Okay.

Good afternoon.

This meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the July 20th, 2026 regular meeting of the Land Use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

I am Supervisor Mirna Melgar, Chair of the Committee joined by Vice Chair, Supervisor Cheyenne Chen, and Supervisor Bilal Mahmoud.

The committee clerk today is John Carroll.

And I would also like to thank Matthew Ignau and James Kawana with SEPGov TV for supporting us during this meeting.

Mr.

Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Please ensure that you've silenced your cell phones and other electronic devices you've brought with you into the chamber today.

If you have any documents to be included as part of any of today's files, you can submit them directly to me.

Public comment will be taken on each item on today's agenda.

When your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, please line up to speak along your right-hand side of this room.

Alternatively, you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways.

First, you may send your public comment to me uh via email at J-O-H-N, period C-A-R-R-O-L-L at SFGOV.org.

Or you may send your written comments via U.S.

Postal Service to our office in City Hall.

The address is the clerk's office, room 244 and City Hall's address is one Dr.

Carlton B.

Goodlit Place, San Francisco, California 94102.

If you submit public comment in writing, I will forward your comments to the members of this committee and also include your comments as part of the official file on which you are commenting.

Items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors agenda of July 28th, 2026, unless otherwise stated.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Clerk.

Please call item number one.

Agenda item number one is an ordinance amending the public works code to authorize the Department of Public Works to recover the city's costs for abating illegal dumping with uh through administrative enforcement proceedings against persons responsible for the illegal dumping and it also affirms the planning department's secret determination.

This item is on our agenda as a potential committee report and it may be sent to the Board of Supervisors for consideration tomorrow, July 21st, 2026.

Thank you so much.

And I do see Ramses uh here who's gonna uh present, but um I will turn it over to you, uh Supervisor.

Thank you for introducing this item.

Thank you, Chair Melgar, and thank you to the committee members for having me this afternoon.

This is uh one of our uh one of our ongoing efforts to try and provide conditions for cleaner streets in San Francisco.

And in particular, this piece of legislation allows us to pursue a cost recovery model for illegal dumping.

And let me unpack each of those.

Uh when I say illegal dumping, I'm of course not talking about someone uh littering a um a candy bar wrapper on the side of the street.

I am talking about much more calculated persistent conditions where we have maybe on the same corner, we have someone that is unloading uh the contents of their uh house every single week, or maybe we have on another corner someone who is unloading the contents of their construction vehicle and site.

Uh and um, you know, these are really large cleanups that require a lot of work from public works that can span hours and hours, uh, climb into the many thousands of dollars in terms of the time, labor, sometimes materials required for required for actually cleaning those up.

Um however, we are currently capped at a thousand dollar fine even for some of these larger uh larger uh debris and illegal dumping sites.

Um our legislation here simply allows us to pursue an administrative uh pathway to pursue cost recovery, so actually charging what it costs the city to clean up these sites.

Um we think this is a really good tool for public works to have.

Uh in conversations with public works, we've uh we've had a number of really good questions come forward, particularly thanks to you, thank you, Ramses, for uh all the questions you've asked about how exactly this works and how exactly we make sure that this uh goes beyond legislation is actually implemented successfully.

Um we've been having conversations about how we accurately uh tee up those cleanup costs and just more on the administrative clerical side, how we actually uh calculate all of this.

And I think um those that have been productive conversations um and they've also brought forward, you know, some of the some of the things that we need to do a better job of supporting you with Ramsey's the fact that you um are many uh positions down on your enforcement team and code enforcement team.

Um so that's something we intend to support you and work with the mayor's office on.

Um I should also mention that uh when I introduced this legislation a few months ago.

I also at the same time called for a hearing on a legal dumping enforcement so we can examine both this but just the the broader issue as well.

And I see um colleagues in the queue, so uh I'll leave it, I'll leave it there and I'm available for questions, and thank you again for hearing this item today.

Thank you, Supervisor Sauter.

Uh Supervisor Chen.

Thank you, Chair Malga.

Um San Francisco has an illegal dump problem, and I think this issue is not really new to us.

I hear it from my residents in my district as well, and I know that this is a persistent concern of residents throughout the city, even though officials have come back it for years.

City data continue to show illegal dumping continue to be a bin for residents.

I really want to express my appreciation uh to Supervisor Salter for exploring additional tools such as this one to address this problem.

I'm sure more potential operational question will come up, which will need to be adjusted to implement this legislation.

But my hope is that we can become an effective informant.

I hope is that this can become an effective uh enforcement to especially to target repeated offenders who cost the city a lot of money in enforcement expense expenses.

So I'll be voting in support.

Um thank you.