Item 2. President s announcements. President mccarthy good morning, everybody. Just moving everything is moving parts here. I just wanted to have a few words to read into the comments and to my president s announcements. Im confident and dedicated i am confident that the dedicated and hardworking staff throughout the department of building inspection are aware of the response to the people of San Francisco and will continue to do their duty and uphold the public trust which theyve been doing in the last week. As you know were dealing with, you know, a Public Health emergency in our city. And our state and country, that we have never, never had to encounter before. On behalf of the commission, i urge all d. B. I. Staff and customers to follow the instructions under Public Health officials and to do their part to prevent the spread of covid19. I applaud the department for taking steps to limit the virus spread such as increase social distancing between the customers and d. B. I. Staff, and the more frequent cleaning of commonly shared public services. Continue to Pay Attention to all of the Public Health instructions and take all of the possible precautions for your own health and your loved ones. Be proactive and help to keep each other safe. And that concludes, madam secretary, my comments. Clerk is there any Public Comment on the president s announcement . Seeing none, our next item, item 3, general Public Comment. Matters within the commission that are not part of this agen agenda. Good morning, my name is jerry grantler. The resignation of tom huey in the march 12th stories about the citys expanding probe of former president and instructial engineer rodrigo santaz are clear indicators that an outside investigation of the department is long overdue. My interest in d. B. I. Began in 2012 when i served on the civil grand jury that wrote a very unfavorable report on the department. I have attended b. I. C. Meetings for the last seven years. Its difficult to monitor projects like the rodrigo santaz prctses mentioned in the citys lawsuit. This lack of transparency is by design. An outside investigation needs to focus on the departments lack of internal controls and weak Building Code enforcement process. Current Code Enforcement penalties are not a deterrent. 98 of the penalties issued are below 1,000. 1,000 is the cost of doing business. D. B. I. s weak internal controls are present by design, not by accident or lack of funding. D. B. I. Has sabotaged the installation of new Computer Systems that would have made the departments practice of favoring a few individuals more difficult and visible. D. B. I. Failed to implement a system that would have eliminated the current process where contractors, expeditors and instructional engineers get to select the d. B. I. Engineer to review and issue their Building Permit. If you had the choice, would you pick your buddy . Humadic is similar to the process by the california d. M. V. To randomly assign customers to counter employees. D. B. I. Also sabotaged the implementation of asela. When you drill down into mr. Santos projects you find that it was the same small group of d. B. I. Employees who should not have approved his Building Permit ove overthecounter and field inspectors who should not have approved the final inspections. Thank you very much. Clerk thank you. So president mccarthy, i believe that there needs to be president mccarthy so because of the nature of this meeting today, were going to remove some items from the calendar, if thats acceptable to all commissioners, please speak up if you have any concerns. Do we do just a point of order do we still have to do the commissioners issues and matters, do we still do that, or just items on the calendar. Looking for clarification . You asked whether its required that we do. President mccarthy that we remove that. You can move to remove it for todays meeting. President mccarthy commissioners, do you want that to remain on the calendar to weigh in indiscernible okay. Number five, i have a request to leave number five on and i wondered what you might have thought about that as a quick discussion and move that forward because of the calendar thats on. And then we can if im correct we could do Public Comment on this again if we needed to though we have moved it out of our commission, is that correct . City attorney rob capla. If you feel that you have enough time to move it forward, the board of supervisors, where there would be more process, you could do that. And you can also schedule a time to take Public Comment on it in the future but you wouldnt be able to rescind the recommendation to move the item forward. President mccarthy okay. So, obviously, 6 well take off the calendar and move to the next available hearing. And then, obviously, we would keep the closed session which we would do last. And then pretty much remove all of the business off the calendar, if the commissioners today have any comments . Clerk do we have a second . Second . So theres a motion and a second to remove all of the items or president mccarthy except for 5, we will leave 5 in which we discussed now and number where am i 5 and 9. Thank you, commissioner. Clerk so theres a motion and a second to remove except for items 5 and 9. Do a roll call vote. President mccarthy. Vice president moss. Commissioner alexandertut. Commissioner clinch. Commissioner jacobo. Commissioner tam. That motion carries unanimously. Im going to read item 5 just for the record. I initially thought that the item would be continued. But all of you have received all of the correspondence and there was additional Public Comment that you have received as well. Okay, so item 5, discussion and possible action regarding a proposed ordinance, repealing ordinance numbers 3817 and 10219, and reenacting certain provisions by amending the administrative code to update the Hotel Conversion ordinance including adding a redefining of definitions of lowincome household and procedures to convert units and harmonizing the fees in addition to other requirements. This is continued from the meeting. President mccarthy do we need to discuss. I want to thank the commission for tabling it until today or continuing it to today. I talked to the Community Group whose appreciated having time to review this and theyre all in agreement with moving forward. Thank you. President mccarthy if i see no more comment on it, City Attorney rob capla. Theres a request to be read into the record. President mccarthy is that the letter from mr. Zach friedman . Yeah, okay. This letter is from Zach Friedman and patterson, a Public Comment, dear president mccarthy and honorable members of the Building Inspection Commission, our office represents the s. R. O. Hotel coalition, hotels, and other individual owners of s. R. O. S who will be affected by this proposed ordinance. In light of yesterdays shelter in place order and the serious Public Health risk of covid19 we reject to this hearing taking place without Public Participation as required by the ralph m. Brown act. Neither my clients nor attorneys or other concerned members of the public can violate the order and risk their health to attend this hearing. This hearing must be pro postponed. And including reacting the record in realtime and the statements by city staff and other members of the public. This is not an imminent matter. And this could be accomplished without the proposed new amendments contained within this ordinance. These amendments are not urgent and do not affect any government function as defined by the order. We respectfully request that this hearing be postponed until the shelter in place order is lifted and we reserve the right to have additional arguments and materials in advance of the final hearing on this matter. Thank you, for your krrs, very truly yours. So that was the Public Comment. And is there any additional Public Comment here . Seeing none. Is there a motion on this item . President mccarthy we do need to make a motion to approve. I move to approve. Clerk a second . Second. Clerk there is a motion and a second. Ill do a roll call vote. President mccarthy. Yes. Vice president moss. Yes. Commissioner alexandertut. Yes. Commissioner clinch. Yes. Commissioner jacobo. Yes. Commissioner tam. Yes. The motion carries unanimously. Our next item is item 9, Public Employee appointment. Director of building inspection. Discussion and possible action to appoint director of building inspection. 9a, Public Comment on all matters pertaining to the closed session. Good morning, my name is dray grantler. If the commissioner is looking for an interim d. B. I. Director my suggestion is the former Deputy Director rosemary vosk who is an attorney. And who is thoughtful and has good leadership skills and knows the department. Thank you very much. Clerk thank you. There was also additional Public Comments submitted via email by last name of mr. White, mrs. White and i have submitted that to all of the commissioners. So they have all received it as well. Our next item is item b, possible action to convene a closed session. Is there a motion to convene closed session . Id like to make a motion to convene closed session. Second. Clerk are all commissioners in favor . Any opposed . We are now in closed session. It is 10 24 we should be back. Hello, this is Building Inspection Commission meeting resuming. We are on item 9 d , reconvened in open session to vote on whether to disclose any or all discussions held in closed sessi sessi session. There is a motion to reconvene. I move to reconvene. Second. There is a motion and a second to reconvene in open session. We are now in open session. All in favour . Aye. Our next item, is there anything to disclose . Absolutely. Thanks for everybodys patience here. We had a really good discussion here and a lot of commissioners thoughts for the future were brought up and whats going to be needed, particularly for this department, which i concur for everything. Obviously, mr. Weir, we unanimously approved you to step in as acting director through this difficult period. As a commission, we thank you for stepping up and doing that. To be clear, weve acted to appoint mr. Riddin interim director. We had a debate about interim and acting. Interim director. So if you are acceptable, you can come to the mic. Officially you could accept the position for us and that would satisfy us, correct. Thank you. Good morning again, commissioners. Thank you for appointing me as interim director. While i am deeply grateful for your expressed confidence in my leadership of d. B. I. During what can only be called extraordinary times, i want to assure you that ours will continue to be a team effort and will continue to involve indeed depend upon the supportive dedication, commitment of building safety and professionalism we are proud to have in our d. B. I. Employees. We have terrific staff who work enthusiastically every day to ensure building and safety codes are observed in the letter of the laws behind them. Thanks to our engineer reviewers and all the Code Enforcement inspectors. We know that structures are built to constantly improving standards. And thus as these construction methods can deliver for everyone who lives, works, and recreates inside these buildings. I take this responsibility youre giving me and i will do everything i can to fulfill your expectations and to provide the department with the leadership needed during these times of Public Health challenges. We will continue to do everything we can as a department to meet the mayor and board of supervisors ongoing leadership efforts to build more housing that is safely constructed for all, especially for our citys most vulnerable populations. Thank you again for the honor to serve as departments interim director. I will certainly do my best to work with the commission, all city departments, the mayor and board of supervisors and City Employees and continue to provide energy, leadership, and professionalism in all areas of building safety in the city of San Francisco. Thank you. Good luck. [ laughter ]. Commissioner, please. Just a quick thing here. I just want to thank our c. F. O. For stepping up to the plate in our time of need at that time as acting director. Big second on that. I move to adjourn. Second. Go home, everyone. All in favour. Aye. Were now adjourned. Its 11 46 a. M. This is one place you can always count on to give you what you had before and remind you of what your San Francisco history used to be. We hear that all the time, people bring their kids here and their grandparents brought them here and down the line. Even though people move away, whenever they come back to the city, they make it here. And they tell us that. Youre going to get something made fresh, made by hand and made with quality products and something thats very, very good. The legacy bars and restaurants was something that was begun by San Francisco simply to recognize and draw attention to the establishments. It really provides for San Franciscos unique character. And that morphed into a request that we work with the city to develop a legacy business registration. Im Michael Cirocco and the owner of an area bakery. The bakery started in 191. My grandfather came over from italy and opened it up then. It is a small operation. Its not big. So everything is kind of quality that way. So i see every piece and cut every piece that comes in and out of that oven. Im leslie ciroccomitchell, a fourth generation baker here with my family. So we get up pretty early in the morning. I usually start baking around 5 00. And then you just start doing rounds of dough. Loaves. My mom and sister basically handle the front and then i have my nephew james helps and then my two daughters and my wife come in and we actually do the baking. After that, my mom and my sister stay and sell the product, retail it. You know, i dont really think about it. But then when i sometimes when i go places and i look and see places put up, oh this is our 50th anniversary and everything and weve been over 100 and that is when it kind of hits me. You know, that geez, weve been here a long time. [applause] a lot of people might ask why our legacy business is important. We all have our own stories to tell about our ancestry. Our lineage and ill use one example of tommys joint. Tommys joint is a place that my husband went to as a child and hes a fourth generation san franciscan. Its a place we can still go to today with our children or grandchildren and share the stories of what was San Francisco like back in the 1950s. Im the general manager at tommys joint. People mostly recognize tommys joint for its murals on the outside of the building. Very bright blue. You drive down and see what it is. They know the building. Tommys is a San Francisco hoffa, which is a germanstyle presenting food. We have five different carved meats and we carve it by hand at the station. You prefer it to be carved whether you like your brisket fatty or want it lean. You want your pastrami to be very lean. You can say i want that piece of corn beef and want it cut, you know, very thick and i want it with some sauerkraut. Tell the guys how you want to prepare it and they will do it right in front of you. San franciscos a place thats changing restaurants, except for tommys joint. Tommys joint has been the same since it opened and that is important. San francisco in general that we dont lose a grip of what San Franciscos came from. Tommys is a place that youll always recognize whenever you lock in the door. Youll see the same staff, the same bartender and have the same meal and that is great. Thats important. The service that San Francisco heritage offers to the legacy businesses is to help them with that application process, to make sure that they really recognize about them what it is that makes them so special here in San Francisco. So well help them with that application process if, in fact, the board of supervisors does recognize them as a legacy business, then that does entitle them to certain financial benefits from the city of San Francisco. But i say really, more importantly, it really brings them public recognition that this is a business in San Francisco that has history and that is unique to San Francisco. It started in june of 1953. And we make everything from scratch. Everything. We started a you we started a off with 12 flavors and mango fruits from the philippines and then started trying them one by one and the family had a whole new clientele. The business really boomed after that. I think that the flavors we make reflect the diversity of San Francisco. We were really surprised about the legacy project but we were thrilled to be a part of it. Businesses come and go in the city. Pretty tough for businesss to stay here because it is so expensive and theres so much competition. So for us who have been here all these years and still be popular and to be recognized by the city has been really a huge honor. We got a phone call from a woman who was 91 and she wanted to know if the mitchells still owned it and she was so happy that we were still involved, still the owners. She was our customer in 1953. And she still comes in. But she was just making sure that we were still around and it just makes us feel, you know, very proud that were carrying on our fathers legacy. And that we mean so much to so many people. It provides a perspective. And i think if you only looked at it in the here and now, youre missing the context. For me, legacy businesses, legacy bars and restaurants are really about setting the context for how we come to be where we are today. I just think its part of San Francisco. People like to see familiar stuff. At least i know i do. In the 1950s, you could see a picture of tommys joint and looks exactly the same. We havent change add thing. I remember one lady saying, you know, ive been eating this ice cream since before i was born. And i thought, wow we have, too. Welcome to the sfmta online budget open house top to ask a question about the key transportation decisions to be made for fiscal years 2021, 2022. Call 415 6462222 [speaking foreign language]
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