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 Francisco Building 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. Why do you want a special permit . Because mr. Hernandez said you have to come back to me, im going to make your life miserable. This is out of control, criminal activity. It will be investigated. Trust me. I look to you to help my plight, my safety, my financial security, from this trumpism. Its a cancer on our city thats been going on for decades and nothing has been done about it. Ive had it. You have a minute and ten seconds if you want to add anything. I do want to follow up on what commissioner richards say said, which is that i worry that if we go through the process of master permit of whatever we call it, revision, whatever we call it, if we send it back to the people that dealt with this before, that we are not going to reach resolution. Thats why i asked this be directed to someone like your chief inspector and somebody that can oversee this process and we can come back to you and report on the outcome of the process so that there is some oversight and we are not back in the same situation that we were a few weeks ago that caused us to be here on appeal. Can i ask a question . Yes. We are not arguing here, i dont think. I think we are all going in the same direction. But im asking you for a potential solution, which i think would get you where you need to go and get where im trying to go, which is to resolve your issues and get your building open. Do you agree with trying to resolve in getting the building open . Im on the same page with you. Okay, good. So if we were to continue this item, and do what i suggested, and that is clean up the mess, because i dont speak against mr. Buskley, hes too good, but this was added, that was added, its a mess, it happens. But get some drawings that are finalized. Get some drawings that represent everything. Get those drawings through planning. Get the drawings through d. B. I. , and again, this is a continuance. So that means you got to come back here, right . And achieve what you want to achieve, i believe, which is to get plans reviewed, approved and plannings blessing, the variance, i dont know what you are going to do with that. Its up to planning. But then come back here and if everything is fine, then we move forward, and you get to continue your business. Whats wrong with that picture . [off mic] i just want to get a well, i think okay. Ill let reask the question according to commissioner lazarus. Thats a good idea. I have a few questions before we move onto rebuttal. I mean of the department. Before we continue. I have questions for you before we continue with the rebuttal which i think commissioner lazarus was suggesting, finish that before we go to deliberation. I have a few questions regarding some of the issues with the building. Were your clients aware of regulations governing rear window replacement and that they were not in compliance with those regulations . Im not sure im the best person to speak to that. Whoever is can. What bothers me a little bit, im not going to get into the drama about whether d. B. I. Is construct and all the allegations, thats not what we are here to decide. Its clear they have gone beyond the scope of permit. Im frustrateed that the assertions that there are no things wrong with the project when clearly they are. Im asking if your clients were aware of these issues and that they were in violation. Were you aware the rear window replacements were out of compliance . I was after the fact were aware of the parking spots . The other spaces that are there . No, its an open garage is it advertised of having 12 spaces. The agent advertised and i told her you cant do that. When i bought the property. Im rachael. Im the other partner. When we bought the property, there was a notation in the listing, which we provided to kelly at planning, that said that you had sixcar parking, four to sixcar parking per garage, two garages. So that was in the listing already. We provided pictures of the garage, completely open. You can see the brick. Essentially the same condition you bought it in and maybe its not in line with regulations we have currently, but it was in the conditions. It was maybe this big on to the next one. Im going to do this quick by because its late. So bear with me in that regard. Were you aware the variances for one and a half feet or Something Like that. Were you aware the variance was needed for in fill that was done . No. They said it was a structural issue, that would building could collapse and said it was small enough under an overhang that it didnt require. It is just small enough. It was like ten feet. Its very close. There we did just speak to planning and they told us it had to be under 12 feet and i went and measured it and sent them a video and they came back and said it has to be under ten feet. So that information changed quickly. Did the interior remodels occur is that accurate . We had floor replaced. The fireplace was added. Thats it. The full bath had a half bath, all that. Thats in the kitchen but what mr. Hernandez represented was there were further remodels beyond kitchen and bath. I believe its on slide 13 he shows theres work done on a kitchen maybe having a new cabinets. Im not sure if this is the condition of the building. But the assertion is there was work done without permits in the interior. Im wondering if you are aware of that. We took a victorian, we updated the kitchen in its original place. We took a out house bathroom that was falling off the back of the building and made it into a full bath which we put on our plans. We added a bathroom off the main bedroom. And thats it. We kept all the all the trim, got a new floor. Its a beautiful building. Nothing out of the scope . No. Commissioner tan e tanner, we see the most egregious cases of stories that are added. Im perplexed standing here. I sympathies and we see cases also but what i want to try to do is diminish the drama around other things. Lets go back to the building and look at the issues, right . Great. The exit corridor. Mr. Buscovich testified he got plans approved from fire that he didnt send down to file. But saying the plans didnt show on the plans. Were you aware of that issue . We asked him whats the purpose of this wall. They asked to do a fire report and they said remove them. They are more dangerous because you are running back inside the building. So did i look at the plans and say where did you no, i took his word for it. And foundation not in the plan, the Foundation Work was done. Is that something you were aware of as an issue . We had a seismic upgrade. Front footing wasnt noted to be replaced. We replaced the front footing. The excavation was performed. Theres discrepancy how much excavation was shown on plan, its your testament there was not a rock shown. Were you aware of excavation work that was not on the plans . I was not. Please one at a time. They were in the existing. The tenant in the upper right hand unit cut a big hole in the kitchen ceiling and put some kind of a party room up there and put a skylight in. We saw pictures that showed a large number of skylights added. From 2018 . Those are ones we put in with our contractor were those permitted . They were supposed to be part of the roofing permit. There were six original skylights. I sent google maps ariels to kelly to shower that. When did you take possession . June, 2018 i think we have to get from d. B. I. When the Google Images you are showing came into being because they show a limited number of skylights. So sheer wall front and rear but it shows no sheer walls installed. That sounds like an issue that is concerning. There are sheer walls. They are not the entire length. They are plywood underneath and chip board. They are there. Okay. Required but no geotechnical report submitted. Is that accurate . Yes, theres no required. The engineer had the lead. We are happy to give so there was no report but you are happy to provide one . Yes. Excuse me, may i . On 3847 18th street, director from d. B. I. Put out s05 bulletin saying theres no report under 5,000 cubic yards. So you were under the amount . Under the one thats now been retroactively done got it. That makes sense. Theres a threshold, and if you are not meeting it, its fine. Bathroom seems okay. The chimney not part of remodel. Not on any plans. Does that sound like something you are familiar with and is an issue . We removed a chimney, i reframed it with full length joist. It isnt on the plans . It shows on the plan to reframe the opening. In words. The only way is to do fulllength joist. We offered to show it to the inspector, have it it was not on the plans you submitted . It was on the plans to reframe the opening. Theres only one way to do it. When they say its not on the plans, you disagree . Yes skylights we talked about. Its eight feet, whatever, six feet and two foot, not really that big of an issue. The deck, the first floor platform is not represented on the plans or permit. Do you find that to be accurate . One of the first floor . There was no work that was supposed to be done on that floor so why would we represent the deck in the back when we do the garage . Go ahead. Step through the deck, we did a revised drawing showing the deck after we went to the building inspector with the photo showing the deck and holes through it. He said go get a permit. We got a permit. Didnt show it at the very beginning because it was the backyard. And it wasnt intended to be done until it was needed. Okay. Stairs weve covered sufficiently. I dont know if other commissioners have issues with that that. Rear windows, we know about that. Garage door, supposed to be seven feet, eight foot opening. I understand d. B. I. Has issues in that regard. We drew the building up, existing eightfoot door proposed because thats the standard door. We said existing proposed because we werent changing anything. When we did the door removal, because fire said we wanted the corridor out, and building said the same thing but they took fires lead. Preservation said when you take out the door maybe you can resenter the door and maybe it eight feet. We went to make the change, we poured the foundation so we couldnt make it eight feet, we could only make it 7 6 because we only had three foot tolerance. So its not eight feet. Okay thats all we have. Do you represent that was not shown on the plans . Existing as proposed because we werent changing anything. Okay. Thats all the issues that have been raised and all the issues that i have. So thank you, commissioners for allowing me that time. It was very helpful. Thank you. If i might add one more thing. I did go to meet with mr. Hernandez last week, was it, with my attorney, and pat, and i was there, there was many people there. And i said to him we keep trying to fix this and it seems like we are jerking us around. The day i met with him he said i dont know what you are hearing but i want to fix this administratively, and i said great because it seems like a lot of this is egregious and overkill. We were ignored by him at every turn. When i got to the Building Department that day, he canceled our meeting. When i pulled in the garage and said im going upstairs and im not leaving until i speak to him. So i waited for about half an hour, and i said to him, are we working on things or are we not . And he said you filed your breech and we didnt agree to that. The only way now is revocation. And i said so you are telling me, you are telling pat, you are telling my attorney right now, revocation is out of time. We are done. Thank you. Thank you. We are done. Thank you. We are now moving onto rebuttal with the department of building inspection. You have six minutes. Commissioners, joe duffy, d. B. I. Hopefully we dont need six minutes. Its getting late. But the d. B. I. Issues over 60,000 permits a year. We have about 400 employees at the minute. A lot of them come to work every day and work very hard. I think there are cases sometimes there are cases when we make mistakes. There are things that happen but overall our process works fairly well. And obviously we get a lot of people get passionate about it, and they have every right to feel that as well. And we respect that. I will say again, there are Code Violations. There is a path to fix them. They should use that path. And there is a path on that we look forward to working with them to get there. Just finished chief inspector hernandez wants to finish off. We are available for questions. Mr. Duffy, did you have something to say . Ewes your time i would like to point out that d. B. I. Was willing to work with the owner and still is. I met with them multiple times. I didnt ask for that analysis for a corridor. From the beginning, i said they have that information, thats great, that will help my case so that i can review proper permits. So even after the site vuitton september 27th, we met at my office and i stayed late to work with him and view all the drawings so i dont miss anything. And speaking with that meeting that we had, he attempted to set up a meeting on thursday, a day before that meeting. But i wasnt prepared, because i meet everybody in that meeting. And i even, every meeting i had with him, it was always transparent. I even sent an email to him the todayday before that meeting. Overhead, please thanking him for the request. I dont have access to everybodys schedule. 24 hours ahead. It wasnt even 24 hours ahead. It was almost at the end of the day. And i was trying to run and find everybody. And i did apologize for them. And i said i contacted mr. Buscovich. I even called him after the email and said i dont have time because i need everybody involved so we can all look at this thing. Did you say to them that because they appealed this case, you werent going to work with them anymore . With all due respect, again, every meeting that i had, even that meeting was in open public. So multiple people heard our conversation even to the point that my question is did you say that . No, i never said that, sir. I mean, my question, joe, is theres an allegation that cooperating with d. B. I. Has not been possible, and that theyre saying we want to do it exactly what the board seems to be headed, the direction the board seems to be headed. You are saying we want to do what the board wants as well, and yet it hasnt happened. And i dont understand it. And i dont understand who to believe and maybe it doesnt matter. Well just continue it and well work it out. They might come back and say they still wont work with us, they are threatening us. And then what do we do . So i dont understand how it can be that both sides are saying weve been trying to cooperate but they wont. I dont understand that either, because we open every morning at 7 30 in the Building Department. You can come in and see anyone. If you are not getting the person you need, you go to the supervisor or director if you have to. You go to the Building Inspection Commission. We do respond. I dont know why they are saying that. But i can tell you he did make a suggestion and i think it was a good suggestion that director appoint a few people at d. B. I. , maybe someone from Building Inspection Division to work with this. I have no problem. You hear me on a weekly basis say we want to get this resolved. Its Code Violations we want to get revolved. People get passionate about it. They cant help that. At the end of the day there will be a solution and well all move on, and thats what has to happen. I certainly hope so. Mr. Duffy, you mentioned the word path to get this done. Is the path that i described a reasonable path for you . Shall i repeat myself . Yes. Get a set of drawings that reflects everything that has been done in the building so far and everything that they want to get done, have them bring it to planning, have them bring it to you, find out where the issues are and then settle them one by one and then bring it back here and say everything is all done. Is that okay . That is great. Because thats what we do with most permits. We get a full set of drawings with everything on there. They could prepare one good full set of drawings. And we can sit down with them. Weve done this many times. Mr. Sanchez said, this isnt the first consolidated permit weve worked on together. Weve worked on a lot of these. And some have been appealed to this board. My commissioner next door to me just did what i would do in a meeting with a full set of plans. Ran down the list, asked the questions, except the only thing that was wrong with it, it was a perfectly done, the only thing that was flawed is theres no set of plans. Its all buscovich wrote this in at the last moment, theyll catch it later. Its a mess. Its a sloppy mess. Again, no disrespect intended. So that path would work for you. You see that getting done. And how much time does Something Like that take to get done and maybe mr. Sanchez can comment on that as well, the same task, which would include you, which would include the potential variance. In my experience, its taken a couple of times because you are going to review them. You might have comments. Youll have to get some responses back. Theyll redo them, come back again and meet with us ready before well be able to cake face them in. Thats formally the process two months, three months . The plan i think that mr. Sanchez has tonight, there is stuff on that that we would need to have more of a look at. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. We will now hear from the Planning Department. You have six minutes. Thank you. Planning department. I appreciate the board to further discuss this to try to deescalate and find a resolution here. Im sure we can find a way forward. There are very fine people on both sides of this. I have worked with mr. Buscovich before. I have Great Respect for them. I appreciate the efforts to get the plans to us this week. My one suggestion would be take another week on it and i dont want our department to be doing Quality Control and have more thorough plans. But i know that we can kind of continue to work on it and get complete and accurate plans out of it and ive worked with d. B. I. And many staff at d. B. I. Over the years and have trust and respect with what they do. They do an unbelievable job with the number of permits they are tasked with. There are violations with this. And we just need to find a way forward with that project. A couple things, in terms of the apray sal, it does say six apray sal, it does say six parking spaces. That was very clear there. Theres certainly no evidence of 12. I wanted to correct that for the record. There have been concerns about d. B. I. , about the process, you know, and i have Great Respect for this board, but this board is not the appropriate venue for those concerns and allegations. There is the Building Inspection Commission which oversees the department of building inspection. And this would be a great place to have those concerns raised if they havent already been raised. And also its unprecedented for this part to make staffing calls. So i think, again, if there are concerns about who should be handling this, director tom, Building Inspection Commission, thats the appropriate venue to direct that if that hasnt already been done, i would encourage them to do that. I think we can find a way forward through this and look forward to the boards assistance in that. In terms of variance and variance timing, it would be several months. I just quoted to them six to eight months. I dont know what the current backlog is of variance applications since im not handling that directly anymore. But we can look into it and get that done as soon as possible. Theres no preferential treatment, we cant take it out of order, but we will do our best with that. They could also revise the project so they no longer need a variance by deleting that corner. They cant reconstruct what was there before, but they can remove that little area that was below that shed roof. Thats probably not what they want to do. They probably want to go ahead to get the variance to legalize that, but they can make that decision and pursue that. Lastly, there are some questions about the skylights and on the overhead photography from 2017 to current day, in 2017, preownership, there were on the east, it functions like two buildings. On the east portion of it, there were a total of looks like six skylights. With the resolution, they could have been other things, but they appear to be six skylights. It does current day it seems theres four more added. It seems that may be what that was. Theres a lot of roof penetrations with venting and things like that but i think the delta is four on the skylights. Im available for any questions. If we are going to chat about a continuance so we dont have to go to revocation, you are the very experienced person for years and years and years. How much time . It, it thing with the continuances is they can always be continued further. Hopefully all the parties are sufficiently motivated to try to get this resolved. It could be some date in february or march. Because, again, if its looking like thats not enough time, the parties could move it out later. February, march time frame seems reasonable. The variance issue you just said, maybe this is some change in the plan or some i didnt hear understand it clearly. I think, in terms of if they do proceed as it is in legalizing that, it will be more than that one. They probably wouldnt get a variance hearing before april, maybe. But at least they can decide. They can have better information. If they need that, they can they got to figure out whether its worth it to do what they have. Yeah. It sounds like theyll want to pursue that. All right. Thank you. Any other questions, anybody . Thank you. Commissioners, this matter is submitted. So i think that the best thing to do here is to do a continuance. It would be my recommendation to be redundant, sorry, folks, for both parties, that the permit holder completes cleanup of your plans as best you can and get them to a final position so that you can wrap it in a ribbon and bring it to planning and d. B. I. And no more contention, no more leaveouts and go through your process and let them do their job appropriately, come back here and hopefully everything is marvelous, and we say, yay, its over. Does anybody have any problems with that . Good. The commissioner likes it. Anybody else have any ideas on that subject . The only thing i would add is if its not marvelous, i would like everyone to understand that revocation becomes a very real possibility. And so just because when we ask people to talk, we learned earlier tonight, and i think one party was very disappointed because they tried to negotiate a settlement, they werent able to. They thought they had a good chance and they didnt. So Everyone Needs to be aware of the risks of not working with each other. One other thing ill say is, well, ill leave it at that, actually. So there may be contention about the basis on which this matter came to us. I think at this point theres irrelevant. We clearly have learned this project doesnt meet all the requirements that we need to see met in order to be able to approve this. And thats where we need to go. Thats our goal. And i would subscribe to what commissioner santacana just said. If it doesnt come back in that shape, there are other options. We have clearly heard this project has flawed. Im were yay of hearing why and what they are and what they should have been and could have been. Come back with a corrected, proper project thats the one that everybody wants and the one the city can approve. Here, here. A motion to continue to whats something in march . February 5 or march 18. March 18 seems reasonable. Its going to take some time to do some ironing out. March 18 continuance with the direction that the project sponsor should meet with the appropriate city departments and resolve the issues with a clean set of plans. And to have a full and complete set of plans . Yes okay. Do you want those plans submitted in advance of the hearing to us . Yes, please. Thank you. So we have a motion from president swig to continue this matter to march 18 to give the parties time to meet together and for the appellants to provide a full set of plans. On that motion, commissioner santacana. Aye. Lazarus. [roll call vote] that motion carries 40. The matter is carried to march 18. We expect the plans to be provided the thursday prior to the hearing. Ill send out a reminder. Thank you very much. We do have one more item, commissioners. We do . I planned this because i knew it would be very short. Direct correcting . If you dont have any questions we can just adopt it and move on. I like it but lets do it properly, please. Okay. Thank you. Can we clear the room . We have one more item to go, please. Thank you. Thank you. Moving onto item number 9, this is a special item, discussion of possible adoption of the annual report for fiscal year 2019. So commissioners, as you know, the charter requires all boards and commissions to issue an annual report and gives the public an opportunity to see what we have done. So we can just start going through some of the pages just to highlight. Looking at page two, we had 30 meetings, 89 hours, which is pretty efficient, i believe. Moving to page eight, 66 percent appeals filed were land use decisions which is down from last year. We had an increase in appeals filed on public works matters. We had wireless and tree removal cases. So moving onto page eight. Well i guess we are at page eight. In terms of the d. B. I. Matters, most of the appeals were let me see of building alteration permits issued, site and alteration permits issued. And let me see. That was on page ten. Appeals of joint d. B. I. Planning decisions. 91 percent were of the issuance of Building Permits. And then just a small portion, nine percent, were appeals of denials. And theres a wonderful picture of the inspector joe duffy in our annual report. I couldnt get one of you smiling. Im sorry. [laughter] i looked. But [off mic] okay. Scotts appearance is now outdated. Yes, yes. So on page 12, we see that there were 21 appeals filed of Zoning Administrator decisions. And those were mixed between if you turn the page, you can see that 33 percent were letters of determination. And 29 percent were suspension revocation requests. Those were the bulk of the decisions. Let me see moving on. And if we move onto yes . [off mic] thank you. Where . [off mic] okay. I know. Thank you. Page 13. Okay. I will fix that. Thank you. You have an eagle eye. She does. Let me see. So moving on, let me see. I dont have my page numbering correct. So if you look on page 17, we talk about the number of appeals from public works. And you can see 39 appeals were filed. 25 were at the wireless box permits. 12 were related to the tree removal. So we have yet to see what will happen with the new legislation with the changes to article 25. Its possible we could have a lot less since we no longer permits are no longer required for cityowned polls. However, for pg e polls theres no longer an appeals process at the public works level. So well see if they come straight to board of appeals. Its not clear what the outcome will be with that legislative change. And let me see. Looking onto page 20, the outcome. 91 appeals were decided. 50 of those appeals were denied by vote, upholding the underlying departmental action, 33 were granted with conditions by the board. Seven appeals were granted. So thats a very small number. And one appeal was denied by default when the board was unable to muster sufficient votes. So thats good. It shows that the board is pretty voting together most cases. Most all of them. [off mic] yes. And in terms of looking at rehearing and jurisdiction requests, rehearing requests, nine were denied, two withdrawn. Jurisdiction requests, o
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.