Here at the Planning Commission but the Historic Preservation commission, our various i cant understand hearings. Theres rec park or departments of public health. How can we make sure that were focusing that time on the projects where a judgment call is really needed in this public setting as opposed to times when we maybe able to get there 9 0 of the time at the administrative level. This is where we have the opportunity to discuss with the public what it is that were doing and grapple with the big issues. How do we get the best bang for the buck out of things that come to a hearing and versus things that do not. And how do we make sure that things come here when theyre ready so you dont recalendar something three months out because of how busy your cal is. The planning code itself, obviously this is our road map. These are the rules of the road. The clowererer it is, the better the results will be. Even simple thing like definitions. Its somewhat fundamentalle that. Can we clean up things like that. Can we get process that has become out of date because we have new procedures for dealing with that usual ewe in the planning code out of the planning code, some planners are not writing that document anymore when theyre already doing Something Else that takes care of that issue. We want to look at how that is structured. Finally, a lot of the behind the scenes stuff, you know, our admin and technology, it is 2017 and there is a lot less paper we can handle. Were working on electronic document review and working on people having appointments to submit plans electronically. And look at the way we use the internet to reach people in the most effective way that we can. Very brief overview, but i hope it gives you the high lights of how were talking about this with staff and how were categorizing and looking for the details to emerge. In closing, so, yeah, then what do we do about all this, right . What is the implementation here . Well, the executive directive is in effect as of september. But obviously we havent yet changed our procedures in a way that would help us to achieve those timeframes. The first thing, i think on the list, is going to be adjusting our application procedures so that we can get all projects that are coming in the door on these timeframes and know that weve changed the way that were going to handle them internally in a way that will make it realistic to meet that goal. There is going to be a lot of things in this plan that well try to do immediately. At kind of the staff level, the internal level. Some things that people are really, really down in the weeds. But it is going to need to evolve over time. So to kind of help us keep track of that, making this a living plan and making it where on some regular basis, we are reporting either planning to the mayors office, here at the commission, from planning staff, what did we just do in the last few months . How is it working to the extend that we know what is on our list right now, what are some of things you heard about what weve changed. We want to keep the conversation going because you have to keep asking yourself are you doing things the right way. It is not just like a thing well do and walk away and move on with our lives. I have three buckets you may be asking yourselfs, are you just going to go do this or is there a process for the process for the process . Of course theres process. Thats what we do, right . It depends on what it is were talking about. If it is something where it is a commission policy, which is i dont think a large part of that universe, obviously well be here and talking to you. You will be making a resolution and talk about changing that policy. If there are departmental policies like application procedures, for example, we have documents like director bullet the incident and information on our website, the information in ourself information packets themselves that we can simply do and that is going toable the Public Record for how people understand what were doing and we can use our directors reports here at the Planning Commission and other ways it goes on our website. Those are things that we can do internally and well be publishing those as we get put together. Finally, certain things involve changing the planning code, so whether it is initiated here or at the board of supervisors, it will be coming back here. So, nothing is going to happen tomorrow. We have plenty of opportunities to talk about the various specifics depending on the level of change that is being contemplated. I wanted to give you a little bit of a flavor for that. And also i want to just thank our Planning Department staff, my colleagues. This is just a list of a few of the people who have been very instrumental to helping. You guys have a really talented high Caliber Group of people work on the city. And it haable a real privilege to work with everybody to see what weve all learned checkively. With that, i think we have Public Comment and i look forward to discussing with you all further. Great. Thank you. We have a couple of speak cards. If others would like to speak, please line up on the screen side of the room. You can speak in any order. Good afternoon, commissioners. And everyone else. My name is christopher roche. As a firm, ill note that we work on both affordable multifamily projects and smaller Single Family or, you know, one to threeunit promises that are part of the Family Housing here in the city. Im speaking today as a private citizen and group as a member of concerned architects called the Design Advocacy Group San Francisco. Im also an active member of the niasf, although my comments dont reflect their position or views. Please note that the members have met to discuss and align our opinion on both the mayors executive director that were discussing today as well as the residential expansion threshhold which has been mentioned and is calendared for later in december. Ahem. Regarding the mayors directive, we agree with and fully support the mayor in his efforts to expedite production of more housing city that is affordable to more San Franciscoans by accelerating the approval process through the planning domestic. Therefore we want to support the Planning Department in these efforts and as Design Professionals that work closely with Planning Department staff every day, we believe we are uniquely positioned to help find creative and effective ways to help lighten their loads so that they can focus on their efforts on the higher goals that the mayor has mandated. And were really here today to speak specifically to an item that jacob brought up in their plan, which is things that should be routine. And over the counter. I think most of us in the Design Community have long recognized that the current Planning Department process is too long, too divisive and two graphic with many projects. Its continually bogged down with items that are routine. They are items that should not be up to discretion. Therefore we offer the following suggestions and examples of some of the items, and just some, that should be more routine or make the process more predictable and take the load off of planning staff. One of suggestions is under the cat gour of intel, and which used to be over the counter. We want to ask for a wider reach insel items without neighborhood notification. They could include insel under decks, adding garages and all rooms under within the r. E. T. Threshholds. Rebuilding existing features 100 . Not just 50 . Section 181 of the planning code indicates you can rebuild an existing feature without notification up to 50 . Over 50 , you immediate to notify the neighbors. Rear additions that are one or two stories high with one or fivefoot setbacks either side. These are all items that could be approved over the counter. The second item were asking for is that we ask the Planning Commission to rewrite the definition of gross Square Footage so that basements and garage spaces are not counted as growth Square Footage this. Will allow people to capture equity within the foot print of their buildings as a right, without having to go through the neighborhood notification or lengthy planning process. This will serve to incentivize homeowners to perform a full seismic upgrade of their foundations, which is often prohibitively expensive and incredibly disruptive. By off setting these costs with the value that theyre able to capture through adding or improving space below grade that has no direct impact to the neighborhood context, it serves the general Public Interest and the citys goal of maintaining a resilient Housing Stock for the multitude of aginging residences to undergo the seismic upgrades and only and the only way it is going to happen at a significant scale and within reasonable timeline is to subsidize the cost through the value capture. The outcome will be a winwin for both homeowners and the city. Im karen pacon. Karen pacon architecture and design. To continue with her point about gross Square Footage, the current definition of gross Square Footage will capture many minor projects that would be done within the building envelope and send them to the commission. This would be triggered by most parking and roomdown projects on sloped lots that are compelling, minor and major excavations to include legal head height. Excluding these will help the commission avoid hearing projects that propose the addition of parking and a single room within an existing building foot print. And also help planning avoid triggering many months, if not years of process and huge fees for such simple projects that do not change scale, mapping or the relative affordability of existing homes. Our goal, as members of the San Francisco chapter of the a. I. A. And concerned architects promoting progressive urbanism and design is to support, collaborate with and serve as a resource for a strong planning domestic. We look to them for their expertise and leadership. Leadership which is often bogged down in the review of mundane issues that impact the broader neighborhood, that really dont impact the broader neighborhood or the city at large. Freeing the department from these small, what should be as of right issues, will in fact not only unclog the pipeline for review, but lead it to more thoughtful and substantial review of larger issues that affect our city and in which the department should be taking a leadership position on. The signatories to this statement that the three of us have just read include neil schwartz, a. I. A. , schwartz and architecture. David gast, a. I. A. , gast architects. Michael robbins, a. I. A. , studio robbins cortina. Jennifer jones, aiasf executive director. Michelle krebull, lundberg design. Ross levy, a. I. A. , levy art and architecture. Lou agorziak. Karen pacon, myself, member of the a. I. A. Jim zack, a. I. A. Mada abernathy. Joshua aidlan, aidlan darling design. Christopher roche, who you just met, a. I. A. , studio vera. And there are more names, but ive run out of time. There are 35 all together who have signed this letter. Thank you. [please stand by] its really valuable in terms of gaining efficiency. What did staff think about our org chart . What is it that we are doing together. I bet were doing things better, faster, more efficiently than doing trainings of people or retrainings or doing things or asking this person rather than that person. I didnt hear about how to get people prepared for Technology Improvements or how to train them. There is some technology that helps people and some that gets in the way. And people have opinions about that and those are valuable. Im wondering if you could talk a little bit about the people part. I think your points are very well taken, commissioner. We dont talk much about that side of the work of the department. We have a fulltime professional training coordinator in the department that coordinates all kinds of training for the department. We can have her come and maybe it would be useful. Im not sure you have met her. Staff has had a number of issues. Weve had a number of formal and informal conversations and they brought up issues around the lack of Human Resource aspect of the work. It crosses a line. Some of the suggestions have been. Can we stop on piddly administrative stuff that gets in our way. There are a lot of systems that tend to take time that are not about doing our actual work. I will put that out there. I think people are all aware of that. And then there are a lot of things that are that also get in our way that are kind of more soft stuff. The supervisory stuff. And weve been talking about some of the issues and im happy to share them as we go forward. But your point is well taken. My fear is that is just it adds stress. So you put in a sixmonth deadline, but you dont train people or empower them or still have a supervisory structure that doesnt work. It puts more staff stress and i fear that. Public service do gods work, i think. Theres an entitlement out there saying, you do it. Youre getting paid. And thats not the case. I appreciate you saying this. This is a staff thats really dedicated. They really are. And i think its important for us to say that. And i think its also important to say that some staff had a challenging time when they read this directive because they felt like it was putting pressure on them and pointing fingers on them as being the bad guys. And i can understand that. I also think that we all have the same goal here of trying to trying not only to produce more housing, but in a more efficient way. I perceive this and what i said to staff, i think this is an opportunity for us to think differently about how we do our work. We dont, frankly, get this opportunity very often. I think it is incumbent upon all of us that we are given this opportunity to look at it differently and see how we can do our work better. Our goal here, and jacob can say more about this, is to engage all the staff in this process in getting them engaged in how we do our work differently. And i guess i would add to that, yes, lots of ideas and they come up, but there are the things a lot of this is not about moral and staff time and the extent that we have our planning staff doing planning work, grappling with the real issues, using our creativity and feeling like you are bogged down by doing something that maybe its not the best way to do it or wrote or out of date. Im hearing that moral feeling. A lot of the stuff that were doing is not about that aspect of it, but by making it so were not sweating the small stuff as much and leaving more room for planners to do planning, you will have better planning. Commissioner richards . Commissioner richards so i met with dan over a couple of sour beers. We spent a couple of hours talking about it. I have certification and some quality things from my past and my professional life, functional deployment and i used to work at h. P. And we would go into organizations and finance and they would hire performing teams. A lot of the stuff here im looking at the eyes and even though were not talking about something granular, now that i have something on paper and i heard your presentation, i want to comment on it. The first thing is, i completely support revocation hearings. I dont think that the fact that we can speed up everything and get it out the door and it reminds me for when i used to work for kodak and people would run in and say, i have to develop this right now. And then you see its christmas pictures. Why did it take you that long to develop this but you need it now . Those are the jokes we used to have. One of the questions we used to ask at h. P. How do we know where we want to go when we dont know where were really at. And after hearing the presentation, that really hits me. And the reason is not because any of this is bad, but i think when i looked at the page here under process improvements, product entitlements. I started to say, a, is what we want to do, b, how we want to do. And c, how we want to do. D, what we want to do and its a mish mash of thoughts, all good thoughts. Theres an organization of 300 people. Some people do the work. Some support i. T. Function, they support everybody. So one of the things that we always came up with when we went into organizations was, people assume that if you work 40 hours a week you work 40 hours a week. Its really not the case because people have vacations. People have bio breaks. They read general emails, and you come down to 60 of the hours were direct work and 40 werent. So if you think you have 2,080 hours per person, its not. Its roughly half of that. Is your staffing correct . If they still cant do it in a humanly possible way, its still not going to get done. So staffing and workload are important. That has tos figured out once you pare this back. What is somebody capable of doing the right way . And then ability in education. There are people that may not have the ability to do the functions we want them to do or they need more training. One of the things about training is, just because you give it, doesnt mean they get it. I was involved in organizations and studies where we train 10 people. Give them a test and 8 people understood it, 1 thought it was different and the other was different, and the error rates was the 1 and the 1. You have to understand that it sunk in. The environmental. Blah, blah, blah. The whole process and understand what the organizational structure is. One of the big ones i hear is coverage. So and so is on vacation for two weeks, its a complicated project, so coverage is an issue that i hear about a lot. Because its everybody is so specialize ofiz iized on what w. Process, what do we do and how do we do it . We talked about demo calcs and we had a 40 error rate. So these are the questions that you come up with, especially on complicated things. Is there a mentor who people should be able to go to who knows about this. And we have to understand on these Different Things that you have institutional knowledge. If you dont write things down and so and so leaves the department and they were the expert, you will have a big gap. Cycle times. I hear a lot about cycle times. I call a developer. Developer sends this in. So you have these cycle times. It seems like you are in a loop until you get off the merrygoround and are standing on the ground. I think theres a lot there. Error rates. What are we trying to do . How much is an error . What is an error . An error is something that you knock somebody over the head with it and to get improvement. In your process, what are we trying to measure . How much of that is in and outofbounds. How much of this could be automated. I went on the Small Business portal and i started up because i started my only little business. Blip, blip. Five screens. Pay your fee. Put my credit card in, established business. Is this San Francisco . I expected to have to come down to city hall and wait in line and fill it all out and tell them i was wrong. So there has to be some level of automation as well. And i think once we understand what we do, mapping it out, how many people do it, and the lens of what they spend, what is the percent of effort and what is the benefit . If you rate the process, its what you want to say, probably not worth doing. Why am i doing this. Those are the ones that you cross off the list right away. I think that theres we have a goal. How are we setting ourselves up to get to this goal . I think to everybodys point, this isnt a stressinducing exercise where we have to get there in six months and jam this peg in this hole and peg in this hole. What is the plan to get to, the ability to do the 6, 9, 12, 22 month thing. What changes do we need to make. And what are the changes that were seeing and learning and how does that reiterate and make more changes. They will be discovering things along the way that will generate more questions and more changes. It will get you to your goal and will have a roadmap. You can get people to buy in when they see that you have a plan, rather than punching in the dark. Well go hit e. I. R. S. Well hit d. R. S. How much of the time do people spend on it, 50 . If its 50 , hell, yeah, we need to march off and change d. R. S. Once we start making things efficient, if some person over here does a job and they dont have as much to do, could we put them over here . Its a plan person. I dont know how all of this works, but you can improve things to the point where one group is efficient and one group is struggling and you cannot repatriate those employees to help out. A lot of good stuff here. I would love to sit down with you folks on a lot of the stuff that i said, but you have a big deadline here. You have talented staff. Everybody wants to do well, but with some deep thought on how you get there, i think we can do it. Thanks. Commissioner moore . Commissioner moore thank you. This should be a slightly longer, more thoughtful discussion. Were cramming this in to help you on december 1. I hope that between today and december 1, we can have another discussion, including those comments made by the a. I. A. I believe were all trying to weigh in. It touches each of us and in a certain way, we feel a certain amount of responsibility. As commissioners, i know we feel the responsibility to do right for the government. I took reading of this directive positively, but also troubled by the extent of taking 40 years and coming to the intersection of potential policy failure and challenge the process. What is happening and what is numerically being accounted for is not the result of the last two, three, four years of the Planning Department and 40 years of doing things differently. We need to step back and take the responsibility we can. Use the tools and skilsz that are honed into problem solving of today and move forward without being burdened by too much expectation, which we may not be able to deliver and perform by december 1, but lets engage in processes that are more efficient and more co comeparable to each other. Eight departments need to speak to each other and interact. The city of San Francisco is different than any other cities in california. Its that of more collaborative thinking. San francisco departments has worked as more individual departments, which is called silo thinking. Im not using that word, but its a wellknown criticism of the way that the city has worked in the past. Its particularly a critical intersection, where we as commissioners, and i will be honest about this, where we find each other in a situation where we together discover omissions or things that were skipping ahead because of the information flow between the two departments was not where it should be. And weve struggled with the interstate of technology and that went back to square one. Its part of history, but also an overlay by people when development and pressure comes to a point of where it is now. Are we realizing there are things that are inkocongress incongruent and caused delays. And, and, and. That said, i want to focus on the positive point of the message of the message and thats for the departments to work together. And i want to use examples from other cities in california, where there is in the initial intake a onestop shopping, so to speak, where people from different departments or representatives sit in the meeting when a project comes in and comment on certain issues that will be part of their judgment or ultimately along the line part of how a project moves forward. This is just like im being very vague, but i think that the director and staff knows what im talking about. It could be broader technical input informing each other about what is coming down the line. And there are certain projects where its more important and others for different departments coming into play, etc. , etc. For example, we had a just recently, we had a d. R. , which came back five or six times, near a gas line and Fire Department and water and this and that and everything. And if that would have been discussed day one on, we wouldnt have had months and months and months of this project cycling back and forth. Im making a characture. You nope know what project it is. Sometimes it sets a baseline as to how the project is set up. I think im seeing enough here. I would like to find other avenues and there are other avenues of how we constructively can support the departments work and be faster and i will leave it at that. Thank you. Commissioner johnson . Commissioner johnson thank you. I think to have something more holistically for more of the work that we see, which is why there are so many delays after things get out of planning, we would need to see the strategies that would require what the director talks about, which is dedicated staff to doing this. Right now, you look at the Fire Department as an example, who they may have comments on str t streets or things like that and they dont have a person whose job is to do this. They struggle to staff the Inter Agency Groups and make sure that theyre doing things in a timely fashion, because its not their mission. Theyre the Fire Department. They fight fires. I think some of that collaboration that theyre speaking of will hopefully come as a strategy from the other agencies. Beyond that, when you give up to the policy level, like what do our codes look like, which is where this flows from, i continue to agree in pushing for more collaboration from the top. The plan is really a plan for how to move forward. Its not a, this is how were changing our life and moving on. There will be a number of things in the plan that will require a lot of followup, commission policies, things that you will be hearing about. The second thing i mentioned, the new building, which is under construction, will have a physical onestop shop for all departments involved in the permitting process. There are like 100 stations in that place on the second floor, second floor of that building is Something Like 37,000 square feet. Its a huge, onestop shop for all city departments, which will be extremely helpful. And that doesnt do everything that you talked about, because we have to make it work. The fact that were all in one place will really help. And i cant help but comment on the notion that its been many decades. As several people have said, its not likely going to be our recommendation that we change things so they dont come to commission. I dont think we propose that, but d. R. S go back to the 50s. The mechanism of discretionary review goes back to the 50s, when it was the only way to come to commission. So it preindicates seqa, 309, and all the other processes that you do. D. R. Was the way of getting to commission at one point. So it really it goes back 70 years. So its, i think while its very important for some folks to come to commission, we will not be proposing that they can no longer come to you, but per other commissioners comments, its worth looking at how we do it. How with we do the d. R. Process. Any other comments . Thank you. I agree with the director. Its not just a plan you implement. Its an ongoing process. I think the city having worked there and in processoriented departments, you cannot just develop a plan and implement. Its constantly ongoing as processes change. So im glad were looking at it and not necessarily a defensive posture. Were part of the issues, too, and we can look at how we do things better and its been 2 hours and 15 minutes and all weve really approved is a sushi bar at whole foods. So theres probably
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.