As follows. The board requests that you turn off or silence all phones and Electronic Devices so they will not disturb the proceedings. Appellants, permit holders and Department Respondents are given 7 minutes to present the case and 3 minutes for rebuttal. People affiliated with the parties must include the comments within the 7 or 3 minute periods. Members of public who are not affiliated have up to 3 minutes to address the board and no eare buttal. Time may be limited to 2 minutes if the agenda is long or if there are a large number of speakers. The rehearing requests the parties are given three minutes each with no eare buttal. Our legal assistant will give you a verbal warning 30 seconds before the time is up. Four votes are required to grant an appeal, modify a permit or other city determination or grant a rehearing request. If you have questions about requesting a rehearing, the board rules or hearing schedules, email board staff at board of appeals at sfgov. Org. Public participation is very important to the board and every effort has been made to replicate the inperson hearing process. To enable public participation, sfgov tv is broadcasting and streaming this hearing live and we will have the ability to receive Public Comment for each item on todays agenda. To watch the hearing, go to sgfov tv cable channel 78 and it will be rebroadcast on friday at 4 00 p. M. On channel 26. A link to the live stream is found on the home page of the website at sfgov. Org boa. And Public Comment can be provided in two ways. You can join this zoom meeting by computer. Please go to the website at sfgov. Org boa and click on the zoom link. Or call in by telephone and call 8884754499. Enter the webinar i. D. 8 933 0628687. And sfgov tv is broadcasting and streaming the toll free number across the bottom of the screen. To block the phone number dial star 67 and then the phone number. Listen for the Public Comment portion to be called and dial star 9 which is the equivalent of raising your hand so we know you want to speak and you will be brought into the hearing when it is your turn. Please note there is a delay between the live proceedings and what is broadcast and live streamed on tv and the internet. Therefore, it is very important that people calling in reduce or turn off the volume on the see the tvs or computers, otherwise there are interference with the meeting. If any attendees need a disability accommodation or technical assistance, make a request in the chat function to Katie Sullivan or send an email to board of appeals at sfgov. Org. The chat function cannot be used to provide Public Comment or opinions. Now we will swear in or affirm all those who intend to testify. Any member of the public may speak without taking an oath pursuant to the rights under the sunshine ordinance. If you intend to testify at any of the proceedings and wish to have the board give evidentiary weight, rise your right hand and sway say i do after you have been swear or affirmed. Do you swear the testimony you give the the truth t whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Thank you. If you are a participant and not speaking, please put the zoom speaker on mute. We are now moving on to item number one, which is general Public Comment. This is an opportunity for anyone who would like to speak on a matter within the boards jurisdiction but that is not on tonights calendar. Is there anyone here for general Public Comment . Please raise your hand. I see one hand raised. I am going to ms. Samantha king. And move her to the video portion. So if we can spotlight Samantha King please. She is participant. Sorry, i accidentally clicked that. I did not mean to do that. Okay. Please go ahead im sorry, did you want to speak . I am speaking on behalf of another matter. Okay. Thank you. Well move on to item number two which is commissioner comments and questions. Sorry, go ahead, commissioner. Commissioner i would just like to anticipate the nomination of most of the woman who is near and dear to most of us on this panel, and hopefully in the audience Kamala Harris on her nomination to be Vice President of the United States of america and i wish her well as i know we all do. Thank you. Any other commissioner comments and questions . Yes, even though there was some banter about it beforehand, i would like to offer congratulations to commissioners swig, santacana and commissioner honda on the reappointment and look forward to serving with them for as long as my tenure lasts. Welcome back. I would like to second that. That admonition and just great to keep working with you, gentlemen, and look forward to continuing to serve the city of San Francisco together. Awe clerk thank you. Is there any Public Comment on that item . If so, please raise your hand. Okay. I dont see any Public Comment so we will move on to item number 3 which is the adoption of the minutes. Commissioner, before you for discussion and possible adoption are the minutes of the august 12, 2020 meeting. Motion to approve please. Sorry, i should have raised my hand. I might suggest that in the section reflecting the Public Comment from that meeting, whether there was a question raised about accessibility of the minutes, our executive director did respond and i thought perhaps there should be some reference to the response. I can do that. That was item number three. And motion with that change please. I will amend the minutes. We have a motion from commissioner swig to adopt the minutes as amended by president lazarus. On that motion i cant hear you that well, just so you know. I heard you say aye, but for the future. And president lazarus julie, hate to interrupt, but did you call for Public Comment on that one before you take the vote . No, i did not. Thank you. Is there any Public Comment on this item . Thank you. On that motion. [roll call vote on approval of minutes from meeting] the minutes are adopted 50. We are moving on to item 4, a rehearing for appeal 20038 and let me make sure that the requester is here. Yes, i am. Awe thank you. This subject property at 727 ottumwa street, Matthew Diamond is requesting a rehearing which was decided on july 1, 2020. At that time upon motion by commissioner tanner, the board voted 401. And commissioner santcanna option to deny the appeal and uphold the variance decision and adopt the findings that the rear yard variances meets the five findings under the planning code and denial of the open space and exposure variances was proper because findings 25 were not met. And the proposal is to construct a twostory, vertical addition, rear deck, and staircase. And to excavate the basement to create a full story height floor. And add five dwelling units to the existing twostory four unit residential building, three new units will be in the new third and fourth floors and two new units to be constructed within the basement, a portion of the proposed vertical addition and the rear decks are located within the required rear yard and therefore need a variance. No open space is provided for the two units proposed at the basement level and an openspace variance is required. The proposed units of the basement level face onto the noncomplying rear yard and exposure variance is required. The Zoning Administrator granted the rear yard variance and denied the open space and august 12 upon the motion by Vice President honda and voted 401, commissioner santacana absent, to continue the rehearing to august 19 on the basis that the requester could not access the meeting because of internet problems. I want to ask commissioner santacana as a preliminary matter, did you have an opportunity to review the videoened a materials for the hearing on july 1 . I actually have not had an opportunity to do that, so i will not be participating in this vote. Okay. So we will not have you vote, but we will hear from the requester mr. Diamond. You have three minutes please. Before i start, i want to queue up a slide show if that is all right. Before you start, im sorry . Can you see my screen . It is actually quite small. Can you enlarge it . You want to maximize the screen. I was thinking i was going to get it. If you hit the center thing, it will enlarge the screen or you can go into i think you can maximize it. Go into presentation mode. Done. Good . It is the same. Im sorry. It is not a long presentation. Im sorry. How is that, better . Yes. All right. I will start the slide show. Okay. I am request a rehearing today based on the information provided at the two hears. The first injustice is that while the d. A. And i were ample time to make the case t board provided d. A. 20 additional minutes to provide his case. Mr. Diamond, you are coming in and out. Can we restart the time and speak to the microphone please. An i think i am right in front of the microphone. If you can enlarge the document. Do you have a headset . [inaudible] i understand that you could hear me last time, right . There is kind of an echo. Is that better . That is a little bit difficult. It is difficult to understand. Okay. I think if you step back from the mic, it might work better. How is that . Much better. Okay. All right. I will stay back 2 feet. Okay. Starting over. I am request a rehearing today based on injustices on false information provided at the two hears. The first injustice is while the d. A. And i were both in attendance and given time to make the case, the board provided the d. A. An additional 20minute during a onesided question and answer period and asked the d. A. Over a dozen questions without asking me a single one and i was not given additional time to comment on. And that is misleading and inaccurate and should have been challenged. It was clear none of the word members had read the brief prior to hearing and they would have answered the questions they asked at the hearing and known many of the answers provided by the d. A. Were misleading or inaccurateened a formed their own opinions instead of relying solely on the d. A. s t misleading answers. The planning code requirement. However, the variance process is intended to allow leeway in the planning code for private parcels. Our property faces 5 such hardships. Therefore, denying the appeal is unreasonable given that we worked on the variance decision. In regard to misleading and inaccurate information provided at the hearing, first, the d. A. Reportedly referred to unit density in the argument in the proposal. This argument is without merit as mentioned repeatedly in the brief and by the d. A. Himself and our Zoning District has no dwelling unit density limit. Therefore, dwelling unit density should not have been a factor in the matter of appeal. Furthermore, the building number three at Howard Street was misdated by the d. A. And resulted in a misleading 143 square foot difference in unit density in the property and the actual difference was 10 square feet. It shows that we are on par for density within our district and with the build. Second, the d. A. Shows a planning code requirement that Clear Windows be built from the entirety of the floor which is untrue. There is no planning code session with this requirement. Furthermore, the housing code section allows clear story windows allows skylights to be utilized by the exposure department. Third, the d. A. With the considerable rear yard and would have town 25 feet by 25 feet and advance 5 feet. This is inaccurate and this is on an inner court. We are proposing an outer court and they have no such requirement. 30 second remain. And misleading and inaccurate information left unchallenged at the hearing and by no means all of them. Information relative to the questions was included in the original brief as the Board Members read the brief, they could have challenged the inaccurate information and i would not commit that. And this more than demonstrates manifest injustice and more equitable and judicious rehearing before the appeal board. Thank you. Thats time. Thank you. We will now hear from the Planning Department. Mr. Scott sanchez. We cant hear you, scott. Welcome. I may not have enough batteries. Do you want to call in, scott . Or try on the phone. He was going to try to rejoin. Thank you for your patience, everyone. Can you hear me now . Yes, thank you. Welcome. Thanks. Sorry. I dont know what happened there. I had batteries in my head phones and i was unmuted but it seems that restarting has improved that situation. Scott sanchez, Planning Department, and with the hearing request of the variance position that was heard by the board a few, several weeks ago now. I think that in the appellants rehearing request that they havent presented any new information that was not available at the time of the previous hearing and we stand by the facts presented at the time of the previous hearing. The project is not code compliant and requires a variance and the Zoning Administrator found it does not comply with the five required findings. And that is all we have to present at this point and be available for any questions. Clerk okay. Do we have any questions . And we are moving on to Public Comment. Is there any Public Comment on this item . Please raise your hand. We have patrick and i will provide you to the panel and to spotlight him. Patrick . He is on the phone and cant be spotlighted. Patrick, you can go ahead and speak now. You have three minutes. I think that i am logged in for the wrong matter, pardon me. Thank you. Is there any Public Comment on this item . Seeing none, we will prar don . Commissioners, this matter is submitted. You want to know something . I signed out of this sorry about that. Go ahead. Commissioner okay. The standard for rehearing is very high and as the standard for variance is significantly high. I heard no new information that was presented tonight to change my opinion and to justify the rehearing. Similar to the permit holder and im sorry you felt that we did not read your brief. We did read your brief, quite extensively. Your brief was extremely thorough. At the time that i read it, i also in reviewing that and met the five standards myself. And i did not have any particular questions for you for myself and i would second commissioner swigs thoughts that the bar for the rehearing is high and i dont see manifest injustice. Commissioner tanner, any other thoughts . I agree with commissioner swig and Vice President honda. And i think also to the the gentleman and we did read the brief and one of the reasons i was asking so many questions of the building administrator so a way to see that variance would be granted, i would have made hur we explored that and i agree we do not need to rehear this matter. Motion to deny the appeal on the basis that no new evidence was presented. A commissioner swig, i want to clarify, you are denying the request on the basis no new evidence. Did you want to add or manifest injustice . Or manifest injustice. Thank you very much. Okay. So the motion to deny and on that motion, president lazarus. Aye. Vice president honda. Aye. Commissioner tanner. Aye. So that motion carries 4 o and the request is denied. And we will now move on to item number 5. This is appeal number 20025, robert versus the department of building inspection and Planning Department approval. Subject project is 44 bond street. And to legalize existing storage habitable space and legalize with new internal stairs. New retaining wall at rear yard and lower floor and infill existing light well, minor reconfiguration on ground floor and second floor, lower floor new bedroom, bathroom and media room. Replace front windows in wind with wood clad and rear windows with aluminum. Rebuild second floor deck in kind. On may 27, 2020 upon motion by commissioner swig the board voted 50 to continue this matter to july 1, 2020 so the permit holder could work with the department of building inspection and the Planning Commission to develop an accurate set of plans that show the existing conditions on the property, including those conditions that existed before any unpermitted work that was done. The matter was not heard on july 1. It was rescheduled to august 19, 2020. So we will hear from mr. Sanchez with the Planning Department first. Thank you. Scott sanchez, Planning Department. From the previous hearing there was several issues raise and a couple of items highlighted about inconsistency and inaccuracy on the plans. What has come ba about in the last two months is identifying and honing in on two issues with the budget permits. In the in addition to the inaccuracies present in the plans, the irn shoes with the legal and no clear permit evidence of it, although the structure had existed in that and the current configuration for some time and several decades and so in reviewing that matter more thoroughly and inspector duffy issued a notice of violation requiring them to demonstrate evidence of the legality and today is no evidence of the legality of the structure is provided and they have been very responsive in working with d. B. I. And planning and they have indicated that they would restore the rear portion to the previous legal condition rather than seeking to legalize it and did commit plans that included that scope of work but a second issue is identified which i think also came to light at the previous hearing and during one of the Public Comments it was stated that there was an illegal or unauthorized unit at the lower level of the building. And since that time, we did receive a leter from the person who made that Public Comment and stating they had been a tenant in that unit and describe the floor plan and the layout and one which is consistent with that with the authorized dwelling unit and walk in through the front door and the door to the lower unit and walk upstairs with the goor to the upper unit and the description was consistent with that of the authorized dwelling unit and the previous owner and two owners removed in 2019 the owner passed away and the estate performed that eviction and was in 30 second remaining. Was in the lower unit. That is evidence, further evidence of a separate udu and that is where we are for those reasons that the permit should be denied by the board and go through the appropriate process to leaguize the outstanding violations. We have a question from Vice President honda. If there was an illegal eviction in 2019 of the tenant, would they be required to create an a. D. U. . So they would be wonderful and legalize the processes through what are available if first, if they want to remove the unit, and that will be required with a c. U. If there was a way to legalize the unit, i apologize. If there is a way to legalize the unit through a. D. U. With the other Code Provisions and then they would be required to legalize the unit. And that is what we need here and keep that from the appropriate process and legalize the units and seek the removal. Thank you. Are there any other questions at this point . If not, we will hear from the department of building inspection. I believe commissioner tanner has a question. Commissioner yes, thank you. My question is to try to understand with the violations, do you want to see one permit and with the best issues and legalizing the rear unit and what is the order of operations to address the issues . And generally we have one permit to be the best path forward with that action and is that also consolidated into the scope of work they initially requested to do . That could all be part of one permit. And they would have one permit to do the desired work and to bring the building into compliance. Thank you. We will now hear from the department and i dont really need to ela b rate. I agree with mr. Sanchez. We issued a motes of violation for the illegalization and we didnt we always give the opportunity to provide a chance and we havent had any and it didnt look like it was part of the original construction. This is an unfortunate project in the fact that they have had the revoked permits previously for other issues regarding the retaining wall and the other stuff in the back and now is the time to get it in on one good permit and whether we could have in support of the permit and the next time they move forward we are not dealing with those issues and every time we go out there, Something Else comes up and it is tough for the people and holding on to the property and no work can take place. The place is vacant and is a hard situation but i think there is a clear path and i couldnt support it from the d. B. I. Point of view, but there is a path forward that mr. Sanchez led out there. We will now hear from the permit holder. We have mr. Art chan, the agent for the permit holder. Yes. Good evening, commissioners. So the case was brought up to the attention for the first time where revisions were full set of revisions were completed and 26 pages with the Architecture Division and two complaints and by the Planning Department and one with unpermitted construction with the building department. The inspector chief duffy came to the site and the first concern is that it was not attached expect for flashing which solved one of the complaints. Second, the owner decided to voluntarily remove the rear structure back to the 1972 original construction and keep it legal and everything. And however, the third concern filed by the Planning Department was the potential illegal dwelling unit with no intention and did not realize there was another unit there when he bought the house. They did not see any gas pipe or stove in that area. And the area being removed was called the kitchen, but no cabinets, no upper cabinets and very hard for the new owner to decide whether before if there was two kitchens or one kitchen. So the owner would like to ask if commissioner cans make a call to revert it back to the Single Family. The owner would like to have the intention to move in one family and not two families. The owner is innocent because he had no clue about it because when you walked in, this went to the public and no complaint about the legal dwelling unit. And however, after the first meeting, two new complaints sparked up. It is very hard for me to address the two new complaints and i send one page of the plan to review to remove the rear structure to revert back to a Single Family house and remove the rear structure again and is very hard and i will need your guidance, so would you please show some guidance, commissioners. Are you finished, mr. Chan . Yes. Thank you. We have a request from Vice President honda. Mr. Chan, when your clients purchased this, was there no disclosure . Or did they purchase it direct from the seller. And i do not know. The owner is on the call. Let me ask him. Hi. This is mr. Jian yu chan. Did you buy directly from the sellers or an agent or broke sner we had an agent. I believe that was not an eviction but a buyout. Sorry to cut you off. It was disclosed there was a tenant in the lower unit. Is that what you are saying . When we look at it . We did not see it was two tent tenants. We believe it was one tenant. We thought it was one tenant living on bonview. This board does not have the ability to circumvent tenant rights and tenant law. That would require the board of supervisors to allow you to convert that back to a Single Family so that is off the table from us. My question would be because since day one we were trying to do the things the right way and this caught us by surprise there was two tenants. They told us it was one tenant. Unfortunately, through discovery, that is what happened and the representative will have time to answer any other questions. I have my questions answered. If there is a problem with disclosure, you could seek that with the council in regards to the representation of both seller and buyer representation. Thank you. The presentation is over. Did he have time left . 17 second. Thank you. You have 17 seconds. I think i presented my case regarding that situation. We will now hear from the appellant. Thank you, honorable commissioners. I have understood that mr. Chan presented floor plans on august 14 with the no complete plans provided. I trust when they are available that the plans will represent the building envelope and the slope as well as the be code complying. I have no objections to the floor plans that mr. Chan provided and that mr. Sanchez referenced. I would like to clarify one important aspect of this appeal. I notified the city of the rear expansion issues at bonview street on december 17, 2019. This date is after the elderly original owner passed away but one month before mr. Zhou purchased the property. By december 17, 2019, email to the city contained a description of the property issues as well as photos, several of which were ultimately presented in the appeal brief. As inspector duffy testified on may 27 he advised the project sponsors to speak with neighbors before submitting the plan. The project sponsors chose not to speak with me and only filed the appeal on march 12 having no other recourse after viewing the issue which contains plans to conclusively misrepresent the current condition and the slope. My concerns as well as the additional property issues and quickly resolved at the project sponsors and reach out to neighbors in advance. And required the property and stand ready to support the project sponsors as needed. We have a question from Vice President honda. How long have you lived there prior to current ownership . How long did you live there prior this ownership or this permit holder . We purchased the home in 2009. Were you aware that it was being used as a multiunit dwelling . I never dont know that the i did not know the family well. There was a language barrier and i knew one gentleman and we would say hi from time to time, but i didnt know enough about the family or Family Structure to speculate whether or not it was a multigenerational family or a renter. Was the same Family Living there the whole time you were next door . That is right. It was opened by the same people since 2009. Thank you. Thank you. We are moving on to Public Comment. Anyone who would like to provide Public Comment . Okay. I am not seeing any Public Comment, so commissioners, this mater is submitted. Commissioners. I guess we denied uphold the appeal . Grant the appeal so that this can go through the process and on the recommendation of both planning and building because of the new issues that have come up. Commissioner tanner, you raised your hand. Generally i an i degree with Vice President generally i agree with Vice President honda, but i wanted to note the permit holder has more questions that they could refer to the Planning Department and work with to understand some of the laws regarding tenancy and what it means to remove or to legalize that dwelling unit, but there is no requirement that you rent that out. Of course, we love to see more rental housing in the city and even though you need to restore the unit, my understanding is you are not necessarily required to have it as a rental. You will need to work with the Planning Department to understand the regulations if that is something that is not something we can really get into here. Vice president honda, did you want to make the motion . I think i will let commissioner tanner make this motion. Why . You just said it so wonderfully. You got the new hair do and everything. Oh my goodness. Okay. What are we doing . We are granting the appeal right. This is why you just need to do it. Okay. Grant the appeal on the basis that this project is not code compliant. Yes. Okay. So we have a motion from Vice President honda to grant the appeal and revoke the permit on the basis that the project is not code compliant. On that motion, commissioner santacana. Aye. President lazarus. Aye. Commissioner tanner. Aye. Commissioner swig. Aye. So that motion carries 50. And the appeal is granted. So we are moving on to item number 6. This is appeal 20046. David and Kelsey Lamond versus the Zoning Administrator. Subject property is 3074 pacific avenue. Appealing the issuance on july 2, 2020 to tim monahan of a variance decision. The proposal is to construct a third floor vertical addition measuring approximately 1492 square feet above the existing two story, Single Family dwelling. The project also proposes a roof deck above the vertical addition, accessed via a retractable skylight. Planning code section 133 requires the subject property to maintain 3 yards on both sides. Portions will encroach 3 feet into the required side yards resulting in side yards of 0 feet. Therefore t project requires a side yard variance. Planning cold section 134 requires the subject property to maintain a rear yard of approximately 26 feet and will encroach approximately 10 feet and result in the rear yard of 16 feet and requires a rear yard variance. The Zoning Administrator granted the side and rear yard variances. This is 2017013272 and we will hear from the appellants first. I believe mr. Drury. Welcome. Thank you. Can you hear me . Yes, we can. Thank you. Great. Thank you, commissioners. I name is Richard Drury and i apt representing kelsey and david lamond. We are appealing this variance. The lamond live at 3070 pacific, and if i could have the first slide please. This slide shows the unusual configuration of the property. The lamonds home before this one please. The overhead. Thank you. And so as you can see 3074 pacific is in front of 3070 pacific. And so because of the unusual configuration here, the lamonds are essentially in the backyard of 3074 pacific and access the home is in the shared rear yard open space that is being encroached on by the setback. They are very much affected by this project. In 2011 the monahans receive advair yans already and we believe that that variance should have resolved any disparities and they are now seeking a second variance. The first variance allowed them to build a second story that also encroached on the side yard and the rear yard setbacks. They now seek a second variance to create a third story and again, encroaching fully on the side yard setback so zero setback and encroaching 10 yards into the 10 feet into the rear yard setback. We have four reasons that we believe this variance should be denied. First, if i could have the next slide please. Section 172 of the planning code and states and i quote an existing structure and reconstructed in large and the increase and discrepancy and create a new discrepancy and at 188 and this project into the setbacks and now were going to have more encroachment and at another level of the structure. It does exactly what section 172 and 188 prohibits. The Zoning Administrator does not mention the codes at all in his decision. Now, the attorney mr. Gladstone cites some document he calls exhibit h which is a staff interpretation which allows this interpretation, but that document doesnt have city letterhead, not signed by anyone, and i dont know what it is. At best it is a staff interpretation. But the code obviously the adopted municipal code control over staff interpretation. Next could i have the next slide please. Next ceqa review and california Environment Quality review is required for this project. This is an historical property. We have testimony from historian Michael Corbett who explains that 3074 pacific was designed by joseph the architect of sea ranch. And it is considered one of his finest pieces of work and it is in several architectural history books and guidebooks of people who visit it. Mr. Corbett concludes that if this project is built, the home will no longer be historic. It will lose the historic significance. Under ceqa section 20184c project that adversely effects the Historic Resource may not be exempted from ceqa review. It is required prior to any permitting decisions. We have filed an appeal with the board of supervisors. We havent been scheduled for hearing yet but at the very least we believe this matter should be continued by the board of appeals until the board of supervisors determines whether ceqa review is required because ceqa must proceed any permitting decisions. Next, in 2011 the Zoning Administrator issued a variance for this property. To the extent it was necessary to address any extraordinary circumstances, unusual circumstances, unnecessary hardships, preserves Property Rights that should all have been resolved in 2011. You shouldnt need to resolve it again a second time. We dont keep going in for variance after variance after variance to resolve a discrepancy that was already resolved. Finally, the project does not meet the five variance factors. I have very limited time so of course necessary to meet all five and will point out the three most obvious. And the last factor is that the variance must be in harmony with the planning code and general plan. As i have just discussed, the variance violates section 172 and 188 of the planning code. It cant meet that requirement, the fifth requirement. Second, there is no practical difficulty or unnecessary hardship here. The Zoning Administrator found that the expansion could not be built without the variances because the side walls and the rear walls wouldnt line up with the lower walls. But that is done all the time. We often have upper floor additions that are setback. In fact, the San Francisco residential Design Guidelines recommends that upper floor additions should be setback. That is not a necessary hardship nor a practical difficulty. It is done all the time. There is no that factor cannot be met. Also, the courts have held that factor is about the topography of the site not about the architectural features of the buildings. There is nothing unusual about the topography here. It is a flat piece of property. The variance will be detrimental to the other properties in the area which is right behind this property. And the blanket statement and the project complies with the residential guidelines at all and in particular the Design Guidelines recommend setting back upper floors on additions to preserve rear yard and side yard setback. This does the opposite of that. The Zoning Administrator andic no that entirely. I am running to the end of the time and i would like allow the lamonds to speak in the remaining minute here. They are on this call. Michael corbett will speak in rebuttal or architect. Thank you. We will hear from the lamonds if ekd spotlight them please. This is david lamond. Thank you for taking time tonight. I guess we just want to share that we would like to find a way to find a very cordial and easy resolution to this matter. We think we are very sympathetic with the monahans and happy to have the third floor to house their mother and create more space for their children but the fourth floor roof deck is totally unnecessary and will cause a lot of noise and it looks straight into our daughters bedrooms which is something that we just dont want. And so we think the addition 30 second remaining. Is too much and we would love to see a solution where if they want, they can add a third floor but not the top floor roof deck. Thank you. We have a question from Vice President honda and then commissioner tanner. Commissioner honda this is to the appellants. What is has been your interaction with the permit holders . During the course of this potential remodel . Theres been a lot of back and forth between we had the first meeting they had with neighbor. We have had discussions. We have had our lawyers talk to one another. And we recently made this offer to have them build their third floor and add the additional bedrooms and in return for not building the roof deck which is really our key cause for concern between the noise issue and being able to see into our daughters bedroom. Commissioner honda during the meetings of the preplanning, were there any other neighbors that voiced concerns regarding their project . Yes. The next door neighbor at 3080, i guess, and i believe that they said they reached some sort of an agreement on their own. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner tanner. Commissioner tanner Vice President honda asked most of my questions, but just to understand, did you at any time consider filing a discretionary review through the Planning Department to challenge the roof deck or have it addressed via that route . Richard, do you want to answer that . There was a d. R. Filed by the family next door, and therefore, the monahans and i wasnt representing them at the time and they believe there wasnt necessary to file two d. R. S. The terrios settled around the lamonds and resolved their issues but not the lamonds. They were essentially left without the d. R. Appeal. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner santacana has a question. Commissioner santacana that was my question, but maybe the lamonds can explain more. Were you represented at the time the d. Rvm was going on . Did you choose not to do a d. R. For any particular reason . We had some issues with our previous counsel and richard has taking over now. We thought we were working with kip our neighbor to resolve the matter with the monahans and we may have dropped the ball or they may have dropped the ball, not sure exactly what happened there, but trying to find a calm, easy resolution here. Thank you. Okay. We will now hear from the determination holder. I understand mr. Monahan will be speaking first and then from brett gladstone, the attorney. So if we could spotlight mr. Monahan please. Can you hear us . Yes, welcome. Thanks. Thank you, Board Members. We are the project sponsors the monahans. I am tim and my wife natasha, daughter schuyler, son kelan and ian. We have lived in this house for 12 years and would like to expand without moving from the neighborhood that we all love. We are creating a new play and study area for the kids who are at home even more now due to remote schooling. We are also adding a new bedroom suite so that natashas father can live with us as he gets older and becomes less mobile. This requires moving ian and schuylers bedrooms to the new third floor. Also natasha and i work from home due to the pandemic and we expect to to continue even postcovid. This addition would allow you have to have our own separate home office for the first time. We have spent almost four years working on this with the Planning Department and with our neighbors. We have posted multiple neighborhood meetings at our house which resulted in 10 letters of support and in order to dive into more details, i will turn it over to our land use attorney brett gladstone. Thank you. Hello. Can you hear me . Yes, we can. Go ahead. Good evening. I would like to introduce team members on the line in case you have questions for them later. Architects are here and preservation consultant and so this home will go from 3668 square feet to 5180. Even so, it will be one story lower than any of the five surrounding fourstory homes and will still be smaller in Square Footage than appellants home. They have 9,020 square feet. The adjacent neighbors whose homes are only 15 to 17 feet away on either side have no objections. The sole objection comes from this appellant who is 52 feet, 3 inches away from where the new addition will be and whose home will be 72 feet away from the person standing on the portion of the roof deck. One adjacent neighbor Charles Terrio did file a d. R. That as a resulted in a Settlement Agreement that creates privacy through the obscuring treatment on the new northfacing windows and a greater roof deck setback. These changes improve the privacy of appellant just as much as mr. Terrio as they are both adjacent to the north. Five variance criteria, exceptional circumstances first. Clients home is a very deep 18 foot setback required by zoning. That is waivable only by the legislation at the board of supervisors. Very unusual. And because the building is an Historic Resource, the location of newly developed space must be at the rear, not at the front so Settlement Agreement ible from with mr. Theriot proposed windows facing him and the lamonds will have an obscure window treatment for Privacy Concerns and that requires a very, very large north side setback of the proposed roof deck and as a result t appellants windows will be a full 72 feet away from where a person can stand on this new deck. Due to the 52 feet distance, it is not surprising that our shadow study shows that the proposed addition would cast no shadows at any point during the year on appellants second floor window. Appellant claims no material detriment from there will be material detriment 30 second remain. From the mid block open space. That all 52 feet difference between the two buildings are concrete. And the concrete is mostly where appellant parks his cars. There is no mid block open space according to the Zoning Administrator. As for section 172b of the planning code, referred to by mr. Drury, you will see it exhibit h of the brief the interpretation. And that is a coded interpretation. That is time. That indicates that is allowed. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Gladstone. We will now hear from the Planning Department. Mr. Sanchez. Thank you. Scott sanchez, Planning Department. The subject property at 3074 pacific is located within the rh1d Zoning District and 40x heightened bull district. The lot dimensions are 37. 9 feet wide and 105 feet deep. And has the 18 foot legislative setback as noted by the variance holder. A unique lot configuration with drive waist on either side that serve properties to the rear. These are both through lots that have frontage nor this case the rear yards on broadway and broadway is an in a lower elevation than the subject properties. And both properties are 3070 and 3080 broadway. And im sorry, pacific. The building is a known Historic Resource and is individually identified and built in 1952 with additions in 65 and 2011 and designed by joseph as noted by the appellant. On appeal is a variance decision that authorizes rear and side yard variances to allow vertical addition of the third floor and also roof deck. And notes no change in the footprint of the property or of the building. And it will increase i believe the internal layout from about four beds to five beds and home offices. The project review began in early 2017 with a project review with Planning Department staff. And environmental applications submitted later that year as well as the Building Permit application for the project. The variance application submitted in early 2018 and the variance hearing was held on july 24, 2019 and this hearing and zoning took the item under advisement and there were Public Comments with concerns about the project. No decision was made at that hearing. And the d. A. Also expressed concerns about the projects compliance with the residential Design Guidelines. The residential design staff had suggested changes to the project. The changes were subsequently made and between december 13, 2019 and january 13, 2020, the section 311, 30day notice was completed. One discretionary was filed by the property at the rear 3080 pacific. And that was withdrawn after minor changes were made as noted by the variance holder. And the variance decision letter was issued and july 2 and the appeal filed on july 10. By july 31, a ceqa appeal was filed and last week the board of supervisors sent that to the citys Environmental Review officer or ero for a timeliness determination and today the ero responded to the board of supervisors that the ceqa appeal was found not to be timely. That is something i think judging by the comments of the appellant i think they may not yet be aware of but the executive director rosenberg was copied on that email from our staff to the board of supervisors and the board of supervisors will in return report that to the appellant and in this case i think they are hearing it from me for the first time. That is due to the fact that the environmental determination is tiered off the Building Permit application which is not yet issue and not yet timely to file the ceqa appeal. Focussing on the variance which is the matter before you, the findings and the variance find given the large setback, as well as the historic rating and character of the building, the size of it, on the lot, and also the unique character defining features of the Historic Resource is the central courtyard and these are extraordinary circumstances that justify the granting of the care yans. In 2011 it was permitted for side and rear yards and at the time i was the Zoning Administrator and granted it for similar rationale. There is no prohibition on variance being filed for a future project. Once you get one does not mean you can never get another one again, so wanted to highlight that. Some of the issues raised by the appellant were concerns about the privacy and light and air. And define that the project complies with the residential Design Guidelines as noted by the variance holder and is 62 feet to the appellants building. And i think the variance holder noted that it was some 70 feet to the roof deck and would note for reference that pacific avenue is about 68 feet wide. I think these are substantial dimensions that resulted in not having a negative impact. Section 172 as justification for no variance granted here is simply not the case. I think a similar argument was made on a variance decision last year and early this year and you can seek and justify code variance and be in compliance with the building and does not prohibit someone from seeking and obtaining a variance done in this case. And the board was provided by the variance holder and was published from january 2014 when i was the Zoning Administrator and can confirm that is a valid interpretation and in the past we had cited 188 and i did not find that to be necessary as outlined in the interpretation and one only needs seek the variance from the underlying code section referenced in 188. For those reasons the variance decision leter is appropriate and the ceqa determination was appropriately issued and complies with the residential guidelines and most important. And the various decision letter. And with that, i am available for questions. Thank you for your thorough presentation. You answered about whether you get two bites of the apple when seeking a variance when there was a variance issued before. Thank you very much for that clarification. It seems from the appellants counsel he wants to quash the whole thing and hear the appellants are really just interested in getting rid of the deck if i can boil it down to that simplicity. Can you comment on the deck addition . It seemed in the last two or three years we have gone into deck mania. But are from any issues with the deck . Do you find it exceptional in any way or problematic in any way . I think it is important to hear what the main focus of the appellant is and it was good to hear that from the appellant. I didnt quite sense the specificity of their concerns until their comments tonight. But in terms of the deck, the project has been reviewed extensively by the Zoning Administrator and the Residential Design Team and finding that the project as a whole and the deck as well complied with the residential Design Guidelines. And fairly modest deck in terms of the size and location. And would not run afoul of the residential Design Guidelineser to policies and procedures. Commissioner thank you. We will hear from Vice President honda. Commissioner honda you answered one of mine that you were the za at the time. During the last variance, was it contentious at all, mr. Sanchez . Not that i recall. In going back and reviewing the variance decision letter, that project was subject to neighborhood notification, no discretionary reviews filed on the previous project and perhaps the Property Owner may better recall what kind of conversations they had with neighbors at that time. That variance was to essentially build out the second story of the building and i think prior to that time it was the same footprint at the ground level. The second story was not the full footprint and they expanded the second story to be the same footprint as the ground floor essentially. But this is a different project in that it is net vertical addition rising up another story from the building. Commissioner honda and in considering that it has the Center Atrium and similar to and ziegler had that as well, it makes it challenging on additions. I agree. Commissioner tanner. Commissioner tanner and the historic nature of the property and the process that went through to approve the addition. Its setback and i think there was a diagram nibble one of the historic i believe in one of the historic reviews that showed the person on the sidewalk not being able to see the addition but across the street possibly. Does that meet the standard we have in terms of vertical additions for Historic Buildings . And in terms of where the addition is or is not visible from . As part of the Environmental Review and Historic Resource evaluation response was completed and that it goes through very clearly step by step the different criteria for review and in terms of compliance with the interior standards. And it cited among other things that the setback for that new third level was one of the key elements in terms of authorizing it and finding it to be compliant with the secretary of interiors standard. There is other issues like the materials that are used, but certainly for the massing and setting it back and distinguishing it from the main Historic Building is a key element. Commissioner tanner can you describe a little bit the process that goes into the review in terms of how that interplays with the Building Design. Does the project planner that works for the city and then the Historical Review consultant i am assuming interplay with the applicant to refine that design to make it more compliant with the standards that the secretary of the interior provide . A there is a consultant report that is prepared at the request of the Property Owner and they engage in the consultant has Historic Resource evaluation, that is submitted to the preservation staff and they review for for consistency with the secretary of interiors standards. In this case staff found it to be compliant with the secretary of interior standards and then the ceqa determination was issued finding no further Environmental Review was needed because the project complied with the secretary of interior standards. Commissioner tanner and this didnt deviate from that process in any way. That is correct. It followed the normal process and applications were initially filed in 2017 and the Historic Resource valuation response was issued in middle of 2019. And it was multiyear and intensive process. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will now move on to Public Comment. Is there anyone here who would like to provide Public Comment on this mat sner please raise your hand. We have patrick. Please go ahead. Patrick. Caller yes. Good evening. I am patrick and i live at 3040 pacific two doors to the east of the monahans. We would like to register our support for the project. I have seen the drawings. It looks like an attractive design. Overall, i think it would be a net plus for the neighborhood. So many of the other properties are three and four stories high, and it would create some continuity throughout the street. I know they have been working on this for a long time, and i hope you will see it fit for approval. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other Public Comment on this matter . If so, please raise your hand. Okay. I dont see i dont yes. Samantha, please go ahead. Caller hi. We live at 3075 pacific which is directly across the street from the monahans. Our main view to the north is their home and we have seen their plans multiple times, and been to their home to view it and fully support it. Our home is also a mid century modern home and i think that the plans that they are showing us, i appreciate them and this they go with the aesthetics of the current home. The addition is somewhat modest and set back from the street which will reduce the visibility from across the street where we live. [inaudible] it will go along with the existing mid century period. And it blends in [inaudible] with the design of the front of the house. We feel that if they were to add the third level that it would kind of bring up and blend in probably better than how it currently looks a z the two homes on either side of it are much taller and currently the home is only two stories. For many reasons, we support it and we hope it is able to go through. Thank you. Is there any other Public Comment . Please raise your hand. Okay. I dont see anybody else. So well move on to rebuttal. We will now hear from the appellant and i understand that Michael Corbett will be speaking first. You have 3 minutes. This is Richard Drury. Could i make a few statements before mr. Corbett. Thank you. Im sorry. Go ahead. The first off, i would like to address ceqa t California Environmental quality act. And mr. Sanchez mentioned a timeliness finding that we filed too early. That is certainly not meaning that were too late so when it is the proper time to file that appeal we will file it. We believe it is clear that ceqa review is required because of the adverse impact of the Historic Resource here, which is clear and mr. Corbett will discuss. Also, section 172, i courage the commissioners to review that and this project clearly violates section 172. Despite a staff level interpretation, staff level interpretation memo cannot overcome the plain language of the planning code. With that i would like to turn it over the mr. Corbett. If you would spotlight mr. Corbett please. I would like to stop the time until we hear him. Mr. Corbett . Can you hear me . Yes, we can hear you. Please go ahead. Thank you. I am going to just speak directly to the issue of the impact of the design on the building and on its significance on the status as a Historic Resource. The secretary of the interior standards is the way you measure whether or not proposed alterations to an Historic Resource are acceptable. I think whats happened here is that the analysis has gotten lost in the trees and doesnt see the forest. That the big picture and unmistakable issue here is that you are adding a third story to a significant twostory structure. That changes the proportions and the character of the building in the fundamental way. And that the analysis done of the secretary of the interior standards is all details and the design is carefully done and tried to do and tried to be respectful of the building but they cant get around this fundamental issue which is that if you add a third story, you have lost the character of the original. Think about an important Frank Lloyd Wright house that you add a third story and you would lose it. And this house has been listed in guidebooks since 1960. Its eligible today i believe for the National Register and i think if this addition is build, it would not be eligible for the National Register. People wouldnt put it in guide books and would look significant 30 second remaining. The secretary of the interior standards if you have the basic intention and to protect the Historic Building and historic character of the building comes first and in this case that will be lost from the project went ahead. We will hear from mr. Gladstone or did you want to have Michael Morrison speak, the architect . I actually just received a text message from mr. Morrison that he drops. We have a commission from commissioner tanner. Did you want to ask a question first . Yes please. The question for mr. Drury or the lamonds. Just try to understand the roof deck as the center desire to have that be removed or minimized didnt read really strongly in the brief. Can you speak to why that is the case . We briefed the legal issues and if there is ceqa which we believe there will be, would have to analyze alternatives to reduce the adverse impact and we believe one of the alternatives would be to build without a roof deck. We are not at this stage, but it is clear given mr. Corbetts statements that ceqa review is requires and ceqa requires analysis of mitigation measures to reduce the impact. And alternatives to reduce the impact. We believe in either of those ways removing the roof deck would be the most obvious as well as other measures to reduce the adverse impact of the Historic Resource. Commissioner great. And this question from mr. And mrs. Lamond on the privacy issue and we heard that the distance between the homes is equivalent to the distance of being across the street from another home. How do you find that squares with your concerns about privacy and the windows . Again, it is not consistent with how he see it, but there will be a noise issue and continue to be a noise issue and also the fact that it will be a Straight Line of sight into our daughters bedroom from the roof deck. And the shared space together as a family and it is not just where we park our cars. It is an extension of the home. While its further away from the bedroom, there is also that space that does get impacted directly from a roof deck. Commissioner and the last question not in a flippant way, but the desire was in the interior courtyard and we have windows of other units that are close to us. And so my solution to that has been Window Coverings and when i want more privacy, i close the curtains and bind and not as concerned, i have them open. Is this something you considered for the bedrooms to deal with the privacy issue . Of course, we have blind and an eightyearold daughter in there and we cant constantly we do our best to monitor everything that goes there, but for the next 10 years it will be a challenge. Its something we care about. Commissioner thank you. Thank you. We will now hear from mr. Morrison. The architect for the determination holders. If possible, could caroline respond on the ceqa front first . Absolutely. Occasion. So you have 3 minutes. You will share that time. Actually, brett, gladstone wants to join. And he says that he is on the line. Bred gladstone is trying to join. One moment. Could you please let him on . Phone number end in 4906 . Let me just check. 3178. I see it. Thank you so much. So one moment. I am trueing to unmute mr. Gladstone. For some reason he is remaining on mute. We may have to do star 6 to unmute himself. Can you hear me now . Can you hear me now . So i am going to defer to caroline and to be required by rdat with the significant rear setbacks at the top floor and show the rear scene and showing the significant setbacks at the upper cornerses. Second, we havent see any light of sign drawings that are not accurate and the sight line drawings professionally prepared indicate no view from the roof deck and we have no evidence of any kind. And as for mr. Corbett, i will let coroline respond. And indicated that seven of the eight guidelines are met. Only one is not met. Could you go ahead. Thank you. Can you hear me . Yes, we can. And from the firm for about 22 years and from that Michael Corbett is a friend of the firm. To be dualing opinions and make the request the building is not currently listed in the National Register that is with the secret el in california and the historical resources. And we agree with the Planning Departments findings that this is a significant Historic Resource and at that point the steps that we take and the Historic Resource to apply the secretary of the interior standard with the guidelines and i would like to just let everybody know that the standards for rehabilitation do allow for change to alter or add to the Historic Building to meet new uses and we have many, more buildings in the city and still maintain the historic integrity and the integrity. And so we felt that they have proposed additions because of the setback which is appropriate under the secretary standards. And didnt diminish the integrity of the Historic Resource. How much time is left . 10 second. Mr. Morrison, did you want to speak. You have 10 second. I think im okay. Awe thank you. We will now move on to the Planning Department. Mr. Sanchez. From a couple of points raised and section 172 tuz not prohibit one from obtaining and seeking and justifying a variance from the planning code. And the interpretation that was published was published by the Zoning Administrator at the time when i was the Zoning Administrator and is not simply a staff writeup and under the planning code the administrator and to follow the argument, no variance would ever be granted and have not heard the argument and the justification and cannot seek and justify the variances on appeal. With what is related to section 172 and that is not the main concern and unfortunate there wasnt the discussion of that. And from that Privacy Concern and for the neighbor to the rear for the appellant and the decking and planting and frosted glass which would obcure vision and sight lines. That is quite significant distance to the rear Property Line and the common open area for the appellants property. Many issues raised regarding ceqa analysis and evaluation, those will be primarily not always and solely, but primarily focussed with the impacts that will read from the public rightofway. So it actually could allow for a deck that is further to the rear and that what is proposed in this case. So i think it would be beneficial for the appellant if they were to focus on their concerns and what they elect the board to address in terms of the ceqa review, i adpree with the appellant that that is an argument for future debate and appeal to the board of supervisors when it is timely. In regards to the arguments that the ceqa review is faulty, as i understood the appellants arguments, it stated if there is a vertical addition to a Historic Building that something couldnt be allowed. That is not the case and as the variance holder and staff noted we have many vertical additions 30 second. Ened an often with the setback which is found here to differentiate and to comply with the secretary of interior standards. I think that the project was appropriately reviewed and the variance is appropriately granted by the Zoning Administrator. I am available for questions. Thank you. I dont see any questions at this time. Commissioners, this matter is submitted. We do have a question. One moment. Commissioner tanner. Please go ahead. Sorry, not fast enough on the raise hand button. The question was actually for the monahans and what the engagement and conversation has been with the neighbors regarding the roof deck and if that was a key issue and i dont know if it was refined in the Development Process as thefsh engaged for a while with you discussing the design. So we spoke with our neighbors the lamonds up until a little over a year ago when they told us that they could only communicate through the attorney. Up until then, they had voiced concerned about noise and privacy and we were working on what we had sent an agreement that could limit the construction noise and inconvenience. Since then we havent had a direct conversation. We would love to have a direct conversation and just to david, come on over and love to talk any time. We are right over here and happy to address the concerns. And i totally understand the concern about privacy. I have a young daughter also. Sorry, not to cut you off, but were you able to make any adjustments to the roof deck because of the concerns expressed or i understand it is modest to begin with but was it refined during the design process . A we spent hundreds of hours negotiating a Settlement Agreement with mr. Theriot who is next door to the lamonds and moved the roof deck back and put an opaque covering so when you stand on the roof deck you cant see into the windows that the lamonds are talking about. Thank you. That is my question. A commissioners, this matter is submitted. President swig i would have asked my concern and been acknowledged that the concern really aside from the other items that the appellants attorney and architect have brought up is the roof deck. And in the history of us dealing with roof decks, the sight line issue becomes important and also the mitigation of the any interference or on privacy or whatever. And i believe impressed in this hearing as was just stated that due to a conversation with another neighbor, the roof deck, in fact, was cutback and also that what we would have probably suggest there had be some something to obscure views would be put on the deck. And that was done. So i dont see the issue of the whether you can take another bite of the apple and get a second variance, that was handled to my satisfaction by mr. Sanchez. I dont see any merit in this appeal. Would find against the appellant. I guess i will go next. First of all, i am impressed that you are able to keep three agers sitting in the same spot without electronics in their hands. They must be tied down or electrical buzzers somewhere next to them. And given the situation and as we can see here even has an army of paid professionals here and this has gone through quite a bit of process. And by what was said by the appellants representative it looks like it might continue to have some more process. One as commissioner swig has stated, roof decks have been extremely contentious on this body. We have had people that wanted to do full size with you name it jacuzzis and this is a very modest in comparison. I think that given the fact that there are three children and there is going to be noise and especially during shelter in place. We dont know when that is going to come out at this point. So having everyone have their space and their sanity is a good thing. Also the department has spelled out quite well that this permit was issued correctly by and reviewed properly be ti department. I see no flaw in it. So i would deny the appeal that the permit was the issue. President lazarus. Just briefly i would concur with that. I feel like this has been through quite a bit of process. A fair amount of give and take on the part of the variance holders. I think its conceivable we will see this project back again at another time. But currently i feel that the appeal is without merit and the variance was properly issued. I agree. I would move that we would deny the appeal and uphold the variance and finding that all five findings have been met. Okay. So we have a motion from commissioner tanner to deny the appeal and uphold the issuance of the variance decision on the basis that it meets the five findings required under planning code section 305c. On that motion, commissioner santacana. Aye. President lazarus. Aye. Vice president honda. Aye. Commissioner swig. Aye. That motion carries 50 and the appeal is denied. So we will move on to item number 7a and 7b and appeal 20047 and 20048. Bridge Housing Corporation and joshua klipp versus San Francisco Public Works Bureau of urban forestry at 1100 connecticut street and including 25th street, 26th street and wisconsin street frontages. Appealing the issuance on june 30, 2020 to bridge Housing Corporation of a public works order and approval to remove eight street trees with replacement trees and denial of the request to eare move one large stone pine tree. Tone pine tree located on the 26th street frontage. On the condition that the project plant approximately 68 street trees. Three trees are located along the 25th street frontage, two trees along the 26th street frontage, two trees along the wisconsin street frontage and two trees along the connecticut street frontage of the property. Removal is part of the potrero hope phase ii project which will provide Affordable Housing, civic improvements and this is order 203342. And so the order that were going to go today is we will hear from the appellant for 20048 first, mr. Josh ya klipp with seven minutes and marie deboer from Bridge Housing will have 14 minutes. Seven minutes in the capacity as appellant and 7 minutes as the capacity as an agent for the determination holder. We will hear from the department. So we will start with mr. Klipp. Thanks, julie. I am going to share my screen. Welcome. Just a moment. Its not take your time. Hold on just a moment. Can you see my screen . It is black. We see your screen, but nothing on it. That is what i want. Here we go. Good evening, commissioners. We are starting. I came a can you hear me . We are starting. And can you hear me . Offering advice on how to prepare in this appeal. In the email the supervisor advised a young tree inspector on the importance of a solid presentation because, quote, by the time i get through the details of each tree and wrap up the staff presentation, if someone comes up raving like a lunatic it makes them seem all the more absurd. He went on to say, when questions come up we the hearing officer, i wont be tempted to take the bait. Ill answer the question and ignore sound and fury which usually signifies nothing. If anyone has wondered why it seemed so hard to be taken seriously in your work to save San Francisco trees, look no further than the bureau of urban Forest Management who views your participation as meaningless sound and fury and passes that on to the next generation of San Francisco tree inspectors. As i said in the brief submitted to the board and july 30, i know there is no chance of winning this appeal. This is a complicated, multilayers and expensive project in the works for years. It is a done deal. There were 254 significant trees on this land when the project started and now only a handful left and the ones we are here to talk about today. There were entire ecosystems and trees that sheltered hawks and shrub trays and ash soshed highway pollution and exchanged it iffer clean air. Some of the tallest, most vibrant greenery used to live given that the bayview, one of the poorest and most polluted neighborhoods has a 6. 7 canopy in a seasonal with only a 13. 4 canopy, the smallest of any nay major city in the United States. Affordable housing is needed all over the world but developers dont build housing out of the goodness of their hearts which means the trees never had a chance. Not necessarily were developers billed to the maximum amount of Square Footage with the maximum amount of project and construction plans view trade protection as an additional burden or cost and tree predz activation has no place in the planning process and the detruks of hundreds of trees doesnt cause an eye to bat for locations like 3333 california, 3700 california and now 1100 connecticut. When it comes to development, this city doesnt fight for its trees. Instead, it ascribes to the loose philosophy of cut down and plant more later even though we know we are losing the fight against Climate Change. We are losing the fight for community and Public Health and from an Environmental Justice perspective, the degreening of black and brown communities is precisely counter to the values we profess to hold. Trees are run one of the greatest allies in every one. Fights and year after year San Francisco loses thousands of them, one at a time, dozens or as here, by the hundreds. My opponents brief is all why the remaining trees have to go with the infrastructure, construction, grading, power poles, and grading and on and on, but the trees were here before they showed up. In fact, the nearly 4 foot wide breathtaking stone pine on 26th street is estimated to be over 10 0 years old. We made choices that backed us into the corner we sit in today. We created the false dichotomy of having to choose between Tree Preservation and housing and economy that does not exist in affluent neighborhoods. If you take this to natural conclusion we will have a city full of housing that flattens every block and builds up to the edges and plants the least offensive trees at precise intervals except when the lack of imagination prevents even that from happening. And just a quick look at the trees that have been planted on developer promises. All of these vandalized or dead trees are cases i submitted via 311 request that range from 50 to 180 days old. I am not saying all trees planted by developers fail but many do and by then the developers are long gone and it falls to the city and strained resources to do anything about it and they cannot keep up. Developers Tree Planting promises are not worth what the city acts like they are worth. So thats where things stand. I know the board cant stop all this tonight, so what i want to do is this. For my remaining minutes, lets imagine something different. Lets imagine a city that purined for new housek to created in harmony with existing Natural Resources and that built the course yards around the Magnificent Trees instead of chopping them down. Lets imagine housing that not only shelters humans but provides shade for them to gather and reduce the energy costs and that create the air of nearby freeway pollution and the sports that are declining ecology and gives a clear message to port communities and people of color that by saving the Natural Resources of the neighborhood where is they grew up, we are inviting them to stay. We are beautifying thoughtfully and with humble respect for black and brown lives and the earth we all share. What a time for raising mature, co2 trees for promises of a small sanitary trees later. We are out of time for developments that prioritize the bottom line. Look around and see the results of those priorities. Worsening wildfire, worsening air pollution, bizarre show of thunder, lightning, and humidity in San Francisco in the middle of august. And rising sea levels. San francisco has declared that we are in a Climate Emergency and professed to seek Environmental Justice, but when it comes to saving trees, we fold. I know i cant win tonight, but my hope is some day, something i said will stick in someones brain and start the wheels of change and how our city according to that development and raises trees and giant blocks of housing and the city that works in housing and lights the way on how to integrate ourselves with the natural world. Were not raving lunatics. We are just tired and mad. And tired of feeling unheard and mad that no matter how hard we try, nothing seems to change. And despite public works claim that the bureau of urban forestry agrees that they should be more forward thinking and all remains the same. Sound and fury, which usually signifies nothing indeed. And i will gladly take my place with the raving lunatics seeking change and offer this quote. When you pray, move your feet. Tonight i move my feet through the appeal and my prayer is that the few trees remaining on this plan be permitted. 30 second. Okay. Thank you. So we will now hear from marie deboer from Bridge Housing. You have 14 minutes. Yes. Can you hear me all right . Yes. Thank you. Great. Let me bring up my presentation. Lets hold the time until she is ready. We can see it. Did you want to start . Yes. One second. I have to set it up so that i can move the power point presentation. It work. Okay. Great. I am ready to start. Thank you. Go ahead. 14 minutes. Thank you. Thank you, commissioners, for the opportunity to speak before you hear today. My name is marie deboer and i am a Vice President of development for Bridge Housing who is the master developer of the potrero hope sf site and copresenting today with the Civil Engineer for the project. Bridge housing is a nonprofit Affordable Housing developer. We have been a business for over 35 years and we are dedicated to providing Affordable Housing. We are Mission Based organization and not only develop Affordable Housing but we also continue to own and manage our properties long term. Were committed to the city and providing Affordable Housing and to san franciscans and currently we have over 2600 units completed in San Francisco and 3700 units in the pipeline in San Francisco. All together we have 25,000 homes completed and in the pipeline. Part of the citys hope sf program rebuild potrero will transform the terrace and the annex and Public Housing into a vibrant mixed income, mixed use neighborhood. Since being selected as the master developer in 2008, Bridge Housing engaged extensively with the community to develop a master plan for the physical redevelopment of the site. To orient you here on potrero hill, the slide shows you the potrero hope sf project. The highlighted area is the layout of the existing buildings at potrero. And this next slide here shows the potrero hope sf project as it is built out. On this next slide here, you can see phase two which we were discussing here today. This is the original layout and the next slide begins shows the highlighted areas of phase two area. Hope sf project let me get to the next slide here. The hope sf project will be providing up to 1700 new units of both market rate and Affordable Housing. Open Space Community facilities and to meet San Franciscos diverse housing needs. The Community Benefits for the site, for the redevelopment and replacement of the existing Public Housing units as well as the site Public Infrastructure improvements include Community Base improvements such as pedestrian plazas, pathways, bicycle improvements within the plazas and parks, open space including parks, mini parks and a community garden. In addition to the 6,000 square foot child care facility and a Community Rec senter that will be approximately 25 to 35,000 square foot large. It will be built as part of the master development. And to summarize the challenges that we experienced at the phase two site with the trees, i just wanted to describe that most of the nine trees that are being discussed as part of todays public works order conflict with the proposed infrastructure work for the phase two site of the potrero. The new intersection tables present significant slope and grading challenges and the trees locations and root zones are in conflict with the plan joined trench and other utility installations. Two of the nine trees locations the canopy and the root zone also interfere with the New Buildings design. And the future buildings are planned to maximize the buildable space on each housing lot and reducing that land area. And the potrero Development Agreement provides authority to install the infrastructure and part of these part of the phase two infrastructure we have to remove the trees and we have to also install new trees. Design in phase two Infrastructure Improvements with approximately 68 replacement trees and in addition 36 trees for the block v housing beside. We will be replacing the existing 30 trees on the phase two site with over 100 trees. I will now hand over our presentation to mark hale who will walk us through some of the Technical Details related to the constructability issues we are facing on each of the tree location. Mark r you taking over . Can we stop the time until we get mr. Hale on . Time is stopped. Thank you. Okay. I see him here. He is sharing the document, i believe. Mr. Hale . Okay. Are you there . Yes. Can you speak louder please . How is this . Better. Okay. So what we are looking at here is the overall grading plan for the Phase Two Development with wisconsin street on the left and connecticut street on the right. 25th street at the top of the page and 26th street at the bottom of the page. A new treat which will be a portion of arkansas street to be constructed with the project. We have ie lighted the trees in we have highlighted the trees in green with the labels and i have gone through and done blowups of each area. So tree number one is a tree that unfortunately was inadvertently removed. There was a little bit of a mix up in communication and the contractor was a little overzealous, but i wanted to show this tree to show that even had it not been erroneously taken out early, it would still in conflict with what the grading for the sidewalk and the construction of the new building. Tree number two is squarely in the handicap ramp that will serve as the new arkansas street with 26th street at the bottom. And tree number three is the aforementioned stone pine and you can see that there is slightly behind the sidewalk and well within the grading and the darker lines. And the dashed dot line is the limits of grading just for the infrastructure. And tree number four is a little bit of the tree which is further south on wisconsin in the sidewalk and labelled a z this other tree which was south of tree five and just behind the sidewalk but well within the grading that is going to be required to construct that sidewalk. Tree six and seven are up on 25th street. And both of them as you can see are contained within the sidewalk. Tree eight is the second tree that was our overzealous contractor removed a little prematurely. But you can see that tree was also going to be contained fully within the sidewalk. And then the final tree, again a little bit of some confusion on this. We felt it was this tree because it was labelled a z two trees on connecticut with tree one and tree nine. This is outside the grading for the infrastructure but in a landing area for the steps that go down to the entry of the building and the canopy is well within the building proposed building. There is also another tree a little bit further to the west that is also labelled as tree number nine on various slides that i have seen. It is within the grading that is necessary to construct the sidewalk. Because the stone pine was such i mean, truly a marvelous tree, we did take a look at what would it take to try and preserve this tree. This is our profile of 26th street from wisconsin down to connecticut street. And you can see the grades are fairly steep. 18. 4 and almost 15 on the downhill side. And we put in the new arkansas street and we have to create a tabled intersection for accessibility reasons, so we have to flatten that out. The best way to do that is to come down steeper so you can flatten out and then youre above grade on the downhill side. Were cutting oen this side and filling on this side. And the vicinity of the stone pine translates to Something Like this. This is just a blow up of that same view. You can see that the center line of the street to cut down the street to about 2. 8 feet and at the vicinity of the stone pine. And then when we get to the intersection we are cutting it down almost 5. 5 feet. And in the plan view it looks like this where the the tree is well within the grading area and also notice that i put the 5 feet bsl which is building setback line shown there and you can see that the trunk of the tree is right at the building setback line so technically the building could be constructed out to that line as well. So weve got infrastructure and building impacts potentially on this tree. And when you look at in it a section view, weve got the new street that is being cut in and weve got the proposed sidewalk area and we have highlighted this drench which is the dry utilities the electrical cable, phone, and internet lines that need to be put in to support this development and the neighborhood at large. And you can see that even if we were to adjust the grade of the road such that the stone pine was essentially at our new design grade, we would still have to put in a joint trench which would cut essentially a 4 foot deep trench all along one side of the tree. And at that point we felt like it was not plausible to try and save that tree. That was just going to be too much damage and we went back to the original concept and cutting a little bit more in the vicinity of the stone pine. And with that, i will pass it back to marie. Thank you, mark. Can you hear me . Yes, we can hear you. Please go ahead. Great. So i wanted to in conclusion to say that the tree removal permit will allow the important infrastructure and housing work at the potrero phase two project to proceed. The project has received ceqa approval as part of the e. I. R. Review and also received board of supervisors approval for the entitlements. The process included Extensive Community outreach and processes that included many hearings and involved the public. The project is now ready to proceed with the construction and not receiving the permit to remove the tree would affect the projects time line and economic situation. The new Infrastructure Improvements will include approximately 68 replacement trees. In addition, there will be approximately 36 new trees installed on block b. Block a is still in Concept Design but we can assume that they will also install new tree. In total phase two providing at least three times as many replacement trees for the phase two site and in addition, the planting tree sites for the replacement trees is twice as large as required by the city making the larger and making them larger to begin with and providing a jump start on the canopy size. Thank you. That concludes our presentation. Okay. Looks like we have a question from Vice President honda. Commissioner honda so first off, i am kind of appalled that you as the project representatives would say that your developer got ahead of themselves or prematurely. That would be assuming that you have the permits. Correct . And that this hearing is just a rubber stamp to endorse that. Basically what you did is you illegally cut down trees without permits, first of all. Can i respond to it . Sure. Our contractor accidentally cut down the trees. There was confusion about the trees because they looked like they were stumps coming back and the contractor removed them. We did pay a fine for that after we found out that happened. That was not intentional. It was by accident. And the overall larger potrero project has been approved. The phase two project has two components. Sorry, maam, you had your time to represent. Just responding to your [please stand by] ne e. I. Vice president honda why is it that youre coming back later in line, saying our guys didnt know what they were doing. So we knew the trees were in a location we knew needed to be looked at. Im not sure if youre referring to the trees that were removed in error. Vice president honda no, just the other trees. We knew we got a late start in basically filing for the tree permit. Vice president honda okay. And then the last question is, it sounds like a wonderful site. Is it all affordable or is it market rate in this project. So the first block is block three that consists of 75 Affordable Housing, and market rate is approximately 167 units, which is about equal. Vice president honda and what is the a. M. I. For the affordable . The a. M. I. For the affordable ranges between 40 and 60 a. M. I. Clerk okay. We will now hear from the department of urban forestry. You have 14 minutes. Thank you. Chris buck, department of public works, department of urban forestry. Just want to confirm you can hear me okay. Clerk yes. Okay. So when we received this application, the application was for the removal of eight trees. It doesnt matter what size the tree is. The challenge is it reduces the publics confidence in the bureaus ability to protect and enhance the aurban forest. Thats the conversation we had, and including the conversation with the Mayors Office of housing and Workforce Development. But i did want to show the photos. They certainly were not the largest street. Besides the point, the point is can the city manage and control the removal of trees. Regarding the seven trees, it was the Italian Stone pine that stood out to us, as we evaluated the trees on the other frontages, we wonder what is a species that can tolerate some construction impact even with some protection in place . Which have poor structure and are not going to tolerate a lot of site disturbance, didnt yet have final design approval, so again, we thought there was another possibility to see if some of those open space requirements to be centered around the Italian Stone pine. And then, additionally, the project talked about a range of units, so we thought it wasnt necessarily a deal breaker to advocate for retention of that tree. Now, a tree of that size has an extensive root system. An excavation of 2 feet in that area is impactful, which is the top 12 to 18 inches of soil, so you may not come across a lot of structural supporting roots, but youre coming across the fine absorbing roots, so thats the issue that weve been trying to figure out a way around that. Now, you know, based on the it just doesnt seem that a tree of this size is going to tolerate the loss of that many roots. Again, we have met with the Mayors Office of Workforce Development to talk about future Development Agreement. We werent involved in the Development Process when this development went through and got approved, and now, one good example is 3333 california street is an example where the bureau was involved from day one, so when that case came before the public and the board of supervisors, the street trees along california street and other frontages were an active part of that discussion, and thats really what we want moving forward. So there are active cases that we are getting involved with now moving forward. Now, unfortunately, the d. A. Did not involve us during the creation of the d. A. The d. A. Clearly does approve the infrastructure and improvements as described. In sense, the tree was denied for removal as part of our resulting decision. Again, weve met with the applicant, and our bureau no longer believes the stone pine can be retained and the structure installed as approved. One of the things that i see in Bridge Housings brief is a commitment to plant all approximately 68 replacement trees with 48inch box replacement trees. The minimum for development is 24inch box size, so it is one thing to note in the Bridge Housings brief, is theyre offering 48inch box replacements for all of these street trees in the public rightofway. That wraps up our presentation. To reiterate, of the nine trees, the Italian Stone pine is really the standout on 26 street. The fine was issued for the removal without a permit of the two trees. The fine is only 2,122 per tree. Again, those trees were really sprouts or volunteers, it doesnt matter. Again, we had discussions with the Mayors Office to point out that was going to complicate things because youre coming in a public hearing, and you need to deal with that. But overall, thats where we stand. The Development Agreement is challenging. This particular Development Agreement didnt grant permission for the removal of all the trees, but in this case, it looks like the installation of the infrastructure will result in the removal of the stone pine. Clerk okay. We have questions from commissioner swig, commissioner honda, and commissioner tanner. Commissioner swig thank you. I feel like my life is running into itself, and i believe in 2008, i was probably on the Redevelopment Agency, and very zealous about substandard housing in the bayview, and i still am. But something, mr. Buck and im going to get to the point where commissioners can comment instead of ask questions. My questions so what happens here . Mr. Mr. Klipp, for whom i have tremendous respect, and i will never probably accuse of jabbering or whatever he self self self he accuses others of accusing him of. He saw uses of trees that are important, and design has to work around those trees. I loved seeing those photos. But, mr. Buck, what the hell happens here when whos who makes the design decisions or who acts as the protector of the trees . Here is an important tree. Where does the design bulldoze the tree . Who in the city is responsible for upholding and protecting those trees when a developer comes with the easy way out . And again, im a proponent of this development, but instead of coming up with something that is creative, they defer to the easy way of lets just bulldoze the tree. Who is the designer of the tree . Great question, commissioner. We would love to get our hooks into the conversation when this is i dont know how much years ago it was when the conversation for terre haute was approved. That is the time to be involved, and say that residents could have shade at this site. Its probably a lengthy site, and its probably not all on our bureau. In that said, one of the things we are absolutely working on is inclusion in that process for Development Agreements. We need to be a part of that conversation so that when the public is out there, the board of supervisors supporting, everyone agrees, we should rebuild lowincome housing. We need more of it, but all of this went through, and theres no discussion about theres this one fantastic tree that everyone should be aware of. Now other projects in a smallersized scope, we actually are they are required to be submitted and reviewed by the department of urban forestry. We is a new permit we have a new permitting center. Hopefully, we can occupy it someday. Commissioner swig let me interrupt you because youre going to preach to the choir, and that wasnt my question. Sure, sure. Commissioner swig my question was, what department is the guardian . Is this a planning departmen i department i would consider it a mistake . By the way, the mayor sat right next to me at redevelopment, and i am lockstep with her on this. So i sat next to mayor breed when she and i were humble redevelopment commissioners, and she went onto greater things. Im just a humble board of appeals commissioner now. But once we made that step to move this project forward, who specifically what department in the city rolled over to Bridge Housings architect and i have Great Respect for Bridge Housing, as well. Their architects may suck thats a technical term. But who in the city was not protecting the tree . Who in the city was not saying, we need to be more creative, Bridge Housing, and you just cant put up the worst architecture in the world, which is russian mass housing . You have to be creative here . You have to work around these beautiful trees and just instead of putting up a mass housing block because were interested, and rightfully so, of housing lowincome people . Where is that decision made in the city . Who didnt step up and say, Bridge Housing, get creative, get exciting, instead of putting russian housing blocks up . Yeah. I cant specifically answer that, but i have heard the phrase design design concepts, you know, creating sites that will integrate with the rest of the neighborhood, meaning oval lot much closer to the street and sidewalk, so i hear a lot about that. Were designing to some degree, it has to be planning, planning is providing overall guidance. Years and years ago, i was an advocate for friends of the urban forest, and i always used to say id file a discretionary appeal on my neighbors house. And theyd say a discretionary appeal, and id say sure. Thats the way that im going to interfere with the rightofway. I sense this is both literal and rhetorical, but i hear you. Commissioner swig so is it the Mayors Office of economic and Workforce Development that has taken over and made these decisions to just let Bridge Housing architects go ahead with their insensitive designs or is it planning . Who do i have to ask . I would defer to mr. Sanchez because hes more of an expert in that matter. Commissioner swig okay. I rest my case now. Clerk okay. We now have a question from Vice President honda . Vice president honda so mr. Buck, is that tree considered a significant street . Thank you, Vice President honda. Its a street tree. Its not considered significant trees. Significant trees are only trees that are on private public and not in the public rightofway. So what a significant tree is saying its off the rightofway, but its benefiting the public rightofway as if it were a street tree. So the signature tree criteria is sort of separate here. It doesnt apply to property that is owned by other city agencies, so its not a significant tree, but that said, it is a fabulous street tree. Vice president honda secondly, thank you for not using all 14 minutes of your time. And so the next question is watering plan and guaranteeing of the trees . So who is responsible for watering and and as, you know, joshua klipp has shown repeatedly, where developers have already built, and then theyre gone, whos responsible for the empty basins . Sure. So the developer will be responsible for planting, establishing replacement trees for three years following the completion of the project. That said, we have there have been a lot of really large scale projects across this city. Weve had thousands of trees planted by these projects. Youre going to find some damage. I know it looks damning when you see these ten trees. Its unfortunate. Thats why we try to protect trees of all sizes. Now, they did just complete phase one. We have a very small punch list of things to follow up on. Phase one trees are being replanted, watered, and ta maintained. I dont see it as an issue for you. Vice president honda i see more of a damage issue, accept considering the environment, and so who follows up on making sure that, you know, once a tree is snapped or broken as you said, a 48box versus a smaller tree, the smaller tree generally catches up, but the 48 box is definitely a nice boost from the builder. Thank you. Youre youre you have a very open position. You should apply, but i forgot to say, the 48inch box is a much larger tree, and its less prone to vandalism. It does help reduce vandalism. If they were going to be smaller trees, we would need more protection on them to reduce vandalism. The increased size is something i dont believe we discussed, i just read it in their brief. That will really help. We have an inspector that inspects the area on a regular basis. We receive regular requests and are very responsive to those. Sometimes we cant close a request until the tree is absolutely replanted, so its good that some of these things are reopened. It doesnt mean that were just closing and moving on. So we have mechanisms in place, so i feel like the planting of 48inch box trees in the public rightofway would be a really Great Condition to add to the department approval. Vice president honda the next question is, i got the number of additional trees that theyre planting. Are there any requests for planting additional trees to replace these trees . Good question. So theres 68 street trees. Weve looked at all potential sites on the trees. We eliminated one or two, so 68 is a very real count of what we believe is doable at this site. They are planting, and they referenced earlier, a number of other trees that will be within the property. We dont typically give them credit for that, but those are the thats where some of these other numbers were coming from, and they can probably speak to those numbers more than i can a little bit, because im really focused on what can we give the public in the public rightofway. Vice president honda okay. Thank you, mr. Buck. Clerk okay. We have a question from commissioner tanner. Commissioner tanner just a question, mr. Buck, and i think the answer is probably no. What is the risk of trying to keep the pine tree and seeing if the work that is being performed is as much as of a shock as predicted . Is there any good percent the tree would survive or is that too dangerous to kind of take a waitandsee approach . Whats your position on that . Thank you, commissioner tanner. Its a really good question. Whats an important question for us at this site, i kept telling colleagues and friends, i can see this tree from the bayview. You can actually look across and see this hillside on potrero hill on the southside, and i was showing my daughter last weekend, like, thats the tree that we have before us in a week. Its massive level. If there was no grade change, we would be talking about flat grade and Design Change and not installing a belowgrade surface. I dont want to be out there, advocating for the removal of this tree, but one of the things it was brought up in Bridge Housings appeal, and its good to see it in there, which is to survive these structural impacts, we have a whole other conversation about Building Design pushing back the envelope, how many units are lost. Now not my issue to decide, but i have inform be think bg that. Thats something that i am coming up against, is that. How much of this, you know, 60footwide canopy in pushing back the window and the normal. 2 feet is a significant, significant impact. We cant just throw a retaining wall around the trunk and call it good. But i think thats a good question for the commission, to throw it back to you all. If it survives construction impact, whats the next step in sort of retaining that tree. Commissioner tanner okay. Thank you for that. That was my question. Clerk okay. We are now moving onto Public Comment. If youd like to speak, please raise your hand. Well hear from natalie down first. Miss down, welcome. Hi. Hello. Hi. Im at a loss for words. Im appalled at how the city treats its awful urban canopy. How can we continue to let this happen . The poor air quality today has had huge effects on me personally. The bayview is a majority black and brown neighborhood, more than the most of San Francisco. The city needs trees to pureif the air. If the city can continue to kill significant ecological trees before their time. How can developers continue to significantly damage our environment like this . Im fed up. Thank you. Clerk thank you. Well now hear from sarah amral. Good evening, commissioners. Im sarah amral from the Mayors Office of the housing and Community Development. I want to bring up and answer some of the questions in regards to process and how we got to where we are, and then to potential implications. As you know, hope s. F. And the housing [inaudible] and as we went through the master planning in 2008, when bridge was chosen as a as the sponsor for this site, we went through a tenyear planning almost around this. Really Extensive Community outreach and collaboration with other city agencies so when we got to the point of Development Agreement and approval and entitlement in 2017, we had a realigned site plan that was going to work, and all of our Housing Residents living on the hill would be rehoused in Higher Quality Public Housing with Bridge Housing managing that. I also just wanted to mention that Bridge Housing as a sponsor is also responsible for the Overall Development of this site and buildout, and for every year that we delay, we delay to our in our trust with the community, which weve worked so hard to try to build back this housing sooner rather than later, as ive said, starting with process in 2008 with a master plan, getting to where we are now took quite a long time. The city is heavily leveraged in this work. We have the Mayors Office of housing and Community Development has contributed 30 million to the infrastructure and development of phase two alone. With further delays potentially to removing and moving the street tree, it will actually potentially delay the Housing Development of 157 Affordable Housing units. Not only that, but our market rate housing, which is our term for subsidized housing with the city. We do request d. P. W. To comment and work with us as we go through all of these processes, but i just wanted to mention that in regards to the scope of the actual street trees, best of my knowledge housing is responsible for putting on a Master Community association that will take care of all of the public improvements and street trees within the community once everything is built . So they are fully responsible as a community and a campus wide approach to maintaining those trees as we move further in this process. So with that, mohcd does hope you support the project. Clerk thank you. We have a question from commissioner swig. Commissioner swig yeah. Miss amaral, again, i was there with mayor breed in the Redevelopment Agency to move this forward. I am a huge believer in in housing in the bayview area, have been a huge believer in all of the areas where many of our lowincome population have been abused by substandard housing, and the practices, early days of the Redevelopment Agency, which hopefully, when i sat on the commission, we rectified some of that bad behavior. That being said so you know im a supporter, right . But i have a hard time with a passing of the buck. Well, this is Bridge Housings responsibility, and this is Bridge Housings responsibility. And as i heard you say in your testimony just now in Public Comment, where is the responsibility of the city . And i also heard when i im not going to term this veiled threats, but they were. Well, theres been 30 million pledged towards this project. We understand all that. But who takes responsibility or do we just as a city knuckle under to Bridge Housings and again, ive said i respect them, as well. But, you know, where does creativity come in . Where does protecting the community with regard to an important this is an important tree. Where does the creativity who makes those design decisions or do you just say okay, we got the money, Bridge Housing, let it go, and if we have to lose a couple trees, so be it . But who, again, from the citys responsibility, is protecting good design and a Good Environment as well as building great new housing for the bayview . Thank you for that questions, commissioner swig. I would say that, traditionally, the at least within the Development Agreement process, planning approved the Design Standards and guidelines and at that time identified should be identifying whether or not there are implications to the urban forestry plan around that. My fellow colleague, mr. Buck, pointed that out that that wasnt necessarily part of the process in 2017 when we went through this process, but again, we do ask d. P. W. To comment on all of our plans as we go forward, and as a see family . But traditionally, that is held with planning. Commissioner swig okay. And what i objected to in your comment is, well, you know, if we worry about this tree, were going to further postpone this you know, this job, and the communitys going to get further upset with us. I know that community really well, yes, they will, i agree, but i really, really have a hard time with that statement that, well, if you take the extra step to make it right, were go were going to were really going to have a problem here. Im not comfortable with that statement, id just like to go on the record. Thank you. Clerk thank you. Well hear from judson true next. I believe he was raising his hand. I was. Thank you very much. Good evening, commissioners. I was listening and wanted to join in light of the discussion ive heard. I did want to be sure to join and just reiterate some of the comments that both the bridge presenter said and sara amaral, housing and Community Development. It is imperative that the project moved forward. I did want to answer some questions about the process to get some of these developments approved. And while i was not in my current position at the time this fwrproject was approved, there is a chance for public works to comment on every element of the infrastructure plan, which does include the urban canopy. I just cant emphasize enough how important it is that this infrastructure be able to move forward as is designed. Every change to design costs a tremendous amount of money and slows the project down, and thats why, 15 years after the approval of the project, we only have one building completed and making headway on the work still there. We work with oewd closely to be sure that we look closely at tree issues and the canopy as we move toward the development and the process moving forward, and that laurel heights, 33333 california example was mentioned as a good practice. We can all do a better job of having that conversation up front, but i dont see a reasonable way to move forward on this infrastructure and the Building Design that is still in the works and keep this beautiful tree. As a native of the midwest, i certainly identify with mr. Klipps depiction of the canopy, and living in midtown sacramento for a few years and marveling at what makes that, the capital of california, a tree city. But our particular job is to get this project built, and i just would ask the commissioners to consider all of those factors while recognizing how hard a decision this is, and that we wish that there was a circumstance where this tree could, you know, be maintained. And i am available and happy to answer any questions that the commissioners may have about this item. Clerk okay. Thank you, mr. True. Clerk okay. We will now hear from the next do we have a question from Vice President honda . Vice president honda, please go ahead. One moment. Go ahead. Can you speak . Vice president honda how about now . Clerk yes, we can hear you. Vice president honda what would you tell john q. Public that comes in front of us every wednesday that says hey, youre knocking down trees that werent scheduled to be knocked down, and the department is just bulldozing multiple trees over and over again in the city that has the lowest canopy of any major city . Yeah. I fully appreciate the canopy in the role that ive worked on with past supervisors like to bring the trees under the citys purview and therefore increase the canopy itself. I think its important in investing maintaining trees where possible and also investing in building a better canopy for San Francisco in the future. I do want to provide one clarification. Believe me, there have been one or two other Development Sites that ive dealt with, whether inadvertently or intentionally, trees have been removed. In this case, it was development that brought to bucks attention that trees were removed. It was my understanding that it was a misunderstanding and it was rectified with fines as quickly as possible from a housing developer. To your comment, commissioner honda, i think we should do everything we can to support the canopy in San Francisco, which is important to the commission and san franciscans. Vice president honda thank you. Yeah. And if i could say one more thing, on the Development Agreement, i think we have to look at future Development Agreements and make sure that the bureau of urban forestry is as an integral a part of the formation of those Development Agreements as the other parts of public works. Again, i think the california Street Project was a part of that, and ive had discussions with oewds director and other people. There will be other developments in the few are, both d. A. S and others, and im certainly committed to working with b. U. F. To make sure that were doing everything we can to protect the canopy while allowing for significant development. Vice president honda thank you, justin. Clerk thank you, mr. True. Well now hear from kristin siutat. Can you hear me . Clerk yes, go ahead. Im a little bit confused of the diagrams we were shown of the project where they said here, you can see its in the way of the grading because we were looking at the canopy, not the trunk, so it wasnt clear to me at all that it necessari necessarily interfered with the grading. Bridge housing has developed a lot of housing, and it seems that all of these trees were in the rightofway, so didnt they know when they were making the original design that these were street trees in the public rightofway and needed to be preserved . If they can design all this development and all the complexities that are involved in that, cant they also figure out a way to work around these trees . Its also my understanding that hundreds of trees have already been cut down for this project. The bayview is starving for trees. If you drive around the bayview, i think it has a lot fewer trees than other cities in the neighborhood, and at this point, every tree in that neighborhood really, really matters. If you uphold this appeal, it will send a clear message to developers that when you plan your development, you have to plan to save the trees, and that you dont just do your plan and come back later, late on your permit tree removal permitting process and say well, the project was already approved, so of course, now, we have to remove these trees. It would send a message that you have to plan for the trees when youre designing your development. Thats all i really have to say, and thank you for your time, and i really think that you should uphold this appeal and a delay of a few weeks for the architects to work around these trees isnt going to did he devastate the community. Thank you for your time. Clerk thank you. We will now hear from r roz arbough. Miss arbough . Hi. Can you hear me . Clerk yes, thank you. I just want to say that some of these statements, like, the sudden retroactive, like, light bulb, like, going off, oh, we should have informed the b. U. F. And oh, we should have thought more about creative development, im honestly shot. Commissioner swig asked the perfect question. He said whos the guardians of the trees, and its right. Its the perfect afterthought. Sorry. Im not that well prepared here. With y but it seems like the city is impotent when it comes to trees. The developers run roughshod theres deforestation. Theres been nine more trees already, and this beautiful tree, over 100 years old, come on, people, i think we can get creative in saving it, so i really hope that you do consider this appeal. I think josh made a beautiful presentation, and there are those of us out there who believe in wellprice housid h and keeping our urban canopy fluorishing. Thank you. Clerk thank you. We will now hear from casey asbury. Miss as bury, are you ready . We can come back to you. Hi. Im speaking on behalf of josh klipps appeal on the removal of the remaining significant trees. Im here to address the issue of degraded forest canny peas that more and more move to the lack of authentic process. I want to move to the subject of instant canopy, replacement of trees with significant trees versus housing. The project should be redesigned to create a pocket park around this Italian Stone pine. In multiple instances before the b. O. A. , the public is able to see at large the primary reasons why San Franciscos forest canopy is decreasing at such an alarming rate. We see mismanagement with project timelines repeatedly, arbitrary and out dates ecology outdated ecology. Penalties that are imposed at levels that are an acceptable cost of doing business are negligible. Fundamental disregard for principles of Environmental Justice, Public Health requirements, and sunshine laws. Overall, a lack of respect for the publics interest and work product of our employees is clear. It may be a structural inability to do the peoples work in this regard. When b. U. F. Budgets are heavily weighted toward concrete maintenance and not Tree Planting and maintenance, when mr. Buck avoids being excellent to get in the path of furies and lunatics, when designers and developers always fail to take the challenge, find it cheaper to remove and replace, this is erroneous language. When the b. L. A. Repeatedly tells us on record that they wish it were otherwise, it all serves to indicate that we must look for relief of this so important element of our Public Comment, our living canopy elsewhere. Clerk thank you. So we will now hear from mary klipp. Miss klipp, are you ready . Im ready. Can you hear me . Clerk yes, we can. In full disclosure, i am the proud mother of josh klipp, one of the most conscientious, compassionate, hard working people that i have ever known. I truly believe that josh that john lewis would be proud of joshs thinking good trouble. I came to live in San Francisco 17 years ago, and i was proud of its reputation as a technological hub and a mustsee city with great normal beauty. It is a city which benefited from the hard work and the forceful thoughts of those who came many years before us. 17 years later, with Climate Change pounding on our doors, the citys decisions to cut down beautiful and measurably tech tech technologically useful trees i couldnt believe that you could measure what every tree does in terms of its work, it belies that reputation of both applied technology and respect for environmental beauty. In short, please do not see trees as an enemy or as a nasty obstruction to development. Count them, plant them, plant five, ten times more than we need. You can always take them down in the future. But please see trees as a mighty soldier thats fighting the fight of the changing climate. Now we need to do the hard work and make the sacrifices for those that come after us, like the people that came before us did for us. Thats kind of a simple the down home way of saying please, lets make this happen in San Francisco. If we cant do it here, where it can be done . Clerk thank you. We will now go to the the caller who does not have a phone number showing. It its caller without a phone number showing, please go ahead. Can you hear me . Okay. Were going to go to a different caller. For the caller whose number ends in 4906, you can go ahead, please. The phone number ending in 4906, your hand is raised. You may need to press starsix to unmute your phone. Okay. Can you hear me now . Clerk yes. This is kendra share calling. For me, tonights hearing is a poster child for the theater of the absurd that San Francisco has truly become. With all due respect, while our wealthy neighbors up the hill quibble over the inconveniences of their mansion expansions, our city boasts 8,000 homeless people, while at the same time our city has around 40,000 Housing Units that remain vacant yearlong, year after year. Our solution to this crisis seems to consist of mowing down our trees and destroying the very he canno system that sustains us. I would like to know when all of this super silliness ecosystem that sustains us. I would like to know when all of this supersilliness will stop. Our socalled progressive city is so in name only. Calling it progressive is a lie and a sick joke. Until such a time that we adopt policy that actually reflected progressive values, policies that reflect Environmental Justice, policies that reflect that the value of our neighbors and the dignity of our neighbors are here x that we also here, and that we also have dignity and respect for our environment. I feel that, currently, we have a city thats allowing people to languish in the streets, and the way that were responding so that is by providing inadequate housing, while at the same time annihilating hundreds of trees. We must do better, and i think were not going to do better until our city enacts policies that say this is impossible. You dont get to mow down 200 or 300 trees in order to make Affordable Housing. Yes, you get to make Affordable Housing, but you dont get to do that. We need to respect our environment and respect our neighbors. Thank you. Clerk thank you. We will now hear from myra swat. Yes. Id like to confirm that you can hear me all right. Clerk yes, we can. Thank you. Thank you, and thank you for your time. Im a proud San Francisco native. Clerk [inaudible] im sorry. Somebody is not on mute. Go ahead. Im going to reset your time. Thank you. I think were missing the big picture here. Its not that San Francisco is different. We are progressive, we are thoughtful, we are innovative, and instead of being another big city owned by Big Developers form coalitions, we are a city where progressive activists have made progress. San francisco has a proud record of including Community Bases organizations in the Decision Making structure. Now if were all so well known for our San Francisco values, socially, culturally, and morally, if were all so well known for being progressive and standing up for what is right, how can we integrate the communitys hope for future housing, to simply eradiindicaerad all the trees that are in the area . Trees absouthbound co2, pollution, they decrease the risk of Natural Disaster with floods and earthquakes, help with Mental Health and has been proven to reduce crime rate and create homes and habitats for many native animals and insects. If we want to continue to walk the talk and live in this city, we need to up the well known San Francisco brand of caring, doing whats right, continuing to stay progressive. In this world, we are choosing to do whats, you know, not necessarily cheap or easy, but something thats just faster or easier. So we simply dont have to bulldoze down hundreds of creative, mature trees to create even more concrete cities that we already have, we can building smaller, build around, build smarter around whats left of our citys full grown natural trees. We can build smarter, and i just want to leave you with this quote. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, its the only thing that ever hass, and i belie believe ever has, and i believe we need to see the Bigger Picture and stay san franciscans together and remember what the city is about. Thank you. Clerk okay. Thank you. We have a caller who has their hand raised. Theres no phone number. Try pressing starsix to unmute yourself. Hi. Thanks. Clerk okay. Please go ahead. No phone number caller. Clerk yes, that would be you. Please go ahead. Little echo. Im going to turnoff my t. V. [inaudible] clerk im sorry. We kind of lost you. Hello . Clerk who is this, please . Im sorry . Clerk im sorry. Can you tell me is this mr. Carnes . Mr. Carnes, can you join by one or the other . Im muted on the computer here. Clerk do you want to mute it on the computer . Vice president honda do you still have the t. V. On in the background . Clerk i think because youve joined by t. V. And computer, if you want to just disconnect one of those, please. Okay. Let me stop hows that . Clerk better. Okay. Plea please clerk please go ahead. [inaudible] by senior b. U. F. Staffers. They seem to forget that the citizens and taxpayers are their clients, and their first responsibility is to provide them with accurate and professional service. Encouraging an attitude of keeping citizens in the dark at hearings is not what b. U. F. Is staffed to do. We need to look at keeping as much of the canopy as possible, especially in district ten and the bayview, which has one of the citys smallest coverage. Those are my comments. Thank you. Clerk is there anyone else that wishes to speak . Theres another western that wishes to speak. Clerk okay. I thought that was mr. Klipp still. Or carnes, you mean . Clerk carnes, okay. Sorry. Thanks. Okay. Were going to move onto rebuttal. Mr. Klipp, you have three minutes. Okay. Can you hear me . Clerk yes, we can. So first, i want to thank everyone who came out to make Public Comment. I know that a lot of you skipped a lot of things, and i want to thank you for your time. Commissioner swig, to answer your question, the answer was no, no department asked if any of these trees could be saved. I would respectfully disagree with your definition of a significant tree because if thats your definition of a significant tree, i would have been able to appeal all 256 trees. The plans are in conflict, not the other way around. And the housing that came down, while the housing came down, that is proof that housing and trees could exist on this exact same land. With regards to the handicap ramp, im an expert in the california state handicap access, and i would say there are plenty of places to access other than straight through a tree, and i would ask in all of these meetings, were any Disability Rights Group consulted . With the use of the word handicap, i would say no. And i think that the Disability Community is sick of being thrown under the bus for tree removal. As for the planned green spaces, green spaces are a great idea. Why not incorporate the greenery that is already there. As commissioner swig said, instant canopy. This design does not consider humans, it just considers the budget. We could have done better. We just chose not to because we wanted to maximize the space, which means profit, and then we set up the false argument, well, if we save the trees, how many housing are we losing . In my college courses, thats called a straw man. I want to point out to everyone whos breathing air today, i want to remind everyone this is a perfect reason why we need to keep trees in the ground. Unless weve found a way to filter mass quantities of bay area skies, and we have not, trees are the only things keeping us between unbreathable air. The last thing that all of us needs is filthier air, which is exactly, unfortunately, where this is headed. Clerk okay. Are you finished, mr. Klipp . Yes, i am. Thank you. Clerk thank you. We will now hear from marie dubore. You have six minutes, miss dubore. Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to speak again. I just wanted to address a few things ive heard during Public Comment. One was or maybe it was during question q a session, but the trees that we will be replacing in the public streets will be irrigated, so we hope that that will secure the future of those trees. There was also a comment, i believe by joshua klipp, that the tree could be 100 years old. We believe it was planted in the 1940s, when the original development was built. I wanted to address a comment that a caller made about the comment that were looking at a section of the tree that showed the canopy but not the you know, the tree itself or the i guess we were showing the roots on that on that exhibit, but what i wanted to describe is is that what we understand is that the trees root system expands as far out as the trees canopy, so we looked very closely as how spreading that canopy is for the stone pine, and that is 65 feet. Even if we were able to preserve the tree without cutting down the existing elevation there, we would have to cut into the tree root system for the construction and for the parking garage thats underneath the future housing building. So the tree, unfortunately, and while we would like to preserve all trees, when possible, this tree is, in our opinion, not able to be preserved. It would not survive the impact of the infrastructure design, and it would be in conflict with the future housing building. I would also like to mention that on the phase two site thats up for discussion today on the potrero site, 50 trees were on the phase two site, some of which have been removed. Im not sure where the comment comes from that says hundreds of trees have been removed already. We estimate that there were 30 trees on this project, and we intend to replace them with as many as three times as many trees. We at bridge, you know, were environmentally conscious. Were also an Affordable Housing developer, and in regards to potrero hill, what we can say is this is our second phase. We will look at future phases differently. We will do shade tree surveys earlier and study it. This as phase two here, it came later, but the development is so far advanced right now, that it would be an economic hardship. And i thi and the developer saying if this project gets delays, future projects would get delayed because theyre being completed in order. As one site gets completed, the new site being affected becomes the new project site. We make a commitment to strive to do better going forward. Mark, i dont know if you anything to say . No, i think you said it well, marie. The future of this project has been going on for a long while on a lot of fronts, and the idea behind the project is to replace whats become dilapidated existing Public Housing and create new Public Housing and then, to help fund that new housing, to create market rate housing that would go in. We tried to connect that neighborhood with the surrounding neighborhood and not kind of leave it as this isolated outpost. I think that, you know, with that, to create that graded street system, theres a significant amount of grading thats going to happen to recreate that structure, and unfortunately, the tree some of the trees are going to be in the way of recreating that structure. But in light of everything that weve, you know, heard, theres definitely, you know, i feel compelled to, when we get to the future phases, especially around the edges of the project, to, you know, see what we can do to preserve more of the trees there, you know, within the project boundaries. Clerk 30 seconds remaining. Clerk okay. Thank you. Are you finished . Im finished. Clerk okay. Commissioner swig has a question. Commissioner swig yes, miss dubore. When do you anticipate that the building related to the destruction of this tree is going to be built . Its expected to Start Construction in may of 2021. Commissioner swig okay. But the infrastructure thats related to that building is starting this year. Commissioner swig okay. I think youve resolved not to try to save the tree, and its your job, housing first, tree later. You mentioned that gee whiz, this is going to affect the parking garage. Gee whiz, this is going to affect this. What can be done in an urgent fashion to save this tree, bottom line . And by the way, do you live in San Francisco . I dont, no. Commissioner swig yeah, so you dont care. Sorry. As a native san franciscan, im getting very upset that somebody comes in from out of San Francisco and hurts my city. I was born here 69 years ago that is tomorrow, and i get a little emotional about people who come in from somewhere else and abuse my city. But that being said, what can be done to save this tree . What is the compromise . What is the financial impact, not that its dont give me the well, its going to kick the can down the road and make the development happen later . Remember, i was there at the beginning. You probably didnt work at Bridge Housing. What can be done to save this tree. What is the compromise that Bridge Housing could make to save this tree . What parking place could be sacrificed . What piece of infrastructure can be moved. Can you identify that, please . Yeah. Although we canhavent studiede exact economic impact, with you know that the tree impacts not just the parking garage of the new building, but it impacts a sixstory building that will be built there. So in order to preserve the tree, the canopy, and the root structure, the building, we would have to cutback at least 40 feet on that side, probably a 30foot risk, and we would lose a substantial amount of units across six stories. So the impact would be substantial on that number of Housing Units that we would be losing. Commissioner swig so so there is so as a result of bad planning, of insensitive environmental planning, what you say is this is a fa fafai fait accompli, and this tree is dead basically. I believe this tree is in conflict with the currently designed development, yes. Commissioner swig yeah. And again, who in the city bho in the ci who in the city was responsible for equal insensitivity, environmental insensitivity and by the way, i was there at the beginning. Who in the city provided the insensitive approval of this environmentally insensitive nature of this design . Yes. I was not at Bridge Housing when this project was conceived, but i am also a proponent of Affordable Housing. I believe we can all do better, between the developer, the different city departments. When a Development Gets planned and goes through the approval stages, we have to make sure that this aspect gets looked at in the future. Commissioner swig you didnt answer my question. I cant answer commissioner swig mr. Hale, can you answer that . No, sir. We went through a master infrastructure plan, and i, you know, worked on preparing exhibits for that, but it was handled by another frirm, anir believe it went through a number of different departments at the city. It wasnt like it was, you know, just kind of tried to slide underneath the radar. It was a very complex project, and i think a lot of people have seen the project. I think that, you know, it if you want to argue that, you know, it was probably put down to an overriding concern to construction the housing and to recreate the graded street system was considered an overriding concern in comparison to preserving this tree. I couldnt because of the scale of the project, i dont remember significant discussion about this particular tree at that time, but as weve got into this particular phase. We particular phase, we did take a look. But for the longest time, the project has shown a significant amount of grading to, you know, proceed with the development, and it has shown buildings that go out to the sidewalks for, i would say ten years at least . But i i have no idea who if youre looking for the one, you know, entity to point the blame at, i dont think theres any one entity. I think theres a number of people, and, you know, i cant tell you if it was considered if it was considered and it was the you know, good was not to be sacrificed for the perfect or if it was, you know, overlooked. I could not tell you, sir. Commissioner swig its just we come in here week after week, and we observe some environmental insensitivity, and like i said earlier, im going to talk about this later in my discussion. Personally, im running into myself because i was a proponent of hope s. F. , involved in hope s. F. , getting some wonderful housing built, yet it myself, in my own foresight, neglected to have an environmental sensitivity and ask these questions then while were housing people that need housing, how do we protect the environment, and how do we not tear down these trees . But i was younger then, and not so informed today, with a lot more information needed. Thank you very much. Clerk okay. Thank you. Well hear from a question from commissioner tanner. Commissioner tanner thank you. My question is for Bridge Housing, and im not sure who will answer it, but thank you answering the question that the street trees will be irrigated. I want to be clear that the replacement trees that were talking about, 104, which a significant number will be street trees, 64 will be replaced, and the other are property trees. Are they 40 or 48 inch . Yeah, theyll be 48 inches. And then, miss dubose, do you have any information on that . Yes. The street trees will be 48 inch, and then, the other trees will be dependent on how close they are to structures and buildings. Commissioner tanner and where is it going to be written for accountability purposes, for mr. Klipp and everybody else to make sure that this happens, where is the replacement plan . It is in the building plan, and bridge will make a commitment to replace these trees. Clerk they are in the public documents, commissioner tanner. Commissioner tanner okay. The documents are lengthy, and i want to make sure that Everybody Knows where they are. And lastly, the environmental impacts to the buildings, is there any requirement that the buildings are built to any sort of standard or lead or design measure that would be incorporated into these buildings . Yes. So our first phase, 1101 connecticut street, was completed and received a lead platinum certification, and were trying to achieve the same thing for block b. Block a will pursue that. Were required to build a green standard, but the level platinum was beyond what was required. Commissioner tanner thank you. Clerk okay. We have a question from Vice President honda . Vice president honda yes. First of all, thank you, guys. I know this has been tough on you as well as it has been on us, and thank you for bearing with us and answering the questions as honestly and accurately as you can. So mr. Klipp mentioned that the the species of the trees life span are 30 years and will grow no taller than 20 feet. Is that an accurate description . Of the tree which trees . Im sorry. Vice president honda well, i think that is more in general to the trees being replaced. He had mentioned that the replacement trees are going to have a life span of no more than 30 years and are going to grow no higher than 20 feet. Is that specific to species or in general . Im not sure where that comment came from, to be honest. I dont have our Landscape Architect on this call. Perhaps mark hill knows a little bit about the tree species. Vice president honda actually, maybe chris buck might have some insight. Sorry to throw you on the campfire there, chris. Clerk chris . Mr. Buck . Vice president honda yeah, hes getting his mic working. Clerk okay. Thank you. Chris buck, department of urban forestry. You know, i dont have it in front of me. Id have to get into my remote access. I know we have that information and we reviewed it. No, these are large stature trees at mature that should be getting well over 20 feet. Vice president honda and life span . Yeah. The average street tree is focal. Is it seven years is the average life span . No, theyre going to be much taller than 20 feet, and they should be there a lot longer than 30 years. So i think mr. Klipps point is its going to take a long time for the replacement trees to create considerable canopy, so we take that point, but i can definitely verify these will be large stature trees. Vice president honda yeah. It didnt make sense that they would put a tree with that time stamp on there, that small, but thank you for answering the question. Clerk okay. So we still have to hear from mr. Buck in rebuttal. Do you have anything to add . You have six minutes. Good evening, commissioners. Chris buck, department of public works, department of urban forestry. One thing i was going to point out in the supporting documents, appendix b, d, and f, Bridge Housing included a sort of aerial view of grade change and then a profile as well as a the other i forget the name of the other the exhibit, but there are just one of the Public Comments had a question about the specifics of which its been looked at, this site and this tree. So the only thing imted to clarify. But beyond that, no, just available for questions. Clerk okay. We do have a question from Vice President honda. Vice president honda just one question as its pertaining to this particular project. When a tree is pruned, i was always under the impression or understanding that you cannot prune more than 30 of a tree, is that skre is that correct . One of the guidelines is that you cant prune more than a third of the canopy. If its regarding pruning at large, we need to clarify what were talking about. But generally, the guideline is about a third, a quarter to a third. Vice president honda and then, ficuses are more . It is when the public demands the retention in the public rightofway and we cant mitigate failure potential other than eliminating weight from the tree. So 24 street and hayes valley are sites that we talk about okay, this is where we can do that, but then, were forced to maintain the tree at a much smaller size. Vice president honda thank you very much, mr. Buck. Clerk okay. Thank you. So commissioners, this matter is submitted. Vice president honda i know rick wants to go first. Commissioner swig y commissioner swig yeah. So im sorry for coming off cranky. So i dont know, 12, 13 years ago, when i started as a commissioner on the Redevelopment Agency, i was introduced to the bayview, i was introduced to Alice Griffith, i was introduced to hunters view and saw how this city had abused its residents by placing people in what was to be temporary housing in world war ii, and that got me very, very dedicated to lowincome housing and very, very passionate about making sure that people would not be relegated to living in temporary housing that was built in the 1940s, and here it was 2005 or 2006 i cant remember what. If you go to hunters view today, it has gone through a resurrection. If you go to Alice Griffith today, it has gone through a resurrection, and i thank fred blackwell, who was head of the Redevelopment Agency during my tenure there, for leading that charge. I also thank mayor breed, who who was so strong at that time as a proponent of getting lowincome housing and redevelopment moved forward. And and she was tremendous in making sure that people who were going to be relocated as a result of that newhousing from their 50yearold or 60yearold substandard housing would not be would not be subjectively moved out unless it was moved into a new piece of housing, which has been fully achieved. So i just want to say that im a major proponent of what has occurred in the bayview, major proponent of Developers Like Bridge Housing, who have been part of the process of getting the housing done not soon enough. What i object to, and i can see and im probably guilty of this, as well that youre in the process of moving forward. You overlook, and im sorry, mr. Klipp, the trees because you want to house hundreds and hundreds of families that are living in substandard conditions. So i can see how the intensive of trying to move the Housing Forward gets in the way of observing that several trees, and important trees, are going to be torn down, unfortunately. So ill i guess im part of the cause, and im trying to be part of the solution. Im going to ask that we deny the appeal tonight because we have to move this project forward, and i dont think this this tree is going to survive, according to the testimony that weve heard. But i would call on the city and those departments who are trying to do well by getting housing together. I would call on them also to be environmentally responsible and to be consideration of tree conscious of trees and conscious of the environment that i grew up in as a native of San Francisco and to sustain these trees and to be a little bit more sensitive. And to Bridge Housing and those Developers Like them understand that citizens of this city enjoy our trees as we enjoy the opportunity of housing people that are not lucky to live in good housing, but we really have to maintain it and be sensitive and be be more responsible about our environmental sensitivities. I and thats my speech and i just wanted to get it off my chest. Thank you. Clerk commissioner lazarus . President lazarus so we have two questions. The first is Bridge Housing is not allowing this tree to be taken down, and then, we have a separate appeal regarding the permit to cut down other trees. Am i correct . Clerk i was going to say, i mean, depending on where the conversation goes, it sounds like you want some conditions, so Vice President honda grant the appeal. Clerk so we would be granting the appeal on the condition that it would be revised to x, y, and z. President lazarus well, i just wanted to clarify. I guess commissioner swig, i thought, was moving toward denying the appeal. Clerk to be clear, commissioner swig, the underlying order denied the removal of the stone pine tree, so if you wanted that tree removed, youd have to grant the appeal and issue the order with the condition of the order of the removal of the stone pine tree. Commissioner swig ill let somebody else make the motion on that, but i understand the direction. Vice president honda you just gave a heart wrenching thing about the trees coming down. Commissioner swig i understand. Ive run out of energy, i think. Im an old man. Clerk okay. Commissioner tanner has her hand up. Commissioner tanner and i still have a question similar to what commissioner lazarus has. We have appeal 20047, which is bridges appeal with that underlying wed grant the appeal, and i would like to condition it on the 48inch boxes being in the order, if thats appropriate. I know that bridge has committed on the record to doing that, and its in the plan, but id like it to be there. And then, wouldnt we have a second motion to deny the appeal of 20048 . Vice president honda yeah. Clerk were amending the order, so we need to combine them. Theres one order, and youd like to amend it. Youd need to condition it on the order being 48inch box, and fumt if y if you wanted remove the stone pine tree, it would be granting that with conditions. Commissioner tanner okay. Before i say that, i think commissioner swig has expressed a view that i hold in terms of the importance of housing, the importance of the trees, as well, and im glad that so many folks here from the Mayors Office have called in here and participated to think about the future phases, and how do we accommodate trees when we think about the infrastructure projects. Im not naive to think that they can all be saved, but certainly, theres a role that these trees play in our ecosystem. Theres Nothing Better than a big trees, and in 20 or 30 years, theyll be providing shade, and itll be fantastic. But how fantastic would it be with residents moving into their homes with canopies of mature trees with new trees. So thats a consideration of future developments and how can we have a little bit more harmony with those. So with that president lazarus hang on one second. Commissioner honda had his hand up, so maybe before you make your motion. Vice president honda youre going to skip over me with your new hairdo. The commission needs to do better, especially on days like this where air quality is really poor. Its not going to have a ton of housing if you cant go outside. Well change the words of the song living in paradise to living in a housing structure. Developers come to this board asking for forgiveness rather than asking for permission, and if its convenient to knock the tree down for 2,000 to save themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars, i would, too. Thats just fiscal responsibility, so i think thats something that b. U. F. Should look into. Go ahead, madam goodlooking hair. Clerk commissioner swig . Commissioner swig yeah. First of all, i would agree with commissioner honda. I dont know who we send the message to, but, you know, the cost of 4,000 because you knocked down to trees, to move a sewer pipe 1 inch costs 4,000, and its a minor change order. And a minor change order is not going to change consciousness, its not going to change behavior, and its not going to change attitudes towards tearing down trees. Its a minor change order. Its nothing. And even 20,000 would be a minor change order. So i appreciate commissioner hondas point of view, and also commissioner tanner, thank you for really summarizing my thoughts in a much more constructive fashion than i could. Thank you. Commissioner tanner youre welcome, commissioner swig. So with that, i would move to deny the appeal and require that the replacement trees be the 48inch box size on the basis that this is beneficial for the community. Clerk and what about the stone pine tree . We need to reference that, also. Commissioner tanner and to allow removal of the stone pine tree. Clerk okay. So we and just to clarify, youre referring to both appeals . Commissioner tanner yes, im referring to appeal 20048 and 20047. Clerk thank you. Okay. So we have a motion commissioner tanner to grant the appeals and uphold the order on the condition that it be revised to require the removal of the stone pine tree on 46 street frontage, and that the 68 replacement trees be in 48inch size boxes on the basis that this is amenable to the project sponsor and beneficial to the community. Is that what you said . Commissioner tanner yep. Clerk on that motion [roll call] clerk okay. So that motion carries, 50, and the appeal is granted with the conditions. This concludes the hearing. President lazarus we are adjourned. Thank you. Good night. Hello everyone. Welcome to the bayview bistro. It is just time to bring the Community Together by deliciou deliciousness. I am excited to be here today because nothing brings the Community Together like food. Having amazing food options for and by the people of this community is critical to the success, the longterm success and stability of the bayviewhunters point community. I am nima romney. This is a mobile cafe. We do soul food with a latin twist. I wanted to open a truck to son nor the soul food, my African Heritage as well as mylas continuas my latindescent. I have been at this for 15 years. I have been cooking all my life pretty much, you know. I like cooking ribs, chicken, links. My favorite is oysters on the grill. I am the owner. It all started with banana pudding, the mother of them all. Now what i do is take on traditional desserts and pair them with pudding so that is my ultimate goal of the business. Our goal with the bayview bristow is to bring in businesses so they can really use this as a launching off point to grow as a single business. We want to use this as the opportunity to support Business Owners of color and those who have contributed a lot to the community and are looking for opportunities to grow their business. These are the things that the San Francisco Public Utilities commission is doing. They are doing it because they feel they have a responsibility to san franciscans and to people in this community. I had a grandmother who lived in bayview. She never moved, never wavered. It was a house of security answer entity where we went for holidays. I was a part of bayview most of my life. I cant remember not being a part of bayview. I have been here for several years. This space used to be unoccupied. It was used as a dump. To repurpose it for Something Like this with the bistro to give an opportunity for the local vendors and food people to come out and showcase their work. That is a great way to give back to the community. This is a great example of a publicprivate community partnership. They have been supporting this including the San Francisco Public Utilities commission and Mayors Office of workforce department. Working with the joint Venture Partners we got resources for the space, that the businesses were able to thrive because of all of the opportunities on the way to this community. Bayview has changed. It is growing. A lot of things is different from when i was a kid. You have the t train. You have a lot of new business. I am looking forward to being a Business Owner in my neighborhood. I love my city. You know, i went to city college and fourth and mission in San Francisco under the chefs ria, marlene and betsy. They are proud of me. I dont want to leave them out of the journey. Everyone works hard. They are very supportive and passionate about what they do, and they all have one goal in mind for the bayview to survive. All right. It is time to eat, people