I know what the house looks like before she did the paint job. It is beautiful. You really should drive by it to see it. I am really sad that theres so much commotion and i know it has to do with the permits and, you know, sometimes the permits arent always in our best interest. I just wish that this code go away and that we could have our streets back. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. I live across the street. I have lived across the street for well over 30 years and walked by the house a million times. There is no doubt about the dry rot, they might have even been termites there. There should be no doubt about the improvements there, and i cant see where there is any real structural deficiencies going on, so i dont see how anybody could speak otherwise. It is just much better than it was. And also, i noticed on the curb, those granite blocks are tapered downwards. Theres absolutely no doubt that that has been a driveway since day one. And anybody that looks there, unless you went out with a chisel at some point, anyone could see that that has been a driveway since day one. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. I am a longtime resident of the Mission District and a friend of jans and a former neighbor of hers. I am in total agreement with her reasoning and the letters that were written by the designer and her neighbor. I think they really said it all very well. I know dan made she made a good faith effort in the beautification of this formerly drab house facade, very job. And the deer or deteriorating effort driveway. I hardly realize it was historic and had so much potential. It was just so drab. It has been known she has the support of the Building Department for the work she has done, which should be emphasized it is also practical infrastructures in place that she has described in that immediate area. It seems to me it would be common sense for these to keep things as they are. So much improved as they now are , and without any kind of penalty. As others have said, she has been under terrible stress because of this and im worried about her, so thank you for listening to all of us today. Thank you for coming out. Hello. I have a couple of points to make. My husband and i live behind jan we bought it in 2009. From the pictures, you can kind of see that the slope from 21 st street is quite steep down to the gate. On the other side of the gate, the slope is a little bit less, but continues all the way down to my house, which you can see from the map pictures. Is probably about 60 feet. Our houses two stories but we live mainly on the second floor. Acute reason why we bought our houses because of the privacy, you couldnt see our house from the street. You cant even see it from the second floor of the people across the street. The only people who can see into our house and our yard on the side are jan, attendance, and the site neighbors on the left have a window that looks into it with the proposed fence, given the slope of the driveway, you will be able to stand on 21st street and see right into my window if it is open, if it is 75 open and 10 feet tall from the grade, so we go from having 100 privacy 20 privacy in the front yard and i really cant overstate the difference that that will make in that space and the way that has worked for us since 2009. The second point i want to make his i as i really appreciate the need to preserve historical district when we wanted to replace our siding, when we needed to replace our siding, we went through the certificate of appropriateness. We changed from having cedar shingles to the original siding, and i just feel like theres no comparison between that and replacing this existing gate with a proposed fence which has no place in the history of the property. Thank you. Pardon my attire. As a lawyer you think i would know better. I am a tenant of jans. Me and my fiance live in the in law suite at the back of the house. Security has been discussed, if it is reduced, it will reduce 1. That is nothing. What i when i attend the notice of hearing on the gable, i reached well above 15 feet. We dont lock our doors, which sounds rather quaint, but i think its a nice way to live. And if it had to change, that wouldnt be the case anymore. Lastly, i would say that jan is an especially kind, welcoming, and generous person. She has made my fiance and i feel at home in a new city. She knows loves her Historic House and loves the city. I therefore urge the committee to treat this issue equitably and grant the variance. Thank you. Hello, my name is christina. I own a home near the property. I have lived here for 25 years. At a time when so many middleclass and fixed income residents are being forced out of San Francisco, it is appalling to me that we could be interpreting contributing to gentrification of the city. If you require jan to not only undo the work she did but to restore the property to a standard it has not met in decades, you are effectively saying the only people who should own homes in these neighborhood are those who are wealthy enough to restore the historic details. I am not wealthy enough to restore my home to its historic details, and now i am afraid i may not be able to do basic maintenance and repairs to my house without triggering some sort of hermit and problems with the Building Department and the historic commission. I urge you to give her the permit she payment she needs in close this case and let the gable stand as it is. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other members of the public would like to address this item . I do want to thank everyone for coming out and keeping our time. I really appreciate it. This maybe your first time here and it is an interesting process we will close Public Comment and bring it back to the commission. Commissioners . Commissioner pearlman . Thank you. I very much appreciate this predicament. One of the things that i discussed with mayor lee when i was appointed to this commission was about the fear that people had of being designated as a Historic Resource for Historic Property because of the exact reasons were talking about today, and this is an incredible example of the conflicts between our search for purity in terms of keeping our neighborhood, you know, as we think they should be , and the reality of the people who actually live there. In this case, i am so swayed by the fact that there are, you know, there were 50 letters, and while the base letter was standardized, more than 30 people had written a note on their, you know, typically when we get petitions, someone just signs it. It is the same petition over and over. In this case, and the fact that this many people came out, says an alarmist amount about this specific neighborhood. I think, you know, i think that we always talk about the fact that the history is we just have a legacy business and we talk about the history of the city as written by its people and the stories that we tell about, you know, who we are and what we are about. The search for perfection to make something exactly as it should be is probably not the best way to run a city. I also do not agree with the staff on the proposed solution because i think that also is not something that is in that district. It is something that is in that district. Obviously there is no specific design that we are looking at, with but the perception of what it is, this has been in place for over 304 years because it was there prior to her purchase of the property or her familys purchase of the property. Clearly things like the driveway , if there were granite curbs there, then those granite curbs have been there a very long time. If they were concrete curbs, you know, you could say, well, those were replaced at some point. Granite curbs tend to be very old, usually original to the first paving of the street. I am really torn about this because i agree there is a sense of this kind of disney cable that isnt something that is on the street, but what we neglect to think about is false runs. Every victorian, most victorians have either a gable shape or a flat front that goes up and sticks up way beyond the actual structure of the house, so if youre coming down the street, you see the thinness of that facade, which is, you know, one of these things that you see with this cable and this gable and. I am torn and agree with the staff that this is not an opiate it is not appropriate under the character defining features of the district, but at the same time, it certainly it is not offensive in any way, and it kind of fits in. It also protects from a safety standpoint, getting to the backyard because all of the other houses tend to have the side alley, but then the house expands into that alley space so there is no way to get behind the houses. This i went on the google street view and went up and down the street to see if there was any other place, any other similar circumstance. It doesnt appear that there is a similar circumstance here. I did a very quick sketch, and you probably cant see it, but basically my thought was, with a little bit of carpentry, if you just cut the gable down and build it up, and then take the trim that is above the windows and put it at the top and made a flat to view, im not sure that this can be seen, but i can certainly pass it around. It would be a fairly simple way to make it less cartoonish and make it more appropriate to the house. This is just a thought. Im not saying this is a solution, but i think that the amounts of change that would be required is well beyond what i think is appropriate for this particular problem. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I did drive by to look at this. In part because i was confused by the fence. I didnt know if the fence was this thing above the garage, or the femmes was that iron thing. So that is one reason why i drove by to take a look at it. I think commissioner pearlman has pretty much nailed it in his comments. It struck me that while there is , shall we say, a cartoonish quality about this gable, still, there are good cartoons and there are bad cartoons. [laughter] there are cartoons that work and there are cartoons that dont. I agree with pretty much everything with that the staff said, except, sometimes the perfect is the worst enemy of the very good. I think that this is very good. At least it is good enough considering the privacy and the security aspects, and other things which perhaps staff was not aware of. Now, what is the rule that we are to be left with . Because the staff needs guidance everything needs guidance. I have never been a fan of redesigning projects onthefly, and this is maybe the mirror image of redesigning projects onthefly. I think the rule might be that we should do an analysis based on everything that our staff did in this instance. Back then there was a little bit more, and when there are other concerns such as privacy and security and cost now commissioner herman, who knows much more about cost of construction than i do, apparently thinks that the cost would be great, and that is something that i would be very much swayed by. I think that we must keep in mind that the preservation rules are here to serve the citizens of San Francisco. It is not the other way around. Citizens are not placed here to serve the preservation rules. I think that at the boundaries, there is room for us to accommodate unusual situations, and i think that this is an unusual situation. I would be inclined to leave things as they are now. As to the driveway, i think that the fact that the curb cuts are trimmed in stone is positive. For me, that ends the inquiry. They have been there or an entreaty they have been there for an eternity. I cannot imagine how someone could prove that they werent. The records may indeed have been destroyed in a 1906, but i dont know. The stone might say it is okay. Great. If i can make a comment before you. I think this is a classic quagmire. I think that we are in a position of addressing a process that is important. The owner obviously has had gone through a process that didnt quite match what the process is and our staff is being asked to do their job, so i dont have an exact suggestion just yet, but i didnt want to say that. Commissioner black . All the things that all three have you have said i concur with things are swirling around and it is very personal. Lots of engagement and involvement for a whole bunch of people, and obviously it is very personal to the owners and the neighbors and mysterious people who turn them in, and things that are really not in our purview. I also did drive by and looked very carefully. It is clear that the owner cares for her property. It is a charming Historic House. I do think its very possible that the mid18 sixties. The color she chose is unusual and attractive, and i think, also that the driveway is possibly original, and the reason i think that, while i dont know if there is a rear structure that was ever a Carriage House, i happen to know that there is a Carriage House a few properties up that is accessible from hill street. It is definitely a neighborhood pattern where there were driveways that went to the rear of certain properties, especially properties that didnt immediately about another property, and this would be this one because it precedes all the later victorians that surround it. I think it is altogether possible that the rear structure started life as a Carriage House without seeing it, i cant even begin to say. I also respect the desire for privacy. We all want privacy in our lives im sorry, im a little less persuaded by not wanting to lock doors or being 50 feet off from a street in an urban area where someone can see in a window, gosh, if only i could keep people from seeing in my windows i would be delighted. Those are not the kinds of highly persuasive reasons to do this. I was also, even though mr. Fagan calls the squared off versions, the older version of this feature original, i have no doubt it was never original. However, i think it was built a long time ago, very clearly, and im somewhat persuaded, even though i know theres no legal basis for this, since it was probably not it was probably never permitted, it was there a long time ago. The owner genuinely believed that it was original, and i dont believe the owner intended to bypass the permitting process im sorry, i can see that. One thing i want to mention to anybody who lives in this district is to investigate the mills act as a tool. It is a way that Historic Property owners, especially newer Historic Property owners can use to offset their taxes in order to use the funds to repair their Historic House. I would encourage those of you who are concerned to investigate that. It is an important tool and San Francisco is one of the few cities in california that really makes good use of this tool. Honestly, i also think that we need to communicate clearly here , not just to the Property Owner, but also to staff. Staff is just trying to do their job. They are trying to implement very specific criteria set out in our code. I dont think staff were trying to go after this person, they were just trying to do their job to the best they know how, and someone who was a staff person for 30 years for other cities, i know how hard that is, so i tend to agree with all of you. This is a giant quagmire that i know none of us want to be waiting around in, but i also want to make a decision here that can solve the problem, but also express that i havent seen any evidence that stuff is done anything wrong, and there i am. All right. I have a question. First, you asked about how much it would cost if we were to support this certificate of appropriateness with the conditions, and according to mry ten or 15,000, but also, your question about the motion. So are you saying that we should consider deleting some parts of the conditions of approval, or, im trying to understand what you are thinking. I was thinking out loud. There are four conditions of approval. Are you saying that we should delete the section about demonstration of Location Code compliant offstreet parking, and then approve the rest of the conditions that are stated, i am trying to figure out where youre coming from. Definitely. I was thinking out loud, trying to work through this, and i had pretty much come to the conclusion that we should approve this as it is, and then commissioner pearlman suggested, well, the concern that has been expressed is that this is completely unlike anything else, which is true. It might be addressed by lowering it and putting on the trim, putting trim on it, which is somewhat similar to the trim on the house, of course, commissioner permanent expressed it much better, but that was the thing. As far as the driveway, i think that should be eliminated, and i think this baby has been there long enough. I kind of question the Carriage House. I dont think anybody looked in lived in a structure like this had a carriage. It might have been a staple, which would have fit with the general building. I think carriage is perhaps an overstatement. I meant an outbuilding, a stable or whatever. A barn. Does that answer your question. Does anyone have any suggestions about how we should a. B. Reconsider the conditions here, working with staff . Commissioner pearlman . I dont think this is a quagmire. A quagmire tends to be a massive issue. I think theres just the difference between the staff and our commission is that the staff is doing their job and following process, absolutely. Nothing wrong with that. But we are a body that can supersede that, and we can have judgements that may not be specific to the code and specific to everything, if it is a reasoned response to that. Right. That is why we are looking at this. I think the problem is, do we just eliminate the conditions of approval . I dont know quite how to do it relative to the process. I think the quagmire is in that we have an obviously noncompliant fence that had some damage that the Property Owner attempted to repair and beautify our process, our standards require a limit in height, a setback from the front of the house, and 75 openness. So that is where the quagmire is , and we have a Property Owner who is now caught in a spiders web, so we need to figure out how to support our staff in doing the job that we have asked them to do, and we have to figure out how to frame this so that we are not creating a precedent so people can take advantage of this kind of quagmire. Right. That is our task. I dont have any great suggestions. I would rather them consider this. I looked at it as someone mentioned, i dont know who it was, but as one of a false friends