commissioners, peter fenton, the owner of the project, along with our daughter. our son could not make it. he is taking an afternoon nap -. i want to share our motivation. it is important we talk about that, and the guidelines we feel would be a corporate. finally, our request is to the commission. laura and i fell in love in brazil in 1989. we got married about 16 years later, in 2008. the year of our marriage, we bought this house. it was a developer house. it had the romanticism of russian hill, but was not functional for a family. we thought we would move if we had a family. what we did not anticipate is how much we would love the neighborhood. i served on a number of boards of startup companies in san francisco. i have no desire to move out. we had a second problem when our son william got a little older. he discovered he enjoyed the back steps. hold on. these back steps create a fear in our house that is hard to describe. when we are not watching him, we worry he is going to open the door. there is a 15 foot fall on the side, and he is getting to a height w

peter fenton is a brilliant venture capitalist. not yet 40, a general partner at benchmark capital. that is a leading venture capital firm in silicon valley. he is self effacing and a practicing catholic -- triathlete. his wife is a graduate of harvard and yale law school. the architect is one of the leading builders of a great city. these are the best and the brightest, a credit to our society. i am at a loss by their attitude in this project. this is no david and goliath struggle. it is goliath versus goliath. i own commercial property in the city and have developed property in the city. i own sterling break -- sterling bank and trust. we have 14 branches in our community. we frequently have to deal with securing permits and working with community groups. our commercial and residential loan portfolio in san francisco is $500 million. we consider ourselves the largest community bank in the city. as a matter of principle, i favor growth and development. within the last five years, both houses on either side of us, including the fenton house, were substantially expanded. we gave them