Transcripts For SFGTV 20240622 : vimarsana.com

SFGTV June 22, 2024

I have 12 artificial body parts, and yeah, i dont get catcalled any more because im old. But the fact of the matter is i dont ever feel unsafe Walking Around the neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Its going to be hard to keep a straight face. I am from Mission Collaborative im sorry, you always say your name so fast. What is your name . Chita. Good to see you again. You, too. Dolores Street Services and born and raised in the city, tenderloin to be specific shoutout to the supervisor. And im going briefly read a statement. Calle 24 is home to carnival San Francisco and host the cesar chavez festival d frieda kahlo festival and were the first place of latin rock are Carlos Santana and other latin bands and were the birthplace of the Mural Movement in San Francisco. We have the highest concentration of murals on 12 blocks in San Francisco. We have the highest concentration of legacy businesses on 12 blocks. These are businesses that are the anchors of 24th and have been around for more than 30 years with some goes back to the 1920s. We hold classic car shows and monthly rides to 24th and host mural tourists with International Artists et cetera. Mayor lee and all of the members of the board of supervisors have acknowledged the contributions and history of calle 24, dedicating it officially as a latino cultural district and to end the statement and add my two cents, if you want to keep families in the mission, if you want to be serious about putting forth commonsense policies and if you dont want 24th street to look like valencia street, just pass this move this item to the board of supervisors, with your recommendations. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker good afternoon, supervisors. I would like to thank supervisor campos for putting this legislation forward even though we have been on an uphill battle. Im john mendoza with calle 24. As was said almost 30 of us are nonstop working on improving and to those here who oppose us, its like where were you 20 years ago . I have been doing this for 20 years. This is kind of my lifes work. Sometimes i gets passionate about it and sometimes im wrong and sometimes im disrespectful, but this is no nonsense legislation. Thank you. Its sue hester. Im in support of this ordinance. This is really a simple ordinance. It says time out for 40 days; no mergers. It doesnt say no rents; no vacant storefronts can be rented. It only says no mergers. Mergers are not controlled by the planning code. They are overthecounter. There are zero standards for conditional uses on 24th street in the planning code. When other conditional uses have been formed it has been after a planning period. There is a 40day period here to get standards together. The Planning Department doesnt do very well by conditional uses without standards. We have had that at the Planning Commission, and its on thursday and the last hearing Planning Commission said explicitly 899 valencia needs to be broke up into three storefronts. It was intentional. And the staff ignored the Planning Commission, and they came in with a proposal to have one massive storefront. The people from valencia street, that were merchants were freaking out at the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission did the thing and said no to cmpmc and they couldnt wipe out the entire storefront of that part of very valencia street. We need specific standards for 24th street. I dont see where there is any problem at all. Thank you. Thank you. Members of the board, my name is miguel bustos. I am a member of calle 24. I am a lifelong residence for 45 years on 24th and harrison. Right in the heart of this location, where this legislation that i support is being called for. You know the conditional use permiting process doesnt address affordability or preservation and Small Business spaces with important, because Small Businesses are important. To the fabric of this city. Not only to the fabric of the mission, but to the fabric of the city. This was evident not too long ago we had the formula retail legislation that went through, which thanks for championing that, supervisor wiener. Because you understood the importance of having the character of many communities and we didnt want change here. And because of that, were able to have Small Businesses. So this is in the same spirit; that we want to preserve small spaces, so that Small Businesses could thrive. You know, we fought against the archdiocese, many of us latino and many of us catholics and saved businesses. For us, we cannot forget that some of the empty spaces that i live there, so i have counted them. Its not 19. You know, i counted three. What i did see is that allen mccarthys space was once a Small Business and he combined them to make a big space because he forced out the old tenant to do this to get higher rent and right now he is asking for 12,500 a month. So this is a latino cultural district. Its important, because people are moving in, and they forget that this is a district, a cultural district with its integrity if i may, i just wanted to ask a question. Im happy to see commissioner bustos here. What is your bigest fear as a long time residence . Thank you for asking. My biggest fear is that you have people invested, who lived there and made the best of the mission. You have us asking and begging for this. And then you have folks that just come in all of a sudden its not enough. And they act like Christopher Columbus discovering america as if no one else was there, and they want clean streets. They say they want safety, so you act like Christopher Columbus or the Second Coming of christ. For me, my biggest fear, we lose the essence of what we are as a city, by losing the essence of what we have as calle 24 as the mission. I would hope that we do the same thing for the africanamerican community. This city is losing its diversity and i hear some opponents saying we want diversity, means less of us. Thank you so much. [ applause ]. Thank you very much for your comments everyone. Thank you for coming. Are there any other members of the public that would like to speak . No. Public comment is closed. Supervisor campos, you have some brief remarks . Just briefly, madame chair, i want to thank all of the members of the public who came out and speak on all sides of this issue. I think those who have concerns about some of the things that have been proposed, i encourage them to become involved in this process. One of the problems that i have with the way in which this process has been described is the reference to calle 24th as an exclusive entity. The reality is that the board of supervisors and mayor created this council and the idea is to continue to be to include every member of this community. And the and beauty of 24th street, what makes 24th street so unique, the fact there are so many Diverse People with so many diverse views. So i encourage you to be involved. The last thing i would say, is that one of the things that one of the things that the community made very clear, that they wanted a lot more included in the interim controls. One of the things that was discussed and requested at some point was to actually have a ban on restaurants. And i appreciate that the Golden Gate Restaurant Association has come out in favor of the interim controls. Because they recognize what was proposed in the end was actually very measured, very balanced. Simply a very narrow focus on mergers, as opposed to a ban on restaurants. So it is a very balanced approach and colleagues, i ask for your support. Thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor wiener. Thank you, madame chair. I want to thank all of the members of the public who came out on both sides. This is actually we have had some rough sledding here in city hall with some of the hearings that we have had recently. And i say this what happened is exactly how Public Comment should be. People were passionate and vociferous and direct and extremely respectable to the other side and that is how the democratic process should work because that is democracy and were all entitled to be critical of each other. I do want to say the interesting thing is and i think i said this during the debate on the mission moratorium, that i think most people on both sides had the same end goal of having Affordable Housing, but i think the same is true today. I think Everyone Wants 24th street to be safe, vibrant, and diverse street. I just think there are different views on how to get there. I do want to say that i think we have heard some comments today about longterm versus newer residents, or Christopher Columbus or whatever the comments were. I heard longterm residents on both sides of this debate and a number of opponents indicated that they had lived the mission 2030 years. So i imagine there are longterm and shortterm residents on both sides of this one. Again, a goodfaith policy disagreement. Its really interesting that ive actually proposed and legislated conditional use requirements in a number of different occasions. I cosponsored legislation to subject banks to conditional use through formula retail. As i mentioned supervisor campos and i coauthored the valencia street and the residents asked us to ban restaurant and went with commercial use instead. And every time i have proposed a conditional use, there are people who take shots at me, telling me im being antibusiness. That im being too restrictive, that im being too hard on these businesses that are just trying to come in and im just going to promote vacancies, and so on and so forth. That is the case, because the conditional use is not weak. The conditional use is actually quite strong. Its a challenging process to go through. Too challenging for some Small Businesses. So its not a process that you just slide through. And i will say, and again i know most about my district, because i work on a lot of the different projects, or follow a lot of the projects moving forward. Many conditional uses have been defeats at the Planning Commission when there is opposition. I will spare you, but i could go through a list in my head of conditional uses defeated in my district and i know it has happened with other districts as well. So i dont agree with that conditional use is a weak tool, but a very strong and flexible tool. As i mentions at the begin, that a ban here is not just a strong response, but a response that will not give enough flexibility, and will have unintended consequences. I mentioned what happened with the restaurant cap, which was effectively a ban. And, in fact, supervisor campos, supervisor kim and i went through, i think, years of process around the mission alcohol controls, which were effectively a ban. And ended up having very, very negative unintended consequences about new and creative uses, including for example, the roxy theater could not sell beer or wine. And so we ended up significantly scalingback that effectively a ban and made it a more flexible thing, so it could be more casebycase, understanding there were good alcohol uses and problematic uses. I would support this if we amended this to convert the ban into a conditional use. I know what supervisor kims view is. I dont know what supervisors cohens view is on it and i will either be in the majority or i will be in the minority and then we can move forward. Thank you. Supervisor kim. Thank you, chair cohen. I just wanted to add a couple of comments to the discussion. As supervisor wiener said, i have already made clear my support for the ordinance that is moving before us today. I want to say that i do appreciate supervisor wieners points. Our office has introduced, i believe, three to four interim controls in our districts. Two were prohibitions and two, i believe were conditional use. And we have always had a lengthy conversation with our community and neighborhood about what is more appropriate, given the circumstances that we are seeing . One example i will give, in the mid market corridor, where we are seeing really fast development, of formerly Vacant Office buildings. There was a concern there was already too much formula retail and that we wanted a process to at least examine each new formula retail in that corridor as the Planning Department completed their study of formula retail controls throughout the city. Market street is a major corridor and this is a downtown corridors where we often have large footprints available for those types of businesses. In that case, we want to strike a balance and did a conditional use in that interim control. We also submitted interim controls with unanimous support by this board, where we have actually done a fullout prohibition, where we feel the market is moving too quickly and we need a planning process in place to examine the patterns that were seeing . The example that i will bring up of a prohibition, we have prohibited any conversion from pdr, which is production distribution and repair, often our manufacturing and art spaces to residential or office during the summit plan. We thought it was happening too quickly, both legally and illegally and rapidly losing spaces for working wage jobs and this deserved a complete pause during the central soma planning process. I think there are arguments for both and what i see today on calle 24th is more kin to what i have seen in central soma; where were rapidly losing space and we absolutely should put a pause on it while we study it. Is it doesnt mean that after the study, a prohibition will be in place and at that time a conditional use could be more appropriate and at that time well have a set of criteria to ask the Planning Department to apply the conditional use. They will have studied it and know what we want to see. Its temporarily and an interim control and not a complete prohibition in the longterm. We have heard a lot from the residents in terms of why supporting Small Businesss is incredibly important. In fact, its really, you know its part of our priority policy to look at controls that preserve and enhance existing neighborhoodsserving retail. And enhance future opportunities for employment and ownership. Large footprints make it very challenging for residents to start businesss and also to hire locally. So i think this is something that will be a positive moving forward. I want to add to the mission alcohol special use district, something that supervisor campos myself and supervisor wiener have all worked on. When was originally proposed i think it was appropriate for the neighborhood. There were too many Liquor Stores in this part of the mission and i certainly see it in the tend erloin and neighborhood that i represent today. Now today, especially along the valencia, guerra corridor the neighborhood has rapidly changed, seeing businesses coming in with liquor sales onsite and they are not contributing negatively to the neighborhood either in criminal activity or other negative repurr repercussions. So even with moving forward we have a prohibition on commercial mergers in the special use district, there is nothing preventing the board in the future from overturning that if its not appropriate for the neighborhood. I will be supporting this today. Supervisor campos. I just wanted to respond to supervisor wein wiener and i appreciate the comments about the conditional use and may be that its appropriate for a special use district, but in this case the community has considered a conditional use. For the reasons explained before, including the reasons outlined by the Planning Department, while a conditional use perhaps is the right approach in district 8. Its not the right approach at this particular time for this section of district 9. So with that i will ask my colleagues to please forward the ordinance that is before you with the amendments that i have proposed. And i would respectfully ask that you forward this item with the amendments with a positive recommendation to the full board. And you know, i would ask all of my colleagues to please consider providing some deferrence to the residents of this district . And again, i want to thank the mayor, and the Planning Department, and the Mayors Office of workforce and Economic Development for their supplement. Thank you. Before we take these motions and go to a vote. I have a couple of comments that i wanted to share with everyone. And express that i have a deep understanding that there are some concerns about the proposal as it is, but it is an interim measure. I want to also remind people that i have previously sponsored interim controls as a way to stop displacement. Particularly this was in the design center, you may recall . When artists and pdr spaces were in jeopardy of losing their space due to a tech companys interest in coming in. And we used we established a conditional use as a process and criteria for the Office Conversions in the design center. This process did give us an opportunity to get some breathing room and come up with a more comprehensive solution that was thoughtful and measured and fair to all parties involved. So really the point that im trying to drive home today, we may ends up with a conditional use requirement in the special use district. I just think it will take us some time to get there. I agree that we need diversity on the commercial corridor. I think that word is thrown around very freely in this city. Im not quite sure how people are defining diversity. But im always keeping a watchful eye on that definition. I think we all have different working definitions of what diversity

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