, but what i now understand is there are many other city employees that have to file them by paper, and

they're not discoverable unless you go down to the department and ask them to produce the form 700s. generally, when a department figures out a piece of software exists -- i've been using it for years. i've filed my form 700 every year on-line -- it's easy to expand that to the rest of the universe. do you have any idea why this project is taking so long? it's my recollection that the board fully funded this at ethics. i'm not a scientist, but if you do it for several department heads, you should be able to do it for all employees at not that much more time or cost. >> yes, supervisor peskin. i'm afraid that i cannot speak for the ethics commission on

that, but it's my understanding that they were planning on making the form 700 available on-line later this year. >> supervisor peskin: they've already said that. >> well, i can't say any more to it. >> supervisor peskin: if we have to take more money for it, so be it. but before you guys make a recommendation that the board should fully fund, i think it is incumbent on the controller's office to also say in that recommendation whether it's been fully funded, what the constraints are for timely performance rather than just saying hey, it's on the board, you know? it's not fully funded, so tell us whether or not the ethics commission is or is not on the top of their game as it relates to electronic filing for all people who are subject to statements of economic

interest. i've got plenty more, but i will stop with that. >> supervisor mar: supervisor haney? >> supervisor haney: thank you, and those were many of the questions and points that i wanted to make. i want to thank my colleagues for their leadership and attention on this. i did announce on tuesday that we are working on a number of pieces of legislation, includi including closing the b.f.f. exemption, so i would love to work with you on that, supervisors peskin and mar. i know both of you flagged just how ridiculous and mindboggling that is, that because you can say someone's been your friend for some period of time, that they can give you these huge and unreported gifts. it's just wrong on its face, and there are many things in this report that come up that are unusually problematic on

its face. i want to ask a couple of more questions about this deferral of oversight authority. they have oversight on the commission other than from the department of public works, is that correct? >> that's correct. >> supervisor haney: and does the -- does chapter 6 designate in any sort of way who that authority, in the absence of a commission, can be delegated to? can it be delegated to anyone? does it have to be a certain type of authority? how is that defined? >> what we -- at least from the public works example that we know, because in the absence of the commission, the mayor basically has the -- the

authority to approve, or the mayor's designee. in the office of public works, it was designated to the department of public works director. >> supervisor haney: so basically because of a lack of a commission, it automatically went to the mayor, and then, the mayor decided to give it back to the director, so the director was their own oversight body. >> fox guarding the henhouse. >> that's our understanding. >> supervisor haney: and underscoring the importance of restoring oversight to this department. it creates a huge problem, where this department is uniquely exposed with regards to a lack of oversight, and that makes it, i think particularly in a position where these sort of things can happen because you have to defer to the mayor, and the mayor says, i don't know what

to do with this and gives it back to the director, which is totally contradictory to the purpose of having oversight on these commissions. and i know that the report recommends that the -- the over -- that the deferral of the oversight be cancelled and given elsewhere. so the mayor cancelled it. does that now mean that the mayor has oversight again and the final approval? >> i believe that is the situation, yeah. >> supervisor haney: okay. and is there any recommendation as to whether that's the right structure for this or whether there's another, you know -- i mean, could it be deferred to someone else altogether, other than the mayor, or delegated to someone else? >> supervisor haney, that's a good question. we don't have a final answer to it. that's part of our -- part of our approach, is doing a

preliminary assessment to make sure we're getting these questions as well as to further consult with the city attorney on what lemgs lay tiff changes might be needed -- legislatives that might be needed to define that. >> supervisor haney: and on a few of these items, it seems like there were far too few checks and balances. that's on the homeless services streamlining services as well as the contractor pool, so we will need to tighten those in various ways and correct for some of the major issues that existed with them. i want to ask you a couple questions about the whistleblower program because in light of what supervisor peskin brought up of how we expect -- it's one thing to correct the laws, which -- and the loopholes and all of that is hugely crucial, but how do

we expect that our government can adequately, in the lack of a better word, police itself, so how do we know this is happening? this has been going on for years from director nuru. it could have been going on longer than that because we only have what's come out recently. there's no reason to believe this sort of behavior wasn't happening 15, 20 years ago. can you explain, there were 284 whistleblower complaints so far in 2020. how does that compare to other years? and i don't know if you are able to say so, but i also know that there are 54 that went to the public integrity tip line. >> supervisor haney: are you able to say how many of those went to public works or how do

you categorize these? >> yeah. to the very first supervisor question that you had, the number of complaints that we've been fielding, the number has been increasing over the last few years. part of that effort that we have been very proactive in terms of a program of continuing to communicate to the departments our existence and what we can do with the information that they have. in terms of the specific public integrity line that we started, you know, in response to the nuru investigations back in february, we basically fielded them. there's 50-plus -- 54, i believe, complaints or tips that we gathered. we provided the city attorney

with all of the tips that were necessary for them to continue to provide more leads into their investigation. some of them that we fielded in the public integrity hotline were whistleblower complaints not only related to the nuru investigations. we'll get back to you on the other breakdown in terms of how much of that is public work. we're actually issuing our year-end annual report in the next few weeks. >> supervisor haney: and did it -- is it fair to say that there's a lot more investigation and analysis that needs to be done on these topics? >> we're learning more information every day, supervisor. that's the important of the tip line as well as the public

integrity tip line, and our report will give you a breakdown of the large departments, so happy to talk to you about that as soon as we publish it. >> supervisor haney: are there specific topics that you identified in this report or more broadly that your office has identified as a need for a lot further investigation? and with that, what are the next steps for your office? i mean, one of the concerns that i have -- and i understand that we have, you know, recently been through a pandemic, and i'm sure you all are being pulled in all sorts of different directions. but it has been, i guess, about five months since this process first started, and there's a lot more that needs to be investigated and analyzed and

reported on. what are the next steps for your office, and what topics are you going to be working on? how can you possibly do all of this? >> yeah. >> thanks a lot, supervisor. if i may, mark, we're learning a lot more every day. what we know so far is that the additional work product related to outside accounts and friends of organizations in particular, as well as what the ethical standards are for commission contract approval processes, including contracts at s.f.o. will be one of the next areas, as well as the awarding of contracts through d.b.i. it is a great deal of work. we do have folks that are able to do much of this skilled work and investigation. some of this does include on-site review of materials.

we take this very seriously, and this is part of our duty and our service to the city, and so thank you for all of your support, as well. >> and just quickly to add to that, the first two that todd mentioned that we're working on, the assessment as well as the airport, ethical standards surrounding commissions, we started the field work on those two way before covid, so those two are actually far along in terms of our report writing, and those are going to be upcoming and forthcoming in the next few weeks, with the friend being the next one to be publicly available. >> supervisor haney: great. well, i do appreciate all of the work, and it's a huge amount. i want to underscore a large

part of the reason why i think there's a couple of levels of additional oversight and investigation that is required to make sure we go through all this and correct all the loopholes and problems in how the systems work, you know, we are -- i put forward, with a number of others and supervisor mar around a special investigator to be able to really follow up and go deeper on some of these things that i think your office has really uncovered in really important ways, but we need to go further, and i do think that looking at what has come in front of us, this is really underscoring the need for that. and also, the two proposals that are in front of us, which is a commission over at d.p.w., which obviously is a huge, glaring gap in oversight at this department.

i think this is wonderful work that you're doing. it's way more than what we thought needed to be done. as i said, i've started the process on tuesday to address some of these things, including putting an investigation around the contractor pool and streamlining. and in addition, one other thing that didn't come up so much in this report but has come up in the last few months -- oh, and also, the grant piece, which i think is particularly important with d.p.w., but also, the donations to, like, shell nonprofits that are really behested payments that are never reported, and then kickbacks with these

required donations to -- to nonprofits, some of which are not even real nonprofits by contractors at the behest of bureaucrats is a huge problem. i hope when you look at the friends piece of it, that's also a piece of what you look at. it's not just that they're getting people to donate to friends of. they're actually getting people to donate to friends of, like the lefty o'doul charity, which then turns around and donates to the department, as well. there are a nb umber of things that we can do to investigate better on our behalf, and we can put a number of things in

place. >> supervisor mar: supervisor peskin? >> supervisor peskin: i assume we're going to have a presentation by the city attorney's office, as well? >> supervisor mar: yes. >> supervisor peskin: i'll hold my questions until after that. >> supervisor mar: why don't we go to the investigation by the city attorney's office. i'd like to welcome deputy city attorney ann pearson. i would like to note that unlike the structural review by the controller's office, the city attorney's office is looking for evidence for potential crimes or charges, so because of that, they may not be able to be as forthcoming as we would like.

with that, deputy city attorney ann pearson. >> thank you. i'm joined by deputy city attorney andrew shen, who would be happy to answer questions pertaining to ethics. [inaudible] >> -- a former commissioner of the immigrant rights commission, balmour fernandez, and walter huang, who's a contract official. the law enforcement tools that

are used to uncover these crimes included search warrants, secret grand jury subpoenas for bank records, and require taps that allowed the f.b.i. to listen in on conversations between coconspirators. based on the allegations against mr. nuru, we interviewed tom hui, who's the former director of d.b.i. we reviewed his e-mails and report reported our findings to the mayor, who immediately

recommended his removal. this took place before the shutdown in march. because of the pandemic, many of our interviews were delayed for about two months, but since the beginning of june, we've begun working with various departments to direct employees to participate in interviews by video. the city attorney has three priorities that i want to talk about. identify employee misconduct to support the removal of unethical employees and officials, and recovering illicit gains for the benefit of taxpayers. now there are strict limits to what can be disclosed publicly about public individuals while charges are pending. there are things today that i cannot say. employees have privacy rights

and personnel actions, and any compelled statements made by an employee as part of a personal investigation could jeopardize the integrity of any investigations by city officials. firs let me talk a little bit more about the three priorities that i outlined before. the first one being official misconduct and employee investigations. criminal allegations are not evidence. criminal charges standing alone will not support terminations of an employee or termination of a contract for cause. the city attorney's office has begun the difficult and prolonged work of developing independent evidence to support the release of employees

involved in misconduct. so to date, mohamed nuru resigned as he was about to be terminated. tom hui resigned as he was about to be terminated. linda creighton with the airport resigned, and florence kang has been removed. we are focusing our efforts on gifts and bribes from improper sources and improper contracting positions. with the help of the controller's office, our office has reviewed every contractor grant with an entity implicated in the criminal allegations to see if there's a basis to

terminate the contract or debar the contractor. the city's contract with nick bovis for toilets, for example, has been terminated. the p.u.c., with the city's help, has determined azulworks to be disbarred for a contract it is now seeking. az azulworks would be entitled to an appeal hearing. the city attorney is looking at the debarment process for a number of contractors, but absent a conviction, it can be difficult for the city to show willfulness misconduct. our third priority is recovering illicit gains. in light of the announcement

that walter huang is pleading guilty in his involvement with the city, we are reviewing every contract that he had a part of with the city and bar those entities from doing further business with the city. as part of this investigation, we are identifying areas in the city's gift laws. we're looking at issues now, and we'll be reporting back to the board of supervisors on our findings after we have a better sense of where their rules

might be best revised to strengthen improper contracts through gifts and favors. i'd also like to note in the midst of all this, our office's separate investigation into building and check fraud by former building commission and president rodrigo sanchtos ledo criminal charges against him. he was charged with multiple counts of bank fraud for stealing funds from clients intended to pay for city permits. these allegations, as well as multiple allegations of permit fraud were included in a civil lawsuit that our office brought against mr. santos. so with that, i will conclude my remarks. i am available for questions, as is deputy city attorney shen.

>> supervisor mar: thank you very much, deputy city attorney pearson. i just have, like, one question before i allow my colleagues to speak. i was wondering if you share more on the construction or process of the city work that you just described. many of the complaints coming to light now date back years or, in some cases decades? so my question is what could have found these out earlier or prevented them, and what steps of the county attorney's investigation? >> well, we unfortunately lack some of the investigation tools that the f.b.i. has. we don't have the ability to listen in on conversations and get the wiretaps, but we do look into every complaint that's filed, either through the whistle blower's office or that's filed with our office,

and we will continue to investigate every complaint that comes to our office. >> supervisor mar: so this -- basically, this -- the city attorney's investigatory work on this type of conduct are complaint driven? >> they are complaint driven. we lack some of the tools that i mentioned. we have the ability, though, to, through departments require employees to discuss with us what's gone on. we have subpoena authority, civil subpoena authority, but we lack some of the tools that assist the f.b.i. in this instance. >> supervisor mar: thank you. supervisor peskin? >> supervisor peskin: thank you, chair mar. miss pearson touched on everything i was going to ask. but there is, within the city and county of san francisco, two agencies that have other authorities. one is the ethics commission, and the other is the district attorney's office.

your office is a civil office and has certain duties and powers relative to the civil side, but on the criminal side, we do have a d.a.s office, and the city attorney has been within the bounds of what is legal and appropriate, been working with the u.s. attorney's office and federal bureau of investigation without compromising or releasing your internal investigations. in what circumstances does this office report to the city attorney's office for this time of crime? >> i don >> i'd be happy to follow up with you on that information.

>> supervisor peskin: and i was actually having this conversation with one of my colleagues the other day, and in this particular case, and in my 20 on and off years on the board, when wrongdoing is found that is either short of criminal wrongdoing or because we don't refer a case to a d.a. or the d.a. doesn't take the case or the case isn't strong enough or they don't charge the case, what happens is the wrong doer disappears into the night, and we never hear anything about it again. tom hui would be an example of that, although it was more public and covered in the press and what-have-you. this committee meets in private closed session to settle lawsuits, and often in those closed sessions, one of us says, well, what happened to the city employee who had,

unbeknownst to us -- we've got 35,000 employees and a few are bad apples -- unbeknownst to us had a long history of sexual harassment or workplace behaviors, and occasionally, the department head or city attorney says that individual no longer works for us. but there's never any -- i'll use the word, overt punishment short of having at the top -- it let --

[inaudible] >> supervisor peskin: so at any rate -- and i realize all of these are protected and under personnel confidential matters that are covered under state, federal, and local law. >> supervisor mar: supervisor haney? >> supervisor haney: thank you, and can you, deputy city attorney pearson and all of the folks in your office who have been doing extraordinary work to investigate this even without some of the tools that obviously the federal government has. it's just been doing so much to unearth a lot of the issues here. i -- you know, one of the things that i'm concerned about, and i want to know how you all approach this. when you have people that have engaged in conduct like this on the private side, there are often a string of victims who

they have left behind that have lost some things, in some cases, irreparably. in these cases, would we go through and try to look back at each of these instances of wrongdoing as a way to look at what type of support or repairing or whatever it is could be done for the people that were harmed, and in some cases, they were harmed potentially due to things we should have known, and i'll given a story here of rodrigo santos. there were hundreds of checks

that people had written to him that were, in many cases, intended for d.b.i. or for others that he basically just pocketed, which means that there may be hundreds of small property owners, small businesses, and others who maybe lost their homes or lost their businesses because they gave a check to rodrigo that they thought was going to d.b.i., that they were in violation of some sort of repair that caused them to lose their home. i'm not saying that as a hypothetical, i think i actually know an elderly filipino couple who lost their home because rodrigo somehow got involved in helping them with repairs, and they don't understand really what happened because they thought they handled everything and did everything they were supposed

to, and rodrigo probably stole their money. they lost everything, so how do we actually investigate to help the people that were harmed, not just to hold the back folks accountable? >> supervisor haney, that's a great question, and it does not surprise me that the consequences of this behavior is felt far and wide, and that the damage is not just to the city but to provide individuals who may have lost money, who may have lost contracts, all those things. we will follow these investigations where they take us. we represent the city and county, and we will act on behalf of the city and uncover money lost to the city and look into what action we can take on

behalf of individuals in the city who have been harmed. >> supervisor haney: i appreciate that. i'm just concerned that we're sort of -- as you said, we're in kind of a tough place there because we're uncovering individuals who may have harmed people outside of the city which candidly, could create some liabilities for the city for not putting a stop to that. and connected to this, for d.b.i., hundreds of checks that were intended for d.b.i. that went into the pocket of somebody who was the most frequent flier at the d.b.i. office, and the fact that they didn't know that is, like, hard to believe. so i think following it in terms of -- i'm sure you're following it in government, and even though they may not have liability, what sort of checks

should be there to connect the sort of -- to be able to identify bad behavior as it's happening. if you've got 30 people who come into your office and say, well, i paid, and i did it through rodrigo, and now, i need repairs, you should be able to put a stop to it without it going this far, and that doesn't seem to have happened. the other thing i wanted to bring up, if you could clarify the process by which somebody forfeits their pension. i was shocked to find out that, essentially, you have to be convicted of a crime of moral terpitude to forfeit your pension, and are there any other processes that we have to -- and it has to be related

to your job. can you clarify what that is and what options the city has when it comes to somebody's pension for somebody who may have been stealing from the city? >> you're exactly right, supervisor haney. there are provisions in the charter that govern the circumstances under which someone is required to forfeit their pension, and those circumstances are very narrow and do require a conviction for a crime involving falsity that's committed in the course of your job. and once that conviction occurs, then, there are administrative procedures to proceed for the forfeiture, but it is very narrow, and that exists in our charter. >> supervisor haney: and that's the only way. you have to be convicted, and then, we have to go and seek

for it to be. okay. >> supervisor mar: supervisor haney, are you done? >> supervisor haney: i'm all done. thank you. >> supervisor mar: well, thank you, deputy city attorney pearson. thanks to mr. ridestrom and mr. de la rosa for engaging in the discussion and your really important work into the investigation into this widespread and pretty outrageous and disturbing misconduct and corruption here in the city, yeah. so this has been a helpful hearing just to get an update on the investigation that we're doing here in the city to not only rid out the misconduct

that's happened but take really bolder and proactive steps to keep this from happening again. why don't we go to public comment. mr. clerk, are there any callers in the queue? mr. qu, please let us know if there are any callers in the queue. for those in the queue, please wait until you're prompted to begin. the system will tell you your line has been unmuted. for those watching on cable channel 26 or via streaming line or sfgovtv, please call in by following the instructions on your screen. dialing 408-418-9388, enter the meeting i.d. 1460991337.

press the pound symbol twice, and then press star, followed by three to speak. mr. qu, do we have any callers who have connected to our meeting? >> operator: yes, there are currently four callers in the queue. >> clerk: caller, go ahead. >> supervisors, i'm very, very interested in the title of this hearing which said investigations into public interruption. i would like to bring to your attention that any person here has access to some of the public avenues that they take. for some reason, our sunshine task force does not work, and

if you look at the commission, you all can dive into it. it does not work, so the taxpayer goes to the controller's office, and you can do all the heavy lifting and provide it to the controller's office, and the controller's office works with the city attorney. and i say you can do all the heavy lifting, which i mean empirical data, and it takes years. and as one of you all's supervisors stated, you could ask the district attorney, and in the past, we did not have a good district attorney. we've got a new district attorney now, and some of you are very familiar with him.

[inaudible] >> clerk: thank you for your comments. do we have the next speaker, please. >> hello. is it my turn? >> clerk: yes, it is. >> i'm calling to ask for a

moratorium on ficus trees removal. >> clerk: could we pause the speaker's time for a moment. speaker, at the moment right here, the government audit and oversight committee is hearing a matter of public corruption in the city. it's the hearing on progress on an investigation into public corruption. that is what we're taking comment on right now. are you still there? >> yes, yes, i understand. that's what i'm talking about. >> clerk: okay. >> i'm talking about nuru, and the order for these ficus trees to be removed came from nuru. it did not originate from the bureau of you aurban forestry, did not originate from the public. i've lived in this neighborhood for 14 years. we've had no problem with our ficus trees.

this neighborhood is being ravaged. this directly contradicts the information from arbor pro, the city paid $500,000 to do an inventory from our tree and make a recommendation. they recommended for one ficus tree to be removed and the others to simply be groomed. right now, they're decimating our neighborhood, and it doesn't make any sense. buck is saying that these trees pose a danger, but i've lived here for 18 years. there has been no issues with the ficus trees, and these trees are 40 years old. it takes 40 years to replace a 40-year-old tree, and the reasons they've given makes no sense whatsoever, and this came from nuru sometime in 2019, this order that thousands of

ficus trees thoroughout the ciy needs to be removed. san francisco has one of the smallest tree canopies in the city, and we're losing massive amounts of our canopy on an order that came from nuru. we can't wait for an investigation because the trees will be gone. so i'm really urging you to look into this. there's no reason for these trees to be removed, and it is a huge loss. additionally, d.p.w. isn't following the proper notification processes. they're supposed to put notices on the trees 30 days before removal. they're not doing that. when we objected earlier this week, they said nothing more would happen until late july -- >> clerk: thank you for your comments. mr. qu, can we be connected to

the next speaker, please. >> hello. [inaudible] >> can you hear me? >> clerk: yes, we can hear you. your time begins now. >> okay. [inaudible] >> with regards to tree maintenance and right lane viet n nam -- removal, i'd like to know what sorts of experience arborists are required to have. [inaudible]

>> in last night's boathank yo.

mr. qu, could we have the next speaker, please. >> linda chapman. by the way, remember months ago, i warned you when our urban canopy which was planted by nob hill neighbors that was

destroyed? that's not what i called about, nor did i call you to tell you about how i lost my home due to the corruption of d.b.i., my second home on nob hill, art deco home that i loved. any way, what i really called about was the appalling results of the hearing that you -- that you held on april 30 of the contracts, the crazy contracting that was done with the hotels and that were then left empty. and, you know, again, i've said that i believe that the controller, the city attorney ought to be able to recover some of that money. i want to mention that, you

know, what you could do is look at the way the federal government handles contracting, for example. you know, it's like hiring. the line managers and the program managers, like i was, we don't sign the contracts. i would go to hotels to make arrangements for contracts and so forth, but only the warranted contracting officers could do it. it's like human resources. they have to protect the civil service, similar to contractors protect contracting officers who were warranted, who are trained and did an apprenticeship and then are certified are allowed to do the contract. and, you know, just crazy decisions were made on those hotels. you don't pay hotels to hold rooms open. >> clerk: thank you for your

comment. mr. qu, do we have anymore speakers? >> hello? >> clerk: yes, your time begins now. >> hello, yes, can you hear me? >> clerk: yes, we can. >> yes, well, my name's stacey bullar, and first of all, i've been listening to you for a long time, and i don't know how you have the stamina to keep going. my mind is swimming. but any way, i'm calling because i, too, am concerned about the process that's involved in removing our street trees, and in fact, this weekend, seven trees were cut down on market street and

octavia street, and it was not really permitted behavior, and we need to know who was responsible for that. yes, ficus trees were pinpointed by mohamed nuru while ed lee was mayor. it it's long documented about removing them because they say they're unsafe and they fall down on people, but when you look at the statistics, they are way down the list of

dangerous. the ones more dangerous are even more numerous than the ficus trees, so i think it's a leftover crink that this order existed. i hope someone will look into it to have it desist. thank you for your work. it's good to have someone opening pages and looking at it. thank you for your attention. >> clerk: thank you for your comments. mr. qu, do we have anymore speakers? >> operator: mr. chair, that completes the queue. >> supervisor mar: thank you, operations, and mr. clerk, hearing no further callers, public comment is now closed. colleagues, i just wanted to thank you, and also the representatives from the city attorney's office for this

robust discussion about hearing about investigations into public corruption in our city. these investigations and public discussions are ongoing, but they've already led to some important actions, you know, both by mayor breed and the acting director of public works have taken steps to address the issues. even at the hearing today, committee members -- colleagues, you announced some legislation that you're working on or sponsoring, and then, there's the even bigger proposals for systemic and instructal changes, such as creating oversight, much needed oversight to the department of public works and also on creating a new office of the public advocate that would address these actions more proactively and systemically. so i look forward to continuing these important discussions in the g.a.o. committee, especially as the controller's

office released their zsh-their zs -- their subsequent reports. colleagues, do you have any more comments? >> supervisor peskin: thank you for bringing this report and thank you to the city attorney for their work during this unfortunate chapter. in addition, a piece of legislation that i asked the city attorney to draft and welcome supervisor haney's desire to work collaboratively on that. i also have requested legislation from the city attorney with regard to rescinding the sanction that the board was asked to pass and indeed did pass with regard to code section 67.7 and 21-b.

it's a pretty easy section to pass, and i hope that we do this tuesday. >> supervisor mar: thank you. with that, colleagues, i ask that we continue this to the call of the chair. on that motion, mr. clerk, call the roll. >> clerk: on the motion to continue the item to the call of the chair -- [roll call] >> clerk: mr. chair, there are three ayes. >> supervisor mar: thank you, mr. clerk. can you please call items 6 through 11 for closed session? >> clerk: items 6 through 11 are items, resolutions, and lawsuits on a closed session agenda. members of the public who wish to make public comment should call 408-418-9388, enter the

meeting i.d. 1460991337. press pound twice and then star-three to enter the queue to speak. >> supervisor mar: mr. clerk, do we have any callers on the line? >> clerk: mr. qu, do we have any caller in the queue for this item on the agenda? >> operator: there are no callers in the queue. >> supervisor mar: so seeing no public comment, public comment is now closed. mr. clerk, please call the roll. >> clerk: on the motion to go into closed session -- [roll call] >> clerk: mr. chair, there are three ayes. >> supervisor mar: thank you. we will now >> contact tracing is

>> clerk: thank you, mr. chair. while the commission was in closed session, they voted unanimously to recommend six matters for consideration. >> supervisor mar: thank you. i would like to make a motion to not disclose the matters in closed session. clerk, call the roll. >> clerk: on the motion not to disclose -- [roll call] >> clerk: mr. chair, there are three ayes. >> supervisor mar: thank you, mr. clerk.

is there any further business today? >> clerk: mr. chair, that concludes the agenda. >> supervisor mar: we are adjourned. >> president bleiman: i am the commission president. to protect the members, the city employees and the public, the city hall meeting rooms are closed, however, the members and employees will be participating in the meeting remotely. and the precaution is taken pursuant to the various local state and federal orders, declarations and directives, the commission members and employees attend through a video conference and participate in the meeting to the same extent as if physically present. public comment is available on each agenda item on this agenda. both channel 26 and sfgov-tv.org

are streaming the number across the screen. each speaker will be allowed two minutes to speak. comments are opportunities to speak during the public comment period are via phone. by calling 1-(408)-418-9388. again, 1-(408)-418-9388. and then the ak says code is 146 069 9630. again, 146 069 9630. you will be in listening mode only. when your time of interest comes up, dial star, 3, to be added to the speaker line. please call from a quiet location and speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television and radio. alternatively, wile we recommend that you use the call-in number for public comment you may submit a written public comment

through the chat function on the webx meeting platform when it's time to make public comment on the agenda item. thank you, sfgov-tv and media services for sharing this meeting with the public. we'll start with a roll call. >> clerk: commissioner perez. here. vice president caminong. here. commissioner thomas. here. commissioner lee. here. commissioner falzon. here. president bleiman. here. and welcome commissioner wayne. >> thank you, here. >> president bleiman: okay, roll call is finished and the first order of business is the general public comment. these are for any agenda items -- i'm sorry -- any items

not on the agenda and we will look now to see if there's any public comment on this item. >> i'm looking right now to see if we have any. give me a little bit of time. okay. we have no one lined up for public comment in the queue. >> president bleiman: okay. hearing no public comment on this item, public comment is closed. and now agenda (indiscernible) for june 30th, and the next item is item number 2, the approval of our minutes from march 3, 2020. do we have a motion on the approval of the minutes of march 3, 2020? >> so moved.

>> second. >> president bleiman: all right, the motion is moved and seconded. any public comment on this agenda item? >> clerk: i'm checking to see and there's nobody with their hand raised in the call-in que queue. >> president bleiman: so seeing no public comment, public comment is closed. and the minutes have been approved, virtual gavel down. the next. >> the agenda item sell from our executive director. >> thank you, president bleiman and good evening, commissioners. it's been such a long time since i have seen you in person, however, it's really nice to see all of your faces in this box tonight. i have missed you all very much. and i want to thank you all for continuing to do the good work in your own communities to support the nightlife and the

entertainment industry during covid-19. and i wanted to briefly welcome commissioner cyn wang to the commission this evening. cyn, we're happy to have you with us tonight and we're all looking forward to work with you. since mid-march the commission has been in emergency response mode due to the covid crisis. our bars, nightclubs and live music venues and event organizers and musicians have been some of the hardest hit in the industry. many of whom were already financially yo vulnerable pre-covid. it's a rolling target, as well as the response to it. so just like our city departments, our offices have to stay nimble and informed as to the situation evolving. wile recognizing that we have been keeping up, i hope during the shelter-in-place, i want to spend time this evening

discussing the staff work because it has been weeks since we last met. which is pretty wild. so when covid happened, the e.c. began to shift gears away (indiscernible) when when permitting for amplified sound no longer being an option, we amplified the efforts and the communications coming into other local government agencies around the economic recovery and reopening processes. since the shelter-in-place began, our office has been pulling together and sharing the latest resources in order to educate the industry, working on leveraging our relationships with other city departments, and our online channels to get the word out as quickly as possible. some of the things that we have been communicating about are the rules, obviously, so the health orders and the directives are ever changing and the most recent communication that came out this past friday was about outdoor bar service without

food. and so we had to let everyone know that this had been delayed and this news came three days before bars were going to be allowed to have outdoor service without the bona fide meal requirement. so i know some of you on the commission may have felt the disappointment in that update more acutely than others. and some of the other things that we have been amplifying are the relief matters which i know that ben van hooten will get into more on later, and resources and just touching on the fact that he's communicating the work of the shared spaces program, and any updates around the abc, when they've been relaxing rules and the moratorium on the commercial evictions. also just sharing resources on financial assistance. during covid, he's worked to have a centralized online hub on sf.gov which is a big push for him and with support from ben

van hooten. so i encourage you to visit at sfgov-tv/nightliferelief. it's for the latest rules in our industry. we have also been focusing on (indiscernible) so both myself and the deputy director have presented in several educational webinars with the department of public health, city attorney and others. so any opportunity that we can to help to inform our industry and small businesses in general about the roles that we take advantage of. and ben van hooten and i are holding virtual office hours and consultations with the industry and so if anyone is watching right now that needs one-on-one assistance we can schedule some time with you. and we did a needs assessment and dylan worked really hard on this too with ben. we surveyed 170 plus industry

workers, including venues, bars, restaurants and other creatives, to understand the financial and social impacts of covid-19. some of the key findings i'll share with you and i'm happy to share the larger report as well. among the industry sectors and nightclubs had the highest number of respondents say they could only stay afloat for the next one to two months under the current conditions. and nearly half of respondents said they had a high amount of concern, a rating of eight to 10, but that their business will need to close permanently due to the financial impact of covid-19. the majority of those are bars, latin music venues and night nightclubs. that is some staggering news so i'm going to just take a breath. we are also working on convening the industry to share challenges and goals. and so thank you all for joining us for our virtual summit on may 18th. we had 500 plus attendees with

our first ever virtual happy hour which was very interesting one indeed. and we're also working on the economic recovery task force of which both ben and i are members and i'm also the policy lead and i have support from dylan on staff and ben van houten as a co-lead in providing support for the entertainment policy working group within the economic recovery task force. i have much more to tell you. so strap in, i'm sorry, a lot has happened. but we've also been working with the industry and fostered goodwill during the pandemic. so we worked on this dear s.x. campaign and a lot of you took part in. so thank you for that. and then, finally, we have been exploring legal pathways to safely allow outdoor entertainment activities to start again under the health order.

so i will keep you apprised of that effort. but we're essentially proposing possible entertainment pathways within the shared spaces program. essentially activating outdoor property potentially suspending certain portions of police code within this emergency to allow for an expansion of what your premises would be considered as to include outdoor. so i just want to kind of shift gears. i have one more kind of major update that i want to cover. and this is around staffing. so as a shelter-in-place began, the city quickly realized a need to support and to educate businesses that were deemed essential. in order to ensure the compliance with the order while operating. so very similar work to what we do already as a staff to ensure compliance with entertainment conditions, and so in response and under direction from the

city, the city formed a group with our office called "community, education and response team or cert" as we call it. so cert is responsible for responding to 311 complaints about san francisco businesses that may not be operating in compliance with the shelter-in-place order. this is really where no one in the agency is already actively investigating and educating around compliance. so we were informed and we were staffed by the whole team in various ways, and we're serving the roles of management, triage coordination and investigation. kaitlyn has taken on a huge leadership role in managing the day-to-day operations of this new group. and dylan provides the most up-to-date messaging and collateral. and crystal provides administrative support. beyond that we have 14 active

disaster workers working in the field, including our two (indiscernible) mike and tony. and we have three triage coordinators who work remotely. so it came from many city departments including d.b.i., s.f.o., treasurer and tax collector, and the office of labor standards and enforcement. we even have someone from the library working in triage. i think, you know, i just want to say that i think that it is a great thing that the city recognized that our group would be well suited for this work because of our history and because of that balance that we need to strike between the businesses and neighbors. we really take that strong educational approach with this group as well. and ensuring that these businesses just know, you know, if they aren't operating correctly, here's how we can bring them into compliance, as opposed to taking that

heavy-handed enforcement, especially when the businesses are already struggling. so, you know, i can give you many more cert statistics on the cert program, but i won't continue to bore you with that. i want to get going with the hearing. so just let me know if you have any questions about everything that i just covered. >> president bleiman: it looks like commissioner perez has a question. >> commissioner perez: hi, thank you so much for the report. can you guys hear me? if the virtual summit was recorded and available for viewing? >> yes, it is. and we have shared that link in the newsletter and dylan will go ahead and reshare it directly with you. >> commissioner perez: thank you. >> president bleiman: any other questions, commissioners? not seeing any. so director wylan, we just

appreciate all of the work that you have done. we have been communicating fairly regularly since this went down, also with ben van houten, which i have never seen him part his hair in that way. i kind of like it. i would say that you should do that more. so, yes, the amount of effort that you have put in and the team has put in is just staggering. what a crisis that we're dealing with here and so i appreciate everything, i speak for all of the commissioners. i think that it's a good testament to the good work that we have done here. that the city entrusted, you know, the entertainment commission department to -- to handle compliance for the new -- kind of the new normal for now. it is a really sticky topic. i mean, you have literally have business owners who are asked to shut down by the city. and then they maybe don't behave

by the same rules that the city gives them and there's definitely room for tension there. i think that it's really important that we handle it in a responsive way and in an emphit itic way and the -- empathetic way. and the fact that they entrust us with that, and kaitlyn and everybody else, it is really impressive and i'm kind of proud of us for all of that. so thank you for that. is there any public comment on this agenda item? >> clerk: so i'm going to just read again the instructions so members of the public who wish to provide public comment on this item should call 1-(408)-418-9388. and then access code 146 069 9630. and then dial star, 3. again, it's star, 3 to line up to speak. so that will raise your hand so i can allow you in. so let's just wait a moment.

see if there's anybody. i do not see any callers in the queue. >> president bleiman: so public comment is closed on this agenda item. gavel down. the next agenda item is number 4, which is an update on nightlife business assistance in response to covid-19. and this is from ben van houten, the business development manager with night the nightlife and entertainment sector with the office of economic and workforce development. >> thank you, president bleiman, and good morning goodand good e. it's nice to see you all virtually. i will recap what we have been doing in nightlife business assistance since the start of the pandemic and touching on and elaborating on a few of the pieces that director wylan identified in her report and then open to any questions on

any of this. you know, really we've been doing just a high -- really high volume, high and steady volume of one-on-one business assistance with nightlife businesses since the start of the pandemic. and it continues at that strong and steady pace today. i think that part of that is due to the ever evolving nature of the resources, rules and requirements that are out there. programs are -- are being watched and changing over time. there's federal, state and local activity. so there's a real -- there continues to be a real robust need to connect with our nightlife businesses and help direct them to resource, answer questions, and to try to support them as best as we can during this challenging time. you know, since the pandemic started, our office, the office of economic and workforce development, has deployed and supported a number of relief

programs, including financial resources like small business grants and loan products. you know, i'm proud of the work that those resources have been able to provide, but we really do know that there's just such substantial need, especially within the nightlife sector where, you know, we have heard loud and clear that nightlife and the entertainment businesses are very concerned about being among the first to close and the last to reopen. and that is a very real challenge that we are continuing to try to address through policy work and in supporting the businesses really in every which way that we can. our office has supported implementation of the moratorium and the food delivery camp. and also educated businesses around business tax deferrals and other emergency programs that have been launched during this period. the mayor announced the san francisco safe reopening plan at

the end of may. and, you know, throughout the reopening process director wylan and i and others have really worked to continue to better inform businesses about the reopening timeline and about the reopening guidelines with an eye towards clear communication about the rules and also timely information so that the businesses are not surprised at the last minute by new rule changes or new announcements. i think that the feedback from nightlife business owners has been really been helpful in informing the guidelines that have been put out to date. although i think that in some of our one-on-one conversations with businesses we're still learning, the businesses are having challenging fitting their operations into some of the existing boxes on what is permissible and pwhat is not permissible. a lot of creative businesses do four or five different things at figuring out which stages different parts of their operations can be happening right now, you know, is continuing to be one of the

challenges that i think we're working on. hoour office has been participating in the shared services program since it launched and subsequent to its launch, it was a departmental collaborative effort to really increase the access to outdoor space for businesses, including food and beverage and retail and all sorts of other business activities. access to sidewalks, curb space, street closures and as director wylan has noted we're continuing to explore the role that entertainment plays in shared spaces and i'm looking forward to continuing that work as well. we are involved in the economic recovery task force. and as director wylan mentioned we are working as policy staff alongside arts commission staff in the arts culture, hospitality and entertainment policy group. the goal is really over the next few months to drill down on key themes for stakeholders in these

sectors and then to identify some really concrete policy proposals to move forward in advance to the whole economic recovery task force. we had a meeting of our policy group earlier today and the theme that we're currently working on i don't think will be a surprise to anybody here in terms of access to outdoor space, access to indoor space, supporting job growth in these sectors. and embedding arts and hospitality within the city policymaking and also supporting tourism. and doing all of this in both a near term but also a look at a long-term sustainability, because we know that nightlife and entertainment is challenging to operate in, and challenging to be in before the pandemic, so we want to not just go back to pre-pandemic standards, but really to support the growth of these sectors moving forward. finally, i just want to note that the mayor submitted the

"save our small business" initiative on the ballot. if there's more information in the commission discussing that, i suggest inviting someone from the planning department to talk about that ballot initiative in more detail. and then, finally, just for what it's worth, you know, this -- and director wylan continue to talk weekly even, this is a crisis that is challenging nightlife and entertainment across the country and around the world. and people are looking to san francisco to see what creative ideas we can come up with, how we are supporting nightlife, to use us as models. so we have a lot of work to continue to do moving forward, but looking forward to continuing to do that partnership.

i'm happy to take any questions. >> president bleiman: thank you, does anybody have any questions? commissioner lee? >> commissioner lee: hey, ben, and maggie, i want to say thank you for the zoom meeting or the webx meeting. the one that you had monday recently -- no, i think that it was thursday or something -- but anyway, i was working at the same time. but it would be great and i'm sure that you'll have another one coming up. can you guys give us a few more days notice, because, you know, a lot of the nightclub people that i'm in connection with, they didn't even know. and i tried to get them on at the last minute and everybody is working. and you guys were in the 2:30 in the afternoon so it was a the le bit -- but it's great information and i just wish more people were online. >> thank you, commissioner lee.

that's a -- absolutely, getting people information in a timely manner so they can participate in those webinars is really important. and director wylan can speak to it as well. as i understand it, that was one of the most engaged webinars to date. and i know that we've had a lot of good feedback from the folks that were there and there were questions from some stakeholders whether there's a recording of that webinar, which i need to follow up on. but, certainly -- certainly, more advanced notice and more of these webinars, i think, absolutely. there's so many complicated to the state and local rules and abc and people want to do business the right way. it can be a challenge for all of those layers to be put together so we're happy to do that. >> be >> may i just add a comment to that. and i encourage commissioner lee and all commissioners to send

all of your contacts our newsletter sign-up and so there's a link in all of the staff signatures to sign up for our newsletter because it's the best way to get info. and also following up on facebook or instagram is a good option for that. and oftentimes with those webinars they are planned last minute because the rules are coming out last minute. so we do the best that we can. >> commissioner lee: thank you. >> president bleiman: commissioner thomas. >> commissioner thomas: thank you, ben, for that update. can you -- obviously, one of the groups that has been deeply affected by this are also the employees of all of the nightlife businesses and venues. can you say a little bit about what the city and oewd is doing for the individuals working in the industry? >> absolutely. and i realized i ended my remarks without a shameless plug for our web resources which i have done at the offset and the

conclusion. but just click on the covid-19 banner right there. there's a dedicated page for workers and we know that absolutely employees and independent contractors have been deeply affected by this. and, you know, there are workforce support programs to help people to identify job opportunities in industries that are hiring right now. which should industries are. and also access to information about if you have questions about employment or any other assistance programs, you know, truly there are new assistance programs or assistance providers that employees and workers in this industry can access on a regular basis. so i would defer to the website. but i'm happy to circle back also at a future meeting with you with more detail -- you're entirely right, it's the industry workforce that is, you know, really been verievery sevy impacted here.

>> president bleiman: commissioner perez, did you have something? >> commissioner perez: yes, thank you, ben, for your report as well. and i was wondering a question for you or for director wylan. another group deeply affected by covid are the non-profit organizations who organize outdoor events. do you also have other resources, support, and assistance that you can report to us? >> yeah, i mean, i would start with -- we have a dedicated page for non-profits on our site as well. i didn't mention that our partners at the arts commission deployed the non-profit arts funding at the start of the pandemic as well. but i would say that in terms of where we're thinking from an arts, culture and hospitality, that many worded policy group that director wylan and i

working on. it's non-profit arts organization and for-profit businesses and every facet of the social and hospitality space. so we really are deeply interested in recommendations, feedback, ideas of folks from every facet of this sector. >> thank you, ben. >> thank you. >> president bleiman: all right. it looks like the commissioners are done with questions. ben, again, i have to echo what i said with director wylan, but it's been a pleasure to work with you. i know how dedicated you are. and what a crazy time it is. so thank you for everything that you have done and thank you for the update. i think that the takeaway is that san francisco is going to try to do as much as they can to help us but we need to figure out partnerships with the city to make it work. i would also just echo they think that we should -- you

know, i still think that our outdoor aim is really weak. i think that other cities are taking much more drastic action to improve the ability of businesses to utilize outdoor spaces. shutting down streets and letting traffic just figure it out. and i hope that we can work together to kind of make that happen going forward and i had a conversation with manny last night and he echoed the same sentiment. but this has nothing to do with your work. i'm just putting it out there that i'm looking forward to working with your office to try to make that happen. and to try to get across to the powers that be how desperate things are. thank you again. and we appreciate it. is there any public comment on this agenda item? >> clerk: i'm checking to see

if there's anybody in the queue calling in and there is nobody waiting to speak. >> president bleiman: all right, then we'll close public comment for this agenda item. all right. okay. the next agenda item is number 5, hearing and possible action regarding applications for permits under the jurisdiction of the entertainment commission. and i will ask them to introduce the items on the consent agenda. >> president bleiman, good evening, commissioners. so we only have one permit on tonight's consent agenda. it's for a permit for 26 nix. this was to be on a hearing back in march but due to things they

were unable to make that hearing. so here we are. they have two pool tables. they've had the pool tables for quite some time and they're just coming into compliance with this permit. so they have noticed the public twice now and there's been zero opposition. it is an accessory use permit and i'm happy to answer any questions if there are any. >> president bleiman: not seeing any questions. so let's move right into public comment. is there any public comment on this consent agenda with this item? >> clerk: let me read the instructions again just -- >> president bleiman: why not. >> clerk: okay. so the members of the public if you wish to provide public comment on this item please call 1-(408)-418-9388. and then the access code, 146 069 9630. and then dial, star, 3, to be added to the queue to speak. so it will prompt you and then

it will tell you when you've been unmuted. let's give it a few seconds in case. >> president bleiman: give it about a minute just in case. >> clerk: okay. >> president bleiman: not sure that there's any members of the public who wish to chime on this (indiscernible). >> president bleiman: give it another 30 seconds. >> clerk: okay. >> president bleiman: okay,

i'm going to close public comment on this. so it is closed. do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> i move to approve it. >> second. >> president bleiman: you can vote. crystal, you're on mute, just in case. >> you see me now? commissioner perez. aye. president bleiman. aye. commissioner falzon. aye. commissioner wang. aye. vice president caminong. aye. commissioner lee. aye. commissioner thomas. aye. i think that is everyone. >> president bleiman: all right, it is so moved. congratulations 26 mix. and you can continue having

(indiscernible). all right. let me move on to the next agenda item. all right, the next item in our regular agenda is under number 6, discussion and possible action to adopt written comments and/or recommendations to be submitted by the executive director to the planning department and/or department of building inspection regarding noise issues for proposed residential and/or hotel/motel projects per chapter 116 of the administrative code. and i will ask director wylan to introduce what we call r.d.r. >> thank you, president bleiman. and just a reminder to everyone to please mute yourself unless you are talking. so the item tonight is for folsom street and it has a couple addresses, 1526 15261540d

135 kissling. this is a project within 300 feet of several of our places of entertainment. if you can envision the space, i think that you may see a photo of it from a project sponsor, but they include oasis and calle 11, and the holy cow and halycon and audio nightclub. and marked out the actual feet between the project and the spaces of entertainment for your reference. and so here to tell you more about the project and the outreach that they did around this are daniel belnath and eric toul. >> thank you very much. can i get the screen, chair control? >> yes. i'll do it right now.

>> excellent. >> hello, commissioners, eri eric... (indiscernible) and a.g.i.s, and i work with [broken audio] and we are a multifamily residential developer in san francisco. and we appreciate the time made for us to talk about our project. and what we have learned and what we're going to (indiscernible) in the entertainment division. and this is the san francisco bay area. it's also -- we're the most

(indiscernible) found in the united states. >> we are having a hard time hearing you. could you possibly get closer to -- >> let me try. >> is that better? >> still sounds really far away. >> daniel, why don't you take over for now. >> sure. so we just very, very briefly, we wanted to give you a kind of a snapshot as to who we are and some of the projects that we have been involved in in the city. and so these are just two of our past residential apartment developments in san francisco that we're pretty proud of. this is a 264 units in dog patch and it was named avaca and it

was recently acquired by another entity that renameed it to the windsor. but this actually won design awards, and this is a project at 1880 mission, so not too far from the project that we're working on today. this is a large project with 222 rental units that we did back in 2013. but our portfolio is not just, you know, residential work. so these are examples of two buildings that we did some value-add renovations to and actually still hold and operate today. so the office building -- so we don't actually operate the theatre, but, you know, we work in close coordination with them and have a bunch of, you know, three different retail tenants operating on the ground floor, in addition to the office tenants in the tower as well as

1301 folsome street that is right in this neighborhood. and some of the stuff that we're working on in addition to 1560folsom street. this is a new ground-up project at 1270 mission that was titled back in 2017 to put 319 units. and then 950 market street which is right in mid-market at sixth and market street, is under construction. you can see that we're probably going to hopefully top out in the next few days. this is just a shot from the construction camera. and this has -- >> real quick, can you hear me better now? >> a little bit better. >> okay, all right, keep going, daniel. >> so now we can dive into 1560folsom street, which is why we're here today. i am sure that everyone on the

call is familiar with the site but just to kind of orient everybody to the extent of our project, the site that we're working with is an odd-shaped one that has three different frontages on folsom street and extends to 11th street and all the way up to kissling street. so this odd geometry was kind of difficult to negotiate, and resolve architecturally. but we worked with a good local architect as well as with the feed back from the planning department to have a stepped massing where most of the density of the building is focused on folsom street and then as you go towards kissling street which is, you know, a part of the enclave, presents to the enclave district, it sort of steps down. but we are proposing 244 units, over 265,000-square-feet. there's going to be ground floor

retail facing on to folsom street. and the primary vehicle access for the main building comes through bbyrnes place that is ol of those buildings on the interior of the block. and just to give you an overview of our process to date, kind of just staying high level, we have been working with the planning department on this since 2018 when we called the p.p.a. we had our community meeting towards the end -- in december 2018, prior to submitting our application. and our product description was in june of last year where they just kind of determined that the project meets code and sort of set the target for our planning commission hearing date. and then as of february of this

year, we were referred to the entertainment commission from our -- from the planning department. and we work with maggie and some other staff who we've been working in close accordination with to do outreach to the nightlife establishment that are in the district. so we'll go into more detail on the outreach. we completed -- what we learned from those conversations but we actually wound up scheduling our noise environment evaluation which is where our acoustics had a noise study. that was in early march. which just barely squeezed in before shelter-in-place was issued so we got good data, luckily. because i think a couple weeks later most of the clubs were not operating anymore. in may of this year, our environmental review was actually completed.

so they published the community plan evaluation. and then today is where we're talking to the entertainment commission. and we were targeting july 2020 for our planning commission hearing, though it will depend on, you know, calendar availability and things like that. so here you can see the kind of overall program blocks and in context with the various places of entertainment. you can see we're kind of right in the thick of it which is really cool. we're very excited to be in this neighborhood. so, maggie mentioned the establishments before, but oasis is right on the corner here, just 30 feet -- basically just across the street from where our -- some of our apartments start over here. and you can see calle 11, and holy cow and halycon and audio

all clustered around here, right on this corner. so we reached out to the contact person provided by the entertainment commission of all of the different nightclubs starting in february of this year. and we don't need to go into every call, but some of the kind of big picture items that we learned -- we were mainly trying to just sort of provide general information about our project as well as make sure that the dates that we were scheduling the noise study was going to capture kind of a typical or a peak, you know, busy night for them to make sure that we were going to capture the sort of worst-case scenario. but in addition to that, you know, a few of the operators shared experiences, you know, of

past noise complaints and how that can be quite a burden and how certain members of the community can be very sensitive. so that's something that we're trying to be responsive to. and the other thing was just making sure that any future tenant of this project are aware of the district that they're moving into. so in addition to the -- the disclosure forms that are provided to us that will be with the leases for these tenants that was provided by the entertainment commission, we also have another lease addendum that we're working with the lgbtq, the cultural district, that we're also going to be incorporating. so new tenants will be well aware of the, you know, the nature of this district. and as i'm sure that won't be a surprise, all of the -- all of

the people that we spoke with at these nigh nightclubs basicallyd that any typical weekend, and anything friday and saturday night would capture the peak sound levels. so here you can see our typical residential floor plan. in context with the nightclubs. so the noise study was schedul scheduled -- i believe that they started it on noon on a thursday. all the way through the following monday -- so from march 5th to march ninth, they had a continuously operating sound measuring device that is supposed to measure the ambient noise as well as the peak sound levels. and i also actually walked around and i measured with microphones and did some spot measurements around the nightclubs just to -- just to get some extra data.

and what they found was that in order for us to comply with the san francisco noise ordinance, which basically are standard thermal windows that have a rating of 26, would comply. and the -- luckily the proposed rating that we have for a typical fixed window, which is actually the kind of lowest performing window that goes in the project was s.f.c., 28, so the news that our baseline specification was already exceeding the minimum rating to comply with the noise ordinance. but after some conversations with the entertainment commission and going back to our acoustic consultant, we decided just in an abundance of caution

to make sure that we were meeting the, you know, the combined levels with all of these clubs operating together. we increased the minimum s.f.c. rating for these certain facade that are highlighted to magenta to s.f.c.33. which brings our interior noise levels to what our acoustic engineer feels that would be comfortable when all of the nightclubs are operating. so we have some more information about the design if you want to go through it but i wanted to just pause here to see if anybody has any questions on the information that we have provided so far. >> i want to quickly add, now that you can lawyer m hear me bi have turned the microphone up. and one of the reasons that we have added to those specific locations and talking to the entertainment commission and talking to a sound engineer and a noise engineer, basically it's just recommended. because even though you can meet the code and you deliver s.f.c.

to the code, sometimes the noise still penetrates and results in complaints. so by going to a higher s.f.c. we can avoid that in those circumstances. along those parameters. >> project sponsors and commissioners, i just wanted to take a moment during the opening here, i probably should have included it here, however, i do want to call attention to the staff recommendation that i sent to you all in the form of a memo which is in your binder for this -- your virtual binder for this agenda item tonight. and so it includes the conditions relative to what the project sponsors are speaking about, about s.t.c. levels so i'm happy to read those out or to discuss them but i think that president bleiman, that's up to you. >> president bleiman: yeah, so can you guys -- can -- i can't

see the commissioners because -- because i'm looking at their screen right now. so can we just stop screen sharing for a minute here. >> sure. >> president bleiman: and then let me just see if there's any questions of the commissioners. commissioner thomas? >> commissioner thomas: mostly i just wanted to say thank you for already having reached out to the cultural district. that was going to be my first question. so, thank you. obviously, it's a neighborhood that has a lot of meaning both in terms of entertainment and in terms of the district and so i'm glad that you're reaching out to them and making sure that people moving into these apartments are interested in living in the south of market neighborhood. so, thank you. >> president bleiman: commissioner caminong.

>> vice-president caminong: sorry about that. it took a second to unmute myself. i do want to also recognize that you are also located in soma, the cultural heritage district of filipino-americans. it's a very large footprint and i just want to go on record to recognize some of the latinos as well. but i also know that eric toul is a big supporter of it since its inception. so i know that you guys have been doing a lot of amazing work supporting community organizations. i do have to say that since the formation of the r.d.r., this is the first time that a sponsor has come in front of our commission and has actually spoken to all of our venues. so i really appreciate your presentation, showcasing your project timelines of communication and also recording

the sound during the high -- or high nightlife periods. so i think this is well done. and i'm glad that you guys were able to get it in prior to shelter-in-place. and this is really exciting during shelter-in-place and we are in week 16 and it feels really good for us to be able to reopen and to do it in a very safe way. and as we are a model for the nation of how we shutdown the city, i think we will continue to be a model for the nation in how we reopen. so i appreciate the fact that you guys came in front of our commission and honored our process and worked very carefully with our staff around this process, ensuring that neighbors all get along. thank you. >> you're welcome. and we hope that there's going to be a lot of sound that we'll have to attenuate in the future.

we'll be checking in. we miss it. >> president bleiman: commissioner wang. >> commissioner wang: i just wanted to echo my colleagues and to commend you all for the outreach that you have done, particularly with such sensitivity to the cultural communities of note in soma there. and in terms of -- out of an abundance of caution, deciding to go with s.t.c. 33 already. i had another question just about the design aspect because there is such a high density of nightlife there. even though you're at s.t.c. 33. are the bedrooms of those facing facing it further back from the frontage of the street? is that how they're designed? >> so the -- the bedrooms are pretty much -- they're multi-oriented on the perimeter of the building. and that's mostly due -- i mean, due to just the kind of the

limited size of the units as well as the, you know, the light and air requirements that both planning and building departments, you know, are required to comply with. so most units have a bedroom and a living space, like a living room, that is facing the perimeter of the building. however, the -- there are some handful of units that do have a nested bedroom. so one of the bedrooms that is towards the interior of the unit plan. and the other thing is that the walls along the property line that are, for example, directly facing on to oasis, that's a solid wall. so, you know, the units that are facing the street and the public ways are, you know, glazed in a way that sort of is responsible. i do have a rendering, if you'd like to see, i could pull it up.

>> commissioner wang: sure. >> let's see. so -- so this is the view along folsom street. so these are bedrooms that are facing to street. and you can see on our typical floor plan, you know, the bedrooms are, you know, kind of in these corners and then there's the living spaces that are within the unit. >> commissioner wang: got it. okay, that's really helpful. thanks. >> no problem. >> president bleiman: commissioner lee. >> commissioner lee: so to add to that, so i can't really see the layout, so the bedrooms on one side has a window, and then

the living room is next to that that has a window facing folsom street, correct? >> yes. you know, i have a typical plan that i could pull up, a unit plan. so that would be helpful. >> it's pretty standard building code requires the bedrooms to have a window. >> commissioner lee: right. >> see if i can find one real quick. so if you look here this is our kind of typical most common three-bedroom layout, so there's two bedrooms facing along the perimeter wall that are facing on to folsom street and then there's a living space in the middle. and the bathrooms, and the kitchens are mostly in the interior of the courtyard. and here's that nested bedroom that i was talking about which has borrowed light. so this has to be, you know, has

a certain percentage to be glazed. >> commissioner lee: and you're using s.t.d. 33 in all of the fronts? >> correct. if you look back to this diagr diagram, everywhere that you see magenta we would have a minimum s.t.d.-33 at every residential unit. so if you look at the rendering, basically everything that, you know, all of these windows that face on the residential units would be a minimum of 33. >> commissioner lee: are all of these rental units or are they condos? >> they're all rental. all rental. >> commissioner lee: okay. so no matter how many people move in and out in the course of 10 years, they will be notified on what they're moving into and what they're expecting, right? >> as part of our -- we're working with the district and we have agreed to include as a position of our

(indiscernible) an addendum. that we're in the entertainment district as well as the cultural district. boaboth of those things. and i believe that there's language that we would be happy to adopt into these addend mums. >> we require a disclosure to all of your future renters. >> yep. >> what has happened in the past is that, you know, the first set of renters get the notification and the next set of renters don't get a noteification at all. -- notification at all. >> that's definitely to make all of the effort and process to get a lease signed and to not notify them ahead of time just seems -- and in dogpatch we were required to notify renters that they were moving in next to the hells angels. >> okay. >> and then my last question

just on the lighting. what is your lighting plan on the outside? i mean, it's normally dark there right now. and you're talking about -- if you're talking about 400 units you're literally talking about, what, almost 800 people? >> sorry commissioner, it's 240 units. >> 240. so about 400 people in this district, correct? so 5d ad tha add that with the s when at full capacity so we are talking about heavy usage. so i see here to the entry to your garage, is that going to be all lit up behind the oasis? or is it all -- i mean, is there a lighting -- >> you are talking about this -- the alley currently byrnes place? >> i see where the oasis is and then you have a bunch of units there, right, across from the oasis in the back.

is that a driveway? correct? >> so here you can see our ground floor plan. so this block on the corner here is oasis. so the primary access to the garage is through byrnes place. and so there's some townhomes that face on to it, which will be, you know, heavily planted. and we will have -- definitely have street lighting there. we're basically re-doing this whole portion of the street because there's grating issues and we are meeting accessibility requirements after working with the accessibility coordinator to add a four-foot sidewalk to the north side of byrne's place. so that whole alleyway will kind of being completely re-done. >> and well lit? >> yes. >> and along folsom street as

well? >> absolutely. >> okay. all right. that's all i have. >> president bleiman: all right. i don't think that any other commissioners have any comments. not seeing any. okay, let's open this up for public comment. i'm seeing that there's a number of attendees here that are actually business owners in the neighborhood. one of them, dylan, how do we do this? so lily has an exclamation point next to her name. should we start with her? how do we do this? you're on mute, dylan. >> sorry about that. so they have to call that number that we have been repeating and put in the access code and press star, 3, which means that they'll pop up as a raised hand. and then i unmute them. >> president bleiman: got it. so is there one call-in number with star, 3 there? >> clerk: so that is actually

our commissioner falzon is doing it. >> president bleiman: so if there's any -- do you see any callers with raised hands? >> clerk: there are none. and i'm happy to read it again if it helps. >> president bleiman: let's read it out. it looks like they did quite bit of outreach. >> clerk: for those that want to do public comment please right now dial 1-(408)-418-9388. and then enter the access code, 146 069 9630. and then press star, 3. and then wait for us to unmute you. >> president bleiman: i'm going to put this, if i can, let's see --... i'm sure that it's out there somewhere. >> dylan, could you potentially type that into the chat for -- >> president bleiman: copy and paste it? >> clerk: i will. and it's also on fo sfgov-tv, ad

i'll do it now. it's on our agenda as well. >> okay. >> it looks like lily has asked questions in the q. and a. as well. i don't know if you want to read those. >> president bleiman: yeah,ly thlet me find the q ask a. >> the very bottom right.

>> hello participants in chat, there's q. and a. >> clerk: someone else can read it or i can read it if you want. >> could. >> first question, has there been any discussion about how the building's management will handle any possible noise complaints with the p.o.e.? second question, street parking is already challenging in the neighborhoods. will there be an additional fee for the residents' dedicated parking spaces. and any visitor parking? >> well, i can answer that. there will be an additional fee. the parking in san francisco is required to be unbundled. so anyone wanting -- it does not come with your unit. you have to pay an extra fee. to tell you the truth it has been a struggle to get the 83 spots. planning has asked us to reduce

the parking even more. and as far as visitor parking, how much accessory park doing we have, daniel? >> we -- 83 is the total number of spaces including car share, you know, 88 spaces. so we don't have, you know, a specific allocation of how many of those spots would be for guests versus residents. >> the first question -- i'm sorry, we didn't ask the first question. something to do with howry we handle complaints, is that it? >> president bleiman: yes. >> for projects that we normally hire a professional management company. so like a manager for the dog patch project and was managing at windsor. so i don't have a specific answer to that other than that

we generally hire third-party institutional. most of our investors are pension funds like calpers that we did our other project. so we hire institutional property managers. to try to follow whatever the rules and the regulations in place are. >> president bleiman: dylan, do we have anybody that called in? >> clerk: nobody has called in. >> just note that i received a message from gina molano that she's been trying and she can't get it to work. >> president bleiman: did she see the directions in the chat? >> i believe so, because she said that she's trying again n now. >> president bleiman: you can also type her questions -- >> clerk: if she wants she can do it through -- through typing. >> president bleiman: we'll give her a second. gina, we want to hear from you.

>> president bleiman: i saw another chat question in the interval. this is from brad and he put it through the chat. will there be anything on the rooftop of the building?

>> yes. i can -- again, i can flip back to the screen if you would like to see. but we have -- i'll pull it up. so we have actually two roof decks. so there's one roof deck that is on the north building, the kissling building that faces on kissling street. and then there's another one that is on the lower portion of the folsom building, so it's kind of tucked behind this top floor residential units. can then there's a community room with amenities and then a roof deck here where they could maybe catch a glimpse of the roof deck at the oasis and they can wave to each other. >> it's one floor shorter, so it's shielded from the folsom street. >> the only other outdoor

amenities are -- there's a bunh of private patios so the units on level two have access to private outdoor space. but these are pretty well protected by the mass of the building. >> president bleiman: got it. gina wrote in that she does feel a line of defense with the management company would be helpful. so i ask if she wanted to clarify what that meant just for the record. (indiscernible). and then we are getting confirmation that the phone number is operational. so i don't know what is happening. >> gina wrote, sorry, every time i type it gets deleted.

>> she's trying to. >> yeah. >> president bleiman: the internet is trying to keep gina from speaking. i don't know. [laughter]. >> it's possibly too wonky but she can always call my cell and i can put her on speaker phone still. >> yeah, i think that we should do that. >> give me a call if you want. i'll put you on blast. >> it is public comment, versus q. and a. >> president bleiman: give her a minute here. [phone ringing] >> president bleiman: all right, she's calling you. we're having some connectivity issues maybe? >> i think that maggie is calling her and she's calling

maggie. there is another item that came into the chat. will there be any operatable windows on the folsom street side? >> so, yes. there are operatable windows. however, one of the things that was found in the acoustic engineer's report is that the -- in order to meet the s.f. noise ordinance that it has to be mechanically ventilateed so if you're annoyed with the noise that you can close the windows. so the upper windows -- >> dylan, i just heard gina. is she in here? >> yeah, so she's echoing. can you hear us, gina? >> she was just somehow on