Transportation committee for monday, september 16, 2019. Im the chair of this committee, aaron peskin, joined by vice chair supervisor safai and to my left, supervisor haney. And were joined by supervisors fewer and mandelman. Our clerk is erica major. Any announcements . Yes. Please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices. Completed speakers cards to be included as part of the file be given to the clerk. Supervisor peskin could you please read the first item . Item number 1 is ordinance amending the plumbing code to delete the local amendment to the california code referring to the San FranciscoPublic Utilities rules and regulations and Cross Connection control, affirming appropriate findings. Supervisor peskin thank you. Are there any representatives from the department of building inspection or the San FranciscoPublic Utilities commission who want to speak to the fact that we are going to continue this, because apparently, those two organizations have not yet come into agreement on this. Are you coming up on behalf of either one of those organizations, or just no, youre just walking around. Okay. Is there any Public Comment on item number 1 . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. And, colleagues, this actually was one portion of the Building Code that came to us wherein there was agreement between two departments. And i was told last week that they had come to agreement, but apparently they have not. So id like to continue this item to the call of the chair. Is there a motion to do so . Made by supervisor safai and well take that without objection. Item continued to the call of the chair. Please read the next item . Item number 2 is hearing on state of the Restaurant Industry, including but not limited to strategies city departments are utilizing to support Restaurant Operators through the permitting and inspection process. Supervisor peskin thank you. I would like to associate myself with it. Insofar as the culture of convenience, the culture of expensive rents and many other things, some of them imposed by an array of fees and Public Policy positions that this supervisor and this government have voted on have had, i think, a deleterious collective impact on the Restaurant Industry. I want to thank supervisor fewer for calling the hearing and turn it over to her. Supervisor fewer thank you for allowing me to hold the hearing today on the state of the Restaurant Industry. Restaurants are a vital part of the backbone of neighborhoods. In my conversations, many have shared what they love about doing businessed in neighborhood, but also have talked about the challenges of opening food establishments on our corridors. Many of our departments have implemented a number of strategies to streamline and improve their support of our Small Businesses, but we know there is still work to be done. The goal of todays hearing is to look at how departments are improving their systems, and also to look at how departments can Work Together to provide clarity in the overall process to provide a road map. Im hoping today we can take a wholistic look at the climate of the Restaurant Industry in the San Francisco and zone in on the permitting processes. Restaurants and the variety of a restaurants and different cuisines help to make us a worldclass city. And a Culinary Destination for people all over the world, but this industry is suffering now. And these challenges actually threaten their very existence. It is the hope of the hearing that we can examine how we as a city and county of San Francisco legislators can support this industry. Today well be hearing from the golden gate restaurant oh, the workforce develop, the department of Public Health, Planning Department and tax collector. Anybody else with comments . I see supervisor mandelman. Supervisor mandelman thank you. I wanted to just thank supervisor fewer for calling for this hearing. In my district, there has been a very steady and troubling drum beat of restaurant closures. And vacant store front, especially in the upper market castro area that i am very concerned about. And then we have also heard troubling stories from a number of folks trying to open new restaurants, about how hard it is to get through the various processes and permitting requirements. We made a mozest change to eliminate the modest change to eliminate the requirements, but there is a lot more the city can do to facilitate entrepreneurs to get a business established. Im interesting in hearing more from departments and folks in the industry about what is going on out there. Supervisor fewer thank you very much. Lets start with the hearing. Id like to call up lori thomas, the policy chair of the golden gate restaurant association. Thank you. First of all, i wanted to good afternoon and thank you, all, for taking the time. Many have you have known me over the years. Ive been in the industry for a long time. What id like to do is speak on behalf and give an expert summary overview of the golden gate restaurant association. I still own and manage two restaurants in San Francisco. And we really appreciate your time. I know there is a lot of people who wanted to be here today, but have to run their restaurant, so were going to give them feedback. Im going to read the overview here. So what we wanted to do today was address concerns were having with hard issues our industry is facing. Were going to start with facts to bring everybody to the same page. This is taking the number of sales tax permits in 2018 and from the bureau of labor statistics, we have 2500 eating establishments and generating 4. 7 million in taxable sales to the city. Our industry provides approximately 65,000 working class jobs in San Francisco alone. And we represent 52 of the citys entire retail sector. We help keep neighborhood corridors vibrant. We bring business to the retail shops, many of whom are struggling in the online economy and help provide tourists with San Franciscos unique experiences. But were seeing a troubling trend. Up until about two years ago the number of restaurants opening and closing was approximately equal, but based on numbers from ye yelp, weve seen the closings outnumber the openings by 9 . This is causing a lot of worry and were not even seeing what were going to count in 2019. 2020, we expect an even greater number of closings, due to many factors were going to cover, that cover housing, permitting, economic pressures and vacant store fronts. Were going to provide proposed solutions and hope we can go further from here. Lets start with the shortage of affordable housing. We all know this. Its directly impacting our employees. With median rents for a onebedroom in San Francisco around 3600 per months and limited availability of anything that costs less, housing in the bay area is way short of our needs. Even ownership in the city is out of reach for the Leadership Teams which causes them to think about moving out of state. Those facing the greatest challenge are in the sweet spot of the earnings, 5070,000 a year. These are managers, chefs. Theyre the most disadvantaged. Were wondering what can we do . We may look at money allocated to Small Businesses, maybe there is a voucher system or something that could help to offset the rent issues. Maybe we can i know this is a tough one but expand transit hours so our employees can make it back and forth from the east and north bays and know they dont have to pay for uber or lyft to get home after everything is closed. Permitting. I know a lot of members will give examples theyve been experiencing. This can vary a lot, but if your a restaurant, it could take up to 12 months. It can be costly with the additional hearings. The rent you have to pay if you didnt negotiate it with your new owner. And also, too, you could risk being denied, which is troubling. The Building Permit progress, i know were trying to make progress, but its still confusing. And everybody that has done it successfully has been using an expediter, with i significantly increases which significantly increases the cost of opening a business. Is there a likely way that success could be delineated. Is there a way to streamline . Is there a way to overlap approval . I know there is a lot of progress, but were giving an overview. So a lot of the restaurants are on the ground floor of buildings. And so were the eyes and ears of what is happening on the streets. We hear from restaurant members of the daily challenges they face with both the cleanliness and the safety, whether its the wellbeing of the patrons or the staff leaving at the end of their shift, restaurants continue to see a rise and lack of safety surrounding their businesses. Neighborhoods with the most challenge, we know theyre the most densely populated from locals and visitors, downtown, market street, the had mission, but were also hearing from sunset and problems theyre starting to see in neighborhoods as well. Additionally, unfortunately, this summer a lot of us have seen a business slowdown, particularly in the month of july, from leisure travel. And restaurants are seeing reduced foot traffic due to conditions on the streets. And members are feeling like its not Getting Better and they shouldnt bother reporting these issues as often no issue is taken. Where is the accountability to address our Mental Health and Substance Abuse issues . This comes from an industry where were intimately aware of these issues. Solutions. So lets Work Together to clean up your streets. Ask the restaurants to participate and brainstorm what we can do and design programs that improve the Emotional Wellbeing of these communities. Now were going to get to my favorite subject. Economic pressure. So i pulled numbers, because i feel thats the right thing to do. I first want to say there has been a lot of great policy i believe in and i know a lot of our members believe in. Im just going to quote some of the statistics, because, unfortunately, some of the policies now have been in place to the point theyre breaking the business models. Wages. Since 2012, the wages have gone up 52 due to the minimum wage and the Ripple Effect on the payroll. This is a huge number for the industry, if you look at the national statistics, only keeps 35 cents on the dollar. So we can go through numbers later, but this has a huge effect. Health care. The spending requirements have caused the business costs, the spend to go up 37 in just since 2012. And combined, these two costs are making it much harder to stay in the red, particularly if you have a large amount of employees like i did at rose for example. So taxes and permit fees. We know we try to fix the gross receipts and payroll tax a couple of years ago and it didnt turn out. I know there is more reform planned. These taxes for smaller restaurants add up to thousands of dollars a year. Its a huge amount of money, you guys. And additionally, there is yearly increases in permitting fees. I wont tell you the cost of the table and chairs permits on union street, it will blow your mind. The other thing, too, i want to mention and youve heard this before from me, we need utilities, but theyre monopolies and theyre going to assign whatever rate increases they want. Pg e, water. We have no say and no way to combat. All these costs put together are breaking the business models. Fast casual and smaller bars and restaurants with little employees on their payroll are going to make it and theyre still continuing to grow, but fullservice restaurants, in particular ones with larger number of employees on the payroll are seeing unsustainable costing. What are solutions . I hate to say this, but im going to, i think we should take a look again at the hcso and see if there is way to modify and adjust this ordinance to make the policy work, but make it for affordable for the Restaurant Business and look at what resources do we have that work that gavin is doing, with kaiser holding their rates and things like that. We would offer to participate, and i would really like, the gross receipts and payroll tax reform. You can have as many representatives from our industry. If there is different ways to do it, i would like it not tied to the payroll. Vacant store fronts. This is a huge, huge thing and were all seeing in the neighborhoods. Were painfully ware of increased rents and vacant store fronts and inflexible landlords. And increasing rents make these vacancies more and more likely. On king street in the press today, two are closing. Tony is closing one of his slice shops. Not only are existing restaurants looking not to renew leases, but new businesses are going to have to come up with huge cash or be large chains to make this work. What is the solution here . I dont know, maybe there is a couple here. One im thinking, is is there a way to incent the landlords to lease spaces . Or a way to give tax breaks to restaurants to help them locate in areas where were seeing the highest vacancy rates. There was an enterprise tax zone in california, that doesnt exist anymore. Is there a way to do that . That helps when you have concrete numbers to put on the table. In closing, we want to ask that you consider restaurants cannot just raise their prices to offset the costs. Customers will either stop dining out, order less and god forbid we see an economic down turn from international or national issues, were going to see more close. Were concerned about the viability of our industry and were willing to be at the table. Thank you so much for your time. Supervisor peskin thank you, ms. Thomas. Before i hand it back over to supervisor fewer, i think as your presentation elucidated, this is an intertwined very complicated web. I think in order for im going to say this to the departments for this hearing to be successful and while all 11 of us and the mayor focus on homelessness and larger societal problems, i think weve got to boil this down to things that we can do. So, for instance, i agree with you that as a matter of fact the board has taken steps in other policy areas to deal with the issue of fees, which are paramount in particularly when youre starting a restaurant when there are over 20 fees. Some of them, you dont have to avail yourselves of if you dont want the entertainment permit, if you dont want sidewalk table and chairs permit, you dont have to get it, but you have to get a dbi permit for the place. You may or may not if youre moving into a previous restaurant space, depending on the zone, have to get a cu. Mr. Star will speak to the fact there are provisions for expedited cancel uses and they conditional uses and there is the department of Public Health as to food handling, which is an ongoing fee. That is something that this board can focus on beyond issues i mean, yes, it is true that San Francisco is at the forefront of health care and minimum wage, but we have been surplanted now by state and even to a limited extent federal behavior. And were seeing that throughout many, many states. I would like in order for this to be productive, because i totally agree we want this industry, at a minimum, survive and at a maximum thrive, as was the case of many years. Which is still an empty space that is causing me grief in the middle of north beach. Sorry about that. Supervisor peskin it is what it is. Youre not the only one. Supervisor haney reminded me that when the giants lose, less people come to south park. For sure. Supervisor peskin i would like to leave the hearing im not saying this to you, but to the other speakers and supervisors and my colleagues on this panel, with ideas of concrete, real things that we can do in the shortterm. That was not to you, that was just kind of to make this a productive. I want to add thank you, one thing, i know there are things that arent directly to this hearing and i hear you, and we all understand that, but if there subsequent meetings and other commissions or areas we could participate, i would be very willing to do that, as would my colleagues. Supervisor peskin and to that end, there is an evolving discussion between the board and the Mayors Office and the Controllers Office. We know that 2020 is the year where a long thought about adjustment to the payroll gross receipts tax that has been plaguing us since the infamous lawsuit brought by General Motors and 51 other multinational corporations has been bugging us for 20 years. Were trying to figure that out. You should all be a part of the conversation. Thank you for that. Supervisor peskin supervisor fewer, thank you. Supervisor safai ill be bri brief. Some of the things that we worked on in the past year have been about reducing buffer zones for permitting and some of the things weve worked on is expanding the use of Commissary Kitchens and restaurants. That hasnt panneded to full expanded to fullservice restaurants. The idea of second floor, i know in many cases zoning doesnt allow for a secondfloor space to be utilized as a kitchen. Those are the things we hear a lot from Small Businesses and restaurants that can be helpful. So any of the ideas, at least as it pertains to this body. We are the land use committee. I wanted to add that. Supervisor peskin and thank you for leading obviously you see an engaged panel, but before i turn it over to supervisor fewer, as a high level you have changing Consumer Behavior through what we love to call the amazon effect. And then you also have a situation where individuals who do not own or control their buildings or have longterm leases are facing massive rent. I read the article about brown where their rent went to 14,000 a month. That is crushing. There are policy things we have been talking about relative to those. And its not every property owner, but those Property Owners who hold out for egregiously high rent and chase their places out. They remain vacant, which is a nuisance and blight to all of us. So there are things we can do, like a vacancy tax, where landlords who do not reduce their rents are going to be incentivized to do so. With that, supervisor fewer. Supervisor fewer thank you for the opening overview of the challenges of the Restaurant Industry. I want to concur with the colleagues, some of the problems are bigger issues than others. But im looking and i think there are some things and ideas we can come together as city departments to help you actually and bring relief. Having said that, i would like to bring up katie skipper . The Program Manager of open sf. Shes going to give us an overview also of what open sf is helping with. Thank you, supervisors. Good afternoon. Im with the office of economic and workforce development. Thank you for the time to speak with you today about the Restaurant Industry and oewds strategy to support restaurants. We have a number of programs that support the restaurants. They strengthen commercial corridors and provides support directly to Small Businesses, including Financial Support and technical assistance. We have Employer Services that connect job seekers to job opportunities. Our Hospitality Services help train residents to enter the workforce in culinary food services, facility and building maintenance. Our night life Sector Development works strengthens the Restaurant Industry, working to connect businesses with city resources and advance policy initiatives to support the sector. And today, given the specific request regarding permitting, im going to focus on the open in sf that assists the permitting process. I wanted to give background about the program so you know where it came from. This program was in response to analysis the Controllers Office did back in 2015, that mapped the permitting process. One of the recommendations that came out of the report was that restaurants could really benefit from having one primary point of contact, someone to own their experience and work with them across all permits and agencies. So we moved forward to create the Program Based on that recommendation. It began with high level of research, including collaborating with our interdepartmental partners, business holders and stakeholders to make sure we understood the process and the challenges and could position the program to provide the assistance needed. So we determined the number of the objectives for the program. The first is to provide a primary point of contact with improve the experience. Thats really the heart of the program. So client manager works with a restaurant across the entirety of the permitting process through all permits across all departments. Another really key objective was to have a wholistic and proactive perspective. As was mentioned, it is knowing what to expect up front, being able to negotiate time lines into our lease. Those help Restaurant Owners have the tools to optimize the process. The program relies on a really high level of interdepartmental collaboration, so we can identify the needs of each individual business and support them through the process. And it also ill speak to this later, provides rich information as we go through the process over and over again to help us identify opportunities to improve the process. So since the launch of the program, at the end of 2016, 269 businesses have received assistance. This includes new restaurants as well as restaurants seeking to expand or add a license or per met to strengthen their permit to strengthen their business. Businesses across the city have received support, and businesses are finding the program directly from supervisors offices, from Partner Agencies such as planning, building and health, from oewd programs, office of Small Business, and merchant organizations and through word of mouth from prior businesses who have been clients of the program. As i mentioned, this work provides us a really good window into what some of the challenges are, what the points are that the businesses are facing over and over as they go through the process. It helps this program work as a feedback loop where we can identify some of these challenges and work to smooth them. So a couple of successes in that work recently have been at the beginning of this year, oewd worked with dbi on administrative reforms that expanded the number of businesses who can receive their Building Permits over the counter. That is a huge savings for those businesses in time. Additionally, recently, a Small Business permit streamlining legislation that was supported unanimously by the board and signed by the mayor last week. It included a number of code changes that will have real em packets for the food and beverage impacts for the food and beverage business. A lot of them came directly from the one of on one work with restaurants. There remains opportunities for improvement, which well discuss today and this program will be a good lens to watch that. Finally, looking ahead, we want to continue to expand our outreach. Were serving a large number of businesses but want to make sure that every restaurant knows its available to them. Were also thinking about how to increase capacity. The budget and legislative Analyst Report prepared at the request of supervisor mandelman on the castro areas, looking at store front vacancies, is a tool. Im thinking about the larger conversation around reducing vacancies. There is interest in how to increase capacity for the program to serve more restaurants and potentially in the future business sectors. We also, as we think about inclusiveness and equity, we know the permitting process can be inaccessible to many and we want to make sure the service can meet the needs of our perspective entrepreneurs. Of course, we will continue our interdepartmental collaboration on this work, which helps us to identify areas to keep improving the process. Smooth the permitting process for the restaurants. As a final note, i want to mention, we recognize as a dimension that permitting is just one issue a much larger and complex environment for the restaurants. This program is just one way we can help our businesses, our restaurants, put their best food forward as they launch and be in strong a position as possible as they launch. And also grow and adapt to meet the changing demand. So, thank you for your time 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