I'm Supervisor Joel Angario, Vice Chair of the Committee.

To my left is Supervisor Dorsey.

The clerk is Ms.

Monique Creighton.

Also, I'd like to thank uh Jamie Echever Echevery from SFGov TV for staffing this meeting.

Madam Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Yes, please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices documents to be included as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk.

Public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda.

When your item of interest comes up in public comment is called, please line up to speak on your right.

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

First, you may either email them to myself, the public safety and neighborhood services committee clerk at M O N I Q U E dot C R A Y T-O-N at sfgov.org.

Or you may submit your written comments via US Postal Service to our office in City Hall.

Number one, Dr.

Carlton Be Good Lit Place, Room 244, San Francisco, California 94102.

If you submit public comment in writing, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and also included as part of the official file in which you are commenting.

Finally, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors agenda of December 3rd, 2024, unless otherwise stated.

Before we begin today's meeting, I'd like to make a motion to excuse Supervisor Catherine Stephanie.

Yes, and on the motion to excuse uh Chair Stephanie, um Vice Chair Angardio.

I remember Dorsey.

Okay, I have uh two eyes with uh Chair Stephanie excused.

Okay.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the first item?

Yes, the first item is an ordinance of repealing Article 26 of the public hold to delete in its entirety the city's regulations governing public bath houses, including but not limited to fee requirements, operating requirements, and permitting requirements.

This item will be presented as a committee report at the November 19th Board of Supervisors meeting.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

This item is being sponsored by Supervisor Mandelman, and he's here to present on it.

Following his presentation, Carl Nasita from the San Francisco Police Department will provide a brief overview.

So Supervisor Mandelman Thank you, uh Vice Chair Engardio, and um thank you uh uh Supervisor Dorsey for your co-sponsorship of this.

Um colleagues, I've been working on this for quite a while since uh 2020.

Um and the uh I guess the bad news is that uh each year we seem to find a new challenge in the way of uh uh allowing bathhouses, queer gay bathhouses, queer bathhouses to reopen in San Francisco.

The good news is that we are finding these um roadblocks uh because there are people who are trying to make their way through the maze and identifying them for us, and uh and so each time we find a new uh a new roadblock, we try to clear it away.

So um the history here is that uh back in 2020, my office worked uh with a bunch of great folks in the city and uh out in the community, the AIDS Foundation and a um set of community advocates who had long felt that um if it made sense to close bathhouses back in the 80s, and I think there's that's been a I don't think I know that's been a much debated question that um by 2020 um uh with uh treatments for HIV and uh prep uh and a whole lot of knowledge um that it no longer uh made sense and actually we could from a public health perspective do more better um by allowing uh allowing bathhouses and regulating them.

Um so at that point uh we believed that what we needed to do was to amend the health code, and that's what we did.

Um we uh we required the Department of Health to adopt minimum health and safety standards gov governing the operation of adult sex venues, and we prohibited the director from adopting standards that would require um what was then required the monitoring of patron sexual activities, um regulating doors or mandating unlocked doors in areas where sexual activity may occur.

Those had all come into place um in the 80s uh as as as a response to HIV.

Um and then we had created this definition for adult sex venues in Article 47 of the health code.

Um and we were uh pleased.

Uh but the first roadblock we discovered was that although we'd fixed the problem in the health code, um, we still uh had a planning and the problem in the planning code.

And so then in 2022, I authored additional legislation um to expand the definition of adult sex venues to allow for the inclusion of bathhouse facilities such as pools, tubs, or steam rooms, um, and to establish uh zoning controls that would allow the use to be principally permitted in areas of the city that have strong ties to the LGBTQ plus community, including the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District, Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District and SOMA and the Transgender District in Tenderloin.

And we thought we were done, but we were not, um, because actually before the 80s, back in the 70s, uh, when regulations were driven drafted uh and adopted by the Board of Supervisors regulating bathhouses generally, uh, people were concerned about the activities that might occur in these bathhouses and the types of people who might be opening them and uh and what kinds and what might happen there.

Um Article 27 of the police code put the San Francisco Police Department right at the center of uh reviewing and approving applications for all types of bathhouses and in addition um has a bunch of language in there that uh seems to be in conflict with what we were trying to do with our prior amendments.

So um there's a prohibition on the provision of services in rooms that can be locked.

A little unclear whether or not that actually would apply to a gay bathhouse, but it creates some ambiguity, requires a daily register of patrons, um, and again puts the police department in the decision in the sort of uh center of deciding whether or not bathhouses of all sorts should be um should be allowed to open.

This we learned is not something the police department is particularly interested in doing or comfortable with doing.

And so we brought um uh the good folks in the police department together with folks from Department of Public Health Planning, the city attorney's office, and tried to figure out whether we needed to have Article 26 of the police code at all, or whether there are other ways already in our various codes to allow for the appropriate review of health and safety and the kinds of things we were worried about in our um in our health code revisions back in 2020 and our planning code revisions back in 2022.

And the answer was we don't think we do need this section.

And since my new favorite thing to do is getting rid of legislation that's been enacted in the past that is no longer needed, um, I uh am happy to bring forward for your consideration this repeal of Article 26 of the police code.

Um, as uh as Vice Chair Engardio indicated, we have Carl Nasida, principal legislative liaison from the police department who was going to present on the item.

Patrick Fostall, uh the director of environmental health from DPH is available to answer questions.

I do want to thank in particular Sneha Patil, Susan Phillip, Eduardo Ceda, Andrew Rodriguez, um Patrick Fosdal, and Jennifer Callawart uh from DPH, um uh uh Steve Jonas, uh Andrew Freins and Carl from SFPD, uh Ann Pearson and Valer Lopez from the City Attorney's Office.

I'm probably leaving some folks out.

I want to thank Calvin Ho in my office for his work on that on this legislation.

Um and of course, I want to thank the AIDS Foundation and the community activists who have been um who have been pressing us to get this done since long before I was on the Board of Supervisors, and I do want to thank those plucky entrepreneurs out there who are trying to make this work and um and are pointing out the areas in which we're not um making it so easy for them to do it.

Uh and with that, uh let's hear from Carl Nasita.

Good morning, Vice Chair and Guardio, Supervisor Dorsey, Supervisor Mandelman, thanks for your time this morning.

I'm joined by Lieutenant David Goff of the Field Operations Bureau, who oversees plain clothes unit 10B and the permit unit, also joined by uh policy and public affairs director Diana O'Reche.

Captain Steve Jonas could not be here this morning, but he wanted to express his thanks to Supervisor Mandelman for seeking the police department's input on this issue.

And I'll repeat some of what Supervisor Mandelman has said, just provide a bit of background and the police department's experience.

Recently, the permit unit has received several inquiries regarding co-locating adult sex venues and bathhouses.

And as Supervisor Mandelman said, bathhouses are regulated by the police code in Article 26, which dates to 1973.