2.

President’s Announcements.

 

President Walker said that she was sure that everyone had read the newspaper about activities at DBI regarding the FBI and stated that she wanted to remind people that this is an ongoing investigation and the Building Inspection Commission (BIC) is not the proper jurisdiction to discuss it.  President Walker said that later on there was an item on the agenda to discuss the Grand Jury report and that would be an appropriate place to talk about the issues where the BIC does have jurisdiction around Departmental policy and Ethics.

President Walker said that in looking at the status of programs that the Commission had been focusing on such as the Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS), the hiring of employees and the computer system things seem to be moving along ahead of schedule.  President Walker stated that because of this in her mind she thought that it is probably time to move forward with doing the search for a permanent Director.  President Walker asked Commissioner Theriault to work between now and the next meeting on a schedule and a proposal of process for doing that.  President Walker said that she had been in contact with the search firm and Taras Madison followed up on the contract.

 

3.

Director’s Report.

• Valuation to date is $2.5 billon dollars compared to a valuation of $1.35 billon for last year.
• 98.5% of inspections are completed within 48 hours in building.
• 96% of inspections are completed within 48 hours in electrical.
• 98.5% of inspections are completed within 48 hours in plumbing. 

 

Ms. Lee stated that the Department was looking at ways to have consistency in the reporting of inspection turnaround times.  Ms. Lee explained that there are after hours special inspections that are typically done in downtown buildings that are occupied during the day; these are overtime hours, but are completely paid for by the customer. 

 

Commissioner Grubb asked if the Department tracked the response time on complaints that come to the Housing Division.  Ms. Lee said that those statistics were provided manually and said that she could provide that information.

 

President Walker said that she would like to see some sample data on permitting as the Commission hears a lot of complaints about how long it takes to get a permit.  President Walker said that she understood that permitting involves other departments such as Planning, but asked if DBI could provide an assessment on a sample project at a future meeting.  Ms. Lee said absolutely.  Ms. Lee said that she would provide information on the backlog and turnaround time on a monthly basis as well. 

 

Ms. Lee said that the Department had become more responsive to the customers and had recently hired four to eight new Engineers.  Commissioner Murphy asked Ms. Lee to report how many Engineers there are in the Department. Ms. Lee said that she would get the number for the Commissioners. 

 

d.  Update on Permit and Inspection Activity. 

 

Acting Director Lee reported that the revenue for the Department was $44.4M this past fiscal year, which exceeded the annual budget of $37.4M resulting in a $7M surplus for year-end.  Ms. Lee stated that these figures were important as the Department goes through the budget process as in the past couple of years DBI has been more ambitious about revenue projections.  Ms. Lee said that because of the budget process the City has scaled down DBI’s budget and as result the Department does not get what is needed expenditure-wise to address the work load.  Ms. Lee said that the Department is playing catch up and hopefully this issue would be resolved next year.  Ms. Lee reported that the inspection side of the revenue surplus is about $3.7M with the permit side being $2.6M.  Ms. Lee reminded the Commissioners that DBI has interest income of about $1M because of a deferred credit fund and the capital fund. 

 

Commissioner Grubb asked if the surplus stayed in the Department or if it would be raided.  Ms. Lee said that the money did not get raided, but DBI was very generous in supporting the Planning Department’s move so that DBI could occupy that space.  Ms. Lee stated that the City’s Administrative Cap went up over $700,000, which are the work orders to other departments.  Commissioner Grubb asked the Deputy City Attorney if the City was barred from raiding funds from the Building Department for general-purpose applications of those funds.  Deputy City Attorney John Malamut said that perhaps this issue could be addressed at another time.  Mr. Malamut said that he thought there were a lot of issues involved in how the surplus is used in expenditures and permit fee calculations and said that perhaps the Commission could to come back to this at a later date.  Commissioner Grubb stated that the Commission should take a look at this issue because if the Department is just generating more funds for the General Fund, he thought the money should stay and be spent in the Department or there should be fee reductions for the people that are paying these fees. 

 

President Walker said that the Department gets charged for administrative services from other departments and said that she has asked for a more specific list of these items as the Department gets billed for them.  President Walker said that this is something that the Commission should get a clear picture about and said that this issue could be on the agenda when the budget process comes up.

 

There was no public comment on these items.

 

4.

Public Comment:  The BIC will take public comment on matters within the Commission’s jurisdiction that are not part of this agenda.

 

Mr. Henry Karnilowitz made comment about a memorial service that was held for Building Inspector Joe Mabelitini a few weeks ago and said that it was unusual to go to a memorial service that was actually quite fun and still a tribute to Mr. Mabelitini.  Mr. Karnilowitz thanked Acting Director Lee for having more Structural Plan Checkers at the counter and said it was a great help. Mr. Karnilowitz thanked Electrical Inspector Ben Yee for his prompt service to a customer of Mr. Karnilowitz’s.

 

5.

Update on DBI’s Management Information Services’ (MIS) activities. [Acting Manager Steve Young]

Mr. Steve Young said that he would begin with a brief review of the projects that have brought DBI to this point of the Permit Tracking Project.  Mr. Young stated that Mr. Samuel Kwong, the Project Director, was on loan from DTIS and had successfully completed the DBI business case study, which provided the scope and requirements for the new Permit Tracking System (PTS).  Mr. Young reported that using the results of this study, Mr. Kwong offered the Request For Proposal (RFP) for Phase I of the overall PTS replacement project.  Mr. Young said that the Gartner Business Case Study and recommendations for business case reengineering resulting from that study provided for the scope in the Department’s Phase I; this scope would provide for the process reengineering and delivery of an Integrated Street Address Management System.  Mr. Young stated that the Phase I project status was now on schedule with the bid submittal date to be September 8, 2006; the delivery of the Street Address Management System is expected to be in May of 2007 and that would conclude that portion of Phase I. 

 

Mr. Young reported that DBI is now in the midst of Phase II, which is the refresh project to replace all computer systems.  Mr. Young said that this project is on schedule and full deployment is expected to be in late October.  Mr. Young stated that all of the Hewlett Packard (HP) servers and memory storage devices are on site, installed and being tested and run through its paces by the HP engineers.  Mr. Young said that the first shipment of desktop computers are being delivered and being configured for deployment in mid September and a completion date for probably sometime in November. 

 

Acting Director Lee spoke about the benefits of having the two Phases separated, as there is no perfect company that does both process reengineering as well as providing the actual system itself.  Ms. Lee said that the Department does not want to have a system purchased and implemented when DBI has not really made any changes internally about the processes.  Ms. Lee said that because the Department was separating the two Phases there will be a higher caliber of product at the end of the day and DBI will have the capability to make changes separate from the computer system. 

 

Ms. Lee reported that the Department is making changes to the website to provide more transparency in the information available to the public.   Ms. Lee said that she believed that the Department would be very successful because of separating the process reengineering from just the purchasing of a computer system. 

 

Mr. Young said that Sam Kwong had worked with Mr. Wyble who is the author of an in depth report that very much touted first steps of process reengineering.  Mr. Young said that DBI was looking at its own processes and correcting what needs to be corrected or streamlined; the process would then drive the product rather than buying an off the shelf system. Ms. Lee said that this was very important in San Francisco where there is a great deal of public input and because many of the processes are unique to San Francisco.  President Walker asked if there were going to be any public meetings.    Mr. Young said that in the reengineering process and the Request For Proposal (RFP) there is outreach to the development community and the end users.  Mr. Young said that the architectural community was involved in the preliminary outreach in developing that RFP as well as the Department’s users.  President Walker said that she went to San Jose with a group of people to look at their systems and said that she heard horror stories from other municipalities that have gone through this process.  President Walker said that these other municipalities indicated that when they started their process of reengineering their system, there were limited amounts of vendors who actually had the software or the experience in it, but now a lot more have cropped up.  President Walker stated that this had been a good and interesting educational process.  President Walker thanked Mr. Young for his report and for being ahead of schedule. 

 

Commissioner Murphy asked for the name of the company that would be doing the infrastructure.  Mr. Young said that it was On Point Technology and said that they are partnered with Hewlett Packard and Oracle.  Commissioner Hirsch said that Mr. Young had described the process that the Department was going through and asked if Mr. Young could fast forward to when this is all completed and tell what the installation and the final program will do.  Mr. Young said that the first stage with the refresh is initially providing for new technological infrastructure, meaning the desktop computers as well as addressing all the servers and the memory devices.  Mr. Young said this would put aside a foundation to when that is completed by the end of this calendar year, prior to the actual institution of any portions of the Permit Tracking System, there will be a sound foundation of the mechanics to be able to support that; this is the hardware portion in regards to the refresh. Mr. Young said that the Department is also updating the operating software to cutting edge technology, which is all of the data base management, which is based on Oracle.  Mr. Young stated that this foundation would allow the development through the business plan and the reengineering and then the development and implementation of a Permit Tracking System that is integrated not only with DBI’s system, but able to communicate with other departments on real time basis. Commissioner Hirsch asked if the software would be integrated with the Planning Department.  Mr. Young said that was correct.  Mr. Young said that information would be available to other departments and the general public that need it as a reference basis.  Acting Director Lee said that she had provided an in depth report several months ago that deals with questions, goals and what the overall plan is and said that she would provide another copy to the Commissioners. 

 

President Walker said that there was a later agenda item coming up where the Grand Jury talks about better data entry at the job site and having hand held units available.  Mr. Young said that the Department was expecting some recommendations to come out of the business process study and the actual reengineering. 

 

Commissioner Theriault said that he could see the logic of doing the reengineering process first and developing and purchasing the product to serve that process.  Commissioner Theriault asked if there were jurisdictions that had approached this task in the same way that DBI was doing.  Mr. Young said that there were many of the smaller jurisdictions that used this approach, but said that any comparisons would not be match for match for what DBI does.  Mr. Young said that San Jose used this approach, but had a lot more variable to put into what they ended up doing.  Mr. Young said that San Jose had their own people who could exclusively spend their time to particularly champion the project as well as to work with the developers to engineer it.

 

Commissioner Murphy asked if President Walker was impressed with San Jose’s set up.  President Walker said that she thought it worked for San Jose, but said that there is a difference in DBI’s set of criteria and said that San Jose also has a wonderful new building and have systems that incorporate with Planning a lot more cohesively.  President Walker stated that a lot of jurisdictions have Building Inspection and Planning together.  Acting Director Lee said that she would be looking at more jurisdictions such as Oakland, Nevada and Las Vegas. 

 

Acting Director Lee thanked Steve Young and Sam Kwong for all their hard work. 

 

6.

Discussion and possible action to draft a response to the Grand Jury Report. [President Debra Walker]

 

President Walker said that initially the Grand Jury Report was done in 2003 and a follow up report was done recently.  President Walker stated that everyone should be proud of the follow up report especially Interim Director Lee.  President Walker said that out of sixteen recommendations there were five that needed further attention and some of those have actually been acted upon.  President Walker asked to read into the record some of the results where several positive changes are occurring; these included:

• Upgrade of all the basic hardware to support new technology
• New training programs
• Improvement of coordination and communication with the Department and the Community
• As of April 2006, DBI has made substantial progress toward implementation of developing a bar code system to track permits and plans
• To address the recommendations not yet implemented, the new Acting Director is initiating a number of complex improvements simultaneously and in a comprehensive and proactive manner.

President Walker said that the report stated that the Grand Jury continues to have concerns related to the implementation of recommendations in the 2003 report, the new DBI Administration should be given a reasonable amount of time to make necessary changes. President Walker continued reading from the report stating that the Grand Jury commends the Acting Director for her professionalism, the progress she has made and her commitment to making DBI more transparent and effective.  President Walker stated that the Grand Jury still had a few items of concern including the Bar Coding System, purchasing equipment to allow DBI Inspectors to remotely enter data from the field, conducting random secondary field inspection and developing a strategic plan.

 

Commissioner Murphy asked about the random field inspections.  Acting Director Lee said that in a Controller’s report several years back it was indicated that it was difficult for the Department to measure the quality of work and the effectiveness of services so recommendations were made the DBI should conduct quality control inspections of line staff.  Ms. Lee said that this would involve senior staff going out once in a while to verify that the Inspectors are doing what they are supposed to be doing and doing it in the appropriate way.  Ms. Lee stated that these inspections were conducted after that report came out and the Department did a varied checklist from those inspections for each division whether it was building, plumbing, electrical, etc.  Ms. Lee said that unfortunately those inspections were kind of put on the wayside because of the priorities of the past administrations and because the Department was understaffed.  Ms. Lee said that she was working with Carla Johnson on this issue.  Ms. Lee stated that she had met with the Inspectors a few weeks ago to get their recommendations on how the Department could provide quality assurance and said that she would like feedback from the Commissioners as well. 

 

Commissioner Murphy said that this was another way of looking over the shoulders of the Inspectors out in the field who are trained to do their jobs and said that he did not think this would help morale.  Commissioner Murphy asked if the Senior was going to accompany the Inspector to do this spot check or was it something that would be done separately.  Ms. Lee said that the Senior would accompany the Inspector.  Commissioner Hirsch asked if this was random, without prior notification. 

 

Acting Deputy Director Carla Johnson said that in the past the Senior Inspectors did some of the inspections that their staff was unable to handle due to workloads.  Ms. Johnson said that the Senior Inspector could actually learn quite a lot about how a job was going by conducting these inspections and reviewing the paperwork.  Ms. Johnson said that inspecting a job after the District Inspector had done his inspection did not work because the Senior Inspector could not see how the Inspector interacted with the client or what instructions that Inspector gave to the contractor.  Ms. Johnson said that the Department was now looking at how to conduct these random inspections and said having the Senior Inspector ride along with new Inspectors develops a stronger relationship between the field Inspector and the Supervisor.  Ms. Johnson said that it helps the Department to identify areas that could be better addressed in training programs or in written policy interpretations so that everyone is operating on the same page.  Ms. Johnson stated that she was meeting with the Chiefs and the inspection services on a weekly basis and quality control spot check is one of the issues being discussed. 

 

Commissioner Murphy said that he was concerned about the Inspectors as they are competent and make decisions and said that he did not want somebody like a Senior Inspector overruling them all the time.  Commissioner Murphy said that he hears this complaint from out in the field.  Ms. Johnson said that she did not want to take away the Field Inspector’s empowerment.  Acting Director Lee said that she had spoken to the Inspectors and asked them for input on how the Department could meet the goals dictated by the Grand Jury and the Controller’s Office regarding quality control.  President Walker said that this issue plays into other recommendations from the Grand Jury of implementing a Code of Professional Conduct, as there is some issue of not being able to make decisions.  President Walker stated that the Grand Jury said in its report that there is favoritism and inappropriate decisions made out in the field by the Department of Building Inspection.  President Walker said that the Department had come up with a Code of Conduct and was working on a Statement of Incompatible Activities.

 

Acting Director Lee said that the Grand Jury provided DBI with a draft in early or late May and the Department issued a Code of Conduct in late June for staff so this item was still open when the Grand Jury sent their latest report.  Ms. Lee said that the Department has come up with a Code of Conduct, but unfortunately there are no disciplinary issues surrounding that mechanism. Ms. Lee said that the issue is really about the Statement of Incompatible Activities (SIA).  President Walker said that the SIA had been before the Commission a couple of times and had been before the Ethics Commission.  Ms. Lee said that the Department is trying to be respectfully of staff’s concerns, but unfortunately some of the issues that were raised might conflict with the very intent of what the Department is trying to do with the SIA.  Ms. Lee stated that just two weeks ago the Ethics Commission came back with yet another template; Ms. Lee said that she had already tried to have a meet and confer meeting but only one union representative showed up and the other union representatives said that they would be working directly with the Ethics Commission and Civil Service later on.  Ms. Lee said that it seems that this is top priority department, but said that her hands are tied, as there are so many delays. 

 

President Walker said that the Building Inspection Department is kind of a guinea pig in this whole Statement of Incompatibility format and said that one thing she spoke with the Ethics Commission and the Mayor’s Office about was to empower people t o make decisions.  President Walker stated that people need to know what the rules are, what the Codes are and be empowered to make those decisions as this is what Inspectors and Plan Checkers do. President Walker said that she was in the beginning conversations with the Ethics Commission who are very supportive of this kind of concept that maybe DBI could be a sort of test Department to use the services of the Ethics Commission in the form of some sort of ombudsman or counselor to come in for a while and live at DBI and work with staff to educate them about the ethics and activities.  President Walker said that she thought this would free up employees to make decisions a lot easier and more competently out in the field.  President Walker said that she wanted to say that she was having those conversations and said that she hoped to have something more concrete by the next meeting.  President Walker stated that the Ethics Commission did not have funding for this sort of training so there might be a situation where the departments that need this kind of training would actually pay for some of those services. 

 

Acting Director Lee said that after many discussions and meetings with the Grand Jury, the Grand Jury asked her to provide a report on some of the challenges that she thought were at the Department.  Ms. Lee said that one of the things she discussed with the Grand Jury in detail was empowering decision-making and the careful balance of negative focus on DBI staff.  Ms. Lee said that DBI is scrutinized to the point where if someone buys a DBI employee a cup of coffee or lunch it is misinterpreted as the employee giving up the permit process, whereas, in other departments people buy lunch and coffee all the time and there is no scrutiny or no allegations of corruption.  Ms. Lee said that she had been told by staff recently that until this latest FBI action people were just staring to feel comfortable with making decisions.  Ms. Lee stated that this Commission had done a fabulous job about not scrutinizing individuals about staff’s decision making, which was not the case with the last Commission.  Ms. Lee said that this helped ease staff’s concerns a little bit, but there are concerns.  President Walker asked if Acting Director Lee thought that having the Ethics Commission, as a presence in the Department would help.  Ms. Lee said that it would help a portion of it, but said that there are other things that need to be done.  Ms. Lee said that she had spoken to Laurence Kornfield of Technical about making sure that there is more consistency in Code interpretation. 

 

Commissioner Hirsch said that he wanted to make a few observations on inspections.  Commissioner Hirsch said that he sees at least two kinds of inspections; one being an inspection that spots violations of the Code where judgment is made in the field and the other is construction inspections where there is an approved set of drawings that have gone through Plan Check and the inspection determines whether the plans have been followed and said that in this case the judgment of the Field Inspector is rather limited.  Commissioner Hirsch said that this second type of inspection either matches what has been done or it goes back to Plan Check to see if changes that are made in the field are appropriate.  Commissioner Hirsch said that the Inspector has to see what is being done and see if it meets the drawings and not take it on their own to say that it deviates from the drawings, but that it is still going to happen. Commissioner Hirsch stated that he thought these were the two kinds of differences in independent judgments. 

 

President Walker said that situations have come before the Commission where the things that were approved were not necessarily correct.  Acting Director Lee said that it is more complex than just two kinds of permits because some people do not provide enough detail or the detailing is vague.  Commissioner Hirsch said that then the project should not get a permit.  Ms. Lee said that there has to be a careful balance because if that were the case the Department would not be issuing many permits.  Ms. Lee said that people make changes to the plans and sometimes it is because of field conditions where something was approvable, but then the contractor wants to do something different out in field.  Commissioner Hirsch said that he did not think that the Field Inspector was a designer.  Ms. Lee said absolutely not, but the Field Inspector certainly looks to DBI Management for guidance.  President Walker said that these are the things that make it a challenge and not just cut and dry out in the field.  President Walker stated that the Grand Jury has identified that the Department needs to find some way of empowering and providing whatever it is the Inspectors need out in the field.  President Walker said that she thought that would be training and ethical training so that people feel empowered and not paralyzed.  Ms. Lee said that there were many ways to deal with these problems and it was not just one cut and dry approach.  Ms. Lee said that staff needs to be confident and trained to make decisions because     at the end of the day everyone wants projects to be built and repaired and that is what the Department is all about.

 

Vice-President Lee said that he thought there should be a way to conduct random inspections that would not demoralize staff.  Acting Director Lee said that she had checked with other jurisdictions to see if there was any quality control spot checking and said that she could not find a jurisdiction doing that right now, but said that the Department would continue to look at the issue. 

 

Commissioner Theriault asked about the response to the Grand Jury and said that on this particular item regarding secondary inspections the Commission should respond that additional analysis would be required.  President Walker said that the Department and the Commission would both be responding to the comments of the Grand Jury and said that she would incorporate all of today’s discussion in the response. 

 

Commissioner Romero said that said that the Ethics Commission said that each department had to develop their own Code of Ethics, but said that the problem is that there are over forty departments that have been stipulated so there are going to be forty different Codes of Ethics.  Commissioner Romero stated that he did not think that this would work because there would be different standards for different departments.  Commissioner Romero said that he totally agreed that the Department of Building Inspection is under scrutiny where other departments are not.  Commissioner Romero said that he had seen the best of the best and the worst of the worst and said that many departments are very loose in the way they interpret the Code of Ethics.  Commissioner Romero said that he thought this Department does a very good job of the way it interprets its Code of Ethics and said that just because one or two things crop up and end up in the paper does not mean this does not occur in other departments.  Commissioner Romero said that the Department might want to suggest to the Ethics Commission that they get all of these departments together.  Acting Director Lee said that the first direction from the Ethics Commission was for each department to write their own Statement of Incompatible Activities so DBI did this, but then the Ethics Commission realized that the Codes for each department were inconsistent.  Ms. Lee said that DBI was commended at the Ethics Commission for its efforts on this issue.  Ms. Lee said that the Ethics Commission then decided to do a second template and are now working on a third. 

 

President Walker said that part of the problem is that the Ethics Commission is horribly under funded and this is a whole new thing.  Acting Director Lee said that she wanted to move forward with a Statement of Incompatibility for DBI as the Department was still working under a 1969 DPW version of Conflict of Interest. 

 

Commissioner Romero said that he did not agree with the fact that there is a problem because the Ethics Commission is under staffed.  Commissioner Romero said that if there are three different sets of directions from the same department then it means, in his mind, that there is no clear plan as to how a Code of Ethics is supposed to exist in many different departments across the City.  Commissioner Romeo stated that there needs to be clear direction from the Ethics Commission.  Commissioner Romero said that his union had mentioned that it is impossible to have forty different Codes of Ethics in the City as it creates a standard in this Department that is not going to have to apply in another department.  Commissioner Romero said that for example if an employee is dinged for one thing in the Department of Building Inspection and they are not in another department then the Director is going to be stuck constantly meeting with different labor unions on issues of enforcement.  President Walker said that the City is in the process of trying to standardize the Statement of Incompatible Activities, but said that she thought that each SIA would be particular to each department on how it plays out.  Acting Director Lee said that she had spoken to the Mayor’s Office and the Ethics Commission that the challenge with the SIA is implementation.  Ms. Lee said that she would have Secretary Aherne distribute the most recent copy of the Statement of Incompatibilities and asked that the Commission give her some feedback and comments.  Ms. Lee said that she would agree that it is unfair for DBI to be the guinea pig in this process and also that there are requirements for DBI employees that other departments do not have to subject their employees to.  Ms. Lee stated that she believed that the Ethics Commission was trying to have a policy on general things and then allow the departments to include their own concerns.  President Walker said that the Department and the Commission would continue to work on this issue. 

 

Commissioner Murphy said that he had a question that was directed more at the Housing Inspectors and asked if the Department had a program to teach Inspectors how to identify mold and mildew.  Acting Director Lee said that the Department has staff that is qualified in this field, but the Department has not trained other Inspectors about that.  Commissioner Murphy said that this seemed to be a big issue with Housing Inspectors who do not feel that they are qualified too make that call in the field.  Ms. Lee said that the Department could work on that.

 

Acting Director Lee said that she would provide a template from the Ethics Commission and a draft response and asked that the Commissioners get back to her with comments regarding the Statement of Incompatible Activities.

 

Ms. Lee said that she wanted to thank staff for moving forward and progressing with all of the improvements in the Department and said that changes were not going to be easy, but said that she was asking the public to be patient.

 

President Walker said that she would be doing the response to the Grand Jury, which was required within sixty days and would get copies to the Commissioners. 

 

7.

Review Commissioner’s Questions and Matters.

Vice-President Lee said that he had no inquiries, but said that he wanted to thank DBI staff that participated last Saturday in the District 3 cleanup.

 

b.  Future Meetings/Agendas.  At this time, the Commission may discuss and take action to set the date of a Special Meeting and/or determine those items that could be placed on the agenda of the next meeting and other future meetings of the Building Inspection Commission.

President Walker said that the next regular meeting was scheduled for August 21, 2006 and it was determined that due to vacations there would not be a quorum. Secretary Aherne said that the next meeting after that would be September 18, 2006 as September 4, 2006 was the Labor Day Holiday.  Commissioner Murphy stated that he would not be present on September 18, 2006.  President Walker said that there probably would not be a meeting at the beginning of October.  Secretary Aherne said that the Commissioners could let her know their schedules, as the dates got closer.

 

8.

Public Comment:  The BIC will take public comment on matters within the Commission’s jurisdiction that are not part of this agenda.

 

Mr. Henry Karnilowitz said that he was appalled by the turn of article in the Chronicle regarding the FBI raid at DBI where there was a presumption of guilt rather than innocence. Mr. Karnilowitz said that Augustine Fallay had been charged, but not been found guilty.  Mr. Karnilowitz stated that he understood there was supposed to be a hearing this month regarding Mr. Fallay and said that it had been continued until October.  Mr. Karnilowitz said that perhaps the FBI is having a problem to find enough evidence to make this case move forward.  Mr. Karnilowitz said that he looked forward to the day when Augustine Fallay would be vindicated and likewise DBI. 

 

Mr. Karnilowitz said that he wanted to speak on the matter Permit Expediters.  Mr. Karnilowitz said that Permit Expediters are not unique to San Francisco and are employed in jurisdictions around the country and around the world.  Mr. Karnilowitz spoke about the difficulties in getting a permit and said that Permit Expediters know how to put together a package in order to obtain permits for their clients.  Mr. Karnilowitz said that Permit Expediters respect the staff at DBI and have a good working relationship with staff.  Mr. Karnilowitz said that it is a shame to hear stories about Permit Expediters getting preferential treatment because it simply is not true.

 

9.

Adjournment.

 

Commissioner Theriault made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Grubb that the meeting be adjourned.  The motion carried unanimously.

 

RESOLUTION NO. BIC 045-06.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:25 p.m.

 

 

 

Respectfully Submitted,


______________________

Ann Marie Aherne
Commission Secretary