>> clerk: everyone's attention and most of all your patience. if you are not speaking, please mute your microphone. to enable public participation, sfgovtv is broadcasting and streaming this hearing live, and we will receive public comment on each item on today's agenda. opportunities to submit public comment are available by calling 415-655-0001 and entering access code 187-756-9079. when we reach the item you are

interested in speaking to, please press star then three to be added to the queue. when you hear your line has been unmuted, that is your indication to begin speaking. when you have 30 seconds left, you will hear a chime. i will indicate when your time is up to speak. best practices are to call from a quiet location, turn down your volume, and speak slowly and clearly. i'd like to take roll at this time. [roll call] >> clerk: thank you, commissioners. first on your agenda is items proposed for continuance. item 1, 20919-022661-cua, at

628 shotwell street. at this time of issuance, this was being proposed for continuance to june 3, 2021. it is now being proposed to be continued to july 8, 2021. i should also announce -- excuse me, and mr. winslow, we've received confirmation from the d.r. requesters? mr. winslow, are you with us? okay. >> yeah, we are still awaiting confirmation from two of the d.r. requesters on 3441 washington. as soon as we have that, i will forward that to you. >> clerk: okay. we should take public comment on that. members of the public, this is

your time to speak to item 1, which is being proposed to july 8, 2021. you'll have two minutes. >> good morning, commissioners. this is ryan patterson, attorney for the d.r. requester at 628 shotwell street. we can live with the three-week continuance, and we can even live with the continuance to july 8. there's no need for a longer delay, and i'm happy to answer any questions. thank you. >> good afternoon.

my name is tony ranner, and i am a neighbor two doors down from it. i just wanted to express my support for the project. i have lived in the neighborhood 15 years -- >> clerk: i'm sorry, sir. right now, we're only taking public comment on the matter of the continuance. we'll take up the public comment if it's heard on that date >> okay. i'd like to voice my objection to the continuance and hope that the commission hears the item quickly. >> clerk: thank you. last chance for public comment on the item to be continued? seeing no further public comment, public comment is

closed, and commissioners, the item proposed for continuance is before you. >> president koppel: commissioner imperial? >> commissioner imperial: move to continue item as proposed. >> vice president moore: second. >> president koppel: commissioner fung. >> commissioner fung: can i ask again, what was the purpose of the longer continuance? >> clerk: is staff here to respond to that? >> yes, hi. the purpose of the extended continuance is that the project sponsor sent a [inaudible] first off, a letter to organizations that were interested in obtaining a residential care facility, and those organizations asked for more time so they can gather more sources. they need to make a plan, and

they need to get money to do that. >> commissioner fung: and how much time do they need [inaudible]? >> they asked for ten weeks. the board of supervisors asked for three. we have agreed with the project sponsor to the six weeks. that is fourth of july for then -- >> commissioner fung: okay. thank you. >> clerk: if there's nothing further, commissioners. there's a motion that has been seconded to continue the motion to july 8. on that motion -- [roll call] >> clerk: so moved, commissioners. that motion passes unanimously, 7-0. placing us on item 2,

consideration of adoption, the draft minutes for may 6, 2021. members of the public, this is your opportunity to speak to the adoption of the draft minutes for may 6, 2021. seeing no public comment, public comment is now closed, and the matter is now before you. >> president koppel: commissioner imperial? >> commissioner imperial: move to adopt the minutes. >> vice president moore: second. >> clerk: thank you, commissioners. on that motion -- [roll call] >> clerk: so moved, commissioners. that motion passes unanimously,

7-0, placing us on item 3, commissioner comments and questions. >> president koppel: commissioner tanner? >> commissioner tanner: good afternoon, everyone. i just wanted to thank the staff, particularly [inaudible] who arranged for a tour for myself and commissioner imperial for the new planning department, the new permission center, which is now getting ready -- already has appointmented and some walk-ins, and -- appointments and some walk-ins, and it was just great to see the new facility and the new location that our staff has to work at. i don't think there's a bad location on any of the three floors. it's great to see staff integrated on many of the new floors. i know that many staff have not been to their new offices yet, and their plans are underway for what staffing and scheduling will look like, but it's a great city facility, and if you haven't had a chance to

take a tour, it's great. it's a really dynamic facility, so i'm just really excited to see how we're able to use that. thank you. >> president koppel: commissioner imperial? >> commissioner imperial: and i just would like to reiterate what commissioner tanner just said. thank you, [inaudible] for the tour. it's really nice to see them, and i hope -- i wish to see them in person in the future, too. and in terms of the permitting center, it's a really great system now. it's great that people are not being waited, and there's a better way in terms of handling the applications. and the -- i hope the staff get

to see the new -- the new building is really pretty, in a way that i think -- thankful for the staff in a way that you provide a service to the city, and we really need to take care of the staff, as well. in terms of different agencies being in that building, i think it will be great to have faster communication. i think it's great that everything is in that house in that building, or most of the agencies are in house in that building. so i really appreciate it, and i hope other commissioners appreciate, too. >> clerk: thank you, commissioners. seeing no additional requests to speak from members of the commission, we can move onto other matters. item 4, department matters and director's announcements. >> director hillis: thank you. i think most of you are going to come and take a tour of the permit and office center, so thank you -- even though we're

starting to see more activity here in the office and more employees here, there's been a core group who have been coming in throughout the pandemic, and just a special thanks to them. a couple of items. we're going to be here june 3 to give you a more detailed briefing on our yslais creek project. we did have two meetings this week on tuesday and wednesday. i want to thank supervisor president walton who attended the tuesday meeting. i think overall, you'll hear more about this in june. the meetings went well and the residents were keen on seeing more investment in the

neighborhood. i also wanted to let you know that supervisor mandelman introduced -- and there was an article about it in the chronicle -- that will allow for four residential on corner lots in residentially zoned neighborhoods that don't allow for four units. that legislation will have to go through environmental review, most likely an addendum to our existing elements, e.i.r., probably will be in front of you in three or four months. just wanted to give you that heads up, and that's my report. thanks. >> clerk: thank you, director hillis. if there's no further comments, we can move onto item 5, review of past events at the board of supervisors, board of appeals, and historic preservation commission. >> [inaudible] to allow

existing liquor stores in polk street neighborhood benefit district [inaudible] with modification. those modifications were in two parts. the first recommended that the creation -- recommended the creation of a new temporary use permit for legacy businesses seeking to relocate, and the second part included [inaudible] to the ordinance in its current form. at land use committee, supervisor peskin recommended that due to the tight timeline for the [inaudible] shop, the [inaudible] and the duplicated files would remain in committee. next on the agenda was the mayor and supervisor haney's ordinance that would allow certain projects to proceed while a ceqa appeal is pending before the board of

supervisors. the criteria is as follows: the project has to be related to a safety health measure necessary to protect the public, public employees, or public property. a temporary activity lasting no more than 180 days, and a reversal activity that is limited to additions that can be easily removed without damaging the site. the ordinance also [inaudible] or for properties under leases from the port commission. appeals of such projects would require 50 san francisco residents or five supervisors to subscribe to the notice of appeal. commissioners, you heard this item on february 25 and unanimously recommended approval of the ordinance. during the hearing, supervisor haney was present as one of the sponsors and introduced nonsubstantive changes

regarding the verification process. supervisor preston concurred with supervisor peskin, reiterating the infrequency of these appeals. he also expressed concern that environmental groups are not in support of the ordinance and would note that one of those groups, sierra group s.f.a. chapter has voiced their opposition for the ordinance. during public comment, there were over 30 public callers with a two-to-one split in favor of the ordinance. supervisor peskin voted to table the ordinance with supervisor melgar not in

dissent. at the full board this week, supervisor peskin's ordinance that would allow the temporary closure of liquor stores in the polk street district [inaudible] and that's all i have for you today. >> clerk: if there are no questions for mr. starr, the board of appeals did meet last night and considered several items that would be of interest to the planning commission. first, the planning department staff, miss jardines and miss connor presented implementation of s.b. 35, and the board requested, after hearing the first appeal, recommended approval of s.b. 35. the board adopted a resolution encouraging the status of notice of all tenants where

improvements are had. 4326 irving street, an appeal of a building permit application for a fourth floor vertical addition and expansion of three dwelling units, the appellants raised a variety of concerns related to the proposed addition which was a staff related d.r. on august 9, 2020. on that hearing, the planning commission voted unanimously to take d.r. and reduce the size of the fourth floor addition. the board voted unanimously to deny the appeal with the planning commission's discretionary review commission. the historic preservation commission did meet yesterday and considered a couple of items [inaudible] first being the first of the i. magnin

building on geary street to mixed residential units. and secondly, they considered an art installation to install illuminated letters on the spreckels music band shell. if there are no questions, commissioners, we can move onto

general public comment. at this time, members of the public may address the commission on items of interest to the public that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission except agenda items. with respect to agenda items, your opportunity to address the commission will be afforded when the item is reached in the meeting. each member of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes. when the number of speakers exceed the 15-minute limit, general public captain may be moved to the end of the agenda. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on items that are not on today's agenda by pressing star then three. through the chair, you will have two minutes. >> good afternoon, commissioners. this is georgia schiutish. the e-mail i sent with the pictures on tuesday was for two side by side alteration projects and one of them sold in january 2021 for

$9.5 million. the other sold two years ago for $8.7 million. after i sent the pictures, i remember that these were projects where someone coerce impersonated me. anyone looking at the google earth photos sent to you by the commission would find this reasonable to question the demo calcs. the calcs for the two calculations did not cross the threshold but were within a few points of doing so.

the two projects in the photos and all the others like them do not get the attention they should have the decision makers, but the outcome is the same. they should get the attention of the public and the commission. the two projects use the current democalcs do not comply with the intent of the housing element of the general plan. please look at the facts as shown in the last two slides and as i wrote in my e-mail to you. thank you very much. take care, be well, be safe, be happy. >> good afternoon, commissioners, and staff. my name is kathleen rock, and i'm calling regarding the upcoming second c.u.a. hearing

for 239 texas street on june 3. i'm the owner of the building adjacent. in a few weeks, the demolition of this building will be heard by you. on march 4, many people came forward to voice their concern about the sponsor's failure to state facts. if not for the neighbors' diligent, the commission would never have known about this unit which would have resulted in the removal of affordable family housing that is so critical for san francisco to retain. i want to thank those commissioners who listened to the neighbors at the march 4 hearing and heeded our concerns by ordering the staff to investigate the serious omission further.

i am hopeful that the commission will hold current and future sponsors accountable for these types of blatant omissions. the commission needs to send a letter and author thaitive message out to owners and developers, especially those that are wealthy and influential that this won't be tolerated. thank you very much for hearing me. >> hello, commissioners. my name is russell maureen, and i called in last week to talk about public comment to talk about a project that you're going to hear next week about another cannabis retail location coming to visitacion valley at 5 leland, and i just wanted to give a little bit of background because i know next week, it's going to be contentious, and a lot of suggestions and ideas might get lost in the noise. i just want to give a little

bit of the background that this project started way back in 2017 or 2018, and it was more or less continued due to the efforts of the project sponsor because of the changes to the planning code section 202. that really clarified where cannabis locations can establish themselves. if this application was filed today to open another cannabis location on that location, at that location, i would be automatically denied because it's within 100 feet of another existing business. i think they're trying to get something open that is not clear based on the planning

code. the last time they were trying to get it established, commissioner moore was on the planning commission, commissioner hillis. when prop 64 passed in california, legalizing the recreational marijuana, san francisco passed it overwhelmingly, but there were four or five precincts in san francisco that voted no, and it just happened that one of those precincts is on this block, a block that they want to put two locations. one is good. we don't need two, so thank you very much for living, and hopefully next week, we'll have a good debate on that, but section 202 says you can't have two within 600 feet. thank you. >> clerk: thank you, sir. that's your time. >> linda chapman. i want to say first -- express my appreciation for scott sanchez getting in touch can me

again to let me know that he's relocated two more of the rezoning maps to show that the maps were issued that i got copies of last summer are completely false, and i so he and are to get -- and so he and i are to get together to go over the entire area between polk and van ness. somebody has issued false maps in the case of that california and polk street project that was up just before you. i'm going to have to ask your indulgence and come in a few times to ask to set the record straight because my area has been turned into a development area. i know you are public servants, and you do a tremendous job of

studying these things up, but when false information is presented to you, and presented by false groups pretending to represent the neighborhood, groups like lower polk currently, it does the most tremendous job of defeating the people who actually are affected, such as the neighbors, for example, in the case of the grub stake site or such as robert varney, who was leading that 900 members of the nob hill association at the time they were fighting the masonic, and up pops this group calling itself the nob hill coalition that defeated robert varney and the 900 members of the nob hill association. so i'm going to be bringing up these associations that deserve

a rico investigation, and where they are encouraged -- you know, call me old fashioned, but i was trained -- >> clerk: thank you, miss chapman. that is your time. >> hi. is this the time to make a comment on 217 hugo street? >> clerk: no. 217 hugo street will be taken up later in the calendar. >> thank you. >> clerk: any other members of the public wish to speak? seeing no other members of the

public who wish to speak, public comment is closed. we will move onto item 6, 2020-007074-cua at 159 laidley street. mr. horn, are you ready to make your presentation? >> yes. the 2500 square foot lot has 25 feet of frontage. the lot slopes down towards the rear. the site is currently developed on an existing 2,614 square foot three bedroom, three-story over basement dwelling constructed circa 1909, and the existing building is three

stories tall with a gabled room. subject property is located on the northside of glen park and parcelled within [inaudible] constructed mostly between 1900 and 1920s. a second period of development between the 1940s and 1950s, and several more recently constructed buildings. subject lot exhibits a great deal of styles -- the project

is code compliant, and the facade includes items that are architectural in nature. at the time of the case report's preparation, no comments had been received. since the noticing of the project for hearing, one comment letter in support of the project has been received from adjacent neighbors to the west at 157 laidley street. there are two items in the case report package that i would like to address. the first is an error on the land use table. to correct this, there is just one single-family home. item 2, within the draft motion, staff would like to amend the language to section 101.1-b findings. priority principle f, which

reads, the city achieved the greatest possible preparedness in case of emergency available. in summary, the department finds the project is consistent with policies of the general plan. the replacement home will provide an increased number of bedrooms suitable for families. the overall scale, design, and materials of the proposed building complements the neighborhood character with a contrary yet context al design. the department finds that the project is necessary and desirable and compatible with the surrounding neighborhood.

this concludes my presentation, and i'm prepared to answer any questions. >> clerk: thank you. project sponsor, are you prepared to make your presentation? mr. gibson? mr. gibson, are you with us? unfortunately, it does not appear that mr. gibson is with us or if he is, he might be having technical difficulties. okay. in light of this, why don't we open up public comment and see if mr. gibson calls in. the person just requesting to speak lowered their hand -- oh,

they're back again. through the chair, you'll have two minutes. >> hello. this is jeff gibson. >> clerk: okay. mr. gibson, you have five minutes. >> okay. thank you. so i'm hear before you for this conditional use authorization for the demolition of this existing nonhistoric single-family house and its replacement with a new single-family home. thanks for taking the time to review this project. we've been working closely with jeff horn and the team and we're pleased that they're recommending approval now. we don't know of any neighbor opposition. we have the support of the neighbors at 157 laidley. no one has been in touch with us from the planning department, and we have been in contact with everyone who

attended the original preapplication meeting, updating them along the way, and they haven't expressed any opposition, so we feel good about the neighborhood support of the project, hopefully. let me take a moment to introduce the clients. tak and rebecca are on the webex. they're moving back to the city after being in the suburbs. they have three children who live with them, and they frequently have extended family visiting for long periods of time, as well. they're going to be living in this home. it's not a development project. it's designed for them and, you know, at the beginning, jeff horn outlined the square footage of the project, but that's a stacker project, garage space, crawl space. it's a modest family home with

3300 square feet of family space and four bedrooms. we're really not trying to design a massive house here. it's to meet their needs. we're working with the down slope lot, sort of tapering and terracing as we go. i want to talk about the c.u.a. and while we're pursuing full demolition in this case. i think the commission is familiar with this work. at the outset of every project we do, we take a look at section 17 to see how the demolition calculations would work. we started this project as a he remodel, removing the rear and squaring it off, but as we got into it, we realized there were three conditions that would probably push us to toe the line or cross the threshold and

we thought we would show you what we're doing and do the right thing, so i'm going to briefly explain the three project specific conditions that i think push this project to demolition. one of which is the house is just not well built. if you look at the photograph in the upper left corner, there's been a lot of strange d.i.y. work done on it over the years, a lot of structural compromise, and we believe there's probably a lot of stuff hiding in the walls that's going to spook us later. we felt it's really a mess, and as we start construction and opened up the walls, even if our modifications work, we'd discover things that needed a lot of remediation. secondly, the house was originally built without a survey. a couple of spots are built

over the property line and encroaching on the neighbors, and that makes it awkward when you remodel the house, so trying to add onto a building that's already skewed on the lot is a real challenge, but then demolishing those skewed walls pushes us over 317. and then lastly is the soil quality in this area. when laidley street was originally graded in this area at the turn of the century, they graded the hillsides and dumped it onto the side of the hill on these down slope lots, so the soil beneath our house is unconsolidated fill. it's actually quite dangerous. the foundation that's there is not safe today, and in order to gain access to the foundation

and work on it and build a foundation, we would really be tearing the house to shreds, as well. we understand the intent of section 317 to retain sort of relatively affordable housing stock, and in this particular case, trying to work within and around the existing house would just make the project more expensive and onerous. we've designed a -- >> clerk: thank you, sir. that is your time. >> okay. thank you. >> clerk: okay. commissioners may have questions for you later. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter by pressing star, three to be added to the queue. seeing no requests to speak, commissioners, public comment is now closed, and this matter is now before you. >> president koppel: as we're

waiting for the other commissioners, it's reassuring to see staff come before us and tell us what's wrong. commissioner fung? >> commissioner fung: i think they've done a good job in satisfying the contextual status of the structures around them, and i am in support of the project. >> president koppel: thank you. commissioner moore? >> vice president moore: when you see projects being torn down, have you considered adding an a.d.u. or a second unit? there's a question for the architect. >> am i unmuted? >> vice president moore: yes, you are now. >> okay. thank you. yes, we do always look at that

possibility. in this particular case, because of the down slope lot, it would be difficult to do and maintain the circulation to the downward lot, access to the back of the lot and the garage, and the pathway to the house to a reasonable location for the a.d.u. was not really possible, but we have, in this project, developed kind of a guest space on the ground floor which is actually geared towards extended stay by their family, which is often the intend of a.d.u. units. so we didn't feel it was possible to add a few a.d.u., but we kind of have tried to add a true extended flexible family home. >> vice president moore: i appreciate the comment, and i am in support of the project. thank you. >> president koppel: thank you. commissioner tanner? >> commissioner tanner: thank

you. i am glad that commissioner moore asked that question. that was one of my question. another question, when i looked at this project at a high level, i was concerned that it was a very large home with no second unit, but then, i was seeing 1100 square foot are nonhobbitable. could you go over what is making -- nonhabitable. could you go over what is making that space nonhabitable? >> okay. can you hear me again? >> commissioner tanner: yes. >> okay. jeff horn, if you could advance the slide, there's a definition of habitable and nonhabitable -- that one, perfect. so yes, because this is a down slope lot on the two lowest levels of the home, the two upper levels of the home are

street level and one up, and the two lower levels of the home are basically below grade at the front, and so our nonhabitable zones are the garage on the ground floor, which are shaded green, and then, when you move down to the right, it's a car down. it's a secondary stacker garage, which is nonhabitable, and then, when you go down another level, there's sort of a crawl space garage level behind. basically, when you total all these things up, the habitable area occupied by the family is only 3347. >> commissioner tanner: which i thought was a much more reasonable size. [inaudible] >> commissioner tanner: the

third story that's there, is that because of the location or limited or no access to light. is that -- or is that just in terms of wanting storage rooms there? >> it's really because of the light. so on that area, it's 100% buried in front because of street level. we thought how could we make a bedroom there? there's just no way it's going to have any light at all. it's just going to be a raw unconditioned storage room. i wish -- maybe the planning department required an architect that submitted plans like this. i think when you dig in to what's often habitable and useable, it's a different story. so we're trying to dig in and help you guys, and we hope you appreciate it, as well.

>> commissioner tanner: i think this home is appropriate, and i think the design was appropriate. i do think the topo graphy of the site makes it challenging to build a second unit. it could be done, but certainly not without some challenge and certainly some compromise to the home that is being replaced. so i'm supportive of this project, commissioners. >> president koppel: commissioner imperial? >> commissioner imperial: thank you, mr. [inaudible] for your thoughtful -- well, first for the thoughtful plans and also when it comes to the issues of a.d.u. and also the [inaudible] around the issues of megamansions because those are things that also come up to us in the planning commission. and i guess i have another question to planning department

staff or perhaps just the planning director. when we look into demolition and construction, and when we look into the square footages, i think we have commented several before that we would like to see an a.d.u. how could we incentivize project sponsors or what are the qualifications, what do we look into in order to encourage people to add an a.d.u.? >> so generally, we don't have any required policies to go beyond the underlying density, the findings of 317 [inaudible]

we have these discussions with the project sponsors from the beginning, if possible, [inaudible] as a single-family home. >> commissioner imperial: so i guess that would have to be a policy in order to look into the a.d.u. [inaudible] what are the qualifications for the h.r. -- you know, the technical side of our a.d.u. program, so that's something that the planning or i guess there are some -- i don't know how far that they're getting into that, but that's

something we've been hearing at the planning commission about the megamansion and hoping to see an a.d.u. i would like the other commissioners what they think on this, but looking at what the purpose of a.d.u. and what could be the incentive for a.d.u. and for the planning to incentivize, too. so thank you -- and i'm also supportive of this, and thank you, mr. gibson. >> thank you. >> president koppel: commissioner moore? >> vice president moore: i'm interested in the commission picking up at some other point, not today, when enlargements pick up another unit or a.d.u., not today. mr. gibson very clearly explained what the habitable space in this building will be, but there are many other cases where the enlargement is such a

scale that one cannot ignore the fact that some projects are intensification. that said, i'd like to make a motion to approve the project. >> commissioner imperial: second. >> president koppel: next up, commissioner diamond? >> commissioner diamond: i was going to move to approve. >> clerk: if there's nothing further, commissioners, there's a motion to approve the c.u.a. with conditions. on that motion -- [roll call] >> clerk: so moved, commissioners. that motion passes unanimously, 7-0, and that places us under

our discretionary review calendar, where i am pleased to tell you that item 9, 2020-007734-drp has been removed from the calendar. they are pleased with the alteration from the project sponsor, so item 9 has been withdrawn. placing us on item 7, 2019-019822-drp at 40679 sever chaz street, a request for discretionary review -- cesar chavez street, a request for discretionary review, where i am pleased to tell you that an

agreement has been reached, but i'll let mr. winslow tell you about that. >> thank you, commissioners. david winslow, planning department. d.r. requester and project sponsor have agreed to sloping the stair and removing the pop out at the second floor 3 feet to the east to better preserve the light to d.r. requester's side facing windows. it complies with the residential design guidelines related to articulating the building to minimize impact to light and privacy and scale at the rear and access to mid block open space. therefore, staff recommends taking the d.r. and approving the proposed modification. this concludes my report at

4079 cesar chavez. thank you. >> clerk: thank you, mr. winslow. i don't see the d.r. requester in our attendee bucket to afford them the opportunity to address the commission, but i do see mr. [inaudible], so because this was not withdrawn, we should provide them with the opportunity to speak. mr. pashlinski, you have three minutes, and you don't need to use all of that or any, if you so choose. >> so commissioners, can you hear me? we've worked almost two months back and forth with different ideas. david winslow was very, very influential in help us come to a decision. i think it's a nice ending to

something where, you know, provide the adjacent owners some more light. they seem to be pleased by that, and so we were able to reach a resolution, and that's all i have to say. thank you. >> clerk: thank you. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this item by pressing star then three to be added to the queue. seeing no additional -- or seeing no requests to speak from members of the public, public comment is closed, and this matter is before you, and so to just remind you, staff is recommending that you take d.r. and approve the project with the modifications read into the record by mr. winslow. >> president koppel: commissioner moore? >> vice president moore: i move to take d.r. with the modifications read into the record, and i'm delighted that the modifications were accepted in a manner that very clearly expressed the d.r. requester's

concern. congratulations to everybody, and thank you, mr. winslow. >> commissioner diamond: second. >> president koppel: commissioner fung? >> commissioner fung: mr. winslow, do you have a response made by the d.r. requester in their last e-mail? >> i do. you know, i felt they were moot at this point, but i'm ready to read those into the record just for edification. so the hearing date for this item had been continued twice from the original hearing date of april 15 to april 29 and then to today to allow the on going negotiations between the project sponsor and d.r. requester. on the eve of my deadline to publish the packet, may 10, i requested or i informed both parties that i would need any final materials that they wished to have included into that packet in order for that hearing date to be maintained. this was intended primarily for

the project sponsor who had been engaged in several revisions and alternatives and attempts to address the d.r. requester's concerns and resolve their issues so that i would have a final plan for inclusion into that packet that i could base my recommendation on. that was received. no other materials were required or necessary from the d.r. requester, and on may 17, i e-mailed a reminder to both parties about today's hearing date, informing them of the date again and requesting their e-mail, phone number, contact information to participate in this hearing, and per our standard procedure, staff set the hearing date. no further request was made to continue this until i received

an e-mail this monday, i believe, may 18, from the d.r. requester, indicating that they had no idea that that hearing date was in place, and it wasn't confirmed. the project sponsor was not willing to continue that, but all due notice had been given per standard procedures, so... >> clerk: thank you, mr. winslow, if there's no further debate from members of the commission, there has been a motion to take d.r. and approve the project with modifications read into the record by staff that has been seconded. on that motion -- [roll call] >> clerk: so moved,

commissioners. that motion passes unanimously, 7-0, and will place us on item 8 for case 2019-0199373-drp at 217 hugo street, a request for discretionary review. >> good afternoon again, commissioners. david winslow, staff architect. this is a public initiated request for discretionary review of building permit application numbers 2019-0730.7350 and 2019.0730.7351 to demolish an existing one-story commercial building and instruction a three-story over-garage building with two dwelling

units within an rh-2 zoning district. this was supposed to be on consent last week to memorialize a change, a change specifically that was requested and adhered to by the project sponsor was to reconfigure the third floor to create a 5 foot by 12 foot set back adjacent to 250 hugo street, the requester's property, and number two, to reduce the roof and provide a privacy screen that extends 2.5 feet above the side of the deck and

additionally to provide frosted glass windows at the light wells adjoining the d.r. requester's property. therefore, the staff's recommendation was to also take the d.r. and approve as modified to memorialize these changes, and to my knowledge, the d.r. requester was satisfied with these. however, on the eve of the hearing last week, we received 45-plus e-mails from neighborhood residents concerned about the project mainly from noise disruption to commercial establishments adjoining this property, and therefore, it's not on consent and before your review. this concludes my presentation, and i'm willing to answer questions. thanks. >> clerk: thank you, mr.

winslow. d.r. requester, you have three minutes. >> yeah, thank you. david, do you have the -- yeah, thank you. i think i'm just going to give a brief statement, and i think the first page is helpful to illustrate context. we don't need to go through the entire presentation. i made this when we were negotiating with the design team just to clearly illustrate our issues. so good afternoon. my name is amir cunan. i live at 230 hugo street. my wife's family has lived in this house since the 1970s, and we've lived here together since 2000. during this time, we've enjoyed abundant light on the east side of our home. when we learned that a

four-story home was going to be instructed next to us, we carefully reviewed the plans and filed a d.r. request to address our concerns about light, privacy, and noise. it was during this process that we learned that due to the current political mandate in san francisco to create as much housing as possible of all types, ranging from low-income to luxury condos, and the fact that this project met the planning department's requirements, the development was most likely going to be approved. we decided that our best course of action was to work with the design team to lessen the negative impact on our home. we don't believe that the demolition of the dance studio on this site and the construction of two market rate units is in the best interest of the neighborhood, we eventually reached an agreement with the design team on some modifications to the plans as described earlier by david that

allowed slightly more light, air flow, and privacy, and we gave our consent to those changes. however, we are not the only residents of this neighborhood who will be affected by this project. we understand that the owners of businesses on this block, along with the communities that they serve have their own concerns. we are pleased that these groups will have an opportunity to voice their opinions about this project at this time. thank you. >> clerk: mr. vin, you have three minutes. >> hi. good evening, commissioners, and thank you for allowing me to speak. i would like to say thank you to mr. winslow for including us in this process, and i would like to thank mr. amir to work with me on the design. the ownership has always wanted to work with the neighbor on

the designing of projects that not only fit in the neighborhood content but also to attract more businesses. i don't have much to add. i understand that there are going to be public comments that are going to come in that have some concern about parking and construction noise and issues. i responded in an e-mail to one of the public -- one of the neighbors, his name is bill, and i will see if there are any other questions that i would like to answer, and i'm available for any questions. thank you. >> clerk: thank you. for members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter by pressing star then three to be added to the queue. when you hear that your line has been unmuted, this is your indication to begin speaking,

and through the chair, you have one minute. >> hi. my name is [inaudible] and i own and run baddy philosophy, a clothing store that is 15 feet down the sidewalk from the proposed project. i've lived in the city for ten years and in the inner sunset for five. i opened my shop, a lifelong dream, in 2019. i don't mean to get emotional, but my business is really important to me, and after 14 years of covid induced hardships here on the block and just as a business owner in general in the world, two to three years of construction

15 feet away from my business could really just sink me, and this business is right next door to this project. so i'm really asking you to consider, what will benefit this neighborhood the most? two luxury units that will sell for millions of dollars that is not affordable housing or four small businesses -- >> clerk: thank you. that is your time. >> thank you. >> hello, commissioners. thank you for all that you do. my name is greg dillard, and i live a block away from the proposed development. normally, you would never hear me at one of these planning commission meetings because normally, these things are not my concern. however, after a year of pandemic, the one light in our neighborhood at third and hugo

is in danger because of two luxury developments. again, i would not be here if these were affordable housing. it would bring more people to our neighborhood and our city. i would not be here. that is not what i'm here to discuss. instead, we're talking about disrupting the neighborhood for two developments that would benefit the rich. i'm here today because i'm standing with the businesses and with my neighbors. thank you. >> yeah, hi, thanks. my name is benjamin kaplan, and i live a few feet away from the site of the development, and i am concerned, also, by the introduction of the two luxury housing units, and specifically not how it'll disturb the neighborhood but how they're

going to almost certainly displace those businesses that are just to the east of the site. these are immigrant owned and queer owned businesses, and i understand the impulse to bring as much housing of every type into the city, but when it's luxury housing, and it's displacing immigrant and queer community members, i think that's something that we really need to rethink, and so i request that you don't approve this project. thank you. >> hi. i would also like to call in and contest the project at 217 hugo street. my name is wendy, and i've lived in san francisco for over ten years, and i'm also a small business owner and love to go to the businesses on hugo street. and the -- i just can't see how

two luxury condos at the expense of four small businesses is something that the city should be considering at -- like the other caller was saying, if it was affordable housing for people, it would be a different story, but there are a million luxury condos that are for sale in san francisco right now, and i don't think two more at the expense of businesses is something that the city needs, so i would like you all to please consider not approving this project. thank you. >> hi, there. my name is emily rosenberg. i am a resident of the sunset and also a small business owner in san francisco. i run a restaurant that, up until covid -- and so i just want to add my two cents. my firsthand experience of getting through this year of

covid has been absolutely devastating to our business. as a resident of the neighborhood, i frequent all of these businesses. the other three regularly, they are the type of businesses that make me want to live in this city, and the luxury condo is exactly the type of thing that is pushing families like mine out and it's not in line [inaudible] so i would also ask the commission to please consider these businesses. they are vital to our community. thank you. >> hi. my name's sarah johnson, and i'm calling in to contest the development at 217 hugo street, and i kind of agree and align

with everybody else's responses, but i guess speaking personally, these are two of the four businesses that would be displaced, i frequent often, the philosophy club and [inaudible] cantina. they're focal points for the queer community. they're huge massive staples to the city of san francisco, and i think there's more than enough housing for the wealthy, and displacing this community seems irrational. yeah, thank you. >> hi. my name is katie dougherty, and i live just around the corner from 217 hugo street, and i would like to make some comments in opposition of the

project. the first reason is, as many of the other callers mentioned, is community. s.f. can feel like a very lonely place because it is so transient. but the reason i say it is because the inner sunset and the community. the heart of the community in this neighborhood is hugo street. these businesses have worked extremely hard to build businesses that bring all different kinds of folks together. young folks, old folks, who have all kinds of generations in the community. straight folks, lgbtqiis folks like myself, i think this project would greatly interfere with our ability to gather at these businesses and maintain and continue to build this community that is so special to

this neighborhood, and just add to that, the noise factor, of course. i think it disproportionately affects neighbors for two units -- >> clerk: thank you. that's your time. >> thank you. >> hi there. my name is kimji benish. i am one of the owners of the [inaudible] cantina. i am calling in to express my concerns about the proposed project going in two doors down. i am at 257 hugo street [inaudible] and then there's the laundromat. we've been here for three years. since covid, we are only able to operate outside, so all of

our seating is outside. this would extremely impact how our business is run. i don't see who would want to sit outside during prolonged construction. also, not just that, i think the design and the proposed luxury condos are completely inappropriate for this neighborhood. the space that it is right now is a beautiful dance studio. it should be restored as a community space, not be demolished. i see a lot of complications, not just for our business, but also for the community and for people that have been coming here and walking their dog -- >> clerk: thank you. that is your time. >> hi. my name is [inaudible] pena.

i'm a seven-year resident of san francisco and a long time patron of u.c. [inaudible]. after covid, i don't see how the long-term disruption and multiyear construction will allow these really vital small businesses to our community, would allow them to survive, so i vehemently oppose this development project. >> hi, good afternoon, commissioners. my name is kaitlyn galloway, and i'm a long time resident of san francisco. i'm calling in, like the others, to just voice my support for the businesses along hugo street. i think this proposed project is going to be detrimental to a business corner that i think has kind of been a model of how small businesses can survive in such a horrific year.

the way these businesses have turned to their community and adapted. i'm just going to read back to you a portion of the criteria that i see here on your website for, you know, discretionary review, which is what we're discussing, and it says the exceptional and extraordinary circumstances occur where the design of a project does not enhance or conserve neighborhood character or a balance of right to develop properties with the occupants. these circumstances arise largely due to unusual context. i just want to highlight that we are in an unusual context in

2020 coming out of a pandemic -- >> clerk: thank you. that is your time. >> hi. my name is alexis spaulding, and i'm calling in opposition of the project at 217 hugo street. i'm really concerned about the effects that this unnecessary construction of a luxury condo could have on their livelihoods and the general community of this neighborhood as i don't feel it provides the housing that's already needed. it's actually incredible. hello? >> clerk: you have 30 seconds remaining. >> yeah. i'm already concerned about the affordability of this neighborhood and want everybody who lives here and wants to live here to be able to access it, no matter their income level, and i'd ask you why a

large luxury condo building for only two units is even up for consideration. i want this neighborhood to thrive and i want it to be the community that it is. that is why i love it -- >> clerk: thank you. that is your time. >> hi. my name's daniel wright. i'm a long time resident of san francisco. i'm calling, just like everybody else, to oppose the proposed development on hugo street. i think it's unnecessary. it would be devastating to businesses, and as you've heard, there's plenty of good reasons for that. there's no good reasons for luxury buildings in this city. there's plenty of them sitting empty. i don't think there's anything else to say.

thanks for your time. >> hello? hello? >> clerk: yes, go ahead, ma'am. >> oh, hi. my name is [inaudible] i'm a long time resident of san francisco? i'm a somatic movement therapist and dance educator, and i'm calling to express my opposition to the 217 hugo street building. this has been a community space and dance movement studio no, sir -- studio for decades. it's a place where many children have learned to dance since the 1970s, and i myself have been renting this studio since 1998. it's a perfect space for my work as i live a block away in the inner sunset.

until the pandemic, people from across the city, the neighborhood, and even internationally to study the services that i provide. the project will require two to three years on time, and due to the pandemic, all of the classes i have has come to a halt -- >> clerk: thank you, ma'am. that is your time. >> -- and -- thank you. >> hello. my name is erin cleeno. i live across the street from the businesses, and i visit them often. i'm calling in opposition to this proposed development. like many callers before, i just want to reinforce the two businesses in particular [inaudible] have worked really hard to attract a lot of

different types of people to their spaces, and i've seen a lot of beautiful interactions happening outside the businesses. i just imagine construction completely erasing the ability of people to have a conversation and go into the shop and order their drink at the restaurant, so i just, like everyone's already said, don't see the tradeoff on this particular block of the sunset. thank you for your time. >> hello? >> clerk: yes, go ahead. >> hello. my name is isabella [inaudible] and i'm the coowner of

[inaudible]. i'm an immigrant, moved here seven years ago, and always lived in the sunset. i just want to reiterate a demolition of this level would endanger not only my business but the other businesses on hugo street. this lot was originally zoned for commercial use, and between [inaudible] the body philosophy club, we're the only businesses in the whole hugo street, and by approving this development, you'll not only be taking away something from the community, which is a safe space for people to meet and people to get together and yeah, to support small queer owned

businesses, to build two luxury condos is the last thing we need in our community and in our city, to be honest, and i just want to thank everyone for commenting and calling and supporting us. thank you. >> clerk: okay. members of the public, last call for public comment on this matter. you need to press star, then three, to be added to the queue. you have one minute. >> hi. my name is charlie miller. i live here in the sunset community. i love these businesses on hugo street. it's just more of the same coming from me, but we all know the last thing that this city needs is more luxury condos.

please support these businesses, and yeah, that would be great. thanks. >> yeah, i also agree. i'm also a resident of the neighborhood. these businesses are spaces for community and inclusion, and it would be very sad to see these businesses adversely affected by this development, so as a residence, i really support these businesses and hope we can all come together as a community to support these businesses. >> good afternoon. this is edo kim, one of the owners here at queen, a small business in san francisco. we moved out here from new york, my wife and i, to san francisco six years ago, just

because we loved the diversity, the neighborhoods, sort of the support of small businesses, and just the general environment. every year we've been here, it's sort of started to lose its soul in terms of these big building going up, these big developments. this is an opportunity for us, we feel, to stand behind the small businesses, especially after such a tough year during the pandemic, and just hearing everybody today, it gave us a little more motivation to keep doing what we're doing, and hopefully everybody here today is what this city is about, which is a call for more diversity, more beautiful neighborhoods like hugo street, so we vehemently protest the

development on hugo street. thank you. bye-bye. >> clerk: okay, commissioners. public comment is now closed, and this matter is now before you. >> president koppel: commissioner diamond? >> commissioner diamond: i want to thank all of the neighbors and businesses that came out to express their opinions and share with us their views. we have two conflicting policies. obviously, the goal and desire to preserve small businesses, and we have a desire to increase housing in the city, especially on the west side. we have a project that is code compliant, consistent with the design review guidelines, and an agreement has been reached between the project sponsor and the d.r. requester. i have a hard time seeing under

those circumstances where there are exceptional and extraordinary circumstances that would justify denying the project. i believe and understand that construction is challenging to live with, but we live in a dense urban environment and have regulations against extensive pollution and noise, recognizing we're in a dense urban environment. i appreciate how diverse hugo street is, but as i don't see exceptional and extraordinary circumstances, i would move to take d.r. with the conditions and modifications as proposed by staff. >> vice president moore: second. >> president koppel: well said, commissioner diamond. i'm also supporting the project today and will call on commissioner tanner.

>> commissioner tanner: thank you, commissioner diamond, for, i think, providing a really good overview, and i also want to thank all of the community who came out and the business owners, as well. clearly, the businesses in that area are very much loved, and i hope they continue to be beloved and succeed and are very prosperous as they hopefully head out of the pandemic. i did have a few questions. for the project sponsor, who i hope is still available, were there any discussions about rebuilding the dance studio and integrating that into the new building? can you share with us what those discussions were? is there anyone here for the project? [inaudible] >> clerk: yes. i unmuted him. >> commissioner tanner: okay. >> yes, i thank the commissioner and i would like

to take the time to thank the public. i understand myself as a small business owner, as well, and the ownership, as well. i understand the struggle, and we all invest, and hopefully we can get through this together. yes, there were discussion about keeping part of the commercial on the ground floor, but in the -- but, you know, after a few rounds of designs and working with the ownership, parking has been an issue. now, when there's two units in this building, we're anticipating at least two cars. we're going to pick up part of the parking on the street, and it affects small businesses in the area, so in that case, we decided to include a parking garage over keeping the commercial space on the ground floor. >> commissioner tanner: okay. so the parking spaces required the enclosure of the studio.

your conversations with the studio owner-operator, have they -- i think they testified because of the pandemic they couldn't use it anymore because people couldn't gather. >> i believe it was the case, those discussions never really went that far, or project sponsor never gave us that indication that the business owner wanted to return. i don't have that answer. >> commissioner tanner: and then, i read all the e-mail correspondence. one part of the correspondence that intrigued me and concerned me was the project owner was confused.

>> i think there was contract between the project applicant and the previous owner that the property was [inaudible] in terms of the detail of the contract, i don't have that information, but i was assured that a contract was in place, and the building will be transferred over to the new owners. >> commissioner tanner: so the hours of construction, i don't know, mr. winslow, that's regulated by the city. can you share with us what those hours are, and if they want to change those hours, what they have to do? >> i'm not sure what those hours are. i believe it's something on the order of 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. monday through friday, but i don't think there's a chance for exceeding

those. d.b.i. is the one definitely -- >> commissioner tanner: okay. great. thank you very much. so i guess i would just leave it -- i do agree with commissioner diamond that it is a challenge to negotiate how these policies are [inaudible] and also protecting our small businesses can go hand and hand. i would ask, perhaps, mr. winslow, if this project is approved today, they still have to go through the building permit process, is that correct, or is the consent happening for the project? >> that's correct. >> commissioner tanner: and so that will take sometime, i assume. i don't know we can project how long d.b.i. would take to issue the permits and begin construction, but i'm assuming, given the backlog, it's probably not going to be quick that the construction would be take is place. i see mr. winslow nodding his head. but i think hopefully there will be a buffer of time between when this project is approved today, when they get

their permits and construction begins. hopefully it will be some more time for the businesses to get more patronage before the construction does create some challenges for the businesses that are located there. overall, i think the project does add housing, it does add parking, which is to try to minimize the parking aspect of the unit. i do want to thank everyone for their testimony today, and at this point, i am persuaded to be supportive of this project. >> president koppel: commissioner moore? >> vice president moore: thank you, commissioner diamond, for so well verbalizing what expresses my support and concern for the project. thank you also for the community will invoicesing your concerns about what is bothering you about the project. i am very inspired by your

holding up the -- voicing your concerns about what is bothering you about the project. i am very inspired by your holding up the community, but if construction is properly and respectfully done, which in many, many and most cases, it is, a construction site becomes a site that you can accept for a few years, knowing that you go beyond it, but it does not destroy community support for the business, and it does not destroy community life. i personally find that the building is respectfully designed relative to context and compared to many other buildings, i find this building is a very modest residential

expression. it is two units, but there's nothing spelled out that these have to be luxury units. they can also be affordable units, and i'm not saying they are going to be, i'm just saying they are respectfully designed context. i'm in support, and i hope this will all work out for you. >> clerk: very good, commissioners, if there's no further deliberation, i believe there was a motion that has been seconded to take d.r. and approve the project with said modifications. on that motion -- [roll call] >> clerk: so moved,

commissioners. that motion passes unanimously, 7-0. commissioners, that will place us on item 10 for case 2019-016244-drp at 239 broad street. this is a discretionary review. >> good afternoon again, commissioners, president koppel, and staff. this is david winslow, planning department staff. this is a request for discretionary review of building permission application number 2019-0820-9263 to construction a new two-story single-family home with an accessory dwelling unit on a vacant parcel.

are the 1,149 square foot a.d.u. will be located on the ground floor and accommodate two bedrooms and three full bathrooms. the 1,433 square foot main unit will be located on the second floor and accommodate three bedrooms and three full bathrooms within an rh-1 zoning district. to date, the department has received no letters in support or opposition to the project. the department's review confirms support for this complying project because it affirms the goal of providing more housing while fulfilling the residential design guidelines concerning light,

air, and privacy. the project proposes one on-site parking space and one bicycle parking space. there is no code maximum for on-site parking -- i'm sorry. there's no code minimum for on-site parking. in other words, street parking would be perfectly fine with our codes. up to four bedrooms are permitted without a conditional use authorization. the primary resident has, as i mentioned, three bedrooms and an office. the depth of the rear extension in the rear limited the mid block common open space from the d.r. requester's property. therefore, staff recommends taking the d.r. to provide a five-foot set back of the building at the southwest corner of the building at the second floor.

this concludes my presentation, and i'm happy to answer questions. thank you. >> clerk: thank you, mr. winslow. d.r. requester, you have three minutes. >> hello. my name is ivan, and i'm the representative of the [inaudible] owner at 239 broad street. it's my cousin, and he's not here, so i'm authorized to speak for him. [inaudible] and then, our neighborhood is so kind of a parking issue already [inaudible] to kind of plan a

multiunit building to have, like, a [inaudible] parking space currently for the plans, just one, so that's our concern, for sure. thank you. >> clerk: if that concludes the d.r. requester's presentation, we should take -- project sponsor, you have three minutes. >> i will begin. good evening, commissioners. my name is derrick. i'm making this presentation on behalf of the property owner, mr. david yee, and the following are some of his concern and response to d.r. [inaudible] believed to be

[inaudible] page three, please. as you can see, our building is built up against a property line, but the d.r. requester building are -- the minimum set back is 4 feet. we have measured that based on the property line of ours, and we do have the proof that this is more than 4 feet. we also design a line that would preserve light and ventilation on our building on

the side. the current building is built could you tell. as you can see, there is no cutout can he corner. -- cutout at the corner. [inaudible] page 11, please. this is a current photo that we

took recently. the d.r. requester took account to block his own natural light. the best natural light came from the front and back of the building, but the d.r. requester chose to block his natural light with the illegal construction of a cap owe pea. he has illegally reconfigured his layout without benefit of the permit. this will conclude my presentation on behalf of the property owner, and i'm happy to answer any questions on behalf of the property owner. thank you. >> clerk: thank you. members of the public, this is your opportunity to address the commission on this matter by pressing star then three to be added to the queue. through the chair, you have one minute. >> hi, everybody.

my name's may, and i'm the owner of 233 broad street, which is right next to the subject property right now? so i'm calling today to support this project just because our family has been living here for over ten years, and this property has been always, like, the stop for, i don't know, like, the neighbors to dump their trash and junk over here, so we just want to express our support for this project. hopefully, it can work out for this project -- project sponsor and the next-door neighbor. thank you so much. >> clerk: okay. last call for public comment. seeing no additional requests to speak, d.r. requester, you have a one-minute rebuttal.

d.r. requester? okay. project sponsor, you have a one-minute rebuttal if you need it? >> no, i don't need it. thank you. >> clerk: okay. thank you. commissioners, that concludes the presentation portion of this matter, and the matter is now before you. >> president koppel: commissioner moore? >> vice president moore: the project is a code compliant in-fill project that meets the code. the project sponsor addresses any concerns that anybody may have. i would move to approve.

>> commissioner diamond: second. >> vice president moore: i would also like to ask mr. winslow, on the side, not related to any projects that we've heard. why is there no title block for an architect or a civil engineer who is responsible for the production of these particular documents? >> i can't answer that concluesively. sorry. >> vice president moore: you see the initials on this one and the previous one. i feel strongly encouraged that we do have reference to those people who are the originator of these drawings, but it's just a comment aside. it does not have anything to do with my making the motion to

approve. >> okay. just to be clear, commissioners, the recommendation is to take d.r. and approve the project as proposed. >> vice president moore: thank you. that is what i was saying. correct. >> president koppel: commissioner tanner? >> commissioner tanner: i wholeheartedly agree, and i just want to commend the project sponsor for having an a.d.u. that is a great size of a.d.u., and i hope we continue to see homes come forward with an a.d.u., and that is a great size of unit, so i will be supporting the motion. >> clerk: if there's no further deliberation, commissioners, there's a motion that's been seconded to take d.r. with approved modifications. on that motion -- [roll call]

>> clerk: so moved, commissioners. that motion passes unanimously, 7-0, and concludes your brief hearing today. >> president koppel: we're adjourned.

today's special guest is virginia donnahu. >> hi, i'm chris manners and you're watching coping with covid-19. today, my guest is virginia donnahugh. she's with us today to talk about how her team has managed during the pandemic and their experience completing construction on a 65,000 square foot facility and moving into it during this crisis. welcome to the show. >> thank you for having me. >> let's talk about the new building and how your operations have adapted because of covid-19. can you walk us through the experience of completing construction on the new facility at 419 bryant street during the covid-19 crisis and then actually moving in? >> first of all, the new facility is wonderful. it gives us twice as much space for the animals, it improved our hvac system. it improves our ability to give

care. but finishing this facility was d. stressful during covid-19. we went from a team of people who met every week at the facility all the time, to having to meet virtually, to having to figure out the last half of construction not in person and that was certainly a challenge. the move itself was something that was i was very anxious about that having go well and it actually went pretty flawless. we can have up to 250 animals in the shelter at any given time and we knew that moving 250 animals would just be impossible. that would just be a nightmare. so we worked really hard ahead of time with our adoption partners to get the animal population as low as possible. we moved them first thing in the morning.

they woke up. they came over from the old shelter to the new shelter and had breakfast in their new shelter. and our animal care professionals were here the night before to set up all their beds and dishes, to set up everything so that it would be a smooth entry for the animals. >> i understand they haven't been able to help as much as they used to. >> our volunteers were not able to help with the actual move itself because of covid. what our volunteers have been doing for the past year is doing a lot of foster care for us and a lot of transportation. so as we send animals to other shelters, we have lots of volunteers who come to the shelter, pick up the animal and drive it anywhere from wild care in marin if you're a pigeon to oregon or idaho with a couple of dogs. so we have some wonderful volunteers who do a lot of work for us. we normally have about 400

volunteers. last noncovid year, they donated 26,000 hours of service. generally, they've been responsible for a lot of the animal enrichment here. so the staff had to take over the enrichment part and we have been very fortunate that the adult population had been lower than normal. we've had lots and lots of people who are anxious to have pets. so animals have been flowing out of here much more quickly than normal. >> you have a lot more space in the new facility. what's your favorite part and has anything surprised you about how the animals are responding to their new surroundings? >> i would say that my favorite part of the new place is the central courtyard. the central courtyard is first floor and you can see it behind me in the background a bit.

it's a giant place based on the first floor and from anywhere in the building, you can kind of glance over and see an animal playing in the park. and i have to tell you nothing lights up your day more than seeing a dog playing fetch in the park. it's a great little break. it's been a surprise. i didn't expect to just get such a rush of kind of relief. it's really a stress breaker to see that going on. so that's been fabulous. so the dogs in particular have been noticeably quieter, noticeably less stressed out. we added a lot of glass to the facility and originally we had thought we would tinker with the lighting so that we and the public could see in, but the animals couldn't see how. we thought that would be more relaxing, but we haven't adjusted the lights yet and i

have noticed that there are a lot of dogs who are enjoying seeing us walk by. but just watching the normal staff of the shelter walk around the building, they really just seem to be paying attention to what we're doing and they're finding it pretty relaxing. >> can you tell us about some of the special features in the new location? >> so the new facility is twice as big as the old facility and before, the animals were really in spaces that were too small. every animal has twice as much space. we also used to have one play yard and now we have four. we have three for the dogs and one play yard specifically dedicated to the rabbits because the rabbits used to share with the dogs and we all know that was not a good deal for the rabbits. >> so whereabouts is the play center located in the building? >> we have one central courtyard which when you come into the building, you see it right there. the other three are on the roof deck.

most animal shelters are in places where there's land, lots of land and you spread out horizontally. being in san francisco, we, of course, had to go vertical and this is a converted building from the 1890s. so there was a large roof deck on top with three split places and all the mechanical equipment that powers the building. >> now, you never stopped operations during the pandemic. what changes did you make to your usual procedures to make sure the general public, staff, and the animals are all safe? >> right. we have never closed. we switched a lot of our services to online. for example, you can get a dog license online now. you don't have to mail it in, you can just sit at home on your computer and do it. so that was one change. we also went to an appointment system. it used to be we did everything on a drop-in basis and now we do everything on appointment which actually has seem to be a

more pleasant way to deliver customer service in general. there's no more waiting around. in terms of our adoption, our volunteers have been great at being foster family so we get an animal in the shelter. depending on how long it's going to be here, we can transfer it to a foster family. the foster family can work with its behavior, help get it settled in and then we put it up on the website and people interested in adopting during the height of covid, we were just matching them with the foster family so that they didn't -- neither party had to come into the shelter. so that's been good. in the beginning, we were really less sure how covid spread. we were working in different shifts so we had team a and team b. so if team a became infected we

had team b come in. we had wards prepared for dogs who were exposed to covid because in the beginning, there was a lot of concern about pets being a source or a way to spread covid. >> fortunately, you didn't have to take care of pets who caught covid-19. >> no. just the two or three. we also thought there would be a lot of people who were hospitalized for long periods of time who would need our custody program support. we have a regular program where you're a hospitalized victim of a fire in court, incarcerated, domestic violence. if you can't care for your pet, we'll take your pet for two weeks, we didn't have to do that at all really. >> now, you mentioned that the pandemic had an impact on the number of animals coming through your doors. were you still able to find new homes for those animals you were taking care of?

>> no. actually. finding homes has been easier than it ever has been. it's been remarkable. dogs especially pit bulls used to tend to stay here for a long time, they found homes within days. it's been marvelous how the public has stepped up and taken these animals into their homes. it's been great. overall, our intake of wild life stayed the same. cats and dogs dropped pretty significantly. we don't know why, but fewer people surrendered their pets during this time period. >> perhaps because people are staying put during the crisis. >> yeah. maybe less moving. less losing housing because people usually surrender their pets to us because of some traumatic change to circumstance in their life. they're moving because they

want to move, they get evicted. they've had a pet and the landlord finds out and says, oh, no pets. they lose a job, they become sick and we really didn't see much of that this year. >> finally, is there anything the general public can do to help? i know the local vet always needs blankets and towels. >> sure. we always need bath sized towels. we always need those. of course, we always need financial donations. they're a great help. kitten season is coming up, so we always need nursing supplies and those sorts of things and we keep that all updated on our website sfanimalcare.org. we have links to amazon and links to chewy. when you're buying your pet food, you can always sneak in something extra for us. >> how do i drop off towels?

>> well, at this point, we're open monday through friday 7:00 to 5:00 and we have a donation box out front. so you don't even need to come in. >> great. i'm looking forward to the day you can open up again for the general public. the new building looks fantastic. i want to thank you so much for coming on the show, and for gives us your time today. >> thank you. we look forward to having the public come and see us too. >> thanks again. and that's it for this episode. we'll be back with more pandemic information shortly. you've been washing "coping with covid-19." i'm chris manners. thanks for watching.

this is the building inspection meeting. i would like to remind everyone if you're not speaking please mute your mic. roll call. [roll call]

the vice president is expected. we have a quorum and president's announcement. >> president: can everybody hear me? >> yes. >> president: good morning everybody i'm joined today with fellow commissioners. and another meeting about 30, 40 minutes he will join the committee meeting. i want to thank everyone.

gold medal award for streamlining our permitting services for electric vehicle and charging stations. thank you to the state and our local partners and city colleagues for working with us on this initiative to meet the california climate goals. we will be receiving a legislative update in a bit, but i want to point out to everyone that on june 1st, the city's all-electric new construction ordinance goes into effect. voted to support this ordinance and is now becoming a reality. this is another important step for meeting the san francisco climate goals. we also have been looking about the resumption of the over-the counter-center. was also how appreciative our

customers were to be back in the building and in charge of the role and plans. i know staff conducted extensive outreach to applicants, hosted two online and worked really hard to secure the racks of the submitted plans so they could open the doors and start fresh. it was good to see the community building working together again in person with d.b.i., and another key topic is to review our online permits this is a tremendous improvement and just make it easier to obtain the permits for these smaller projects. a big thanks to the team and m.i.s. for working through a myriad of challenges to make this happen. so thank you. i know what challenges you had

there. i'm sure we're all cheering the news that the covid cases and hospitalizations in san francisco has decreased rapidly in the past few weeks and we're all hoping we will be returning to normal soon. the city and the state are being thoughtful and careful about re-opening and we will continue to operate under public health directives that impact our work including maintaining 6' of distance from other people and wearing our masks indoors. now that the customers are coming back into the permit center we'll keep them informed. while we're talking about the pandemic, i want to take a moment to say that i am tremendously proud of the dedication and professionalism that the d.b.i. and staff and our partners and permitting in other departments have demonstrated in the past few

weeks, but also in the long year behind us. we were one of the first city agencies to welcome our customers back and expand in-person services and that would not have happened without the commitment these folks bring to their work every at at d.b.i. and other departments. so much of our work didn't stop whether it was the records division, thousands of microfish records, keeping staff safe and informed and our inspection teams going safely into inspections during the lockdown. never stop working. never let up. for that, we owe you a debt of gratitude. thank you so much. thanks to all of you for attending our virtual commission meeting today and please continue to join these

meetings and get vaccinated. thank you. that concludes my announcements today. >> thank you, is there any public comment on item 2? >> seeing none. our next site is item 3, general public comment. the b.i.c. will take public comment within matters in the jurisdiction that are not part of this agenda and i ambiguous just wanted to announce the public comment call in number is (415) 655-0001. the access code is 1872961181. to raise your hand for public comment on a specific agenda item, press star 3. and now it appears there's one person's hand raised.

>> caller user 215415. you are unmuted. >> thank you. good morning everyone. thank you, commissioners. president mccarthy. thank you. this is georgia shootis. i have a suggestion about the notification of applications for demolition permit. i just got two recently because i'm on a list to get these things, not because i live that close to them and i realize that you get this notice and then it says you'll be notified when the permit's issued. but then the permit's issued, but then it's too late. you may have missed the conditional use hearing and the conditional use hearings

usually get the planning ten days before the hearing. so my suggestion is that if you could, on these notices, when the d.b.i. sends them out that you either put the planner info on there because these two projects i just got, there is a planner assigned already or someone whoa's talked to the project sponsor on there. put his name on there so that the public knows how to contact him or something about the pin or your own d.b.i. tracking so you can see what happens with the permit or the project's coming. because i think 10 day's notice may not be enough and these projects when they are use, no one gets a 311. so you don't even have the 311 notice which gives you 30 days for something that may be a fairly simple remodel.

so that's my suggestion and i think it would just be helpful to the public to know how to contact somebody in the between time between when you get this notice that the permit's been applied for and then issued and once it's issued it's too late and then you've got to go to the board of supervisors. so that's my suggestion. thank you very much. take good care. be well. be safe. bye bye. >> thank you. good to hear from you. next caller, please >> okay. thank you. we will go to item 4. discussion and possible action regarding the director of department of building instruction from the april 2021 meeting. >> president: this item was continued last month for

request of commissioner. we are here back today. so if there's any dialog on questions on this, we'll take that first and then we'll go to public comment. i just want a clarification, commissioner, last time you had to excuse yourself. is that the case? >> yeah. i actually had to submit a few questions. just out of an abundance of caution, i will ask to recuse myself again on this item.

do we get to take a vote for that. >> president: i believe somebody needs to make the motion, yeah. >> so moved. >> president: okay. we will see you shortly, commissioner. so with that, commissioner beto. >> commissioner: yeah. i looked through the information that was provided. i'm curious to hear what my other fellow commissioners' feedback is and understand what

questions they have. >> commissioner: i don't have any red flags or additional comments at this time. but i'm happy to join the dialog. and i'm happy to hear the questions that commissioners had asked or posed. >> president: okay. how do we do that? i wasn't aware of that. >> i don't think we can. >> president: maybe the city attorney can think about that and give us an answer about that. okay. commissioner moss. >> commissioner: no comment. >> commissioner: was commissioner toots regarding her recusal?

>> president: i think she had some questions in reference. don't hold me to that commissioner summer. but i think that's what she was asking. so, with that, sonya, can you wave commissioner toot's questions, please. >> i don't know exactly what they were. i wasn't aware she had questions on this item. i know she was going to speak to the city attorney to see because i think depending on the type of contract, she may be able to participate, but i don't know if she was able to get that kind of permission before the meeting. that's the only thing that i was aware of. >> president: maybe the city attorney can weigh in. is rob online there? >> i actually don't see him yet. it looks like commissioner tan may be on the call now i'm not

certain. perhaps he could have logged in but not ready to participate yet. >> president: okay. why don't we go back to commissioner beto, please. >> commissioner: the i think the only, the presentation that was provided last month and looking at the proposals, between the two of them, the only question that i have and the alliance proposal's only slightly tighter and that they are particularly areas of exclusions or services, but that's really to their benefit. i don't see so much, i don't see that as much in the proposal. so i guess the question i have

in my mind is the duration that proposed in often times is longer and do we need that time to look for a proper candidate? because i don't think we want to run into a situation where we've underestimated the time it takes considering the position we're looking for. so that's one of my bigger questions about this. there's some minor details about, you know, the details of the proposals, like the reimbursables, those are pass through cost. but that's the biggest question that i had between the two and then the other question that i had was alliance also the recruiter that recruited the

last director some are qualified to do this, but i think the time frame is one big question that i have. >> president: is case with us? >> yes. he is. >> good morning. thank you. i just wanted to kind of get your voice. so it looks like i was the one who asked you that so if you want to talk a little bit about

that. >> case howard from the city attorney's office. as commissioner mccarthy said, you know, my view and you can see the proposals yourself. the alliance consultant is a firm that has a great deal of experience doing recruitments on behalf of the city and county. i have personal experience and personal knowledge with them. and i feel confident in what

they have been able to lay out. in terms of the timelines, i think i was hearing commissioner bito, is that you would be concerned about rushing the outreach and recruitment process and wouldn't want to in both cases, they will work with the outreach that you all believe is necessary and would also work with you to extend the timeline if the candidate pool is sufficient or if you wanted to see a deeper, broader pool. you do have good options in either case and i know both firms would work with you on

refining the time line to meet your needs on the calendar there. >> president: commissioner bito, does that answer your question? >> it does. but when i look at the second and third week which is anywhere from a week to two weeks, they'll develop a candidate to target. you know, that feels like that's not a lot of time to look for a list of candidates of this caliber. so it doesn't, that time line, and then i can understand that a consultant is more than happy to extend their timeline, but it would come at a cost. so what we perceive as saving,

you know, what the difference in their fee, $30,000 so what would happen is they would say, yes, we're absolutely and when you're already in contract with somebody yourible ability to negotiate, they're already committed to the project. in the two weeks, they'll develop a list of potential candidates. it's just that doesn't feel like a lot of time having gone through, you know, understanding what it takes to look at somebody at an executive level, but president mccarthy, we didn't hear from

commissioner tam. >> commissioner: i take it we're on item number 4. >> president: correct. >> commissioner: so i did reach out to sonya with concerns i had and i'm just listening in on commissioner bito's comments. kate, as it been done where we can go back to alliance and say, hey, can you match this other i guess dollar amount. is that like negotiations a possibility here as far as the pricing and the time frame? >> thanks for the question, commissioner tam. yes, we can go back to the vendors and propose a different

time schedule or a different approach or request additional outreach. i would say that our billing is based on milestones. it's not based on the specific lengths of time. so i think to address the concern regarding, you know, we get and we still don't have a profile or haven't even start the outreach. typically for milestones one at initiation, one at the profile, one at the progress report, and one after the interviews. and so that's how i think we would address the concern that commissioner bito is raising. however, i have seen commission requests that d.h.r. goes back and say we like your approach,

but we want to expand your outreach. does that change your pricing at all. and so i'm happy, of course, to go back to ask of that. >> thank you. and i do see both and i'm sure they have a roledex of candidates that they already have in mind to work for this. and those are my consents. thank you. >> president: okay. is there any further commissioner comments. if there's not, let's just go to public -- okay. commissioner bito. >> commissioner: i have one just because of the timeline and i look at the website.

often times the placement from this various nonprofits that they work with has been multiple. i like the fact that they're i do have pretty big concerns about the timeline. i really don't think like one or two weeks to create a potential list of people is enough time to do that and then the other question is, is the pool of people in the public sector, the only sector that we want to look at? i mean, we definitely -- i think that you want the experience working with the public, but does it have to come from somebody that's just working in the public sector?

and, i think given, and i understand the cost of the fees between the and that comes from venting through a lot of different resources. so that's just added comment to that, president mccarthy. >> president: okay. so i think what we have in front of us, we have two options here, one is to take a vote on which firm to move it forward today and then the other is to send it back again which i'm kind of against because i think we should be moving forward here due to the commitment that we did that we'd start this progress. move it out another month. it's not necessary. but, that said, i think that's been brought up to bring it back. she would go back and kind of

renegotiate their offers. so i'm just curious in what way the commissioners are leaning towards this morning. my feeling is to take staff's recommendation and approve alliance. but i'm open for suggestions if the vote's not there for that or whatever. >> clerk: so we should do public comment and then, following that, someone can make a motion. so is there any public comment on this item? >> no. there's not. >> clerk: okay. thank you. >> president: commissioner bito, do you want to make a motion here then? how would you like? >> commissioner: i think what i've heard between commissioner tam and myself at least the two of us expressed an opinion

about this if alliance can renegotiate their contract even though they used a percentage of the salary, their burn rate every week is pretty close so or ask the same question of offen heim. what is the same time frame for alliance. would you match the same dollar per dollar that alliance has and see what kind of response you would get from either party, but i understand,

president mccarthy, desires to move it forward but this is one of the most important things we're going to do this year as a commission and rushing the process because the cost of picking the wrong candidate is so much higher than the time extending one more month or vetting this one more month or asking these consultants to renegotiate their timeline so that you have parody between the two of them. the only exception that i take to oppenheim's contract, when i look at it closely, they will after a year that if the candidate doesn't work out, that at no cost, they'll find a replacement, but the term they use as a recruiter is

demonstrated incompetent. and it doesn't put the city in a strong position to say look, oppenheim, you need to find us another placement. i would look at that term carefully and replace the demonstrated indianapolis with and it's up to the consultant to find a replacement for the city after a year. does that seem like a fair suggestion to you, president mccarthy? >> president: thank you for those comments, commissioner

bito. kate, can you weigh in on the strategy that commissioner bito is laying out? >> i think i heard two things. you would like to see the apples to apples timeline and what would the cost differences be. i would note for the commission that the timeline that is are referenced in the proposals, they are meant to be, they're estimated. they're meant to kind of lay out the general approach and the general amount of time these firms have found that it takes historically to do this kind of work so i can certainly go back to them and ask them, you know, if they were required to do the processing or only 11 weeks or required to take longer, you know, would that change their pricing. i think the question about kind of the terms and the issue of a

replacement, we already have underlying contracts with all of these firms and so i would need to look at what those terms are, i don't recall off the top of my head, but whatever the underlying terms of the contract are, that's what will govern the agreement, not what they wrote in the proposal. the proposal, they've already signed a contract to do this work and there are certain terms and conditions associated with that: we wouldn't be able to make changes to those things. >> president: so the answer to renegotiate the contract is a no because they're under the governance. these are essentially almost like jobs against the contracts. you know, we've said we want to work with you, we want a contract in place so that we can bill against it when the city needs it so the contracts

are in place and now they've said they've raised their hand and said we're working with the building inspection. >> president: so then what we're up against, commissioner bito, does that change your position on voting this to the? >> commissioner: no. i think my position is the same. obviously the timeline is we want to see what renegotiating alliance's contract to the same timeline because i'm not comfortable with the timeline they proposed. >> president: why don't you make a motion to approve oppenheim and see if there's a motion to second that. think about that and then,

commissioner tam. >> commissioner: i think, she definitely -- i'm not speaking for her. i think she feels both parties are capable, it's the timeline and the cost involved. if we motion to move alliance forward based on them being able to match oppenheim's proposal, is that something we can do? >> president: let's go back to kate there, vice chair. >> yeah. thank you. this did happen in another commission where they basically selected one firm and said, but the price is a little too high and we were able to do that. so i think you can -- you could provide me the direction to ask oppenheim to match the timelines that are proposed in

alliance and oppanheim and provide an updated pricing. >> president: vice chair tam, is that acceptable to you? >> commissioner: that's the thought. >> president: okay. back to commissioner bito, would that be acceptable to you? >> commissioner: i think that would be acceptable. >> president: okay. >> commissioner: president mccarthy, if they come back and they don't match it, we're back to square one? the assumption is that they would in the next meeting presumably, but if they don't, we're back to making another discussion between the two proposals and would the difference in schedule and the difference in fees. so i just wanted to be clear on

that. does that guarantee we've gone with one. >> president: yeah. no. there's something in here for everybody. voting one up or one down at that point. which i'm willing to do today at that point, you know, with the comments from commissioners, i think this is a good compromise here. so would commissioner bito or vice chair tam, would you make a motion to that then? we've done public comment. i'm sorry. i should have gone back to -- would any other commissioner like to weigh in? commissioner jacobo? >> commissioner: yeah. for me. asking alliance to do that

would make me feel good. so i think this is a good look into the future to see if we can get that happening. >> president: thank you. commissioner moss. >> commissioner: i don't have any further questions. >> president: okay. commissioner sommer. >> commissioner: i might of gotten a little lost. are we asking, alliance is the lower cost faster, less amount of time. so we're going back to them and saying, can you guys do this or more money in the longer amount of time? is that what we are saying? >> commissioner sommer, my understanding is the commission is interested in ensuring there is sufficient outreach time early in the process to develop a comprehensive list of

candidates and is asking and i believe wants to move forward with alliance but with the assurance with adding additional time to the outreach process, you know, that they can do that and my understanding is that you want. >> commissioner: okay. >> one option would be to not accept the proposal. >> commissioner: sorry. it's more a conversation of the timeline and requesting further information from them regarding, hey, it sounds like this is a little tight to us, would you think it's appropriate to adjust it type of conversation and i suppose we're just, that is being left at the discussion of the

conversation of the department of human resources and the consultant which sounds like that makes sense. is that the assumption >> so my understanding is that it's the commission's desire to have that outreach and candidate identification process to be more similar to the oppenheimer proposal. the commission feels this early part of the process is not sufficient to fully understand the rule, build out a real target candidate list and do that recruitment and outreach. what would it look like if you added two weeks to that, three

weeks to that? does that change the price. >> president: and, if they accept that, it doesn't have to go back to alliance and as commissioner bito said, then we one up or one down on the next one. okay. that's good compromise. >> i think the condition is they need to match the timeline. so their proposal should match the timeline and they're supposed to be associate wednesday that. the timeline is really the important piece and that's my priority. i'm presuming that they'll match their fee accordingly that that should also be part of the condition too. >> president: kate, can you just confirm that there. that would be your understanding as well. >> my understanding is that you wish for the timeline to be the

same. and i can make that request to them. >> president: commissioner bito or vice chair tam, do you want to make a motion? >> commissioner: i know commissioner bito would because there's some verbage. we need to make sure i think it's definitely important and i know, i totally understand this could have significant consequences. just because we have to >> i'd like to make a motion.

>> commissioner: i'd like to make the motion. >> secretary: so there is a motion by commissione bito and seconded by vice president tam. i'll do a roll call vote on the motion. [roll call] that motion carries unanimously. thank you. >> president: thank you, kate, and thank you for your guidance this morning and thanks, commissioners. good conversation.

>> secretary: next item is item 5, commissioner's questions and matters. 5a, inquiries to staff. at this time, commissioners may make inquiries to staff regarding various documents, policies, practices, and procedures, which are of interest to the commission. >> president: i will go to vice chair tam, please. >> commissioner: i have no questions at this time. >> president: thank you, vice chair. commissioner alexander-tut. can we welcome you back? >> commissioner: just a quick question are we doing a and b together? >> secretary: yeah. we're just doing a at this time because then b, we announce the next meeting and other information. >> commissioner: okay. no questions at this time. i'll wait for b, thank you. >> president: thank you. commissioner bito, please.

>> commissioner: i have one question about one of our meetings that it's a five-year strategic plan that i forgot who was writing that, jeff buckly, i don't know. i guess my question ties back to the technology question i had earlier. do those -- does that technology question or the plans that d.b.i. has for that get tied into that strategic plan? it's a question to the staff and i'm also wondering because that strategic plan doesn't happen, i think we don't get a report until later this summer or a draft until august from my recollection. >> president: okay. is our director here.

>> good morning, president mccarthy and commissioners. commissioner bito, i believe those two things are very much connected and what we're working on short term is updating our current pts with the latest of forms and obviously we have good rfqs out there. we're going to have a contract by the end of june and then we're going to start working on that project while updating current p.d.s. while looking at a slightly longer goal of engaging with vendors in relation to the longer goal of having a modern technology

platform. so, yes, we are moving forward with that and it will be blended in to the strategic policy document for sure. >> president: commissioner bito, does that answer your question? >> commissioner: it does. when will we see a draft from that? from what i understand is we don't see that until later this summer? >> yeah, our initial effort is to update our p.t.s. so we can have a modern face on the technology that we're using right now and we'll be working on the bigger project starting in the beginning of the fiscal year which is july 1st.

a point. i see those two things being linked to the 5-year plan, so i'm curious to know when we're going to see a draft of the strategic plan so we see what the priorities are especially with respect to technology and the plans for d.b.i. and permitting. >> yeah. thank you for that question, commissioner. can i turn this question over to you, please. thank you. >> sure, director. hopefully you can hear me. this is jeff buckly, so we should have a draft for you no later than. so that is the presentation we provided to you.

i think that was the timeline that we had laid out. >> commissioner bito, is that okay? >> commissioner: that's fine. i was hoping we were going to get to see something in the interim, but that's not the case. >> president: back to mr. buckly, is there a possibility obviously not ready for prime time or some fellow commissioners can look at and just making comments, jeff, are you think that you're not willing to release that sooner? just asking. obviously, it's your call. back to you, mr. buckly. >> secretary: hello, jeff, are you still on the call. >> yes, i'm here, can you see

me or hear me. >> now we can. >> sorry about that. i think we can get you something probably as early as august. i would be concerned about getting something earlier than that. i think there's a lot of work to be done between now and that time. >> president: commissioner bito, something is better than nothing. commissioner alexander-tut, did i skip you? commissioner jacobo. >> commissioner: nothing at this time. >> president: it's really, i don't know that the staff. >> commissioner: much to the chagrin of some building trades. you know, the initial

information we have on it from the developers, the architects and things like that. but i would like to hear from the d.b.i. staff about your thoughts on is it, we're always talking about yes, it's expensive, but, yes, it can take a long time to build and get permits and i'm just wondering if staff is planning on kind of quantifying, you know, because i get 833 bryant is really coming along and i'm wondering if in the future, we can get a report on d.b.i. staff's opinion on the effectiveness and quality of the modular affordable housing units that are coming online since it seems like it's a technology that's here to stay, but we want to make sure we're building high quality housing for everyone that lasts a long

time. >> president: yeah. commissioner moss, that's a good question. i think your timing of it is perfect. we said two years back, we had a hearing. >> commissioner: yeah. it was right when i first started and it was a hearing. i guess what i'm feeling now is there's some empirical data, physical, tangible things that people are moving in to and i'd wanted to hear everyone's thoughts on that. >> president: as you correctly pointed out, it was a controversial hearing and different things. but i thought that time we were trying to figure out was how does that fit into the d.b.i. code and local safety and fire and so i think that would be a very timely hearing. interim director, can you weigh

in on that. i'm trying to remember who met the staff. >> director: i believe deputy director sweeney made the presentation and i think there's two parts to this. number one, there's the need to prioritize which we do the affordable housing projects and the other part of the discussion goes back to the use of the modular construction. so we can, you know, it's been a few years now and i wasn't involved in much of the conversation at the time, but we can look at it and provide you with information in regards to how we assess the modular construction and what's involved with it is codes and obviously knowing that these pieces are built in a factory and they're put together on site and we look at the foundations and obviously we

have to do with the electrical and the plumbing for the structures when they are being assembled and when they're coming online. so we'll be -- we're happy to if you would like to provide you with an update on that. >> commissioner: yeah. absolutely. please. and i would love for it to be public and public information. there's a lot of subjective words being thrown around out there about the efficacy of the modular and i'd love to determine these things to weigh in publicly. >> director: absolutely, commissioner moss. >> president: and thank you commissioner moss. i know at that time commissioner walker and i and mandelman went to these locations when they were building the different

companies. it was fascinating. that's a good one. >> next is commissioner sommer please. did i miss anybody? >> secretary: yes. i believe you called everyone. we can go to the next item. 5b is future meetings and agendas. at this time to determine those item that is could be placed on the agenda of the next meeting. our next leg of the meeting will be on june 16th. >> president: and, there is a possibility we might be in chambers. we'll figure that one out.

commissioner tam. >> commissioner: i was curious, i know we spoke about any updates or any input we have to the current rules and regulations for the bick. is this something that we discussed here or is that another? >> secretary: we'll be discussing it here. a few members of a working group met, but i'm update you on that to try to get you in the loop of it, but i believe we'll be revisiting those items next month, at next month's meeting. >> got it, thank you. >> president: commissioner alexander-tut, please. >> commissioner: yeah. i had requested and it was pulled that it would be on next month's meeting, a conversation about, you know, some of the concerns that will be reflected

in the hearing that was called by the board of supervisors regarding alleged cementing in a gas pipe that could cause a fire the board of supervisors in june here, i think we have a couple different roles. one is to understand, is this true. two is to understand if it's true, does anything need to be done about it and what do we need to do and the third is to review our internal communication within our sub committees between the bick and b.i.c. and our sub committees

and the subcommittees don't meet very often. we have drafts that have been sitting out there for months and months. so while we could go and look at minutes i'd like to see us institutionalize something more formal whether it's just like them bringing a form to us. so i think the question about the sub committees. one is understanding what happens and something needs to be done, then a separate kind of internal look at our subcommittees. are we getting information and i would like to see the subcommittees at least come to the b.i.c. annually, but i think there's better processes we could do to maintain connection with our subcommittees and i understand we're invited to go to all of

the meetings which is probably impractical for all of us to do but to improve and make sure nothing falls through the cracks between the sub committee and say our subcommittees. >> thank you, commissioner alexander-tut and well articulated there. director, i know we are going to be hearing back from you this month. i know a particularly good request to talk about that next month as well. >> absolutely. which committee? i'm confused on which one you're going to be at? >> the hearing is at land use. it's scheduled for june 7th and

we're looking forward to misplaced concerns. we are confident that the seismic program has made the city safer, you know, the construction was built to code and there were multiple layers of oversight, not just d.b.i. inspectors, but third party inspection. our methods that we use in regards to what we required were indoors by our board of examplers which was a group of engineers and we will be reporting back to you next month after the hearing. >> and in particular, interim director, that relationship between the department and the committees how they communicate, could you please, i'd be very interested to see, you know, if that's a weak link that we need to kind of

strengthen up here. >> absolutely. we're looking at that and we'll definitely report to you as well. >> for now i'm good. thank you. >> president: okay. commissioner bito, please. >> commissioner: i'm sorry. i had to use the restroom. what was the question? >> president: on our item b. >> commissioner: oh. >> president: i'm just wondering if you had anything on the b item. >> commissioner: no, i think the item i was interested in. i don't know if that needs to be an agenda item. so no further comments from me, thank you. >> president: commissioner

bito. commissioner jacobo. >> commissioner: no further questions at this time. >> president: commissioner moss. >> commissioner: nothing at this time. >> president: commissioner sommer. >> commissioner: nothing at this time. thank you. >> president: the only thing i'd like to add to the public comment area by ms. george tootis. i was wondering if somebody could walk us through that. of course, she was asking to get further notice before the decision was made on the demolition. is that correct? were you there for that? >> i wasn't there for it. initially, it's a planning notification. there is also a requirement for a 15-day building notification and basically, we post a sign

on the building and that gives folks a 15 day window of appeal and no work can be done in many that 15 days because once it's demoed, there's no going back. >> president: i know we have contact, i wonder if one of the staff can just reach out and just articulate in an e-mail just to make sure we captured what she was asking and if there's some work to be done there. if it's a planning issue. >> yeah. absolutely. >> president: okay. >> yeah. i'm happy to reach out to her on that and provide her with the information. >> president: georgia shootis. forgive me if i pronounced it wrong. madam secretary, i believe that's everybody. we need to go to public comment. >> secretary: yes. is there a public comment on items 5a and b?

>> no, there is not. >> secretary: okay. thank you. our next item will be item 6 update regarding d.b.i.'s initiative to accelerate permit processing during the health crisis. >> president: looking forward to this. please -- is this christine? >> yes. christine. can you share my screen. >> secretary: yes. one moment. >> okay. can everyone see that? >> secretary: yes. we can. >> good morning president mccarthy and commissioners. of course, the big news this month is our expansion of over-the-counter plans of

pharma services which began last week. this is a giant accept towards getting back to normal and restoring efficiency and this is a huge boost for both our customers and our plan review staff. when we instituted the droppoff service and the pandemic restrictions, it really became difficult for customers to, you know, confer staff to communicate with customers and for us to route plans and customers have possession of the plans and they're around plan reviewers. the process is much quicker and more efficient. and, here is a photo of our meeting with plan reviewers. people are still a little socially distanced because of the health restrictions and that will remain while the health restrictions are in place, but you can see people now able to interact with their

plan reviewers and make changes in real time. and so our plan to continue to expanded in-person services. so this actually began on april 28th. we started inviting customers who had already dropped off their plans to pick up their plans and meet with plan reviewers. that was a three-week process that's now finishing up this week now that we will by the end of this week have all the plans back in the hands of customers we'll be able to invite more new customers in a the permit center for plan review and we're still doing that by appointment and that is happening now. we have new customers coming in by appointment and then we'll be expanding the number of appointments for new customers, as well as people who have gotten comments back on their plans and have been invited to cam back for rechecks. so the second phase is for us

to expand the number of appointments for new customers and start moving towards the day we can offer walk-in services like we used to have. that will be dependent on the pandemic health restrictions changing, but we're starting to gear up for continuing to expand the availability and capacity for new customers. so the expanded services last week led to a ban for over-the-counter permits. we had a huge jump in a number of over-the-counter plans we had last week and so you can see and really getting the more efficient process back off the

ground. so in other news, we have been leading up to this. we had two public advisory and customer webinar events to help to communicate to our customers about the changes and the services as well as get their feedback and answer questions. we also held two webinars for the all-electric new construction that's going into effect on june 1st so our customers are ready and understand what that means for them and then coming up in the next couple of months, we're going to launch some training modules for our plan review so we can help our customers use electronic plan review effectively. and additional updates, we have three new plan reviewers. one new plan reviewer starts this week and two more building plan reviewers starting soon so that, of course, increases capacity for us to review for

permits and expedite the permitting process for continuing to pilot the expanded electronic plan review which we expect to expand the plan review, electronic plan review to more projects probably in the next couple of months and we're recruiting for our deputy director for permit services that job is posted now and we are actively recruiting. and, with that, i'm going to hand it over to bruce m.i.s. project director who's going to show you the new online kitchen and bath remodels. he's going to walk you through that. so, please take it away. >> thank you deputy director. hope you can all hear me. i'm going to share my screen, i think. i do not have a share my screen

option. here we go. >> secretary: giving that to you now. >> gotcha. >> all right. hopefully you can see my slides. so i want to thank the commissioners for allowing us to show you the snapshot of our latest edition to our online portfolio. this is our kitchen and bath remodelling projects for incline projects. my name is bruce yuke. the goal of our online portfolio is to reduce the number of customers who must come in to d.b.i. to conduct business. with driving more permits online, particularly permit issuance, we're decreasing dbi's overall permit capacity. every person we can issue online, that's one person that doesn't need to come in the door and that's one more person our counter staff can serve with another type of permit.

so along with our electrical, our plumbing, our reflinders aluminum fabricationing permits, this new kitchen and bathroom model will issue permits online. >> secretary: did you advance your slide? >> i did not. i am doing so now. that was just my long introduction. so the program requirements for this online offering is limited to contractors only online. you need to have a contract classification. one or two unit dwelling units. there cannot be any building,

plumbing, or electrical problems on the property. the historic buildings are not eligible. this is for inclined kitchen and bathroom models only. no change in structure units. no modifications. again, this is not available to the property owners as an applicant. this is restricted to contractors. and, in addition, any additional work that needs to be done will require a separate permit. so i kind of stressed the online permitting in that last slide and here are the requirements for those contractors. we need to have a contractor's online account issued by d.b.i.. in order to obtain that, you need to have a valid contractor

license with the appropriate license classification. you need a valid san francisco business license. a valid worker's compensation's certificate and you need to be registered in dbi's database for contractors. and then online, we have links to the online applications. those online applications can now be fully submitted to the health staff and then we can create the accounts for the contractors. all right. so here's a little snid bit of the sfdbi website. you will find the online permitting. underneath the permit services

dropdown and you'll see a menu item that's called instant online permitting and you can click the highlighted link for reapply for kitchen and bath permits. so here's a summary of some of the information that you're going to see. after you log in with your account and move in to the kitchen and bath area, you're going to answer your project address or your parcel number and one of the cool things that happens, cool from an i.p. perspective is that we are checking your address, we're making sure that we're using an official address, but we're also making sure that based on that address that the property is of r3 property. it verifies with the contractor based on your log-in. it holds the proper license

classification. ensures that you're c.s.l.b. or your business tax license is not incomplete or expired and it also checks to make sure there's no complaints against the property. so what you see on the left is a summary of the information that you may have input about the project for both the building, electrical and aspects and plumbing of the work and some acknowledgements and disclaimers. on the right-hand side, what you see is a summary of the fees associated with the information you've submitted. and when you click continue to payment, you'll be sent to the online portal for payment which you'll see on the left of the current slide. so, from here, you can pay by electronic check with no service fee or by credit card.

there is a service percentage fee depending on the dollar amount and to make your payments and after you make your payment, you will see e-mails that will include your building permit, your electrical permit and plumbing permit. so what you'll see on the right is a copy of a building permit that was e-mailed out to the applicant. you'll get similar electrical and permit, excuse me electrical and plumbing permits as the case is needed. once once you have issued, you can download and you can also check the status of the permit, we have a website that allows

you to track the permits or complaints and you'll see in the comments probably in just above the middle of the screen, you'll see that the, oops, i think i lost that what you'll see in the middle of the screen is that is the comment in the middle of the screen here. so that's actually my last slide. so i want to thank you for the opportunity for presenting this and i am happy to answer any questions that any of you may

have. >> president: thank you, bruce, and the commission. thank you so much for working so hard on this. >> president mccarthy, if i might chime in here at this point, because i'd like to give a huge shout-out to bruce and his team for what they have done with the kitchen, bathroom modelling online and reroofing. it's very meaningful to us because, like you said, any of these permits we don't have to issue over the counter gives us greater ability to issue more of the other types of permits we issue and i think bruce said something about it being cool from an i.t. perspective. i think it's cool from a non-i.t. perspective. bruce, amazing work. i'd also like to thank our

staff for the past week or ten days in so far as they've made this expanded in-person service work seamlessly. nobody is complaining. i mean, i gage things by complaints sometimes, but everyone seems very happy and i walk around the floor every day down there and there is an energy there and there is a feeling of getting back to some degree of normalcy about the whole operation and i have to say the permit center staff has been amazing also in making all this work. i mean, they are the logistics behind the operation and in addition to that, other departments have been amazing in so far is they're working with the permit center and us on the d.b.i. side and it's all working smoothly and i'd like to say thank you for the

customers over the patience over the last year and a half now. it's been a wild ride and i just want to say how thankful i am to my staff and everyone that's making this happen right now. >> president: thank you, interim, director. if there's no objections, commissioners, i will just open the public comment and then i'll come back to you if there's no objection. >> secretary: is there any public comment on this item? we are on agenda item 6. >> clerk: not at this time. >> secretary: okay. no public comment. just a reminder for people listening in to call in it's (415) 655-0001 and the access code is 187 296 1181. and to raise your hand press star 3 when prompted by the meeting moderator.

okay. president. >> president: thank you, secretary. vice president tam. >> commissioner: i just want to say this is very cool. the site's probably going to evolve as you get feedback. i'm curious later on down the line once you get feedback how many of these permits are getting issued. but very cool. thank you, bruce, and the entire team. >> thank you, commissioner. >> president: commissioner alexander-tut. >> commissioner: yeah. no questions. just kind of the same sentiment. this is exciting work and great to see this develop. >> president: thank you. commissioner jacobo. >> commissioner: no. just kudos. thank you. >> president: commissioner bito. >> commissioner: just echoing my fellow commissioners.

it's great to see d.b.i. streamlining their process. thank you for the presentation. >> president: commissioner moss. >> commissioner: no questions. thank you. >> president: commissioner sommer. >> commissioner: thank you for the presentation. this was really helpful. >> president: the team really knows the hard work. it's very difficult to get anything meaningful done. i have just one question if you can go to your if first slide, what qualifies for the kitchenen and bath and roof permit. is that possible? >> yep. perfect. next one i believe. >> that's all we had.

>> president: go back. so anyway. there we go. this one the building not yet eligible. can you walk me through what's historic because everything's historic. >> planning mains a database of different historic buildings within different classifications and there's other specifications that are called articles. basically, the ones of most concern are category a historical buildings. so anything that is a property already noted as historical category a is not allowed currently. the future in working with plannings data, we will be making that more specific to category a, articles 10 and 11 will be disallowed. everything else would be allowed online. >> president: okay. great. so there's a formal place to identify those.

>> yes. >> president: perfect. all right. well done, bruce. madam secretary, i do believe we are done here. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> president: thank you, bruce. >> secretary: thank you. so our next item would be item 7, update and discussion regarding d.b.i. initiatives to reform and improve department operations. >> can i share my screen again? >> secretary: just one moment. okay. thank you commissioners. this is the second part of the

ayend canada item from last month in which we talked about we were working on this initiative. so what this is about is d.b.i. is instituting a series of retomorrows and these initiatives are designed to improve our processes. create dictional checks and balances and enhance transparency for the public. the main things you're going to see here are all about transparency and accountability. interim director was the developer of this package and our executive team will be responsible for ittings success. we've had a lot of engagement and support from our managers. so the effort starts with management reforms. we want to set the right tone at the top and make sure every

employee at d.b.i. understands how they're expected to conduct themselves and how they're able to provide consistent ethical service to the public. and that will be done through a series of initiatives. we have a code of conduct that we give to employees and we encourage employees we're going to conduct some diversity equity, inclusion, and people management. we're going to be looking at department sections through a racial equity lens and partner with racial equity working group. and administrative reforms. we want to be sure that we're consistently deploying best practices in hiring and in our records management. our human resources department

already has many policies in place but we're continuing to revise and update and enhance the best talent, increase diversity and provide consistent training. we're looking at different ways we can standardize our processes and expand outreach to communities and establish some new standards for, you know, how we post jobs and how we recruit for jobs. so in records management, just give a sense of this. we get up to a thousand requests a month just for residential information requests. we already have as you can see here significant records in place to make sure they're archived properly so they're accessible and in tact. but we also have an excellent document management system which allows us to review and retrieve some permit history including the plans, and final

completion. and, then next up, we're going to implement a system called secure a share and they secure in a faster way. for m.i.s. or management information services, our information team has a way to lock the records and to protect the information in those records as well as back them up, and, for this, we're looking at both providing cyber security training to i.p. manager to strengthen that aspect as well as modernizing our permit tracking system which would probably inherently include more security. so for inspection, we are increasing the checks and balances in our inspections division. both to ensure the quality of

review and the public's comments to make sure they're run appropriately. it has already implemented a system of assigning inspections by district and what that means is you have a district inspector and any inspections that fall within that geographic cal area are automatically assigned to that inspector. so you don't have a situation where somebody's saying can you come and do an inspection over here. so what we're looking at for this is requiring and when we talk about requiring pre-expectation, that's the quality compliance legislation that we worked on with supervisor ronen that was passed recently and that's for customers who are flagged for increase oversight making sure that we do a pre-inspection on those jobs so we can verify the

site conditions. we're also looking at providing additional training to inspectors on planned review and site inspections including more of the inspection correction to details online for public information adding customer concern hot line or website so that people are as clear for customers how to elevate any concerns they may have about inspections as well as just providing better guidelines to the public about how they can file complaints and how they can file an effective complaint. often, we get a complaint with not enough information. we don't know what to follow up on. providing more specificity really helps us with our enforcement. so our code enforcement people is on the front line of safety san francisco to make sure that homes and businesses are properly built and renovated. but we also protect neighbors

and the public by making sure the work is done, that permits are pulled properly. so there are some things that our code enforcement team feels they can do to ensure the integrity of the system is having a defined process for identifying and referring those repeat code violators to state licensing boards. it just goes kind of hand and hand with the previous one about how to kind of train the public on how to make plans about code enforcement and how to understand the process. we want to point a new inspector and make the notices of violation available to the public so there's a public regard of those. and, on the permit services

side ensuring that the plans are refewed with the highest level of confidence and integrity. our job is both to ensure that those plans meet the codes, but also to educate and help our customers understand the code and build code compliant contracts. so we want to ensure that they are good plans and we also want to ensure there's an accurate and honest and consistent review of those plans. especially where the additional compliance control comes in and implementing some standardization measures to you're not getting one plan to the next. we have this system called queueless that was implemented in the permit center which assigns customers to the next available plan reviewer. that just makes sure that the

customers aren't able to come in and choose the plan reviewer. they have to go to the next available window and so that just ensures that we're randomly assigning those. the defined criteria is, again, part of that measure of making sure that the plan reviewers are consistently filing a recheck process and just providing them with additional training on identifying, you know, various kind of common ways that folks might try to avoid code compliance. so the next steps for this, we want your perspective on the proposal and welcome suggestions for how to make this stronger. we are working hand in hand with the controller's office

who is conducting a public integrity review of the project. we expect that will be done in the july time frame and that we would add any recommendations that the controller's office has to this framework and then once we have that, we would return to you with an implementation plan and a time line for how we're going to achieve these initiatives. and that's the conclusion of my presentation and i'll take questions. >> secretary: would you like to go to public comment first, president? >> president: thank you, christine for that presentation. yeah. let's go to public comment and then i'll circle back to

commissioners if there's no objections. thank you. >> secretary: is there any public comment on item 7? >> not at this time. >> secretary: thank you. >> president: everybody must be on vacation out there in the world. i thought there'd be a lot of comments because there was a lot of this commission today that was talked about and discussed. anyhow, with that, let me just go to my fellow commissioners. commissioner tam. >> commissioner: thank you for the presentation. i really appreciate that. i have no questions at this time. >> president: okay. commissioner alexander-tut. >> commissioner: yes. thank you deputy director for your presentation. i do have a couple questions and one comment. one comment is, you know, i've continued to work with the staff around kind of this idea of how internal complaints get

dealt with and i think in the spirit of this agenda item as well, but my question is actually regarding the question, regarding some of the housing inspection and that's why i missed it. it's just housing inspection or code inspection too, but it's a question about how their districts get divided. is it based on gentlemen geogr? is it based on population? how do the districts get divided? [inaudible] >> i'm happy to take that, christine, if you would like. so these districts have been like geographically set up for many years and i think the original partitioning of these

different areas of the city was based on primarily based on workload and tells us how many inspections are being performed in the different areas and in regard to what you mentioned commissioner, about housing inspection, i think we understand that a lot of these s.r.o.s and these building that housing would be looking at would be focused on specific parts of the city more than others. so i think that what you would see when you look at the map of the districts is that you would have smaller geographical areas for those types of the city that have these types of buildings and that's primarily how it's set up for all the inspection divisions. in other words, if you look at the one i'm most familiar with is the building inspection divisions, the smallest district in the city is the

financial district because it's tall and there's a lot of floors and high-rise buildings to look at and these tenant improvements are going on all the time. so geographically that's one of the smallest districts and one of the largest districts would be maybe the sunset or the richmond. so that's kind of how it works for the most part and i hope that answers your question. >> commissioner: yeah. could i repeat that what i hear to confirm. it's my understanding that each division has their own district map based on their own departmental need. >> director: correct because housing would be different in building and electrical. >> commissioner: yeah. that makes a tremendous amount of sense is how it gets divided up. so that's helpful to know that's already kind of in play. and then i did have a question.

so, thank you for that. my other question was regarding the standardization measures in planning review and just wanted to find out a little more about what that -- since that was a separate line from some of the other points that were mentioned, just what that meant to the department and what that means for and forgive my nontechnical knowledge of what i'm about to say so thank you for bearing with me, but the when the contractor really wants to do a demolition or wanted to do a complete internal review, but comes to us with piecemeal building permit request, are we setting ourselves up to catch that in a more efficient way through these efforts? i hope you know what i'm

talking about. [ laughter ]. >> director: yes, i think, commissioner, what you're referring to would be the tendency for maybe some design professionals or maybe contractors to come to us with a piecemeal or multiple permits that might all add up to something greater. so it's a very small percentage of cases where we see this happening and we do look at the permits that have been issued previously in relation to these different projects and the planning department in particular where they are involved will be, you know, consolidating all of the recently issued permits and putting the pieces of the puzzle together. but it is something we're working on with the planning department and we can make it better.

we have two different sets of codes. we have our building code and they have their 317 of the planning code and we have ongoing conversations and we're -- we hope to come up with a structured way of looking at these across the departments, you know, based on our meetings and conversations. >> commissioner: thank you so much. no further questions at this time. >> president: thank you, commissioner alexander-tut. and that has been the most contentious for the department planning and those have been the kind of serial issues that come up from time to time. commissioner bito, please. thank you. >> commissioner: i think i'd have to look at the slides a little more closely, but a question i had about the nonpermitting services on

improvements. i didn't see a lot of breakdown between. i know that your o.t.c. is pretty efficient, but you are longer intake what the improvements on timeline i think could be part of your agenda. so that was something that i didn't see in part of the presentation. that's just a suggestion. >> director: do you want to take that, christine, or should i? >> i took that down. thank you. >> commissioner: i think the other question i had, president mccarthy, they had their public advisory sign up and i didn't have a chance to review the last ones, but i think we've heard consistently that the time sfs frame that people are

receiving this permit continues to be a consistent complaint. how does that inform your initiatives and reform and your agenda? so that's a question, but it doesn't necessarily need to be answered specifically, but i think that should be a big part of it. >> president: okay. interim director, you're okay with that. did you want to answer? >> yeah. absolutely. i mean, obviously, we're putting a lot of resources to coming out of the pandemic situation right now and that means that we have a lot of focus on these getting the

over-the-counter and then we can move back to our in-house review. as christine mentioned, that will be our focus after the next few weeks when we get the over-the-counter process back to a more normal situation. >> secretary: unmute yourself, president. >> president: sorry. i'm having trouble with power on my phone. commissioner jacobo, please. >> commissioner: thank you for the update on the initiatives and the reform. i think it's going to be very important and i am excited to see the timeline. do we have any idea when the city controller review is going

to be completed? i don't know if you said that and i missed that. >> yeah. they are hoping to have it wrapped up in july. >> commissioner: in july. okay. and maybe we can expect that in august or september kind of an updated timeline, etc. >> yeah. >> commissioner: that would be great. thank you for much for putting your time and energy in it. >> president: thank you, commissioner moss. >> commissioner: no questions at this time. thank you for the report. >> president: commissioner sommer please. >> commissioner: no questions at this time. thank you. >> president: thank you very much. and, obviously, christine and interim director and to all the management team for putting that together. i look forward to the final report from the city attorney so we can finalize everything. you know, as sitting on the contractor's seat and talking to the contractors, they just want a clear understanding of what the rules are and that

they're all implemented evenly and they have no interest in a few bad actors who've seemed to abused the system over the years because it makes it harder for everybody else. i think this is going to make it way more efficient. let's face it, as a commission and i know interim director trying to make the public aware and we're doing everything we can to make it better. so any comments or any ideas from the public that, you know, please bring them forward because this is -- with this document, christine, that you're working on, i think it's a great opportunity to get everything on the table and make sure we do a good job. thank you christine and your

director for putting this presentation together today. did i miss anybody? >> i just want to know, i'll talk to you guys soon. >> president: yeah. thank you for that. i was aware of that. thank you, commissioner jacobo, for joining us today. >> secretary: thank you. midway through the conversation, there is a hand raised, so i was trying to see if we can take public comment. >> president: absolutely. second public comment of the day. >> secretary: okay. thank you. >> sonya, christine still has the host ability. maybe you can unmute them. >> secretary: okay. thank you. i will do. >> hi there. good morning, commission. thank you for your time. it's kevin o'connor calling

again. and i'm having a technology glitch today. i'm not sure if you guys are hearing me. i just wanted to say i just listened to the proposals. i also want to say since march 2020, i sent you guys questions. i haven't heard back, not a word, not a peep. and when that's heard why were you given a permit for retaining walls that were never built. it would be nice in your effort to obtain this transparency that you actually take some steps and go through it by simply responding to my questions. no one has answered my questions and i think they're good ones. they involve other things. i don't want to go to the detail now. it's my understanding that the b.i.c. is the advocacy board for the consumer and i'm getting it and i would appreciate some. thank you for your time. stay safe, be well, and thank you for all the great work. i can tell you guys are working

really hard down there and it's a great department. i want to be part of it as a consumer, as a builder, as a permitter. so i appreciate all the efforts that you're doing. thank you very much. >> secretary: there's no other comments. okay. so we will go on to item number 8. 8a is update on dbi's finances. going to try to coordinate this just one moment. hello caller. is this deputy director madison. just wanted to make sure you were the right person. >> yes. and, could you share the report, please. >> secretary: yes.

>> okay. good morning, commissioners 2021 and i would just give you a brief summary. if for revenue. revenues are at $45 million due to better than plan check. revenues are steadily increasing which is a good thing. so every month, we see more collecting more and more revenues. maybe that's a good thing. year to date, we're at $35 million this year. on the expenditure side, we're at year to date expenditures at $59 million and that includes

primarily to more building and services on work orders and i'm happy to answer any questions. >> president: thank you deputy director. commissioners, is there any questions? i'm assuming. i see none. >> secretary: okay. the next item. thank you. our next item is 8b, update on proposed or recently enacted state or local legislation. >> good morning, commissioners. john murray. d.b.i. legislative affairs. we have a few up coming hearings. mainly supervisor melgar's hearing on maintaining safety, that is scheduled for june 7th at land use. supervisor haney has introduced a hearing item on starting a

small business in san francisco. that is scheduled for june 10th in the public safety neighborhood services committee and finally supervisor mar introduced a hearing item on the budget legislative analyst report on eliminating natural gas uses in residential buildings. we do not yet have a scheduled date. i'm hearing maybe sometime late june, but nothing definitive yet. we also heard supervisor preston's in the western addition. at the conclusion of the hearing supervisor preston continued the item to june 17th for follow-up discussion. the city department's all-electric new construction ordinance will be effective on june 1st, so any permits for new construction filed on or

after that date will have to be all electric. supervisor peskin's ordinance pending the removal of existing community kitchens which you all considered last month was passed by the board and signed by mayor breed on may 14th. the other item you considered was the deadline consisting of existing firearm systems. so it is waiting the mayor's signature. supervisor safai's emergency ordinance requiring owners of commercial high-rise building of their ventilation systems are code compliant was tabled at the may 5th board meeting. and on may 11th, supervisor mandelman introduced an ordinance to expand the city's water reuse program that's the purple pipe water recycling program. that basically lowers the threshold for what type of project would be subject to those requirements. and the small business recovery

act which would extend prop h so i don't have a date for when that's going to be up in front of land use. with that, i'm happy to answer any questions. >> president: thank you, mr. murray. commissioners, once again, i open it up. does anybody want to weigh in on anything in there? seeing none. next item, please. >> secretary: okay. our next item is 8c, update on major projects. >> good morning, again, commissioners. this is patrick o'rearden with an update on our major projects. this is a summary of the month of april over the month of

march, and there is a 2.4% increase in the total construction in april over march and along with that, there was a 1.26 decrease in the total number of units in april over march and i'm available for any questions you may have. >> president: any questions, commissioners? i see none. on to the next item. thank you, madam secretary. >> secretary: 8d is update on code enforcement. >> i think it's still good morning, commissioners. joe delfi acting deputy director of inspection services. i have some of the inspection numbers for april 2021. building inspections performed

4,589. our electric 193 npgsz performed on 300 and our code enforcement actions 46 cases were sent to so it's a pretty steady number. there is. we are hearing a building inspection that there is some concern that the increases and expectations i thought i'd mention the only hope is i don't want to have too big of

an effect. but i thought i'd mention that. so thank you very much. that's my report. >> president: thank you, mr. duffy. i will open it up to commissioners there if there's any questions. >> commissioner: i have a question. i just wanted to we have not been called in for an abatement and appeals hearing in six, seven months. i just wanted to ask, i guess that means in a nobody has challenged. it seems like a long time, so i just wanted to ask about that. just has there not been appeals or as many fines being issued. could you just kind of let me

know. >> hello commissioners, that's something we're working on. they're working on abatement appeals and some other items, but i can give you an update and staff can as well. >> commissioner: sorry. i didn't quite hear. >> there's a bit of an echo going on. i'm not sure. >> hello. is that better? >> thank you, yeah. >> yeah. i believe that we are trying to resume the abatement appeals board hearings and there are a few cases to be heard so we will -- we're going to begin resuming it. >> okay. >> president: but it has been a long time, sonya.

so i'm sure you might have a backlog at this stage now, so maybe you can let us know individually commissioners if it's something off line that you want to give us a call and let us know. >> commissioner: yeah. i'm kind of confused because i thought we had a director response timeline [inaudible] so. >> president: yeah. i don't know either way to be honest with you. >> yeah. and i'll work with staff on it as well so that maybe with the director or more and [inaudible] i'll give an update. >> yeah. we'll definitely look into it and provide you with information. >> president: okay. because i know we're busy at

the litigation committee. okay. >> thank you. >> secretary: next item is item 9. review and approval of the minutes of the special meeting of february 10th, 2021. >> commissioner: make a motion to approve the minutes. >> commissioner: second. >> secretary: there is a motion and a second. is there any public comment on this item? there appears to be no public with their hand raised. are all commissioners in favor. >> commissioner: a. >> secretary: any opposed. the minutes are approved. thank you. next item is item 10, adjournment. is there a motion to adjourn. >> commissioner: motion to adjourn. >> commissioner: second.

>> secretary: okay. so there is a motion and a >> good afternoon. this meeting will come to order. welcome to the may 17th, 2021 land and use and transport committee of the board of supervisors. joined by vice chair supervisor dean preston and and supervisor aaron peskin. madam clerk, do you have any announcements? >> clerk: yes, madam chair, the board of supervisors

legislative chambers and committee room are closed. however, members will be participating in the meeting remotely. this precaution is taken pursuant to the statewide stay-at-home order. committee members will attend the meeting through video conference and participate in the meeting to the same extent as if you were physically present. public comment will be available on each item of this agenda channel 26 and sfgov.org are screening the public comment number across the screen. call the number on the phone that's (415) 655-0001. the meeting i.d. is 187 333 3238. again, that number is 187 333

3238 then press pound and pound again. when connected, you will hear the meeting discussion but you will be muted and in listening mode only. when your item of interest comes up, please dial star and then 3 to be added to the speaker line. best practices are to call from a quiet location speak clearly and slowly and turn down your radio. you may submit public comment in either of the following ways. you may e-mail myself the transportation clerk at erica.major@sfgov.org. if you submit public comment via e-mail, it will be made part of the official file and forwarded to the board. or you can send your public comment through mail as well. finally, items acted upon today may appear on the may 25th board of supervisors agenda

unless otherwise stated. madam chair. >> thank you very much, madam clerk. please call item number one. >> clerk: yes. item number one is the temporary closure of liquor store in polk street neighborhood commercial district does not require new conditional use permit and affirming appropriate findings. members of the public who wish to provide public comment on the item should call the number on the screen. that's 4156550001 and the meeting id is 1873333238.

and then press pound and pound again. you only need to press starly to line up. the system will indicate you have raised your hand in confirmation. please wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted and you may begin your public comment. madam chair. >> chairman: thank you very much, madam chair. supervisor peskin, thank you for bringing this item to our committee. will you please leave your remarks. >> supervisor peskin: thank you supervisor melgar. this item is a piece of legislation that my office introduced in the past in the north beach commercial neighborhood district a few years ago after a massive fire in this case coit liquor and another spot they have temporarily relocated. and, this is a similar

situation, but thankfully, it's not a fire. the drug shop very similar to coit liquor was actually located across the street from this current location and then when that property was turned into a condominium development they moved to their current location on the northeast corner and that project has been approved for a large condominium developer and the good news is they will be able to relocate after a period of construction. construction is going to commence actually very soon and they have found another temporary location to relocate during the period of construction. everybody's doing good by doing well. i want to thank my chief of staff who's been moving heaven and earth to make this fit

within everybody's construction schedule and i want to that city deputy attorney peter millen for the planning department staff who brought it before the commission which recommends it, but actually had some much more expansive suggestions which i'm quite interested in, but given the fact that the city attorney has deemed many of those suggestions to be substantive and what i would like to do is to duplicate the file so we can start working with the city attorney and the larger community not just in the polk district, but potentially beyond to see if this is something that makes sense for everybody but with a little more process, so i'd like to send the item as is of course, subject to public comment as a

committee report and we can hear it tomorrow on the first meeting and tomorrow on the 25th at its second meeting before we break for the memorial day recess. so that's it in a nutshell and thanks to sunny and peter and audrey for their work. >> so, just to be clear supervisor peskin, do we want to hear from the planning department on the second file or should we leave that at some other time? >> it's totally up to you. it's actually dated may 14th and i'm happy to hear from audrey and the basis of their recommendations all of which were embraced as a suggestion to this body by the planning commission. >> chairman: okay. why don't we hear from ms.

maloney shortly if she's here and ready and willing to give us the wisdom before we go to public comment. >> thank you, supervisor. audrey miller from the planning department. the commission did recommend essentially two suggestions to the board. and so with that first suggestion it was the creation of a temporary use authorization for all legacy businesses as they are defined in the admin code. it would basically state that as a legacy business, or due to it would allow them to temporarily relocate to either any other location within the same zoning district or any other location outside the

doning district. the commission recommended that this temporary use permit for an additional two years maximum not to exceed a total of six years. all other permits by agency would still be required and if the location is to be rebuilt and the plan is for that legacy business to return to that location, this would allow that business to not have abandoned their use at the original location meaning they could move back without needing to seek new approvals or pay impact fees. lastly, the idea that this tua has followed the legacy business itself. that vacates their temporary space. the space would return to its previously engaged designation. we understand that supervisor peskin is on a timeline. therefore, we have just some

mechanical modifications that we would like to suggestion to the original ordinance. so for that original ordinance, we suggest extending that time limit from three years to four years and the temporary location use permit. the commission also requested that we clarify that the temporary liquor store location shall revert to its previous use upon termination of that occupation of the liquor store. we also wanted to make sure the entitlement process exempt to liquor store from this legislation and development impact. again, both that temporary location and their original location so long is that's occurring within the three or four time period. and, last, we requested that the term during construction of a development project that be replaced with the language due to the issuance of a demolition

and new construction permit or due to a force major on the site. that's all of the commission's recommendations and i thank you for your time. >> chairman: thank you very much ms. malone. if there's no more questions from my colleagues, let's go to public comment, madam clerk. >> clerk: thank you, madam chair. if you haven't yet, please press star three. we've confirmed there's one caller with seven listeners. if you can unmute the first caller, james. >> linda chapman. well, i don't want to speak against, you know, allowing a liquor store to move to a different location in the polk

n.c.d., but considering the history we've had of total disarray, complete dysfunction that was caused by too many liquor license principalably of bars, clubs and such. i would have a concern if this were being extended beyond what we're talking about. in the polk ncd, it was not the liquor stores that were the problems but the concentration of liquor license which both the planning call and the a.b.c. law say they're not supposed to be more than a certain distance apart and because the planning commission during a period of time was very willing to authorize anything that came up, we reached the point where it was beyond chaos and specific locations were an example in the senior housing, the leland hotel. there was a use that was approved to and the next thing

they turned from one thing into another. the people living there were suffering. everybody went down. obviously, old chinese people didn't go down, but i went down for them. the seniors condo across went down and the planning commission just dismissed them. you know, the people who lived in the senior condo actually had to buy glass to cut off their bay windows. the street itself turned into chaos and crime. it was completely impossible for northern station to do anything. they said that with all the hundreds of drunks who were there and finally chief surrender intervened after i wrote him and he came out and heard a meeting and heard tapes of what it was like there. world cup soccer every night.

so if it were -- >> clerk: speaker's time has elapsed. >> clerk: we have another caller in queue. we have nine listeners with one caller. jim, if you can unmute the next caller, please. >> hi, chris shulman residence and a nonprofit director in lower polk and i'm representing myself. i'd like to thank supervisor peskin, his staff, the planning department and others for this. this is very important. i also appreciate that the recommendation for the planning department are going to be carried on in a duplicated file and i look forward in participating in that discussion in lower polk which has a lot of vitality with legacy businesses including alcohol related ones, you know, legacy businesses could be effected in the future with development and i look forward to being part of the

discussion. so thank you so much. >> clerk: thank you. madam chair, that looks like the last speaker in the queue. >> chairman: okay. with that, the public comment is now closed. do we have a motion to send this out of committee without recommendation? supervisor peskin. >> supervisor peskin: i would be happy to make that motion. there are really two sets of recommendations that the planning commission recommended to this committee and this board of supervisors. one is the first that which is really kind of the larger public policy. the second are a series of amendments that i think this legislation could benefit from. unfortunately, they are mostly deemed to be substantive that would require additional time.

so what i would like to do is duplicate the file and i'd like to do so now and after we get back from the memorial day quick recess, make those amendments relative to the time limitation from three to four years which is substantive relative to having the use revert to it's pre-liquor store use and a couple of other amendments that i will have that be follow-up legislation so that we can at least get this development going and keep this legacy business on its feet. i just wanted to save that for the record. i'd like to duplicate the file and, madam chair, i'll come to you some time in june and still have the larger conversation. >> chairman: okay. supervisor peskin, because you're the expert on this, help

me out. for the second duplicated file, do we continue it to after the june -- >> supervisor peskin: yes. i would like to duplicate the file and make a duplicate of the file to the call of the chair. >> chairman: okay. sounds good. madam clerk, can you please call roll on the first motion. >> clerk: yes. to note, member peskin requested the original file be duplicated. no motion is necessary, but on the motion to recommend the original file as a committee report as moved by supervisor peskin. >> supervisor peskin: as a committee report. >> clerk: as a committee report. [roll call] you have three ayes. >> supervisor peskin: and then i'd like to continue the duplicated file to the call of the chair. >> clerk: on the motion as

stated by supervisor peskin to continue the duplicate item to the call of the chair, [roll call] you have three ayes. >> chairman: thank you very much. that motion passes unanimously. full motion passed unanimously. so, madam clerk, can you please call number 2. >> clerk: yes, madam chair. item number two is urging the recreation and park department municipal transportation agency to work collaboratively on a long-term recovery and revitalization plan involving immediate neighbors and community stakeholders to reimagine twin peaks and identify resources to improve accessibility, safety, cleanliness, environmental sustainability and the ability to build upon a welcoming

environment for residents and tourists alike. for public comment, please call (41) 565-5000 to speak. the meeting id is 1873333238. >> chairman: thank you, colleagues for hearing this item today. earlier this year, i suggested a resolution along with supervisor mandelman and president walton urging the recreation and parks department to work collaboratively with other city departments and community members to develop a long-term plan to reimagine twin peaks and to make this an accessible tourist destination and a place for all residents to be proud of.

while mitigating some of the impact on the neighboring residents. looking at places like land's end, we know there's so much potential for twin peaks. maybe a warming hut, perhaps a cafe, sometimes a visitor's center or public arts space, there's just so many possibilities that would be an improvement over what we have right now which is not very well planned for and gets a lot of use. these and other amenities to only offer a sense of wealth of economic opportunity, but also offer consistent activity to help alleviate some of the crime opportunities that some of the neighbors have seen. it's sad to see this amazing beautiful location that's full of possibilities, always riddled with graffiti, litter, vandalism, and preventable

crimes. i see the opportunity for us to invest in the love in public open space. it is a tourist destination that attracts thousands of visitors. i know when i have family who come from out of town, one of the first thoughts always is at the top of twin peaks and my hope is making twin peaks not only accessible to people who have different needs and different accessibility levels, but also welcoming clean, enjoyable for our residents and for neighbors and for tourists. in the short term, we are working closely with the department, with the san francisco police department and with the mayor's office to identify more resources for park patrols and for other ways to prevent crimes. i am looking forward to general

manager ginnsburg's presentation on the inspiration parks department is drawing from to envision what twin peaks look-out could be and i'm looking forward to having a conversation about what kind of process we could develop to plan and to strategize and community members. i am grateful that over the past couple months, there have been hopeful conversations with rec and park and i'm also very sensitive to the concerns of the neighbors who are most impacted by what has been happening in twin peaks during the pandemic. i want to make sure that this is authentically a collaborative process. i have been hearing over the

past week from many neighbors who have been frustrated by the activities and the decisions that we have made as a city and i think that with an eye towards making progress and improvement, i want to make sure that all voices and that we come up with a process that's transparent and that works in terms of coming to consensus. without further adieu, i want to bring up general manager general park and sfmta. and director ginsburg, i'll turn it over to you now. >> thank you chair melgar and good afternoon supervisors. we have a short presentation that just does a little bit of context setting about some shared values and some opportunities about sort of what's what at twin peaks with

an eye towards recovery and revitalization in the resolution. so if i could -- i think i am joined by beverly who's going to show our presentation. great. next slide, bev. so as you noted, supervisor melgar, this presentation is in response to a resolution that you introduced along with your cosponsors supervisor mandelman and wallton to collaborate with other supervisor departments to imagine twin peaks and a little bit of context setting. i'll state the obvious.

twin peaks is an extraordinary location. it's one of the most visited national areas with stunning views of the city and in and around twin peaks, you can find a .7 mile trail that ascends the twin peaks and the

so during covid, the streets have been providing equitable space so people can be outdoors at a safe social distance. the end of march, twin peaks

was closed to properly social distance while enjoying the ability to do these sorts of activities. what you see here is that the space is really being widely used. we have been able to track our visitors. we're getting approximately 1,300 visitors a day around christmas tree point. and around 1,100 around the north side and panorama about 1,600 on that side. the pink triangle -- twin peaks has made the pink triangle its home for over a quarter century and the pink triangle was illuminated in honor of this 50th anniversary of pride.

next slide. very significantly, twin peaks is also the home of the mission blue butterfly. the habitat at twin peaks open space is a very diverse area and mission blue is a dangerously federally protected species and that only occur between southern marin and its habitat is very limited. twin peaks habitat and population is very important to the survival of the species. our department has been working for a decade to conserve the mission and in 2010, the species was on the brink of extension in san francisco and our efforts to protect and enhance the mission blue which is estimated to be at over 200

today, next slide. over the pass several years there's an escalation in studying twin peaks. installation of crosswalks along twin peaks boulevard. new trails which were built earlier this decade and another round of trail improvements in 2017. here's a look at the current configuration of the site which shows the modifications to the figure 8. there you see on the photograph

and then you see the area that has been closed to car traffic to pedestrians and bicycles only and then you see the existing roadway southbound which is now actually going to be, it's two-way tracks that go back up to twin peaks boulevard. so next slide. some future projects up at twin peaks that are already in the works are some trail segments, one segment that will lead to crest line drive. this would be the backside of the figure 8 and then there is

some work to improve parks and transportation on the site that is also in the works. so some future ideas would be to continue working on circulation, trail access, continuing to manage our conservation and habitat restoration efforts, but to provide the kind of activity and to welcome visitors as you suggested, supervisor melgar, one would be to create a visitor's center. so the idea would be a place where we could actually, san franciscans can visit visitors and about the importance of the

site to the region and, of course, it would also be a place to actually study, acknowledge, recognize our first americans, recognize the ohlone tribe and give a 360 degree view corridor and potentially an educational center that would obviously include opportunities for employment, for, you know, economic development, etc. next slide i wanted to add any big

projects to improve the big blue. a visitor center that could help with trash management and offer, you know, partnership with some of the other trail impovments a robust sort of circulation plan that, you know, with a trail network really could serve to protect the habitat. one way to begin to sort of in terms of a path forward to try to test some of these ideas and projects would be while this conversation continues and funding is identified is to experiment with some temporary or pop-up spaces that could begin to create a centralized space that could provide the education or even refreshments that we speak of and begin to elevate and provide some

structure to the space as a destination space. next slide. we're going to revisit this. i already actually covered this which is, you know, there are wonderful opportunities to celebrate. both our environmental and natural and cultural history at the top of this site and to invest in an improved trail network and improve circulation network that would potentially mitigate some of the public safety issues that are well known up there, but that also needs to be balanced with the environmental conservation efforts. next slide. so how do you begin to get there? there are a variety of different strategies. it obviously begins with lots and lots of outreach which it feels like this and the hearing and the resolution is intended to, you know, to begin a

conversation about the right balance of activation and offering a space that's welcoming to visitors, but, you know, there are a variety of ways to get there. one is purely a philanthropic effort to either operate the site and that could be also with a nonprofit organization, if its focus is going ton on environmental education and national history. it could be some sort of blend and/or we could, you know, invite ideas from the public about how we might accomplish this. there are real costs here and there's a lot of communication, outreach, and process that needs to commence. i think some of the intermediate steps that we touched on very briefly with

respect to improve trail circulation and converting the backside of the figure 8 into the linear park are really important intermediate steps of the conversation continues but we are happy to work with this board and our fellow city agencies that are responsible for land management in the space and most importantly neighbors and community stakeholders on trying to achieve a balance that makes twin peaks even more special than it already is. and i'll stop there.

thanks. >> chairman: i love the idea of having some presence to remind us of the ohlone people and their stewardship of the land and the mission blue butterfly. it seems that those two things like having folks, you know, access the top of the hill when the pass is not very well kept

is kind of an invitation to trample on the habitat of the butterflies, so it seems like we really need to support the flowers, the native plants and the butter flies that way as well and it seems to me we should be talking about how do we have like an orderly way in which people access the top of the hill and minimize the impact of the land and, at the same time, remembering the stewardship of the land and i am wondering because in our conversations in my office with all of the different departments as you pointed out, it is multi-jurisdictional. who has right now jurisdiction of the pass going up to the hill from twin peaks boulevard because it showed had it as being under rec and park jurisdiction, but in your presentation, you talked about

that being mta and dpw. >> let me pull up my slide here that shows the circulation. i believe that we are managing, we manage the trail network, the roadways themselves are actual public works roads and traffic management is sort of overseen by m.t.a., but our job has been to try to manage the existing trail network as much as we can. unfortunately, this space was designed with not much historic reflection for pedestrian access. up until recently, there were very few sort of formal trails, there were some social trails up there, but it's a combination of all of us. and to add, supervisor melgar,

we do have a million dollars in the 2020 bond allocated continuing to improve the trail network up there. so we are moving forward with the trail and circulation piece. trails are really important in the space. that mission blue relies on the loop that's up there and that's a very sensitive plant as it is and we do need to keep people on the trail network or on hardscapes and away from some of the more sensitive conservation areas. >> chairman: thank you. and would there be opportunity for community input or for neighborhood communication and input into that $1 million bond at work to this trail? >> yes, of course. i mean, we engage in community design processes with all of our capital projects and all of our bond funding.

this is a -- specifically that funding is allocated for natural resource conservation and protected specifically. within that, there will be a lot of opportunity to receive community feedback about some of the specific needs both from neighbors and from natural resource stakeholders. >> chairman: okay. thank you. and your other ideas in the presentation about, you know, a conservation center or in informing hub. did we have partners how what the collaboration was of the department? what was the road map that was used? >> well, i think it sort of depends on the particular project and the moment. right. i mean, if, you know, the city were to make the kinds of

policy decisions to rely solely on public funding, that would be great, but often, particularly a project designed to inspire environmental education and stewardship and conservation really could attract some private support. obviously, any education center or visitor center would need to have an operations plan and a business plan that would be sustainable to keep people there and to operate the site and to be able to welcome visitors. so we're really at a beginning stage and i'm grateful to you and your cosponsors and the other supervisors on this committee for, you know, for just talking about it. we don't have a percentage road map, at this point. we, you know, i think we would all agree that twin peaks is a tremendous asset and access and circulation and public safety

and are challenges as is the fact that the state isn't particularly welcoming to those who do make the trek up there. these are things we could solve while celebrating and acknowledging that this land once belonged to the ohlone peak. >> chairman: so i had one clas question. my neighbors have talked a lot about access from tour buses. it has been an activity that hasn't been all that well regulated. there's big ones and small ones and so we have tried to put some order into it. are there eye tourist locations that are administered by rec and parks department that regulate access of buses or have any kind of system to put

order in terms of like the times that are accessed, the number of people, the size of the buses. any of those things. >> some of that is done in and around union square with a moderate degree of success. some of that is done in golden gate park with moderate degrees of success. i think if we looked to our federal partners, obviously, places that like you mentioned, supervisor melgar, like land's end do get a lot of tour bus operators. supervisor peskin i don't think the tour buses make it all the way to the top of as you noted

the fact that many want to see san francisco at the top of the twin peaks. >> chairman: thank you. colleagues, do you have any questions or comments for mr. ginsburg? >> i so. thank you chair melgar. and i want to thank you for bringing this forward and just appreciate the comments, general manager ginsburg around the early conversations on this because i think it's really important and i think a resolution helps on this for things that need to be baked. i did have a question just on the i think you had a slide

around the possible approaches sort of laying out some different ways to bring in the investments and revenue and managed the property in the future. you know, for me, it always raises a question, something you and i have spoken of just around potential privatization of public land in its various forms and my question is less about whether that's specifically the plan here because i think you answered it's to be determined and whether rec and park has any policies in place that would apply here and to other projects around private use of public land. like as this conversation goes forward, is there a set of guiden principals around when rec and park sees private use

or management as appropriate or is it just case by case. >> i think ultimately isn't determined by rec and park as it is community. partnerships, you know, are important, we have private entities like nonprofits offering in our self-help or the ymca operating in some of our clubhouses, we partner with all kinds of organizations on park related matters for the resource development that also remains and it needs to make

this is the very beginning of the conversation. so there are different ways to try to, if the objective is how do we and we need to make more investment in the trail network and some of the circulation and access issues that we've alluded to. there are plenty of gaps and pieces to that. we are still, you know, need to take, you know, utmost seriously our conservation work and our natural resource protection, but if there is an idea that having some type of activation at the top of twin peaks to provide some safety to be more welcoming to those who visit, there are different

pathways to get there and, you know, we want to choose something that's community appropriate that meets the values and objectives that's a lot of people would like to see up and ultimately, it would need to be sustainable one way or the other. >> commissioner: so forth as to a particular project. like let me just give you an example. is there a hierarchy, for example, of uses? you know, top choices, generally, we want a government facility run by rec and park. if that's not possible, we want

a nonprofit used. if that's not possible, we look to a private restaurant or is there some sort of guidance? >> yeah. so i think rec and park, land management responsibilities are fundamentally ours. we don't delegate our land management responsibilities. secondarily if you're talking about sort of buildings and programs, our work with our recreation work, our work with kids and the seniors, it is you know, we squeeze every ounce of public service delivery that we can as we've been doing with our delivery hubs and our summer camps and afterschool programs, but sometimes we do enter into mission aligned strategic partnerships with nonprofits to leverage the work that we're doing to provide either specifically culturally

competent work or whether a community stakeholder can offer something that we don't have the resources to provide and, so i mean that that is pretty it. we're not really in the direct provision of concession. that's not really in our business line. so, yes, we would entertain and we do throughout our park system private sector to support our parks with park appropriate concessions and amenities as every park system does in the country. we don't as the golden gate national we're not in the direct provision of concession type businesses but in terms of environmental education model, we would either probably tend to do similar to what we do with a lot of our other national resources type spaces and with our community gardens and urban farms and direct

service provision and some partnership with, you know, mission focused on profits. >> supervisor preston: thank you. and i just want to say i'm excited about some of the ideas that have been discussed and i want to mention the trail work which i think is an important part of folks enjoying the natural butte of twin peaks thank you. >> chairman: thank you supervisor preston. supervisor peskin, did you have any questions or comments for mr. ginsburg. okay. thank you very much. we will hear from matt lasky from mta and perhaps, mr. lasky, you can talk about the access to the park and the questions and ongoing issues we have about that. >> good afternoon, supervisors. can you hear me okay? >> chairman: welcome.

i like the background. >> oh, thanks. >> so in terms of access and tour buses, is that your question, supervisor melgar? >> chairman: that was one of the questions. so the question that i had asked director ginsburg was whether in other places we have set up systems of just to control access to a number of people that it gives one of the constant concerns that i hear from neighbors is that it is sometimes a very stressed use of that spot in that, you know, part of my desire is improving the overall infrastructure for twin peaks is to put some order in terms of like the number of

people who uses it and so one of my questions was are there other places where we do this successfully? and keep that kind of implicit to you but i also wanted to have you here for the presentation to talk to us about, you know, just more general access issues up there. so what director ginsburg talked about was that they have jurisdiction over management of the land, but that the mta and d.p.w. have jurisdiction over the access. >> okay. so, first, let me try and speak a little bit to the tour bus issue or the number of tour buses. so, before the pandemic, there was approximately 10 tour buses that traveled up to the top of twin peaks per hour, per daylight hour. so there was a range but on a friday, saturday, sunday,

there's typically about 100 tour buses that went to the peak. and those all accessed egress from the peak portola side which is this other side. tour buses are currently not allowed to use the burnett gate. so they entered and exited via portola, and, currently, we're not seeing a lot of tour buses up there given the pandemic and tourism, but we think in the future, they will be back. in terms of limiting traffic or limiting tour buses, there are and speaking with city attorney's office, there are limitations that we have in terms of, you know, like a toll

road, say, and that is governed by the c.p.u.c. and so the california public utilities commission and so that is at the state level. however, we have some other tools potentially that we could consider like parking, you know, parking fees up at the top at christmas tree point road. currently, i think there are nine tourist bus parking spaces and 20 or so vehicle parking spaces up there on christmas tree point road and those are -- there's no fees or there's no meters associated with those. so there's potential there. i had another point. >> chairman: sorry to interrupt you. you know, so this hearing was

called specifically to ask the agencies to work together to come up with a plan to improve the infrastructure to make it more hospitable and amenable for the public. i would like them to work with the main one being recreation and park and you may have heard director ginsburg's presentation which really prioritized a couple things. one is sort of highlighting the need to preserve the mission blue butterfly which is so important to keep people off of the hill and off of areas that are not trail and the main access road. so with that in mind, you know, it seems like it's the utmost importance for your agency to work with that and sort of the things that you have talked about right now seem like just

the mta you know, this is what we can do because of the cpuc. so i'm very interested in the things that you can do if you work with the recreation and parks department to put some order into this, to make, you know, we want tourists to be able to have access, but we also want them to use the land gently and it is i think on us to put some order, to make sure that that is up and we haven't quite fought it through together. >> right. yeah, we're definitely interested in working our partners alternate rec park as general manager ginsburg mentioned. it is a public works roadway like 95% of the other roadways in the city and we m.t.a. are in charge of management of the roadway and traffic. so, yeah. i think our agency and the

m.t.a. board is open to collecting more community, you know, input as a future plan comes to be so promote the healthy use of the space. as you know, we just went through a process that kind of changed the roadway, but, i mean, it's not done, you know. we understand that twin peaks boulevard has undergone an evolution and can continue to do that in the future. i fully embrace the gentle touch on the natural environment up there and working with our partners up there and making sure that people have access both, you know, tourists and people visiting whether they're walking, biking or needing access via vehicle. so, yes, that is important to us as well and it's been an ongoing project and i don't

think it's going away. so, yeah. we're very supportive of that. >> chairman: okay. did you have anything else in terms of this presentation? >> no. i think if you have specific questions, i'm happy to answer them. we -- i'll just say as apart of the twin peaks for all project which was approved by our board several months ago, that opened up the portola gate and closed the burnett gate, we're doing an