Months or whatever to get a variance. In this case that option would be foregone if its in one permit . Yeah, because given where we are, we would need to have everything in one permit. So we are past that point. Why wasnt this done under one permit . Was a briefer question. Yes im learning something after four and a half years or five years. Okay. Thats my only question. Shall we move on . I have a quick question. Mr. Buscovich said this is all minor stuff. One thing that jumped out at me was the infill. Is that, in your view, a minor violation, easily overlooked . I mean, it requires a variance. I guess what concerns me is when you have so many permits, how do you not properly account for all your scope of work . Theres fewer excuses for hiding work when you do nine permits. I dont know why they didnt account for that in one of the plan sets. None of them showed i guess what i have concerns with is you have these changes but theres noel vacations that show this work theres no elevations that show this work. The plans are thin. There are a lot of permits and plans, but they decent donty show the information that they should and could. Im hoping we can get thorough plans. This is not singling out to make this different. Usually the plans i see have more detail on them than what ive seen in this case. Thank you thank you. We are moving onto Public Comment. How many people are here for Public Comment . Given the time and given our goals policy, i am looking at the numbers, i would like to limit it to two minutes, please. Let them know. It will be after Public Comment. So Public Comment is two minutes each. If you can line up against the wall, i would appreciate it. Make sure you hand a speaker card to ms. Sullivan after you are done speaking so we can keep track for the minutes. Sir, please approach. You can give her a speaker card after you are done. Thank you. I have some materials that i would like to hand out. President swig would you accept these materials . What are they . A summary of my statement and some diagrams. Thats fine. We wont have time to review it tonight. Well put it in the file. Okay. So can you just hold it, please. Can you set the timer, please . I would like you to see you can show them on the overhead, sir. Talking and showing pictures isnt my fore forte. Can you reset to two minutes . Thanks. Ive been working to bring accountability and transparency to Building Code enforcement in San Francisco since 2012. I served on the civil grand jury that issued a critical report on the department of building inspection. D. B. I. s process for revoking permits is before the b. O. A. The questions to be answered are does d. B. I. Have a firm criteria for when to revoke permits and is it consistently enforced . The answer is no. Debra walker expressed these sentiments in the 2019 meeting. You have her captioned comments. Thats why i wanted to hand it out. She made these comments after i presented the case study i showed you. The second question is do d. B. I. Employees engage in inappropriate and illegal behavior . The answer is yes. There are many examples of d. B. I. s lack of a fixed criteria and clarification of Building Permits. Hopkins is an example of a home designed by a worldrenowned architect. D. B. I. Found the developer 718, did not revoke the permits. You have before and after pictures and information on richard noitra. This leads to the question of do d. B. I. Employees lead to bad behavior like altering data, ignoring violations in certain cases and overstating violations in others. D. B. I. Deleted nine of the 11 complaints on the case study from their management system. D. B. I. Allowed the house to illegally occupy two lots for two years and ten months. Other violations include submission of false architectural plans. The most extreme example of d. B. I. s bad behavior is when in 2017, d. B. I. , who approved your permit extension. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is chris big low. I would like to speak in support of the issue regarding 22nd street. I have handed in a speaker card. The legal brief filed by mr. Richards attorney lists a total of 21 projects wherein the actual scope of work clearly exceeded the permitted scope of work or had proceeded without permits. The listed projects include 3847 18th street, 841 chestnut, and 21 hopkins. This information is already included in the appeal. So theres no need to recite the entire list during this testimony. As stated in the legal brief, any problems or violations observed during inspections of the subject project are minor when compared to those that were found in the listed projects such as 3847 18th street. Any of the violations found at the subject project could have been addressed by means of a cleanup revision permit during the normal course of construction and inspection. Borrowing from the criteria associated with Planning Commission consideration of a request for discretionary review during the permit application phase, it would appear that exceptional circumstances that influence the process of d. B. I. Enforcement in the present case. Please note that none of the projects listed on the legal brief had their permits revoked, thereby supporting the contention this case is an example of selective enforcement by d. B. I. As you know, the Planning Commission has the power to disapprove or require modifications to a project during a process. This commission has a similar yet broader power to provide a final review of actions by various city departments including the department of building inspection. Please exercise your power, grant this appeal, reversing the actions of d. B. I. Code enforcement and allow the project to proceed within the normal course of inspections and final approval. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, commissioners. I want to tell you whats been happening to me. I had a foundation replaced a couple years ago at my cottage that was to include other seismic work. I hired one of d. B. I. s preferred contractors. In the brief he refers to them as favored by d. B. I. Because he was working next door and access was easy. The d. B. I. Inspector finalled my project for him without the post and beam walls. When i contacted him he said he would come over but he missed the appointment three times because he couldnt find my cottage. Once he finally got to my cottage, he told me the two by tens on my ceiling were beams and the twobyfours on the wall framing the wall were posts. He eventually withdrew his final inspection. After hiring a nond. B. I. Preferred contractor to install the posts and beams and other work, a different inspector came for that inspection and accused me of having illegal construction. When i asked him what made him think id done so, i answered i dont know, i just think so. I offered to ask him photos but he reviewed to look at them. He issued a notice of violation. The inspectors themselves told me it was to harass me. They said you have a nice property, you will get a lot of complaints. The building inspector said to me. Inspectors and inspectors from d. P. W. Have said this to me. All the complaints have been abated. The horizontal addition was abated. My adjacent neighbor has been doing a do it now ask for forgiveness later project, and d. B. I. Tried to obstruct me in every situation, hidden plans from planning and all kinds of things to obstruct the proper process. I encourage you to ask for an investigation on how d. B. I. Works with their favored contractors and how they try to punish anyone else who is not part of that group. Thank you. Please give a speaker card to ms. Sullivan as well. Thank you. Maam, if you want to go to the shorter one im okay. Hello, appeals board members. Im anastasia. I live near dolores street on 24th street in noe valley. I often walk by the subject property on 22nd street on my way to attend Union Meetings or to shop. Im familiar with the building thats freshly painted and appears ready for occupancy. I dont feel the permit holder committed any flagrant or egregious violations of the San FranciscoBuilding Code to warrant the extreme action d. B. I. Has taken in the case. Since the issues are relatively minor and can easily be remedied. In contrast, overhead, please, please allow me to present 655 el dorado street, a home in my neighborhood as an example. Heres the before shot of the twostory singlefamily home and after the expansion to four stories, which caused significant damage to Neighboring Properties on either side. Note that the site permit drawings didnt include demo calculations and after the plan review was completed in september 2016, the structural addendum was added in november 2016. Three additional permits were issued. Three were issued as a result of a complaint filed in august 2017 based onsite observation for number one, undermining of the neighboring structure. Number two, extending the scope of permit and to document the suspension of permits. This is an extremely involved structural undertaking, apparently new permits were issued and work done by d. B. I. To ensure compliance. No penalties were collected. These violations are far more egregious than the issues at 22nd street, yet d. B. I. Issued n. O. V. S and did not suspend or revoke Building Permits. Thank you. Thank you. Please give a speaker card to ms. Sullivan. Thank you. Great. Next speaker, please. Good evening. With San Francisco alliance coalition. President swig, you were wondering how often d. B. I. Does revoking of permits . I do have the data on that. Where they revoked the permits, the cases were extremely, far more egregious than the case of this project. So i would just quickly go over what was it that was revoked. Conversion of office space into Light Industrial space. The result of the of the citywk force investigation. Building that had been largely reconstructed, the building where large portions of the exterior walls have been removed and reconstructed. Expired permit history and no inspection. In two cases the Property Owner misrepresented the propertys existing number. There were only 20 in the past few years. As you probably know, there are thousands and thousands of permit applications that come to the d. B. I. Like the previous speakers, i would like to point out two cases where there were far more egregious acts of violation that have taken place where d. B. I. Was very slow to react or didnt do anything. In this case, i want to take you to 301 west street. Overhead, please. This fellow, the owner, is quite well known, he had put a full story, as you can see, its a full story. And after repeated complaints, finally he got an n. O. V. , and the total was 208. But that is far more egregious. So this is a fourstory plus added square footage. So this is hard for the public when the rules are not consistent. So i would just like to have you keep that in mind and make it easier for us. Thank you thank you. Good evening, my name is bruce bowen. I live in dolores heights. What should we expect from the department of building inspection . According to d. B. I. Ez own website, it is effective, efficient, safe and fair enforcement. Is that what we are getting . I would like to limit my comments to the goal that enforcement should be fair. Judging by the evidence many of us have seen in our neighborhoods and facts laid out in this appeal, no, we are not receiving fair enforcement of laws. We probably all agree fairness requires consistency. You have been hearing and you see in the appellants brief examples of the lack of consistency. Heres one more example. Its 48118 first street. This project involved unauthorized removal of the second rental unit. The owner misrepresented the number of Housing Units as one thank you as one unit rather than two, illegal democrat in addition. A Building Permit was filed for interior remodeling and in the months after that, most of the house was demolished, the foundation was removed, a new foundation was poured. In november 2018 the inspector noted dry rot from the east facade. And he suggested that a exploratory permit needed to be filed. He made no other comments about the demolition work. A member of the public filed a complaint. An nov was issued. Work continued for months after it was issued. In spite of this record, no action was taken by d. B. I. To ask for Public Comment or complaint. No permits were revoked or suspended until after action by planning. Your authority should be able to use your your authority should be able to use fairness as a basis for a decision in this case. And appeal the appellants appeal should be granted. Thank you. Thank you. Will you give a speaker card to ms. Sullivan, please . Okay. Thank you. Okay. Good evening, commissioners. My name is andrew santa clauses. Im here as a concerned andrew zacks. Im an attorney. I practiced law in San Francisco for 30 years. In my years of practice in San Francisco, i have never seen the department of building inspection act as decisively and swiftly as in this case. In my 30 years of experience as a real estate lawyer ive never seen them revoke permits for the of times of minor violations that exist in this project. The Building Code sections that are at issue with respect to revocation of a permit are quite clear, and they are quite narrow as to when revocation is appropriate. Whenever the permit is issued in error, or on the basis of Incorrect Information supplied, or in violation of any ordinance or violation of provisions of this code, a permit may be revoked or suspended. You dont have before you tonight evidence of any of those factors. What you have before you is evidence that work was done in excess of the scope of properlyissued permits. In no circumstances, the remedy is not revocation. The remedy is requiring a permit to solve those problems which it appears this board is intent on doing, i applaud you for your consideration of that and for your apparent intent to solve this problem. I urge you to reverse the decision to revoke these permits and find a solution that involves a way to solve the problem and not be punitive in a manner that appears to be quite illegal and unconstitutional. Thank you. Is there any other Public Comment . We will move onto rebuttal. Each appellant has three minutes each. So would you like three minutes each . We can do the six minutes and run the time okay. So six minutes. I would like to make three quick points. One is to emphasize what has already been mentioned about with the Building Department, notice of violations went out. Was there an opportunity to work with the Building Department to fix those things before revocation . No. It happened the same day. The very same day. I dont know of any precedent for that in all the public records ive reviewed. Number two, we have been asking for exactly what this board has been talking about, which is lets get rid of these revocations, sit down with you, do a master permit. We were told, to my face, i didnt believe mr. Buscovich, when he brought me to the Building Department with him, that theres nothing to talk about if you are going to appeal the revocation. Third, what should have been happening is whats been happening with the Planning Department when we were informed the planning had concerns, we have been working with them to address each of them. Just today the seven inch issue about the variance came up as we worked with them to work that out too. Mr. Buscovich and then you can hear from commissioner richards. So you ask about what was dangerous when they revoked the permit. I did a voluntary seismic before we did the work, the building was dangerous. There was nothing dangerous about the seismic. The corridors were removed because the Fire Department and the Building Department said theres an ally directly next to the deck. Dont go back into the building. Its dangerous. Go out on to the ally. Thats why they said remove the corridor. I got a permit for it. Ive drawings that are in this 36set of drawings that i have offered to file a revision. Ive always offered to file a revision permit. I have 36 sheets. So weve always been willing to work with the Building Department. We had a meeting thursday that they t complaint went to him. Friday i met with him, he said we are revoking the permit. That day. That day. There was no working with anyone. We are revoking your permit we did produce 36 sheets of drawings. I sent them to planning sunday night. Ive been trying to meet with the planner because she asked me to do some things i werent sure was right. So im taken aback that the drawings arent perfect, because they are not supposed to be perfect. They are working drawings to work things out with planning. 36 sheets is a lot of work to put together, but thats the master permit. I have no problem working with planning. It just hurting me feelings that as soon as something sunday night killing myself to get it in on time and im criticized for disinformed drawings. Try to put together 36 sheets over a weekend. Hello. My name the commissioner dennish richards. I dont enjoy standing up here. I didnt ever want to stand up here to hear somebody our partnership hired had sloppy drawings pains me. You ask why we are here. Im being retaliated against. The address is 3847 3849 18th street. We are hearing it on december 18. We have heard it twice before. You have the videos in your brief from us. Please watch it. Thats why mr. Hernandez and mr. Duffy were so tonguetied around what the hell was so wrong with the building that we had to revoke the permits. What safety issues were there . Its me. Thats why they are doing this. They are trying to get back at me. They are holding it over my head so that i let that project go and stop pursuing it. Commissioner honda called me up. Offered a quid pro quo, basically, and i said to him, look, darryl, i told you when i first met you, i cannot be bought. And i still cannot be bought. And i feel uncomfortable talking about this right now. You should tell him and his crew to go fuck themselves. Quote. Thats why we are here