Edwin M. Lee, Mayor Recreation and Park Commission Minutes November 16, 2017

Commission President Mark Buell called the Recreation and Park Commission meeting to order at 10:02 a.m. on Thursday, November 16, 2017.

ROLL CALL Present Mark Buell Allan Low Kat Anderson Gloria Bonilla Tom Harrison Eric McDonnell

Absent Larry Mazzola, Jr.

PRESIDENT’S REPORT Commissioner Buell: Let me make two observations and these have to do with the request that we adjourn today’s meeting in the memory of two distinguished park advocates. Former Commissioner Larry Martin was a dedicated city employee whose career began at MUNI in 1966. He served not only on the Recreation and Park Commission but also on the Planning Commission and the Human Rights Commission. Larry was a respected leader of the Transport Workers Union Local 250A and at the same time worked hard on behalf of the people of San Francisco who benefitted from his dedication to the city. Sadly, as well advocate May Wong was one of the city’s most dedicated park advocates. She not only showed up at our Commission meetings but also at the Board of Supervisors and worked hard on behalf of her neighborhood causes. She was one of the founders of Sunday in the Park McLaren free concert series at Jerry Garcia amphitheater, was active in park philanthropy and in volunteering. May was a strong advocate and also a kind, affable person who helped to instill an atmosphere of respect. That concludes my report.

GENERAL MANAGER’S REPORT Phil Ginsburg: Good morning Commissioners, a few different announcements. So, it is a month of giving thanks and last Sunday nearly 10,000 soccer fans were very grateful to see the San Francisco Deltas win the North American Soccer League Championship at Kezar against the New York Cosmos. In their inaugural season the Deltas accomplished what very few professional teams have done in any sport on any level and I really want to thank the entire Deltas organization for their efforts and inspiring a new generation of soccer fans in San Francisco, for their commitment to providing affordable family friendly entertainment, for their organizational values and their investment in Kezar stadium. It’s been well reported that the state of US soccer is in a bit of turmoil and the North American Soccer League may or may not survive. They didn’t just play with grace and class, they ran their organization well and we’re grateful.

Later this afternoon at 3:30 I will be joining Supervisor Katy Tang and hopefully some of you and several others in reopening the athletic fields at West Sunset Playground after a $13.6 million project funded by the 2012 Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks Bond for which we have San Francisco voters to thank. The project has resulted in what is arguably the city’s finest baseball complex including two new batting cages courtesy of a $40,000 donation from the Baseball Tomorrow Fund which is supported by Major Leagues Baseball and our San Francisco Giants. In addition to the baseball field upgrades the park sport courts were resurfaced, renovations for the park soccer fields and the stadium bleachers were also upgraded. Join us today for the grand opening. Thanks to Dan Mauer.

It’s November but it is time to think about baseball. This Saturday November 18 is the start of the registration period of the 2018 San Francisco Youth Baseball League Season. Each spring SFYBL served approximately 4,000 youth baseball players, girls and boys, ages four to fourteen from tee ball to competitive Pony League levels. SFYBL includes an all-girls Division featuring our amazing San Francisco Bay Socks. Individual and team signups are available. Also, this Saturday November 18 please join us at Shoreview Park for a community fun day and planning workshop at one of our newest parks in the Bayview neighborhood. Shoreview is a nearly one-acre site originally owned by the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, formerly the Redevelopment Agency and was acquired in June with the goal of renovating the site. The planning phase started in July and will continue through next spring with an anticipated reopening in 2019. The renovated park will include a new children’s play area, picnic area, irrigation upgrades, landscape areas, lighting and a new accessible pathway.

Next week as we prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday San Francisco Unified School District students will find themselves with an entire week off from school and that includes one of my own. It’s a first for San Francisco families. I’m very proud to announce that Recreation and Park is helping to provide city kids with fun programs by offering seven Thanksgiving week camps from basketball and tennis to eco-camp and rock climbing. The camps will be Monday through Wednesday of next week. We still have a few openings. I’m very pleased to report that most camps are already close to capacity but if you are looking for something for your kids next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday please check out our availability.

On Thursday December 7, from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. we want to invite everyone to join us at an extremely special holiday event in Golden Gate Park from McLaren to Conservatory Valley we’ll kick off the holiday season in style with toboggan rides, a snow play area, live entertainment, carnival rides, and visits from Santa maybe his elves. At 6:00 p.m. we’ll be lighting we are calling this Golden Gate Park Winter Lights. We are expanding our normal program this year. At 6:00 p.m. we’ll light San Francisco’s official holiday tree for the 88th time and at 7:00 p.m. we’ll light the Conservatory of Flowers in an amazing illuminated art show the sequel to this summer’s Summer of Love light show. Of course, we have many partners and friends that help us put on these events including the San Francisco Parks Alliance, Kaiser Permanente, Sports Basement, our Conservatory of Flowers, and others.

I have two special recognitions to offer and one is for Lisa Branston. Last Friday November 10 the Golden Gate Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals held its annual national philanthropy day luncheon at the St. Francis Hotel. The San Francisco Parks Alliance which is a sponsoring member of the event nominated our own Lisa Branston with the Spirit of Philanthropy award for her commitment to Let’sPlaySF! not to mention her leadership and work on numerous other projects in our Department including Crab Fest, our scholarship program, our bench program, Party for the Parks, her team’s work on the Golden Gate Park tennis projects and many others. I am please to present a small token of our nursery’s handiwork.

Lisa Branston: It’s an honor to come to work every day in Golden Gate Park. I joke that I have the best title in city government, Director of Partnerships, because I am out every day with amazing partners from community groups to big nonprofits. Thank you.

Phil Ginsburg: Last month I had the honor of attending the retirement party for Barbara Wenger and I wanted to take the opportunity to invite her here today to bid her an official commission congratulations. It’s a bittersweet moment for us at Recreation and Park as I noted at Barbara’s event. It’s an opportunity to thank and recognize her amazing contributions as one of our most valued park advocates but she is moving on after 23 years. In 1994 Barbara sowed the idea of activating Koshland Park and creating a park space where neighbors could meet, building community and plant something together. Today the fruits of her labor are evident. Community Grows, previously known at the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Parks Group, manages or is active at eight gardens in the Western Addition and beyond including a garden at the African-American art and culture complex, the Koshland Park community learning garden, the Hayward playground garden and kitchen, Alemany Farm. But more than that is the effect Barbara has had on our communities. As we look to do at Recreation and Park and model a lot of her amazing leadership Community Grows activates our parks, teaches our kids how to care for our resources, cultivates the next generation of park stewards, and kindness. As Barbara retires we want to thank her for her tireless efforts in the Western Addition as we look forward to continuing our partnership with Community Grows and in a role to be developed our partnership with Barbara. But I wanted to give her some special recognition today too.

Barbara Wenger: In 1973 I was involved in the demolishing of a park that the community got together to go to the Trust for Public Land to ask them if they could turn this fire ravaged area into a park so in 1973 I was involved in the beginning of Koshland Park and I went through two renovations of it. My first experience with the Commission was going before you in 1994 when Mary Burns was the General Manager and bringing the community - big huge pumpkins that we had grown - asking for set-aside money for that park and also because it was involved with Hayes Valley north and south development. We took on Hayes Valley Playground and Clubhouse. When we got them renovated everybody said you should work with the kids in the housing development and do programs for them, so that’s how we started Community Grows and we did a program for teenagers called The Beats, we’ve had that program going since 2008 and they get a stipend to work and learn how to be stewards for the environment and do job youth development. I’m really proud of that organization and proud of our partnership with Recreation and Park and I appreciate this honor, thank you.

Phil Ginsburg: In honor of Barbara and next week’s bountiful harvest our video this month features our community gardens program. [video plays] That concludes the General Manager’s report.

GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT Fortune Kookie Fun: Happy holiday and happy Thanksgiving. We have much to be thankful for and me and Sunshine would love to bring more cheer because there’s definitely a lot going on that we need to brighten people’s lives. We are entertainers and we love to do balloon art and fun things with kids. It’s a very important time to spread the cheer and we like doing it over at Union Square and all other locations. So we’d love to talk with you as we well and especially Union Square that’s coming up just next week. I hope to see all of you there and brighten your days and your family’s with our art. Thank you.

Linda: Linda is what you called me it’s true but the name the city knows me by is Sunshine Two. I’d like to think that I do my best I’d say to make everybody in a happy space for the holiday. Union Square this year is once again under wraps it’s true. It doesn’t look as nice as we’d like it to. I remember 28, 30 years ago I’d say when I used to be right next to the tree by the way. I think it’s time again it’s true if you’d like to talk to me when you’re not so busy at a council meeting too it would be nice to be once again actually in the square this year so we can bring cheer that they don’t have to look at only construction this way. Once again I’d like to wish everyone a happy holiday and in the city too. It’s a time in the world when you can’t have enough happiness you see. I’m glad to see San Francisco honors that for you and me.

Jim Salinas Sr.: I’m a native San Franciscan, born and raised in the Mission District. I’ve now passed the half- century mark living here in San Francisco. I’m here this morning to implore and beseech all seven of the Commissioners to consider the following when appropriate, hoping that you will consider renaming what was once known as Justin Herman Plaza.

Commissioner Buell: There is an item coming up and you can speak to this issue under that item.

Jim Salinas Sr.: was not aware of that. It was my fault for not looking at the agenda.

Ace Washington: I’m from the Fillmore. I call it the Fill No More. I’m here to speak on the issue that’s coming up pretty soon but I thought I’d have the opportunity to speak on some issues that might not be on the agenda. But let me say to your park director, you have few parks in my community in the Fillmore that this agency is like the rest of the city, don’t give a damn no more about the Fill No More. You see I’m 63 years old born and raised in the Fill No More. But yet I’ve got to come down here to City Hall which I call Silly Hall to even get the rights to be on the map on the Fill No More. It was ironic, some of you on that stage there know exactly what I’m talking about because you know the history of the Fill No More. I’m appalled at this Recreation and Park. I had to negotiate to just work in a park, a minipark across the street from the Police Department in the Fill No More. We had killings right next door to the Police Department in the Fill No More. Right across the street from a minipark that I think you guys are funding right now. I’m appalled. Sixty-three years old. The history speaks for itself. I got kids and my kids got kids and my grandson gave my four great grandkids so I’m a paw-paw but in my community I’m known as Ace on the Case in your face now I’m in your place and I’ll be here to talk about some other things that I’m appalled on errors that you all make in the City and County.

Albert Sandoval: I want to put this here as a natural areas, native plants, open space, and I’m here to talk about why don’t we have a master plan but I’m going to get right to the point. So I gave you guys a letter last time, November 1, and it says: To whom it may concern, the park bonds passed in 1987 provided $2.4 for major improvements to McLaren Park. Additional funds would come from the State, park bonds, the city and open space program and the Department general fund. Help the southeast district of San Francisco follow the money CV1 schedule and cost McLaren Park Master Plan cost estimates page number 28. Annual maintenance, currently six gardeners assigned to maintain John McLaren Park with completion of high priority actions in addition to three custodians we will be required to augment the existing workforce with completion of the long-term action and additional gardeners will be required. Presently November 1, 2017, five gardeners are assigned to maintain McLaren Park’s 300 plus acres. What’s wrong with this lack of manpower? The master plan approved in 1987 apparently had been swept underneath City Hall without any consideration to the hardworking underprivileged communities they actually affect in the southeast section of San Francisco. Too many specialties being created to glamorize and sway the new Mayor, General Manager, Supervisors, not enough reinforcement for the gardeners’ labor force that performed the high standard to make you guys look good. The health and safety practice that impose on the McLaren Park gardener staff the Recreation and Park Department City and County of San Francisco should be taken more seriously by the Recreation and Park Commission. So, five McLaren Park southeast beat gardeners maintain over 365 acres will have an opportunity to enjoy their retirement without a long-term debilitating injury due to being overworked, not much different than modern slavery on a 375 acre plantation. Where is the open space fund money that is to be set aside for the McLaren Park gardener positions?

Sue Ellen: I’m the mom of three boys from District 11. I’m also representation a coalition of parents from the Save the Sand San Francisco. I’m here to just talk about how SFRPD has been quietly trying to phase sand from all newly renovated playgrounds even though they are saying there is no sand ban policy. We have internal emails showing orchestrated public relations campaigning, making it appear as if they’re engaging in a design process with the community but they have purposely left sand out of community conversations. Specifically, we have this petition with over 700 signatures that an accessible sand element be seriously considered and offered as a possibility in every redesign playground with sensible solutions for maintenance including those who have gone through a conceptual design process such as Merced, Macaulay and McLaren and that the benefits of sand play be clearly and concisely communicated to community members during community meetings. While Merced, Macaulay and McLaren were being developed they did not consider sand for new playgrounds. On July 22 Connie Chan told KRON4 that the Department will be phasing out sand at the playgrounds. July 25 she told ABC we are discouraging the use of sand during the design process when renovating playgrounds. But the tone has suddenly shifted. On September 5 Connie Chan said sand is often discussed as part of the design element but it seems as if her statement was saying that communities has to raise sand in order for it to be even considered and that now since September 29 they have begun developing guidelines for including sand in the playgrounds and the playgrounds that are already in development they are already pushing the plans through before guidelines have been developed and we are asking that they actually slow down the planning phase in order to listen to the community and be able to give feedback on whether or not they want a sand play element for their children, thank you.

CONSENT CALENDAR Chuck Farrugia: Neutral. I am a native San Franciscan. I grew up in the Portola District. I have to little kids, a five-year-old and a ten-year-old and we started Help McLaren Park, a group about ten years ago because there were five missing playgrounds in McLaren Park. By the way I’m talking on Item D, the playground renovation. One of the reasons we formed is like I said there were no playgrounds there for kids and we were asked to see if we could get a playground at an area that was smaller because we didn’t have the money to put a larger playground at the group picnic area. So, we started with a toddler playground which we worked hard with Recreation and Park to fund and we applied for grants and we have now that small playground which is successful, Peru Street Playground, but the whole reason we started Help McLaren Park 10 years ago was to have a playground for older kids for all ages actually at the group picnic area which is where this playground is being built and it’s a beautiful design. I put neutral on the card because I could easily be swayed to approve it but there’s just a lot of missing elements. I think there should be more for kids and when they’re there they’re picnicking, there’s going to be groups of kids, there’s not much there right now and I think with Recreation and Park’s help and maybe some outside monetary help we might be able to make this a great playground. Right now to me it just seems like it’s missing a lot. It just looks pretty to look at.

Stephen Tennis: Neutral. This is similarity between McLaren and Macaulay and I wanted to speak on Macaulay. I live right next to Macaulay Park and I was really invested in a lot of time and the procedures that have led up to this part of the design and I would like to put it on record that months ago there was a design that was passed by the public regarding Macaulay Park and that was to kind of show respect to Little Saigon that’s about two blocks down that was passed and voted on. That design has left, has not been included to any part of the final design as far as I know and I think that is disgusting considering what we did to that country that we should in some small way this would be—I mean it doesn’t amount to anything but I think it would be a nice gesture because we bombed the hell out of that county and I think it would be nice to have something that shows some type of respect to the people of Vietnam, Saigon. I would like you all to look into that.

Richard Harris: Oppose. I’m here with the San Francisco Public Golf Alliance and we have appeared before you many times over the years on the Sharp Park matter. This is before you today on consent calendar 5I, Laguna Salada. This was also before you on March 16 and I have provided a copy to you of your March 16 and specifically referring you to pages H, 1, 8 and 9 of that exhibit. What is before you today by a consent calendar matter of which I received no notice is it would change language from a matter that was on your notice calendar and I appeared and testified in support and now the language of the letter is being requested to be changed and you will see that in your package on consent number 5I there is different language. Now, I have spoken with staff about this this morning because I had virtually no time on this. It’s possible that this is something that can be understood but at this moment I ask that this moment be taken off the consent calendar. I would like the opportunity to speak with staff about this and then bring it back for consent or kick it over to another meeting. Thank you.

Commissioner Buell: I’m going to ask the General Manager to comment on that if he would.

Phil Ginsburg: Commissioners, what’s on the agenda—and Mr. Harris and I have spoken about this a little bit already—what’s on the agenda is simply a clerical fix to make sure that when you approved—there was a resolution approving a letter that was submitted to the Board of Supervisors when the Board heard the Natural Resources Management Plan appeal on February 28, I think you have a copy of that letter. You in March voted to affirm we had the wrong draft of the letter. So, all this is is a clerical substitution of the language that was actually approved and in the Board of Supervisors’ record on February 28. Mr. Harris was present at the meeting. Mr. Harris was present when this letter was read into the record at the meeting and Mr. Harris and the San Francisco Public Golf Association were of course consulted very closely on the substance of the language. We have already apologized to Mr. Harris for this catching him by surprise, this was really only meant as a clerical fix to conform the language that you approved to the language that the Board of Supervisors approved a week earlier. You basically approved an earlier version of the letter.

Commissioner Buell: All right, thank you. Next speaker.

Tom Scott: I’m a longtime volunteer and advocate for McLaren Park and I took great interest in the McLaren Park project from the moment the 2012 bond passed. I have attended most meetings, filled out numerous questionnaires and corresponded with project managers throughout the process. After hours of research on the subject I concluded that I support most aspect of the plan that you will hear about.

Commissioner Buell: Can I interrupt you just for a minute. There is an item on the general calendar about the McLaren Park plan and the trails. The item that relates under the consent calendar has to do with the McLaren Park playground renovation.

Tom Scott: Right, I want to talk about the park.

Commissioner Buell: If you address that issue under this.

Tom Scott: No, I’m talking about the trails and the paths.

Commissioner Buell: And that’s going to come up and when it comes up we’d appreciate your testimony at that time.

Albert Sandoval: Support. Good morning esteemed Commissioners. I’m looking at this here consent calendar 5D which is McLaren Park Playground Renovation Conceptual Design and E, Let’sPlaySF! related agreement for McLaren Park playground renovations. This is long overdue but we’re very thankful, we’ll take anything we can get. There’s families—you know the demographics, it’s all here, it’s in your equity. I’m going to put it right here so you can see it. Inspire, connect, play. Let’s see if we can get that on the screen please, I don’t know if you can do it but anyway we have issues here with a lot of money and here it goes a plan to add these—where does Recreation and Park Department plan to maintenance of asphalt paths, lot of money is going to dirt trails. I guess you’re not going to put that on the screen, that’s good stuff. We have a problem with equity metrics. I think that you guys need to look a little closer if that’s what you’re using somebody’s not looking very well, there’s some serious problems at McLaren Park. I want to thank from the bottom of my heart Jake Gilchrist, project manager for November 1. I have the Recreation and Park Commission Capital Committee, this is a very good subject, John McLaren Park Vision Plan. We need a master plan but I want to thank them. I’m grateful, we are grateful. November 1, 2017, subject Let'sPlaySF! McLaren Park Playground Renovation, Alexis Ward is a worker, she is something we should cherish. She’s an assistant project manager. That’s what we need to get things done. October 4, 2017, letter Recreation and Park Capital Committee, this was done by Toni Moran, environment specialist, physical grants, Capital Program Division, McLaren Park trails improvements, trails not pathways, not asphalt, outdoor environment education. So there’s a lot of money going to trails, a lot of people can’t navigate trails. We need pathways. Let’s focus on what’s important. February 1, 2017, McLaren Park gardening renovation project, Alexis Ward again. So I want to thank everybody.

Anna Abata: Neutral. I’m a neighbor at McLaren Park. I’m speaking to Item 5D and I also think that the conceptual design that has been put forth for the playground there does not address the full needs of the community especially the eight to ten-year-old children, it is much more aimed at younger kids and therefore I do encourage that the neighborhood be brought in more decide what kind of playground we really need there.

Phil Ginsburg: On a different item. Commissioner it’s Item 5C on McLaren Playground I just wanted to take a second and thank the following community groups for their work in activating the park and working with us on the design. La Voz Latina, Lower Polk CBD, Central City SRO Collaborative. I want to thank Ana Gee who is the District 6 PROSAC Representative for her engagement. We have been in very close communication over the design and then a series of additional alternatives that the community is interested in, specifically a restroom within the park and while the restroom itself is not within the budget scope that we have we are going to work with the community, public works and, and J.C. Decoix to find out if we can move the existing J.C. Decoix which is outside the fence line and is slated to be replaced with a new structure that could also include some storage within the fence line and this is stated for the next year and a half to two years. We’ve also, since the capital committee, figured out to include both the trash cans and bulletin boards in the project budget and are working with TPL and the community to see if we can’t find additional funding for some other smaller scope items on the wish list which include a storage unit, some electrical outlets, some additional seating and probably a little be pricier arched entry gate and art installation. So, we’re excited to move forward with the concept design. These items will be included as alternatives. There’s a lot of instability in the bidding climate as you know. Over the next twelve months we’ll try to work together to see what additional funds we can cobble to chip away at the items. It’s an important space for the community. It should be safe, clean, inspiring and we welcome the opportunity to work with them to see what we can do.

Commissioner Low: I just want to also support the General Manager on his report. Since the Capital Committee hearing there was quite a bit of dialogue on Macaulay Park and I encourage the Department to continue the great start on collaborating with the community to make sure this happens. It’s maybe not perfect in some folks’ eyes but I think we have a plan and we just have to push it forward to make it happen and look in our pockets to see if we have any extra pennies to make the alternates happen.

On motion by Commissioner Low and duly seconded the following resolutions were unanimously adopted:

RES. NO. 1711-001 RESOLVED, That this Commission does approve the minutes from the August and September 2017 commission meetings.

RES. NO. 1711-002 RESOLVED, That this Commission does recommend that the Board of Supervisors 1) appropriate funds for the renovation of the Powerhouse building of the Geneva Car Barn and Powerhouse (the “Project”); 2) authorize the Department to enter into a Funding Agreement with the Community Arts Stabilization Trust ("CAST") to help finance the Project; 3) authorize the Department to enter into a Development Services Agreement to allow payment of construction costs and related expenses out of the Project financing; 4) authorize the Department to enter into indemnification agreements with CAST and the other financing partners in connection with the Project financing; 5) authorize the Department to enter into a 55-year lease for the public purpose of renting the Powerhouse to a Qualified Active Low Income Business (“QALICB”), and to award CAST a 7-year option to lease and develop the Office Building next to the Powerhouse; and 6) authorize the General Manager, in consultation with the City Attorney, to enter into agreements substantially in the form as presented to the Commission and to modify and amend these forms and to enter into further agreements if needed to further the Project so long as there is no material change to the Department’s rights or obligations.

RES. NO. 1711-003 RESOLVED, That this Commission does approve the conceptual design to renovate the playground at Sgt. John Macaulay Playground, a Let’sPlaySF! Initiative Project. Approval of this proposed action by the Commission is the Approval Action as defined by S.F. Administrative Code Chapter 31. RES. NO. 1711-004 RESOLVED, That this Commission does approve conceptual design for the John McLaren Park Playground, a Let’sPlaySF! Initiative Project. Approval of this proposed action by the Commission is the Approval Action as defined by S.F. Administrative Code Chapter 31. RES. NO. 1711-005 RESOLVED, That this Commission does authorize the Recreation and Park Department to enter into a Related Agreement with the San Francisco Parks Alliance ("SFPA") under the Let'sPlaySF! Initiative regarding an in-kind grant of approximately $360,000 in design services for the renovation of the playground at the McLaren Park Picnic Area. Acceptance of this grant is subject to Board of Supervisors approval of the overall Let'sPlaySF! grant.

RES. NO. 1711-006 RESOLVED, That this Commission does to amend the contract with Roebuck Construction for the Glen Canyon Recreation Center renovation project (3209V) to increase the change order amount allowed under the contract from $953,750 to an amount not to exceed $1,211,850, which is greater than 10% over the original approved contract amount. RES. NO. 1711-007 RESOLVED, That this Commission does amend the contract with Anvil Builders for Gilman Playground (3211V) to increase the change order allowed under the contract from $109,359.50 to an amount not to exceed $132,912 which is greater than 10% over the original contract amount. RES. NO. 1711-008 RESOLVED, That this Commission does approve, and recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve, a 3rd Sale of the 2012 Clean and Safe General Obligation Neighborhood Parks Bond Issue in the amount of $76,710,000 to fund Neighborhood Park Projects and Citywide Parks and Programs, of which up to $1,000,000 would fund associated bond issuance costs. RES. NO. 1711-009 RESOLVED, That this Commission does adopt a corrected resolution approving the General Manager’s corrected letter regarding soils dredging in connection with the Laguna Salada Restoration Project at Sharp Park, which was studied in the SNRAMP EIR which was certified on December 15, 2016.

SAN FRANCISCO ZOO Robin Wu: Good morning, I am the VP of Education and Community Engagement at the San Francisco Zoo and Gardens. I apologize, this is going to be a repeat for two of you that were at the Joint Zoo Committee two hours ago but bear with me. I’m going to give you a brief overview of what’s been happening in terms of our education programs and community engagement activities over the past six months or so. As you can see, up here our summer zoo camp is extremely popular, broke enrollment records this year with close to 1800 kids participating. I think when we had registration last February 16 we had 800 people register the first day. A lot of our kids also participate in some of the Recreation and Park camps so it’s a nice mix of kids with over 1,000 families and 1355 individual children participating. We had eight to ten classes each week for kids four to seventeen years of age and over the course of ten weeks. We also offered our second year of Wellness 101 which is for middle school kids introducing them to animal husbandry, animal wellness, creating enrichment items, and all our conservation camp session targeted to 6th and 7th graders were sold out. Here’s a cute picture of our 1st grade tigers with tiger masks that they made, also our early childhood programs are extremely popular. We celebrated the 10th anniversary of our Little Learners Cabin. We have 300 classes, 430 kids participating and our staff continues to participate in professional development through classes at City College.

In terms of community engagement, we’ve partnered recently with Sunset Family Resource Center to provide scholarships to local low-income families and we’ve been having an ongoing partnership with support for families of children with disabilities. We have family access day. In April of this year we’re going to have another one. We’re also starting our fourth season with S.F. Tots which is a group that uses parks in the city. We have these little kids that are barely able to walk but they’re going to become future soccer stars I think. They’re really mobile and use animal movement to play at the zoo and learn soccer skills.

Zoomobile program, kind of one of our flagship programs at the zoo. This past year we taught almost 500 lessons and we served 94 Title 1 schools in SFUSD. Title 1 schools are schools that provide free lunch or partial fee paid lunches so that was a great way to serve some of the schools that haven’t done traditionally and it’s also part of the science enrichment pathway pilot program. Again, 20 scholarships for various organizations. We’ve had reservations of over 200 reaching 15,000 students.

I mentioned earlier that driving in from the East Bay I heard climate change discussed on NPR about six times during my two-hour commute and that’s something we want to focus on at the zoo so having the climate change discussion in 23 classrooms. Also, with our zig-zag preschool animal lesson we’re trying to target these lessons for the little ones that involves more movement. We partner with the San Francisco Shared Schoolyard project at Denman Middle School and some of the other schools that have revamped their schoolyards and playgrounds. We recently participated in Supervisor Katy Tang’s Zootopia movie night in McCoppin Square. There’s our cute Zoomobile, the climate change lesson. A picture of our zig-zag preschool lesson with the little ones pretending to be ferrets I believe. This year we hosted the 35th San Francisco Middle School Science Fair in partnership with SFUSD, Randall Museum and Recreation and Park. We had that in our Great Hall with very good participation and some of our staff serving as judges on the science projects.

Also, we had the second year of hosting BATS or Bay Area Teen Science conference in partnership with SFUSD and UC Berkeley and some underwriting from Google. We’re about to start the third year of that. Here are some of our youth showing bio-facts to some of the high school attendees. Then again we’ve finished the fourth year of partnering with SFUSD and Salesforce who you know has a big presence in San Francisco. We’ve partnered with them to offer Zooforce for 6th graders in several of our underserved schools. We teach animal behavior class in the schools, a week later the kids come to the zoo and come to hang out with the visit the animal and this involves the Salesforce volunteers and our staff. We’re about to embark on the fifth year of partnering in two weeks.

In terms of youth volunteers this is just the youth volunteers within the education Department. We have others in our nature trail animal resource center. These are some of the numbers in terms of scholarship recipients, number of hours that the youth have contributed during the year. Here are some of our youth with reading, story time station for the visitors that come by. One of the partnerships we’re really proud of is Zoo Crew at Mountain Lake. It’s been a 20-year partnership with Recreation and Park habitat restoration on city property. The youth spend Saturdays reading and doing other types of restoration and we’ve also collaborated with Presidio Trust where this past annual planting day we planted over 1000 plants.

Also, on a national level we’ve partnered with NNOCCI, National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation. We hosted a meeting on a day not like today, a sunny day at the zoo, with folks from throughout the country. Some of our education staff have been training on climate change interpretation for audiences. Then wild nights this is an overnight program that’s very popular. People get to stay overnight at the zoo, either camp out and set up tents on the playground. We had over 400 guests, 13 completed programs, Outward Bound likes to come visit us, 30 family groups, and we won a best of 2017 award for Family Wild Nights through San Francisco magazine back in July. Here is a copy of the award and then Girl Scouts Program, again a program that’s been popular at the zoo, we’ve kind of ramped it up this past year. It has become very popular. Three out of the four programs had wait lists this past fall and the girls come and do enrichment to get their badges so it’s a fun collaboration. We also work with Boy Scouts. And then lastly free admission numbers during the fiscal year 16-17, 346 SFUSD schools visited for free. Four years to 8th grade almost 15,000 kids and then the chaperones are the 15-64 year olds, almost 60,000 complimentary admissions during the past six months and that included most recently disabled vets and fire victims. Last weekend for Veterans Day National Guard, SFPD, SFFD and then every month we have a free day for San Francisco residents. That concludes my report, thank you.

This item was discussion only.

MCLAREN PARK VISION PLAN Dawn Kamalanathan: Good morning Commissioners. I’m the Director of Planning and Capital Management. We’re here today to, I hope, celebrate what will hopefully be the first round of a series of increasing investments in McLaren Park and I really want to start today by thanking both the many staff who have worked on all facets of this plan over the past year and a half an also really thank the stakeholders who have stuck through with us as we have gone through a year of extensive process and the conversations overall have been enormously collaborative and constructive and we’ve learned a lot. I want to thank constituents for participating in that process and bringing their many years of experience and occasional frustrations but most importantly their dreams and hopes for McLaren Park to that process. I think we’ve made major process in this plan on moving forward on those priorities.

Today what we are really asking the Commission is to approve the priorities reflected in the allocation of $8.9 million for McLaren Park funding and to direct staff to continue to develop concept plans for each one of those priorities. We have done that already for group picnic and we will replicate that process for each of these other subsequent priorities, developing more detailed concept plans, completely CEQA review and bringing them back to the Commission for approval before proceeding with construction contracts and the like.

One of the things that we wanted to start with is talking a little bit about what are McLaren Park’s unique opportunities and challenges. McLaren Park does actually operate or occupy a very specific space within the park system. We’ve talked about Golden Gate Park as the front yard and McLaren Park as the back yard. I also think about if you were to put Golden Gate Park and McLaren Park as bookends on the whole system you could almost arrange all the other open spaces on a spectrum between them between extreme formality of the spaces and then also our most wild spaces. So what we wanted to do when we went through this process was not change McLaren Park’s core character but figure out ways to emphasize and enhance it.

So what are some of those distinguishing characteristics and what are our opportunities here? One is McLaren Park, like most of our parks, does have a healthy set of assets which encourage active recreation whether it’s the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater or our many courts and playgrounds that are in the park. It’s also I think specifically distinguished by the amount of natural landscape and not just landscape but San Francisco’s original landscape where Golden Gate Park is where nature reclaimed and transformed McLaren Park is what San Francisco looked like and it reflects a lot of our original habitat. I think one of the main challenges of McLaren Park is really it’s circulation and by that we just mean the safe and predictable movement of people, dogs, children, cars, bikes, and other forms of transportation yet to be developed across the park. That’s been one of the things that’s most been lacking in McLaren Park certainly since I’ve been working at the Recreation and Park Department - that a clear set of policies and a real model for how to accommodate all those users and their movement across the park has been one of the most fundamental challenges because while we’re moving people across the park and trying to accommodate and balance between all these different uses we’re also very much trying to protect the habitat and the natural features that make McLaren Park such an attractive place to go visit. So, we need to balance between the conservation of those resources with also our goal to increase activation and this is just three quick—monkey flower habitat, we’ve also got red tailed hawks, we have Mission blue butterflies. These are found throughout the park system but also very specifically in McLaren Park in a fairly stunning showcase. So we want to make sure that we’ve accomplishing both objectives at the same time.

So, our overall goals for the process when we started were again to really develop a unique identify and kind of brand for McLaren Park which had been lacking, I think to build the community support for a set of priorities which we’ve brought with you today, to balance typical neighborhood city park uses with our natural features and invest the 2012 bond funding in a clearly articulated plan and with clear expectations for folks. And also hopefully to position McLaren Park for future investment with not just a set of projects right now but also a somewhat vetted set of projects that people can continue to develop if they want to seek additional philanthropy, if there’s future GO bonds or general fund support.

Our objective and principals that we use to evaluate the different projects that we were proposing and developing were to again enhance community access into and throughout the park, to maintain the natural landscapes, to enhance views—I think that’s one of the great hidden secrets of McLaren Park is the set of views there that you can’t get anywhere else—and to create and build diverse play opportunities.

So this diagram gives us a general scheme or framework for how to organize all our thinking about the different types of projects and also how we wanted to think about this unique problem of circulation. McLaren Park has four distinct neighborhoods surrounding the park and the edges are actually one of the main challenges of the park, that there are places as I’ve said before where there is literally a 15-20-foot grade drop between the street, the neighborhood and the park and knowing how to get in and how of the park from places as diverse as Sunnydale, Vis Valley, even the Mission, how to get in and out of the park and access that is one of its key challenges. That being said we have all these neighborhood edges that we want to activate and serve for neighborhood uses but also preserving what we’re calling the wild heart of McLaren Park and again this is where a lot of trails are, this is where our natural views are, natural features, and then develop a connectivity framework to connect those edges to the heart because that is actually not as simple as it sounds if you’re showing up at McLaren Park for the first day I have been lost in McLaren Park many times and I’m sure I’m not the only one. So we want to come up with a framework that helps bring people from the neighborhood edges into the park so you’re not just hanging out at your playground on the edge and that’s the only spot you know and you’re wondering how to access the rest of it or you have a favorite trail or view but really create something that’s predictable and understandable so people can understand how to explore and enjoy the whole park.

We conducted as I’ve said a pretty robust outreach process. We wanted to focus not only on the folks who know the park right now but also try and connect with user groups who traditionally haven’t accessed the park as much or haven’t been able to participate or were unaware of the Commission process even for how to get resources and so we started off with a treasure hunt that was very successful and had somewhere between 250 and 300 people, many of whom were occasional users of the park and we used that as an opportunity to solicit feedback on again what the average user’s experience was at McLaren Park as well as doing open community meetings. We did focus group meetings, so for each one of the priorities that we’ve put forward today we had at least one and in many cases several meetings to develop those ideas. We took a road show to many of the neighborhood associations around the park and also conducted an online survey which got us about 300 responses.

What came out of that process was a set of proposed projects that we’re bringing to you today. This is the $6.9 million of key priorities that we would like your direction to continue forward with developing ideas for and concept plans. And then in addition to that $6.9 million there is $2 million of the $4 million for trails set aside in the 2012 GO bond ordinance so there’s $4 million set aside in the ordinance, half of it we’ve proposed goes to Golden Gate Park and half to McLaren Park. And then the Commission has already allocated $3.1 million for McLaren Park, these are the quick start projects many of which have been in progress, some of which have been completed and a few of which like group picnic area will be combined with the playground project. So all told that equals $12 million. So, $10 million of which is allocated to McLaren Park in the ordinance, $2 million for trails and within that $10 million there’s also in the bond report $1.5 million set aside explicitly for restoration of habitat and natural features.

As I mentioned we also wanted to prepare for the future and so there’s so many needs at McLaren Park and so many great ideas. We also worked with our design team CMG to develop concepts which were shown at the Capital Committee of future projects that you could also continue to fund and would continue to enhance McLaren Park’s identify and the park experience and that includes developing points of interest further, giving the upper reservoir more of an identify and kind of clear set of activities and working on additional improvements to those identified in tier 1 for the amphitheater and also continuing to fund the bike park which opened about four weeks ago to great acclaim and I think good user feedback. Also, the gateways, particularly at Crocker Amazon, Louis Sutter, Mansell and Oxford Street again transforming parts of the park that right now read as kind of an entrance, kind of a neighborhood edge and really developing them, building them out so it becomes really clear that you are entering McLaren Park. Those also all have concepts that could be developed to help further the design. And then also just the connectivity work whether it’s asphalt pathways, paving Mansell or trails there is really an endless amount of work that needs to be done to continue to improve McLaren Park’s fundamental connectivity infrastructure.

So, in more detail just quickly running through those Tier 1 projects that we’d like the approval of the allocation of funds for today, again group picnic area restroom, this would add a restroom to the playground project and that has been a long-standing theme of feedback from McLaren Park users that having it makes total sense, that you would want a free-standing restroom right by one of our largest picnic areas with a new playground. Also, again there’s $1.5 million set aside for restoration of natural features and habitat, most of this work would occur within the context of also focusing on the connectivity projects around trails and the like. This is very similar to the approach we took in the 2008 bond where as we’re doing trails work again the point is to be on a trail, to see nature, and we want the nature to be in good condition and preserved. These are some before and after pictures from other parks as well as McLaren of what that means in terms of again growing, restoring the habitat, restoring the plants that are growing around the area and also again just creating a clear sense of this is where people go and this is where the sensitive habitat is.

The Jerry Garcia Amphitheater. We had a number of really great meetings with different permitees as well as public focus group and we came up with four different specific types of investments. One is folks really wanted just a whole set of facelift options, small cosmetic improvements, make the green room like nicer, improve the sound panels, etc. But then the idea that I think has come out through the design process was really the idea of creating more flat space right by the entrance because that would automatically allow you to program that area with a broader set of amenities that could support larger and more diverse crowds, if you were thinking about changing the types of acts or just activating it more we need the infrastructure to support those audiences and right now it’s very easy for us to serve 300 people there and it’s more difficult to serve 1,000 people. Two other ideas identified if future funding identified is to create also temporary fencing installation so that you could for events for the purposes of crowd control or fundraising or one thing or another you could put up fencing but it would not be permanent, you could take it down after an event. And then lastly the hill is very steep behind the seats at McLaren Park if you’ve ever tried to picnic there, picnicking at a 45-degree angle is not a comfortable proposition over several hours in the full heat so that’s the third thing that we also identified as an option.

Tai Chi. This is one of the stakeholder groups that we were very happy to connect with finally in a very direct way and had a number of focus group hearings with them and we want to improve courts probably Crocker and Mansell most likely but also if there’s funding and we’re open also to Louis Sutter being in that mix.

And then pathway improvements. This has come up quite a bit. This has been I think also on the radar for constituents from the very beginning. This is our effort to take feedback in a map that was provided by constituents and it identifies based on the constituent’s own evaluation like excellent to poor pathways across McLaren Park and what we think we’ll be able to do with the $700,000 that’s allocated to pathways right now is tackle the worst red zone areas and we’re also hoping to tackle a fair amount of the orange. After that I think we have a good conversation. We’ve shared this information with our operations colleagues and that’s a future funding decision. I think about the ways that these needs can be wrapped into an annual paving allocation or annual program to continue working on the list.

These are just photos of some of the red zones and you can see these are literally just crumbling paths in many areas. And also in our last community meeting there was a request to allocate more funding to Vis Valley needs and so we were also happy to fund pedestrian crossing of Visitacion Avenue that will help connect the middle school in particular to the park and improve that access and make it safer.

The John McLaren Community Garden also received more funding as a result of the last meeting and this will allow us to deliver the full concept plan as originally envisioned.

With that I’m going to introduce Melinda Stockman to talk through the trails portion of the plan.

Melinda Stockmann: I am a project manager with Recreation and Park Capital Division. My focus working on this project for the vision plan was the trails and paths focus area. I’m here today to present some information for you.

This first slide shows basically a sample of all the different people who are currently using and would like to use McLaren Park. So we have a real increased interest vocalized in mountain biking and off-road cycling and we have our brand new bike park that opened on Sunnydale and we’d like to add to that. We also have lots of dogs in the park and dog walkers. We have folks with different abilities, runners, trail runners and of course little ones and older folks as well. So as Dawn mentioned with the trails and paths focus area specifically we were tasked with looking at a fairly robust trail system already in place with fantastic amenities like Philosopher’s Way and to figure out what are the challenges of this system and what improvements can we make with the money given.

I’m going to show you a series of maps. The first map shows the existing legitimized multiuse trails and by that we mean open to bicycles in the park. So, these lines are showing Mansell which you might be wondering Mansell is a street but as you recall this January we converted it to a multiuse path and the other blue line below that is the fire road that starts at what will be our new crosswalk across the street from the Visitacion Avenue Middle School and continues all the way over towards June Jordan on the west side of the park. So that is the current legitimate off-road bike access in the park which is about 1.3 miles. Through this plan and the process and input from a lot of stakeholders this dark blue line shows the proposed increase in multiuse off-road bike access in the park. I will talk about the two loops but basically together with the existing and proposed we’re looking at approximately 8.1 miles of bike trails and paths.

Finally, we have the overlay here of all the proposed pedestrian-only trails as well as multiuse. So, one thing I want to point out, Dawn showed this in a previous slide, one of our main conceptual moves as the diagrammatic level is to have a large loop that’s open to both pedestrians and cyclists in both the north and south halves of the park. And so this map accomplishes that and we’re tasked with balancing. How do we get bikers on trails that are through the woods and have different topography and alignments while also keeping some trails for pedestrians. This is our effort to do that. You likely have seen some other maps circulating from community members. We are realigning some trails. We are proposing to close and restore other trails and restore them to natural features and I will talk a little bit more about that.

Again, so the total here for all of these trails and paths is 18.8 miles with approximately 8.1 miles being open to bikes and the remainder pedestrian only. I also want to reiterate a point I made at the Capital Committee about what are we asking for approval from you on today because I know the vision plan is a little bit different level and we’re trying to create an identify and an comprehensive plan for McLaren Park. All of this work that you see here as part of trails will return to you with more detailed design, the concept design approval level prior to getting a contractor on board. So today we’re really asking for your approval for the expenditure of the $2 million for trail improvements and some path improvements that I’ll point out. We’re also asking for your approval of the organizing principals and the hierarchy of trails including the multiuse loops in both the north and south halves as well as the balance of pedestrian-only and bike legal multiuse trails. And finally, we’re asking for your approval for the prioritization for the use of specific 2012 bond funding in hand for improvements in these four designated priority areas shown on the screen at this time.

In addition to that there’s a separate $1.5 million set aside for the restoration of natural features. We anticipate that designs for this project would be built into the trails improvement project and that we would again develop more detailed design and come back with those details as part of the concept design approval.

So, these are the four priority project areas we identified. We shared these with the community at our final of three trails and path outreach events in June of this year. The first one of the supper reservoir. Due to some community advocacy and cooperation between SFMTA and Recreation and Park we are planning some improvements to calm traffic and increase pedestrian access on Shelley Drive. This upper reservoir area is going to have a crossing that connects the blue water tower and the path and the Philosopher’s Way on the west side of Shelley with the Philosopher’s Way as well as the path down to the reservoir on the east side. In addition to that in this area the asphalt path and steps which go down to the reservoir are in deteriorating condition and we would like to make that into more of a natural surface trial and have less steps and kind of define the path more with some plantings. We also would like to repair the paving on the ramp that’s south of the reservoir and look at accommodating bicycles on that ramp and adding way-finding signage because as you get to the bottom of the reservoir there are some paths that take you to the group picnic and amphitheater and we want some rustic low-key signage to let folks know where they’re going.

The second area is a big one. We’re calling it the Shelley loop interior. Basically it is the area between the group picnic area that will have the new playground and the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater. This area as you see from the photos on the bottom and the middle shows how wide these trails are, they’re really like roads, and in some cases we need to keep them at a certain width for maintenance vehicle access but we have a lot of drainage and erosion problems on this trail and so we would like to regrade and put in some drainage features and just define the train better. We also would like to make a bit of a crossroads between the dog play area, the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater and group picnic just so folks know where to go. The bottom right shows some of the storm damage at the base of the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater from last year. So again this is an area where we have our Gray Fox Creek and we have an opportunity to do a lot of restoration. We have groups like Greenagers and the Youth Stewardship program and other community groups using this area so we really want to enhance it but again keeping that natural feel.

The third priority area is the connection between Louis Sutter and the Mansell Courts. This picture on the bottom right shows the current asphalt path coming up from the Louis Sutter playground towards the rest of the park. We went out and did a site visit and the slope on that path is 19 percent. ADA slope allowed is much less than that and so we are looking at realigning that path and looking into the possibility of making it firm and stable but again a little bit more natural feel than asphalt. We’re also looking to reconfigure the asphalt path and steps closer up to the Mansell courts and we’re looking to accommodate bicycles on a multiuse trail that meets ADA outdoor accessibility guidelines. But we’ve worked with these guidelines in Glen Canyon Park and Golden Gate Park Oak Woodlands and there’s a lot you can to do still make the trail interesting and exciting while still meeting outdoor accessibility. It’s different than say getting folks to a building.

We also want to consolidate and reroute trails in this area to reduce erosion and maintain or improve the integrity of the grasslands and we’d like to add some way-finding signage again to help folks find their way around.

The picture on the bottom left is an example of the kind of incision that happens in trails over time when water hits the trail in the same place, it funnels into the middle and creates a really unsafe area and gets really compacted. So for some of the trails that we’re looking to realign or close in this area we would likely sue some of that natural features restoration funding to scrape up the soil, to put seeds in, to put erosion control so it can really go back to grassland habitat.

Last but not least the Visitacion Avenue corridor. This is the area that runs from Visitacion and Hahn intersection right across the street from Hertz Playground up to the Visitacion Avenue Middle School. We worked with VoCal, Volunteers for Outdoor California, a large volunteer group I think about four years ago to rough out a trail corridor in that area. However, it’s very sandy and so we would like to work with a contractor to stabilize the soil surface and again we have a lot of exciting things going on there with the community garden improvements. I also have the PUC rain garden. So this would be a new multiuse trail from the park entry and we also would like to have a lot of habitat restoration plantings there and we’re working with community members to make that happen and to get more detailed designs. This would connect with that new crosswalk at the middle school so that trail users could walk up the trail and then right across the street to the fire road. We would like to have an interpretive sign here and we’re also working with the Planning Department separate from bond funding to look at the possibility of doing a sidewalk along Visitacion Avenue and we’ve determined that there is sufficient need for both a sidewalk and a multiuse trail and that they meet sort of different experience preferences.

So now we get into the best management practices that we talked about asking for your approval. I just want to show a few slides of the existing conditions in the park. Of course, on the left we have our newly transformed Mansell which is basically a wide street and it has some striping to designate where bikes go and where pedestrians go. This path on the right is at Mansell in the court area, it’s showing sort of a typical asphalt path, some of the paths are wider than six feet but this one is just wider than six feet.

Moving into trails, in order to accommodate bikes in a safe and balanced way and to minimize user conflicts our team has determined that five feet wide is an appropriate design width for multiuse trails and three-foot wide for pedestrian only trails. I want to point out that a lot of the trail work we’re doing is in existing areas and so we are either doing small scale widening, in some cases we’re actually narrowing the trails as I showed before and we’ve looked up standards from several other places and this is well within the acceptable range of best management practices. We looked at the Marin County Open Space District in California State Parks for example and again for multiuse access our goal is really to provide recreational opportunities that people can go for a ride after dinner, teach the kids, tool around after the bike park but we are not aiming to be a Mt. Tam or China Camp or challenging mountain bike only resource.

So this slide shows trail widths in the park. You see the combination between the left and the middle photo being five-foot wide trails and that middle trail is actually a segment of Philosopher’s Way. You can see the small granite marker there and the photo all the way on the right is a three-foot wide existing trail. Another point that we’ve been making with our outreach is that we are building the trails designed at five feet but because we really do have limited maintenance capacity as one of the community members mentioned earlier we anticipate that the trails would likely shrink down to about four feet. So, this is an example from another park of a trail right at construction either improvement or new trail and again this looks sort of like a construction site, it looks barren, and then soon after the vegetation repopulates and it really does look much more rustic. So again we anticipate that these multiuse trails would end up being between four and five feet.

Other best management practices that we’ve used for other projects and are excited to use at McLaren Park, we’re looking at the slope of trails, how they drain, how do we control erosion and what kind of surfacing we use. So on the bottom tier of this slide you see three different surfaces, the asphalt path in the middle that’s the new Mansell, you see on the left a proprietary mix called park tread which meets the ADA requirements for being firm and stable but it has a lot more natural feel, and on the right we have a biker on a natural soil in McLaren Park. So a lot of our trails we are planning to just keep as they are and the dirt is fine but we have a template here that we can use depending on the goal of the particular site.

The top photographs from the middle to the right show actually another area that our Natural Resources Division worked on. So in the middle photo you can see the trail is really muddy and if you’re walking there just with tennis shoes you’re going to be in trouble. The photo to the right of that shows what we call an armored drain lens where the contractor comes in and brings some large rock and then puts the dirty back on top of it and that allows the water to run underneath the trail. We’ve done that in Glen Canyon, it’s very successful and that photo on the right shows what it will look like. So these are the kinds of things that we’ll be doing in some of the four priority project areas.

Another set of best management practices, trail realignment and decommissioning, hazard tree mitigation and habitat restoration. So we do trail realignments and closures and restoration for a lot of different reasons, predominantly if the trail is really steep then we’re concerned about user safety and the sustainability of the trail in the long run and so for example in the area near the labyrinth just north of Mansell we would propose to realign the trail there, provide the same access from point A to point B but close and restore the very steep trail. In other areas the trail might be considered redundant, it’s going to the same place as another trail and so again we would try to find the balance and maintain that and restore it to nature area.

Hazard tree mitigation. Again, we’ve planned to do this just in those four priority project areas, we’ve done this with all the other trails projects. We look at the corridor just specifically right around the trail, what branch or tree could fall on the trail. We work with a third-party arborist consultant, we have our Urban Forestry Division review the findings and then we do some pruning and removal accordingly. Unless there’s an imminent hazard we would of course do our thirty-day courtesy posting on that.

And then habitat restoration work is another tool where we would be working with a contractor and we’d also likely be working with the community to do some stewardship there.

Finally, signage. So we have developed a family of trail specific signage that we’ve used at Glen Canyon Park and Twin Peaks and they include these small way-finding placards that include key destinations and how to get there. We anticipate having likely two different types of interpretive signs for the park that show people what is here, what are the species that are here, how can you help. And then on the right we have images of the Philosopher’s Way markers which are really special and unique and so we’re working with the artists and Arts Commission to figure out how can we meld that signage and route with our standard signage.

With that I’m happy to open it up for questions.

Peter Richards: Support. I along with Susan Swartenzberg are the designers of Philosopher's Way which was funded through the Arts Commission several years ago. Philosopher's Way is a public art project that inspires people to be mindful of their surroundings as they traverse a 2.7-mile trail that goes around the perimeter of McLaren Park. The inspiration came from not only the users of the park in particular the tai chi programs but also my encountering a Philosopher's Way in Kyoto, Japan and another in Germany. The trail layout was the result of many community meetings. I worked with RPD staff and really many miles of just walking around the park. We’re trying to understand the park in relation to the Bay Area and the city. Because of our budget we incorporated as many existing trails as possible, some were wide, paved fire trails, others were very narrow but altogether they work quite well. The changes proposed for Philosopher's Way do not impact our vision and in some cases improve on our design. The changes include grade adjustments, erosion control, widening in some places and some realignments to address use conflicts. These all should improve the Philosopher's Way experience.

Sally Stephens: Oppose. I encourage you to approve this request except for the $3.5 million for trails. I ask you to withhold that. Here’s some history—an early version of the 2012 bond ordinance said that the trails money could only be used in natural areas by which the Department meant areas managed by the Natural Areas Program. Many of us opposed NAP and we therefore opposed the bond. I said in Scott Wiener’s office with him, Sarah Ballard and a few others from both sides looking for a compromise. Ultimately, we agreed that they use only natural areas language would be removed from the bond ordinance. Instead the language would say the money was to “repair and reconstruct” trails in McLaren Park and Golden Gate Park. There was no requirement to use money in natural areas. I then appeared before a committee of the Board of Supervisors considering the bond ordinance language to announce that with the amended language included we no longer opposed the bond. Imagine my surprise to hear that during the envisioning process Recreation and Park staff insisted that the trail money from the bond could not be used to for example fix paths but was all to be spent in natural areas. That went against our agreement and was not what people had voted on in the bond ordinance language. While staff later apparently backed down somewhat it is extremely troubling that it happened at all. If you approve the money now what is to prevent staff from once again declaring that the money will be only used in natural areas. They’ve already tried to renege on our goof father compromise once, what’s to stop them from doing it again. Bonds are not blank checks for the Department and the parks bond was not a blank check for NAP. There’s not mention of habitat restoration anywhere in the bond ordinance. The bond report was published about a month before our negotiations in the Supervisor’s office. Clearly it was never changed to reflect what we discussed. It cannot be used to justify this $3.5 million that’s going to go for habitat restoration. What matters is the language in the bond ordinance not the bond report. If you can’t trust what’s in the bond ordinance you see what you vote on then people won’t be voting for any future bonds.

Male Speaker: Neutral. Good afternoon. I’m here to talk about McLaren Park. $3.5 million for trails, natural areas, when will the City and County of San Francisco Recreation and Park complete the master plan? West Sunset, wow. Nicely done. We need that over there. Here, I’d like to put something on. This is really important. I’d really like this to be on the project because a picture is a worth a million words and this shows the locations map, it shows McLaren Park in the center or Excelsior, Crocker Amazon, and this is worth—this is really I hope everybody sees this because these are working class people. These are people who just want to walk in the park, use the bathroom, not trip on a pathway. They want a place where their grandparents can use the restroom in dignity. They want a water fountain. Maybe some lights at night. That’s what it was like originally, it was never maintained, it was always the same story. It wasn’t preventative maintenance, it wasn’t maintenance, it was deferred maintenance and now we’ve got what we’ve got. I’m sorry to say, it falls in your guys hands because of lack of money, lack of bonds. A lot of these dirt trails are being done without grants and there’s free labor. That’s great. What about the asphalt paths? So where is all this money going? Anyway I want to say I think everybody for the vision plan but where in the master plan, when are we going to get it? So until we get one I’ll keep asking where is the master plan. Thank you.

Male Speaker: Support. Commissioners, General Manager. Here I am speaking about my support for this plan because my parents bought in the mid-sixties in that area because it was a family-friendly neighborhood and a place that you could let your kids run and play in the part. There were two lakes, there was paths connecting them, there were horseback riding. After the mid-70s approximately things went into disarray like Albert was saying, there was lack of maintenance, it became a place that was abandoned basically, a lot of burnt-out cars and a place to dump a body. It was not a friendly place for families and they started leaving that neighborhood in droves and this is an opportunity of a lifetime. I think the Help McLaren Park group celebrate this because we worked really hard to get this bond money and I think part of it is because of our letter writing campaign and we’re all here now arguing about where the money should go but I think we should all be happy of the fact that we have $12 million and that’s never happened in McLaren Park history. So I’d just like to say I accept the visioning and I support it so we can start rebuilding this grand park for the sake of our youth. It’s time. The opportunity spans several generations. It’s finally at our door and it’s McLaren Park’s turn to shine.

Male Speaker: Support. I’m a mountain biker, hiker, enthusiast and I’m proud to support the McLaren Park vision plan with the caveat that the habitat damaged by the trail work will be restored and enhanced. I can’t think of a better way to spend the 2012 Clean and Safe Neighborhoods Parks Bond money than on trail improvements in McLaren Park. After all the recreation assessment survey show that San Franciscans view walking and biking trails as the most important features of city parks. I’m extremely happy that the plan seeks to minimize drainage and erosion through the rerouting and closure of redundant trails that scour the park. Of course, the building of trails will come with some of the destruction of the dwindling natural resources. People in crowded urban spaces need these natural resources to provide them a scenic escape from cars, buildings and the chaos of city living. Equally important is that our remaining natural resources provide a haven for biodiversity, I’m talking about reserving ample habitat for bees and others that live among us. It’s critical that any destruction caused by these wonderful trails be mitigated by careful restoration of our native plants, grasslands and natural areas. We cannot give invasive weeds an opportunity to get a foothold on these disturbed areas. Why? Local fauna has not adapted to them. A study shows that over 90 percent on insect species coevolved with specific plan species of a group of related plant species. These insects however have not had a chance to develop a tolerance for the chemical defenses in many of the introduced plants that thrive in our disturbed soils. I urge you to enhance the trail user and wildlife experience by planting California wildflowers along the trail and especially California native bunch grasses which are deeply rooted and stabilize the soil while providing hiding places for local wildlife.

Alex Aldrich: Oppose. I represent over 949 petitioners on a change.org petition asking you to withhold approval of the trail and path portion of the McLaren Park vision plan. We do not agree with the proposed trail widening, access restrictions and trail closures. During this whole envisioning process most users try to approach it with openness but as each meeting passed we realized that this was not a community-driven process about trails and paths but a preexisting plan that was being forced on us. There was no discussion of the trails to be closed or widened. Instead we are told vague statements that trails are eroding and in surrounding areas sensitive plants are trampled. These are trumped statements. The majority of the trails have no erosion control including recently built one yet erosion is on a few mostly recently built trails. So stay on the path because the trails are where we want them. This map shows all the trails that are going to be closed in areas. If the Recreation and Park Department wants to add rules, change usage, close trails and areas, they need to engage the community in real conversations with real meetings. We have been asking for maps since the 80s yet Recreation and Park installs restriction signs instead with some rules being non-codified. What also makes this park magical besides being wild is that there is discovery. This plan loses that. We can’t be coerced into a preexisting plan or be told that we must obey a non-codified rule McLaren Park already has a long history of requests and safety concerns that are not being prioritized. Stop the cycle of neglect. Do not approve the funding for the trail and path plan as this has not been a community-driven process.

Mei Ling Hui: Support. I am the community garden program manager for the Recreation and Park and I am delighted to be here today to speak in support of the McLaren Park Community Garden funding that’s before you today. When I first visited the garden years ago I was struck by how charming and beautiful the site is. It’s right on the edge of McLaren Park in a really peaceful, sunny open and beautiful location. It’s an ideal space for a community garden and the garden has been very well-loved despite the poor condition of the garden itself. It makes sense that the garden is well-loved because besides being in such a beautiful, ideal location it’s at the end of this residential street where there’s tons of community and neighborhood support for this garden. Chief among those supports is our wonderful and energetic garden coordinator Sean Smith who is here today to speak. This garden is also in an area where there are many families that could benefit from increased access to community projects like community gardens. Sean and others have been advocating for a complete renovation for years because the state of the garden’s infrastructure has been impacting community engagement here. People can’t garden somewhere where all the pots are falling apart. Having recently visited all of the community gardens across out program I can see how critical site design and build decisions are to enhancing community engagement at our sites. This increased funding will create engaging new opportunities to bring more people into the garden and create more opportunities for community engagement. It increases the plots by 80 plots, doubles the number of plots, and creates other infrastructure that we can develop programming around. Thank you for your support and the Capital Division for their design and urge you to support this funding request.

Joshua Brankman: Support. I am the executive director of Outward Bound California based here in San Francisco. Outward Bound has worked with Bay Area students and adults since 2008, having worked with over 10,000 students at this point. We use local parks as one other areas that we introduce students to the educational opportunities of the outdoors and we highly support moving forward McLaren Park vision plan. McLaren Park is one of the best kept secrets for many people beyond the five immediate communities around the park but we know having worked there for over a decade that park has been used by the communities there for decades and it is neglected and we are excited to see that there is an opportunity here to reintroduce not just the five communities that surround the park but the entire City and County of San Francisco. That’s exciting to us. We look forward to using the park more regularly for our programs. One of the areas that’s most important to us are the trails and open spaces. We recognize that trails can be hotly contested but as an organization that used the inherent challenges of the outdoors to teach young people even foot trails become part of our educational model and while recognize there may be some dispute around the trails in particular we are supportive of funds that go towards improving those trails to use them with all types of students young and old. Lastly, I would just like to add that Outward Bound has a long history of working with Recreation and Park Departments around the country, most specifically in Baltimore and Philadelphia, and we see partnership between educational organizations like ourselves and city governments as key to using open space and creating future outdoor stewards. We’re excited about this work and urge you to move forward.

Jake Sigg: Support. I speak for the local chapter of the California Native Plant Society which has yearly donated an average of over 1,000 hours to maintaining our natural heritage since 1989. Long before the Department created its popular Natural Heritage Division contrast this gift to the city with detractors of the Department some of whom don’t pick up their dog poop. Building trails is very disruptive and re-vegetation is an integral part of it just as wetness is related to water and heat to fire. It can’t be divorced. And where are the trails being built? In designated natural areas. Trail needs are legion through the city and this is only a very beginning of filling the needs. This is a popular program and when occasion rises we can turn out supporters as we did when the Natural Areas Management Plan came before the Commission a year ago at which time supporters outnumbered naysayers 75 to 42 by actual count. The program has strong support by the public. Detractors widely disseminate false information such as this Examiner headline accusing the Department of bait and switch. We endorse the 2012 bond with the clear understanding of the purpose of the funding. Why the hostility to preserving our natural heritage? The city is dedicated to preserving diversity and that includes biodiversity. People loves the grasslands with their spring wildflowers and the grasslands provide rich foraging grounds for coyotes, hawks, owls, and others. These animal find meager sustenance from weedy areas and weeds to not pass their energy up the food chain as the natives have been doing for millions of years! And few people appreciate thistles which the program is effective at keeping under some control. The needs are great. Please help the program.

Charles Deffarges: Support. Good morning Commissioners. I’m a community organizer on staff at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. I’m here today to speak in support of the McLaren Park vision plan on behalf of our 10,000 members. In particular we are very happy to see traffic calming on park streets as well as trail access for bicycles as major parts of this plan. Bicycle facilities are important destinations within the park. We believe that this plan is an important first step in making McLaren Park safe and accessible for all users. Currently, the average speed of vehicles travelling on Shelley Drive, Visitacion Avenue and Sunnydale Avenue consistently exceeds the speed limit by 50 percent. These speeds pairs with a lack of dedicated bicycle infrastructure on these streets create very dangerous conditions for people biking. The proposed traffic calming measure will slow down cars and make the street safer for people walking and biking. We also urge you to accelerate the midterm plans for traffic calming and bicycle infrastructure along Visitacion Avenue and Sunnydale Drive. Finally, we’re encouraged to see the bicycle access as a major component of the trails plan, trail access to the bike park and other amenities will be an important way to get more people riding bikes in McLaren Park. We encourage the Recreation and Park staff to continue to build upon the trail network and pursue park policies that encourage bicycle use to and within the park.

Tom Scott: Oppose. I’m a long-time volunteer and advocate for McLaren Park and I took great interest in the McLaren Park project from the moment the bond measure past. I attended most meetings, filled out numerous questionnaires and corresponded with the project planners throughout the process. After hours of research on the subject I’ve concluded that I support most aspects of this plan, specifically the improvement to the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, the main picnic area and the gateways. But I strongly oppose the trails and paths portion of this project and I urge you to deny approval for this portion. The Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, picnic, gateways portion of this project is very popular and deserves your support. There was great collaboration between the community and the project managers. The planners and the designers listened to the community and asked what we wanted. At follow-up meetings they presented options based on our input and they came up with some terrific plans. By contract the trails and paths portion of the project could not have been more different. From the beginning this project has been more of a sales pitch and less a response to community input. For years we’ve been asking the crumbling network of paved paths be repaired. We want badly eroding trails to be fixed. Many have asked the repairs to the trails damaged by last year’s horseback riding concession. Rather than address these demands the planners presented their vision for radically altering the trail system that includes closing numerous popular trails and widening beloved dirt trails throughout the park. Nobody in the community is asking for trails to be closed, nobody wants their favorite trails widened. Personally, I’m sad to see what’s happening to Philosopher's Way and I appreciate what Peter had to say but it’s designed for peaceful contemplation while walking through nature. This plan calls for widening more than two-thirds of the Philosopher's Way and converting it into multiuse which will take away the intimate nature of walking through nature. So please yes to the whole project except for the $3.5 million for the trails and paths.

Dustin Smith: Support. I’m the co-chair of the McLaren Bike Park founders. I speak for my co-chair Will Allrich, we represent 150 some-odd donors who have financially invested in an amenity in McLaren Park whose biggest probably concern is around trails and connectivity to the park so I’m here to speak in support of the visioning plan. I think the Recreation and Park folks have done a great job working with us, creating McLaren Bike Park was just opened on October 21 with much success from the community, families, children from the neighborhoods, people came from all over. So we want to make sure that as this plan moves forward that we’re involved in the details of the trails development to ensure that people can safely and have fun, get to McLaren Bike Park and move throughout so that including planning for Hertz Playground and the connectivity there as well as through Sunnydale. So again we view this visioning document as a malleable document that through meetings and more community input will be able to affect the wild and winding nature of the trails so that they do not all become wide and sanitized. We know that we need those types of trails to move folks through the park, especially folks that may not be able to walk on their own two feet or move on two wheels. But we also want to make sure that we keep the wild nature of McLaren Park as well as allow for fun as people are moving back and forth through the park into the bike park. Thank you.

Fran Martin: Support. I’m affiliated with the Visitacion Valley Planning Alliance and Visitacion Valley Greenway Project which is an outdoor classroom serving 60-75 children and adults weekly. Our programming has included working with children from the Sunnydale Boys and Girls Club at the McLaren Park Community Garden. I’m here to represent these children who live in Sunnydale. They have no accessible open space allocated for them and their families in McLaren Park. Where they live is surrounded by single-use facilities that cut them off from nature. They do not have the luxury to lobby for their needs. They have no voice. It is our hope and desire that the McLaren Park Community Garden will become the centerpiece and heart of the McLaren Park Outdoor Education Center which will include trails, PUC rain garden and native plant Botanical Garden extending from Visitacion Valley Middle School and Hahn Avenue. These long overdue improvements will address the general issue of woefully inadequate access to McLaren Park for Visitacion Valley’s existing and expected population will be increased by 6,000 to 10,000 units of new housing in the next several years. The McLaren Park Outdoor Education Center is the only environmental educational component of the entire McLaren Park visioning process and is sorely needed regionally and particularly in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood. Visitacion Valley is arguably the most disenfranchised and underserved neighborhood in San Francisco. Our children are equal to any in the rest of our wealthy city lack opportunities to thrive and learn. It is our intention to help remedy the social, economic, environmental and aesthetic injustices that plague our community through education and healthful living. The funding to complete the McLaren Park Community Garden is a paltry amount for the city to invest in our community considering the burden of high density housing we carry for other neighborhoods. We need the funds to build the garden, landscape the surrounding area and complete the trail begun over two years for Visitacion Valley Middle School. I urge you to fund the entire McLaren Park vision plan with provisions for further planning improvements where needed.

Sean Smith: Support. Good morning Commissioners. I’m a native of San Francisco since 1963. I’ve lived in the Visitacion Valley community since 1993. I got started through this program for the John King Senior Center when there were seniors that actually operated the garden but when they were too old to keep participating in it I decided to volunteer and keep the grass cut for them. But they had moved from the center that was across the way up to Raymond Street. As time went on they aged on and were unable to participate in the garden. So one of my main things was to find out who can help me in participating and bringing the community together and actually helping kids along with seniors to have an active community garden since it has been neglected for so long and since now they have more beautification and renovations coming up this is something that we would like to see in our community garden. We would like to actually ask you for the funding and we thank the Recreation and Park for bringing this up to par. Thanks to everyone. We would like to add that in the future if you can see that most of our children will grow older and as our senior grow older that they can be more thought about and taken care of because as you know San Francisco is turning into a very large city that has a small condensed area. Give a little considering to the children and the seniors that are here in our city. Thank you.

Ren Volpe: Oppose. I’m an Excelsior resident and daily park user and I support all the plans we’re spending the bond money except for the trails and path portion. I also want to be sure that the plan addresses keeping the park clean. We voted for a 2012 bond called the Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks Bond but no specific amount of money is set aside in the plan for keeping McLaren Park clean and there’s no articulated plan that addresses trash and garbage in the park. I do want to give a shout-out to Daniel Choi, he’s been working really hard but our gardeners should not be picking up trash and there’s no money set aside in the plan for the trash problem. Throughout the visioning process the community has been confused, stonewalled and manipulated by what appears to be a predetermined plan by the Natural Areas Program. The community does not want large areas of the park restored to an arbitrary point in native plant history. We do not want pesticides sprayed in our park. We do want healthy trees cut down and we do not want trails closed and so-called natural areas closed off to the public. We want the money spend on repairing the asphalt path system. We want all, not some, of the asphalt paths to be safe and accessible. When park users walk on a dirt trail they expect a rugged outdoor hiking experience. When using a paved path we expect it to be usable for the elderly, families with strollers and for people with mobility issues. The trails of McLaren Park do need attention but we do not want any of the bond money to go towards the Natural Areas Plan for trails or anything else. It’s not what we voted for and not what we discussed in the envisioning plan. 949 people have signed the change.org petition supporting this view. They can’t all be here today but they signed on to that. The whole plan is great except for that $3.5 million.

Ace Washington: Neutral. I’m here to speak on another matter but I’d be remised if I didn’t get up here and speak on something that I’m up here to talk about is the black African American negro however you want to call us this here in the city by the bay. I wish I had got behind a brother that just spoke. I want to thank Fran I know for a number of years. She’s been diligently working for the African American community. I’m appalled that there’s only one brother that got up here to speak and he didn’t use the words black, African American he used the community. Well I’m here to say there’s a difference with what the city calls community and the black community because our black community is down, I’m getting emotional. I’m appalled. You’ve got a master plan for the Recreation and Park up in Sunnydale? Where all of our black folks been there for many years you ain’t even think about doing nothing in the years there. They’ve been killed and not they’re getting replaced. This place like you did in the Fillmore. Public housing—all them parks up there been there for years. You all didn’t do a damn thing when the blacks was there. Now we almost gone and now it’s just like urban renewal. You bring in all these other things in here and then you come in here and you put everything good. Now how many years have that [unintelligible]. But you’re going to make it beautiful now. You’ve got a master plan like you did for the Fillmore. I’m appalled. You know, I never visit the Recreation and Park now but it’s going to be one of my stops now because you’ve got all kind of parks in the Fillmore. You ain’t did a damn thing until you got rid of us and now you got them parks over there. I went there by the other night I didn’t see nobody that looked like me but everybody up there running around and kicking balls and things. And that after you all kicked us out. Now you’re going to the public housing. It is so embarrassing to be part of the City and County by the bay.

Chris Giorni: Support. I want to acknowledge our last speaker as well. I’m here on two accounts—biking and hiking but I’m a native and I actually support his view. We don’t want to kick out, we want to include. So I tip my hat to you as a Caucasian. Tree Frog Treks is my company. We work with kids all over the city, 25,000 strong every year. Our motto is to get out and get dirty. I’m also an avid cyclist. I biked across the United States as a college kid and I worked for Backrounds for many years leading trips all across Alaska and France. I support any way that we can get out and get people connected to the outdoors. Biking is one of the most significant ways to create freedom and a child’s world. We want them to feel safe out there biking and hiking on their own. If we widen these trails which I support the entire master plan I think we’ll do just that. I believe that the native restoration is key to connecting our children to the red-tailed hawks, the great blue herons, we see them when we’re out there hunting and feeding and there’s nothing more miraculous than watching a predator prey interaction and blood and guts right in front of you. Southern alligator lizards abound on the overlook which we call the witch’s water tower over Visitacion Valley and kids can collect and hold them on their own. We want them to be able to go anytime they want to and feel safe. It is starting to be reclaimed as he says by more affluent people but as Chuck and I can tell you as kids sometimes we were scared to go to McLaren Park, especially if we were white because we didn’t want to get our behinds kicked. Also if we open it up we really have to have an educational program as Fran said to include the Sunnydale people, the Visitacion Valley middle school people. I’ve taught at Visitacion Valley middle school and I’ve had to break up fights with girls that are bigger than me and avoid getting punched because they are so actually engaged in other activities. Nature will calm and focus. Please approve the plan.

Matthew Blaine: Oppose. I’m part of San Francisco Urban Riders and we’re the local mountain bike advocacy group. We’ve contributed thousands of hours in McLaren Park doing volunteer work and also running several volunteer community events bringing hundreds of people to the park, many of whom had never heard of it before and loved it afterwards. I’m here today to also talk about the trails and paths part of the plan. So, someone made a comment earlier about there’s a survey, the number one survey response was actually more mountain biking trails in the park and we’re actually thrilled that the plan actually recognizes the needs of mountain bikers and that’s great. I do want to comment also unfortunately that the eight miles of trails and paths opened to bikes is actually only about 3.6 miles of paths but we understand why there’s this compromise between the different user groups. So, the main thing I want to talk about today is one of our goals is environmental, social and economic stability but one thing I wanted to talk about was the trail width. You’ve heard from many community members they’re concerned about widening trails in the park and we are also. This news to me today that the only expect users of the park are beginners, even children actually want more advanced. We’re not looking for giant jump lines but different types of trails and that was recognized in the plan so that was a surprise to me today. But this trail width issue is unfortunate because a five-foot trail versus a three-foot trail yes it’s a 50 percent larger but if make it cut into the hillside it’s two and a half times as much material which gets removed. It also sort of loses this feeling of nature winding through the park, a narrow gives you an intimate feel that was talked about why it calms you I want to mention that it’s not necessarily—it’s best practice. It turns out narrow trails actually slow bicycles down, reduce conflict. Many places including even Marin they’ve actually moved to a flexible standard which is contact sensitive. The latest trail in Marin was actually two feet wide, not appropriate for McLaren Park but not five feet. So we urge the Commission to approve the plan so long as this five-foot restriction is removed which will satisfy all the users as part of the trails part of it.

Katie Strange: Support. I’m with the San Francisco Parks Alliance. I’m here to speak in support of the whole plan. We are aware that this is a city gem and it’s a well-loved park as we can tell from all the people who have come to speak today and like many well-loved places in the city we see an abundance of passionate and dedicated individuals, park users, community members, trail users, etc. and while it’s not easy to find consensus among so many passionate individuals we excited and glad to see the Department and staff work and spend their time and resources to go out and listen to the community and hear what they have to say. We believe that the plan as a result is a quality and inclusive plan so we look forward to this much-needed plan and next steps and the opportunity to partner with the Department and the community.

Anna Abata: Oppose. I’m a neighbor of the park and I walk the park every day from a half hour to an hour and my favorite places to walk are the narrow paths of the Philosopher's Way and I do encourage that they are kept that way. There are plenty of wide trails. I think the most important place to use the money are the asphalt paths. They’re dangerous, even I trip on them and I’m a pretty avid walker. So I do support the plan except the widening of the paths and this thing of not using money for the asphalt paths.

Shawne Portman: Support. I live about a half-mile from the park. I currently ride this park two to three days a week, that’s about 150 days a year, mainly on my mountain bike. I love this park, I love the trails, the proximity to my house allows me to just go right out my front door. I don’t have to get in my car, I don’t have to go somewhere else to get any exercise that I need. I’m highly involved in a mountain biking racing series called the California Enduro Series and because of this year and this park and all the riding I currently get to do in it this is my reward, my yellow jersey that I earned. We go to a lot of places, very hard terrain. I like how this park offers me the opportunity to do different terrains and the technical features that are involved that help out in my training a lot. You can see a lot of the red is going to be pointing to a lot of the trails that are going to be closed down and then I’m going to show to you the red at the top is sort of like all the riding—this is a heat map so anything in blue I’ve rode a couple times and anything in red and a lot of red is something that I rode a lot. This section here we can zoom in on this is McLaren Park so you can see I’ve rode every single trail in this park multiple times. I like this park as it is. I’m all for the paved paths improvement but all the other trails do not need to be widened. It offers us great challenges for a lot of people. I run into people all the time socially, little kids, parents with kids, I help activate these people in skill sets and say hey why don’t you go try it this way or that way. I’m here to help people. I love the training that I do in the park and I like the park the way it is for the most part. Please don’t change too many things in the park as they are.

Commissioner Anderson: With respect to how the money is spent on trails improvement I believe that Melinda from the Recreation and Park made it clear that this was about approving expenditures but that it would return to you, she said, in terms of what these trails are going to look like, whether some are going to be closed or not, whether they’re going to be widened or not. So could we have just a little bit more commentary on that please Melinda or Dawn?

Melinda Stockmann: That is correct Commissioner. So the trails improvement project will come back to the Commission for concept design approval and we have committed at a site walk that we did with about a dozen community stakeholders, many of whom are in the room today, as well as in a written fact sheet and in email communications that we would have an additional publically noticed community meeting before we finalize the concept design and likely a site walk too because as it turns out just with all the roads and topography it’s much easier to understand the site at the park than looking at the maps.

Commissioner Anderson: All right, so I’m going to internalize it, it’s not a foregone conclusion as to what’s going on with the trails specifically and that you have been here listening to the public comment and you’re going to take these considerations in mind and you’re going to have more community input?

Melinda Stockmann: That’s correct and I also just wanted to mention that we had three focus group outreach for the trails and paths focus area. We had a site walk in February with over 50 people attending. We had a first workshop in April with about 40 people and a workshop in June with 30 to 40 people and we did show the four priority project areas and a very similar itemized scope and they were well supported at that time.

Commissioner Anderson: Thank you. The other question I have is to confirm or dispel concerns about whether or not the bond money is being spent appropriately. I saw a photo copy of a column, I heard what Ms. Sally Stevens said and I want to make sure we address some concerns there if that’s all right.

Melinda Stockman: Absolutely. So just I think a little bit of history here is helpful. The 2008 bond program, so the one that precedes this there was also a trails program and at that time the trails program was restricted exclusively to natural areas with the intent of promoting access and also helping to improve access and restore habitat and it was explicitly focused on the Natural Areas Program. As we implemented that program and we went into 2012 we got a lot of good feedback that I think was constructive and helpful about how that was too restrictive and it proved I think too divisive. So what we did in the shift for 2012 was we do have a trails program, it is described as being for trails, paths, and overall connectivity in Golden Gate Park and McLaren Park whereas the 2008 program was at many sites across the system and focused on the natural areas. And it does not specific at the ordinance lever what the split of the $4 million for trails should be but only that $4 million should be spent between Golden Gate Park and McLaren Park.

The City Attorney wrote that language so I was pretty involved. The section title is Trails. It’s not sidewalks, it’s not about roads, it is to promote a cohesive, coherent trails network and many of our trail sections do include a mix of earthen trails and then asphalt connectors and occasionally maybe sending someone out onto a sidewalk or even a street. The Peaks to Creeks Trail that goes through Glen Canyon works very similarly. So that’s why we broaden that language and it is not limited at the ordinance level to the Natural Areas Program but just to McLaren Park and Golden Gate Park.

Now, the McLaren Park funding. The ordinance also says $10 million for McLaren Park including all the kinds of normal improvements you might want to see at a park but we do have a bond report that came to the Commission as well as the Board of Supervisors and PROSAC, was approved by all bodies as policy and we use the bond report as our main policy guidance about how to implement the ordinance. So, nothing in the bond report is in conflict with the ordinance but it provides more detail including things like allocating $1.5 million of the $10 million on McLaren Park for natural features and that’s really important, it’s not natural areas, it’s for natural features and habitat restoration. Whether it’s in the Natural Areas Program or not and actually the four priority areas that we’ve identified today in fact kind of zig and zag through the natural areas. There’s some portions that are in the program, some portions that are outside of it. So, the focus is over all on increasing access to nature, not limiting the expenditure of funds to only improving the Natural Areas Program.

That bond report also specifies that this process happen. It outlines the entire process for the Community Opportunity Fund, it set up the Let'sPlaySF! Playground Task Force. So the characterization that the bond report doesn’t matter is especially frustrating for me because we’ve certainly spent a lot of time trying to follow it pretty closely and I think we’ve relied on it as again policy guidance from not just the Commission but also from the Board of Supervisors in returning to that document when we’ve tried to figure out what to do next and how to move forward with improvements.

The trails money that’s allocated in the ordinance must be spent on trails, we don’t have an option to not spend that money. You could make an argument about whether or not you wanted to allocate evenly between Golden Gate Park and McLaren Park, I don’t know that we would want to do that. But that money is very clearly called out for trails, we don’t have an option not to spend it at all, we do have to spend it eventually and I think we’ve done the most work that we’ve ever done to date in trying to outline a workable framework that attempts to strike various compromises.

And in addition again I would say that the feedback we have right now I think a lot of the tensions are around the path width but so far we have received good feedback and consistent feedback that those four priority areas we’ve outlined as the focus for this first set of investments has received widespread support, that those are the four areas that it would make the most difference to improve and our hope is that as we go through a concept planning process we can develop the details and walk through with folks in a fairly specific way, like what the improvements would be that would make the most difference.

Commissioner Low: Just to follow up with Commission Anderson’s question, is the expenditure of the $3.5 million on the trail restoration in compliance with the 2012 bond ordinance?

Melinda Stockmann: Yes, it’s in compliance with the ordinance.

Commissioner McDonnell: On the community voices and the conclusion that there was general acceptance of the four priority areas, more specifically was there general acceptance of the trails portion and elements, whether that was width, number of closures, what was the ‘community sentiment’ around that.

Melinda Stockmann: Thank you Commissioner McDonnell. As I mentioned we had three main outreach events, the final one was in June and we presented the four priority project areas to the community. We also presented the organizing framework. At that time, we had not yet developed the trail width standards. We started talking about those later in the summer. We received an uptick in questions and concerns predominantly via email and also we just found a lot of conversation on social media that we tapped into that wasn’t reached out to us directly. Basically, when we talked about the trail width we had a site walk with a dozen McLaren Park collaborative and other stakeholder users and then we put the fact sheet together.

So I think what you’re hearing today is likely in combination with the letters we’ve received as part of your packet is representative of the split. I think we have a lot of folks supporting the trail width. We have some vocal folks who have a lot of resources to dedicate who are not in support of the trail width.

Commissioner McDonnell: One more question in regard to the trails. On the point of closures how many, what’s the net as a result if that in fact happens and recognizing to Commissioner Anderson’s point we aren’t there yet.

Melinda Stockmann: That is a reasonable question and that is the message that I’ve been sharing with the community that the map we’re showing is the proposed framework. We’re not hiding behind anything. At our June community meeting I think the last question that was asked was if a trail is not on here does that mean it may be closed and we said yes. Since then we’ve made several adjustments to the map so maybe the overhead quickly just to show. At our June meeting we made several adjustments to the framework map based on feedback we had got at the April community workshop. Some of these were based on community input and some were based on our trails team getting more information. We took these slides and showed them point by point to the community.

In addition to that I believe that some of the confusion around our trail network was caused by our own graphic errors, so I want to be upfront about that. For example, in the area above the upper reservoir between the group picnic area and Shelley Drive we worked with volunteers some years back there to do a more sustainable reroute of the landscape architecture team that we worked with didn’t catch that and so we went through again point by point and made additional adjustments and we have shared with the community that our map is diagrammatic, it’s our best effort at this point and we committed to continuing to hone in on the design. One of the reasons that’s hard to quantify numbers is that some of the trails on maps being circulated were not designed or built by Recreation and Park and we just don’t have really good survey data so once we move forward into concept design we’ll be able to get topographical surveys for some of these areas and look better at the slope and other conditions.

Commissioner McDonnell: One last question. The statement we thought it was a community process but it felt like a selling of a plan, what’s your response to that?

Melinda Stockmann: I’m disheartened to hear that and surprised. I have been spending a lot of my time on this project reaching out to provide additional information for people and to make process commitments as well and again I’ve been trying really hard to think of McLaren Park as the city gem and we have also passionate park users and it’s difficult to come to a consensus and we’ve tried to find a balanced solution and we will continue to try to do that.

Commissioner McDonnell: Again, I want to maybe this is an underscore or bold and then circle we are being consistent with bond ordinance by working to implement bond report and the resources therefore being used are appropriate, therefore no bait and switch, yes?

Melinda Stockmann: Yes.

Commissioner McDonnell: Very good. And then sidebar but related I got some concerns expressed by some in community around the Let'sPlaySF! initiative and the failing playground work that many of us worked hard to ensure that it would happen and that because it wasn’t seen in the vision plan some fear or are concerned that work was lost. I don’t believe it to be the case but again because it’s all in McLaren Park and now you see this big grand plan around McLaren Park and when you turn the pages you don’t see the Let'sPlaySF! initiative body of work. Can you just confirm that both are still true?

Phil Ginsburg: Yes, both are still true and I think it probably does make sense going forward to demarcate where the Let'sPlaySF! work is happening. The Let'sPlaySF! project was on the consent calendar today.

Commissioner McDonnell: Yes, I know that. I appreciate that. Very good. And then so lastly just a couple of comments. So I would go back to where staff began which is from my perspective a moment of celebration because this is a park in our system that has long been neglected for a whole bunch of reasons. I would also candidly underscore some of Ace Washington’s comments that it is unfortunate—I am absolutely glad we’re here and at the same time it is unfortunate that it has taken so long to get here and as a result many who were in the community and who could have benefitted from this amazing opportunity aren’t and can’t and won’t, that is unfortunate. I personally experienced the same thing in the Fillmore. My park sat all my youth and now it’s one of our best parks in the system. That is fantastic and sad at the same time but we’re making progress and so that part I do celebrate.

Also, our efforts around renovation of our parks, every one of our parks always have the same or similar dynamics which is the incredible challenge of finding the right balance of interest groups where McLaren Park is concerned between wild and don’t touch it and programmed so everybody loves it. There is the challenge between neighborhood, there are some who still feel like the part of McLaren Park that is nearest them is their neighborhood park and so thank you very much, don’t touch it. Which again has some merit and a valid perspective. And so I do believe that this plan does a good job or both recognizing those competing interests and the challenges and lands in a really good place. I often when I am reviewing out board packet and in each of the items in addition to the content of it I go to the end of it because at the end of all our reports it says who opposes it and who supports it. I am most concerned when any one of those categories is empty and it is often that—well, wait, no one opposed this? Really? Did we do the kind of outreach because we’re in San Francisco, there is always someone who opposes the plan and I always want to be sure we’re hearing all those voices and can duly hear them and consider them. So that was a long way of saying thank you for what I know what a lot of hard work and outreach and ensuring that while there may be a prevailing room in the collective process we’ve heard as many varied voices as possible and therefore I feel like we’ve landed in a good place, thank you.

Commissioner Bonilla: I actually live by McLaren Park and I’ve lived there I want to say over 30 years. During that time I’ve been hearing all the comments that have been made about the park and the fact that it’s unsafe, that it has not had many investments in terms of resources in improving the park, that it’s inaccessible. I’ve heard that oftentimes. So I’m really appreciative that we finally have a plan to do some work there because I really think it’s long overdue. I think it will be much of what will be accomplished, I think will be greatly appreciated by most of my neighbors, by the people that live in that District. And so I’m totally in support of these improvements.

Having said that, I think that when I read my packet and I read all of the comments in the words of the participants that were noted, some of them were not as legible but I did take the time to read all of the individual comments but it came across to me in reading those comments very loud and clear that people want to keep that area as natural and undeveloped as possible so I think we want to really take that very seriously and we need to consider that every step of the way in planning this project.

I had one question that came up in terms of maintenance, after we’ve made all these improvements what will the maintenance plan consist of? Because oftentimes what happens is that we do all these grandiose things, we make all these improvements but we don’t make sure that we have a plan and resources to maintain them. So I’d like to hear a little bit about that.

Phil Ginsburg: I’ll tackle that one. I am actually very proud of the Department’s park maintenance work. Obviously, resources for parks not just in San Francisco but all across the country urban park systems we need the public, we fight over five-foot trails versus three-foot trails but we’re all together about investment for parks and Proposition B was something that provided stability, did not provide a ton of new money but at least provided some stability for us. There’s been talk about what our current staffing ratios are in McLaren Park, we’ve been able to increase them considerably since the days of three gardeners. I think we have 12, 13, 14 staffers in different classifications working in McLaren Park which is actually pretty comparable to the maintenance program and the parks are not the same but Golden Gate Park being four times the size they are ratios. And they have different needs in part because there is so much wildness and natural resource and less formal landscape in McLaren Park.

But whether it’s through Proposition B, whether through our apprentice programs, whether through Project Lifecycle which is more focused on developing preventative maintenance cycles for hard assets as opposed to landscape there’s been a lot of progress and a lot of work happening on the maintenance side and I think that the Controller’s Park maintenance scores reflect that. You’ll see those in December. So I’m pretty confident. We’re never going to have as much as we need and we can always do but I’m quite confident in the Department’s ability to steward the assets it has.

Commissioner Anderson: I want to close by thanking all the people who came out from the community to speak on this. I know it’s hard to take time out during a workday. Finally, I want to commend the work of Sean and Fran for the wonderful work that you’re doing with the young people in the communities. It’s really amazing what you’re doing. As a mother of a 22-year-old and a 20-year-old who raised my children in all of the parks and I also invest in mentorship programs and things like that, what you’re doing it critical to our community. We would be lost without you and I personally thank you.

Commissioner Buell: Thanks. I appreciate all the enthusiasm of the audience. We try and minimize the expressions of support or otherwise.

On motion by Commissioner Low and duly seconded, the following resolution was unanimously adopted: RES. NO. 1711-010 RESOLVED, That this Commission does approve $8.9 million in proposed expenditures from the 2012 San Francisco Clean and Safe Neighborhood Parks Bond for McLaren Park and authorize staff to proceed with design development and environmental review for projects included in the McLaren Park Vision Plan.

230 7TH STREET SHADOW ON HOWARD AND LANGTON MINIPARK COMMUNITY GARDENS Yael Golan: Good afternoon. I’m joined by Kimberly Durante from the Planning Department. The item before you today is 230 7th Street shadow on Howard and Langton Minipark Community Garden.

Planning Code Section 295 was adopted in 1985. In 1989 the Recreation and Park Commission and Planning Commission jointly adopted a memorandum which identified quantitative and qualitative criteria for determinations of significant shadows on parks under the jurisdiction of Recreation and Park Department. The 1989 Memo provides guidance that parks under two acres already shaded 20 percent or more should not receive any new additional shadow. Qualitative criteria are provided to inform evaluation of the significance of new shadow. The project site is located at 230 7th Street in the western SOMA neighborhood. The neighborhood is characterized by a variety of commercial office, residential, hotel and light industrial uses. Existing structures are generally two to three stories tall with few four and five-story residential buildings on Langton and Howards. The project site is currently used as a paid public parking garage. This is an image of the north elevation of the proposed project on 7th Street. Kimberly Durante from the Planning Department will now tell you about the proposed project, the public benefits and environmental review.

Kimberly Durante: The project site is a through-lot located on the south side of 7th Street between Howard and Folsom on Assessor’s block 3730, lot 004, in the South of Market neighborhood. The site has approximately 75 feet of frontage on both 7th Street and Langton Street. The subject parcel measures approximately 12,375 square feet and is currently occupied by a two-story, 14,230 square foot industrial building. The proposed project will demolish the existing parking garage structure and allow for new construction of a 6-story, 65-foot tall, 44,722 square foot mixed use residential building with 40 dwelling units and 2,012 square feet of ground floor commercial space. There will be 20 off-street automobile parking spaces and 40 Class 1 bicycle parking and 8 Class 2 bicycle parking spaces. The proposed project provided a total of approximately 4,100 square feet of usable open space for the residents.

On September 26, 2017, the Planning Department reviewed and issued a community plan exemption under CEQA Number 15183 and it has been thoroughly evaluated under the Eastern Neighborhoods EIR plan.

Further, through that environmental review process and historic preservation review the project has changed significantly from when we first got it at the Planning Department. The original proposal had two building, one on Langton Street and one on 7th Street and through that review process the project now is as proposed with one and shadow impact prior were greater than the currently proposed project which is just one building on 7th Street with a rear yard setback while retaining the historic façade of the existing garage building on Langton.

This item is scheduled for hearing on November 30 by the Planning Commission and we will appreciate your recommendation. If you have any questions I’m available, thank you.

Yael Golan: Howard and Langton is a .23 acre community garden located on the corner of Howard and Langton Streets. The park’s entire area is dedicated to a 40-plot community garden. Access to the park is reserved for community garden members with the exception of seasonal open garden days and requires a key. Recreation and Park staff reports about 80 people hold keys to the park. Park features include pathways, planter beds, seating areas, a tool shed and a chicken coop.

New shadow will occur in the mornings between 6:47 a.m. and 8:55 a.m. from February 15 through October 25. New shadows will be present for up to 130 minutes throughout the year with an average daily duration of 78 minutes. The size of the shadow ranges up to 4,042 square feet covering a maximum of nearly 40 percent of the park area on the day of maximum duration. Depending on the time of year the new shadow will shade different areas of the park. The southern half of the park will be shaded in the summer solstice reaching approximately half of the garden plots on the day of maximum shading. The northern and eastern portions of the park will be shaded during the spring and fall equinoxes, shading about one-third of the plots. All new shadow will leave the park by 9:00 a.m. The proposed project will increase the shadow load 1.53 percent to a total of 50.38 percent. Here is an image of the maximum day of shading occurring on August 16. The size of the maximal shadow on this day at 8:00 a.m. is 4,042 square feet.

The shadow study also analyzed new shadows cast by other projects in the development pipeline and the foreseeable future. Cumulative shadow analysis performed for these projects determine they will add an additional .09 percent of total annual available sunlight to a total of 1.62 percent. This image shows the proposed shadow in purple and cumulative project shadows in orange. Overlapping shadows are shown in brown.

To summarize, Howard and Langton minipark is a .23 acre community garden. Existing shadow load is 48.86 percent. The proposed project will increase shadow load by 1.53 percent to a total of 50.38 percent. All new shadow will leave the park by 9:00 a.m.

This concludes my presentation on the 230 7th Street shadow impact on Howard and Langton minipark community garden. We are available for questions, thank you.

J.C. Wallace: Support. Good afternoon Commissioners, thank you. I wanted to give a couple of highlights that were not mentioned in the staff report. I am the founder of Horax Partners, the project sponsor. You’ve seen the site plan, the location of the project vis-a-vis the Howard Langton Community Garden. A couple of highlights, as was mentioned it’s a 6-story building fronting 7th Street. We significantly redesigned the project over the last years with input from Planning and Recreation and Park to push the project towards 7th Street, reducing the shadow significantly on the park. It is 40 residential units. This redesign reduced the number of units from 44 units to 40. We also reduced the number of parking stalls from 29 to 20. I think most importantly from the park’s perspective the reduction was about 22 percent in the shadow impact and the latest shadow is now before 9:00 a.m. whereas it was close to 9:45 a.m. with the previous massing of the project. This is a graphic showing the change with the elimination of the 4-story Langton building and pushing back the project towards 7th Street. This is a rendering of the new pedestrian and cyclist entry on Langton Street where we’re preserving the historic façade. It’s activating the street further, it will be lit at night and most importantly from the community garden’s perspective is significantly improving safety and cleanliness on the street. We’ve had many meetings with the community both the garden who is supportive and has endorsed the project as you have seen the letter in your packet and from other neighbors on Langton Street. I wanted to highlight a couple of other things related to the garden. Again, the community garden has endorsed the project. We’ve met with them over half a dozen times, worked very closely on this, we have committed to making financial contribution to the community garden through their fiscal sponsor. They have expressed how safety and cleanliness on the street is a big concern. We actually think our project will, if anything, improve the experience both for the garden and the neighborhood by having more eyes and ears and activity.

Brian Wickenheiser: Support. Thank you for letting me speak. I’m representing the committee that was formed at the Howard Langton community garden to address shadow issues with the 230 7th Street building project. We’ve met a number of times with representatives of the building project and with the redesign with the taller portion of the building moved off of Langton onto 7th addresses concerns of incremental shadow in the early hours during a portion of the year for the Howard Langton community garden members. Additional foot traffic on Langton with additional night lighting will help make this alley street safer for garden members and the community. Thank you for working with us to consider issues that affect the community gardens and our growing vibrant city.

Alex: Support. I’m a resident on Langton Street and I’m here to support the new building. I’ve lived on Langton Street for about seven years and I was a member of the community garden a while ago, not a current member. I do think the plans now address the issue with the shadow which is the main concern, but I’m also very concerned about the safety and cleanliness of the street. Right now, the community gardens is a nexus for drug use, drug sales, people passed out all day long and unfortunately the city is not addressing it and cleaning up the needles and feces. I think a new development that comes onto Langton Street with a pedestrian entrance there will bring more eyes and ears hopefully, have people report and have this area cleaned up because right now it’s really a blight on the community and not a great place.

Commissioner Low: What is the amount of the financial contribution and where is it going?

J.C. Wallace: We’ve made a commitment of $12,000 that goes through Parks Alliance for the benefit of the community gardens.

Commissioner Low: What are those funds going to be used for?

J.C. Wallace: It is fully at the discretion of the community gardens. We’ve engaged in conversations about whether we would do a project for them and the conversations with the sub-committee that was formed was really that they should decide what it’s used for, they control the funds. There’s precedent for this. The Trinity Projects had made a contribution a few years back related to their shadow on the garden and it was done through the Parks Alliance.

Commissioner Low: Is there a way that we can assure those funds are used for the community gardens through Parks Alliance?

Phil Ginsburg: I might have missed that, the funds are not being donated to the San Francisco Recreation and Park.

Commissioner Low: No, it’s going to the Parks Alliance but how do we assure that those funds are actually going into the community gardens?

Phil Ginsburg: Oftentimes donations are used for very restricted and focused purposes so the donation should be for the purpose of supporting the community gardens.

Commissioner Buell: Can we make it part of the approval?

Phil Ginsburg: I’m not sure I would advise that.

Commissioner Buell: We have a representative of the City Attorney’s here.

J.C. Wallace: We’ve actually signed an agreement with the committee of the garden people including their treasurer saying we would make this to the Parks Alliance on behalf of them. We’ve provided that to staff. My understanding is there’s precedent. I’m not an attorney but we have an agreement that both parties have signed.

Phil Ginsburg: Let me clarify. When these issues are before you the support to the community gardens group is something that happens outside of the purview of your shadow analysis.

Commissioner Low: I understand that. I just want to make sure that money is actually going into the garden.

Phil Ginsburg: So that would be left to the developer, the Parks Alliance, and the community gardens folks to actually reach an agreement on what the uses are for and then even within the community gardens there are programmatic uses and capital uses. The only thing I would add, should there be any physical change to the structure, any construction or capital type project then we would like all our partnership projects get involved. But if it’s for programming or staff or events or whatever then that is between the Parks Alliance, the community gardens and the developer.

Commissioner Low: This matter came before the Capital Committee and my struggle with this one is that where there’s a shadow on a park that’s less than two acres that already has a 47 percent shadow load the 1989 Memo tells us that there should be no additional shadow. That’s usually where I stop my analysis and would probably say that no further shadow should be allowed on this community garden.

However, the nature of this park is really a community gardens that’s closed to 80 members. You can only get in there with a key that opens the lock. I tried to walk by there, I couldn’t get in because it’s a closed garden. By that nature if the community gardens folks don’t mind the shadow can we get into that qualitative analysis under the 1989 Memo? Under a normal park that’s opened to the public I would say no. But given the nature of the park that’s where the users and I presume the chickens in the chicken coop support that additional shadow then I would allow this to move forward and make a determination that the additional shadow cast on this community gardens will not have a significant impact.

On motion by Commissioner Low and duly seconded, the Commission unanimously adopted the attached Resolution Number 1711-011 titled “ RESOLUTION RECOMMENDING TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION THAT THE NET NEW SHADOW CAST BY THE PROPOSED PROJECT AT 230 SEVENTH STREET WILL NOT HAVE A SIGNIFICANT ADVERSE IMPACT ON THE USE OF HOWARD & LANGTON MINI PARK COMMUNITY GARDEN, AS REQUIRED BY PLANNING CODE SECTION 295 (THE SUNLIGHT ORDINANCE).”

GOLDEN GATE PARK CONSERVATORY OF FLOWERS Dana Ketcham: I am the director of Property Management. I’m here to present to you a discussion and possible action to authorize the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers acting through the Parks Alliance to place a temporary art installation of lighting from December 7 to June 1 on the Conservatory of Flowers. As many of you know we had an incredibly successful lighting of the Conservatory of Flowers with the summer of love theme that you approved with an awesome opening event. It was incredibly popular with many people coming each night to enjoy the show and the park. Since the installation daytime visits at the Conservatory of Flowers are up 41 percent and membership has increased 20 percent. The Conservatory of Flowers has been working again with Obscura to develop a new theme based again on love and the seasons and flowers. I have an overhead here that gives you a little bit of a glimpse of what we are proposing to have come. The lighting will open as Phil described on the same day and will run by June 1.

Katie Strange: Support. So we’re here to speak in support of this art installation. It’s hard to say no to something so beautiful. As partners of the Conservatory of Flowers we’re excited for the winter version of the summer of love and it was such a huge success. I don’t know if you guys were able to make it but as Dana mentioned the Conservatory of Flowers has really benefitted from the installation itself in terms of membership and attendance which is great to see and bringing out people to the parks especially in the evening for a nice family friendly fun activity. We support this and hope to see you guys there on December 7.

Phil Ginsburg: I wanted to follow up on Katie’s point. This is probably the best opportunity we have to do a quick reflection on the lighting installation during the summer of love. Since it went live on the summer solstice on June 21 daytime visits at the Conservatory of Flowers are up 41 percent, membership has increased 20 percent and we’re seeing real energy and attraction at the Conservatory of Flowers as a result. The goal here is to keep it going.

Commissioner Buell: Makes one wonder if you put lights on the zoo or wherever else.

Commissioner McDonnell: I find it interesting that nighttime lights are driving daytime visiting when you can’t see the lights but whatever works. I’m happy to move approval.

On motion by Commissioner McDonnell and duly seconded, the following resolution was unanimously adopted: RES. NO. 1711-012 RESOLVED, That this Commission does authorize the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, acting through the San Francisco Parks Alliance, its fiscal sponsor, to place a temporary art installation of lighting from December 7, 2017 to June 1, 2018 at the Conservatory of Flowers.

GENEVA POWER HOUSE IMPROVEMENTS AWARD OF CONTRACT Reem Assaf: I’m a project manager with the Capital Division and today is a request to award the contract for the Geneva Car Barn and Powerhouse Project Phase 1. As you might know we’ve been working on the design and funding for the Geneva car barn since 2010, a very long time. We received our permit earlier this summer and put the project out to bid in mid-September.

The project scope encompasses hazardous materials remediation, seismic stabilization, some sidewalk improvements, accessibility improvements, improved entrances, a new roof, restored windows, mechanical and electrical systems, new structural radiant heating and most importantly when we are done it will be a community space for arts and enrichment programming. With assistance of the Department of Public Works, the Department held their first prequalification round for contractors in which five general contractors applied and were approved. The Department advertised the project for those prequalified contractors and received only one bid proposal on October 25, 2017.

The bid was submitted by Roebuck Construction in the amount of $8,252,300 base bid with an additive alternate of $15,000. In total for $8,267,300. Now, the base bid was $1,930,840 above the project engineer’s estimate which was set at $6,321,460. Now, there’s several reasons for the high bid. One is we’re an incredibly impacted construction market. There is a limited and overloaded LBE subcontractor market and there’s space constraints with the site and its relationship with the MTA rail yard that will provide additional construction complications.

So, based on these reasons staff does not believe rebidding this project would result in a lower bid and so the review has been completed and the Department now recommends approval to award the contract.

Jim Salinas: I hope that as we deliberate these types of contracts and I appreciate the fact that we have two labor representatives here and Roebuck is a union general contractor but local hire should be very important to the volunteer citizens on this panel. These projects actually offer oftentimes an opportunity to bring in young brothers and sisters from the black and the brown community and as one of the brothers spoke earlier we’re now at a point in San Francisco where we have three percent African Americans. That’s not the city I grew up in. And so you are all in a perfect position to make a difference as you obviously make decisions on quality of life issues. But there’s one other added benefit you can bring to the community and that’s those jobs so as we deliberate on those things I’m not sure there was at one time a contracts committee on this Commission where those things were vetted and I hope that it’s still in place so thank you for your consideration.

Commissioner McDonnell: Just a question related to that last comment in terms of local hire and how that will play out.

Reem Assaf: The city does have local hire and small business enterprise requirements and this project did follow within those guidelines and Roebuck did comply.

Commissioner McDonnell: When we enter into contracts don’t we have the first source hiring ordinance also?

Reem Assaf: Correct.

On motion by Commissioner McDonnell and duly seconded the following resolution was unanimously adopted; RES. NO. 1711-013 RESOLVED, That this Commission does award a contract to Roebuck Construction in the amount of $8,267,300 for the construction of Geneva Powerhouse Improvements.

JUSTIN HERMAN PLAZA Commissioner Buell: Let me make a comment going into this. One, at the last meeting I feel somewhat responsible for the confusion around the vote. I knew that Commissioner McDonnell had made an expression of his sentiments before he left and I think I conveyed erroneously and inappropriately to the acting secretary that the voted should be recorded. So I apologize to all those concerned.

Now, let me say that the item before us came from the Board of Supervisors as an 11-to-nothing vote asking this Commission to remove a name and replace it with its original name of Embarcadero Plaza. So what is before us does not have a staff report or recommendation per se because it comes from the Board of Supervisors and, two, we are not entertaining as part of this action renaming it anything other than Embarcadero Plaza if that’s the wish of this Commission. So I just want to frame this and say that we also heard a great deal of testimony and comments at the last meeting and so what we’re really doing is trying to correct the voting record here today. With that, please proceed.

Ace Washington: Support. I really accept your apology Commissioner because as others were here at the long meeting we thought everything was—after my further research with the secretary, the City Attorney, and McDonnell I didn’t see anything wrong. The only thing I seen wrong was that it had greasers to find out who was assigned here. Well in my opinion who was at fault? I guess the City Attorney’s. I’ve been through all kind of Commissioners meetings, there’s always City Attorneys there. I’ve run to the City Attorney several times. Ace, what do you want? I said man you all made a big boo-boo. Well then, let me just say this, I’ve only got two minutes and it’s ridiculous I have to stay here but I’m hoping and praying that we’re going to put together a committee because I know this process is just to remove that name but there’s another process on selecting the name to go on there. See, that is a process that I don’t want no flaws, I don’t want no mistakes. We want a fair chance to rename the thing. Now, everybody is up here trying to put this name, that name. I’ve got a bombshell I’m going to drop right now, let’s name it Barack Obama because that way there will be no challenges, there will be no denial, we get the Federal Government, State Government and then after that you can put everything else under there. That is my proposal. My name is Ace I’m on the case.

Veronica Garcia: Support. I’m hungry so I can only imagine how you all are feeling. I’ll be brief. I’m from the San Francisco Human Rights Commission on behalf of our Executive Director Sheryl Davis she was not able to be here she just wanted to confirm that you all received the letter from the Commission and if not I have copies but just wanted to emphasize that the letter has concerns from the community related to the name.

Jim Salinas: Support. I was admonished once, probably I will be admonished again. But I’m here not having known that this was on the agenda but Commissioners I’m here to plead with you and hopefully convince you that there should be two names for you to consider when you replace the original name. I would hope the names of Commissioners Leroy King who is the longest-serving city Commissioner and a lifetime member of the San Francisco Longshoreman’s Union would be put into consideration at some point as well as someone that served on this Commission, Commissioner Larry Martin who we recently lost was the president of the Transport Workers Union and served on the Recreation and Park Commission. Both of these brothers have long contributed to the well- being of this city and I would hope that as you move forward in the future those two names would be held in consideration. They both made such an impact, such a great difference for San Francisco.

Barbara Thompson: Support. I’m actually sharing the committee for David Johnson. I was here last time to speak so I want to say Mr. King and the other names that were mentioned, so please consider David Johnson.

Commissioner Anderson: Thank you Commissioner Buell. I wrote a statement because I want to be sure that I don’t forget anything really important. I’ve gone through a month-long discernment on this issue and I have reached out to a lot of people. As I reflect on this resolution before us I see it in two parts. The first part is to remove a name which many agree it’s time to do. The second part is to pick a new name and it’s that second part that I was focused on from the very beginning. San Francisco’s public parks and recreational are our most cherished of community treasures. They are like no other city’s parks and spaces, iconic, welcoming symbols that carve out our landscape and skyline attracting millions of visitors yearly to enjoy all our city has to offer. As stewards of these vital spaces we are committed to provide safe, clean, and accessible parks for our families, our children, coworkers and visitors from all around the world. All members of the public. As importantly the manner or terms by which those spaces are named can also reflect the highest values and aspirations of the community. In fact in this letter from Sheryl Davis the HRC supports the Board of Supervisors call for the plaza on the embarcadero to be named for an honored resident who embodies San Francisco values of equity, inclusion and forward thinking. On the topic of renaming this space I have engaged with the diversity of distinguished community leaders, residents, and advocates, regarding their keen longtime and even newly piqued interest in changing the name of the plaza, one of the most visible features of our public spaces and parks. Their expressed interests are clear, rename the plaza in honor of either a person or event that best reflects that values of diversity, inclusion and social progress for which San Francisco aspires and is best known. To that end I will vote to remove the current name of the plaza and I look forward to hearing more public comment about choosing a new name for this vital space and I’m looking forward to a broader discussion on public policy regarding how we name parks of portions of parks and open spaces. In other words, something that fosters a public process for respectfully hearing much need community input and ideas so that this plaza carries a name and symbolism in which we can all take pride and I heard three very awesome suggestions today.

Commissioner McDonnell: I would ask my apology as well since I caused the ruckus. This is such an important moment where the city takes a step forward and in some ways another moment of long-time coming. Maya Angelou said some time ago do the best you can until you know better and then do better. I feel like right now we are doing better.

Commissioner Bonilla: I voted in opposition and the reason is because frankly at the Board of Supervisors level and committee meetings prior to the Board of Supervisors discussion on this matter and because I did not see at our last Commission meeting I did not see much input from the community. There wasn’t really from my standpoint. I don’t think we really have deliberated sufficiently on this matter. If you look at the people that are here I know this matter was in the newspapers and I looked on the website to see additional comments that were being made and so on and it really—I mean I really didn’t see much—I didn’t see feedback. I didn’t really see or read many comments and so I saw that my thinking was that we really hadn’t deliberated on this and at the time I really the comments made by our esteemed President Mark Buell were in my mind persuasive enough for me not to want to rush to judgment and for me not to want to say that—or not to be involved in a process of singling out one individual during this whole era and pointing the finger or blame on this one individual and speaking and separating that out from looking at all of the people, all the powers that be, Board of Supervisors, City Managers, administrators, people who were involved in the construction of all these projects and spending thousands of hours I’m sure with commitment and passion with what they were doing. I mean I felt difficulty in doing that and I didn’t feel that was an appropriate role for me. So that is why I voted along with the President of the Commission whom I have total confidence, trust, and have no doubt in his leadership and so I felt that being the case that was the decision I needed to make and that is the same decision that I need to make now.

On motion by Commissioner McDonnell and duly seconded, the following resolution was adopted: RES. NO. 1711-014 RESOLVED, That this Commission does remove the name of Justin Herman from the plaza at The Embarcadero and Market Street, and to name the plaza the "Embarcadero Plaza" pending any further action by the Commission.

Ayes: Anderson, Harrison, Low, McDonnell Noes: Bonilla, Buell

GENERAL OBLIGATION BOND PROGRAM LESSONS LEARNED Dawn Kamalanathan: Commissioners, I think one of the things—today is my last day before I go on maternity leave for six months and so before I leave I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning up and putting context and next steps out there for both my team and colleagues in other Divisions. One of the things I wanted to do for the Commission before I left was reflect on the lessons learned from our 2000, 2008, and 2012 GO bond programs because we have a couple of big projects coming up over the next six months to a year and Toks Ajike will be acting in my stead will continue to keep you appraised but most notably the lifecycle project.

So we’ve been reflecting quite a bit about what it means to be entering what I’ve called the plan to plan phase for the next GO bond. So we’re not in the process of starting a public process yet but we are in the process of getting ready for that and as part of that we actually took some time, the General Manager what did we learn from the past 15-plus years of implementation, what lessons are worth carrying forward, what are some changes we might want to make and so we wanted to just share that with you because as the lifecycle data continues to come in I think it’s going to raise new questions and it’s worth reflecting on the past a little bit to evaluate the choices that we have before us more clearly.

So quickly, I do think we have, particularly with the 2008 and 2012 programs, a real history of success at this point. There’s dozens and dozens of ribbons cuttings including one this afternoon so hopefully you can get your sandwich before you go to West Sunset, delivering on projects for communities and really meeting and managing expectations and then being able to deliver on them and one of the things I wanted to really talk about today was just connected that success as much as possible to I think the integrity of process and the due diligence that went into that. I think it’s very easy five or eight years later you’re at the ribbon cutting, it all looks great to just forget the kind of early discipline and tradeoffs that were necessary to get there.

So the main lesson of the 2000 bond, one of my staff found this article, is around managing expectations. So this is an article about the 2000 bond projects which the 2000 general obligation bond for parks just said $110 million for parks, that’s it, unlike today’s discussion about McLaren Park and the detail of what the bond ordinance said and what we were committing to the 2000 bond said $110 million for parks but not Golden Gate Park, that was it. Then it also set a up policy conversation that said we would pursue leveraged funding and we did actually, we got several hundred million dollars worth of additional funding that we leveraged against that $110 million but because the public had been promised a renovation of the entire system for those funds as we began to fall short and ran out of money essentially after not even completing what was deemed to be the first phase despite the fact that delivered man projects successfully the Department didn’t get any credit for that. What was left was a feeling of pretty sour grapes on the part of the public and stakeholders about all the other projects that they thought were in the pipeline and that now they would need to wait for until an undetermined future date.

This is just a timeline showing the history of GO bonds for the Recreation and Park Department. You can see in the 70s the light green means that they failed. There were a number of initiatives that tried to get off the ground and couldn’t and it’s really with the 2000 bond and then the creation of the city’s 10-year capital plan that we really start to see major successes and I think that’s been important for us is there’s been a balance of focus on neighborhood assets, regional assets, citywide assets, and as we move forward to 2019 we hope to continue that success.

So our first best practice I think for 2008 and 2012 - very comprehensive outreach process. We had a stakeholder working group of about 10-15 people that helped us really zoom in on the most important policy tradeoffs we needed to answer as a park system. In 2008 actually because of the feelings around 2000—and we were very lucky, if people had access to rotten tomatoes we would have been in a lot of trouble as we went into different rooms. There was a deep need for rebuilding trust and so we spent a lot of time talking about not just projects but what accountability measures we needed to adopt as a Department to demonstrate that we learned from past mistakes.

That working group helped us also frame choices that we brought to the broader community in a series of easily over 50 community meetings over the course of a year to get feedback on our proposal as well as engaging with policy makers the whole way as well to again try and develop a proposal that responded to people’s needs and I think one of the things that made that outreach process unique was that we really tried to combine an objective date- driven, quantitative perspective that made sure that squeaky wheels weren’t the only ones that carried the day but that there was actual objective condition assessment data and that’s what COMET was for us. It gave us assessment data on all of our major facilities with a local subjective conversation about values neighborhood to neighborhood and also what their local interests were based on their experience and current park user patterns and in every instance we tried to bring those two perspectives together at the same time and I think that was very powerful as kind of being both responsive but also balancing against let the strongest neighborhood association prevail.

We also in that community outreach process, we first got feedback on the criteria for project selection, then we went back with the projects and so we also were able to engage in a high-level conversation first and the project selection criteria we settled on were around seismic safety, condition of the asset itself, whether or not the asset was located in a high-needs, high density neighborhood and also the extent to which it had multiple features so it could serve as many user groups as possible and when you made that list and ranked all of our assets there were a couple of notable winners that rose to the top. Chinese Rec Center was number one on that list. It had a condition asset score that basically indicated that it absolutely needed to be replaced top to bottom. High needs community, served a lot of different types of uses and also had a seismic problem and so that made it number one and being able to have a conversation that was data-driven but also really resonated with users’ experience, no one ever argued with us about whether Chinese Rec needed to be replaced. It really allowed us to have some clear winners.

Another lesson is in 2008 the named neighborhood park projects as much as possible were full site renovations, what we would call curb to curb. I think Cabrillo, Fulton, these are both good examples. In 2012 in an effort to try and spread funding more broadly and try to capture even more votes we did partial site renovations. I think you have all seen I think the results of some of those choices. It’s a little counter intuitive, you think you’re spreading the money further but then it always comes back because now as you’re doing a partial site renovation you’ve made one part of the site look awesome and the other site looks worse than ever and it creates a real pressure for scope creep for us to solve all the other problems at the site because again in the community’s mind they’ve got this one shot, one community process to get as much as they can and then we’re in a scramble and again you’re delivering this great project but people can’t help but feel frustrated and so I think as much as possible going with curb to curb renovations you get these pretty spectacular makeover projects—Palega Recreation Center is another good example that everyone just feels like that’s a win.

The 2008 and 2012 bond programs also combined again a lot of specificity and accountability around named neighborhood park projects that the Department and the Board commit to delivering but it also has these citywide programs which have been really popular from Community Opportunity Fund to Let'sPlaySF! and that allowed us to balance again. We could have made a list of just 25 named projects, if you don’t get a project you’re kind of upset. So having a portion of the bond that is around named projects were again we can measure we’ve been successful or not in a clear way and then these citywide programs that allow for more flexibility and community participation and also allow the opportunity to spread the money even further across different projects. That’s been I think a successful approach as well that balance between the two.

We also built in multiple levels of contingency into the 2008 and 2012 budgets. At the project level we have design and construction contingencies, we also had a program contingency of like $5 million and then $6 million in 2012 and then also I think in 2008 what was a successful approach was there were reserves placed on some of the citywide programs that said you couldn’t spend the last dollars of certain citywide programs until the neighborhood park projects were delivered. So we couldn’t actually touch the last $800,000 of forestry or the last $1 million of Community Opportunity Fund until Mission Dolores was in contract. And that also was very helpful for us in that we ended up not needing that money because we were able to leverage other funding sources but knowing that was there as additional cushion was also helpful.

So those are kind of like the core best practices. I think we had consensus around and as we start to pivot to things that we would do differently or try and focus more on I think more contingency in reserve given the bidding market that we find ourselves in and also several of the other factors I’m going to go through. We want to continue our project level of program and bond level contingency reserve practices but also we’ve talked about this idea of a bid reserve and that conversation we’ve had good conversations about the need for that and ways that we could fund it and I think also having that outside the bond program is also really helpful because one of the things that’s toughest for constituents and policy makers is to set aside you know $10 million inside a bond program, it feels to people like you’re just wasting the opportunity, you have money just sitting there. Now even though we know there’s a high likelihood we’ll need those funds it makes it difficult to make the priority in the moment of the tradeoffs with the community members so thinking about ways that we can have reserves and contingencies that are outside of the bond ordinance I think is also something helpful.

To that our regulatory roadblocks have been significant on a number of our projects. There have been recent improvements and changes made to the way that City Planning staffs the preservation unit that I’m optimist will pay good dividends for our program but we learned the hard way on a number of projects that CEQA historic preservation permit appeals all ended up eating significantly into our project schedules even when we tried to get ahead of them and whether it’s Beach Chalet which does not require more description, George Christopher delayed a year around preservation discussion around the playground and also Alamo Square was stuck for over a year as well in a loop between Mayor’s Office of Disability, the Preservation Commission and the civic design review and there’s not really much you can do as an individual project manager where you’re in that spot except to continue to negotiate as assertively as possible but that does mean we have to think about the planning, the lead-up to getting to the design process with more flexibility and probably fewer explicit commitments because that planning process is where we get thrown the most curveballs.

I also think that deeper analysis of existing site conditions is worthwhile. The fact is a lot of times to find the problems that cost the most money on the backend it involves a fair amount of destructive testing which sometimes takes the facility offline so that’s a difficult thing to figure out how to plan for but one thing we’ve talked about internally is developing a risk matrix that basically said if the following risk factors are present at a site you may not know what the answer is but you’ve determined the factor is there you should increase the construction budget that you’ve planned on by a certain amount. A good example is do you know that there’s a stream at the site but you don’t’ know where it is, add 10 percent. Also soil conditions and like Mission Pool we had a lot of problems as we pulled back panels only to discover what was there. So that’s another tool I think we need to refine over the next year and hopefully the lifecycle analysis will help us do that.

Also, given the swings that we’ve seen project budgets from 2008 and 2012 to have a swing due to the bidding market or unforeseen site conditions of 10 percent on a $5 million project that’s somewhat solvable but when you get to these larger than $30 million projects which we have a number you want to be further down the road in terms of the design and CEQA process so that as soon as the ballot passes you can put it out to bid for your biggest projects so that isn’t a requirement but you should be as close to certainty as possible about what the true project budget will be and then be able to act on that so you don’t expose yourself to further risk over the lifetime of the program. So this is an example of Portsmouth Square which is moving forward and will hopefully complete design and we have a number of others that we’re moving towards that same goal but that’s important because on a $50 million program to have a 20 percent swing can mean the project has to stop. So we need to plan for that and think of that as well.

Lastly, I think we do need larger GO bonds, just looking at the 10-year capital plan when we started in 2008 we were the first GO bond in the city’s 10-year capital plan, no one knew if all the bonds were going to pass, we were the first test case and since then we’ve had all this good progress where each bond has passed but Recreation and Park has been frozen at the same more or less level of funding and when you just look at the 10-year capital plan’s own escalation figure if we were to escalate our $150 million base amount by those escalation numbers we should be at least at $200 million and I think arguably we have a good case for why we need more than that given the types of projects that we have outstanding. We have a number of pipeline projects that again are going to come in easily at over $30 million that are both neighborhood-serving but many times citywide serving and thinking about how we’re going to capture all of those projects within one GO bond or doing that on a five-year cycle I do think there needs to be some change in thinking about sizing and also what our Departmental and citywide goals are about how we want to set these priorities but this list alone comes in easily over $400 million. That doesn’t include anything for neighborhood parks of the other types of citywide programs we’ve had.

Our lifecycle schedule right now is we hope to come forward in January with a contract award for a new vendor who will go and complete assessment very similar to the one we did for COMET and that should yield a brand new data set sometime in the next six to eight months that you’ll be able to sort and analyze and evaluate the condition of assets relative to one another and we hope to share that information with you and we hope that it will also kind of continue in form not just bond planning but all our capital planning and be a helpful tool for philanthropic partnership.

Commissioner Buell: Thank you. This is a bigger, longer conversation and you caught us kind of at the end of a long meeting but I think it needs to be continued. We are enjoying an enormous amount of popularity with the public in my opinion because it’s because of people like you and the staff that are doing such a good job and the fact that the parks look good but the deferred problems and the big projects that need to be done call for extraordinary efforts. Thank you.

Commissioner McDonnell: I agree with that. Secondly, just a quick question, it was projects and programs not projects or programs right?

Dawn Kamalanathan: Yes.

Commissioner McDonnell: Just wanted to be clear. And then secondly on the shovel ready piece this is part of the to be continued conversation because what came to mind was there was kind of the investment in doing so like where would those resources come from to do that and then the community engagement process that’s involved. But again, to be continued.

Dawn Kamalanathan: A number of these projects have made significant progress already on those fronts because here’s other funding that’s been leveraged or like India basin we’ve gone through a tremendous amount of outreach for 900 Innes already.

Phil Ginsburg: I think that is from my perspective a principle which is the further projects are along going into the bond the better. That is not a hard and fast rule. There are reasons particular with respect to programs that we might not be shovel-ready on.

Commissioner Bonilla: I just wanted to ask the Peace Plaza which could be a significantly costly project for us to undertake where would that fit in?

Phil Ginsburg: You should not take that as the list of 2019 bond projects, it’s not even close. Lots of conversations about the Peace Plaza. It is an emerging priority and there are probably 25 other things that were not on Dawn’s slide that are emerging and I think Dawn was gentle as suggesting there were $400 million worth of projects on the list. The plaza is probably an expensive undertaking. There’s already been a considerable amount of community engagement and this all speaks to thinking through how we’re going to develop the next bond and at what size because there will have to be by definition some winners and losers here because we’re not going to be able to fit everything into the scope of the bond but we’re aware of the condition of the plaza.

Commissioner Bonilla: But at least it’s in the running here. I mean, it’s going to be considered.

Phil Ginsburg: Yes.

Commissioner Bonilla: Because the condition that it is in is untenable.

Phil Ginsburg: It is definitely on the list.

Commissioner McDonnell: Quickly, I don’t want to each lunch, I just want to sit and talk all day. This is another thank you, it’s really helpful to look back and learn and then go forward. We wish you well.

Dawn Kamalanathan: Thank you.

NEW BUSINESS/AGENDA SETTING Commissioner McDonnell: Can we name the moment of continuing the conversation we just touched on. Just wanted to be clear. [The shovel ready piece this is part of the to be continued conversation because what came to mind was there was kind of the investment in doing so like where would those resources come from to do that and then the community engagement process that’s involved.]

ADJOURNMENT

The Recreation and Park Commission meeting adjourned at 1:49 p.m. in memory of May Wong and Larry Martin. Respectfully submitted,

Margaret A. McArthur Commission Liaison

Attachment: Resolution Number 1711-011

RECREATION AND PARK COMMISSION City and County of San Francisco Resolution No. 1711-011

RESOLUTION RECOMMENDING TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION THAT THE NET NEW SHADOW CAST BY THE PROPOSED PROJECT AT 230 SEVENTH STREET WILL NOT HAVE A SIGNIFICANT ADVERSE IMPACT ON THE USE OF HOWARD & LANGTON MINI PARK COMMUNITY GARDEN, AS REQUIRED BY PLANNING CODE SECTION 295 (THE SUNLIGHT ORDINANCE).

WHEREAS, Under Planning Code Section 295, the Planning Commission may not approve a building permit application for a structure with a height of 40 feet or higher if the resulting shadow will have an adverse impact on property under the jurisdiction of, or designated for acquisition by, the Recreation and Park Commission, unless the Planning Commission, upon recommendation from the General Manager of the Recreation and Park Department in consultation with the Recreation and Park Commission, makes a determination that the shadow impact will not be significant; and

WHEREAS, the Recreation and Park Commission has jurisdiction over real property located on portions of lot 091 of Assessor’s Block 3730 in San Francisco known as Howard & Langton Mini Park Community Garden (“Howard & Langton”); and

WHEREAS, Oryx Partners, LLC, (“Project Sponsor”) proposes to demolish all but the rear wall of the existing parking garage structure and construct a six-story mixed-use building containing 40 residential units and approximately 2,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space (“Project”); and

WHEREAS, ESA analyzed the new shadow cast by the proposed Project on Howard & Langton and determined that the Theoretical Annual Available Sunlight (“TAAS”) for Howard & Langton is 38,025,265 square-foot hours (“sfh”). The amount of shadow currently cast on Howard & Langton by existing buildings constitutes 48.86% of the TAAS for the park. The additional shadow cast by the Project would constitute 1.53% of TAAS, bringing the total annual shading of Howard & Langton as a percentage of TAAS to 50.38%; and

WHEREAS, the Planning Department is responsible for conducting environmental review for the project. The Department completed a Community Plan Exemption (CPE) Checklist to evaluate whether the environmental impacts of the proposed project were addressed in the Programmatic Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) for the Western SOMA; and

WHEREAS, on September 26, 2017, The Planning Department determined that the proposed project would not result in new, significant environmental effects, or effects of greater severity than were already analyzed and disclosed in the Western SOMA PEIR; and

WHEREAS, the Project will provide the following public benefits to the City: 5 of the 40 proposed units will be below-market-rate units; the building’s historic Langton Street façade will be preserved; the project’s lower-level commercial spaces will help activate the street frontage to increase public safety; and WHEREAS, the Commission finds that the additional shadow cast by the Project will not have a significant adverse impact on the use of Howard & Langton Mini Park Community Garden for the following reasons: (1) All new shadow cast by the Project would occur in the early mornings with all shadows gone by no later than 9:00 am, thus the Project would not cast shadows during mid-day and early afternoon hours when the park has maximum sunlight exposure; (2) the duration of proposed Project-generated new shadow would vary throughout the year, with new shadow being present for a maximum of 130 minutes and an average of 78 minutes; (3) new shadow from Project would not be present throughout the year, with no new shadow cast on the park during the winter; (4) new shadow would only affect some areas of the park, including about half of the garden plots in the summer and about one third of the garden plots in the spring and fall; now therefore be it

RESOLVED, the Commission recommends that the Planning Commission find that the shadow cast by the proposed project at 320 Seventh Street will not have a significant adverse impact on the use of Howard & Langton Mini Park Community Garden, pursuant to Planning Code Section 295 (the Sunlight Ordinance); and

Adopted by the following vote:

Ayes 6 Noes 0 Absent 1

I hereby certify that the foregoing resolution was adopted at the Recreation and Park Commission meeting held on November 16, 2017.

Margaret A. McArthur, Commission Liaison