Today. Im available if you have questions. Supervisor fewer any questions or comments . Supervisor peskin could you remind us of your name . Katy sherping. Supervisor fewer you mentioned many of the permits being streamlined. Which ones are you streamlining . The legislation that was signed last week did a number of things. I may not have them all off the top of my head. It reduced some of the duplicate inspections that would happen. If you did a buildout and apply for an entertainment, you would have to do that again. So that goes away. There are other areas where we updated our health code for example to be more in line with state health code around when restrooms are required to be accessible for patrons. This expands opportunities for businesses to, for example, have like a small coffee cart or Something Like that without having to provide a restroom for their customers. There were a number of other pieces of this legislation. The piece that was talked about most in the commission had to do with the buffer zone and honing in our zoning so its most applicable in the neighborhoods where it was originally intended. Supervisor fewer we heard from the Restaurant Industry about the money that is associated with all of this permitting process. So with open to sf, how much can an entrepreneur look to save going through this streamlining process . The open in sf program doesnt change fees for any of the businesses. If that is your question, what it does is help guide them through the process, so the way that i most see people be able to save time with the program is two pieces. One is i really try to make sure were engaging with Restaurant Owners before they sign their lease, as was mentioned, you can adapt to a lot if youre negotiated that into your youve negotiated that into your lease, but if youre not expecting it, and you already pay rent, its challenging. So its being proactive with people so they know what is going to be expected of them. And another piece, if you know about all of the permits required of you in advance, you can set them up and do certain things at the same time and have the process work in the right sequence and save time. Supervisor fewer so helping them get organized and navigate. Yeah. Supervisor fewer are you doing an evaluation process after you help the clients to see how we can make it better . Thats a good question. Its something were working on. Oewd in general has been working on getting feedback from businesses and were hearing about the program. And then weve considered launching a survey with these businesses to hear back from them after the process, how it worked for them and what could have been done better. Supervisor fewer how much what is the budget for open in sf . Its really just one fte. Supervisor fewer i actually think since this is sort of a new initiative, the collection of data on this and also the feedback from the Restaurant Industry would be really helpful. Is this something we want to expand on . Is this something they find helpful . Is this something we want to put more funding to, to reach more people . I think the survey and the feedback from the people in the industry is probably the most important aspect i think. When we come back to reevaluate what were doing, are we doing enough, could we do better . If you could give us an update, that would be great. Great. Supervisor haney thank you, supervisor fewer. It seems that in some ways that particular program around open in sf was created to give businesses, restaurants, a Central Point of contact to help them understand the different departments that they have to navigate and that sort of thing. Is that how you understand it . There are obviously a lot of departments who will be coming and that restaurants would have to navigate through. Would oewd view you as the right place to start to understand the various steps . And then if thats the case, are you saying that there is only one fte that is responsible for this . There is only one fte that is responsible for this. In terms of the right place to start, i think, yes, ideally, its the right place to start so they have the information as they move forward across all departments. Sometimes it works a little bit out of order, which is okay, lets say someone is interested in a space and so they go down to the Planning Department, to the Public Information counter to ask about that space. They might get referred from there directly to this program to then come and get more of an overview before they move onto other departments. So it can work in multiple directions, but ideally, it works best if they find us first and get that sort of overarching picture of the process. Supervisor haney obviously, its called open in sf, so a lot of this is folks who want to open a new restaurant. What about keeping restaurants open in sf . If is a business is having a set of challenges, maybe the rent is going way up, or other sorts of permitting issues, would they come to you to then help them navigate how to deal with the challenges or other types of Logistical Support that you could provide . Yeah, absolutely. A number of businesses sort of in their attempt to grow, adapt to changing markets and interest, want to, for example, add a permit, maybe expand their space, maybe move from a limited restaurant to a restaurant with beer and wine, which all require permits. So i help them navigate through that process. Supervisor haney so youre the right first point and then you can do the other . Okay. Got it. Thank you. Supervisor fewer thank you very much. Next we have stephen clock from department of building and inspection. And i think that were going to cover the overthecounter expedite the service. Is that right . Yes. Okay. Good afternoon. Im a senior building inspector with the department of building inspection. Im involved in the planning review services where we review permit applications for projects. Today, im going over the restaurant permitting process. To give you a little bit of background about the department, typically in a oneyear period we do 70,000 Building Permit application reviews. Out of that, in prior years, weve done approximately 900 Building Permit applications for restaurants, bars and cafes. These permits consist of all types of applications for the restaurants, including alterations, new restaurants and minor alterations. During the timeline, its 44 days for processing of a permit application. This consists of a wide range of application and also includes all other Agency Reviews within that time period. General review of the permitting process would be applicant comes and files for a Building Permit application. We conduct the permit application review. Where we issue comments for outstanding items and then work with the applicants on working on approval. After that, we send the permit for permit issuance. Once its issued, theyre approved for construction, they can go through the construction, conduct their construction inspections and once everything is complete, the project completion, they get their certificate of final completion and can open their business. Restaurant permit process. So typically once a project is approved by the Planning Department it comes to our position for review. There are two routes for the process. One, overthecounter. And the second is through intake process. About 90 of the applications we review go through an overthecounter process. This process within the department usually takes 2day review and approval process. The intake process is typically similar, however, that time usually takes a little longer than the overthecounter process. The difference is, intake application, the drawings and application are dropped off and submitted to the department and go through a sequential interdepartmental routing process which can take time take longer time than overthecounter review process. We have a general review of a flow chart of overthecounter review process. As you can see, application typically starts with dbi and finishes with dbi. Throughout the process, these projects do require some other agencies review and this is where theyre intertwined within the application process. Such as some projects that require Health Department review would be sent to be reviewed within the process. And some projects for larger restaurants may require fire Department Review and so forth. Some of the causes for the extra time needed for a very view, there is ongoing issues for a project and there is time needed for the applicant to respond to the comments and revise the drawings to comply with matters. Other things that can create additional lead time, its upon approval of an application. Sometimes the applicant is still working on finding a contractor and do not get their permits issued until they have selected someone. So sometimes other things that would be sequential review process, where in an intake situation, other departments may not see the application until previous departments complete their review of those applications. Am some of the improvements we have made to help streamline the permits, we contact permit applications about our overthecounter review process. For a permit such as restaurants needing conditional use, upon approval planning, they arrive through dbi. This is through the intake process. Once we receive the projects, we contact them and inform them about the overthecounter process, where they can come in, walk the permit through the over the counter tt area and then drastically streamline and cut down the review time needed for the applications. Other things we have done, we have created an information sheet which is available on our website for new restaurants and alterations to restaurants. In this information sheet, we have developed guidelines to inform applicants of they should expect. Some of the major code requirements they need to account for. And other things to help them with the permitting process. We have also continued to broaden our reach to other departments to also incorporate them within the overthecounter review process. So initially only Building Department would conduct overthecounter for the building, construction and mechanical reviews and other divisions may not. Since they have worked with us to broaden and jump on board with the overthecounter review process, that has helped to streamline the restaurant permitting process as well. Thats all i have for you today. Supervisor fewer okay. Colleagues . Any comments, questions . I dont have a question relative to dbis chart, but i do have to say from real life experience, both relative to the opening of new facilities as well as in one case where there was a fire in north beach and actually, this board of supervisors passed special legislation to not allow another liquor store to relocate a half block away. It took longer to get that through various departments, actually im not looking at planning, that was remarkably cooperative and im not looking at dbi, no offense, mr. Spitz, im looking at the department of public works, where i had to send my staff down get an encroachment permit. Its like we need somebody who walks these people through the various steps. I understand why all these laws exist. Im delighted we live in a society where people dont burn to death in their buildings because we require sprinklers and we verify that people arent cheating. I realize that different neighborhoods have different desir desires, so we prohibit mortuaries and gas stations in certain neighborhoods, but there is always one other thing at the end of the chain. So this board in record time passed legislation to allow this particular business to locate a half block away. And we did it in less time than it took this owner to get to the bureaucracy, mostly because unknown to us, they were hung at the department of public works over an encroachment permit i didnt even think was necessary. I just want to say, if oewd wants to be a help, its like track these cases, have them have the Central Point of contact that when we run into some kind of bureaucratic thing, none of this is, like, arbitrarily capricious, but where they can unstick it. This is not to dbi. This is to mr. Van houten. I dont think its going to streamline for anybody if they cant get past the next department in line. I wanted to get that off my chest. Supervisor fewer you said there were 44 days from the time of permit filing to issuance. The average time was 44 days. That includes the Planning Department . Yes, it does. Includes the Planning Department as well as all other Agency Reviews. Supervisor fewer okay. I just dont understand why im hearing from people who have recently opened a cafe, restaurant, saying that it took them a year to do this. Why would be that if youre telling me on average its 44 days . Because a lot of them is overthecounter. For the people who come in and out in hour, that compensates for the folks who are there for nine months. Supervisor fewer thank you, supervisor. Yeah, because i believe a majority of them do the overthecounter, which can take just a few days, a week or two. And then there are cases where there could be applications that take 9 months to a year. Through our statistical review, it came out as an average, 44 days. Supervisor fewer because this is what im hearing. Im hearing theyre paying rent on these places while still going through the permitting process, so it gets super expensive and that is dragged out around this permit and that permit. And the wait time and more and more. So i think that i quite frankly, when im looking at the chart, im thinking, oh my god, all the red tape we have to go through sort of. So hearing back about the ov overthecounter process . We have had positive feedback because it drastically cuts down the time they need to get the permit. Some of the remarks that are not positive is because they may not be familiar with the process, so sometimes they need to come through a couple of days to complete the permit application. And other things like the wait time. The process is kind of managed by the applicant. They themselves are responsible to take it to the different departments for their review. Like within dbi we have a couple of subreview, so we have architectural, structural, mechanical, where you could wait in three our four lines just for our department. I think some of that, there is a lead time or wait time for each section within our department for review, so sometimes, you know, that can take a little bit more time to complete the over the counter tt review process. But other than that, it has been a positive. And the feedback that has drastically cut down the time needed to obtain a permit from previous history. Supervisor fewer thank you very much. Any other comments . Seeing none, thank you very much. Now we have mr. Aaron star from planning. And this is how planning is supporting permit streamlining. Good afternoon, supervisors. Im the manager of legislative affairs for the Planning Department. Im going to go over the restaurant approval streamlining efficients that the department has efforts that the department has done to date. Were going to start back in 2011, when we did the restaurant definition rationalization. Weve been working on this for a while. To do this, we did something unusual, we created an outreach video using new technology, where you type in the dialogue you want, put it into the computer and these two bots talk it out. It was very popular for about six months or a year, but then the video became famous in planning circles. It received 30,000 views and got press, but what the ordinance did or actually what the video showed was that dialogue between the planner and a Small Business applicant. It showed the absurdity of our current regulations and why they needed to change. It was effective. If you want to watch it, its under four minutes. Just google hello, city planner and it will come up. There were 13 different definitions for drinking and eating uses in the planning code and it was reduced to three. It was based on alcohol consumption. A bar owning alcohol. And a limited restaurant, no alcohol. We were able do this because the city had adopted controls which made the different layers of restaurant definitions unnecessary. So we had definitions that said, if you serve in disposable cups, youre this kind of restaurant. If you order at the counter, youre this kind of restaurant. We simplified that to three basic things. For those in controls, we left the fullservice restaurant the same, but permitted limited restaurants without alcohol, through most of the city and obtained existing prohibition on neighboring retail and commercial districts through that. So recently we developed our cb3 process, which is community, processing program. For qualifying businesses, it requires conditional use authorize, hearing date in 90 days, placement on the consent calendar. No guarantee they stay on consent, but most of them do. Businesses that qualify for this are not formula retail. The proposal is not seeking to operate outside of the hours of what is permitted. The proposal doesnt include a consolidation of store fronts. There is no alcohol sale except beer or wine, so they would be able to do that. And its only for a change of use. If youre trying to expand the building, you dont qualify fort program. Some other internal improvements weve done. Something that safes time for a lot of applicants, not just restaurant, we do inhouse notification labels. Before you had to contract with the third party to develop the labels and add that to your application. We have the technology to press a button, generates the list on demand and that is no longer a cost for applicants to do that. It saves time so you dont have to give us new labels if six or nine months pass after the application. We have a Small Business liaison. They work directly with the office of Small Business. We have a Small Projects team that takes the cb3p application and other applications and focuses on giving those getting those through the process as quickly as we can. We have a find my zoning tool. Which im going to try to show you if the computer will cooperate. This is on our website. To find your zoning its not you would just type in an address. And it takes you to the Property Information page. If you go to the zoning tab, then go to find out what businesses are permitted. It takes you to this page. If you wanted to look at a restaurant, thats under sales and service. Youd find the restaurant. Also if you click on these, you can see what the definition, so it tells you exactly what is covered under the definition. Sorry, flexible retail. That was a mistake. If you click on restaurant, it will tell you whether or not you need a cu or if its permitted. In this case, you need a conditional use authorization for it. If you scroll down, there are other boxes to check. If i put in its really hard to see on this computer a restaurant on the third floor, it will tell you that supervisor peskin you go to the Property Information map, click on the property and then what do you do . Under the zoning tab and then the business zoning check is to the right of that. It says, sorry, your business isnt permitted here. Thats a restaurant in the castro, its not permitted on the third floor. On the ground floor, it is. Supervisor peskin now that i know that, ill stop sending so many people over to you. [laughter] so that program was created its called startup program. They developed it for free and said if you want it, you have to pay for it. So the Planning Department does pay a fee every year to maintain that. And its allowed to automate the Public Information process. It was made possible through the code reorganization project, because we combined all the use definitions into one area, so that helps that tool get processed as well. Legislative changes that happened or could happen, i know supervisor mandelman did the market ordinance and supervisor safai did the Commissary Kitchen ordinance. There are other things you can do that probably simpler to do. One is to expand if you want flexible retail in your district. It allows for multiple uses in one store front. These uses are not accessible to use control. You can pack them in there and see what works and what doesnt. What is similar you can remove neighborhood notification. This was done in supervisor safais district and supervisor mars district. What that does, it takes a sort of 34 month process where you have to do neighborhood notification and turns it into overthecounter process. So it gets approved immediately over the counter. Then the other thing you can do is to remove cu requirements for restaurants. You could look, as supervisor safai mentioned, restaurants are not allowed on the second floor, so if you change the zoning controls, you can allow them on the second floor with that. And that concludes my presentation. Im available for questions. Supervisor fewer thank you very much. Colleagues, any comments, questions for mr. Star . Mr. Star, why dont we have more restaurants on the second and third floors of buildings . So our neighborhood commercial district created in 1986 and it was out of concern, i think, partially chain retail coming into the neighborhood districts and too many restaurants coming in, cannibalizing our service ori t oriented retail or shops. It was also the way the vertical zoning was a way to protect housing. Now you have controls to protect housing. You dont have to worry about a restaurant displacing housing on the second floor because its very difficult to get rid of housing. But basically, the answer to your question, just where the city was at the time the regulations were developed. So you can go back to your neighbor commercial districts and look at the controls and see what makes sense to change, if anything. Supervisor fewer because when you travel throughout the world, you see there are restaurants on second floors. And third floors many times. And so that is probably something we should be looking at. What we heard from, also our from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association is also about the rents that are constantly going up in San Francisco. And so i know there has been this idea that i think is pretty promising, we can expedite the condoizing of retail space. Meaning that if a Property Owner has a piece of building that actually has maybe housing on top, that he or she is able to actually sell the retail space. What do you think about that . Because its true, there is no rent control on retail spaces. In my district, im seeing a 10year lease with an option for another 10 years, theyre now doing it annually, by just an annual lease. The restaurants in my neighborhood are seeing a lot of increases. And three or four times the amount of rent. This is what happened to farmer brown. So condoizing just the retail space and the empty store fronts, they can just sell the retail space. What are your thoughts about this . Well, Planning Department doesnt really deal with the condoization of spaces, but if its instability in the Restaurant Industry, thats a viable option. The only concern, restaurant have to come up with the rent to buy the space. It would get rid of the rent increase probably. Supervisor fewer another question. The cb3p, you just rolled this out . No, i believe its been out for three years. Supervisor fewer so do we have any data back from the Restaurant Association about how successful this is and how many and make you can tell us how many applicants you assisted . I dont have the numbers on, but i can get them from the special projects team. I will have to let the Restaurant Association answer the other part. Supervisor fewer is it working well . Any suggestion . Im not sure, but usually when theyre done with the process, they dont like to talk to us anymore. [laughter]. Supervisor fewer really, okay . I always think its good to get feedback. For those of us not in the industry, quite frankly, lay persons, and in this city bureaucracy, i think it helps to hear from people who do work on the ground on how we can improve. I would urge you to get data on it just to find out is it doing what we intended. Could we be doing more . How efficient is this . How helpful . Et cetera. Ill pass that onto them. Supervisor fewer thank you very much. The next speaker is Gregory Slocum from d. P. W. The cafe and table chairs process, with San Francisco public works, im representing the bureau street mapping this afternoon. Can i get the screen . Were going to go through a brief overview first . San francisco public works offers a cafe table and chair permit to utilize public sidewalks to permit and provide customers with out door seating. This program has been initially instituted in 1993. To give you scope and context forever the size for the size of the program in the last fiscal year, we received 458 renewals and 145 new applications for a total of 603 permit holders. These are also demonstrated through the public works order 183188. And there is a permit fee that applies to all new applications and then fees are assessed based on the Square Footage of the proposal. So its 144 base fee and then 8 per square foot. Just a brief overview of the application process. Applicant that wants to put tables and chairs in front of their establishment would complete a permit application. Its relatively simple, just includes your address, name of the applicant, name of the business and they submit the initial processing fee. They need to provide us with the certificate of insurance as well as current San Francisco business registration. These are items they already may be in possession of before pursuing the permit. Then we require a site plan that depicts the layout, so we can assess the impact on the public right of way tt. This is a sample of the brochure that is created for this program. If someone wanted to come into the office, this might be an example we provide them. If staff determines that the application does not meet requirements, we will send a detailed letter to the applicant indicating what changes need to be made to the application, so we can continue our review. If staff determines that the application has been submitted to us, has been acceptable, well create a Public Notice that the applicant has to post in an observable location fronting the public sidewalk for 10 calendar days. This is part of the public notification process. So during this period, if staff receives no objections and they may continue to assess outstanding fees, approve and issue a permit. In the event of objections to the table and chair tt permit, they will seek to reconcile them if there is a way to negotiate between the complainant and the business seeking the permit, well always try to do that. In the event we cannot mediate a solution, then it proceeds to a hearing. Following the hearing, the director of public works will decide to approve or conditionally approve. Conditionally approve may be reducing the amount of table and chairs just to give you an example of the condition. Then we can move into the approval process, which is typically the fee that is assessed. Square footage fee that we talked about on the front end. We take the base 144 and assess the Square Footage because sometimes the proposal can change dependant on guidance provided i about the staff. The by the staff. The permit must be placed. We do renewals for these based on zip codes. We stagger them by zip codes. Renewal process is much quicker and easier than the initial application and its cheaper. We charge 71 base renewal fee and 7 per square foot. Modifications to an existing permit requires a new permit application. If they wanted to expand, we would need to do another public posting so that the public has an expectation of what is going to be placed in the public rightofway prior to our approval. Some additional info, public works inspection enforcement may respond to complaints or proactively inspect for permit compliance. You can see on the two graphics on the bottom is things that inspectors might have an eye out for. Thank you for coming today. Comments, questions . Supervisor mandelman do you happen to know how much the city collects . I dont off the top of my head, but we would be more than happy to follow up. I would be curious to know and what the average total is for a business. I know it varies on Square Footage, but the range that is something we could probably follow up and provide you info on. Have they changed over the recent years . I have one constituent who feels like their fees have gone up dramatically over a short period of time. I dont know that the base fees have changed dramatically. We do look at cost indexes if we have to adjust. But i dont know of dramatic increase. It may also be if someone had to expand the footprint, so without knowing the context of the constituent, i couldnt say. Thank you. Supervisor peskin mr. Slocum, unlike most fees that the city charges, which are based on Cost Recovery, i believe this fee is an exception insofar as its actually based on the value of the real estate, because its in the public rightofway, so its actually if we issue a marriage license, the way the controller calculates the fee is how much staff time costs the city has to fee to produce a marriage license. So its a Cost Recovery thing. But i believe that the tables and chairs are different because its in essence, a lease payment. So its not based on Cost Recovery. Am i correct on that . It is prorated amongst the space that is occupied, however, that being said, when it comes to time and materials, i dont believe we recoup our efforts in the permits, and one of the reasons we do it that way, were trying to promote activation of the public space and as such, the fees are lower. Supervisor peskin in 1993, before my time, was the base fee established . I would have to do research and follow up on that. Supervisor peskin i think that is a conversation we should have. Because at 8 a square foot, thats pretty hefty. I do understand that these are lands of the taxpayer, so i get why its not i dont think its a fee, but its actually a lease charge by landlord to a tenant. Supervisor mandelman is totally nodding his head, so i feel like hes getting me, but i would love to understand how the base charge is established. You and supervisor fewer and i can have that conversation. Its 8 per square foot. Supervisor peskin no, i said 8. 8 its per was the time period. 8 per year . 8 per square foot fort initial application. For renewals, 70 base fee and 7. It goes from 144 down to 71 for renewal. And then the assessment drops from 8 down to 7. Supervisor peskin annual basis . Yes, sir. Supervisor peskin got it. Thats helpful. Supervisor fewer thank you very much. On that topic, i wanted to say, so hearing from the Restaurant Industry and all these fees and, you know, getting sort of nickel dimed every step of the way, do you think that we could, mr. Slocum, im sorry to direct it to you, youre the authority here, do you think there is a possibility that we could eliminate these fees for them . I mean, i think that it works two ways. One, as you said, the city really wants to activate these outer spaces for the activity. I think we all can agree when you have table and chairs outside, that from the pictures that you actually showed, it actually does help to activate the commercial corridor. Makes it look lively and adds a level of attractiveness and expands the service area for the restaurant. Do you think there is a possibility that once you give us the amount of money were actually recovering or getting from these fees, do you think that there is a possibility that we might waive these fees . And in light of that, it is not a Recovery Cost for the city and county of San Francisco as others are, but more actually related to a real estate cost, what do you think about that . Supervisor peskin before you answer that, mr. Slocum, two members of this panel have to go have been summoned into the mayors office. So well be back and supervisor fewer has been pinted by appointed by the president of the board to be a member of the panel, so there is a quorum and i shall return. Supervisor fewer please be back, because you have a lot of restaurants in your district. What do you feel about that . Could it be a possibility that we could eliminate the fee to actually allow this first floor restaurant . Restaurants on the first floor, we dont have a lot on the second and third floors, but also if there are restaurants on the second and third floor, the first floor would be paying a higher rate because its more desirable on the street level. What do you think if we were to eliminate these fees . So its not something that we discussed internally, so i dont have anything that i can piggyback a prior discussion. One of the challenges we do a pretty good job reviewing the applications in a timely fashion. For scope of example, the last year, the new applications we turned around in average of 11 working days, which on the calendar means staff was processing this over the course of 11 days. We were able to do renewals and two working days. That being said, we have some outliers and we have reviews that can be quite labor intensive, if you have someone with no scope of expertise, coming up with a diagram and following up on the letter where we issue them. That being said, because were not recovering cost on many of the applications, it would be tough without discussing it more indepth internally. Supervisor fewer i want to commend your counter service. Ive heard wonderful things about the counter service, that you offer permitting. And your turnaround time, excellent. I dont think we have an issue with that. Im just wondering, if you could come back and tell us how much were actually getting from the fees and how much do we need for Cost Recovery. And whether or not, you know, i think its a question of what City Government or whether or not we should try to absorb some of the costs because this is one thing we might be able to do in the city. I mean, theyre asking us and homelessness, its very difficult, its a bigger issue, but these type of things we could possibly do pretty quickly, after we have analysis of it, i think this is the things were looking at. So thank you very much. Greatly appreciate this. And i think your presentation was great. Any other questions . All right. Thank you. Supervisor fewer and now we have people from the tax collection office. Good afternoon. Treasurer of the city and county of San Francisco. I want to say thank you to the supervisors for holding the hearing. This is personally and professionally important to me. Personally because a lot of you partake in the restaurants and professionally, because its an opportunity to make changes as we go through the process together. Whether desired or undesired is the home for Small Businesses and their information. We partnered together with Public Health, fire, entertainment and the Police Department many, many years ago to create a consolidated license bill to annually renew all of the permits and licenses they have easily. What were going to tack about today is the talk about today is the large change weve made in partnership with the public Health Department. The large change was being the first in the country to put an online permit for food permits. This is an application that is begun after they go through the dbi and planning review to make sure the location is sufficient for them. As you know, as the data both anecdotal has shown, the process is long and took a will the of time for the restaurants lot of time for the restaurants. They recognize this as a point of contention as do the other studies. In addition to just the time and elapsed time, we have errors that were causing kickbacks. We have inconsistencies in data. Somebody would like their name on the restaurant one way, another way on another piece of paper, the address in a different location. This actually hindered the coordination of the departments to become one city, one voice. So we worked together with the public Health Department. They were collaborative and opened us up and had us participate in the lien process. We sat with them. It took a significant amount of days to get one application permitted. And the whole process was to decrease the time and increase the quality of the user experience. And Staff Experience is equally as important. We found a solution. As you know, the Office Creates a lot of online applications. We have 100,000 businesses, 120,000 locations. The majority of the business have to file tax in one month, online and pay. Surprisingly enough, 95 of the businesses are on time so our office figured out how to put this online, get the payments in and thats how we started to work with the public Health Department. We wanted to a business to populate it with the information. To take away typo. And all of the Little Things that do cause challenges. So what it does, the center point is, one city, one set of data, how we move you forward and save the other departments some quickly and responsively . Sophisticated work flow in the background that makes sure its calculating based on the responses they have and all of the different permits that environmental Health Department will speak about later, speak to in permits. The benefits have been sizeable. The public Health Department has achieved an award for the work itself. The application is done whether they come in person, they can do it at home, whomever theyre working with. They also can get feedback from the inspector. Only about 79 of the current applications under review have been sent back. So further questions to the businesses themselves. And we have the city as i said earlier planning and fire getting directly the information that they need to proceed with their applications and permit. The benefits as i said, were the applications are more accurate. We have reduced the amount of inquiry back and forth. And more importantly, ill talk later about the number of applications that have come through and been approved within the less than one year. I think most people have talked about the time and the last time, and how long does it take. Weve had over 647 applications approved. 1200 have been put into the system. Processing time decreased by 100 . Most improved in 90 days and some even in 70 days. I think supervisors asked what is next and how we continue to do improvements . Our office is updating the forms, Public Health office as well as the restaurants have told us to make changes on the form itself. We went live with version 2. Were working with department of public works to bring tables and chairs on the license, consolidate the bills, so businesses have a predictable way of when they have to pay and what they have to pay and by location, which is then a huge saving. When we went with license consol day, the delinquency rate dropped as well. And i think the most important thing were seeing as the association spoke about, the Treasurers Office is part of the Business Tax Reform discussions impacting many of our businesses, small and large, particularly in the Restaurant Industry. Supervisor fewer any questions . Seeing none, thank you very much. Good to see you again. Next is the department of public heal health. This is stefani curbing. Good afternoon. I were committed to the lean process. More than a year ago we heard that the process for us, after doing what we call a value street mapping, took 79 steps for a restaurant to apply for a permit from us. So 79 steps. It took 23 feet of paper. And took almost close to a year as ms. Shaw pointed out. The study that we did, fire, planning, oewd, all participated so we could see the broader view of what was happening to the restaurant. Plus the association sent representative. We have change it to eight steps and we use their information to populate the application. Its online. And you can also pay online. From that, as she also stated, we won a state award being the only jurisdiction in california that has an online application in addition to payment online. So that any person, applicant can apply anywhere they are, wherever they have a computer. In addition, we have a specialist in our office. If somebody comes in, theyre helped to fill out the Application Online in our office. In addition that, once the completed application is received, then it is assigned to an inspector and an immediate email goes out to the applicant to call this inspector to start their process for inspections and what other needs they may have so they can move through the system much quicker. So what used to take almost a year, takes anywhere from 24 months. So weve certainly decreased that amount of time. We continuously want to improve so we have something called planned to study act. Where we look at what is going on now and try to improve that. The inspectors here from the public, from the restaurant applicants, with regards to what they feel could be better, what is slowing the process down, how we can do things better and thats why we actually held off moving to the second phase until we addressed all the issues that weve had in the background. So as ms. Shaw said, were moving to the second phase. Were trying to also move the other 35 programs in Environmental Health to an Online Presence so that other applicants for any type of permits that we issue dont face the same things that the Restaurant Owners faced. And we started with the food program, because that is one of the largest programs that we have in Environmental Health. In addition to that, i wanted to say that we are trying to streamline our inspection process so its more riskbased following the center for disease controls five major issues that cause foodborne illness. And supervisor peskin has sponsored that. Its been before you, so we will become more in line with the counties around us using red, yellow, green. So its consistent as you move from county to county, and also Restaurant Owners are not seemingly punished because they have a broken tile in the back. Or a broken tile in their bathroom. Or they just dont seem at that time to have paper towels or soap in the bathroom. So its really punishing them in that way where they lose points, this is more riskbased. Its based on food temperatures, food storage. Hand washing, if they dont wash their hands and finally where the source of their food comes from. So were making changes to the way that Environmental Health has operated in the past. And were moving forward with that. Any questions . Supervisor fewer any questions . Colleagues . Seeing none. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. So lets open up the Public Comment and hear from you. Im going to call names out. Everyone has two minutes. [reading of names]