Thank you so much for all your help. Thank you for so much for all your help, everyone. Hi, how are you . Good afternoon. The meeting will come to order. Welcome to the thursday, december 11th special meeting of government audit and oversight committee. I am the chair. I am joined by Committee Members supervisor peskin. Thank you to the committees clerk. I would also like to thank jim smith and matt at sfgovtv for staffing this meeting. Do you have any announcements . Thank you. Please ensure you have silenced your cell phones. Your speaker cards should be submitted to the clerk. Items today will appear on the december 17th agenda unless otherwise stated. Do i have a motion to excuse supervisor brown. So moved. Thank you. Mr. Clerk please call item two. Resolution authorizing the Planning Department to confirm existing and create new and resized designtions of Priority Production areas by the association of bay area governments and the metropolitan Transportation Commission as part of the planned bay area 50 update. Thank you. I am proud to expand this citywide alongside supervisor fewer. It is important for San Francisco to plan for our own future to pro actively say where we want more housing and to plan for increased housing density alongside improvements to Public Transit and important in. Structure. We must do this with the input and support of the community. We continued from last week for further clarifications about the implications for pdas. Since the last Committee Meeting i met with the principal planner at the association of bay area governments leading the pda program. One issue the public brought up was how pda boundaries would be misused as a target for private development. He relayed to me pdas only make cities eligible for Additional Resources and funding and are not tied to production goals. If a pda receives planning funds, the Community Gets to decide the specific boundaries of the plan area and not bound by the pda maimed. Cities can remove pdas. The reason the public raised was how they could inflate goals for housing development. He described how there are statutory requirements for the method and pdas are not among the requirements. That said, there are underlying factors such as proximity to transit that are related to both pda and the goals. They are not directly linked nor are influenced by each other. As the sitting member of the executive board i help oversee the committee and nominated the council of Committee Housing organizations to serve on the committee. By another meeting with the staff reaffirmed my believe pdas will play a positive rolls to expand Affordable Housing throughout our city. This past year we laid the groundwork for this work in my district by securing new funding for the west side planner and Needs Assessment and plan to build a Nonprofit Organization focused on developing Affordable Housing on the west side. I am meeting with Planning Department staff biweekly, and i am excited to launch the Planning Initiative next year. We are proactive and arecious about planning and development. We need resources. As i advocate for city funds, regional and state funding will be able to access through the expanded pda designation to expedite the planning goals. Pdas unlocked tens of millions of dollars in planning, capital and transportation funds for the city. I look forward to making this available citywide to all districts. I hoped to pass this out of Committee Last week. We continued it to today to allow for additional input and feedback from the public. Given the very limited outreach by the Planning Department and plaque of Community Process there continues to be misinformation and rumors about Priority Development areas. With sb50 on the horizon my constituents are rightfully concerned. I want to address those. I will make a motion to pass this resolution out of committee today to be scheduled at the full board for january 14th rather than next week. In the period between now and january 14th, i would urge the Planning Department to work with the offices of the supervisors whose districts include the new proposed pdas, that is districts, 1, 2, 4, 7 to provide clear information to the public about pdas and solicit feedback before a vote at the full board. Joshua is here today to answer questions. Mr. Switsky. Is this something the Planning Department can commit to to engage in more Community Outreach before the january 14th board vote . Good afternoon, yes, supervisor, mar, i would be happy to engage with the supervisors you mentioned and those interested and attends meetings and engage with any constituents that have questions to discuss this further. Great. Thank you. Supervisor peskin, do you have anything . I have no comments i did not make last week. Why dont we go to Public Comment on this item. I do have speaker cards. Are these the only cards or were there others . I have cards for agenda item one and two. These are for agenda item two. You can just come up. Speakers have two minutes please state your first and last name clearly. I will read the names of the cards i have. If you you could line up on your right side of the room. Anyone who hasnt turned in a card is welcome to speak. Please get in line. Eileen boken and californiarin e howard. Eileen boken here on my own behalf. On the overhead is the distribution of modified and proposed pdas for the bay area. It shows a high concentration in San Francisco. From the same meeting, there is a slide showing 44 of the land area within existing pdas is at risk of gentrification or displace meant by the uc berkeley displacement project. This is consistent with what is happening in the mission. According to the documents the pda process began with letters of interest for designation which were submitted in september. The time to begin Community Process should have been before the letter of interest was submitted. Who submitted the letter of interest and what was the content . A letter of confirmation may have been submitted in september. If so, this would be a commitment to complete the pda plans by 2025. There would no locker be the option for longer be the option for the symbolic pda. Was the letter submitted . What was the content. When it was under taken by the gang of four, did anything of these four agencies have the Community Process during this phase . Not that im aware of. Presentations were made by planning after the facto a few community organizations. Planning was out of the loop through most of the process. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. Thank you for postponing any vote until we have had the opportunity to learn about and give input during the robust public process. After all of this is for planned bay area 2050. What is the rush . How can weeks or months matter. We are deciding the future of the city. At the meetings i hope the public can ask questions directly to the Planning Department. Why should San Francisco establish more pdas . How are they arrived at . What are the im li the implications e state legislation that is supporting market rate development. Although these areas for for planning purposes, the outcome has been very different. According to m. T. C. , the planning documents the Program ProvidesFinancial Support for planning processes seeking to intensify land uses and supports plans for the greatest potential for land use zoning and policy changes leading to new development. In na San Francisco there is moe intensification of development. I have watched neighborhoods riverich in diversity and charar crushed. I am very concerned that pdas are furthering this process and finishing off the neighborhoods left. Planning can be done without signing to the process. Lets find out what is in the pill before swallowing it. Next speaker. I am erica. I am a long term resident of the sun set. I have two worries about the pdas. One is that they were designated with no Community Input and by the Planning Department. I dont know. That worries me. More importantly, i also engaged a number of years ago now supervisor peskin in the waterfront campaign. I think it is dangerous. I wonder if there is a way with the short comings or the unknowns about the pdas if they could step back from the ocean on both the richmond and the have their say on the waterfront. As the chair said the voters continue to rule. Next speaker. Georgia. I live in d8. I look at at the map to try to understand. The thing that disturbed me was the example from my neighborhood. The pdas expanding up from church to noe. A lot of those blocks are up on the hill, a lot of those blocks have seen very expensive Single Family homes put in, no demolition control because people are alltering homes to make monster roams. It looked like sb50. It was expanding from Church Street past sanchez, then up to noe. I think that is a concerning thing. I hope that d8 supervisor mandelman will look at that and d8 people will be on top of it. It is one piece of it. I think it is indicative of the issues that make people very concerned about the new pda expansion. Thank you. Next speaker. Thank you, chairman mar. I am Caroline Kennedy, chair of the improvement club. Like other speakers, i worry about the impact of sb350 and 50 on the proposed pdas. I was delighted to hear you are delaying the vote to january 14th. What we need to know is what will seentor wieners next senator wieners next version impose and how might that impact communitybased planning . How will the pdas work . Will they enable them as you outlined . That is my hope, too, or will they be hamstrung by requirements that bar the most effective elements of communitybased planning. San francisco planning Impact Analysis will be out soon. I am hoping we can see that as well when you make these decisions. My read of the law it blows up the current planning processes and mandates some steps that specifically sb330 limits local Agency Approvals to objective standards which appears to eliminate discretionary processes Like Community planning or input or discretionary review. It imposes limit of five public hearings on any housing development. This could curtail planning. It allows demolition with replacement units at market rate rents. Please wait to finalize both the pdas and the San Francisco proposed amendments to sb50 until we get more information on these elements. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon. I guess i agree with most of the speakers so far. I just want to add the element of money that you actually mentioned. Money. Where is it coming from . Pdas getting more money from taxpayers. Taxpayers already have problems dealing with living in a very expensive city. You have bonds you want people to pass and where is this money coming from . It seems like we are raising public debt, public expectations of more, more, more and asking a lot of the public that basically has less and less money to spend on what they need. Right now we have an affordability crisis, affordability gap. How is raising more taxes and raising more expectations of spending more money that we dont have a good idea in todays economic climate . And todays Political Climate . Thank you. Next speaker. I am lower rain petty from district 5. I am a member of senior and disability action, also a member of the San Francisco te tenants union. I am concerned about the public process, about i have been to many town halls and Public Forums run by the Planning Department. A lot of other people, and i find there is only a limited circle of residents that actually end up knowing the meeting is even going on. I would suggest as a public process for the pdas that the town hall be run in each of the districts jointly organized and run by the District Supervisor in conjunction with neighborhood organizations. That will spread the word a lot faster and get more people there. This is a big concern of mine that we do these planning and zoning things with very little public input and very little understanding on the part of the public. I ask you to give serious consideration to how these Public Meetings might be held and who is going to help. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else that would like to speak on this item . Public comment is closed. Thanks to everyone that has shared your perspectives on this resolution to expand pdas in San Francisco. I want to ask the Planning Department to respond to a few of the points that were raised in Public Comment. First of all, i think the concerns around the inadequate sort of Public Notice and public process around this proposal to ban the pdas, i am proposing the board take the vote on this instead of at the december 17th meeting, at the january 14th board of supervisors meeting to allow time for more notice and public input. Mr. Switz ski has committed to working to ensure that you know there is opportunity for the constituents to be able to understand the implications and to weigh in. There were questions raised about the expanded pdas and how they might interface with the housing bills that are pending in the state, particularly sb50 and sb330. Could you respond to that . Sure. I would be happy to. Like we discussed at the last committee hearing, there is no correlation or connection between sb50 as it was previously drafted, and i would expect as it is drafted in the future and the pdas. That is a voluntary framework for funding purposes. It doesnt relate to zoning or development specifically. I would be very surprised or i would say shocked if there was any connection in the future of the bill considering there is a rather uneven voluntary offering of pdas in jurisdictions around the bay area. Given the purpose of sb50, i would be surprised if they used that for any purpose whatsoever in the bill. As it relates to sb330 again. Because the pdas dont implement any zoning changes whatsoever and dont change any underlying zoning, it would have no direct correlation between did implications of sb330 and what actually happens. Pda is an abstract framework used for funding. There was a question about the source of the funding or resources the city would be able to access through the pda and expanded pda designation. Maybe you could talk about that. I am not an expert on the funding available. My understanding it is mostly transportation funding from the state or federal government. The region distributes around for various purposes. There is a certain amount of that honey at th o of that money and they are using that for the planning activities around the region. Thank you so much. Again, maybe moving forward, can we send this item with positive recommendation to the january 14th, 2020 meeting of the full board without objection . I will not object. I want to concur with staff from the Planning Department that there is a difference between pdas and senate bill 50. I realize those things may beacon plated in the minds of some of my friends from the public, but i dont have any problem with the pda legislation item 2. As to item 1, i want to thank supervisor mar who picked up where i left off. I realize that there is a stream of thought that this should be opposed at all costs rather than doing what supervisor mar and other folks are suggesting, which is to oppose unless amended. I think that is the right tactic and strategy. I will concur with the motion or make the motion that supervisor mar has requested. That is item two. I hear a motion on item two to recommend to the january 14th, 2020 board meeting. That gives the Planning Department plenty of time to do more outreach. Mr. Clerk, please call item one. Sorry. I spoke to item one. It is a resolution. Opposing California State Senate bill number 50 offered by senator scott weiner unless further amended. Thank you, mr. Clerk. Just an update on this item. Since we made amendments to the resolution opposing sb50 last week, i sent a letter to state senator wiener included in the Public Record for this file asking we Work Together to address the concerns of his bill and to meet the needs of San Francisco. Senator wiener did not apply but issued a statement encouraging me to focus on Housing Solutions in my district and elsewhere instead of introducing another nonbinding resolution. To be clear i did not introduce another resolution last week. I amended the prior resolution which was duplicated by supervisor brown to clarify the changes to sb50 we would need to see to support it. As we work with our state legislation to addressness concerns with state law, we are laser focused on expanding Affordable Housing opportunities in San Francisco. In my first year in office we have made historic investments in west side planning for Affordable Housing including funding nonprofit staff in d4, Needs Assessment including Affordable Housing needs, working with president yee for a website planner in the Planning Department. 300,000 from state funds for west side Affordable Housing capacity building. I released the first ever jobs housing fit report and passed resolution for this annually, passed a 600,000 bond for Affordable Housing. We passed proposition e to rezone land for affordable anded you you indicator housing. I am strongly supporting the first ever educator Housing Project in the city. Thanks to prop e, the teachers and paraeducators will be able to move in new homes sooner and the first ever small sites acquisition and program for edu construction and expansion. I am actively identifying sites for affordable development. I am sponsoring the item we just heard to expand pdas on the west side. One important tool to continue the work that centers the people in the community. Yes, we have to build more housing on the west side, and in coming into this role i inherited cumulative housing balance negative 260. 7 in my district over the last decade. We lost more affordable units than we created. I am working every day to turn the tide in the communities i represent and meet their needs. We cannot let state land use intervention mandates blockade Community Planning efforts. As a city, we need to demonstrate concerns about this bills impacts on gentrification, displacement and ability to decide for ourselves what is needed in our community. Supervisor peskin do you have anything. No, i put items two and one together and gave words to both of them because members of the public were testifying on both. I will keep my mind open as you call for Public Comment on item one. Why dont we do that. Any members of the public that wish to speak on this item . I have speaker cards. Mary, georgia, eileen, Catherine Howard and Caroline Kennedy and susan marsh. Thank you, supervisor. I am georgia. Could i have the overhead, please. One of the issues that troubles me about the sb50 is that it talks about climate change. This is a yard that no longer exists, and what is happening a lot is the yards are being turned into this. This is the same yard. That is fake grass. Here is another example. You can see the surrounding yards have all kinds of growth. Here is another example. They are taking out the growth and soil which captures carbon. We are losing that. With the full lot excavations, we are losing our trees. I know the trees and canopy in the city is a concern to the board of supervisors. I think that the sb50 proposal seems to be a greater extension of what we have had here. The other things the city needs to do that sb50 doesnt is okay you pan see study to understand who is living where. How much is this market rate housing being occupied . Are we reaching maximum . The entitlements. You know about that. There is a pipeline. The city is densifying and the rh beyond discretionary review. A. D. U. S is another way to dense fi. That is within the current zoning. The city could set a policy to encourage the return of units to the market like the twitter tax. Preserving the yards captures carbon. Design smaller units. Dont have big homes. Have smaller flats, not big kitchens, efficient, design a space and have a demolition policy. Next speaker, please. Eileen coalition for San Francisco neighborhoods on my own behalf. Hearing strong opposition to sb50 i would like to thank supervisor mar for his leadership and supervisors yee and fewer for the willingness to meet with the bills author. Be skeptical of carve outs currently in a sb50. They have been used to buy off opposition. This is a strategy. I would therefore urge the supervisors not to believe carve outs are a viable option. It is a red flag that the bills author is unwilling to divulges the amendments being considered. Should the sb50 amendments introducerd in january fail to meet the supervisors goals i would urge the goal to change from opposing less amended to outright oppose. Thank you. Next speaker. Mary lisa. What i want to do is just make a point that was made by Dennis Richards at the Planning Commission the other day. He asked the legal aid or legal team for some kind of idea about where the bills that are currently enacted stand. What does 330 mean, what does 35 mean . How are these bills coming together . At what state are we at in terms of all of the appeals . There was no answer. I am hearing this a lot. I watched the land use Committee Meeting and saw the same thing. I saw the supervisors asking questions that went unanswered. That is because they really dont know what effects we have already had on situations with housing, traffic, afford built, all of that. Nobody knows the answer. It seems fruitless or it seems weird for us to continue going in this same direction, spending more money, asking more and more of the landowners, taxpayers, Small Businesses to take on more and more for what . When we get no results that it is positive that we can see. Can we point ourselves to one situation that has been improved so far by all of this dentification . I havent seen any. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Erica. I oppose sb50, but i do appreciate all of the amendments added. I think that if those amendments were there, it is still dispickcable in a way because it is the state telling us what to do and it is our elected official that has taken our voice away, scott weiner. Not only scott weiner but our two other elected in the state support taking away the voice of the local people, which i think is to the extreme. The continued refusal to dialogue with what is going on with his own constituents. I want to get that on record. It is not acceptable. Everybody needs to be aware of what is going on with our elected state officials. But i think i am very pleased with our board of supervisors. Thank you very much. Next speaker. Catherine howard. With all due respect and appreciation of the work done, i still recommend we oppose sb50 outright. If San Francisco supports sb50 with amendments we are accepting the basic premise that the state should dictate our housing, zoning and land use. We must develop our own parameters for Affordable Housing in the community. Senator wiener is crafting amendments. They will not be shared. Why arent they more transparent. Until we know the exact amendments we should not support it until we know how it interacts with sb330 and the housing accountability act and until we know how it interacts with state legislation that has been passed with a purpose of attacking the cohesiveness of our local communities and opening up to rampant real estate speculation, we should not support sb50. We are not alone. Support is crumbling. Los angeles will not accept carve outs for sb50. Craft trade unions may withdraw support from sb50. Furthermore, according to the principles for dell cattic democratic principals they let people speak for themselves. On the other hand senator wiener is building his own wall since he arrived in the senate between local communities and right to selfdetermination. I recommend we oppose sb50 at this time and we uphold the communitybased planning process to results in an increase in low income and Affordable Housing, preservation of family neighborhoods and healthy and livable environment for everyone. Thank you. Good afternoon. I am susan marsh. Last week i said while we oppose sb50 and do not believe it will be fixed. We urge passage of this resolution as written. I should touch today on one robe we believe it will not be fixed that is because if you look at the way in which it is structured and the lack of any meaningful tenant protections, it is very clear the goal and purpose of the legislation is to promote massive get fiction and displace gentrification. The protections are not meaningful with all due respect to the Northern CaliforniaNonprofit Housing Association as the journalists who site them as authorities, as people who defined tenants every day, we are absolutely persuaded these protections cannot be enforced without an administrative body and without Public Records. That is just one of many reasons why we oppose this bill. Again, we thank you for your efforts and we urge passage of this resolution. Thank you. Caroline kennedy. Like supervisor peskin, i put sb50 in item two. I want to reiterate this bill sb50 is an over reach with a huge negative impact on our city. It is the incentives to give value to developers without any additional inclusionary housing or incentives to build Affordable Housing we so desperately need in San Francisco and the bay area. It also increases density without funding for investment in infrastructure to address transit and s. F. M. T. A. To need 22 billion of which we only have 1 billion for our rebuild that is needed for 2040. Given senator wieners rebuff to you, supervisor mar, and given how horrible this bill is in the present form, please wait to determine if amendments are useful until senator wean nor brings forward his revised bill 50. I am not sure you can put lipstick on this pig. We need a strong voice in the legislative process after we review the latest sb50 changes. Thank you again for your time today. Thank you. Anyone else that would like to speak on this item . Please step forward. Jeffrey. I have an opportunity to do this. I would like to second the position of the person that was utterly opposed to the carve outs. It is another example of the kind of tactics that scott weiner is using to get the bill passed. It is just wrong. And to ask if you could consider like you did with the pdas, consider delaying the passage. I am in favor of what you are doing. I applaud the work you are doing, but i think it would be good to see what our friend scott weiner comes up with on january 6th. Then make a decision whether or not we need an additional amendment to our opposition to it unless it is included. If they are going to put it on some of us, they need it on all of us. The idea to get all of those votes is just wrong. Any other members of the public to speak on this item . Seeing none. Public comment is closed. Thanks again everyone for sharing your perspectives on this contentious and polarizing issue that has so much potential impact on our city and neighborhoods and quality of life. Thanks to the many others who werent able to speak today that have shared their perspectives from those placing displacement in the city that have concerns about the gentrification. I just responding to the points around be the timing of us moving forward with the second resolution in relation to waiting to see what amendment senator wiener may make in january. Since he was unwilling to speak openly with any of us about the amendments he is considering in any detail, my colleagues and i did feel it was important for us as board of supervisors to move ahead and be clear about what the amendments that we would like to see in the next version of sb50 to remove the opposition from the city and county of San Francisco, let alone considering supporting the bill. That is why we are moving ahead with this second resolution to specify those changes in sb50 that are needed to ensure that it is not going to have such a negative impact on the city in so many ways. With the hope that this will help senator wiener in his final decisions on the amendmentses he is going to introduce in january. Can we move this item to the full board of supervisors with positive recommendation as a Committee Report . Not until i say a few words, mr. Chairman. Let me start by saying a few things. One, having the board of supervisors of the city and county of San Francisco say to their home senator that we will oppose unless amended is a pretty big deal. The legislative process here in sacramento is dynamic. That is a place marker and this process takes place over a number of months. As one of the speakers said, i think it was georgia, we can easily at any time take off the necklace amended if it is not the unless amended. To the individuals who spoke about the carve out, which i assume is a reference to the agreement that senator mcgiant senator wiener arrived at, i completely associate myself with your comments. I actually had a conversation with the late great lawyer about whether or not we could assert our rights as a charter county in so far as this was no longer a law of general applicability in the state of california when you start carving out certain counties as a matter of a political deal with 39 colleagues. I reserve my right to petition the City Attorneys Office should this pass and the deal remains intact. This should be a law of general applicability to the state of california. I totally want to associate myself with those comments. I also want to say for the record that there is a need for legislation like this. We see this through the lens of San Francisco, and i say this as somebody who come the east side and who represents the densest district in San Francisco. I realize there is an east and west side dynamic in San Francisco. There is a need to increase density if you are ban and suburban areas in the state of california. I actually think that with the amendments proposed not only by supervisor mar but the organizations that brought these forward that we have that Public Policy conversation in a way that does not displace people, that does not lead to rampant gentrification we have seen in other areas. I am willing to have that Public Policy conversation locally and statewide. I say whether you come from chinatown or the outer sunset, yes, ms. Howard, i am picking on you. I think this is a very important conversation for the state to be an having. It is significant that the city of San Francisco is putting a marker on the table as to how we want this conversation to evolve in sacramento from the moving party who happens to be our state senator. Finally, i have a question for our deputy city attorneys. Should the senator not listen in whole or in part to the admonitions of this committee and the board of supervisors when it appears the full board of supervisors, would you consider it to be a substantive change if we took off the unless amended. Would that inquiry feral to a bd to a committee. You are suggesting if by next tuesday senator wiener says he is not interested in proposing amendments along the lines the resolution suggests you strike that non substantive amendment and you could adopt it at the board. Thank you for the advice. With that i am happy to vote for item one as i expressed when we talked about item number two. Again to repeat the motion. We are recommending this item to the full board of supervisors with positive recommendation with Committee Report. The Committee Report notion is not necessary. Regular business from today will be considered on december 17th. I will vote for sending this with recommendation not as Committee Report for hearing on 17 december, 2019. Without objection. Mr. Clerk any further business. There is no further business. We are adjourned. December 20