Has been, you know, the city has waited long enough and been patient enough. We now need a stick. How we get to that Needs Analysis in terms of the implication from the Equity Perspective for Small Businesses opening their business. Lang you. In my neighborhood in the mission we have a lease. We got that all tracked. You are absolutely correct. Those are all speculators waiting for a few couple developments in the mission. Those not vacant are monthtomonth. I think we are all with you. To me it is simple. All of us have some sort of appeal process. Bad players will be found out and not get the appeal. Good people you could build criteria. Show me proof of conditional use taking this long. Let the features be reversed through appeal. Not i am going to refund you money to pay the penalty. It would be easier. That is how i see it. Yeah, i mean some people will have trouble coming up with 25,000 to have it given back. If you have to finance that, then getting it back is harmful. You have to pay the financing fees, and the people that need to finance this are not going to low cost lenders and they are going to high cost lenders that will cost money. That is an equity issue. I think that some appeal process and really being proactive about that, knowing that situation can arise so that there is not just we have that fund over here. We have the option to deal with it that way. I think you ought to be overt and say this fund will be used to, you know, compensate those trying to get through it but yet stuck in the process, you know. Then also acknowledge there will be many, many they wont be the edge conditions. They are dead center in the bell curve, these people that take more than a year in the city. We have to go after the process. Not to hold up the legislation but to acknowledge we have a broken process that goes hand in hand with this. The very fact we cant manage the current registry is a little telling. The rules changed in march of this year. I do think we have the ability. To require selfreporting . D. B. I. Inspections. It is too soon to say we cant handle it. I dont want to dash on d. B. I. Like that. I think it is a resource issue. How many people work at d. B. I. . They are out doing a lot of inspections. If there, as i have estimated 500 legitimate vacancies make it 1,000. There are only 250 works days. If one staff member is dedicated to vacancies. They would have to go to two vacancies a day or four. I dont think that would happen. It is not a fulltime job. They are not out pounding the street to look for two to four vacancies a day to be sure they are compliant. It is a man power issue. Cost recovery on the storefronts wont pay for the f. T. E. In san francisco. You know, yo your upside is if u can find the businesses 1,000 per 20 linear feet that is a 10 million budget so you can hire more people. As you said, you dont want to collect that fee. If you add more it properly and these people wont rent the space you will have a pretty big budget to go enforce it. Maybe it will work that way. Commissioner. What about the idea to put into the legislation that if the Building Permit or the c. U. Resolution permit is not done caused by the City Department delays it would be extended . That seems like the easy way to do it, you know, to allow more time. That is what we are looking at is folks not getting what they need because of the citys inefficiency. Lee acknowledged they dont want to penalize. If you can put that in saying they have done Due Diligence, it is the city that hasnt been able to complete it. I have to interject here. As the department who counseled businesses on the citys bureaucracy to now say to a business one more thing you need to track is whether you get through the conditional use process in this timeframe or your Building Permit in this timeframe. If you dont now you have one more bureaucratic step to go to to ensure you are not charged this tax. I feel so very, very strongly when we are having discussions with the mayor and the board of supervisors on what we can do to reduce the bureaucracy and the cost of opening a business, i think we can get to the supervisors goal, but, you know, when the Building Permit is except for the soft story or Property Owner is initiating their own improvements, the majority of the time it is Small Businesses if we are talking about ncd and nct. I dont normally interject. I dont want to receive the call for the First Business that has to pay that 25,000 tax. Perhaps, i think, the best direction is to you still need Public Comment. It is to still take your feedback and our office work with supervisor peskins office to really understand what the processes are so we dont inadvertently get Small Businesses caught up and add another layer of bureaucracy to it. This is a march ballot measure. What is the timeframe . You have to have it buttoned up by when. Last Board Meeting in november. This is a fastmoving train. In full appreciation of this it is informed by the a lot of the conversations. I agree the city can probably do a better job of possessing things more quickly. Lumping with the conversation around the tax legislatively is lets not lose the forest for the tree thing. All right. I am so sorry. I think i have heard all of as talk about need for an appeal, however, lee, i have heard you say there is problem areas around the appeal process, it creates liability, i think you mentioned in passing. It is potentially expensive for the city. Is that a fair summary of your concerns around the appeal process . Short of me characterizing as a legal issue, it makes it more complicated when you insert discretion in the mix. We could say maybe we can say that the city shall promulgate rules to establish an appeal process before this is implemented. Another idea in the mix. Listening to our executive director talk about adding another bureaucratic process to folks this is going to disproportionately affect those people not well equipped to deal with multiple layers of bureaucratic process at a vulnerable time as well. Could something be written just and again, i am spitballing here, but could something be written directing the sbaf to reach out to anybody who has who would get a fine and in some way, you know, streamlining that bureaucratic process maybe some sort of automatic grant if you do steps x, y, z. I dont know what those steps are. I am trying to figure out how to straddle the need for to not have a complex appeal process, the need to not have a bureaucratic process, while at the same time allowing the funds to be used and go ahead and speak to that. When we think about appeals process. There are two things to think about. There is the Property Owner and their appeals process, and then there is the Small Business that is engaging in their permitting that might be caught up in this, right . So and i think as the office of Small Business and our role is to help businesses get open and to, you know, try to advise on where we can simplify that process, i think the preference would be not to see a Small Business have to go through that appeals process. It is the Property Owner that is keeping their whatever the marker is for x amount of time, keeping their space vacant, that is for me a very different process. I mean there is the consideration that we have a vacancy registry. I do think there is more concerted effort and d. B. I. Has passed inspectors out in neighborhood corridors to keep an eye out to, you know, open these things. We now have a 30day window so it could be tied to a timeline you are on the vacant and abandoned storefront registry, which is, you know, you are on that if you have not completed your you are on that if you are not engaged in an active Building Permit to which the majority of the time will be a business to get your business open. I am putting that out in terms of can we go a simpler route and simpler to track and not inadvertently get out as commissioner ortiz said, catch the Small Business dolphins up in this net . I will chime in to say i dont know how a Small Business gets caught up in this, given the shared incentive here to alleviate the vacancy. It is kind of this question about what is market rate . Market rate is whenever somebody can pay to occupy your space to stay in business. That is how the market sets it. If you are confronting the pressure to stop the vacancy, why put it on the Small Business unless it is jointly shared if you know that is going to prevent them from opening in the first place. It is something that gets corrected by the market and, yes, this is designed to, i think, change the market for rents and commercial space leases in these commercial corridors. I dont see the equity issue. I will be completely honest. Well, lets open it up to comment. Do we have members of the public to comment . If so, come on up. Bob sam son comesher shall real estate broker. Costar is a service for commercial real estate. I can tell you how many vacancies you have in the mcd district 323. In 2015 we had 6. 2 overall. Today we have 19. 7 . They project 2021 will be 23. 7 . This is at a time when we see tremendous vibrancy in our economy. We still have vacancies going up. This whole thing is miss guided all the way. Why . Because the process is what is killing retail today. I will give you three examples. I represent 580 green street. The City Bank Building isvo cant over four years. When they bought it with the intent of putting in a service. They got rejected at planning after 18 months. We have attempted to lease this for well over a year and a hatch. We had all kinds of interest. The problem is we are in three different zoning districts. We cant put anything in there. We cant put Financial Services to replace the bank, we cant put restaurant use, no gym use, there is no use. I went to supervisor peskins office to ask what you would accept and i will get it for you. I am waiting for a phone call to be returned. Second a bakery fifth and full some. 1500 square feet. A family from france had 500,000 to build from scratch. By the time they waited one and a half years they put 750,000 into the space to open up the neighborhood bakery. I will tell you about 2366 mission street. It is the old tuxedo shop for over 70 years. It closed last year. They retired. We have attempted to replace that tenant. We have had all kinds of interest gym, restaurant use, all of which would require conditional use permit. That conditional use permit is not going to take 90 days or six months, it could take up to a year with an understanding the neighborhood has objections to opening more restaurants so the chance to get approved is 50 50 at best. Gym use creates noise for the neighborhood, also a problem. That is the problem in retail along with the fact the 11 story tail rule is a complete failure. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, commissioners. I echo the stimulating conversation taking place for the last several minutes. The chamber shares supervis or peskins desire to keep it vibrant. We are concerned about what the previous speaker just brought up. There is all of these other factors and reasons that contribute to the spaces becoming vacant. Retail vacancies can occur for many reasons including current zoning, uncertainty around the cost and now we are trying to build on to that. Of course, we know there are challenges within the city permitting process and things dont happen within those time periods we expect. The maximum days that would considered vacant dont allow as written sufficient time to market retail spaces, build out when rented or to come back from devastate being loss due to fire and earthquake. I am happy to hear amendment to that time period. Everybody raised the question of time period. That is a huge issue here. All of these things you are not going to end up having people have a loophole by opening up that window. If a land owner is able to lease a place, why is that now going to fall on the tenant . We are passing the fact we are passing this down to somebody who is trying to open a business and they have to go through that process and we are punishing them for our bureaucracy is absolutely ludicrous. We want to see beyond that time limit being extended i want to see that 182 day limit consecutive or nonconsecutive and we think that should be consecutive 182 period of vacancy to allow somebody who comes in and has to leave because it dent work out and some of the different situations we have been talking about. If it takes half a year to successfully market the space and the Small Business takes it. Will they be on the hook for the time they exceeded the time limit. From what i can tell that is the case. You have highlighted the points we echo and agree with. We feel this needs more work to consider it is not going to fall on our Small Businesses trying to open when there are so many other scenarios at play here. Thank you. Any more Public Comment. Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Do we want a recommendation . What are we contemplating as the recommendation . I would like to say the main recommendation is a reconsideration of the timelin timelines. Especially for anyone who has a Building Permit out there or a c. U. Resolution permit if that is not Going Forward if it is because of city bureaucracy, then there should be no fine on them. That should just we can, you know, decide on another six months, a year. You can write that in, but we have to have that. Would that be something that would be captured in the appeals process notion . I think maybe wording off having to do with appeal, at least by saying if you can proof to you say you have a Building Permit or you are actively pursuing the ceu, you are not going to have that fine slapped on you. Well, so you would say delays due to city delays resulting from the workings of the city will not count against the timal lotment . Yes. Something to that effect . What about the idea of average possessing time plus . There is no average possessing time. Okay. That is all you have got to say. A couple things come up. Delays how the city operates, notion of appeals process and extending timelines outright. Also back about the 182 days only consecutive. I second that. What about passing on to the lessee . Do you have thoughts about that . What about the 182 days . Consecutive . Right now it is nonconsecutive. In other words, you could have two weeks here, four weeks there, six weeks there, if it is at 182, you figure whereas if it was solely consecutive it would have to be an extended period of vacancy rather than patchwork every dom. You have to do the hat business then reset the clock and keep going. I think. I dont know what either one. Right now it is written consecutive or nonconsecutive. Just make it consecutive. 182 consecutive only, expanding the timelines to something greater than they currently are to be determined unless we want to make a hard recommendation. I would recommend that you have our office work with your goals and objectives. Restrict it to limited to the citys doing rather than something that the Business Owner has no control. There are other externals other than the city. The contractor. The contractor, pg and e. I mean i had to have power up upgraded and it took time. Pg e dont go here is your 220. What about automatic extension. After that if you have not completed . Are we suggesting change that due to the city . Things that you dont have control over, actings of god. Who is the responsible party . There is no appeal process now, who would be the party to hear these concerns to make that determination . We are clear on longer time periods. We seem to be clear on consecutive days. There is a request from the director the Supervisors Office works with the fpc to take a closer look at how the bureaucratic inputs fit into this and that might be sufficient right there to address some of these other concerns to simply ask that they meet with the director and her office and then they can dive into the nittygritty that we cant. Okay. So the keep points are extending the timeline extending all of the timelines but in consultation with the office of Small Business, correct . Yes. Making the vacancy term 182 days consecutive. Stop. Not unconsecutive, but consective. Allowing for extensions due to delays that are outside of well, see, you have to appeal if you are going to make an argument the delay is due to the city or the contractor. I would i think creating considering an appeals process for the Property Owner, perhaps something that we would have to discuss with the city attorney, but i think if the Property Owner in the 182 days and there are particular challenges and they havent leased it or something to that extent then an appeals process could be established. I think dealing with the timelines where we might get into the we are tracking by the ceu or the Building Permit we can look at those timelines and figure out what sort of reasonable so it doesnt inadvertently capture Small Businesses to put extra work on them. Is the recommendation to modify the timelines in consultation with the office of Small Business . Yes. Okay. Got that one. Modify the timelines in consultation with the office of Small Business. Then make the 182 days exclusively consecutive and do you want a formal appeals processor not . I will leave that to your discretion. I am asking the group. I want clarity if this is in the existing purview or we should specify our recommendations make it that d. B. I. Is vacant and the storefront unit has this as part of the responsibility so they are the respo