Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Budget And Finance Sub-Committee 2

SFGTV BOS Budget And Finance Sub-Committee July 13, 2024

Francisco. We can either reject this roll out and lay the foundation for a safe wired city or we will risk being one of the most toxic cities in the world. I urge you to take the first step to blocking this ordinance. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Thank you. My name is linda smith and i lived in San Francisco since 1985 and im a former editor of the San Francisco chronicle. I have a different story for you today. Earlier this year, seven neighbors got together to impose the permitted installation of a wireless antenna on a light pole outside their building at pacific avenue and webster street. In their appeal, which i have here, and will leave with the clerk, they documented the dpw and Planning Department made incorrect determinations regard north permit. As a result, the neighbors won their appeal and the installation was blocked. All owe verizon and Telecom Companies are required bylaw to document radio frequency emissions after antennas are installed, the company has never done so. Not once. Although d. P. W. Is required to track and assess such documentation, before issuing permits, it has never done so. Going forward, with the deployment of 5g and more 4g antenna within the city, how can residents have trust these radiation antennas are not creating harm when no safety testing has been done and no one is holding these tole com companies or d. P. W. A count able for their unlawful acts. Such unlawful instillations violate the principle ordinance enacted in the 2003 in San Francisco. Did states where threats of serious or i a irreversible, laf full scientific certainty about cause and effect shall not be viewed as sufficient reason for this city to postpone Cost Effective measures to present the degradation of the environment. Next speaker, please. My name is roxanne and im a resident here in San Francisco who has been affected by ordinance 19019. I have a wireless proposed 12 feet in line outside my bedroom window. Its not through the noticed materials but only through filing a protest and a records act request i could learn about the facility and uncover some errors within the application. My application is still being reviewed including at appeals. During this process, ordinance 19019 was adopted and now the city and Wireless Companies are saying theres no public row view or input. Theres no permit necessary anymore for this. And they rely on the master license with sfpuc which is an outdated agreement and that agreement contemplates regulatory process that has been removed through the adoption of ordinance 19019. Its obviously problematic to remove the public process entirely from fighting these facilities that effect the estheticses of the city and are quite controversial in terms of their Health Effects and all one has to do is drive around the city to see the proliferation of them and the conversion of many of them from 4g to 5g. So the status quo relying on an outdated master agreement that is not paired with a permitting process is flawed. I surgery the board of supervisors to rescind ordinance 19019 and replace with another process and allows the public to have a say in how the facilities are cited. I support many of the comments made at beginning of the public process and straight forward commonsense items that could be included to help protect the aesthetics and the wellbeing of San Francisco. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, my name is robert johnson. I would like to use my time to highlight the importance of preserving some form of notification in your legislation. You know, its already tar from a fair fight. The more we allow this to proceed in secrecy, the more trouble we will have. If you read through board avenue peels against cell phone towers every person there alleges that they were given improper notification. I dont think its a winning argument because i dont think the board of appeals has overturned a permit on improper notice. I think its true. Verizon in particular has gone to great length to avoid giving notice to people and notice was required to be given to owners or tenants and you have mr. Albred here today. Verizons position was they could chose to notify owners or tenants but not both. Right. If i have in charge of running a race and i say, person who comes in first or second gets a medal. I dont ex fact you to chose the person and not give the person a medal. Its unreasonable interpretation. Hundreds of permits were issued with this background. So, i just want to highlight we need to have notice. If neighbors dont know what is going on, they cant fight back. When we go to our politicians, they always say, well, you know, you need come up and influence the legislation. We cant do that if we dont know what is going on. I would appreciate if you could keep that in mind. Thank you so much. Thank you, next speaker. Hello board members. Its the biggest thing and you are requested to stop permitting pervasively poison usous pollution from unsafe and untested 4g, 5g Wireless Communications telecommunications facilities. And 5g broadcasting in the city of San Francisco. Thousand dollars of scientific studies reveal irreversible microwave health and safety dangers. To 9 residents of San Francisco. Especially children pregnant women, helderly persons in others. The burden of liability weighs heavy on the city. They should have back by insurance policies by the Wireless Industry in escape clauses in the w. T. F. Contracts that they possess. Joe moscow wits published an article in Scientific American and he advocated an immediate moratorium on the 5g and demanded our government adopt protecting our health and safety. The 2003 precautionary principle ordinance is a rule of of law that requires per have a len peo protect people and the environment. Upon these grounds, it is mandatory to preserve publichealth and safety by enacting moratorium begins activation of San Francisco Wireless Telecommunications facilities. You also have the tmobile versus San Francisco case which gives you the trite do this. Its all on your shoulders and im sure that you have the right decision. Thank you. Thank you. Its also on our state and federal officials shoulders that they preempt our ability. Next speaker, please. Next speaker. Hello. My name is Karen Jackson and im a student at San Francisco State University and im here to commissioner vaughn nottati on of the 5g cell phone towers and theres a lot of stuff we dont know about the effects of this kind of technology and what we know is that so many people are sensitive to the type of radiation and i just improper you to wait until we know more. There are multiple countries across the whole entire planet that have banned 5g in their countries and due to not only people sensitivities to this type of radiation but also the fact that the frequency of this radiation can also be harnessed as a crowdcontrol weapon using frequency of you waves. Many people have spoken and told you what you need to just halt on this and theres nothing more i can say but lets just wait. Thank you. Next speaker, please. If you will lineup. My name is betsy russellmanning and i compiled a book on 5g is coming. Its here in parts of San Francisco. Its coming to our home, our schools, our libraries, our parks and towns and to your children. Its linked to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, alzheimers, cataracts and immune dysfunction, antibiotic resistance, immune suppression and birth defects. Here are there are over 240 scientists around the world who warn about the dangers of these millimeters waves to all of us. Ill get you a copy of this soon. Thank you. Thank you, maam. Seeing no other members of the public for Public Comment, we will close Public Comment. Ms. Letswski, do you want to come up . Or mr. Spits . There we go. I believe supervisor haney has a question for you. You are also welcome to respond to anything that i said or that you have heard in the public or any other things that you as a subject Matter Expert and regulate or may want to add to this conversation. Thank you supervisor peskin. There was a couple things that came up from the public that i wonder if you can respond to. One, is sort of this question of the timing of implementation and whether theres some possibility of waiting and there are Court Decisions coming down and such and what your response is there. The point go notice and who is given notice. It does seem like it would be important to let tenants know and in addition to owners if you can respond to those two things. Absolutely. So last year, a lot of work was put together to respond to the scc requirement thats we meet the sixday shot clock. Its something all the city departments got together to figure out within the process that we had set in place and with what we need today do in order to allow processing of permits to occur, meet the time lines, go through all the of the different departments for the proper reviews. [please stand by] issues or determination that both the noise and rf emission standards set by the fcc are met. And that the pg e pole would be posted and within 300 feet, poles would be as well. The public can come out and engage in the public process. If theyre interested, through appealing to the board of appeals. So that does remain in the current legislation. For the puc and the mta, they have a whole separate thing they do that doesnt have the same noticing process and appeals process. Public works is no longer overseeing their processes. In the prior legislation, we were issuing permits for all poles, and now theyre currently taking and doing all the review related to their assets. Okay. So i would for one be delighted in you want to continue to agree to hold off on the adoption of the objective standards. I think first and foremost i dont mean to be cranky on deputy City Attorneys debut at the land use committee, but having our deputy City Attorney who is the legal subject Matter Expert, mr. Sanders, here, im not sure why hes not here, would be very helpful. I do not want to put ms. Pearson in the position of having to delve into a body of legal material that is not her subject Matter Expertise. So i would like to continue to hold off. I would like to continue the hearing and also like to get legal advice about the potential outcomes of litigation three months hence. And at about the same time, the updated report will be forth coming from our department of public health, which is truly independent of the fcc and the telecommunications industry. So i would like to make a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair. And, colleagues, if we can do that without objection, i will continue to meet with ms. Dodd and ms. Selby and the Advocacy Community offline, and i failed to mention brian roberts, and deputy City Attorney sanders as we continue to try to figure out what were going to do with the ordinance this board unanimously passed this year. If we can do that without objection im sorry . My apologies. That will not be the order until supervisor safai speaks. Supervisor safai you pretty much said a lot of what i was going to say. I do concur with the chair. I would appreciate holding off on implementation. I want to express some of the things ive heard from people in my district. People dont feel like the appeal process is a real process. They feel they submit their concerns. Many of them have been expressed today and then everything proceeds as planned anyway. It doesnt feel and i understand that were moving forward with a conversation about standardization of esthetic, i think thats an important thing. I think there needs to be time done to look into the science. We certainly want to get that on the record. But i want to express the overall frustration from some of the folks ive heard from that, the appeals process this is not a criticism of dpw, this is the standards by which the appeal is heard and held to. So many times people feel like if they look at some of these devices and how theyre implemented on poles, they one look at one esthetic and there is other ones with a different esthetic. So there is no real standardization. And then proximity and health. For all those reasons, i want to concur with the chair. I think we dont do harm by slowing down the conversation to get all the facts on the table. And in particular, if we were to proceed, then there needs to be a standardization. There needs to be understanding of why some of these are implemented and why the scale is different in size and the esthetic is different depending on where theyre implemented. Supervisor peskin could you read item number 2 . Item 2 is ordinance amending the planning code during the project approval, by authorizing the Planning Department to authorize certain interim activities at project sites as temporary uses up to 36 months and adopting appropriate find its. Supervisor peskin mr. Star, the floor is yours audrey, Planning Department staff. Before i talk about the Planning Department recommendations, ive been asked to share a map to show where the legislation would be applied. If i could get the overhead . So any of the colored areas on the map is where this legislation would apply and im happy to answer any questions about that after i present the commissions recommendation. With that, the Planning Commission heard this item on april 25, 2019. They reviewed a version which i believe has been amended to be more restrictive on the types of uses allowed under the new temporary use authorization. The version the commission reviewed would allow entertainment, arts and recreation uses. Any social service or philanthropic use within a pdr1d district. Regardless of use size and permitted in the underlying Zoning District. It would also permit any office use so long as the office space is less than 5,000 square feet and equal or greater Square Footage of space is dedicated for arts, activity uses or Light Manufacturing uses. I believe the length of the authorize has been amended, however, the Planning Commission recommended 36 months with the ability for that tua to be extended up to three separate times for a period of 12 months each. That would be a total of six years. At the april 25th hearing, one person spoke in favor of the ordinance and one urged the commission to find ways to prioritize low equity tenants. They voted to approve the more expansive version of the ordinance i summarized. The first was to amend the requirement to increase residential density. Instead only if there is existing residential on the site. They recommended this because it may only exclude many sites from being eligible for this t. U. A. Even if the city supports the proposed project, the space would be of benefit to the city. The project must have a project submitted to the city and if the city determined the project is desirable enough, requiring the project to provide at least one unit of housing on site to be eligible for the tua doesnt make sense. The commissions second recommendation was to clarify that retail under the section that describes the types of uses are allowed, should be restated to say retail sales and service. The eligible uses allowed under this site believe that the retail reference was actually supposed to be in reference to retail sales and service. However, there are retail categories of uses in the planning code that would not be desirable to be an active commercial space such as automobile manufacturing, things like that. Im happy to answer any additional questions and that ends the commissions recommendations. Thank you. Thank you. Audrey, can you put that map back up . So, i dont think the map is right. Okay. Let me grab my staff report and i can say out loud the districts. Supervisor peskin heres what is missing, which is, it says, and neighborhood commercial districts. And im just looking at that map of the city and there are neighborhood commercial districts all over, 24 of them, and not a single one is on the map. Its neighborhood commercial districts bound within a certain area of streets. So its neighborhood commercial or neighborhood districts and mixed use districts in the area bounded by market, 13th, division and king. So soma. Otherwise, n. C. T. Districts citywide would be included but not n. C. D. , neighborhood commercial versus transit. I am not a lawyer. But english is my only language. Tom, definitions. So thank you. Section 205. 5, subsection b, eligible area ends in and neighborhood commercial districts. So its really so is that modifying bounded by market 13th, division and king in mixed use and commercial districts, because that is not clear to this lawmaker. If thats the way planning interprets it, and thats the way you interpret it, or if you think there is clarifying language they should do, so state it now, councillor. Thank you, supervisor peskin. If there is a lack of clarity, we can make it clear that the n. C. D. District all are intended to be covered supervisor peskin shes saying they believe that the legislation that they are recommending to us does not intend n. C. D. S, except within the area bounded by market, 13th, do division and king. Which is what she just said. Thats correct. Supervisor peskin i wanted to do what she intends. Let me state it differently. I cant do what you said, because that would require rereferral to Planning Commission. She believes that the Planning Commission is recommending to us was a narrower thing. And i bel

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