Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Welcome Presidio Bay scholars.

I think we can make sure that question gets answered when the commissioners discuss this matter. We will get that question clarified for you when we discuss the matters. OK.

Okay, she can go okay But someone else in the audience someone else in the audience could use their time and your phone to somebody else not yet spoken.

So point of clarification for the audience as well as myself. Notification, how is it deemed what form of notification is appropriate? for projects going forward.

Thank you. I think that the concern is notification for commercial versus residential versus open space. It can vary. So you're actually taking all of that into account, yes.

I believe that would be the concern. It's the other side. It's the people being notified or making sure that the vast amount of people that are everybody's impacted does get the notification. That's actually built into it. Got it.

I think this is a very tricky topic because there's so many details to the sequence and flow of environmental analysis and when documents are published and what types of determinations are made. And so there's a lot of detail in the weeds. And I think one could spend, well, one literally does spend an entire class trying to figure this stuff out. I'm going to try to get into a few topic areas and seek some clarifications, too. One thing I just want to say right up front, being very clear about this, there was varying comments about whether or not we are getting rid of Proposition K. as part of

And regardless of that, so we would still need to respond as a department to material submitted that comes in all the way up to the appeal hearing, basically? Is that how it works? That's correct.

Okay, so it's just the timeline for filing the appeal. Okay, that's helpful. One of the other changes that's being made here is the elimination of a planning commission hearing on the draft EIR, so that catches my attention since it's the planning commission. I had to think about that one. I'm in favor of it just because At the Planning Commission hearing, we really tend to get some pretty higher level comments that are typically followed up with or preceded by much more detailed input. And all those pathways for providing input on draft EIRs would still exist. And so I think it's a reasonable

okay thank you um i think where this this leads me and kind of following on to commissioner mcgary's questions about the notice for um those are broader notice questions i we have some recommendations from the historic preservation commission that were referenced during this presentation And although I'm not supportive of two of the three of them, I would say on the third recommendation that they had, it's to evaluate the methods of public notification for environmental review to assess their impact and identify opportunities for improvement. And then there's some additional details there. Tha

So current practice is just to translate that section 295 essentially the prop K sunlight ordinance We have been basically doing the analysis in the same way as that. That's correct Yes, okay. Thank you Commissioner so

Thank you. I just wonder, just first and foremost, I wonder if what my fellow commissioners have brought up, these questions about notifications, has satisfied Ms. Alice Barclay's question, one of the public comment question about all the different notifications? You good? OK, thank you. All right, so I think that there's a lot that my colleague had covered. And I am looking at, there's a lot of people coming in today and talked about the evolution of the special San Francisco procedure chapter 21, the local procedures on CEQA, the evolution of it. I really appreciate the history. And a lot of

Thank you, Commissioner Tso. Sequa is incredibly complicated. I'm an architect. I'm in the orbit of talking about Sequa. And even I had to spend a ton of time with these amendments. I spent a lot of time with staff. Thank you. So it's easy to get confused. You need a glossary, a cheat sheet, just to understand what a lot of this means. And it's clear to me, even from a lot of the public commentary, that there's a lot of confusion. So I really appreciate a lot of the time we're taking here to get that clarification and really get on the same page about what these changes are and are not. I real

There's no doubt that in my career here, my lifetime in San Francisco, it's in 95, in construction, put people to work on a daily basis. Shadows have been weaponized to basically kill, delay, abort, get rid of, and just slow down the cog in the wheel that things just don't happen. The picture we saw earlier on, that was 1750 Taylor. I worked on that project for years. maybe almost two years of my construction. Above that is 999 Green Street. 1000 is basically the other side of the road. And building a question there that something's going to go up was the Verde, and that's a burnt-out building

Oh, yeah, definitely shade. And on wind, one hour is over a year period. I think moving that to nine hours is perfectly plausible. over a year's study, and we're not guns, as Commissioner Solge has pointed out. We're going to be living in a different world year by year, six month by six month. I just watched the news this morning, and we've got wildfires in the West of Ireland. The world's just changing. We have to adapt with it.

I do note that the HPC recommendation of approval of the ordinance included a direction to the department to report back within three months on the methods of public notification. Since that was already adopted by that commission, I would just say I think it would be helpful for the planning commission to also see the results of that effort under their direction.

Thanks, Ms. Vlade, for the pretty comprehensive overview of the permanent SF efforts. I really appreciate seeing everything that's been going on and the examples that you provided. And kudos to the whole permanent SF team. Just to think about this, it's such a big lift, and there's so many pieces to this. When it comes to the overall broader permit SF efforts, setting aside the OpenGov contract for the moment, I have a couple of just kind of open-ended questions. I don't know if you have answers, but whatever you might be able to share would be helpful to me. And so I'm curious about what has

Sure, that makes sense. I mean, I was sort of thinking about that, too, in terms of there must be so many things that involve leadership in order to actually move some of this forward because it is such a cross-silo kind of effort, hence why it's so difficult. I'm curious about the first example you raised of communication. Is that where you're referring mostly to the processes for communicating internally or externally to the permanent customers or?

That's helpful. And certainly change is probably hardest for people who know the old ways the best. So that makes sense what you just said about that range of users. Do we have a follow-up survey or means of collecting user feedback?

Great. And that's actually a good segue kind of to something a little bit more related to those processes versus what's happening with OpenGov's sort of interface and database kind of transition. So first of all, you know, in public comment, we heard, you know, the idea that maybe some permits are taking longer or not being processed same day. which I don't know if that's necessarily something to do with the OpenGov transition so much as the changes in workflows. I don't know. Do you just have any... Yeah, absolutely. I guess I'm asking both what is the tracking of our improvements in timing,

OK. Thank you. Yeah, the teething problems certainly sounds reasonable. I think the one note I would make is just I feel like as we transition more permits to being online, which we should, that should be our modern practice while still having an in-person option. It's a little harder. There's a little less pressure maybe to solve a problem right now when there isn't somebody standing there right in front of you, like they would be at the permit counter. So hopefully these processes, we can work out the kinks and still manage to keep a sense of urgency and priority and just a seamless process

OK, thank you very much for answering my questions. And the contract resolution has my support. I think it's important for our ability to keep this process moving forward and knowing what we have to work with. And so, yeah, thank you very much.

Thanks, Commissioner. Thank you. Commissioner McGarry.

This is Wadi. You and your team, thanks for bringing us into the 21st century. San Francisco, it's kind of ironic that we're holding up where we even know what carbon paper is, but you showed an example of it there. I recognize it because we also have it as a backup, backup, backup in my daily job. We have to pull out this paper that basically has no pen in the world that can fill it in. So thanks for that. Past practice, nothing will get you in trouble. The company I work for, the organization I work for, nothing will get you in trouble faster than using the term past practice because you los

So I really appreciate that. I didn't time how long it took you to tell us everything about what you and your team had gone through since like a whole year gone by, right? And also especially since the mayor addressed the city, the state of the city earlier in the beginning of this year. Also need to thank Sarah Dennis-Phillips to allow the staff to have such a great collaborations across so many different agencies. I really personally thought it was just really try to get the building permit and the planning permit, but now we adopted so many friends from our city, including the SFIM permit.

Yes, yes. And then how can we help our public to get a better understanding? Because knowing that this upcoming few years is going to be a lot of pivoting and learning, and we are definitely very nimble and agile. seeing your contract amount and now knowing what you're actually, your scope is like kind of when like this, like a fireworks exploded. I mean, like, so it's a two-part question. How do, what are we prioritizing and how do you inform the public moving forward?

The second part was because things are ever, but things are evolving, right? You mentioned phase one. We took care of a lot of the low-hanging fruit, the basic plumbing permit things, right? And then you have that set of data. But then moving to phase two, you are going to expand to more complicated permit applications. Then your set of data will be different. But my second part of the question is, like, how can a general public keep up with understanding of where things are. If I have to answer an auntie asking me what to do about her coffee shop in the middle of Chinatown, I'm not sure. Shou

Okay, I do have my one last thing is I really agree with you, and we definitely need to do better. Already we're doing pretty good, but we can do better. Now we have other, we collaborate or group with three departments, so good customer service is very important. how many times I personally mortified just to get a permit from DBI. I can't count how many times I personally got mortified. I like really being treated not as professional as it could be. This is not when I was serving on this particular commission. But I just want to make sure that whatever we're doing, had a way to incentivize ou

Great. Thank you. And then that ties into the QR code, right? That's just, like, give us your feedback. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Thank you, Liz. I'm done with my comments.

Okay, thank you. Thank you so much for the presentation. SF permit is something we've been hearing a lot about, but getting a window into what you all have accomplished in the last year and where we're heading is fantastic. And I love that there's vision, right? That there's... I loved hearing, as someone that is, you know, my side, you know, my other job is I am one of your customers, you know, and my colleagues are your customers, and I think... approaching it not for what's easy for us, but what's the customer experience, I think, is going to be game changing. And this permit rationalizatio

That's super helpful to understand. The project charters are ones that, is that something you just, as part of your presentation, do we know what those are?

Without creating more, this is so informative, without creating more work, is it possible we could do this at some healthy cadence? Absolutely. Whether it's annual or just to kind of understand what happened in the last year and where are we headed now?

Fantastic. You mentioned an invitation to the public for feedback, and there's workshops and things like that. Is there an easy way for customers to provide feedback on the website?

Great. I'm curious, maybe, I don't know, I'm going to put you on the spot here, but in my organization, we often talk about big, hairy, audacious goals. I'd be curious to know what yours are for SF permit in the long run.

Do you mind if we take a little break? I don't mind at all.

Generally, I'm very pleased I think that the changes in this legislation make a lot of sense. They're reasonable. They seem like a really good set of steps towards accelerating and supporting the production of affordable housing in the city. I don't really have any concerns at all with the temporary uses, mid-block alleys, or conversion of residential care facilities components of this. But I did want to dig a little bit into the ground floor commercial and active use requirements change for affordable housing projects. So the arguments for supporting that change make a lot of sense to me. The

2024 I believe okay, and I think there's also a reference that currently it's a possibility for these or Correct me if I got this wrong, but but basically with state density bonus Some affordable housing projects have been waving out of these active use ground floor requirements. Is that actually a track record of? projects doing that or Just you know a possibility

OK, thank you. That's helpful. I think just from my perspective, I could support legislation as is. But I do think it will be important to continue to have this conversation as this legislation moves forward to determine if there are potentially locations where this might not apply, as has been raised. I don't think I necessarily would need that in the motion of supporting legislation. Hopefully those conversations can continue and see what might come of them. And I will say I reside near a recently completed affordable housing project near Valencia and Cesar Chavez. And it's not, as far as I

Well, I'm always supportive of this effort. I did mention early on, like, we really is, like, climate resiliency, we need to really adapt. And I'm grateful to see that we have a really good team of staff to create that continuity. And I would assume that we are doing the heavy lifting to kind of bring all the other city agencies together to do this effort with us. As I remember when I was serving on the board of directors on SFMTA, we quickly identified like there's this sea level rising and everybody needs to work together along the entire shoreline. So I'm just super happy we are continuing

I don't have extensive comments to share over my time and Over the last four years, I've heard about this plan as well as some of the other plans that were mentioned for sea level rise adaptation. And it's just good to see over time how this work is moving forward and how we are identifying resources to keep it moving forward and to continue the prioritization to continue efforts to ensure that there is a lot of community dialogue and inputs to these processes as well. So this has my full support. Thank you.

Thank you. I echo the sentiment, incredibly important work. Um, it's a very long term investment in our city that we need to be making. Um, and we do hear along the way, um, the other efforts that are, um, that have an initiatives that have, um, been going on. So it's really, exciting to see that we'll be filling in the remaining gaps and coordinating strategies and then coming out of it with a land use plan and implementation roadmap and funding strategies. And I, of course, support deeply the community public stakeholder feedback. This work is highly technical, too, so I do want to just make

I'll jump in. I think this is the first time we're seeing a project here at the commission, at least, that is part of the family zoning, exercising the local, yeah, okay. So it's neat to work through something for so long and then finally start to see the fruits of that labor. This feels like a poster child project in response to, I think, what we all imagine for family zoning and the local program. It's great to see project sponsors exercising that option. We're getting eight units in exchange for two. It's a transit-oriented community. District so we're really I think that's why we don't hav

Thank you, President Campbell. Yes, everything President Campbell said, I agree with. The family zoning plan was adopted in December of last year by the board supervisors and the mayor, and we had worked through a lot of the details here as well along the way. And this is the kind of project that is now enabled by that, and there's also a lot of by right pathways that exist with housing and restrictions from the state level about ensuring that we are approving housing. So I sympathize with the point that it's jarring. This is going to be a period of transition in many areas of the city in whic

Second. Second. Commissioner McGarry. Is that it? Commissioner Braun, thank you. Commissioner McGarry.

I'll echo my fellow commissioners. So it starts. The Richmond is getting height. The Sunset's going to get height. We put it off for years. Everybody else has had to basically house. Every other district has had to house San Franciscans. They're kind of run out of space. and basically it's our turn this is the start of it and there's going to be more there's going to be little needles sticking up in every little neighborhood in the richmond it's happening it's going to happen we've got a deficiency again arena goals 82 000 that's over a year ago that can only be growing because we're not build

If I may, the parking permits, I'm on 10th and Gabriel. We've got one block that doesn't require parking permits. It's great when you're the top 90%. But when you're the only block with two blocks left that don't require a parking permit, everybody comes to park in your end. And the car outside my house is not. in my neighborhood, or it's actually around the corner where they can have a permit, but my back garden goes there. And I try and get a permit, but I'm not entitled to get a permit because I'm in a no-permit parking. So it's a catch-22. There's a vehicle outside my house for two weeks,

I really second all my fellow commissioners, a lot of your comments. And I actually really appreciate that this is the first one that your project applicant is utilizing our local program. which is like to see more of these. Again, I mentioned earlier we want more housing of all kinds. And I noticed that you have two units here are also below market rate units. So that's a really good commitment. I do, however, really wish that you do have a commitment to actually have it built so we can actually house families and people instead of being it as such as entitlement and then sell it. So I really

You can come up and speak in the microphone, please.

I appreciate it. I'm in support of this. Commissioner McGarry?

So there is a commitment to build it, and you're not going to sell on the entitlement? Got you. Thank you.

So that would be the project sponsor shall work with community groups under direction of the planning department to incorporate the mural and determine its size and material, not its content.

This is a heartbreaker. I work out of D10, Hunter's Point, whatever we want to call it. Go back to Butchertown, whatever generation we want to go. Yeah, it's AutoZone. It's your national brand. You see a market, and you're the car version of Starbucks. I get it. People have their life. You're corporate. It's a market. It's speak. It's corporate speak. Basically, you move. I don't know if you knew Islas Creek is going to shut down. And when it does, it's going to shut down for two years, I believe. I know that because we just built our new hall in Hunter's Point and 3rd and Cargo will be one bl

We're in a situation here where basically nothing is happening, and nothing's been happening for God knows how long. Basically, there's either activation or it stays the way it is. But if it stays the way it is, it's just getting worse. That property is not getting any better day by day. It's not good. We're not in a good spot. We're really not in a good spot here. And people are not like, we're not in an economy where basically there's 10 tenants to actually pick from. they're going to activate the situation. And basically what we're going to do is we're going to try and work with them to see

I'm not allowed to have a conversation back and forth, so I'm going to try and tee it over to one of my fellow commissioners.

Thank you for everyone who come out here and also two weeks ago you were here and a lot of efforts, a lot of many years of struggles and I had to give appreciation to my planning staff, Edgar, actually carrying that torch to try to help to revitalize Third Street. I've been to Third Street many times and through the pandemic and also all these recent years, it is... Coming along, it could be better. But having blight on the street, personally, I don't feel safe. And that's simple as that. And recently, I do recognize that the AutoZone or actually the Walgreens site has started to have encampme

May I continue? Yes, please. Thank you, Commissioner. It is a huge property, so it's not really easy to find a tenant that can fit in there. And it is owned by just a family. It is a challenging situation, and no one wanted to be in today's world, right? There's a Walgreen left and then left our community, your community, without the formula retail pharmacies. But I'm also aware of that there's a new pharmacy coming up nearby that is actually closer to some of the major senior homes. that allow them to have more convenient access to get their pharmacy fills. One of them actually can just go do

So you're selling parts? Yes, we sell parts.

Yeah, your oil recycling drop-off, can you explain to me about? So you're selling parts, so you really have nothing to do with oil change or anything?

OK, thank you. Do you do the neighborhood recycling with just vehicle oil or just also cooking oil?

Is there anything else you'd like to share with the commissioners and the public at this moment?

Do you have some commitment to beautification on 3rd Street?

Like help them clean their street. Yeah, definitely. Beautifying the street.

Please. And I think my fellow commissioner had mentioned about your commitment to local hire and then some training program.

OK. And you're OK with notice that our conditions of approval to here, you need to work with our planning staff to come up with? signage that works with the community, you're okay with that? Correct. We're made aware. Might have be a little tweak from your corporate boilerplate standard. Yeah, yeah. But yes.

All right. Well, thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you. It is a tough one coming in here. A lot of people, I know that This neighborhood had systematically, historically been marginalized, and it's one of the very rich, diverse community neighborhoods and had a lot of history of environmental justice that needs to be right. And then I'm also really aware of that We are needing to revitalize San Francisco economic. And we can't do that by kind of leaving things the way it is. I see that there's like a two-step approach. What I don't want to see is landlord, property owner

Thank you, Commissioner. So Commissioner Braun.

First, I have a question that relates to something that Commissioner McGarry had mentioned. The property owner, in one of their submissions, mentioned a July 15 meeting, and there's a written agreement that's being prepared that includes the job creation local pipeline that was referenced by Commissioner McGarry, and then also the neighborhood beautification efforts. through partnership with Economic Development on 3rd, that I believe just was mentioned as well. Could the representatives from, since those are AutoZone commitments, could you speak a little bit to the status of those agreements

It has to do with, well, the supervisor, Commissioner McGarry referenced formalizing a job training pipeline with the local community college to link these roles directly with their new aircraft maintenance training program.

Does that make sense? Yeah. And then also the neighborhood beautification effort with the partnership with Economic Development on 3rd. What's the status of that conversation?

okay thank you for that um i would just say and you can sit down i think that's another question i would just say uh that's out there there's a lot of people from the community here who just heard that and uh if this does move forward uh i think those are commitments and conversations that we as a city and also you know everyone should be trying to hold folks accountable to those efforts that they're still formalizing. More concretely, I think, are the conditions of approval that we have that we're able to actually put in place as a city, which are the ones that the staff read out about the si

Thank you, Commissioner Braun. I believe the community absolutely should have a voice in the kinds of businesses that they'd like to see in the Bayview. These aspirations belong in our planning process. and continue to shape the neighborhood's long-term vision. The two things I keep coming back to are what our role is on this commission, which is to work within what's been adopted by the city, the policies and regulations, and what's complying. And I think where I come back to two things. One is the zoning, which Commissioner Braun was just talking about, and what I see as market conditions wi

I believe that's, oh, Commissioner Braun.

With the amended conditions of approval as well.

With the conditions of approval that were read.