San Francisco Government SmartTranscripts:

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Good afternoon, everyone. This meeting will come to order. Welcome to the 02/23/2026, regular meeting of the Land Use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. I am Supervisor Myrna Melgar, Chair of the Committee, joined by Vice Chair Chyanne Chen and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood. Of course, we have Supervisor Cheryl here with us today as well. The committee clerk today is John Carroll. And I would also like to thank Eugene Libadine Libadia from SFGov TV for staffing us during this meeting. Mister clerk, do you have any announcements?

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Yes. Thank you, madam chair. Please ensure that you've silenced your cell phones and other electronic devices that you brought with you into the chamber today. If you have any documents to be included as part of any of today's files, can submit them directly to me. Public comment will be taken on each item on today's agenda. When your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, please line up to speak along your right hand side of this room. I'm pointing it out with my left hand. Alternatively, you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways. First, you may send your public comment to me via email at johnperiodcarroll@sfgov.org. Or you may send your written comments by U. Postal Service to our office in City Hall. The clerk's office is Room 244 in City Hall, and City Hall's address is 1 Doctor Carlton B Goodlett Place, Room 24 excuse me, San Francisco San Francisco, California 94102. If you submit public comment in writing, I will forward your comments to the members of this committee and also include your comments as part of the official file on which you are commenting. Items acted upon today are expected to appear on the board of supervisors agenda of 03/03/2026 unless otherwise stated.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you so much, Mr. Clerk. Thank you everyone for being here. I know there is significant interest in item 30, which is a fire code item. While it may seem like it's a long agenda, I promise you we will get through it fairly quickly. We're going to call items through to 27 together. So I think that this will take care of that. But there are a lot of people here in the overflow room. So I will be limiting public comment to one minute per speaker for public comment but we'll get through everyone who wants to use that one minute. So with that mister clerk please call item number one.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Agenda item number one is resolution adding the commemorative street name Carmen Johnson Way to the 1100 Block Of Pierce between Turk And Eddy in recognition of her lifetime of service to the families of the Fillmore.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay. Thank you. This thank you, supervisor Mahmood, for introducing this item. I'll turn it over to you, and you can conduct the hearing.

[Supervisor Bilal Mahmood]: Thank you, Chair Melgar. Victor, why don't you come up to the podium? Last Thanksgiving, Victor Jones, who's here today, invited me to the community room at the MLK Marcus Garvey Apartments in the Western Edition to volunteer serving food to the community. But this event has been going on for years and was started by his mother, Carmen Johnson. I've known Victor for as long as I've been active in the district, and he's someone with a deep passion for the community and for bettering the lives of everyone around him. And it's clear that he gets that from his mom. Carmen Johnson dedicated her life to serving others. She worked as a pediatric nurse and a mother to six children. She also fostered over 60 children, and served as an unofficial mother to youth across the neighborhood. She served on the board at MLK Marcus Garvey Apartments, helping lead the community through difficult financial times. When Carmen passed away in 2023, mayor London Breed spoke at her funeral and talked about the impact she had supporting her and other women in the Fillmore. She lives on in the hearts of all who knew her, who carry her spirit of neighborly love into all that we do. It's an honor to ask my colleagues for your support for this street designation on Pierce Street, just outside her home, so there will always be a reminder of her for all the lives that she has touched. Thank you. And Victor, we'd love to hear your story as well.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Just a moment.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Pull up pull up the mic closer to your face. You yeah. There you go.

[Victor Jones (community member)]: It's not on. It's oh, there it is. Was done.

[SFGovTV audiovisual staff (likely Eugene Libadia)]: My fault.

[Victor Jones (community member)]: Well, it's definitely an honor to be here. Just to speak in front of all you guys. And an honor to be here because I know you got another thing going on with the public as well. And and thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, grandfathers, grandmothers for letting me allowing me to speak. I thank you, guys. But I just wanna say, I appreciate you, man. You know, you knocked on doors. I think more supervisors need to get out and knock on doors instead of taking votes and saying, vote for me. Vote for me. You gotta you gotta go around and meet the community. You know? You gotta you gotta feel people. You know? You gotta you know what I mean? It's just like one of those things you get some lemonade when it's hot. You know? But I just wanna say thank you guys, and thank you for acknowledging my mom. I am living on her legacy, and I'm gonna do the best I can and get the job done. And I just say, you know, that community right there, the street name, just, you know, just to have that, you know, in place. I really appreciate that. I'm an activist because of her. I've stopped a lot of wars in San Francisco between Film and Hunters Point. I couldn't do without her just having her recipe and just her just cold hearted having her, but I I appreciate that, man. You know, it's it's I have I have real days. And I know if anybody lost a mom, they know what I'm talking about, you know, crying. And then I lost my son, but at the same time, God is a good God. Just started back going to church. And I have a good support system too as well. You know, pastor Aaron's right here. You know, he just shot me a flyer. So you're gonna get the flyer too as well. We gotta gotta do a thing called stop the violence. My mother was real genuine on that, bringing people together, especially she she was about the women. The women. We couldn't do nothing without you women, period. So I just wanna say thank you, supervisor, man, for giving me this opportunity, man, and being in my corner. You never lied to me. You never lied to me. And I may and I'm so glad that you and heiress is sitting down talking now. You know? That makes a difference in my heart. You know what I mean? Because without us communicating, we can't get nothing done. So I appreciate the board, and I appreciate you from Cole Harley and your assistant because he stays at it. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you so much, Victor. God bless you. God bless your mom.

[Victor Jones (community member)]: Yes, ma'am. Anytime you guys want to come up there on the date, I'm a have the supervisor let him know that I'm doing her Thanksgiving thing. No. Hold on. Because you might want some of the soul food. I'm going to do her Thanksgiving thing, and you guys are all invited.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you. Okay. So I don't see any other comments from my colleagues. I would like to be added as a cosponsor on this item. Thank you so much. And let's go to public comment on this item.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you, madam chair. Land use and transportation will now hear public comment related to agenda item number one, a commemorative street name for Carmen Johnson Way between Turk sorry, on Pierce Between Turk And Eddy. If you have public comment for this item, please come forward to the lectern now, and I'll start your time.

[Eris (public commenter from Fillmore)]: Yeah. Eris, actually, again, the segments. Carmen Johnson, Agape, one of the agents she started was Agape Love, and I was able to attend my first Giants game because of Agape. I grew up near and around King Garvey Co op, and if you think he's a giant, then you would imagine what his mother looked like, right? She's giant in spirit and heart, and she loved her community. She loved it, and the Thanksgiving event was her baby. You know, she made sure that she fed everybody, not just on that day, but that was really her signature day, is Thanksgiving. But and also, of course, you know, we have a lot of challenges in the film work. But, this is a way of remembering, you know, those and, you know, commitment to the work that has been done over the years, you know. So, we look forward to the next couple of years, and, you know, not only of street names, but hopefully we can preserve some of the African American people there also. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Do we have anyone else who has public comment for agenda item number one? Madam chair.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you. Public comment on this item is now closed. Supervisor Mahmood.

[Supervisor Bilal Mahmood]: I'd like to make the motion to vote this item to the full board with a positive recommendation.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Motion offered by member Mahmood that this resolution be recommended to the board of supervisors, vice chair Chen. Chen aye. Member Mahmood aye. Chair Melgar?

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Aye.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Melgar aye. Madam chair, there are three ayes.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you. That motion passes. Mr. Clerk, take a deep breath and call items two through 27 together, please.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Agenda item numbers two through 27 are 26 resolutions initiating landmark designation under article 10 of the planning code for the following properties. The Alexander Adams house at 1450 Masonic, the Hinkle house at 740 Castro, the Born home located at 99 De Viz Adero, The Buena Vista Farmhouse located at 11 Piedmont Street. Charles Katz home located at 1200 Dolores. The Dubose Triangle Greek Revival home located at 2173 15th Street. The Elliot m Wilson home located at 1335 Guerrero. The Fernando Nelson house located at 701 Castro, Engine Company Number 44 located at 3816 22nd Street, the Floyd Spreckels mansion located at 737 Buena Vista Avenue West, Golden Gate Lutheran Church at 3689 19th Street, the Guerrero Street Double Stick East Lake House located at 1415 To 1417 Guerrero, the Henry Street Row Houses located at 191 To 197 Henry, Holy Innocence Church located at 455 Fair Oaks Street. The James C. Hormel Mansion located at 181 Buena Vista East. John C. Clark House located at 210 Douglas Street. The building's located at 560 And 552 Noe. The Lang House located at 199 Carl. The Mission Dolores Academy located at 3371 16th Street. Lebanon Presbyterian Church, Noe Valley Ministry located at 1021 Sanchez, the Pool Bell House located at 192 Laidley Street, the Power House located at 1526 Masonic, Second Church of Christ Scientist located at 651 Dolores Street, the Shaughnessy House located at 394 Fair Oaks Street, Saint Aidan's Church located at 601 Belvedere, and finally, agenda item number 27, the Teets Benneke House located at 657 Chennery.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Great. Thank you so much, Mr. Clerk. We now welcome Board President Rafael Mandelman, who is the sponsor of these items. Welcome.

[Supervisor Rafael Mandelman (Board President)]: Thank you, Chair Melgar and committee members. And sorry, the members of the public who have to sit through my 26 items before we get to the stuff that most of you are waiting for. But I think these are important. These, this is part of our ongoing efforts in District 8 to, designate and appropriately protect historic properties. As we know, the world has changed, and we can no longer rely on things like CEQA or other discretionary processes to protect historic properties if they are under consideration for development. We need to do that work on the front end and identify the properties where it really would be a loss for San Francisco if they were demolished or significantly altered without some consideration of their historic merit on the front end. So that's what we're trying to do. Colleagues, thank you. It was, I think it was just a couple of weeks ago that we finally passed the Chula Abbey and Alert Alley landmark districts near Mission Dolores. We have previously advanced 16 individual landmarks that we worked with, or that really planning identified, but we supported and got those in the queue starting in October. And they've worked their way through what is a very process rich process. Now 14 of those have been considered by the Historic Preservation Commission, and will be coming back to the Board of Supervisors for action on their actual landmarking. And then, this is our next batch of 26 proposed landmarks, which Alex Westoff will tell you more about. They do represent some of San Francisco and District Eight's most unique and cherished architecture. And I'm hopeful that you will agree that at least these should work their way through consideration for landmarking. Do have a when after the presentation has been made, and you've taken public comment, I'm going ask that you do a few things. One is there's some very minor technical cleanup to some of the resolutions. I've, we've circulated that by email. My office has. I've also handed out those very small changes for your consideration. I would ask that this committee make those changes. And then item 26 is one that, upon further consideration and analysis, planning no longer believes should be in this batch. We concur. And so, I'm going to ask that you table item 26. But that of the others, you make the modest amendments that we've put forward and forward those to the full board for positive recommendation. A final word on these items coming to this committee at all. As you know, I had tried to have these passed at the full board on our assignment without committee recommend or first, you know, what we call the FACR, just to have them considered by the full board and passed as a matter of course because this is such a time consuming process. And so what we're doing now is just initiating that process. There will still be much additional consideration of each of these landmarks. They will all still have to go to the Historic Preservation Commission. And before these properties can get landmarked, they will be back in front of this committee with ordinances attached to them to do the individual landmarking. So you're going to get a lot, I think too much more than you should on these District 8 landmarks. And I would love for this body, for the Board of Supervisors, get comfortable with the idea that at least the initiation part of this does not need to go to committee, that that can be done just by an action, by a motion at the full board, and get the process going. But we weren't able to do that with these, and thank you for your patience in hearing this. And thank you, Mr. Westoff, for all your work on this. I want to thank, as well, your boss, Rich Sucre, and planning department staff. I want to thank Ranil B. Joy in my office, and Calvin Ho, formerly of my office, for all of their work on this. And then, if it pleases the chair and the members of the committee, perhaps you should hear from Mr. Westoff.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you, President Mandelman. Welcome, Mr. Westoff.

[Alex Westhoff (Planning Department)]: Thank you, President Mandelman, and good afternoon supervisors. Alex Westoff, Planning Department staff. So, I'm going to present the 25 properties that are to be considered for initiation as article 10 landmarks as part of the family zoning plan landmark program. So President mandelman already gave an overview and I presented to this committee before so I won' get into all of the details specifically But, this is an effort that is going in conjunction with the family zoning plan to ensure that San Francisco's properties with the highest historical, architectural, and cultural significance are elevated to landmark status to ensure protection that CEQA no longer affords. Thanks to President Mandelman's leadership Phase 1 in District 8 has already gone through the historic preservation commission just last month as he mentioned they approved 14 properties as landmarks and those will soon be before the full board of supervisors the ordinances so in District 8 we' now on to Phase 2 and so this includes properties in the residential areas These are also existing category a properties that we've identified as having the highest level of significance and integrity. And I see you have a full house today so I'll try and keep my talking points brief on each of the properties. But just one slide per property. And the first one is the Alexander Adams House. This is located at 1450 Masonic Avenue. The property was originally constructed for Alexander P. Adams of Coffee Roasting Company, Alexander P. Adams and Company. The property is an expressive example of the Queen Anne architectural style, which dominated San Francisco residential architecture by 1890. The Hinkle House, this is located at 740 Castro Street. This was constructed in 1898 in the Eureka Valley neighborhood. The house was built by prolific Eureka Valley builder, Charles Hinkle, as his personal residence, and is associated with the longest period of Hinkle's productive building career in San Francisco, also an expressive example of the Queen Anne style. The Born Home at 99 Divisadero Street was constructed in 1905 in the Castro Upper Market neighborhood. The home was designed by Duncan, who was an architect for the Southern Pacific. The original residents were general contractors, George and Stephen Bourne, whose work included brick contracting, and may have served as the builders. The Bourne home is an exuberant example of the Gorgon revival style. The Buena Vista Farmhouse, located at 11 Piedmont Street, was constructed circa eighteen sixty's in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood. The building was once part of a prosperous dairy farm, and remains a rare extant building associated with San Francisco early ranching and agriculture, which dominated the perimeter neighborhoods prior to suburbanization. The property is also an early expression of Italianate architecture. The Charles Katz home located at 1200 Dolores Street is an exemplary example of Queen Anne architecture. The property was built for real estate developer Charles Katz, who served as the original owner. And his family resided there until the 1930s. The Dubose Triangle Greek Revival Home. This is located in Dubose Triangle. This is one of the earliest properties in the neighborhood. This is a rare example of a Greek Revival style property in San Francisco, which was more dominant prior to Victorian styles coming into fashion. The Elliot M. Wilson House located at 1335 Guerrero Street in the Mission neighborhood. The original owner of the property was Elliot M. Wilson, president of the Pacific Coast Steel Company. The home was designed by architect of Merit, Arthur Bugbee, and includes intact features of the second empire style. Engine Company number forty four slash the Adams Van Heusen House. This was constructed in 1910 in the Noe Valley neighborhood. It has two periods of significance. The first being 1910, as an intact example of turn of the century mission revival firehouse. The second is the period in which well known San Francisco based artists Mark Adams and Beth Van Houston resided at for decades. The property served as an art studio and residence for the couple for nearly fifty years. The Fernando Nelson home, this is constructed in 1897 in the Eureka Valley neighborhood. The house is associated with the productive life of Fernando Nelson, an influential and prolific housing developer in Eureka Valley and San Francisco, and is a distinctive example of the Queen Anne style of architecture. The Richard Spreckles mansion slash Buena Vista Studios, This is located at 737 Buena Vista Avenue West. The property is an exemplary example of a classical revival home, designed by architect of Merit Edward J. Vogel. And the home was built for Richard Spreckels, who managed the Western Sugar Refinery in Potrero Hill. It has others layers of history, including having been home to Jack London, who wrote White Fang out of the property in 1906. And in the mid-1960s, the ballroom on the Top Floor was converted to the Buena Vista Studios, which was known as one of the first hippie friendly studios. And it was used by a number of bands, including the Grateful Dead, who recorded their first demos there. The Mission CongregationalGolden Gate Lutheran Church, this is in the Mission neighborhood, and is an exemplary example of a Gothic revival church. The Guerrero Street Doublestick East Lake House, this was completed in 1894 in the South Mission neighborhood, it was constructed by builder of merit Fernando nilsen, and is unique as a double stick East Lake house. The Henry Street row houses 191 To 197 Henry Street, this was in the Debost Triangle neighborhood representing the transition of the neighborhood from an ex urban neighborhood of large lot Victorian villas to a moderately populated middle class neighborhood of row houses with the occasional multi family building. The property is an intact example of the stick East Lake style. The Holy Innocence Church, this is an example of a carpenter gothic church built in 1890 in the Mission neighborhood. The original building was designed by architect of Merritt Ernest Coxhead, and was his first commission in San Francisco. The De Uriste slash James C Hormel mansion, this is located at 181 Buena Vista East. The property was designed by architect Nathaniel Blisdell. The prop, the original owners of the property was the de Uriste family. George de Uriste was appointed counsel of the Argentine Republic in November '1. And he was approached routinely throughout the decade of the nineteen tens by the city's newspaper as an authority on political matters in Central And South America. The family owned the property for two decades before selling it to James C. Hormel in 1986. Hormel was heir to a meat packing fortune and was an important figure in the gay rights movement. He established several significant national and community institutions, such as the Human Rights Watch, and the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center, and became the first openly gay United States ambassador appointed by President Clinton. The John c Clark house this is one of the earliest properties in the Corbett Heights neighborhood it was built in 1885 designed by architect John c Clark. This is a good example of the chalet style home in San Francisco with intact features. The Kirby House and Phoenix Brewery building, these are two properties adjacent to one another at 560 And 552 Noe Street. Thomas Kirby, an Irish immigrant founded the Phoenix Brewery in 1876. Kirby made ale, malt extract, and stout on the site. The Kirby House and Phoenix Brewery building are significant for their association with the early history of brewing and industrial production in Eureka Valley. Relatively few properties associated with this period survive. The Lang House, this was built in 1900 at 199 Carl Street. The property stands on what was once part of a dairy farm and is associated with early Coal Valley history, designed by architect of Merritt August Norden, and is, was constructed for the German immigrant Lang family. The Mission Dolores Academy was constructed in 1932 in the Eureka Valley neighborhood. This is a good example of a school building designed in the mission revival style by architect H. A. Minton. As is common with the style, the building features a shaped parapet, stucco cladding, arched windows, and a large wooden door. It also includes ornamental baroque columns that flank the main entrance. The Lebanon Presbyterian Church slash Noe Valley Ministry, this was completed in 1891, and is a rare example of carpenter Gothic architecture in San Francisco. It was designed by architect Charles Gettys. The subject property is clad in wood siding with a gabled roof, and has Queen Anne ornamentation as well. The Poole Bell House at 192 Laidley Street was completed in 1872 in Glen Park, known as the Poole Bell House. The house was built by attorney John Pascal Poole, whose widow Annie Poole lived there until 1906. Theresa Bell purchased the property. The Bells were associates of Mary Ellen Pleasant, a leading abolitionist during San Francisco's Gold Rush period. The property is an intact example of an Italian at home. The powerhouse, this is a rare example of a residential property that was designed by architect of merit, Bernard Maybach, who also designed the Palace of Fine Arts. This was done early in his career, and was built in 1910. The second Christian Science Church at 651 Dolores Street. This was designed by architect of Merit William H. Crim in the Beau art style. The Shang Nesty home, this was built in 1890 at 394 Fair Oaks Street, and is an exemplary example of a Queen Anne home. And lastly, the Teeth Bennecke House, this significant as the oldest property in Glen Park. It was constructed in 1886 at 657 Chenery Street. And it's a rare example of folk Victorian architecture in San Francisco. So that's all I have. But I'm available to answer any questions. Thank you.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you very much, Mr. Westoff. That was a lot. And well done. A lot of work went into this. And thank you, President Mendelman. So with that, I don't see anyone on the roster with comments or questions, Mr. Clerk. So let's go to public comment on this item.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you, Madam Chair. Land use and transportation will now hear public comment related to agenda item numbers two through 27 initiating various landmark designations. If you have public comment for any of these 26 resolutions, please come forward to the lectern at this time. And Madam Chair, it appears we have no speakers.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay. Public comment on this item is now these items are is now closed. So I would like to make a motion that we accept the amendments to items 19, file number 260,062, initiating landmark designation of Legg House in item 25. Have to

[Unidentified city staff (likely City Attorney’s Office)]: Correct approve the

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: me, Mr. Clerk, because I have something else on the script.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: So Madam Chair, supervisor mandelman has come with proposed textual amendments to agenda item numbers nineteen and twenty four.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay and item 24 not 25. Let's do that first.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: On the motion offered by the chair that the land use and transportation committee amend agenda item numbers nineteen and twenty four as presented vice chair Chen Chen aye member Mahmood Mahmood, aye. Chair Melgar?

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Aye.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Melgar, aye. Madam Chair, there are three ayes on those amendments.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay. So those amendments pass. I would like to make a motion that we table item number 26. Let's take a roll call on that first.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: On the motion offered by the chair that agenda item number 26 be tabled vice chair Chen Chen aye member makwon makwon aye chair Melgar aye melgar aye madam chair there are three ayes

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: thank you and then I would like to make a motion that we approve the rest of the items and send them to the full board with recommendations, 19 through 24 as amended, and the rest as submitted.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: On the motion offered by the chair that the balance of the items be recommended to the Board of Supervisors, noting that nineteen and twenty four have been amended. Vice chair Chen. Chen aye member of Mahmood aye chair Melgar aye Madam chair those 25 items are sent to the board of supervisors with the recommendation of land use.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Great thank you so much congratulations president mandelman Okay now let's go to item number 28 please.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Agenda item number 28 is an ordinance amending the administrative code provisions related to the shared spaces program to remove the planning department as a coordinating entity conducting design review eliminate application requirements of documented community outreach and neighbor notice and eliminate public accessibility and alternate public seating requirements amending the public works code to eliminate requirements of public notice for application, and affirming the planning department's CEQA determination.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you so much, President Mandelman. Again, this is something we considered a couple years ago and weren't quite ready for, so thank you for seeing it through. The floor is yours.

[Supervisor Rafael Mandelman (Board President)]: Thank you again, Chair Melgar and colleagues. And thank you for your action on the prior items. This is a bit of parklet reform. You know, one of the good things, I think, to come out of the pandemic was, as part of our renewed interest in activating our public spaces, creating a way through the pandemic for restaurants and other businesses to go out into the right of way to put up parklets. But of course, parklets didn't start during, in San Francisco, didn't start with the pandemic. They actually go back at least to 2005 when a group of friends fed the parking meter at a spot in SoMa, rolled out a patch of grass, and reclaimed a small piece of the street, calling it Parking Day. And over subsequent years, up to, I guess, prior to the pandemic, up to 75, parklets went out. And many of them were delightful. And some of them were less delightful. But a lot of good came from that program. Now, of course, during the pandemic, we wanted to get a lot more of these open very, very quickly to allow our small businesses to survive. And so the rules that were put in place then and then after the pandemic allowed more than 300 to go out onto the streets. As we made the program permanent coming out of the pandemic, then Supervisor Peskin and I and others on the board worked to make a permanent program that we hoped would be good and accommodate as many different interests as we could. I think that in the years since we rolled out that program, we have learned some things. And I think that we can make some positive changes that will allow this program to be easier for our staff to manage and make more sense to the public. Among the things that I think makes sense to address, one is administrative. But there was a fight when the original Parkland legislation got passed about where it should live and who should be in charge. And, there were some folks who felt very strongly that planning needed to be playing the main coordinating role in this program. As it has rolled out, planning has no staff working on this program. That does not make sense. And that seems to me like something that we should change. There are some other administrative aspects of the program that as we've talked to staff and stakeholders don't make a ton of sense and we probably should fix. What brought me to this legislation initially was two particular provisions that I wasn't sure about when we initially passed them and I've become even less sure about in the intervening time. One is a requirement that the commercial parklets for which people are paying have some kind of public seating. This is a hard thing for the folks who are who are renting the space from the city to accommodate, and doesn't make a ton of sense, in my view, for the commercial parklets. So I think it makes sense to get rid of that requirement now. There was also a requirement put in place when we did the, that original permanent parklet legislation that required that parklets be open basically all day from early in the morning until midnight. And the notion was that, you know, we wanted to have this space activated and used. The trouble is that in many neighborhoods, including neighborhoods that I represent, having these spaces open before there's anyone to sort of oversee them and care for them makes no sense at all and is actually damaging and bad for the neighborhood. And so, it seemed and we basically don't enforce that requirement. And so, we see parklets that go for days and days and days never being opened, which is also bad. So what I am suggesting is that we change that requirement that nobody enforces and that is probably unenforceable in the real life world of San Francisco right now And, make it a requirement that these parklets be open during normal operating hours for the businesses associated with them. And then, I'm hoping that the city will actually go to these owners and have them comply with that requirement. I want to thank so many people who've helped along the way. See Lori Thomas from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association back there. She's been part of the story very much from the beginning. I think Laurie and I and Ben Bliman wrote an op ed in the Examiner in the early days of the pandemic, thinking about how San Francisco could come out better. As I said, I think Parklitz is one area where we've come out better. But I want to thank you for your partnership and thinking through how to make the program better. I want to thank Annie Yalone in the planning department and Monica Munowicz at the MTA for their assistance and insight. I want to thank Brian Manford from MTA, who I think will be talking to us in a moment. Austin Yang in the city attorney's office has tried to figure out the legalities of all this. Melanie Mathewson in my office has, has worked on this. And then, you know, a couple of former city staff who we should always just kind of like say nice things about when we talk about Parklitz are Andres Power, who worked on Parklitz when he was in the planning department, then worked on Parklitz as part of the mayor's administration. And Robin Abad, who's now a Board of Appeals Commissioner and works over in Oakland. But, long time San Francisco City employee, who really was, you know, the person who kind of had to roll out Parklets through all the challenges of the pandemic. So, I think those are my thank yous for now, but I do want to invite, with the chair's permission, Brian Manford from the MTA to come forward and talk a little bit about this legislation.

[Brian Manford (SFMTA Senior Transportation Planner)]: Can you see it? Oh, there we go. Okay. Thank you, chair, and thank you, President Mandelman, for those comments and background. Yeah, as mentioned, my name is Brian Manford. I'm a senior transportation planner with SFMTA presenting today. I'll be brief on the history because I think President Mandelman gave us a lot of the context. But these amendments that we're looking at in this year, in 2026, are really focused on cleaning up the code, low hanging fruit, and better aligning with the day to day operations and sort of the lessons learned over the past several years as we transition from the pandemic permit pandemic temporary program to a permanent one today. There's two main themes that these amendments fall under. As the program has evolved, so should the code. And now that things have stabilized, can we simplify some permitting and address common operator issues and complaints, part

[Supervisor Danny Sauter]: of

[Brian Manford (SFMTA Senior Transportation Planner)]: an effort to continually streamline our processes. So the first code update, as mentioned, is the department consolidation. This would remove the San Francisco Planning Department as a listed department from the shared space administrative code. They were a key part of establishing shared spaces, but no longer staff the program today. So this would update the code to reflect that. And then the second category of changes is the application streamlining. This would remove the requirements to submit outreach documentation, as well as the ten day public posting period. These were already administratively removed for sidewalk tables and chairs permits. This would make the shared spaces parklets consistent with that. I do want to note that neighbor permission would still be required annually for parklets to occupy neighboring frontage according to the program rules. And complaints received through three eleven are enforced by public works as

[Alex Westhoff (Planning Department)]: they are

[Brian Manford (SFMTA Senior Transportation Planner)]: received. And we have the good neighbor policy that helps inform that. And then the last kind of group of code updates is intended to modernize operational requirements. So this includes, as mentioned, removing the alternative public seating requirement for fixed commercial parklets, as well as movable parklets. Part of the rationale for this is that parklet operators find them challenging to design and maintain. There are often site conditions such as slopes, small parking space, and sidewalk elements that make it challenging to design for. And also note that public parklets continue to be an option. We have slightly more public parklets today than we had during the legacy program before the pandemic. And then the last change would be to add the requirement that parklets remain open during business hours. I think President Mandelman spoke to that. But this would ensure that parklets contribute to the neighborhood activation as intended by the program, and also has a note that they cannot be used for storage, which has been a concern. And with that, thank you. And myself and Annie Ye Long can answer any questions.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you so much. We do have questions. Supervisor Chen.

[Supervisor Chyanne Chen (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, Chairman Melgar. First, I want to thank for all the work. I am supportive of our shared space program. And reflecting in District 11, around our business corridor, we have very little public space for our consumer and also resident to enjoy. I see some of the proposed amendment of, like, eliminating eliminating public seating requirement. Just want to clarify. So, does the change under this change, would the policy still be considered a public space that everyone can use or this is not just limited to the customers?

[Public Works representative (unidentified)]: Afternoon. With public works. So just to clarify, the public seating requirement as is in the code today is pretty loosely written. It just says there must be a public bench. And so we administratively defined that as being able to seat two individuals. So, it wasn't that the entire parklet, if it was commercial, only a portion of that parklet, that one seating area, would need to be public. But, for public parklets, the entire and that still remains today, the entire parklet will be open to the public at all times.

[Supervisor Chyanne Chen (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. Thank

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: you. Before I go back to you President mandelman I just wanted to give a few remarks because I was on this committee last time we approved these rules. And it was trial and error. We were trying to figure out what worked during the pandemic. Ms. Thomas, of course, helped provide lots of real world knowledge to inform our decisions. And we went back and forth on both of these things, both the seating requirement and then the hours of operation. There was lots of conversation in this committee about that. We have some very successful shared spaces that act as overflow for commercial purposes, both restaurants and others in my district. Some of the more successful ones are on West Portal and Irving. There are commercial areas that I wish had more. And I still don't know exactly why it is that we don't, what it is about the design and the process that works for some and not for others. Ocean Avenue, which is a commercial corridor that Supervisor Chen and I share down the middle is one that's pretty devoid of these spaces. During the pandemic, we stood up a couple, and then they just kind of weren't worth it for them. And that is really too bad. So I'm eager to improve the program to make it work better for folks who need it, because it could be it can be really transformative. All the time that I've been supervisor, now five years, I've gotten complaints about some of the aspects of the parklets. Obviously, the loss of parking is a thing. You know, it is what it is. Know, competing uses, but I've never gotten any complaints about the public, bench thing, not even once. I have gotten lots of complaints about the hours and the fact that people feel some kind of way about having this responsibility, even if it's not enforced. So I welcome that change. And the other thing I did want to ask you about that I've gotten complaints about a lot is about drainage, especially during the winter when we see a lot of precipitation. And the way that DPW can or cannot clean and the way water flows under or over the spaces. So I wonder if you could speak a little bit about that, about the street cleaning specifically, and then how sometimes, you know, these spaces the code that we use may present a challenge for both cleaning and the flow of water when precipitation is really high.

[Public Works representative (unidentified)]: Thank you for the question supervisor. So, there is a drainage requirement that comes into play when the operator is building out their space and that is a part of our inspections process for public works to inspect that drainage system and make sure that it can maintain water flow through the throughout. And but it is the operator's responsibility to really go ahead and manually clean that space. The idea is, with the drainage system, to be able to, you know, poke a broom through it so you can remove debris easily. But I would have to get back to you about the street cleaning operations specifically.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: So, if both drainage and street cleaning are the operator's responsibility, who enforces that?

[Public Works representative (unidentified)]: We do. And we do rely on three eleven complaints, and we do encourage members of the public to use that.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you so much. Thank you President mandelman for this next iteration I think it's an improvement thank you. I think that's it for questions and comments let's go to public comment on this item.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you madam chair land use and transportation will now hear public comment related to agenda item number 28 if you have public comment for this item please come forward

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: to you could return please this close that door I'd appreciate it.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Do we have anyone who has public comment for agenda item number 28? Please come forward to the lectern. I'll start your time.

[Laurie Thomas (Golden Gate Restaurant Association)]: Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. I'm Laurie Thomas. I run the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and I've had restaurants in San Francisco for thirty years. And I just want to, one, thank you guys for thinking about this. I know it's been a long time coming. Two, really do a shout out to Supervisor Mendelman, who, when I personally had to close my two restaurants, panicked, like lost all sources of income, had to borrow a loan to make the payroll. We reached out. And he was super receptive. I know Supervisor Melgar helped as well. Everyone else is too new to have been involved in that mess. And I do think it's really worth shouting out to Robin and to Annie and to everyone. We spent hours, hours, hours, hours on this. And Supervisor Melgar, there is a really good requirement for drainage. But again, you have to work at it. But that was in the final 125 page operating manual that Robin did such a good job on with diagrams and things. So that's there. I do want to just support a couple things with this. I think it's really along the lines of what we're trying to do in the city, which is to streamline and make things make more sense, and not just consider we passed an ordinance twenty years ago, and we're going to leave it there. So I really encourage the iteration and relooking at it. I do want to say that we did have several conversations about keeping it open versus the closed. And I do think from a staffing perspective, especially in restaurants, opening the parklet up when there are workers to open it up and keep it open, and then closing it when it's closed is super important. And also, the streamlining from planning makes a lot of sense, too. So thanks again. We're happy to answer any questions. Appreciate it.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Do we have anyone else who has public comment for agenda item number 28? Madam Chair.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay. Public comment is now closed. With that, I would like to make a motion to send this item out of committee to the full board with a positive recommendation.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: On the motion offered by the chair that this ordinance be recommended to the Board of Supervisors, Vice Chair Chen, aye. Member Mahmood, Mahmood, aye chair Melgar?

[Bilal Mahmoodine (public commenter)]: Aye.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Melgar, aye. Madam chair, there are three ayes.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay that motion passes. Congratulations president mentalman.

[Supervisor Rafael Mandelman (Board President)]: Thank you colleagues.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay let's go to item 29 please.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Agenda item number 29 is an ordinance amending the planning code to allow additional uses as principally or conditionally permitted in historic buildings citywide, exempt historic buildings in certain Eastern neighborhood plan areas from conditional use authorization, otherwise required to remove production distribution and repair, institutional community and arts activities uses and from providing replacement services for such uses to make conforming amendments to provisions as affected by the foregoing including zoning control tables affirming the planning department's CEQA determination, and making findings of consistency with the general plan and the eight priority policies of Planning Code Section 101.1, as well as findings of public necessity, convenience, and general welfare under Planning Code Section three zero two.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you very much, Mr. Clerk. We welcome Ms. Lisa Glockstein here to present on this item. Welcome.

[Lisa Gluckstein (Planning Department)]: Thank you, Chair Melgar. Mr. Carrol, I have copies of the amendments for that.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: I'll be

[Eris (public commenter from Fillmore)]: there in

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: a moment.

[Lisa Gluckstein (Planning Department)]: Good afternoon, chair Melgar, members of the land use committee. Lisa Gluckstein, planning department staff. I'll endeavor to keep my comments brief because I know there are many people waiting for another item. But the file before you today is intended to support the continued use and preservation of San Francisco's historic buildings by standardizing and expanding the city's existing use flexibility programs for such buildings. The historic preservation commission recommended approval of this file on 10/15/2025, and the planning commission similarly recommended approval on 10/23/2025. Since this item was last heard by this committee we have worked to incorporate several amendments in response to comments received from members of the public. The amendments for your consideration today do the following and bear with me it' a long and technical list. In the planning approval criteria for subsection 202.11 clarify that formula retail controls continue to apply under this program. Two, restructure the permitted uses subsection D of section twenty thousand two and eleven to create exceptions by use to maintain default use controls for cannabis retail hotel and most industrial uses. That is to say these uses cannot be approved under this flexible use program. Create exceptions by use and district which specify that in the 24th Street Mission Nct and Mission Street Nct and the portions of the RH2, RH3, RM1, RM2, RM3, NC1, NC2, NC3, and PDR1G districts found by Valencia, 13th, Harrison, and Cesar Chavez, Use controls remain unchanged for the following use types: adult business, adult sex venue, bar, chair and foot massage, electric vehicle charging location, fleet charging, fringe financial service, gym laboratory, life science liquor store massage establishment nighttime entertainment office private community facility restaurant and tobacco paraphernalia establishment in Sections 209.12 Hundred 9.22 Hundred 9.32 Hundred 9.42 Hundred 10.12 Hundred 10.22 Hundred 10.37107117227527547577587638283831832833834835836837838839 And 840 and relevant sections of article seven make conforming changes to district specific zoning control tables to reflect the aforementioned changes and in 202.8 eliminate a prior amendment that would have deleted specific pdr replacement language instead preserving status quo pdr replacement requirements in the Eastern neighborhood plans areas and update the findings in line with the above changes. Thanks for being with that. We' recommending these amendments for adoption with a positive recommendation. Thank you to members of the community who have provided input and worked with us on these amendments. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you so much, Ms. Gluckstein. And also, thank you so much for all your work engaging community members and working out these amendments. I really appreciate the openness. So I don't see any questions or comments from my colleagues on this one so Mr. Clerk let's go to public comment on this item.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you Madam Chair land use and transportation will now hear public comment to agenda item number 29 adaptive reuse of historic buildings if you have public comment for this item please line up to speak along that western wall that I'm pointing out with my left hand and you may begin if you're at the lecturer now.

[Peter Papadopoulos (Mission Economic Development Agency)]: Good afternoon Chair Melgar, Supervisors Mahmood and Chen, Peter Papadopoulos with the Mission Economic Development Agency. We do truly appreciate the work we did together between USM coalition groups and the planning department and the mayor's office, and also our conversations with Chair Melgar and her aide, Jen Lowe. So thank you. Want to point out a special appreciation for Lisa Gluckstein and also for Rich Sukray for their time and really diligent attention to our concerns and spending time sorting out this framework together to make sure that we're simultaneously working to activate these historic spaces while also making sure we're keeping intact our mission action plan frameworks and our prior legislative goals that we had achieved through that work. And I also want to shout out the Mission Action Plan team who took the pains to incorporate this legislation into the discussion there despite being short staffed with our friend out there. So we appreciate that. So we look forward to continuing to work together in this way and to making the mission a neighborhood of culturally driven prosperity that provides opportunities for our families to achieve economic mobility. Thank you.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you Mr. Papadopoulos.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Do we have anyone else who has public comment for agenda item number 29? Madam chair.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Public comment is now closed to supervisor Chen.

[Supervisor Chyanne Chen (Vice Chair)]: Thank you chair Melgar. I know there are challenges with activating many historic buildings and it can be very expensive. I want to make sure as we open the door to more adaptive reuse that we do not undo many of the carefully crafted land use controls in our neighborhood districts. That is why I really appreciate the additional work conducted by departments since it was first introduced to amend this legislation to address some of their concerns, including restriction for restrictions of formula retails, cannabis retail, hotel use, and retaining Publication X control for PDI use in the Mission, SOMA, Bayview, and Potero, as well as land use control to keep mission area plan frameworks intact. In neighborhood commercial districts throughout our city, supervisors and their community stakeholders came to the conclusion that they wanted to prohibit or place additional control on certain uses this is especially important since this legislation would apply not just to register historic buildings but also to a larger universe of those who are eligible for historic status. You for the additional one. You.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you supervisor Chen. With that, I would like to make a motion to adopt the amendments as read into the record by Ms. Kluckstein.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: On the motion offered by the I'm

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: sorry, did I close public comment?

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: You did.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: You did, Okay. And yes, let's vote on that first.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: On the motion offered by the chair to accept the amendments as presented by the planning department, Vice Chair Chen. Chen, aye. Member Mahmood, aye. Chair Melgar?

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (roll call response)]: Aye.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Melgar, aye. Madam Chair, there are three ayes on the amendments.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay, that motion passes. So then, I would like to send this item out of committee with a positive recommendation as amended.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: On the motion offered by the chair that the ordinance be recommended as amended, Vice Chair Chen, Chen aye member Mahmood Mahmood aye chair Melgar

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: aye

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Melgar aye madam chair there are three ayes once again

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: okay that motion passes okay now finally at mr clerk let's go to item number 30

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Agenda item number 30 is an ordinance repealing the existing San Francisco fire code in its entirety and enacting a new San Francisco fire code consisting of the 2025 California fire code and provisions of the twenty twenty four international fire code together with amendments specific to San Francisco, including provisions for fees for permits, inspections, and various city services with an operative date of 01/01/2026, adopting findings of local conditions pursuant to California health and safety code section one seven nine five eight point seven, directing the clerk of the Board of Supervisors to forward the amendments to the California Building Standards Commission, as well as the state fire marshal in making environmental findings.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you so much. We welcome Supervisors Cheryl and Soder to the Landis and Transportation Committee. And I will go to Supervisor Cheryl first for some comments before I turn it over to Fire Chief Crispin and our Fire Marshal Chad Law. And also, Supervisor Sauter wants to provide some comments before we get started. So go ahead, Supervisor Sherrill. Welcome.

[Supervisor Sherrill (transcribed as 'Cheryl')]: Good afternoon, Chair Melgar. Thank you very much for having us here this afternoon. Thank you, Vice Chair Chen. Thank you, Supervisor Mahmood. Chair Melgar, thank you very much for scheduling this important item today. I'm extremely grateful that we're moving forward with this critical update to the fire code. Colleagues, as you all know, I've been meeting with many of the buildings who've been impacted by the sprinkler retrofit requirement that was implemented during the 2022 update to the fire code. And in those meetings, I've heard loud and clear that this sprinkler mandate has placed a significant financial and mental stress on residents of affected buildings and the stress is already being felt today. As a result of these meetings I've worked alongside supervisor solder to ensure that this update to the fire code takes a key first step towards implementing a more reasonable fire safety requirement. And I'm proud of the work done to get to this point, but this is just the first step toward a better solution. I look forward to continuing to work alongside my colleagues on this committee, the mayor's team, fire department leadership, who has stepped up a lot in the last few months. And I do want to thank you both very much for your hard work on this difficult item. And also, I want to thank the voices in this room that have helped come forward to achieve a better solution, one that does not displace residents in the name of safety. So to all of you who are here and who are watching and who are maybe not here because we all have busy lives, to all of you, to all the voices in this room who have approached this very emotional conversation with a deep amount of respect, even when you felt that you may not have been treated the same way, to all of you, I want to thank you. And I also want to thank my Chief of Staff, Lauren Chung, whose tireless efforts have been crucial in getting us here. So with that, I know many of you are going to make your voices heard. But Chair Melgar, once again, thank you for opening this up today.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you. Supervisor Soder.

[Supervisor Danny Sauter]: Thank you, Chair Melgar. And thank you to the committee members for your time on this today. I, too, would like to speak on the proposed updates to the residential sprinkler mandate first passed in 2022. It is hard to overstate the significance of this issue, and I think that's why we see a large crowd with us today. The mandate touches 143 buildings throughout the city. And in my district alone, District 3, almost 7,000 residents are impacted. Let's first start by reviewing how we got here and how this retrofit law originated. The law was introduced by the former district three supervisor in January 2022. It required existing older residential high rises to be retrofitted with automatic sprinklers throughout the units. The stated goal was to increase habitability and fire safety. At the time, if you remember, 2022, city hall meetings were hybrid. Some people choosing to appear remotely, some in person. The files and recording show little public engagement about the proposal. Only two public commenters spoke at the Building Inspection Commission and three at the board's Land Use Committee. We have more than three today. At the building inspection commission hearing, the legislative sponsor acknowledged that a sprinkler retrofit would create, quote, would create, quote, some amount of costs and, quote, some element of disruption to existing residents. But when the commissioners asked whether studies had been done on cost, tenant displacement, and implementation and enforcement timelines, the sponsors stated that they had difficulty getting input from stakeholders, but would be more deliberate in the future seeking out this information. The retrofit law was incorporated into the fire code updates that passed in December 2022, taking effect in January 2023. And so far, I have found none of that follow work. No record of the analysis or studies requested by the Building Inspection Commission. In fact, the closest thing to that was probably a 2016 budget and legislative analysis report. And anyone who's read that should have seen that as a warning sign. It said, in short, that there was no comparable requirement found in any major U. S. City comparable to this. And if it were to move forward, it suggested a large package of items to try and offset some of the challenges, which would have included loans, guarantees of tenant relocation funding, mitigation of tenant displacement risks, and also looking at other safety upgrades before looking at fire sprinklers. But that brings us today, to today. We are now less than a year from the first compliance deadline of January 2027, when drawings and permit applications must be submitted to the Department of Building Inspection. More than half the buildings on the list are located in my district, and for the last year, constituents have continually pleaded for relief from the significant and potentially devastating cost impact life disruption and displacement risk. I want to thank all of you for being here today, but more importantly, for the many months before this that you have been active and been advocating for yourself and your neighbors. Many of the residents in these buildings are retirees with limited incomes. They are understandably upset at the prospect of finding and paying for interim housing. And owners have supplied us with retrofit quotes up to $300,000 per unit, and are understandably grappling with how to finance these projects. Meanwhile, property values are dropping, and we know that this is already a concern with the assessment of your buildings and the price of your buildings. Our office has been working for this past year with the mayor, the fire chief, and Supervisor Cheryl to evaluate the conundrum that none of us got us into, but we're all trying to find our way out. As a first step, we agreed to give ourselves more time. We're proposing to move the first two compliance deadlines by five years. This allows time to conduct a holistic data driven assessment of the circumstances when units should be retrofitted with automatic sprinklers. We will look at fire department data on fire related injuries and deaths in buildings subject to this retrofit law. We will analyze the projected cost displacement and implementation timeline and resolve the conflicting reports on those metrics. We will obtain and discuss studies that the Board of Supervisors did not consider in 2022. Supervisor Cheryl and I will be also soon introducing legislation to create a technical advisory council to support this work. And I want to be clear that I believe this is all very modest. And I believe that much of this should have been done either in 2022 or in the immediate passage and implementation of that law. I'd like to thank the mayor's office and our fire chief and fire marshal for recognizing how important this is and for all their work and partnership on this in the past year. Special thanks to the deputy city attorney Sarah Fabian for her tireless work on these amendments, Lauren Chung in District 2, and Tita Bell, my chief of staff. Colleagues, again, thank you for your time and focus on this. I hope to have your support on these amendments, which, again, I believe are modest, and I believe are a first, first step towards a more balanced approach to fire safety. Thank you.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Do you want to provide comments now before the presentation or after? Can we leave that, those comments till after the presentation? Let's do that. Welcome, chief Crispin.

[Chief Dean Crispin (San Francisco Fire Department)]: Good afternoon. Madam chair Melgar, other committee members, you for allowing us to present on our 2025 fire code. My name is Dean Crispin, chief of department. High level summary. The fire code is presented on a three year cycle. The previous fire code is then repealed, and the new code becomes law. The code transfer transfers from the fire commission to this committee, then to the board of supervisors, and the mayor, and finally to the buildingstandardscom building standards committee for final approval. Today, we'll go over the changes to the code from 2022. I will focus on the changes to the sprinkler ordinance and then fire marshal law. We'll discuss the other changes in the code. The sprinkler ordinance was approved by the fire committee, this committee, board of supervisors mayor and building standards commission in 2023. This ordinance created a requirement for retrofit sprinklers to be installed on residential high rise buildings. Those above a 120 feet in height and some between 75 and a 120 feet in height if they do not meet strict criteria. It also set several benchmarks that these buildings had to meet to stay in compliance with the final completion date of 01/01/2035. Upon our swearing in in 2025, fire marshal law and myself began engaging with district supervisors, Souder and Cheryl, and community stakeholders about the implement implementation of this ordinance. We received very valuable input from community about the potential hardship that this ordinance would have on residents and tenants of these buildings. Many of the concerns were around displacement, cost, ability of buildings to physically install sprinklers amongst others. We began an engagement process with the supervisors in the mayor's office about ways to amend the ordinance in order to address the concerns of the community. We held two community meetings with community leaders. We attended two town halls at Fort Mason and one in The Presidio and feel like we communicated well with the community. After much input from building owners, managers, and HOA officials, we came to the table and presented with the possibility of extending the next deadline, which was set for 01/01/2027. With that date fast approaching and after hearing many concerns in the community, it was agreed upon to amend the ordinance in two major ways. One, to move the next compliant date compliance date, which would be the requirement to apply for a permit with the city from 2027 to 2032. And the second one, requirement would be to further define hardship to include financial hardship and displacement. That is located on page 93 of the four fire code, and the compliance date, movement is on page 94. Once this was agreed upon in theory or in, in agreement with the supervisors and the mayor, our department began the following. We assigned an assistant fire marshal specifically to this project. She is here in attendance, assistant fire marshal Lourdes Circos. And we also assigned a concierge to this program, acting captain Al Joe. He's also in attendance. They have done some hard work to move this project forward. We've exempted 17 buildings that either meet the s b nine zero four requirements or have an enclosed penthouse that, that has them not be required to have, install sprinklers. We also created a checklist to inspect the 53 buildings that fall between 75 and a 120 feet. So currently, we are creating a task force for inspections. We're conducting water flow inspections of the five buildings determined to potentially be difficult to supply volume and pressure in a PUC recording from the letter of inquiry from supervisor Cheryl. We're also communicating with the Park Merced residents and building owners to schedule inspections and water flow testing there. That is, where we are at this point, and we're happy to answer any questions. And I'll allow fire marshal law to discuss the other areas, fire code that have been changed now.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you, chief. Welcome, fire marshal law.

[Fire Marshal Chad Law (SFFD)]: Thank you thank you supervisor Melgar, supervisor Chen, supervisor Cheryl Mahmood, supervisor Sauter. I' just going to discuss a couple changes from the 2022 fire code we actually only had two the first is actually the compliance states that we just mentioned that is the other one that's one of them and the only other one was the fee change for compact mobile food for hot dog carts legal hot dog carts went from $436 to $95 If you were going those are the summary of the changes that' all we have so it' 2022 fire code and two changes are the compliance dates and the mobile food cart fee lowering that' all I have for you and I' here for other questions as well.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you fire marshal. Supervisor Mahmood.

[Supervisor Bilal Mahmood]: Thank you chair firstly I want to thank everyone in the well especially those from district five who came out to speak today and came to our office and have brought this issue before us today about the sprinkler amendments as well. Your voices matter, and I appreciate you sharing your plan to share your experiences as you have the last several weeks and going forward as well. I want to thank Supervisor Cheryl and Supervisor Sauter for their work on figuring out a compromise measure and for engaging thoughtfully on a complex issue, as well as our Fire Department and Fire Chief Crispin and law as well. And that's because I understand both perspectives on this issue. I take this personally. I've lived in a high rise that has caught fire twice due to lithium ion batteries. And in both cases, sprinklers stopped the fire. It's no question that sprinklers saved lives and likely saved my life on more than one occasion. At hand here, we have to also be honest about the impact and the board's own budget legislative analysts have previously noted that retrofitting existing buildings can be costly and disruptive to tenants that are all obviously here today as well. Especially if not handled carefully. Not every building is the same and some already have other fire protections in place. The amendments that supervisor Cheryl and Sauter have worked on with the mayor's office I believe will give us the time to do proper due diligence, evaluate water system capacity, infrastructure needs and existing safety measures so that the eventual solution in the long term is thoughtful and workable. And I look forward to working and the work of the technical advisory committee that supervisor Cheryl's office is leading, along with community stakeholders and subject matter experts. Looking forward to seeing this and having District 5 residents continue to have their voices be heard so that this can move forward. And lastly, I'll be, unfortunately, to head out for another thing at 03:30. But Supervisor Cheryl will be subbing for me at that point.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you, Supervisor Mahmood. Supervisor Chen.

[Supervisor Chyanne Chen (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, Chairman Melgar. Also, first, I would like to begin thanking the community member who are taking time to come to voice yourself this afternoon. I also want to express that I do take the issues of fire safety very seriously. To this day, we continue to have many fire vulnerabilities facing our communities. Fire in large apartment buildings in San Francisco have resulted in significant property damage, loss of housing, and in some instance, of life. I appreciate the fire marshal for this annual update and for the co amendments that are included. I also want to appreciate supervisor Cheryl Salter and the mayor's office, especially also with District Two's legislative aide, Lauren Chen, who has been working very hard to address the concern raised about retrofitting homes in high rise buildings with sprinklers. When the board passed this legislation in 2022 to amend the file code to require automatic sprinkler system in existing high rise buildings, it was in response to a rigorous analysis and policy review conducted by the bla. I know that this mandate poses a significant financial burden to property owners and tenants in the building that are affected. These are not simple fixes and require a substantial amount of retrofits. I am supportive of the amendments that are included in this legislation, which provide a longer runway for property owner to budget for the capital improvements needed to comply and create additional provisions to define undue hardship for those least able to comply. And I'll be supportive of this legislation today. Thank you.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you, Supervisor Chen. I was on this board and on this committee when we approved the 2022 legislation. I also take fire safety very seriously. We have had a couple of fires in my district. I've worked one policy with Supervisor Mahmood surrounding fires. They can be extremely financially disruptive for tenants and owners alike. I am uncomfortable with some of the language in these amendments and remain open to input from my colleagues in how we address these issues. So to be specific, I wanted to ask the city attorney for an assessment on what the legal risk is to the city if we give the fire marshal discretion to waive the requirements while we are in the process of defining what hardship means. And that clause in itself, which is in the proposed amendments, makes me uncomfortable. But I would like to really understand what it means and how I should be assessing it in terms of voting for it as an amendment. I also want to thank everyone who's here engaging in this process, because I do agree it is very important. Keeping ourselves and each other safe is really important, And also our firefighters who are risking their lives when they go in to save lives. And making sure that we minimize the risk to them and to their families as well is really important. So all of these are very serious issues. I'm glad people are engaging in it. One of the things that I heard you say, Supervisor Sauter, is that we will have a robust process, that you're involving some of my colleagues and experts. I really appreciate that because I do think that it needs some vetting. Again, I have questions about what happens in the meantime until we get there. One of the things that I didn't hear in the listing of the description of what this group will do is what this could do possibly to the issue of fire insurance for owners. Because I do also see how the crisis in insurance in our state has exacerbated all kinds of costs, including costs of property ownership. And I fear that this might make it this action may make it worse for these property owners as well. So like I said, I have questions and, you know, discomfort with some of these issues. But remain open to considering and to hearing from the public about how this is all playing out. So if I could ask city attorney Brad Russi. And I would have asked also Adam, but he is unfortunately stuck in Mexico right now, who has worked on these issues with the supervisors.

[Deputy City Attorney Brad Russi]: Deputy City Attorney Brad Rusty, just so I understand your question, supervisor and I might have to get back to you after we take public comment on this. Yeah. Is the question whether the current language in the ordinance authorizes the fire marshal to completely waive the requirements? Or is that something that you would want to see in No.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: As I read the amendment that is proposed, one of the amendments proposed I think it was I'm sorry. I don't have it in front of me. I want to say it was line 19. Maybe somebody else has it up. It says that the fire marshal has now the discretion to waive these requirements when there's undue hardship on the property owner. And so I'm wondering if that actually transfers liability to the city since the fire marshal is an employee of the city.

[Deputy City Attorney Brad Russi]: Okay. I think I understand the question now. We've approved the ordinance as de form. So that means there's a defensible

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay. There's a defensible risk. Okay. Thank you. All right. So I don't see anyone else on the roster with questions or comments. Since I asked the city attorney, I do want to ask the fire marshal before we go to public comment what you think about that provision, if you will be guided by existing policy or

[Chief Dean Crispin (San Francisco Fire Department)]: yeah. Do you mind if I speak to it?

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Go for it.

[Chief Dean Crispin (San Francisco Fire Department)]: In the original ordinance, the fire marshal is allowed to grant hardship. But this specific alteration adds definitions to hardship, including financial and displacement, is my understanding of the changes. The city attorney can clarify that. But the original legislation did include a provision where the fire marshal has authority to grant hardship and exemptions.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you, chief. All right. With that no? Okay. He's not on the roster. But thank you. Let's go to public comment on this item. Again, public comment will be limited to one minute per individual. Please come up and since there are many folks who want to weigh in let's keep it moving.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you Madam Chair land use and transportation will now begin taking public comment for agenda item number 30 repealing '20 22 fire code and adopting the '20 25 fire code. If you are here to give public comment for that please line up to speak along this side we will hear from everyone who is here for public comment but I do ask that we keep things flowing do not interrupt the speaker with any kind of audible interjections of support or detraction we need to hear from each person and the first speaker can come forward to the lectern now.

[Robert Eaton (retired deputy fire chief; San Rafael fire inspector)]: Good afternoon my name is Robert Eaton I'm a retired deputy fire chief from Alameda County and currently work in San Rafel as a fire inspector with some plan checking responsibilities. I wanted to state right off the bat that I'm pro fire department, and there's no arguing that sprinklers are save lives. The issue does not, the issue is whether, the issues are four issues that I think are important to consider. The first issue is cost remains the largest obstacle, Retrofitting older buildings, especially multi unit housing, can cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit. And when you get into street work, and when you get into devices, backflow devices, when you get into possible lead paint, when you get into asbestos in these older buildings, I live at 1201 California, it's a 100 years old building. It's probably not set up for ease of adding additional sprinklers. The cost can skyrocket to I've heard it was

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Speaker's 300,000 time is concluded we have to move on to the next speaker.

[Public commenter (resident of 946 Stockton Street)]: Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you. For future speakers you're going to hear a quieter clacks that goes off when you have thirty seconds remaining and then you'll hear a louder alarm when it's time for us to move on to the next speaker please begin.

[Anna Abeta (public commenter)]: Hello my name is Anna Abeta my family owns a one bedroom condo in The Summit at 99 Green Street there are 112 units in this building while I' I would prefer that the sprinkler mandate be removed I do support the proposed five year extensions to the first two compliance deadlines. I understand, as the supervisors have mentioned, that the budget and legislative analyst office will be updating their study. Back in the day, condos were not included in this study. I hope that they will be included. In our building, most of the units, probably all of the units, have been remodeled there is not a single unit that looks like each other every 112 units is different and retrofitting that is costly and time consuming thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for coming let' have the next speaker please.

[Pierce Akel (public commenter; teacher and Hamilton resident)]: Hello my name is pierce akel I have not heard my story told yet at the other town hall meetings I'm a teacher and a Hamilton resident I sacrificed to live in SF for a long time. Moved here in '7, went to school here, have been a teacher and an educator here for a long time. I've lived in a walk in closet for five years, three or two of which I was a full time teacher during. I bought the cheapest studio that sold in the month that I bought, I believe, in 2022 with 5% down. Commit, this was a large commitment to the city and to my school, and this could be financial ruin for me. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Unidentified city staff (likely City Attorney’s Office)]: Good afternoon, chair Melgar and supervisors. My name is Jacinta McCann. I live at 1333 Jones Street on Nob Hill. In 2018, my condominium was stripped back to structure and completely renovated with all the ceilings replaced and lifted close to the underside of the roof slab. My contractor estimates that to retrofit a sprinkler system in my unit would cost in the range of 170 to 200,000, take six to eight weeks at a minimum, and could require ceiling replacement again due to the shallow depths to work with and all of the other complexities. The Comstock has external enclosed fire stairs located at either end of each floor, a very strong concrete structure, and internal concrete petition walls in each condominium. Our building is well managed and complies with all city fire department requirements. I cannot understand how this mandate passed in 2022 without an extensive outreach process and assessment of fiscal impacts. This alone should have prevented the mandate from going forward. I ask that you vote to pass the new fire code with a five year extension as a first step and work vigorously to accomplish a rational, safe, and affordable approach. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: To the next speaker, please.

[Robert Cosma (public commenter; 999 Green)]: Hello my name is Robert Cosma. I'm speaking on behalf of my neighbors myself at 999 Green, the summit. We agree with the purpose of the fire code saving lives the lives of firefighters our neighbors lives our own lives we want to live in fire safe buildings that save lives. Installing sprinklers is one way to do that but there are other means of making buildings safe and saving lives using nationally recognized standards to establish equivalence. The San Francisco fire code allows for the use of these means and standards yet there' no publicly stated mechanism in place for doing that. Consequently this vital section of the code is inoperable we propose language that strengthens this session to make it the primary approach for saving lives.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: I''ll retrieve those in a moment and pass them out thank you for your comments You can just leave them on the rail there.

[Public commenter (high‑rise resident; water damage anecdote)]: Water can be a wonderful thing if you're thirsty or if you're fighting a fire. But if you live on a high rise, water can be a devastating thing. Several years ago, came home one I came home one afternoon. There's a half an inch of water on the floor. Our toilet had over flooded and poured down into four units downstairs. I saw the devastation. It was shocking. Walls, fine art, furniture, rugs, floors, keepsakes, all ruined. The damage ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Come to find, this is a common occurrence in high rise buildings. And, in fact, a year later, it happened in our building. Now you wanna put sprinklers in every single room and every single unit. And with can you give me a guarantee that this technology is infallible? I'd like to ask the fire department if they can guarantee that this is infallible. One final thing there are two fifty toilets in our building if those sprinklers went off in a false alarm it would create millions of dollars of damage. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please.

[Public commenter (lifelong San Franciscan; teacher)]: First I' like to say this process is an embarrassment you should all be ashamed of yourself to give all these people one minute and this gentleman who is a firefighter didn' get to speak his mind you should all be ashamed of yourself I want to say hello to the people in the overflow room, I'm a lifelong San Franciscan, I got my teaching credential from San Francisco State University after going to George Washington High School, Marina Middle School, and elementary school in the school in the city. My mother was a teacher in the city, My sister had to move out of the city. My brother had to move out of the city. I live in a studio apartment like the gentleman who previously spoke. I'm going to have to move out of the city. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please. Hold your applause let' have the next speaker please.

[Steve Stiller (board president, The Heights)]: My name is Steve stiller and I' the board president of the heights a 12 story concrete and steel coop residential building. We are one of the 29 buildings affected by the mandate that are working together to see safe and affordable solutions. I wish to start by thanking the supervisors, the committee, and the fire marshal for hearing our concerns. Fire safety in our buildings are top priority. It is our lives and homes that are at stake. Our building has over 20 fire safety systems already in place, which mirrors most, if not all, of the affected co ops and condos. Those systems include fire sprinklers throughout our common spaces, as well as in the residences at each exit to two fire escapes. Outside each apartment are the following, fire hoses, fire extinguishers, pull stations, fire horns, lighted fire exit signs. Each apartment also has hard wired smoke detectors, low frequency sounders, fire extinguishers. It is clear that we have met or exceeded all of the fire code's mandates and have prioritized fire safety. We look forward to working for the stakeholders to formulate an affordable and effective alternative to the Thank you

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: for sharing your comments with

[Joel Goodrich (resident, 850 Powell/Francesca)]: the committee. You.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Let's have the next speaker, please. Once again, do not interrupt the proceedings with the applause. We need to move on to the next speaker. Let's hear from the next speaker, please.

[Public commenter (Nob Hill resident)]: My husband and I bought our San Francisco condominium in 2015. It has currently lost one third of its value despite the feeling that our building is being damaged, its reputation as a function of this mandate, despite our concrete walls separating units, two concretes and encased smokeless staircase exits, three fire doors backed by generators, standpipes, fire extinguishers, fire hoses on every floor. The list goes on. Our options now despite that, the San Francisco assessors board has seen fit to continually assess me at the twenty fifteen value. The last data point and I want you to hear this loud and clear is on the San Francisco Fire Department's database, my husband and I did a thorough analysis of the cases shown less than one point five percent occurred in the buildings on this list. I know high rises, people like to throw that word out. It's a dangerous fire. I live in a high rise. I'm very concerned about safety too. But the point is, if you look at the remaining 98%

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for

[Julie Tang (public commenter)]: your comments.

[Public commenter (Nob Hill resident)]: A third of those are in multi Next speaker, please. Single story units, wood structures.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Speaker's time is We'll talk

[Public commenter (Nob Hill resident)]: to them first.

[Public commenter ('good, bad, and ugly' analogy)]: Thank you for allowing

[David Thompson (resident, 1170 Sacramento)]: me speak.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Hang on one second. Before the next speaker begins, we need to keep this flowing. Please respect the board rules. Stop interrupting the proceedings with applause. We need to hear from the next speaker. You may begin.

[Public commenter ('good, bad, and ugly' analogy)]: Thank you. This reminds me of the movie the book, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The ugly is the cost of construction and destructive moving people out while during construction. The bad is is the cost. A lot of people just can't afford it. The good is we have a lot of protective fireproof safety items in place currently. And I would invite our fire chiefs and look them in the eye and say, come help us make it better. I was walking over here today, and I almost got hit by a car. I always look the person in the eye to see if they're going to go or stay and I don't trust them. But I look at our fire department and I trust them. You tell us to do something we'll do it at a lower cost we'll make it happen. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments to the next speaker please. Next speaker please. If we have a speaker that's ready to come forward to the lectern please begin.

[Ren Rhodes (HOA President, 1750 Taylor)]: My name is Ren Rhodes I'm the homeowner association president seventeen fifty Taylor and I'm a member of the twenty nine building coalition that has been pushing back on this for the last eighteen months. I'm here today to ask you to vote to pass the proposed new fire code with its five year

[Bilal Mahmoodine (public commenter)]: The loader?

[Ren Rhodes (HOA President, 1750 Taylor)]: Oh, sorry. Let me put this up. To pass the new fire code with the five year extensions. While the imposition of this mandate may be a financial hardship to apartment building owners the homeowners in the 3,600 apartments in the affected condo and coop buildings are in a different situation. We're required to fund the cost of implementing this mandate out of our own pocket with no financing option, and we will have to relocate during construction. You may have heard that we're all rich homeowners who can easily afford this expense, that the retrofit costs are not that high, and that no one will have to vacate their home for the construction. Nothing could be further from the truth. This false information is being provided by the building trades because they want the jobs that award. 1 to $2,000,000,000 citywide construction project will bring their members.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments to the committee. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Dr. Richard Perillo (neuropsychologist; resident 850 Powell)]: Hi there. My name is Richard Perillo. I am your local neuropsychologist here in case any of you needs any brain analysis. I'm, you know, I'm available. In any event, I've been in this city for thirty five years and at 850 Powell Street for twenty five of those thirty five years. I didn't hear a lot of suggestions regarding construction. My building is replete with steel and cement beams. I just don't know how you're going to put pipes through these steel and cement beams. I think that you're creating a problem here. And we're an earthquake company, country. This could be really problematic. And I'll just end with, the building was built in 1922. In those one hundred and four years, I don't know of any instance where we had smoke or fire intrusion. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Joyce Glick (public commenter)]: Hello. My name is Joyce Glick, and I just want everyone to know how pleased I am with the supervisors working on this. I'll be really fast. I want to know do you want to know who we are? Okay? We are and I'm going to talk about myself. I'm a doctor of physical therapy for fifty years in our medical community. I still make house calls in the tenderloin and the mission. I know that I believe in housing affordability. I've worked so hard. I moved here, went to Medical School Physical Therapy with a single parent. I've worked my way up where I can afford to live in a building, one of the 141 buildings and I am not a privileged person I would have to move and I' have to be displaced thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments next speaker please.

[Steve Stiller (board president, The Heights)]: This mandate has the potential to displace the majority of your constituents from their homes and is this the legacy that this board of supervisor wishes to leave? Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments next speaker please.

[Nicholas Suk (homeowner, The Hamilton)]: Hello my name is Nicholas Suk I am a homeowner at the Hamilton 61 O'Farrell Street which is a 21 story building in the Tenderloin I've been living for the last twenty three years. We at the Hamilton take life seriously, but the thing is this mandate has not been thought through. When it was passed in 2022, the 2016 BLA report was ignored. Proper outreach dialogue to community was not, did not happen. A study of the water capacity for PUC didn't occur. And then there's a cost. This is a huge financial hardship. You know, we're hearing numbers of 10,000 or $300,000, that's staggering. Here at the Hamilton, we are residents who are working class. Remember this is the tenderloin, we have nurses, teachers, government workers, and many retirees on fixed incomes, many simply can't afford the cost. You know, we don't expect this mandate to be resolved right away overnight, we need to, but we need to resolve this mess, and to do that, we, I kindly request that the commission pass the current fire code and extension. But, hang on, this is not a solution.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Right? Speaker's time has concluded. Thank you for sharing your comments with the committee. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Max Isaacman (public commenter; veteran)]: Hello. I'm Max Isaacman. And, I'm here because this mandate is poisoning our real estate market, and it's killing values for our apartments, and if you can even sell them. And unless this mandate is canceled, the sooner the better. I'll be forced to move out. I can't afford this expense of the mandate demands. Are you kidding? It's a fortune. Now, all I hear now is like San Francisco's burning. This has a moderate to low chance to burn. Check any studies because I have. I'm a Vietnam era vet. Don't scare me with I might be killed. I might have a fire. I'm sorry that if for people who got caught in a fire, but come on. You're for you're telling me to move out of my apartment because there might be a fire. That's not fair. This is so unfair. I'm here to ask you to do the right thing and cancel this terrible mandate. I' asking you to have empathy for me is something I' not hearing. Haven' heard anything.

[Public commenter (Green Hill Tower resident)]: Thank you

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: for sharing your comments let' hear from the next speaker please. Thank you. Let's have the next speaker. I understand there's close to 200 people waiting outside to get in to give to the public comment. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Diana Helander (homeowner, The Hamilton)]: Good afternoon. My name is Diana Helander, and I live in the Tenderloin at the historic Hamilton Building, which has a 186 units and where I've owned a unit for over twenty five years. Our owners will somehow have to come up with these onerous additional funds, which in effect results in a large tax on all of us. I respectfully ask you to take the first step to extend the time frame for this mandate. I believe this is only the first step of several steps, which includes additional research on resources required by buildings and the city to support this, and not the ultimate solution we will need to support our building and our residents. Thank you, in particular, to my supervisor, Mahmood.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Eve Meyer (homeowner, 66 Cleary Court)]: Moving as fast as I can. I' Eve Meyer. I'm a condo owner at 66 Cleary Court. I brought these along to represent the rest of the residents in the condo and all around the city. I'm asking today for us to take three actions. Number one, change the name of the proposed technical analysis commission to feasibility commission to broaden its scope. Number two, eliminate the 2035 expiration date appearing on page 91 part 11 o three point five point four in the fire code to allow for future flexibility. Three, make these changes immediately to avoid the major losses in valuation of our units that have been re that will result in property tax assessment lowering for the city almost immediately.

[Unidentified meeting participant (brief interjections)]: Thank you

[Eve Meyer (homeowner, 66 Cleary Court)]: so get $300,000

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. The speaker's time has concluded. We do have to move on to the next speaker. Thank you so much.

[Eve Meyer (homeowner, 66 Cleary Court)]: Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Brian Hayes (public commenter)]: Yes. Hi. Brian Hayes. Thank you for your time. We appreciate it. There was a quote by Will Rogers a hundred years ago. He said, be thankful we're not getting the government we're paying for. And, the problem is, my friends, it's very simple. We can't afford this. It's a they did studies throughout The United States, Maryland, and so forth. The the keyword came out, we can't afford it. It's not affordable. We cannot pay for it. We don't have the money. Don't have the So please consider this because it's not affordable. That's what you need to know. We all support the fire and police, and we just we just can't afford it. It's it's something that you you have a lot of pie in the sky ideas. They're great ideas like asbestos removal. We can't afford that. ADA compliance to every building in San Francisco. It just becomes you can't afford to do it, so you have to say no. We're asking you to say no. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much for your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Joel Goodrich (resident, 850 Powell/Francesca)]: Good afternoon. My name is Joel Goodrich. I live at 850 Powell Street, otherwise known as the Francesca. I think one of the earlier speakers made the most important comment of the afternoon, no other major American city has any ordinance like this. So, I think that we're all concerned about safety and saving residents' lives, but in addition to that, that appears to be unnecessary because of every other major American city. It would destroy the historic nature of a lot of these buildings because of the intrusive construction, and also, I've read that the city's infrastructure is not equipped to handle this in many of the blocks. So, the whole structure seems undoable, plus the undue hardship it would create on 26,000 San Franciscans unnecessarily. So, you and appreciate all your efforts to get this rolled back. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. To the next speaker,

[Dr. Harvey Malhoff (physician; resident, 1940 Broadway)]: My name is Harvey Malhoff. I reside at 1940 Broadway. Two observations I would like to make, and I would like the counsel and the fire people to realize, there isn't a single person in this room that wants to burn up in a fire. Likewise, I am appalled by the fact that as a retired physician, we always dealt with risk benefit ratio. We just heard from a layperson that they did the research that indicates that the risk is so low that it doesn't warrant the cost, which has never been analyzed except for ten years ago. And I'd like to know why the council thinks something that was unfeasible cost wise ten years ago would be more feasible now in view of inflation, etcetera, etcetera. Thank you for your time.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much for your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Public commenter (physician; concerns on seniors’ healthcare access)]: Madam chair and supervisors, there is a real risk of fire related death in these steel and concrete buildings, but it's a very, very rare risk. As a physician like the former speaker just preceding me, I'm as concerned really about the health of the occupants of my building and these other buildings that are in this, that are being judged by this, this sprinkler mandate. A lot of my friends in my building are elderly, they're senior, they have spent months, if not years, developing relationships with their health care providers here in the city. Should this sprinkler mandate be instituted, these senior citizens, often on a fixed income, would lose their health care providers, whether it's physicians, home health providers, physical therapists, like the person that spoke a little bit earlier, where would they get their medical care? Where would they go if they're forced if they're displaced from their homes? Another issue is if there if we do have to remodel our facilities

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much for your comments speaker's time has concluded thank you for your comments let' have the next speaker please.

[Karen Rose (public commenter)]: Thank you my name is Karen rose and I thank supervisors cheryl and sauter and my friends and neighbors I would make all the same points that they have made I would just wish to emphasize the following and that you do this consider the impact not merely to San Francisco reputation as being unreasonable but to the reality of San Francisco being unreasonable as has been said nowhere else is this regulatory scheme in place and it' not because other Cedar City Leaders are more concerned about their residents' and not because we' smarter than they are it' because we' not reasonable despite the comments the very pious comments about concern for fire safety none of us here living in these buildings is unconcerned about fire safety yet we understand what the implications are.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments let' have the next speaker please.

[Susan Fish (senior resident, 1201 California)]: Good afternoon my name is Susan fish and my husband and I live at 1201 California Street We are senior citizens, and I have to say, being a senior citizen in San Francisco is not an easy task. This mandate, if it's passed, will make it that much harder for us financially, displacement? Where would we all go in a city that has no housing that is affordable? Where are we going to go? I find it inconceivable that our elected officials who pride yourselves on upholding San Francisco values would allow this to happen to your constituents. When mayor lorry says San Francisco is a city that works is this what he's talking about? I don't think so. You have to repeal this mandate. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. The next speaker please. Everyone please withhold your applause you we can feel your support don' interrupt the proceedings however we need to get through everyone and understand there' 200 people waiting outside to come in and give public comment Let's hear from the next speaker, please.

[Neil Bardak (board president, The Comstock)]: Yes. My name is Neil Bardak. I live at the Comstock. I am the president of the board of directors, so I speak on behalf of all the shareholders who can't be here today. And I wanna cut catalog and quantify the hardship. As an owner and a shareholder, I have to renovate my apartment and pay for the cost. Let's say it's $300,000 I also have to share in the cost of the building's expenses, The common areas, if they have to be sprinkled, if they have to be asbestos removal, I have to spend my percentage share of ownership to pay for that as well, along with paying for the cost of moving out and moving back. So, when you talk about hardship, you have to go beyond the apartment cost itself and realize we are all responsible for the cost of renovating the building, as well. So, on top of insurance, on top of labor, and all the things that will stay in place while this is happening. So, it's a tremendous burden that is being created far beyond just the cost of putting sprinklers in our phones.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments.

[Eris (public commenter from Fillmore)]: Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Tanya Amochaev (resident, Fontana Towers)]: Hi I am Tanya amochayev I've lived in my city San Francisco for over seventy years and will always love it I lived in my home in Fontanetowers during the nineteen eighty nine earthquake which not everyone remembers, but which destroyed so much of our neighborhood. It was the quality of our building that kept it from being damaged in any way. That gave me the confidence to buy and plan to live here for the rest of my life. I have all we have already done so much that our building needs to protect us from earthquakes and fires without, as this mandate will do, tearing apart every apartment and displacing thousands of people for months and imposing millions of dollars in costs. We could just fight for an exemption, but that would be unfair. There's an enormous community that will suffer. I ask you to stand up for our population. Cancel this sprinkler mandate.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Folks, I'm really sorry. Mr. Clerk, you know, clerk has repeatedly asked folks to keep the noise down. It is a board rule. We have to enforce board rules. It is fair. You know, right now, I'm appreciating democracy because in our country, we're there. But but please, please respect the rules. I don't want to have to stop the meeting. So let's just keep going. Thank you.

[Julie Tang (public commenter)]: Thank you very much. My name is Julie Tang. Let's get to the point that collectively, the people who are here for whom the benefit is supposed to inert don't want this legislation. We think this pub this so called public health, government policy is in fact destroying our public health right now. Our public health is being destroyed, being demised, and we're suffering from stress, depression. Some people is thinking about death when they have to move out because they're not well. So this is a very bad piece of legislation. Secondly, the cost just doesn't justify the benefits. We don't see it. We're rational people. I tell you, there is a way out. There is an option to this. Adopt the Maryland plan. Maryland vacated its mandate, its sprinkler mandate, scuttle it, did not implement it, and that's the way to go. And the reason, financial hardship. That alone itself should be the purpose and for which this legislation should be demised, and I urge you to do so.

[Unidentified meeting participant (brief interjections)]: Thank you

[Julie Tang (public commenter)]: very much.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: So the next speaker, please.

[Andrew Halpern (public commenter)]: Good afternoon. My name is Andrew Halpern. I think it would help the public to understand how many deaths or injuries have occurred in the last five years do the fires or smoke in the 12 plus story buildings. I think if the fire department gave us some statistics, that would balance out where we go from here. A number of the speakers have spoken about financial hardship, displacement, and also all of the other fire control mechanisms already in place. There's a number of them in buildings. Right now, the multiunit real estate market is at a standstill because buyers can't buy, sellers can't sell because you haven't solved this issue yet. And the city is losing tax dollars and revenue because the values that are recognized from sales in the new tax base is not recognized by the city. The treasury and assessor's office is losing dollars.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Andrew Halpern (public commenter)]: We have over 48

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: every speaker gets the same amount of time, so we'll move on to the next speaker after the time is concluded.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Good afternoon. I'm Gina Ferrante. If the sprinkler mandate is not amended, I won't be able to afford to live in my Fontana West home or San Francisco for that matter. The life altering impact would be utterly devastating. This especially breaks my heart

[Gina Ferrante (retired SFUSD administrator; Fontana West)]: as I faith as I have dedicated the past twenty five years of my life faithfully serving the city of San Francisco in the capacity of k 12 public school site administrator. I had to scrimp and stay for thirty years to even afford a down payment for a home in San Francisco, a home I have to grow old in. As a retired public servant being forced to move out of my home, it would bankrupt me. I have nowhere to go and do not do not have the funds to cover the expenses. My association fees would be untenable, and I would be forced to sell my beloved home at a significant loss. The idea of losing my home leaves me feeling absolutely gutted. As a safety focused five time nerd trained citizen and nerd host, I beg you, I implore you, please don't render me nor my neighbors victims of what feels like a form of senior citizen gentrification.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Speaker's time has concluded.

[Gina Ferrante (retired SFUSD administrator; Fontana West)]: Thank you for

[Melissa Draper (homeowner, 1001 California Street)]: your comments.

[Gina Ferrante (retired SFUSD administrator; Fontana West)]: Literally in your hand.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: We have to move on to the next speaker. Sorry to cut you off, but everybody has the same minute to provide their public comment. We need to move on to the next speaker.

[Public commenter (resident of 946 Stockton Street)]: I'm the resident in 946 Stockton Street. And, our building, it's a cement and concrete. And, the ceiling is eight feet high. And, as I know, the pipe is 14 inches, so it's below the cold. So, I have a question for everybody. Why the government allow the manufacturer to make the car to sell it to the customer? And, don't let the people drive the car on the street. That's all.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Let's have the next speaker please.

[Jim Edlin (homeowner, 66 Cleary Court)]: Hello my name is Jim Edlin I live at 66 Cleary Court. I am here to say for all the reasons that you have been hearing that extension is not the right move Repeal is the right move. But if this goes forward because the mandate has chopped hundreds of thousands of dollars off the value of our home, we plan to apply for an equivalent reduction in its tax assessment and I expect

[Public commenter (high‑rise resident; water damage anecdote)]: thousands

[Jim Edlin (homeowner, 66 Cleary Court)]: of other owners will do so as well. In addition to flooding the assessor's office with reduction applications if these are granted, it could result in an annual loss of tens of millions of dollars to the city and county's property tax revenues. Please just strike the words until 01/01/2035 when this exemption expires from the fire code that is up for consideration. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Bilal Mahmoodine (public commenter)]: I'm Bilal Mahmoodine. I'm 84 years old, a retired school teacher. That's forty seven years of making kids love math. I'll cut right to the extension. We appreciate very much your consideration of a five year extension, but here's my reality. I live on a fixed income with a very tight budget. I cannot afford an extra quarter of $1,000,000 now and I will not be able to afford it in five years or ten. That's the way fixed income works. If

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: I'm going to pause the speaker's time for just a moment to request once again the people not interrupt the proceedings so we can continue to hear. If you applaud and jeer and whoop while the speaker is speaking then you are taking the time away from them we cannot hear the words that they telling us. Please you have eighteen seconds.

[Bilal Mahmoodine (public commenter)]: If the if the mandate is not reversed there is no plan that I will be able to stay in the Fontana West. I will have to leave the Fontana, and that will be heartbreaking.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much for sharing your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Bilal Mahmoodine (public commenter)]: Afternoon everyone. My name is Ramona Rideout. I'm a 75 year old retiree and I own a condominium in one of the retroactive sprinkler mandate buildings. How did such good intentions go so wrong? You may not have been on the board when this unworkable mandate was passed, but it falls to you now to fix it. Due to my building's concrete walls, radiant heating, and asbestos ceilings, the estimated cost per owner in my building is $300,000 For seniors on fixed incomes like myself, this is a catastrophic amount. Construction would require me to relocate in the most expensive housing market in the country. And with all of this loss oops. I'm sorry.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for

[Joyce Glick (public commenter)]: standing I

[Bilal Mahmoodine (public commenter)]: ask you to approve the five year extension and commission

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: What's the the next speaker, please? My

[Bob Herrera (homeowner, Telegraph Landing)]: name is Bob Herrera. I live at Telegraph Landing, and this sprinkler mandate retrofit will be a major problem. It will be a huge hardship to relocate and simultaneously pay rent, pay our existing mortgage, and pay up to an estimated $300,000 in construction costs. With its low concrete ceilings and embedded tension wires, our building was never designed and built to accommodate significant new water infrastructure in every room. Moreover, retrofitting such infrastructure risk future insidious damage due to incidental water leaks from a new water system. I urge you to pass the legislation before you today. It is a crucial first step. However, the mandate needs to be changed and repealed. I strongly support, amending the sprinkler rule to trigger a retrofit only when a major renovation renovation to the building is undertaken. I'm a member of the barbery coast neighborhood association they support my statement and thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments next speaker please.

[Ellen Bowley (resident, Fontana East)]: I'm Ellen Bowley, I reside at Fontana East. And my question is, before this mandate was passed, why wasn't there a statistical study done to determine the probability of harm versus the cost of the remedy? How many people in San Francisco have died or been injured in twenty in the past twenty years in concrete buildings like Fontana East? The fire department would have these statistics. This needs to be done now again. And then consider those results to determine if this is a reasonable mandate.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Victoria Ponds (resident, The Hamilton; MOHCD DPA recipient)]: Good afternoon. My name is Victoria Ponds. I live at the Hamilton And The Tenderloin. I'm also a DOP recipient from the mayor's office of housing, that's down payment assistance. And, I'm also a government employee, just work across the street. This expense will devastate my quality of life, as I would have to move out of the city if this were to move forward. And, this will also devastate the community of my building, as we are as my neighbors have said, full of senior citizens and other low income or fixed income residents. So, I prefer the many to be repealed, but I ask that for the time being, the time frame be extended so we can work on a solution together. Thank you for your time.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Sandy Frank (resident, Fontana Towers)]: Hello. My name is Sandy Frank, and I live in the Fontana Towers. Some of us are sick. Our doctors are in San Francisco. Our infusion centers are in San Francisco. If we are forced to move out of our homes and out of the city, would be extremely stressful for us to get to our doctor's appointments and the medical teams we have close relationships with. Finding a medical team you trust can take years and it would be hard for me to get to them because I don't drive due to my health issues. Please have a heart and think about those of us who are young and old

[Steve Simon (resident, The Hamilton)]: and you

[Sandy Frank (resident, Fontana Towers)]: can't leave San Francisco due to our health.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Jenny Gelbard (resident; recently laid off)]: Good afternoon. My name is Jenny Gelbard. Three years ago, I invested my life savings into a condo. Two weeks ago, I was laid off from my job. When mayor Lurie speaks of impossible choices, he is talking about me. For an unemployed homeowner, a 6 figure assessment is a financial crisis that threatens my ability to stay in the city that I love. The current narrative that these retrofits are simple one day affairs is false. It dismisses the 9,800 families facing massive debt, invasive construction. We do not need we need more than a five year stop gap. We need an independent technical advisory committee mandated to evaluate proven performance based safety alternatives which provide equivalent protection at a fraction of the cost. For integrity, we request form 700 disclosures for all committee members. Public safety policy must be driven by data, not by industry interest. There are 15,000 affected residents. We are motivated one issue voters.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Sepe Richardson Wood (public commenter)]: Hello. My name is Sepe Richardson Wood. A couple of years ago, I fell very hard and broke my arms and my shoulder, and now partially disabled. And then I saw I had to move out of my house. I had lived there for a long time, and I thought that I'm getting to have my forever home in San Francisco that I love dearly. That's where I like to die. So, I put $350,000 to remodel my home so I don't have to repair or improve my in my 70s, 80s, 90s, whatever. But believe me, I have no more money. I have no pot to piss on to give you. So please repeal and support Sardar and Cheryl. I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Christopher Wood (resident, District 3)]: Hi. My name is Christopher Wood. I'm a resident of District 3. Thank you, Doctor. Doctor. Thank you, Supervisor Souders, for your very clear statement earlier. I support that 100%, with the possible exception of, I would really like to see repeal rather than a delay. And, I'd also wanna say I'm a lifelong union man, stagehands local sixteen, and my son is a firefighter. Unfortunately, not in San Francisco. But, I recognize the fire safety issues and, I think that many people have said the, the personal issues would apply to me as well. And, please consider all of that. Thank you very much.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. To the next speaker please.

[Linus (Lineus) Stumpurzius (HOA President, 1835 Franklin)]: My name is lineus stumpurzius president of the homeowners association at 1835 Franklin St. My comment deals more with the implementation of whatever happens five years from now with the extension or tomorrow. I don't think anyone's really thought through the implementation. As a board we control what can happen in a common area but really have very little control of what happens to individual units that' private property for each homeowner and what I envision is an HOA applying for a permit for providing sprinkler system into a building but then that'll have to be repeated by each homeowner who has to hire their own architects designers engineers to submit a permit application for their work so you've got partial systems being submitted to the building department for approval and I' never heard anywhere where that' even practical.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments and set the next speaker please.

[Madeline Trembley (Gateway representative)]: My name is Madeline Trembley. I represent the Gateway, twelve fifty eight units representing approximately 3,000 people. Twenty eight to thirty percent of our residents on their eighties and nineties with many health issues. We also have professionals working on visa that have to notify us cis within ten days of change of address how will everyone cope how is gateway management going to relocate roughly 3,000 people? And how are these people that are on fixed income going to cope with no doubt the increase that will come once the apartments are renovated? I understand that the fire departments loves our nineteen sixty buildings. We had a couple of fires, and they were self contained with no casualties.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for

[Madeline Trembley (Gateway representative)]: your comments.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: So the next speaker, please.

[Public commenter (Green Hill Tower resident)]: Good afternoon. I live in Green Hill Tower. My insurance company charges me extra $25 for lack of sprinklers in our apartment. Apparently, they consider risk of missing the sprinklers is not very high, and they are one of the best to access the risk. Another thing I would like to point out that risk award consideration definitely does not justify hundreds of millions of dollars on retrofit. I implore our board of supervisors to repeal the mandate because it causes so much heartache today and it will cause a lot of troubles in the future. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much for your comments. Let''s have the next speaker please.

[Gerald Asher (public commenter)]: My name is Gerald Asher, and I'm going to disregard the notes that I've made because I'd like to answer a couple of points that were made here. The fire department said they would, in fact, consider cases of hardship. Wouldn't it be better if I don't know how qualified they are to measure hardship, but they are qualified to look at buildings and check whether, in fact, there really is need for this. Installing sprinklers throughout might mitigate physical damage in the event of a fire, but they wouldn't save lives. Sprinklers are activated when the ambient heat gets get to about a 160 Fahrenheit, at which time anyone who was still around would have passed out because of a heat stroke. I'm I'm 94. I've lived in my building for over fifty years and this if if this is passed, it would be ruinous financially for me.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much, mister Asher, for your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Eric Sandler (retired AGM/CFO, SFPUC)]: Hi, supervisors. I'm Eric Sandler. I have an apartment at 1200 Gulf Street, is impacted by this fire sprinkler mandate. I'm the retired assistant general manager and CFO of the San Francisco PUC. So I'm no stranger to this room and no stranger to having to balance public health and safety against cost impacts to ratepayers and customers. So I was so I went back to the administrative record in 2022 to try to understand. I was reading I was reading all of the fire code, and there was absolutely nothing about the financial impact of this measure on customers. It was shocking. I could not believe it. If I had done something like that during my career, I'd be fired. I appreciate all of the work that the two supervisors have done to delay the compliance deadlines, but really that's this is backwards. All of the staff work should be complete, and then you should legislate.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments to the next speaker please.

[Rudy Gonzalez (SF Building & Construction Trades Council)]: Good evening members of the committee Rudy Gonzales with the San Francisco building and construction trades council rising to support the delay and to support the inclusion of HOA voices in any technical advisory council that's adopted by this body. There's a lot of science to discuss. There's a lot of real human impact to discuss. I've heard that loud and clear today. And, I think we should welcome more of this dialogue. Frankly, we should make it easier for people to find out about these things. I think, you know, there's we're dealing with a piece of legislation that was signed by a mayor who is no longer here. That was administered by a fire department whose chief is no longer here. By a fire marshal who is no longer here. You are all here and these folks are here and technical experts are here. And, I think we have to work collaboratively to find a true path forward and I respect and appreciate the voices in this room being included in that process moving forward. To the objective hardship analysis, I think that should be the first thing the TAC takes up. It's really about feasibility and make sure that people are heard, considered, and that we move forward with a plan.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you. Thank you for your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Chris Ingram (Ingram Fire Protection; sprinkler contractor)]: My name is Chris Ingram. I'm the CEO of Ingram Fire Protection. I'm a fire sprinkler contractor. I'm also a fifth generation San Franciscan and former resident of Golden Gateway 440 Davis Court. I come here for two main points I wanna make to to the committee, that one, the requirement for as a contractor, the requirement for the tenants to move out is absolutely false. There is no need for that to happen. There's been very considerable misinformation, and we've done multiple jobs identical to these where we have not had any tenants have to move out. That's number one. And number two point, it's very critical, the cost per unit is $60,000. All in, total cost.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: I'm pausing the speaker's time.

[Chris Ingram (Ingram Fire Protection; sprinkler contractor)]: And I will personally do any building in San Francisco for $5,000,000. So that's the cost and any misinformation from that is otherwise. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments.

[Chase Browning (National Fire Sprinkler Association)]: Members of

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: the committee,

[Bilal Mahmoodine (public commenter)]: let's hang out for

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: a I don't want to have to stop this meeting, please. Thank you.

[Chase Browning (National Fire Sprinkler Association)]: Members of the committee, my name is Chase Browning. I'm with the National Fire Sprinkler Association. And we represent the industry. We also represent residents. And as you've heard loud and clear today, there's a lot of concerns about costs. We're concerned about the costs. The numbers that we've heard in media here, and the numbers that we've heard today, are a far cry from what we've experienced as we've done case studies on this. And we have published information that indicates a number closer to what Mr. Ingram was talking about. We also know that there's a lot of noise about displacement. And as a previous sprinkler contractor and a fire marshal, I've seen this happen where it's very rare that you have to displace. As Rudy mentioned, there is discussion about a technical advisory committee with encouragement to have HOAs involved. There's a lot of energy about this discussion. There's a lot of creative approaches to get the costs down. Keep the discussion going, and let's find a way to massively reduce the numbers from what we're hearing today, because it's totally feasible around the country. It's

[Brian Hayes (public commenter)]: happening. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Let's have the next speaker please.

[Joan (public commenter)]: Okay. Hello, my name is Joan. Thank you for hearing me. I had the privilege to meet the kind supervisor, Danny Sodder, at Pine Terrace, who feels deeply for myself and many, many others in doing his best regarding this. Not only am I not able to pay for the sprinkler assessments on top of my I will have to sell my unit at a drastic or total loss because the cost of an estimated 300,000 sprinkler is a third of my unit's value. Please have compassion on our plight and repeal this mandate As one neighbor to another another under god, I ask you to please have compassion. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Georgie Fain (resident, 1200 Gough)]: Georgie Fain, 1200 Gough Street. I bought ten years ago. The value of my property is already less than it was. I cannot go further underwater. I would just like to also point out that all of us when we purchased our units, knew that it didn't have a sprinkler system. We were willing to move into a building with no sprinkler system. We continue to be willing to live in a building with no sprinkler system. And so I think that we should be allowed to live in our homes as we choose as opposed to have this forced on us which will completely change our lives and probably mean that, as you've heard, many of us will have to leave the homes that we planned to live out the rest of our lives in.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments to the next speaker please.

[Public commenter (young homeowner)]: Good afternoon. I'm here to make two quick points, one a personal one. We've been talking a lot about our senior citizens, I wanted to give a different perspective. I bought my unit in late twenty twenty four. By 2025, after scraping since moving to the city in 2014, I found out in less than a year of owning it, the property value had halved. I can't afford the changes that the sprinkler mandate will require, nor can I offload my property because literally no one is buying in these units? And you can ask realtors who are going to make comments, including the realtor who sold me my unit. The second point that I want to make is this needs to be about repeal. Like, that is the thing that we're all here for. There's no extensions. It needs to be about repeal. Literally, no one was aware of this ordinance or what we were taking on. This is just irrational policy making in a city where it's already hard to for anyone to buy anything. Just let sanity for once prevail in San Francisco politics, and please repeal this thing. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please.

[Olive Rubenstein (resident, 1333 Jones/Comstock)]: Afternoon. My name is Olive Rubenstein. I am 35 years old, and I live at 1333 Jones Street, the Comstock Building. My building is steel and concrete. We have electric stoves as well. These sprinklers would cause medical issues such as asbestos. This mandate is drowning my building and my community. Please repeal this. This is not worth it, and this is going to drown us all. Is not worth it, and this is going to make me and everyone else in here leave San Francisco. This is not worth it, and you guys are gonna regret it. Please do not let me leave this city. I love this city way too much and so does everyone else in this building and everyone else in this city. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Let's have the next speaker please.

[Public commenter (criticizing industry cost estimates)]: My name is your I' grateful the ceos and industry reps making tons of money came all this way here today for fire safety in buildings that they do not live in truly generous people I'm joking, of course, but I just wanted to make one comment. Treat their numbers, like the numbers that they cited, with a lot of skepticism. First, they said 12 k as the cost, but then no one believed them. Check their press releases. Then they said 60 k. What will the next number be that they cite? So, please stand with us, the people of San Francisco, instead of these crony capitalists. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Kimberly Wong (San Francisco Association of Realtors)]: I'm Kimberly Wong, I'm on the board with the San Francisco Association of Realtors and I wanted to make two comments. The we not only do we want to repeal this but it would we also would like the creation of a formal technical advisory committee committee of engineers, architects, and other experts to assess retrofit feasibility building by building, because each building is individual and different. And also, we would like a pause of an on enforcement until the committee releases its findings.

[Supervisor Chyanne Chen (Vice Chair)]: Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Melissa Draper (homeowner, 1001 California Street)]: Hi. Melissa Draper, 1001 California Street. And I am here representing the HOA, as the secretary. And it seems San Francisco has made so many fabulous positive strides that this really is kind of a blemish that has started to intrude on how we feel about San Francisco. I wanna thank the supervisors and the fire department for doing such a great job. Clearly, we're we're all moving forward in a positive way. Our building just went through a four year multimillion dollar renovation because it's over 100 years old and needed to have many things addressed, including water intrusion. I have to say the numbers talked about tonight probably are more correct in the higher range than in the lower, having just gone through a huge assessment for any work done in San Francisco. And I think we all realize that. We call for repeal. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Janice Lee (Realtor; Chinese Real Estate Association of America)]: Hi. I'm Janice Lee, a realtor at Coldwell Banker, past president and board of director at the Chinese Real Estate Association of America. This sprinkler mandate was not well thought out, and the public was not informed. I also feel bad for the recent homeowners who bought without knowing about this potential huge $300,000 expense per unit. Property values will go down, and many homeowners may go bankrupt or lose their homes and get foreclosed upon. Please repeal this. Please reconsider. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker,

[John Leveldt (resident, 1200 Gough)]: Ladies and gentlemen, my name is John Leveldt. I am a resident of 1200 Golf. My my point is, I don't understand why we have to go through this when there is no expert study done on on all of this. So why don't we sit down? Nobody wants nobody in this room wants a fireman to die. Trust me. But I don't wanna die being broke. So I'm asking you to please reconsider what you're talking about. And then if it doesn't work like that, put it on the ballot. We will tell you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Donna Crowder (Realtor)]: Good afternoon. My name's Donna Crowder. I'm a realtor of fifty years in the city and county of San Francisco. And I'm here to support and sympathize with my neighbors. The point that I want to make of course, what everyone has said and the stories I've heard are heartbreaking. And they're true. But the point that I want to make is that with a stroke of a gavel, you've taken money out of these people's pockets. Their values have gone down. They could be underwater. And this is today. We can't sell the units or the buildings today without a very, very significant effect on the value. And that's a fact. Please reconsider extension experts or do away with it altogether and find some alternative. You.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. To the next speaker please.

[Bilal Mahmoodine (public commenter)]: Hello. My name is Susan, and I live in the Hamilton Building in the Tenderloin. Just to add my own personal viewpoint to everything that's been said, I support the five year extension leading to more study and, ultimately, the repeal of the mandate. I'm a retired teacher on an extremely modest fixed income. I simply could not afford to finance the installation of sprinklers. I would have to leave San Francisco for all the reasons everyone has said. And if that's the case, I will take anyone's suggestion where I could move after having lived my entire adult life in this city. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for comments. Next speaker, please.

[Joni Lachman (public commenter)]: Hi. My name is Joni Lachman. Just personally, I have a daughter who is 25 years old, but she had four brain surgeries last year. She has to stay in the city to be near her neuro team. She has to be near a trauma one hospital. So not only would this be catastrophic for us financially, but it's health wise, it would there would be no way back. There's no alternative. So I really ask that you repeal, and thank you for your time.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Allison Jacobs (public commenter)]: Hi. My name is Allison Jacobs. I'd just like to speak to a comment from the two fire sprinkler professionals who said we don't have to move out of our buildings. Our buildings have asbestos and lead paint. The construction would take about twelve months. I don't think it is reasonable to expect residents to live in a hazardous active hazardous waste situation for twelve months. Also, high-tech solutions like firefighting drones in high rises as well as new fire sprinklers that are more effective than even than water are becoming available. So why force massive retrofits now when much more affordable options are coming soon? Take and in addition, sprinklers have can cause risks, such as during earthquakes causing leaks and if components in a sprinkler system

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for

[Supervisor Rafael Mandelman (Board President)]: your comments.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Leaks. Speaker's time has concluded. Thank you for sharing your comments to the committee. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Myrna Friedenberg (public commenter)]: I'm Myrna Friedenberg, and I'd like to ask each of the supervisors a favor. Would you please just imagine a loved one of yours in the situation in which we are? What would you say? Would you say, I don' care? Would you say, oh, that's too bad, but everything will be okay? Or would you say, I will do absolutely everything I can to help? Then imagine this loved one again. In this situation, what would you think? Would you realize that this loved one had no money at all to pay for this? Would you realize that this loved one had absolutely no place to go? Would you realize that this mandate has already caused loss of sales of units in my building? Lastly, please remember that your role as a supervisor is to do what is best for your constituents.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your

[Bob Fousner (public commenter; real estate/construction background)]: comments.

[Myrna Friedenberg (public commenter)]: And, remember that at the next election

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Speaker Speaker

[Myrna Friedenberg (public commenter)]: we will remember how you vote.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments to the committee. Let's have the next speaker please.

[SFGovTV audiovisual staff (likely Eugene Libadia)]: Hi, good afternoon. My name is Steve I'm and I've lived here since 1975 and for the past twenty five years I've been practicing as a CPA serving local business owners and San Francisco residents. And, this mandate is kind of ridiculous and I would like to have it repealed or expedited so that the we would know the results. But, going back to my story, I'm sure it's same related to other people And, I put my property up for sale. It's been four months and it depreciated a $100,000. So, I have to load it to a $100,000 for my original and it's not getting any any interest from the buyers. So, it's happening already. So, I moved out. I moved to Sunnyvale because I don't like the policy here anymore. I love the city. Served in various committees here with the mayor's office and it just shows no it just shows no appreciation of residents by the local governments. This and my lastly for the construction.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments.

[SFGovTV audiovisual staff (likely Eugene Libadia)]: Yes. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much. Before we hear from the next speaker, just want to mention we have folks who are observing the meeting in the overflow room, Room 263. I understand most of the folks that are in that room are just watching the proceedings, but if we have anyone in Room 263 who wants to join the public comment line, we have space in the chamber right now, and you should make your way this way, and we're just gonna continue going until we hear from everyone. Let's hear from the next speaker please.

[Cathy (public commenter; small property owner)]: Hi. My name is Cathy. I own a property free unit and I don't think I need the sprinkling and I couldn't afford it. And I'm retired now, and my mom let me the property. So it's like fixing up. I couldn't afford it. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much for your comments. Let's hear from the next speaker, please.

[Ellen Bowley (resident, Fontana East)]: Hi. My name is Karen Franklin. I live in the Hamilton Building. I'm a former public school teacher. One thing I always had to tell my students every day is get off your phones. This is humiliating. This little buzzer, we have one minute to plead for our futures, for our lives, for our families, for our health, for our investments. People are leaving. They're not even bothering to look at us. What the hell is going on here? Anyhow, I'm angry. I want this initiative to be dismissed completely and be like the rest of the states. And, really, if you're just too tired to be here, go take a nap. Otherwise, look at the people who are standing in front of you and have something important to say. This isn't a joke, at least for all of us. Shame on you for being so disrespectful in the person who just left.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Lindsey Robinson (resident, 66 Cleary Court)]: Hello. My name is Lindsey Robinson, and I live at 66 Cleary Court. Thank you to the supervisors who are in the room and taking this issue so seriously, and thank you to the fire department. I hope you can see and understand and feel the passion and the fear that our neighbors are bringing to you today. I'm just one of hundreds, thousands of people who will be affected by this. We each have a personal story about why this is painful for us, why this is not feasible for us, why we are scared that this initiative has passed. And we are all hopeful that it will we will be able to work towards a repeal that is sensible. And I stand in solidarity with my neighbors who can't be here. We have dozens and dozens of elderly and disabled folks who live in our building who can't physically be represented. So every face in this room, every face who has spoken here today, please know that they represent hundreds of their neighbors. Thank you so much for your time.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Gina Ferrante (retired SFUSD administrator; Fontana West)]: My name is Janet Fong. And if this, mandate is not repealed, I'd like to point out that this mandate does not require all buildings with less than 12 floors to add sprinklers. So, the first 11 floors of higher buildings should be also be exempt from this mandate, to be fair. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much for your comments. To have the next speaker, please.

[Dan Rabinowitz (public commenter)]: Good afternoon. My name is Dan Rabinowitz. I'm here because my building has done a statistical analysis which can help this discussion by quantifying the risk against which this ordinance was intended to provide mitigation. We looked at twenty six years of published fire department data of every call out, twenty five years of published EMT data, cross correlated both of those. And what we discovered was that of the 126 buildings which were originally the subject of this ordinance, none of them in that twenty six year period had a fire related death. Of the 126 buildings which were the original subject of the ordinance, 123 of them went through all twenty six years of this recorded data without a single fire related injury. Three buildings out of the 126 subject to the ordinance had a total of nine non mortal injuries, none of which involved a first responder

[Public commenter ('good, bad, and ugly' analogy)]: or Six fire

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: times concluded.

[Steve Stiller (board president, The Heights)]: Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank for sharing your comments to the committee. Let's have the next speaker please.

[Public commenter (addressing Supervisors Chen and Melgar)]: Hi supervisor Chen and supervisor Melgar addressing to both of you that you need to hear we need your help okay and there' no homeowners able to afford 300,000 If any plumber telling you that it's not 300,000, please be reminded. The building was built before 1975 that it may contain lead based paint and also asbestos pipe and ceiling. Okay? And so and also, we need a place to live while they're doing construction. Nobody wants to live in a place that during construction with asbestos in there. So and don't forget, there's also we need to be in compliance with the electrical stove and water heater. How much more money that do we need to put in for just one condo unit? Okay. And, you are forcing your constituent to be foreclosed on their properties and forced to be displaced. Don't do that. We need your help. Please remove and abolish this mandate. We need your help. I know d two, d three has been, helping us a lot working on this. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Gina Blancart (Women’s Council of Realtors, past president)]: Hello. My name is Gina GINA Blancart. I'm past president of the Women's Council of Realtors in San Francisco. And I want to say thank you, Board of Supervisors, for working cohesively with our mayor and doing great things in San Francisco. And that said, I believe in the positivity of San Francisco. And we are on the rise, and we feel it worldwide, not just in our city. And that said, it is never too late to do the right thing. And the right thing is to repeal the sprinkler mandate. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please.

[Eva (Chinese Real Estate Association of America representative)]: Hi, my name is Eva. I'm representing of the Chinese real estate association of America. I'm here today to ask you to reconsider and appeal the proposed sprinkler retrofit mandate. Many of the homeowners represent deeply concerned they did not know how to lift it resident are and can realistically remain their unit while a full sprinkler system installation is taking a place. The cons the construction process is distracted, extremely stressful, especially for senior family and young children, and the residents with medical condition even more cons concerning a financial burden. We are seeing estimate of special assessment reaching approximately 3,000 permits for up to five years for them. They cannot afford it. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing our comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Roman Kanaki (resident, Green Hill Towers)]: Hello. My name is Roman Kanaki from Green Hill Towers. I want to frame two things that we have just heard. We heard from the gentleman in the construction company that he would be willing to do it for $5,000,000 per unit. Back of the envelope, dollars 5,000,000 oh, per building. 5,000,000 per building, dollars 100 buildings, dollars 500,000,000. We also heard that there has not been one recorded death in these high rises that this is subject to. So, again, what is the return on this? Why aren't you looking at wood framed buildings if it's truly about fire prevention, fire safety, and saving lives as we've already heard? Repeal this.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments have the next speaker please.

[John Parker (resident, 1998 Broadway)]: Thank you hi my name is John Parker I live at 1998 Broadway and they say a good listener is somebody who doesn't know what they'll say until everybody else has talked. So, I'll put down my phone and just say tell you a little bit about our building. We have 84 units on 12 floors in a building that's a footprint about the size of this room. And, we have people that volunteer, we have people that shop, we have people that dine out and support our local businesses. We' exactly the type of people you re really want at the contributing to the city and you' making it harder for people to stay. The other point ill make it' true that no other city has this mandate but many of them have passed legislation like this and then stepped back and rolled back, including San Diego, Los Angeles, further afield Honolulu, the entire state of Florida, and the city of Chicago. So, this is not the first time cities have looked at this, and every time they have stepped back. So, I strongly encourage you to repeal this mandate at some point in the short time

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: you for your comments.

[John Parker (resident, 1998 Broadway)]: Do the extension. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Let's have the next speaker please.

[David Thompson (resident, 1170 Sacramento)]: Hi good afternoon my name is David Thompson I live at 1170 Sacramento Street. Thank you for the opportunity to be heard. I particularly want to thank my supervisor Sauter and supervisor Cheryl for the excellent communication which is quite a contrast from how this legislation was originally rolled out. I'm not going to add a lot to what has been said today I'm here asking that you repeal this legislation. But as I listen, there's it's just a absence of common sense. How are gonna pay for this? We're just not gonna write a check. Where are going to go to live? We just don't have a second residence. Values are being reduced and there's a lot of fear and upset in our community. So thank you for taking that into consideration and thank you for your time.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Sylvia Hughes (public commenter)]: Hi, I'm Sylvia Hughes. I live in one of the buildings, and I think you need to repeal the mandate sooner rather than later because prices will be depressed and nobody will want to come to San Francisco while your study is going on for the next five years. That's a long time in the life of an elderly person. It's a long time in anybody's life, maybe. But I think you started this backwards. You need to repeal it completely, and then start a committee that looks at what can we do for additional fire safety. Not push it down the road now and leave everything depressed without thought for what happens next to the people that are actually living in these buildings now. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much for sharing your comments. To have the next speaker, please.

[Beverly Sutton (resident, Telegraph Landing)]: Hi. My name is Beverly Sutton. I live at Telegraph Landing. I was didn't intend to speak, but it struck me as I was listening that nobody is talking about the impact on the city infrastructure. If this mandate goes through do we have the water supply to support the sprinkler systems? Will we have to tear will you have to tear up streets? I I don't know, but I think it's worth asking because you need to look at that before you start tearing up buildings. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Marilyn Green (resident, 150 Lombard/Telegraph Landing)]: Afternoon. My name is Marilyn Green. I live at, 150 Lombard Telegraph Landing. I'm on the board of directors there. I wrote a speech, but I don't have time to give it, so I just wanna talk about risk. I've lived in that building for forty years. One time we had to call the fire department. It was a false alarm. So I really the risk is low that I gonna be burned up in the building. And and I certainly appreciate all the safety work toward the with the fireman give us, but the risk is low. I'm 87 years old, and I do think that I speak for, several other generationally handy challenged individuals whose risk now is being moved from their living spaces for untold periods of time to install such systems. That's bigger risk than a fire in my building. We just had a fire horn mandate, which cost us so much money. I had to go out and

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for

[Joni Lachman (public commenter)]: sharing get a brief your

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: oh. Speaker's time has concluded. Thank you for sharing Okay. Your

[Marilyn Green (resident, 150 Lombard/Telegraph Landing)]: You cannot risk

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: We'll hear

[Sylvia Hughes (public commenter)]: from the next speaker Please.

[Unidentified meeting participant (brief interjections)]: You.

[Mary Gassert (resident, 66 Cleary Court)]: I'm Mary Gassert at 66 Clery Court. I'd like to just address some of the arguments that we've heard in favor of this mandate. First, that we are overstating the cost. We are not reacting hysterically. I have been president of our board for about twelve years, have overseen several large projects. I know what these things cost. This is going to have a severe impact on people's finances and with possibly devastating consequences for some of our owners. Secondly, there's this life safety argument. High rise fires provide for a lot of dramatic film footage, and it's easy to jump on the bandwagon. But the fact is, these steel and concrete buildings are the safest in the city. If you're serious about life safety, spend the limited resources that the fire department has and spend it on the wood frame buildings. Require them to upgrade their electricity. Require them to have sprinklers. Mean, there that's where the risk is, not in our buildings.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: To the next speaker, please.

[Public commenter (referenced 2016 city fire safety report)]: Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I respectfully ask that you repeal this mandate. In 2016, the city's Fire Safety Commission issued a report on the feasibility of mandating retroactive fire sprinkler installations in existing residential buildings. It concluded that it was not feasible, but it identified other measures to improve safety, which many, if not all, affected buildings have complied. When the city passed this mandate in 2022, they did so without any proper outreach to owners and tenants. None of the people in leadership roles in the city were involved in the passing of this mandate. No other city or state has similar retroactive sprinkler requirements. In fact, many cities and states have reversed this requirement after trying to implement it because it is not feasible. This board of supervisors should reconsider the advice of the city's own fire safety commission and the examples of other jurisdictions like LA and San Diego and Thank repeal this

[Public commenter (high‑rise resident; water damage anecdote)]: you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Let's have the next speaker, please.

[David Thompson (resident, 1170 Sacramento)]: Good afternoon. My name is Owen Erickson. I'm at Fontana West. I have one request for the Board of Supervisors, and that is if they would, the citizens of San Francisco, investigate how this mandate in nineteen twenty twenty two was even passed without proper protocol. And, are there other mandates out there that haven't had proper protocol? We don't know. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Patrick Carney (architect)]: Hello, my name is Patrick Carney. I'm an architect at forty five years. Everybody wants safety. Bringing an old building up to code is not always possible. We live in a 25 story building which is entirely of concrete shear walls. No steel columns, no wood, only thick concrete. Our structural engineers don't want our shear walls weakened and turned into Swiss cheese. Doing sprinkler cores in a concrete box will weaken the building seismically. Sprinkler estimates vary up to $42,000,000 which is $300,000 per unit. Some owners may have to walk away from their units. Yet this measure in 2022 had less public input than the typical backyard deck remodel. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. Let's have the next speaker please.

[Chyanne Chen (retired city employee; not Supervisor)]: Good evening. My name is Chyanne Chen. I work for the city and county for the past twenty years and recently retired. I represent San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco Fire Department, police coordination, and business tax. I always looked at the interest of the city, but the fair equity of the public was equally important. I beg to differ on this initiative. My sister is affected by this, and I'm concerned she has already lost or will lose half $1,000,000. Thank thank you for listening.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Jordan (public commenter submitting letters)]: Hi. My name is Jordan, resident of San Francisco. I have here a stack of letters from residents who could not be here asking for changes to the SF Sprinklr retrofit mandate. We were just asking for some changes so that you do not displace residents in the city due to the Sprinklr retrofit mandate. Again, fire safety is important, but it should not be displacing the very people it's supposed to protect. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much. If you'd like to leave those for the file, you can just put them right on the rail, and I'll pick them up in a moment. Just leave them right there is fine. Next speaker, please.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: I'm really sorry. The folks in the back who are taking video, if you could turn off your flash. It's just really blinding up here. Thank you.

[Roland Wing (resident, 946 Stockton/Manor Tower)]: Good afternoon. Roland Wing. We have a unit at Manoran

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: I'm going pause your mic could you pull the mic right up to your face there we go start your time over.

[Roland Wing (resident, 946 Stockton/Manor Tower)]: Start my minute again please. Yes. Good afternoon my name is Roland wing nine forty six Stockton street the Manoran Tower. The building is made out of concrete metal reinforced studs. I' kind of a statistics guy ask the fire department how many fires they have responded with concrete buildings compared to fires that respond with wood frame buildings how many buildings have burned down wood frame versus concrete? Our HOA has gone up from 300 to over $1,000 per month since we' owned the unit so let' repeal this mandate for all or required for all including your residences in San Francisco thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments to the next speaker please.

[Public commenter (process/time-limit critic)]: I cannot afford to purchase in San Francisco. I'm here today to support those who can and senior citizens or just members of our community who needed you to have their back when this legislation was introduced And now, the time it takes for my day is my legs are swelling in the financial assistance program that was supposed to actually be there to missing. So the bun the the buzzer and threatening the members of your constituency with to suspend them suspend the meeting is just is irresponsible, and it doesn't it doesn't speak to the nature of your responsibility and that position that you that you you asked for and you and you serve in. So serve it with some dignity, and please extend the same dignity to the people who are here. I don't care if it's a thousand people outside. We're going to hear them, and you will too.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. I have the next speaker, please.

[Bel (public commenter; first-time homeowner)]: Supervisors, thank you for listening. I know it's been a long session. My name is bell. My husband and I got married right here in City Hall. As newlyweds, we bought a put all of our savings to our house to start a family. Water has been our absolute worst enemy as in our short term in our short time as first time homeowners, we've had three major leaks. The last one was last week, and it's been tens of thousands of dollars. So I worry about how much not only the the retrofit will cost us, but also the repairs from any sprinkler activation. I also worry about our ability to stay in the city and start a family. So please consider this for all constituents of all ages. Please repeal the mandate. Thank you so much.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Public commenter (Bel’s spouse; first-time homeowner)]: Hi board of supervisors that was my wife right there we bought our condo six years ago with the hopes and dreams of starting our family in this beautiful city of San Francisco Since then, our home value has decreased by a few 100,000 based on other, you know, comps on the market. We don't want to leave this city. We want to start a family here. To be honest, we've put our family planning on hold because of the financial instability and uncertainty that this situation has caused us. Please repeal this. Please help us start our family, and please let us stay in our homes.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. Next speaker, please.

[Jeannie Hua (resident, 1001 Pine Terrace)]: Good evening. My name is Jeannie Hua. I'm from 1001 Pine Terrace. We have about 144 units. And I can possibly positively say none of us want taxation without representation. I feel like this is what this is right now. Out of respect for this former firefighter, I would like to surrender my time to him. And anybody else, too, who would like to surrender

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: his We I'm sorry to say. You have thirty seconds remaining, but

[Linus (Lineus) Stumpurzius (HOA President, 1835 Franklin)]: Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: I just just wanted wanted to say one one thing. But he should get into the line to provide I public

[Robert Eaton (retired deputy fire chief; San Rafael fire inspector)]: didn't know so.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Did you already speak in public comments earlier?

[Chase Browning (National Fire Sprinkler Association)]: I did.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Okay your time has concluded. There's no surrendering time to somebody else But we will hear from the next speaker, please.

[Unidentified meeting participant (brief interjections)]: What's the second? Gonna be thirty seconds.

[Public commenter (younger resident; plea not to be priced out)]: Hi. I just have a personal plea as a member of the first generation who's officially worse off than the one that came before it. Me and my husband, we got married right here again two two years ago. We also have put family planning on hold. We are desperately trying to live in San Francisco. We chose San Francisco over Washington, D. C. On purpose. We desperately want to be your constituents and live here I'm begging you as my elected officials please do not rot us out of town over this thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments to the next speaker please.

[Jim Light (Fontana Buildings; data-oriented commenter)]: My name is Jim light from fontanah buildings. Stats we haven' heard too many about three and fifty seven thousand responses by the fire department nationally twenty eight hundred deaths civilian deaths in a year that' for the national levels California it' about seventy to one hundred deaths per year fatalities building types eighty four percent of those deaths are coming from single family homes or duplexes fifteen percent are coming from apartments the other one percent are buildings four stories and up one percent that' representing for california maybe one death per year is this making sense the insanity' got to stop repeal this if you want something to go after go after single family homes that' where your safest bet is That' where your enjoyment' going to be on fatality reduction.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. Next speaker please.

[Anna Abeta (public commenter)]: Hi. My name is Barbara. I live at the Comstock 1333 Jones. I' looking at the page 93 of the fire code amendments. In line 19 it says determination of undue hardship but not limited to consideration of the building owner's financial hardship. Does that mean the entire building or should that say the apartment or unit owner? And if it is, how would you determine one unit gets a waiver and someone else in the same building doesn't? How would that work? That's all I have to say.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Public commenter (Nob Hill resident)]: Hello. My late husband and I have lived, lived and bought a condo at 66 Cleary Court in 1988. San Francisco is my home and it is also the home of my soul. I don't wish to leave this home. Dear San Francisco Board of Supervisors, no words can adequately express the nightmare scenario and the literal nightmares that this, albeit well intentioned initiative, has created for ordinary people here whose lives will be hopelessly turned upside down and permanently harmed by it. As a result of its adoption, people will be forced to sell their condominiums, leave the city, or in case of retirees, use their retirement savings up until they have no resources left. From everything that we've heard through investigating this project, it was not sufficiently researched nor were viable other options adequately considered before adopting it as it was done by other cities around the country. Furthermore, the real life consequences Thank

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: you for of sharing the these

[Public commenter (Nob Hill resident)]: people to do that it was designed to

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you. Protect

[Public commenter (Nob Hill resident)]: Speaker not take into account.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Let's hear from the next speaker, please.

[Tim Hurley (board president, 1001 Pine Street)]: My name is Tim Hurley on the board president of one thousand and one pine street and I'm super excited. We heard a little while ago from our industry representative that this is only going to cost $60,000 per unit. Mean I I had thought maybe it would be something like 300,000 and when supervisor Sauter was giving his presentation and he mentioned the 300 ks right well our our fire marshmallow and our fire chief they shared a little look and a little smirk and a shake of the head and I thought well maybe they have something they don't they're not sharing with us or maybe they're just giving us lip service about their concerns but actually they knew that it was gonna be super cheap I mean 60,000 that's that's almost nothing that's that's great I mean everybody out here as you've heard they can do that I mean it's only 60,000 so you know keep up the good work don't mind what we're being charged cause like they say safety has no price well it does I mean we balance safety cost all the time.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for your comments. Thank you all. Let's have the next speaker please.

[Unidentified meeting participant (brief interjections)]: Hello my name is Maureen Hayes and I live in Fontana West with my husband for the last fifteen years. We were both born and raised in San Francisco as our parents and some of our grandparents. And all I can say is after listening to all the comments and I'm totally troubled by all the heart, the fear that it has put in the tenants in our whole building that you were elected officials and you are public servants. And public servants shouldn't have so much power over all these The people's only thing good about this whole thing, which I hope you repeal the whole thing and start in the beginning, is I've gotten to meet so many strong, brilliant seniors and younger people in all of San Francisco that I'm thankful that I've gotten to meet them. And they will fight this for sure. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Beth Stein (resident, Fontana)]: Hi. I'm Beth Stein. I live over at the Fontana, And my comment is a solution based comment. Should people be displaced because this is not repealed? Maybe you could take off the ordinance that says we are not allowed to sleep in our cars at night, provided we don't bring a lot of garbage into the city but let's think with some thought about where we're going to go.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments just before we hear then from the next speaker I want note that the line is getting quite short. If we have anyone else here in the chamber from whom we have not already heard public comment and you wanna give public comment on this item, you can line up to speak behind them. Otherwise, we're gonna take this line to the end. Let's hear from the next speaker.

[Steve Simon (resident, The Hamilton)]: Good afternoon. My name is Steve Simon. I've been a resident of San Francisco since 1959 and currently reside at the Hamilton. I think we owe these residents and San Franciscans facts and answers in regards to the feasibility of this program, the affordability of this program, compatibility with their units. And at that point, then maybe we can make some accommodations, but there's no facts. Have no answers. I don't know how much this is gonna cost me. So how am I to make a a judgment on this process without facts and if it even is feasible within our buildings? Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you for sharing your comments. To the next speaker, please.

[Pierce Akel (public commenter; teacher and Hamilton resident)]: I believe I left thirty seconds. May I have thirty seconds back? I walked away trying to be complete.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: You gave public comment earlier and you had a minute to give your public comment.

[Pierce Akel (public commenter; teacher and Hamilton resident)]: And I heard the ding and in an anxious state of trying to be compliant.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: I trust you. Come up and give your public comment for thirty seconds. Let's go.

[Pierce Akel (public commenter; teacher and Hamilton resident)]: Thank you so much. I just wanted to raise that if the $12,000 estimate is real, putting aside the question of housing, that's still a $100 a month for ten years of savings. And for a lot of the residents in my building, that's untenable already. $60,500 a month for ten years for people on fixed incomes. Meanwhile, as until this gets resolved, I can't move anywhere. I can't start a family, and I'm resigned to doing that in a studio. I hope that you'll think about

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: seconds. Thank you so much for sharing your comments with the community. That was way outside of usual bounds. Thank you. Let's have the next speaker, please.

[Helen Tan (real estate and loan broker; CIEAA board member)]: Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Helen Tan. I'm a real estate broker and a loan broker, and also I'm CIEAA board of director. I say real estate field, so I think this mandatory is should supposed now to be pushed forward. Okay? Because first of all, we can know many seniors, they are don't have income and also living in the only house. I can tell because many, like, a reverse mortgage come to me because they don't have money. Even they cannot pay the property tax. So for this standpoint, I think we shouldn't do this kind of fire sprinkler mandatory. Thank you.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much for sharing your comments to committee. Let's have the next speaker, please. And I'll note that there's just one more speaker behind that speaker. If you want to join and you haven't already given public comment, please line up to speak. Otherwise, we will hear from this speaker and then that speaker and we'll be done.

[Bilal Mahmoodine (public commenter)]: That's a lot of pressure. My name is Ann Miller and I'm also with the Fontanas. To give you a little courage, supervisors, to listen to the repeals. For over ten years, every supervisor said no to freestanding legislative retrofit attempts. Using the BLA you've heard of and other studies, they determined it was too costly and too disruptive. But in 2022, with no updated studies, as you've heard, no concern for the homeowners, The fire code was used to accomplish what legislative attempts failed to do. The result, one man's workaround, is causing long term serious consequences for homeowners. I'm also concerned that we thought we were getting two five year extensions. One the first and the second of the requirements in this code. Extending only one for five years doesn't really help us that much. There's too much to get done. There we will be right on

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: top Think of of your the comments. Let's hear from the next speaker, please.

[Bob Fousner (public commenter; real estate/construction background)]: Bob Fousner. I ran a real estate and construction company. The answer to your question about insurance, water claims are the number one thing that raise rates and our problems in buildings like this, not fire. Here's the thing. I've been at a lot of public hearings, and this one has been totally remarkable to me. You've got 143 buildings, 10,000 residents, you can't find one resident in favor of this. You need to listen to these people. A lot of them, most of them, all of them are very well educated, Experienced people are telling you, no. We don't want this. The answer is you need to repeal this, not kick the can down the road. I know that may be politically expedient, but I and all these people don't wanna be here in the next five years at the next hearing complaining about what's going on and all the nonsense. And this is about a a bunch of nonsense. Unlike everybody else, I will admit, I could afford these sprinklers. Two reasons I'm not doing it. There's no cost benefit. And number two

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Speaker's time

[Public commenter (young homeowner)]: is included.

[Bob Fousner (public commenter; real estate/construction background)]: Concerned about my neighbors who can't

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Thank you so much for providing your comments to the committee. Do we have anyone else who has public comment for agenda item number 30?

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay. Madam

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: chair, here's this is tomorrow.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Thank you. Mister clerk, with that, public comment is now closed. Supervisor Cheryl.

[SFGovTV audiovisual staff (likely Eugene Libadia)]: Thank you.

[Supervisor Sherrill (transcribed as 'Cheryl')]: Thank you, chair Melgar. Thank you to everybody who came here to speak. Thank you for taking time out of your lives. I know you all have a lot going on. Thank you for being here today. Colleagues, lastly, there's one non substantive amendment to the fire code unrelated to this issue, actually, that's been circulated with each of your office and community clerk. Specifically, this amendment's on Page 63, Line four, adding back language that was mistakenly deleted in the update to the code. I've confirmed that this amendment is non substantive with the city attorney's office so that this does not require a continuance in committee. As long as there are no questions from colleagues, I move to amend this item as circulated and move to send the amended fire code to the full board with recommendation.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay. Supervisor Slaughter.

[Supervisor Danny Sauter]: Well, thank you, Chair. Just very quickly, because I know it's been a long afternoon, I want to echo Supervisor Scherrill's appreciation for everyone who joined today. I know there's many that were here and didn't speak. There's also many that were in the overflow room who a number that I spoke with earlier who we didn't even see in this room. So you made your voices heard. And, you know, one thing that I heard loud and clear is that what we're considering today with these changes to the fire code is not enough, and this delay is not enough. And I agree with that. And there's more that needs to be done here. And very shortly after this, we'll be working to introduce a technical advisory council. And there's more that needs to be done beyond that. So again, I want to thank you for your engagement. I know that this is going to continue to cause a lot of anxiety. And in our offices and I think I speak for Supervisor Cheryl we'll continue to work with you on this. Because how we've gotten here, I think, is a misuse of trust between residents and government. And for my part, I'll do everything I can to begin to correct that. Thank you.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay. So perhaps before we vote, Mr. Clerk, you can clarify the procedure. Supervisor Mahmood has left us. I believe President Mandelman has appointed Supervisor Cheryl in his stead.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: That's correct. We have a presidential action memo from the President appointing Supervisor Cheryl temporarily in place of Supervisor Mahmood, is noted absent as of 03:30 this afternoon.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay. Should I have explained that before you made the motion, but now we are. Now we can no, no, no, we're done. So, there's a motion on the floor.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Okay. On the motion offered by Temporary Member Cheryl that the ordinance be amended and then recommended as amended, Vice Chair Chen. Chen, aye. Member Cheryl? Aye. Cheryl, aye. Chair Melgar?

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Aye.

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: Melgar, aye. Madam Chair, there are three ayes on those two motions.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay. Thank you all. And thank you to all the members of the public who came to weigh in. Mr. Clerk, do we have any other items on our agenda?

[John Carroll (Committee Clerk)]: There is no further business on the agenda.

[Supervisor Myrna Melgar (Chair, Land Use & Transportation Committee)]: Okay, we're adjourned. Thank you.