Board of Appeals - Regular Meeting

Thank you, Ms. Lamar. Colleagues, I just want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting of the Board of Appeals. We have two items, as well as a business matter to take care of regarding our annual report. I can assure members of the public and others that we have read the materials that have been provided to us. We are ready to move forward with your testimony, and I appreciate those of you coming in in particular. Thank you. Colleagues?

Move to adopt the minutes of the September 16th, 2026 meeting.

Yes. I'm disclosing for the record that I sit on the Planning Department's Community Equity Advisory Council, which advises the department staff on strategies to engage diverse communities. I do not accept any payment or honorarium for this work, and the work does not involve the appellant or permit holder. I do not believe this will impact my ability to be fair and impartial in this matter.

Thank you, Mr. Wu, for your brief and your oral presentation tonight. I note at the beginning of your presentation you acknowledged the general legitimacy of the permit, and you've outlined three concerns. One is for the privacy, one is the size of the deck, and the third related to noise. Have you raised these concerns with your neighbor? And if you have, what has been the response?

I'm sorry. My question, though, was whether you had approached your neighbors about the three concerns that you have now raised. And I think you answered that you didn't.

Thank you. And Vice President Soroyan, I'll yield to her. She has a question for you. Please, please quiet in the, thank you.

Thank you. That actually was not what I was asking, but I'm happy to have your answer, and I'll now recognize Vice President Soroyan.

Mr. Wu, I have asked a question. You've given me the answer. No. There's no question pending. Oh, okay. It's up to Vice President Soroyan to now ask a question. Gotcha.

Hi. Good evening. Hello. I have a question. The pictures that you took and you attached to your brief. Pictures. Photos. Photographs. Yeah, the photograph. So it looks like the deck was built, at least the platform for the deck. Is that right? Yeah.

No, no. I absolutely heard what you said before. But my question is, so the general construction and outline of the deck is now in their backyard. Is that correct? Yes. OK. So have you seen that? Because from what I read, they're going to have a relatively open deck. So go with me here for a minute. Are there any shadows that are being cast onto your yard

But within the outline of the deck that it is now, there's no shadow on your property? Because the fence, how high does your fence go? Six. Six feet? Yeah. OK. And then from the ground to the, it looks like there's about maybe three feet between the top of the fence and the bottom of the deck?

OK, but then there's a setback, right? Because it's three feet. OK, but there's no, all right. No, that's what I wanted to find out. So did the construction stop after you filed the appeal? On the deck? Did the construction on the deck stop? Yes, yes. OK, great. Thank you. I have no more questions.

OK. In the photo, it looks like you indicated that there's six feet between their opening and your opening, and that's going to be where the deck ends. Would you, specifically for the privacy issue, would you be open, or would you be amenable for them to put a screen, even if it's like perforated and sunlight can go through, but something where people can't look directly into your bedroom? as an alternative?

So one of your concerns was about the privacy. And I'll ask the other party this as well. If that is one of your concerns, would having some kind of screen or something that makes it harder to look into your room address your privacy concerns?

Yes. But if there was a screen, I think it's more of a yes or no question. Conceptually, if there was a screen that could give you a little bit of privacy, would that make you feel better?

Yeah. What I heard and read in the brief is that you have a concern about them seeing into your yard, seeing into your room. So if there was some kind of screen or something where they can't just look at your stuff, would you be amenable to that? Or is the problem greater than this?

Which is why I'm asking, if you can obscure the observation a little, would you be comfortable with that? And that would address your privacy concern? Of course. OK. That's it. Thank you.

What type of railing is proposed for this deck design?

So when you say open, what does that mean? Like a metal thing?

Okay. And then in situations like this, if the planning department were to recommend any kind of – modification to entertain the privacy concerns of the neighbors, what might that look like?

OK. And then if the neighbors wanted to make their fence higher, do they need a permit for that?

And I have one more question. What about hedges?

Thank you, Mr. Tigg for your presentation. Just two questions. You have described the proposed deck as modest, echoing the same as the permit holder has described it as modest. The appellant? pretty strongly disagrees, doesn't think it's modest. Can you tell us the maximum size of a deck in that area?

I guess I'm just trying to get a sense as to whether I should consider the appellant's description more accurate or your description? I'm trying to figure out why is it modest and not almost up to the edge?

Okay, great. I think the depth issue seems to be the most clear as to why it's modest or why it isn't modest. The other question I had relates to the it seems my colleagues are exploring possibilities of changing the wall of the deck from what it is currently. And I'm wondering whether, if we go down that road, would we be potentially harming the appellant's concerns about shadows? Are there style or construction issues related to trying to increase the protection for privacy and trying to not have shadows? Is that something we should be worried about if we're trying to build those?

Thank you, Mr. McElroy. I thought this was a pretty straightforward case until I got to your brief. And at the bottom of page 36 of 37 of the entire record, You tell us, which nobody else, I believe, had told us, there was an earlier permit. And in your brief, the scope of work for the original permit was a first floor new office, two bedrooms, two bathrooms with a wet bar. relocation of laundry and mechanical, second floor kitchen remodel, new bathrooms, and that permit was issued in March 27 of 2026. The question I have, this prompts me to think that the characterization of it as a small dec

a lot of other activities going on in the same building. Correct. It's pretty typical.

So in my discussion with Mr. McElroy from DBI, he clarified for me and for us that there is another permit going on and work going on for greater activity at the permit holders building. Did you have any concerns about that permit?

The reason I ask this question is because in your initial testimony, you acknowledged the legitimacy of this permit only, and your concerns are more about the particular behavior of people who could be on the deck. They could be noisy. They could look into your own house. And well, the other issue is it's a large deck. So it seems to me it becomes more of how the deck is going to be used rather than the deck itself. And that's what I wanted to clarify. You're not concerned about greater activity over there. You're just concerned about the size of the deck?

Yeah, you've referenced it a little. I get that we've brought up a privacy screen because I'm wondering, would you as the permit holder be amenable to doing something like that just to alleviate as like a gesture of good faith or something to address your neighbor's concerns?

Got it. So just to clarify, based on my first question, you as the, or Mr. Chan, you don't believe that your clients, the people that you represent, would be willing to do a privacy screen at this time?

Yes, Mr. Chen, I want to ask you about the... Alec just turned it on. I want to ask you about the other permit and the contemplated use of this deck. So according to the DBI testimony, the other permit is going to authorizes a new office. Are there any offices now on your premises?

Well, the other permit says first floor, new office. Yes. Are we going from zero to one, one to two?

I'm sorry, can you just answer my question? Yes, zero to one, yes, correct, yes, yes. All right, and then it also says two bedrooms on the first floor. How many bedrooms exist prior to this permit?

How about in the entire building? Total four. So we're going from two to four bedrooms. Correct. OK. And then it says on the first floor, two bathrooms. Correct. And then on the second floor, it says new bathrooms. So my same question. How many bathrooms are there prior to this permit, and how many will there be after the permit?

Yes, thank you. Hi, Zoning Administrator Teague. Earlier you mentioned that the existing proposed deck, which is somewhere in the order of 8 by 20 feet, fits within the existing buildable area of the lot of the subject property. I noticed that the property next door has the same lot depth, and the building footprint of that house is equivalent. It's relatively the same. So really, either property owner has recourse to building a privacy structure exceeding 10 feet within that buildable area, assuming that the rear yard setback requirement is going to be equivalent for both properties.

And something like a privacy wall or screen exceeding 10 feet would be within that buildable area, so long as it doesn't push past, say, 20 or 25 feet towards the rear lot line?

So there are maybe a few different degrees of strategy that could be deployed. Maybe a taller fence, it might trigger if in excess of six feet. A building department review, maybe a planning department review. But the point is that both the appellant as well as the permit holder could employ strategies to address visual privacy. That is correct. Contingent upon one or the other necessarily to I guess a fair representation. Yeah. Yeah.

I Thank the parties the representative and and the city representatives for all of the good information and particularly answering our questions and As I alluded to earlier, I started out thinking this was just a pretty standard, straightforward, common addition of a deck. And we've had a lot of discussions over my time here about privacy and having a neighbor wake up and have the monstrosity of a deck built next to them. But I thought, and I thought at the beginning of this hearing, that the burden of dealing with these issues is with the parties themselves, the neighbors. Which is why I aske

Thank you, President Chasvina. Yeah, I think to the zoning administrator's point, the previous permit for the interior improvements within the existing building envelope were a separate process, a separate approval, and one that I believe would trigger neighborhood notification. And I suppose I should have lodged this question with the zoning administrator while he was up here. So excuse me for asking the question out of order. But the point is that those improvements are within planning code. They were executed as such and went through due process in order to be approved. And so I'm less conc

Colleagues, are there further thoughts? Commissioner Wong.

Yeah, I think I was looking at it as more of whether or not they're allowed to build a deck. I think the permit itself was issued to the person. I'm trying to figure out if it was issued properly. I think in the conversation today, the piece that was a little disheartening to me is that the permit holder wasn't willing to entertain any kind of modification um in deference to their neighbors concerns um i wouldn't want to have to make adjustments on my property because my neighbor made an adjustment on theirs right that puts an additional financial process all of that burden onto me um but at t

Commissioner Soroyan, do you have thoughts on this?

I'm a little disappointed that the parties have had no discussion. So I know what it's like to live in the city. I know what it's like to have neighbors. My neighbors have a laurel hedge that's probably about 10 feet high. And it casts a shadow onto my backyard, which is just the way we bought the house. So I do think that the deck could be bigger. It's relatively small. I am concerned about imposing additional conditions on the deck itself. While I do hear your concerns, and I understand them, and I would have similar concerns if there was a deck near me, but I think that I'm not sure there w

Thank you, colleagues. To summarize, it seems like we are, in terms of the permit itself, we feel it was properly granted. There are some extenuating issues around the impact of the granted permit. But in terms of an appeal, whether it should be granted or not granted, it seems to me that we will not grant the appeal. But I will say and caution those who are here and those who are listening that this leads to two things. One is the importance of neighbors talking early on and resolving these matters themselves where they can. Sometimes they can't, and that's understandable. But they are in a m

Yes, following on the suggestion of Vice President Soroyan, I appreciate your efforts to always bring us together and to think creatively and find compromise. And so I might make a suggestion to amend the appeal along the lines of something like we encourage the parties to speak directly. It sounds like that hadn't quite happened yet. to see if there's any collaboration that can happen on either side of the property line, even if it's commitments around times of day or school nights or something along these lines. We all do live on top of each other here in San Francisco. And I'm fortunate tha

So perhaps Secretary Lamar can add language that would be encompassing Commissioner Abad's condition.

I'm disclosing for the record that I sit on the Planning Department's Community Equity Advisory Council, which advises the department staff on strategies to engage diverse communities. I do not accept any payment or honorarium for this work and the work does not involve the appellant or the permit holder. I do not believe that this will impact my ability to be fair and impartial in this matter.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hu, for speaking with us tonight. My questions are really to clarify and to affirm my understanding of what it is that you're asking for. We received your brief, and we've all read that. And there are some items in there that I believe you would like us to address this evening. And in your spoken testimony just now, you mentioned a number of other things that are not in writing in the brief that you submitted. So I'll go through them one by one just to make sure that I read and heard correctly what it is that you're asking us to consider. Does that sound OK?

Mrs. Yu, I'm going to do them one by one, if you'll allow me to. So the first issue written in your brief is that you want to make sure, you want to ensure that the improvement of the property next door, that any vents, for example, for laundry... go through the roof and not through the wall is that do i understand that correctly vents through the roof

Okay. So you did that when you remodeled your house. You're asking your neighbor to do the same as they remodel theirs. Is that correct? To put the vents through the roof and not through the wall? Yes. Thank you. There's four total items. The second item that I want to check with you on is that you mentioned in your brief that the fence that you had built was damaged. Did you... want us to somehow address that in this hearing? You mentioned that you built a fence when your neighbor was remodeling their property and that it has since been damaged. But there wasn't anything more specific in ther

I understand. So your neighbor did not share the cost with you for that. No. But you're saying that there was some damage. Yes. OK.

Thank you for clarifying. I have two other items I want to double check with you on. The following two items are not in your written brief, and I just want to understand if you're asking us to consider those in our deliberation today. You had mentioned you would like a setback or a buffer, and you've mentioned a dimension of three feet, three feet wide setback or buffer. Is that something, again, this is something you didn't submit in writing to us and you just introduced in your written, in your spoken statement. So did I hear you correctly that you are also asking us to consider a three-foot

Okay. Great. And then you had also mentioned, could you clarify what you meant about firefighting or fire safety? That was one of the items in your spoken testimony, but I would appreciate if you could further clarify.

Thank you for clarifying. So I have four items, and some of them I think I'll have follow-up questions for both DBI as well as the planning department. One has to do with ensuring that vents go through the roof and not through the walls, maybe addressing something about the fence. I don't know if we can impose or even address that, so maybe I'll pose that question to the city attorney when the time comes. there's a three-foot setback request from the property line and then a concern about emergency access and i would imagine that because these plans were approved as they are that they satisfy

Thank you, Mizzou. I'll be pretty brief. I want to thank Commissioner Abad for helping, I think, all of us outline what we've heard, and I appreciate him saying there are four issues, and the agreement of Mizzou that he is correct, that there are four issues that she has presented. Mizzou, I want to ask you about the vent issue. permit holders brief, they state, Ms. Yu's initial appeal raised a concern regarding the location of the laundry exhaust vent near the property line. In an effort to address Ms. Yu's concern and avoid unnecessary disagreement, our architect informed Ms. Yu in writing i

I guess I asked you a compound question. You're familiar with the changes. I think you said yes to that. Is that no longer an issue to you? yes great and my second question relates to the three foot buffer that you described here are you and you can tell me if you know or you don't know are you saying that is legally required or that it is desirable for fire safety and other reasons because we provide the three foot setback

I understand. I just want to know whether you feel that's a legal requirement or it's a mutual understanding. Well, I did it, so you should do it too.

Great. And I did not properly state mutual understanding. It's not an issue about whether anyone has agreed to it already. You're just saying that it's a good idea for the reasons you stated. Thank you very much. That's all the questions I have.

Hi, good evening. The permit holder had mentioned both in their written materials and in their verbal presentation that their architect has indicated that as their project planner, essentially the permit holder is committed to ensuring that the vent goes through the roof. And so it's recorded here in the brief, but is that recorded or lodged at all with DBI? Is that noted as part of the permit record? Not at this time? Not at this time. OK. So that commitment exists purely between the appellant and the permit holder as their own civil communication, as well as whatever they've submitted in the

And so there is a further phase of detailed review where you're looking at, as you mentioned, architectural, structural, HVAC, building systems, so forth. When is that the next step for the permit holder? Or when are they required to submit that documentation to DBI for review in the sequence of a project like this?

So presumably a detail like the location of any vents and where those penetrations are on the ceiling, the roof plane, et cetera, that would be in that and it could be...

The appellant made reference to maybe some concern about emergency access or egress from the property, first responder, accessibility. Can you speak at all to those concerns?

Thank you, Mr. Zhu, for your preparation and clarity. If I'm looking at Google Maps correctly, your property, the property with the site permit, sits to the north of Ms. Zhu's property. Is that correct? misused to the south yes that should be correct right so there's no way that your the building addition that is proposed on the property to the north could cast shadow on the property to the south because the it's that's what i understand okay thank you okay cool thank you okay thank you no further questions so we'll now hear anything further from the planning department anything further from t

I thank our city representatives and the parties for their written presentations and oral presentations. I do not see, as the zoning administrator stated, code compliant. I don't see any basis to grant the appeal. I do want to express that this case was easier to understand by the very eloquent presentation by the permit holder's representative tonight. And it does have an impact when presentations are well organized and done. And I would say his presentation was as strong as any attorney and representative I've heard since I've been here. Colleagues?

Thank you, President Trasvigna. Yes, I do appreciate both parties coming forward tonight and expressing themselves. And I do believe that all the issues that were raised by the appellant were duly addressed or fall really beyond our remit. for example, disagreements about fence posts and laundry lines. So I do feel satisfied that any fire safety ingress, egress, emergency responder issue, of course, is duly addressed in the course of DBI's review. And that there's sufficient documentation in the record that you know vents will will be placed at a sufficient sufficient setback or distance from

Yeah, I also want to appreciate my fellow Commissioner Abad for laying out all four points earlier when we were listening to the appellant. It helped me track and listen to everybody's presentation from the four that you had gotten the appellant to confirm that that's what we're listening to. None of those seem to either seem to be addressed or are outside the scope of this permit. So for those reasons, I concur with you both to deny the appeal.

And just finally, through this process, the appellant does have some, has received some relief regarding the events issue. So it does not, while there's the appeal is going to be denied, there is some improvement in her situation. I will move to deny the appeal based upon the grounds that the permit as approved is code compliant.

Thank you, Ms. Lamar. And I will be brief, but the brevity of my remarks shouldn't mask the enormity of the appreciation I have. I had a chance to review an early draft and more than one draft of the report. I believe it represents the work that we do well. And it also represents hard work by my colleagues, who I'm enormously grateful for. They come prepared. We do spend more time this year than last year on the same number of hearings, but that's because we want to make sure we are engaging with the public and make sure the public's questions and concerns are answered through this process. I

Thank you, President Trasvigna. And yes, I echo the appreciation. The report is very thorough. It's important for us to be able to see year-over-year trends and numbers, not only the fiscal ones, but just in terms of our caseload. and how those divide in terms of the decisions that we render. Just a clarification question and maybe a couple comments. One is, is this an action item in terms of us taking action? OK, great. So I have a comment on page 1319 and then the page with carryover surplus.

Starting with page 13, then I'll have a question about page 19, and then a question about the page with the carryover surplus.

I don't think it's necessary. I can generalize. Yeah, we break down subject matter by different jurisdictions, DPH, Public Works, Arts Commission. DBI and planning are conjoined. And I wonder if the commission has ever contemplated Atomizing that You know, sometimes it's a building permit. Sometimes it's a planning permit there. They are different concerns and I Wonder if that degree of resolution would be helpful or supportive It's it's not a comment or a request for a revision to this.

No, thank you for drawing my attention to the chart on page 13. I think the narrative on page 13 as well as the table on page 14 are organized slightly differently. And so I think I missed that in the table on page 13, ZA, DBI only, and then planning and building were separated. Categorized differently so me just observing some different ways of reporting and talking about things nothing monumental moving on to You said page 19 Page 19. I appreciated how you broke this down for us in your verbal presentation in terms of percentages. These are like raw numbers. And I wonder if, yeah, in future

So we're completely self-sustaining. Yeah. Just, again, want to echo the kudos from President Trasvina, staff, for the reporting, I think, especially as the discourse around our overall city commission structure and, you know, discussions, contemplation of conjoining or absorbing the work of other commissions within our own potentially that's been suggested. So this is helpful as we think strategically about how we handle things and handle ourselves. So thank you for the work.

Thank you, Commissioner Abbott. Commissioner Wong.

I also want to echo the efforts that were put into here. I think I read it a couple of times just as a new member of this board to try to understand the impact and everything. I do have one question. And it's not to change this, but on page 28, it talks about the appeal filing fees. And as a footnote, it mentions waivers. Is it safe to assume that there was no waivers or filing fee waivers granted this year? Or do we just not reference them?

Okay, but yeah, I think that it's important for us to inform members of the community Especially those that have economic hardship that they're still able to file appeals If you know a $600 zoning administrator determination is too high

Commissioner Budd, do you want any changes to the two pages you mentioned?

No, no changes, just questions. Thank you, President Transvino.

Then I will move to accept and publish or adopt the department's annual report for fiscal year 2526.

And again, thank you very much to Ms. Lamar, Ms. Longaway, and other staff members for their hard work on this, including the city attorney's office, which we rely on greatly. There being no further business before the board, we will stand adjourned.