Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20171130

Publicly indicated discussion narrow view and rear yard variance. Our proposed continuance for variance to january 11, 2018. 744 harrison street, propose ed use authorization. Item four for case number 2014 at 89 roosevelt way. Discretionary review as proposed for continuance to march 1, 2018. Item five for case number 2015o18233 drp at shafter avenue. Discretionary review has been withdrawn. Commissioners, further under your regular calendar, item number 19, we have received a request for continuance. For case number 2017oo7658c. U. A. At 4522 rd street as we have received a request for continuance for case number 2016 at mission street. Commission use authorization. That is proposed to be continued indefinitely and i believe second week in december. What is that date . Second week in december is december 14. All right 678 that is the proposed date. Any Public Comment on the items proposed for continuance . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Commissioner fong. Move to continue the proposed items in addition to item 19 and 20. Second. Thank you, commissioners. On that motion then to continue items as proposed, commissioner fong . [roll call] so move. It passes unanimously 52. If the acting zoning administrative 50. Excuse me. 50. I apologize. If the Zoning Administrator could rule on item 2c. Continuing item 2c to the date proposed. Thank you. Commissioners, ill place this on your consent calendar. All matters here are considered to be routine by the Planning Commission and may be acted upon by a single roll call vote of the commission. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the commission, staff or public so requests. In which the matter will be removed from the consent calendar and considered as a separate item at this point and future hearing. Item six, case number 2016o42991 c. U. A. , commissioner use authorization. Item seven, 2 geneva avenue. Commissioner use authorization. Item eight, and 501 through 503 and 508 through 511, laguna street. Item nine at 123 west portal avenue, conditional use authorization and item 10, 1765 california street, conditional use authorization. I have no speaker cards. Ok. Thank you. Any members of the public who would like to comment on the consent items or pull frem the consent calendar . Seeing none, commissioner moore . Id like to ask item 10 to be pulled of con sent. I just have a few questions that i could not really discern from the staff report. Ok. Well hear that first on the regular calendar. Do i hear a motion . Oh, sorry. I make a motion that we approve the item from the consent calendar. Except for item 10. Except for item 10. Second. Thank you, commissioners. So, on that moex to approvement items under consent did you have a comment . Just a second. Ok. So, on that motion to approve items under consent, except item 10 , commissioner fong. [roll call] so moved. Commissioners, that motion passes 50. Commissioners, that will place us under commission matter, item 11. Consideration of Adoption Draft minutes for october 26, 2017 and november 2, 2017. Any Public Comment on the draft minutes . Sighing none, Public Comment is closed. Commissioners . Motion. Any motion . I make a motion that we approve the minutes. Second. Thank you. On that motion to approve or, excuse me, adopt the minutes for october 26 and november 2, 2017. [roll call] so moved. Commissioners, that motion passes unanimously 50. And places us on item 12 for commission comments, and questions. Commissioner moore . Id just like to ask the question when the department is going to distribute meeting material for our meeting at the end of november because many of us are going away for thanksgiving and it is kind of a little bit unclear when we will be receiving packages. Those packages are expected to be delivered to you wednesday before the thanksgiving holiday. And for those who are gone already, are they on the web when . They get posted on the web as soon as we deliver them to you. Ok. Thank you. Thats good. Appreciate it. Thank you. We can move on to the next item. Very good, commissioners that. Will place us on item 13 for the 2018 hearing schedule. Commissioners, i submitted to you a proposed 2018 Commission Hearing schedule. It includes all of your regular holidays and the summer hiatus in august. Generally speaking, you take or cancel 11 hearings every year. Occasionally you add one. Occasionally you subtract one. But on average, you ahead of time cancel 11. I would suggest considering Chinese New Year for the thursday, february 15. That hearing conveniently coincides with the president s day holiday that monday. You may consider easter for april 5. Yom kippur falls on september 20. You generally recognize rosh hashanah, not yom kippur, but it calls on that. And then in november, after thanksgiving, you have a fifth thursday so my suggestions would be to consider those, but i would strongly consider the Chinese New Year and the Easter Holidays to be included in your advanced hearing schedule. All right. Thank you. Lets see if there is any Public Comment on the schedule. Nope. Seeing none, commissioner moore . The only thing i would say is coming out of a rather sketchy calendar in november and december of this year, and then moving into a cancellation on the first thursday in january, we have three meetings in january, three meetings in february, the fifth meeting in march is canceled. All were going to do is get penalized one way or the other. It is going to haunt us no matter what we do. So it will be here until midnight or well spread out our meetings a little bit more evenly. And im in support of recognizing the holidays and then i would suggest that its not due lets not cancel the march meetings and pretend it is meetings rather than months and fifth thursdays. It just doesnt work. Right. Commissioner rich aerss . That means if we dont cancel the march meeting, were up to 16 weeks in a row . [counting] speak up, please that means we are up to 16 meetings in a row all the way up through may 31. Well, if we take the Easter Holiday 12 meetings in a row. If you take Chinese New Years on february 15 and then the Easter Holiday in april. It would make a lot of sense to keep the 5th thursday this march. The suggestion is add back the 29th, cancel the 5th of april and february 15 for Chinese New Year. Yes. So, add back march 29. Yes. But cancel back the 15th of february and april 5. Right. And keep Everything Else as proposed. So were not canceling september 20 for yom kippur and not canceling november 29 as a fifth thursday. I think for now thats fine. We can always add that. The calendar already had six hold holidays and you considered one, two, three, four for your consideration. And were down to seven, six 10 on here. There were four holiday cancellations and then three summer hiatus cancellations and then there were two fifth thursdays. But all together, this would account for about 11 cancellations now, which is on average on par for your average every year. And the suggestion was do not continue to meet february 15. No. Cancel february 15, cancel april 5. Ok. Commissioner . I would respectfully request that we cancel yom kippur. I already bought plane tickets for the 29th so i wont be here. Because the school holiday. So that would mean two meetings that id be out and i just respectfully request that maybe im the only person who observes. That would still make 11 ok. So commissioner is requesting that we cancel the 20th. It would be cancellation on february 15, add back march 29, cancel april 5 and cancel september 20 is whats different from the calendar being proposed. Do we need a motion on that . Yes, plea. And then november. Well keep it for now and cancel it if need be. Ok. There any motion . Commissioner richards . Motion to adopt the calendar with thursday, february 15 as a holiday, april 5 as a holiday or day off, yom kippur, september 20 and adding back a meeting on 29th of march. And november 29. Its already on there. November 29th. Regular meeting. Ok. Second. Thank you, commissioners. If there is nothing further, shall i call that question on that motion, then, commissioners to adopt the proposed 2018 calendar and just to be explicit, canceling february 15, restoring the march 29 hearing, canceling april 5, canceling september 20th and keeping november 29 as a regular hearing on that motion. Commissioner fong . [roll call] so moved, commissioners. That motion passes unanimously 60. Thank you. Commissioners, other places under department matters, i have 14 directors announcements. Thank you. I just wanted to call your attention to the resilient by design, the competition that is under way. Regionally. Yesterday the teams released the 10 teams released their conceptable ideas for a number of sites across the bay and those sites are on the website, under resilientbydesign. Org and they are accepting Public Comments for the next two weeks on those sites and on those ideas until december 1. At that point, there is a committee that is going to go through a process of matching teams with particular locations in the bay area and that will happen by the middle of december and then those designs will move forward and are due may 1. So, i encourage you to look at the website, to check out the idea that there was some pretty interesting stuff that came up as you might imagine and we could submit your comments anytime until december 1. Thank you. That concludes my presentation. Thank you. Item 15 review past event at the boyder of supervisors, board of appeals and the Historic Preservation commission. Good afternoon. Aaron starr, manager of legislative affairs for the Planning Department. First on agenda this week was a landmark designation for 2731 to 2735 fullsome street known as the dougrahn house designed in the beauxart style and it is a fine example of residential beauarts architecture. Staff president designated to the committee and answered questions from the committee members. Supervisor peskin then asked to be added as a sponsor and then the Committee Vote unanimously to extend the designation. The pier 70 project passed its second read. The landmark designation for 1399 mcallister street also passed its second read. The planning code and zoning map amendment for the Transit Center special sign district, sponsored by supervisor kim passed its first read. And also on the agenda was the appeal of the category exemption for a project located at 20 nobles avenue. Im sorry, noble alley. The project has a long and complicated permit history dating back to the 1990s. It was not focused on ceqa, instead appeared toable a proxy for settling disagreements between neighbors. There was a motion to extend the item for three months to resolve the issues but failed to receive a majority vote. Ultimately the board agreed with staff by upholding the environmental determination and rejecting the appeal by a 63 vote. And lastly, which youre all probably wait, for, ill discuss the cannabis regulations that were heard at the land use committee, the rules committee and the full board this week and the previous weeks. After a total of Six Committee hearings, three at land use, three at the board and between four and five and six hours each where i theseder same Public Comment over and over again [laughter] i understand how you feel on the m. C. D. Hearings, its been very hard to keep track of all the various amendments that have been going through. So, im going to do my best. Some of these may not be completely up to date, but i have checked with the City Attorney and i believe this is the most Accurate Information i have thus far. First the ordinance was split at the land use hearing. One version is referred as the skinny version and the other is refered to as the bulky version. The skinny version removes most of the special carveouts that they added to the ordinance in the first land use hearing while the bulky version keeps most of those in. The skinny version was recommended to the board without recommendation and the bulky version remains in committee, allowing the board to pick different amendments to place into the skinny version at the full board. Regionally the land use Committee Voted to increase the 600foot buffer around schools to 1,000 feet, which this commission recommended. The committee at one point also considered adding the 1,000foot buffer around child care facilities, adding child care facilities that the buffer would have all but eliminated the green zone in the city. Since then and through various amendments, the 1,000foot buffer around schools has been brought back down to 600 feet in the skinny version and the child Care Provision has been eliminated in both versions. Also originally the orbit option was added to the ordinance which, again, this commission did recommend. However, currently the version that was before the board on tuesday, the orbit option was replaced with a straight 600foot anticlustering provision. Rather than the 300 feet originally in the ordinance is up to 600 feet. The Landuse Committee added the mc1 districts to the green zone and this is something that you recommended. And also with those version, there is a finding that directs the Planning Commission to [inaudible] m. C. D. S and cannabis retailers when reviewing amly indications. Both version of the ordinance have a limit of three m. C. D. S or cannabis retailers in any in the excelsior mission in m. C. D. This previously extended to all of district 11. The bulky version also has a requirement that m. C. D. S converting to cannabis tailers in the four outer sunset m. C. D. S, the ocean avenue m. C. D. , the west portal m. C. D. Must seek mandatory v. D. R. To do so. The bulky version has only one cannabis dispensary or establishment in the sacramento street, n. C. S. District and supervisorual district two and west portal m. C. D. And has a limit of two such establishments. At this weeks full board hearing, the board voted to continue the item to november 28 on a 91 vote with supervisor peskin voting no and supervisor cullen absent. This was done to allow more time to consider the proposed amendments. There was a proposed amendment by supervisor sheehy that would have allowed the sale of adult use cannabis on january 1 for existing m. C. D. S on a temporary basis until they got their final land use designation and permanent permit for the office of cannabis. And then to push off the other land use decisions for a few more weeks. Ultimately this recommendation was withdrawn by supervisor sheehy. So tend result of that San Francisco will not have regulations for adultuse cannabis in San Francisco for january 1, 2018. The earliest the law could take effect would be on january 6 if the mayor signs the ordinance one day after the board adopts it. And that is all the information i have on that. But im happy to questions. To answer questions. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners. Acting senior preservation planner with the department. Im here in place of tim to file a report on the actions of the Historic Preservation commission yesterday. The commission heard three certificates of appropriateness, recommended approval for the addition of Cliffs Variety and tomasos Ristorante Italiano to the business registry and heard an informational item from the waterfront on the land use plan. In addition, they heard a permit to alter case. This projects proposal is to restore and partially replace 75 street facing windows. The permit was submitted as a minor permit to alter and request for hearing was filed by sue hester on august 28 who raised concerns about the potential loss of the existing 41 s. R. O. Units at the property, which have been vacant since 2013. During the hearing yesterday, the h. P. C. Heard Public Comment from 11 members of the public as well as ms. Hester, the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development corporation, hospitality house and the senior and senior and disabilities action. Expressing concerns regarding lawn construction history of the hotel, past legal action against Property Owner and the potential loss of s. R. O. Units at the property. Because the permit did not address the use of the property, which is an issue beyond the per view of the h. P. C. And because the permit would lead to the inhabitability of the building, it would improve to alter. In their remarks, the h. B. C. Directed staff to make the Planning Commission, mayor and board of supervisors aware of the Public Comments and the h. P. C. s concerns about these issues. It is our understanding that a request for discretionary review will be filed against the permit and heard then before this commission in the coming months. And that the h. P. C. Will provide a statement to this commission, the board of supervisors and the mayor regarding their concerns about the Affordable Housing at the property. There are three approved permits from 2013 to 2014 for interior tenant improvements, but no permit has been filed for change of use. It would trigger a conditional use authorization for both the remove alt of Affordable Housing units and for hotel use and per chapter 41 of the code, one of the units would be required at an alternative location. That concludes my presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioners, there is a board of appeals report from the Zoning Administrator. Ill apologize in advance for it does appear to be lengthy. Last week, the board of appeals held a hearing and considered two items that may be of interest to the commission. First the board heard and denied a rehearing request for their decision 2226 green street. The board upheld the Planning Commissions decision to allow a roof deck at the subject property. Second, the board heard an appeal of the Building Permits for demolition and new construction of a singlefamily dwelling at 2255 sea cliff avenue. The commission heard this under discretionary review and approved the permit with reduction in the size of the top floor. The board upheld the demolition permits but required the top floor be removed, allowing a roof deck up to 500 square feet. The board continued the item and requested that the parties Work Together on the final details of the roof deck. Last night, the board of appeals held a hearing and considered three items that may be of interest to the commission. First they considered an appeal of the variance issued by the Zoning Administrator of the project 6545 valencia street. The Planning Commission heard a discretionary review request on june 2 of this year, filed by the neighbors to the rear of the property. Their primary concerns were potential impacts to the rear yard tree and impacts of new shadow on to their rear yard. The Commission Voted 51 with commissioner johnson absent tos take d. R. And ship the top floor five feet away from the neighbors property line. The apellant made the same arguments at the board of appeals but the board determined that the project met the require reasonable doubt five findings to grant the variance and voted unanimously to deny the appeal of the variance. Second, board considered an appeal of a Building Permit for a third story addition to 255 avilla street. They heard a discretionary review on the project august 4 of this year, file by the neighbor to the rear of the subject property. His primary concerns were the added height created by the third story and potential structural issues related to seismic activity. The Commission Found no exceptional extraordinary circumstances and voted 50 to not take [inaudible]. The appellant made the same argument at the board of apaoelts but the board determined that the project had been properly approved and voted unanimously to deny the appeal of the Building Permit. Finally, the board considered an appeal of the rear yard variance issued by the Zoning Administrator for the project 2523 steiner street. The proposal was for rear additions on the third and fourth floors. The Planning Commission heard a discretionary review on june 15, 2017 which was filed by an adjacent neighbor. And the Zoning Administrator heard the variance at the same hearing. The Commission Voted 41 to take d. R. And disapprove the entire project, which also included a horizontal addition of the front of the fourth floor that did not require a variance. The Zoning Administrator took the variance under advisement and granted the variance with several conditions of approval that set back the proposed rear additions terraces further from the adjacent property. The appellant made basically the same argues to the board of appeals after a lengthy hearing and deliberation. The board voted 32 to deny the variance. However, four votes are required to overturn the administrators granting of the variance. No motions were made and appeal was denied due to lack of votes. All right. Thank you, jonas. Commissioners, that will place us under general Public Comment. At this time, members of public may address the commission that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the commission, except for 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. I have two speaker cards. All right. Step forward. [inaudible]. Ok. So, well yeah. First item. Georgia. Good afternoon. Im here with a copy of a memo that i sent to the r. E. T. I sent it last week. Your december 7 hearing for the initiation of the residential expansion threshold, as you probably know, no longer going to be initiation, it will be informational and pushed back to 2018. So my suggestions are in this memo. Oh, you didnt start my time. You have unlimited time. Jesus you dont want that. [laughter] no one wants that. Not even my husband. [laughter] um, um, um, sorry. I shouldnt have made a joke. Um, so anyway, getting back to the serious matter. The r. E. T. I made some suggestions in this memo that you should deal with some of background. I dont think weve heard enough about whats wrong with tanltsment to demolition. As i write in here, i have three bullet points. A full description of the problems with tantamount demolition. How come the staff doesnt always know how to do it . They havent known until recently. Loopholes that developers can slip through and sitespecific issues related to poverty, i think thats come out during the Public Meetings that weved ha. And those have been really good and i think the staff has been fairly really accessible to the public. What i would like the know is a description of why 40 of the samples that we discussed two years ago should have been demolitions. I think that was dealt with by the enforcement staff. So maybe we need to hear about that. Why would those projects have been demos and not the other 60. And what does that mean . Especially related to bullet point number three, the socalled economic oddities of San Francisco real estate market. Compared with other markets. If those had been changed as mandatory d. R. S, what would that have changed . Would that have changed the market . Like there is a 10 million home in glen park right now. Ladley manor. It actually was campbell and wong bay area tradition. But it is basically virtually they wanted to get a demolition permit. The demolition permit would have been denied so they got an alteration permit. Things like that, we need to understand how it happens. I think the staff presentation like this would be very helpful for understanding the goals of the r. E. T. And ive given you copies of the memo and thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Lum. Hello, commissioners. This is Michael Moore from my office. Similarly to the 317 tantamount to demolition reform, they did ask us to do an analysis of our current project load just to understand what this might do to the commissions load. And this is also relevant to the mayors directive to streamline things. So, in relationship to our current residential project load here, we have currently in San Francisco 65 San Francisco projects, which i guess would be great. Residential. And 85 of these are actually, why dont you speak about this, michael . You focus. Can you focus it . Sorry. 85 of our 65 San Francisco projects are r. H. Districts and will be affected by the proposed f. A. R. Legislation or code. 32 or 18 projects as existing structures are over the s. A. R. Numbers proposed. 66 are 37 of those 65 projects are over as proposed for the additions. We were told that this process was numbererly done to reduce the amount of things that were brought forward in front of the commission to endoesntinger density. Of our 64 projects, four are currently undergoing a d. R. Process and unfortunately none of those four are actually over the f. A. R. In r. H. Districts. So, where we currently have four projects in front of the commission, we would have 41. That is a 10fold increase in projects brought to the commission. Which could only slow things down. We have also done an analysis of different districts, which show the reduction of Square Footage proposed in regards to the f. A. R. And standard 125foot lot and were happy to share this with you. We dont want to be premature, but the schedule was going to be this was first heard in the month of december and it is of great concern to see the impact so were happy to take questions do this offline because i know that this is offline topic. So well forward this information to the full commission. We didnt bring copies. Thank you very much. Any additional general Public Comment . Ms. Hester . Sue hester. The Planning Department has a tendency i dont want to say a tendency. It doesnt always remember where the law came from. 311 notices came from the Planning Department saying we didnt have the ability to figure out how to apply part of prop m and part of prop m that passed was Development Policies and they required context of the neighborhood be evaluated in a project. And there was two years of meetings at the Planning Department. And the Planning Department finally said that we have zoning that is imperfect. Its type of zoning that may not apply to this particular area of the city that well. But thats what were going to do. And they said we can either do serious studies like were doing right now on the area plans, we can do them for large parts of the city or else we can say well issue 311 and our neighbors will tell us it is a neighborhood character. So, what it is about, 311 and 312, goes back to neighborhood character section 101. 1 of the planning code, which is adopted policy by the voters of San Francisco. And so it is a controversy to this day. But you have to realize that these issues have been talked about by the citizens of San Francisco and the voters of San Francisco. And the Planning Department came up with their 311, 312 process because they didnt want to do the work. Of really looking at a fine grain level to neighborhoods of the city and their terrain. We have mouths in the city and the mouths of the city really have an effect on what is otherwise a noncontroversial zoning category for that land. And so that is why we have a Planning Commission. The Planning Commission is there sitting in the shoes of the public. You have a huge responsibility. Im not saying you have an easy job. But it is why youre there. Thank you. Thank you, ms. Hester. Any additional general Public Comment . Seeing none, we can move to the regular calendar. Very good, commissioners. That will place us under your regular calendar and item 10 was pulled off of consent and will be considered now for case number 2016. California street. This is a conditional use authorization. Good afternoon, members of the Planning Commission. Sharon young, Planning Department staff. Item before you is request for conditional use authorization to establish a retail restaurant, specializing in sushi packaged for takeout inside the exist Whole Foods Market Grocery Store. To occupy a portion of the existing deli and food preparation area with approximately 400 square feet of floor area. There would be no expansion to the existing building. According to the project sponsor, also known as gn enji sushi and genji express and specializing in allnatural sushi and japaneseinspired cuisine in the grab and go style. As the years progressed, the name was simplified. They currently have seven locations in San Francisco and approximately 191 stores worldwide. Sushi bars are located in over 180 whole food market locations in 21 states, the district of columbia and the united kingdom. Thes ed project will allow for the San Francisco location located within the Whole Foods Market Grocery Store. The former retail findings, to date the department had is received a correspondence from members of the van ness corridor Neighbors Council and initially had requested continuance of the case. But later withdrew that request. Departments recommendation is approved conditions. This concludes my presentation and im available to answer any questions. Great. Thank you very much. Project sponsor . Thank you, chair and commissioners. My name is robert selna and i represent genji sushi in this matter. To my left is the representative. In San Francisco. As ms. Young mentioned, there was an interest in a possible continuance because a representative of van ness corner Neighborhood Council thought proper notice had not been done. I spoke with her yesterday. That representative and she sent an email back to the Planning Department. I dont know if the commission was cc d on that. This project followed all the noticing requirements. It has met all the findings for a c. U. Perform and theres been no neighborhood opposition. The use is consistent with the commercial character of the neighborhood. The location of the sushi vendor is within an existing formula retail, the whole foods which has been through the formula retail c. U. P. Process and it is essentially an accessory use as the Planning Departments report says to you. In the area, formula retail represents just 14 of 93 commercial establishments. So this addition will be extremely minimal. It is also the only sushi vendor within a 300foot radius. In the neighborhood. So this sushi operation, which is essentially a counter within the existing whole foods in which customers pick up sushi and then talk it to the checkout line in the whole foods is a very, very minimal to an existing retail use. Again, theres been no Community Opposition to the conditional use permit application. Eric, i dont know if you want to add anything to that. And he is here for questions if you have them. Im just here for questions. Again, we are just replacing an existing sushi vendor that was already there so it is not a new addition to this location. As well, i think rob pretty much covered everything. Great. Thank you very much. Any Public Comment on this item . Seeing none, well close Public Comment. Commissioner moore, you had yes, i have a question. The whole foods in that location always had sushi, which is prepared right on site in what looks potentially as slightly smaller area. And since im a frequent customer, i was wondering as to whether or not you are taking in the fields area or staying within the already food prep area that is designated for the reparation and sale of other foods. That is where we do our food prep and share our food preparation area for whole foods team which is belo that area. On a level below. The sushis that are being sold at whole foods, at least the one that comes out of the freezer across from where the sushi is prepared already has the name of your company on the back of it. Is that because you supplied the store before hand or because you were waiting for approval operating there . You mean across from the actual sushi counter . That is correct. It is a little Additional Space that whole foods gives us since we have smaller fourfoot case so that is why we also sell sushi in that area. That means you at a smaller size didnt need the approval and now increasing in size you need the approval . Im trying to understand the move from what it is right now to where you are going. We are already existing in there when we started this process. I asked the planner at the time if we could move forward and start operations on good faith. They said that that was approved as long as we went through this process. Thats a question which somebody else needs to answer. To me, it is a little unusual. But as far as other stores are concerned, in Larger Stores you are also selling under your brand. Are you attempting to make other formula retail applications in other stores. I was in the store saturday eating your sushi and turning my box over and i see your name on there. However, there is no application for those stores and formula retail. Im just trying to really understand what were doing as a commission. Sure. Sure. We have another one pemdsing at 2001 Market Street and one thats in existence for avenue whole foods. For patrero hill, i was told thats not fallen under formula retail. If that s a not true, well work on processing that one as well. I just have to ask those questions because if im sitting here i need to have information that stacks up so ill let the department deal with the question regarding patrero and also with the approval. When the approval hasnt occurred, you dont start assuming that you get it. That is my own comment on it. But i can let the rest of the commission make a motion. Thank you. Just a question. Its odd to me that if youre picking up their sushi and going to pay for it, like its just a stand within whole foods, why does this even come to us . You know there is an area of whole foods that you are selling starbucks branded products, would that have to come to us . Yes, exactly. Starbucks, wells fargo has a little but if they have it and its separate and independent. But this is you get the product and you actually go to the same you put it in your basket with the rest of your stuff and you go check out is my understanding. Because theyre making it there. They do make it there. Yes. That is the difference. Because they make it there . Yes. That seems odd that that would have to be it seems like a lot of process for if its just to the person whos actually buying it, it is no different than buying, you know, a bottle of wine or a pepsi. Just because they make tlit . Seems like if you buy it and grab it and you go to the whole foods counter as if you are in whole foods, it seems like this is kind of overkill. Commissioner moore . Id like to make a comment on that. I was before your time on the commission, president. We had a fourdoor chrysler large formula retail on geary street and they came and wanted a starbucks but in that case, you bought the starbucks at the starbucks. Its a little different. Its a car dealer selling starbucks. This is a food this is a Grocery Store selling sushi. The one thing i was concerned about here is that they dont take theyre not taking sales area away from a store which is already smaller than the typical large scale whole foods. So, 400 square feet, if that would have come out of the sales area, i would have been concerned. If it is coming out of the sales area and theyre selling shirts. But its coming out of the sales area and selling food that theyre selling anyway. Its just odd to me. I guess thats the Zoning Administrator interpretation of the c. U. Thats correct. Because it is prepared there. You can correct me if im wrong, but i believe we discussed this specifically with the Zoning Administrator. Ok. Commissioner johnson . I cant believe this is still happening. Im enraged. Move to approve. Second. Thank you, commissioners. There is a motion that has been seconded to approve this matter with conditions on that motion. Commissioner fong. [roll call] so move. Thats pas unanimously 70. Never get that time back. It places us on item 16 for the mayors executive directive on housing informational presentation. Commissioner,ly kick this off with a few comments. First im not sure you are aware that jacob bentliff has moved into a new position and he will be coordinating the efforts on preparing this plan. He was working on the inclusionary. Did great work there. But moved over to this work to help us coordinate efforts on responding to the mayors executive directive. As you know, the directive was issued in late september and gives us until december 1 to prepare a plan or at least a draft of a plan to as to how we will respond to it. Its only a few weeks. It is not a lot of time. So, we are having a hearing today to talk to you about how we propose to respond. What jacob will present today are highlevel hot concepts and our initial kind of policy direction, if you will, on many of the issues that we are dealing with. I will say that weve had ive had three conversation brown bag conversations with staff. Ive been talking to people outside of the department. Ive been talking to other stiefms about our processes, getting a range of input on how we do our work and how we could improve our work and that will continue. I also think it is important to remember that while we have to present something by december 1, this is an ongoing process. And, you know, december 1 isnt the end of the process. Frankly, it is the beginning and this will be a document that changes can over time. But our goal is to streamline the work and to respond to the drexive and move forward. With that, ill let jacob carry on. Thank you, john. Commissioners, good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity to join you on a nice, rainy november thursday to talk about what we are doing as john said, in response to the mayors executive directive, which came out at the end of september. And ill get a little bit more in a moment into what that directive includes. But before moving into all of that, i wanted to briefly touch on why. Why are we even talking about the housing supply, Housing Production targets, how does that fit into the Bigger Picture . Just a few stats that jumped out that help illustrate the picture. Basically since the recession up until 2014 when our production picked up, we added about 140,000 new jobs. But only 15,000 new Housing Units. So you can see that were out of balance just on that represent right there. Another fun stat is going back to 1980, which i guess is almost 40 years ago. Kind of crazy. Weve increased the number of residents by 20 , but only increased the number of Housing Units by 17 . Whats happening there . We have people moving into existing units obviously and that is where were starting to look at displacement. Were not keeping up. That is a longterm underproduction relative to demand based on the amount of People Living in San Francisco. Another thing, almost everybody in San Francisco lives in a housing unit built before 2005. Only 2 of our households are living in newer buildings that were built since 2005. It is a really small piece. We need to grow that piece of the pie to have more room for folks coming in. And finally one thing i found really interesting that we dug into a little bit in our inclusionary work was that basically, since 1990, weve added about 31,000 market rate units. So, the number of highincome households has grown by 76,000 over that time per. So, 76,000 is a lot bigger than 31,000. What that means that even if all of those 31,000 units were occupied by highincome households who can presumably afford to pay the rents and buy those units you have 146,000 households living in displacement. No two people can live in the same unit at the same time unless theyre part of the same household. I hope this frames why the planninging department is taking this seriously and we understand why adding more supply isnt by any means the only solution. But it is a big part of the solution. We dont have much control over the demand in the market. But a lot of demand over the supply of housing. What does this execktive directive actually say . A few things. First of all, it sets some deadlines for our approval of projects. Those are dependent on the level of Environmental Review that goes along with that project. So t shortest when there is a project not seemed a promise under ceqa, six months. Were supposed to have it ready to go from the Planning Department in six months. At the longest for a complex e. I. R. , 22 months. In no case is it supposed to take us more than two years to have a project go through the Planning Department. Then, of course, what happens after us . Well, post entitlement. Its approved. This directive sets a oneyear timeframe for getting things constructed or rather getting their construction documents a. That entilement. Time period. Some Accountability Measures are very hard to read on that yellow. I apologize. One thing is that the hearings for projects should be scheduled automatically on these timeframes. If we get something in the door and it is a sixmonth project, put it on your calendars. Another thing is that a senior manager from all the other departments ill mention in a moment should be appointed to manage the process. And findly the directive requires quarterly reporting. Id like to talk a little bit more about how we enjoy planning on coming to the Planning Commission on a quarterly basis so we can update you on what were doing. Finally, were supposed to develop some kind of process Improvement Plan by december 1 of this year. Im afraid. So, that doesnt that is going to keep me pretty busy. But that is for the Planning Department and the building inspections. We will be giving that plan out from the Directors Office to the mayor on december 1. By april 1, were supposed to work with not only d. B. I. , but public works, the fire department, rec park, Mayors Office and disabilities. All these departments that have a hand in permitting projects, depending on what is going on in that project. They are supposed to develop a consolidated plan for how we get to that oneyear post entitlement on december 1. So how do we go about doing such a thing . Weve done some brown bags. Ive been on a listening tour through the department. A lot of learning what folks are doing, what people feel like. Where were not getting the most value out of the time that we do spend. And so one thing that has run very loud and clear for me has made me think of this line quite a bit to prioritize my own self which is anything worth doing is worth doing well. Some of us think why am i doing this right now. Should i be doing this . If the answer is no, you should stop. If the answer is yes, you should do it really well. Because why are you doing it. Ive always lived by these words and this keeps coming back to me as i hear from our staff that come to work every day because they actually really care about the results. They want to be in this profession. They want to have the best city that we can have for the people who live here and for everyone else that that affects and it is not a question of challenging the value of the work that we do, it is a question of asking ourselves how do we do it the best way that we can. How do we make sure that what were doing is really the most value to get to the goals that we all want to sigh. Want to see. That is our overarching attitude toward this entire exercise. Talk a little bit about our work so far. These are this is a bar chart that represents the total value of projects that weve been working on over the past 10 years through the end of last year. It has been going up since the recession. By quite a bit. So this is really hopefully just to illustrate that our workload has continued to increase. Its leveling. At this point, it is leveling out. But it is actually still quite a bit higher than it was the last market peak in 2007. So, you know, were not hanging out, twiddling our thumbs. We keep ourselves pretty busy and the market keeps us pretty busy as well. One thing while this is up, i wanted to mention. As you know, this is when things come in the door for us. That whatever project is on that bar chart. That is not necessarily the year that it leaves our hands. Things can take quite a long time. We were looking at the agenda here. Today, only about six out of the 30 items on your case number has that starts with 2017, meaning this calendar year. Meaning 80 of the granted theyre not all entitlements have been taking more than a year for them to get to the Planning Commission today. The only things that is supposed to take more than a year is something with an Environmental Impact report. To help frame the magnitude of the work that we need to do to have new processes, to make things go faster and get our job done better, i hope that helps illustrate it. I also looked at our current pipeline and kind of reflects that. Basically out of our current pipeline of Residential Projects that arent aproved yet, about half of them have a case number that is in the last two years and about half of them are longer than that. So were meeting that twoyear timeframe, which is the timeframe for something with an e. I. R. Under this directive in half the cases. We have our work cut out for them. Were trying to do a toptobottom look at the way that we do business at the Planning Department. So, how are we thinking about this . As i said, you are goal here is to recognize the value, where there is value to do it as well as we possibly can. Some sort of categories or buckets have emerged and i just want to go over those. This is how we will be structuring this plan that well deliver at the end of this month. So, first and foremost, our actual application process. I mean, duh. This is the foundation of the entire process. What do people have to give us and when. How do we let the public know about that information . That all comes down to our actual application process. Right now, one thing were looking at in particular is our preliminary project assessment application, seeing if we can reduce that timeframe, get the best value out of that and look at consolidating the many different types of Development Applications we have into one Development Application so we can staff it better, track it better, have better coordination and critically set these timeframes for the project, even if it has a c. E. U. And other entitlement action as well. We need to set the timeframe for the project as a whole and give the public the information of what that timeframe is and intermediate targets along the way so we can know if were on track not. Well spend a lot of energy looking at our application process so youll be seeing ago lot of that in the plan. Ive been talking to folks in all of our divisions about how we do that. If we dont get that right, we wont be on stable footing for any of the rest of this. I want to talk about some things that are relatively routine. We do approve a lot over the counter at the planning information center. Our staff approves all kinds of things all day long. But there is probably more where we generally have a pretty good sense of whats ok and what is not ok. What we can live with and what we cant live with based on our experience that we could probably have more things not coming upstairs toen mraeers. To planners. When that happens, it goes back to our queue. That consent motion was filed in november of last year and assigned to sharon or maybe her predecessor in march of the next year. As you saw in the chart earlier, were busy. So, we do our best to get through it as soon as we can. But that is a backlog right there. If things like that need to come to a planner, that planner is working on the big stuff where we need that analysis and care from a professional. We want to look at how we can do that better. Environmental and design review, critical. We vonl one San Francisco. Once you build something, it is built. It makes a lot of sense why we spend so much time on energy and design review. Again, we often know what mitigations are successful in terms of Environmental Issues that arrive through the ceqa process and we know what kind of design treatments were comfortable with. We can look at the pat pattern of discussions that happen in this room and look at it at the staff level and can we put those things on paper in a clearer way so it doesnt have to involve discretion and scheduling something for two weeks out because you get peoples outlook calendars to align when we know the answer in many cases. Can