Association is also about the rents that are constantly going up in San Francisco. And so i know there has been this idea that i think is pretty promising, we can expedite the condoizing of retail space. Meaning that if a Property Owner has a piece of building that actually has maybe housing on top, that he or she is able to actually sell the retail space. What do you think about that . Because its true, there is no rent control on retail spaces. In my district, im seeing a 10year lease with an option for another 10 years, theyre now doing it annually, by just an annual lease. The restaurants in my neighborhood are seeing a lot of increases. And three or four times the amount of rent. This is what happened to farmer brown. So condoizing just the retail space and the empty store fronts, they can just sell the retail space. What are your thoughts about this . Well, Planning Department doesnt really deal with the condoization of spaces, but if its instability in the Restaurant Industry, thats a viable option. The only concern, restaurant have to come up with the rent to buy the space. It would get rid of the rent increase probably. Supervisor fewer another question. The cb3p, you just rolled this out . No, i believe its been out for three years. Supervisor fewer so do we have any data back from the Restaurant Association about how successful this is and how many and make you can tell us how many applicants you assisted . I dont have the numbers on, but i can get them from the special projects team. I will have to let the Restaurant Association answer the other part. Supervisor fewer is it working well . Any suggestion . Im not sure, but usually when theyre done with the process, they dont like to talk to us anymore. [laughter]. Supervisor fewer really, okay . I always think its good to get feedback. For those of us not in the industry, quite frankly, lay persons, and in this city bureaucracy, i think it helps to hear from people who do work on the ground on how we can improve. I would urge you to get data on it just to find out is it doing what we intended. Could we be doing more . How efficient is this . How helpful . Et cetera. Ill pass that onto them. Supervisor fewer thank you very much. The next speaker is Gregory Slocum from d. P. W. The cafe and table chairs process, with San Francisco public works, im representing the bureau street mapping this afternoon. Can i get the screen . Were going to go through a brief overview first . San francisco public works offers a cafe table and chair permit to utilize public sidewalks to permit and provide customers with out door seating. This program has been initially instituted in 1993. To give you scope and context forever the size for the size of the program in the last fiscal year, we received 458 renewals and 145 new applications for a total of 603 permit holders. These are also demonstrated through the public works order 183188. And there is a permit fee that applies to all new applications and then fees are assessed based on the Square Footage of the proposal. So its 144 base fee and then 8 per square foot. Just a brief overview of the application process. Applicant that wants to put tables and chairs in front of their establishment would complete a permit application. Its relatively simple, just includes your address, name of the applicant, name of the business and they submit the initial processing fee. They need to provide us with the certificate of insurance as well as current San Francisco business registration. These are items they already may be in possession of before pursuing the permit. Then we require a site plan that depicts the layout, so we can assess the impact on the public right of way tt. This is a sample of the brochure that is created for this program. If someone wanted to come into the office, this might be an example we provide them. If staff determines that the application does not meet requirements, we will send a detailed letter to the applicant indicating what changes need to be made to the application, so we can continue our review. If staff determines that the application has been submitted to us, has been acceptable, well create a Public Notice that the applicant has to post in an observable location fronting the public sidewalk for 10 calendar days. This is part of the public notification process. So during this period, if staff receives no objections and they may continue to assess outstanding fees, approve and issue a permit. In the event of objections to the table and chair tt permit, they will seek to reconcile them if there is a way to negotiate between the complainant and the business seeking the permit, well always try to do that. In the event we cannot mediate a solution, then it proceeds to a hearing. Following the hearing, the director of public works will decide to approve or conditionally approve. Conditionally approve may be reducing the amount of table and chairs just to give you an example of the condition. Then we can move into the approval process, which is typically the fee that is assessed. Square footage fee that we talked about on the front end. We take the base 144 and assess the Square Footage because sometimes the proposal can change dependant on guidance provided i about the staff. The by the staff. The permit must be placed. We do renewals for these based on zip codes. We stagger them by zip codes. Renewal process is much quicker and easier than the initial application and its cheaper. We charge 71 base renewal fee and 7 per square foot. Modifications to an existing permit requires a new permit application. If they wanted to expand, we would need to do another public posting so that the public has an expectation of what is going to be placed in the public rightofway prior to our approval. Some additional info, public works inspection enforcement may respond to complaints or proactively inspect for permit compliance. You can see on the two graphics on the bottom is things that inspectors might have an eye out for. Thank you for coming today. Comments, questions . Supervisor mandelman do you happen to know how much the city collects . I dont off the top of my head, but we would be more than happy to follow up. I would be curious to know and what the average total is for a business. I know it varies on Square Footage, but the range that is something we could probably follow up and provide you info on. Have they changed over the recent years . I have one constituent who feels like their fees have gone up dramatically over a short period of time. I dont know that the base fees have changed dramatically. We do look at cost indexes if we have to adjust. But i dont know of dramatic increase. It may also be if someone had to expand the footprint, so without knowing the context of the constituent, i couldnt say. Thank you. Supervisor peskin mr. Slocum, unlike most fees that the city charges, which are based on Cost Recovery, i believe this fee is an exception insofar as its actually based on the value of the real estate, because its in the public rightofway, so its actually if we issue a marriage license, the way the controller calculates the fee is how much staff time costs the city has to fee to produce a marriage license. So its a Cost Recovery thing. But i believe that the tables and chairs are different because its in essence, a lease payment. So its not based on Cost Recovery. Am i correct on that . It is prorated amongst the space that is occupied, however, that being said, when it comes to time and materials, i dont believe we recoup our efforts in the permits, and one of the reasons we do it that way, were trying to promote activation of the public space and as such, the fees are lower. Supervisor peskin in 1993, before my time, was the base fee established . I would have to do research and follow up on that. Supervisor peskin i think that is a conversation we should have. Because at 8 a square foot, thats pretty hefty. I do understand that these are lands of the taxpayer, so i get why its not i dont think its a fee, but its actually a lease charge by landlord to a tenant. Supervisor mandelman is totally nodding his head, so i feel like hes getting me, but i would love to understand how the base charge is established. You and supervisor fewer and i can have that conversation. Its 8 per square foot. Supervisor peskin no, i said 8. 8 its per was the time period. 8 per year . 8 per square foot fort initial application. For renewals, 70 base fee and 7. It goes from 144 down to 71 for renewal. And then the assessment drops from 8 down to 7. Supervisor peskin annual basis . Yes, sir. Supervisor peskin got it. Thats helpful. Supervisor fewer thank you very much. On that topic, i wanted to say, so hearing from the Restaurant Industry and all these fees and, you know, getting sort of nickel dimed every step of the way, do you think that we could, mr. Slocum, im sorry to direct it to you, youre the authority here, do you think there is a possibility that we could eliminate these fees for them . I mean, i think that it works two ways. One, as you said, the city really wants to activate these outer spaces for the activity. I think we all can agree when you have table and chairs outside, that from the pictures that you actually showed, it actually does help to activate the commercial corridor. Makes it look lively and adds a level of attractiveness and expands the service area for the restaurant. Do you think there is a possibility that once you give us the amount of money were actually recovering or getting from these fees, do you think that there is a possibility that we might waive these fees . And in light of that, it is not a Recovery Cost for the city and county of San Francisco as others are, but more actually related to a real estate cost, what do you think about that . Supervisor peskin before you answer that, mr. Slocum, two members of this panel have to go have been summoned into the mayors office. So well be back and supervisor fewer has been pinted by appointed by the president of the board to be a member of the panel, so there is a quorum and i shall return. Supervisor fewer please be back, because you have a lot of restaurants in your district. What do you feel about that . Could it be a possibility that we could eliminate the fee to actually allow this first floor restaurant . Restaurants on the first floor, we dont have a lot on the second and third floors, but also if there are restaurants on the second and third floor, the first floor would be paying a higher rate because its more desirable on the street level. What do you think if we were to eliminate these fees . So its not something that we discussed internally, so i dont have anything that i can piggyback a prior discussion. One of the challenges we do a pretty good job reviewing the applications in a timely fashion. For scope of example, the last year, the new applications we turned around in average of 11 working days, which on the calendar means staff was processing this over the course of 11 days. We were able to do renewals and two working days. That being said, we have some outliers and we have reviews that can be quite labor intensive, if you have someone with no scope of expertise, coming up with a diagram and following up on the letter where we issue them. That being said, because were not recovering cost on many of the applications, it would be tough without discussing it more indepth internally. Supervisor fewer i want to commend your counter service. Ive heard wonderful things about the counter service, that you offer permitting. And your turnaround time, excellent. I dont think we have an issue with that. Im just wondering, if you could come back and tell us how much were actually getting from the fees and how much do we need for Cost Recovery. And whether or not, you know, i think its a question of what City Government or whether or not we should try to absorb some of the costs because this is one thing we might be able to do in the city. I mean, theyre asking us and homelessness, its very difficult, its a bigger issue, but these type of things we could possibly do pretty quickly, after we have analysis of it, i think this is the things were looking at. So thank you very much. Greatly appreciate this. And i think your presentation was great. Any other questions . All right. Thank you. Supervisor fewer and now we have people from the tax collection office. Good afternoon. Treasurer of the city and county of San Francisco. I want to say thank you to the supervisors for holding the hearing. This is personally and professionally important to me. Personally because a lot of you partake in the restaurants and professionally, because its an opportunity to make changes as we go through the process together. Whether desired or undesired is the home for Small Businesses and their information. We partnered together with Public Health, fire, entertainment and the Police Department many, many years ago to create a consolidated license bill to annually renew all of the permits and licenses they have easily. What were going to tack about today is the talk about today is the large change weve made in partnership with the Public Health department. The large change was being the first in the country to put an online permit for food permits. This is an application that is begun after they go through the dbi and planning review to make sure the location is sufficient for them. As you know, as the data both anecdotal has shown, the process is long and took a will the of time for the restaurants lot of time for the restaurants. They recognize this as a point of contention as do the other studies. In addition to just the time and elapsed time, we have errors that were causing kickbacks. We have inconsistencies in data. Somebody would like their name on the restaurant one way, another way on another piece of paper, the address in a different location. This actually hindered the coordination of the departments to become one city, one voice. So we worked together with the Public Health department. They were collaborative and opened us up and had us participate in the lien process. We sat with them. It took a significant amount of days to get one application permitted. And the whole process was to decrease the time and increase the quality of the user experience. And Staff Experience is equally as important. We found a solution. As you know, the Office Creates a lot of online applications. We have 100,000 businesses, 120,000 locations. The majority of the business have to file tax in one month, online and pay. Surprisingly enough, 95 of the businesses are on time so our office figured out how to put this online, get the payments in and thats how we started to work with the Public Health department. We wanted to a business to populate it with the information. To take away typo. And all of the Little Things that do cause challenges. So what it does, the center point is, one city, one set of data, how we move you forward and save the other departments some quickly and responsively . Sophisticated work flow in the background that makes sure its calculating based on the responses they have and all of the different permits that Environmental Health department will speak about later, speak to in permits. The benefits have been sizeable. The Public Health department has achieved an award for the work itself. The application is done whether they come in person, they can do it at home, whomever theyre working with. They also can get feedback from the inspector. Only about 79 of the current applications under review have been sent back. So further questions to the businesses themselves. And we have the city as i said earlier planning and fire getting directly the information that they need to proceed with their applications and permit. The benefits as i said, were the applications are more accurate. We have reduced the amount of inquiry back and forth. And more importantly, ill talk later about the number of applications that have come through and been approved within the less than one year. I think most people have talked about the time and the last time, and how long does it take. Weve had over 647 applications approved. 1200 have been put into the system. Processing time decreased by 100 . Most improved in 90 days and some even in 70 days. I think supervisors asked what is next and how we continue to do improvements . Our office is updating the forms, Public Health office as well as the restaurants have told us to make changes on the form itself. We went live with version 2. Were working with department of public works to bring tables and chairs on the license, consolidate the bills, so businesses have a predictable way of when they have to pay and what they have to pay and by location, which is then a huge saving. When we went with license consol day, the delinquency rate dropped as well. And i think the most important thing were seeing as the association spoke about, the Treasurers Office is part of the Business Tax Reform discussions impacting many of our businesses, small and large, particularly in the Restaurant Industry. Supervisor fewer any questions . Seeing none, thank you very much. Good to see you again. Next is the department of public heal health. This is stefani curbing. Good afternoon. I were committed to the lean process. More than a year ago we heard that the process for us, after doing what we call a value street mapping, took 79 steps for a restaurant to apply for a permit from us. So 79 steps. It took 23 feet of paper. And took almost close to a year as ms. Shaw pointed out. The study that we did, fire, planning, oewd, all participated so we could see the broader view of what was happening to the restaurant. Plus the association sent representative. We have change it to eight steps a