May 4, 2004

MINUTES
of the
SAN FRANCISCO BIOSCIENCES
TASK FORCE

Tuesday, May 4, 2004 at 4:00 p.m.

City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett Place, Rm. 421

1. CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL

The meeting was called to order at 4:20 p.m.

2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

The minutes of the meeting of April 13, 2004 were approved as written.

3. TASK FORCE COMMITTEE REPORTS

a. Industry Location Criteria Committee, Michael Costa reporting.

Met twice since the last Task Force meeting. Last iteration of location criteria listing was sent via e-mail to members. Mr. Costa went over the document in a Power Point presentation form. Incorporated more data so that policy recommendations can be made.

Land use and regulatory factors not the most important factors in location decisions. Three most important factors include: (1) availability of highly-trained workforce

(Ph.D.s, technicians, wide variety of skilled people). SF fulfills this requirement;

(2) proximity to high caliber academic research institutions (UC has highest no. of NIH grants in Bay Area); (3) cost of doing business (SF not favorable in this factor). Another factor is access to capital; SF is equal to other places in this area.

Completed report will go into further detail.

Ms. Woods wants to look at two things: policies facilitating location and policy recommendations.

Mr. Costa: if City has commitment to biotech, it would be in its best interest to exempt biotech from Proposition M.

City Attorney Elaine Warren: doesn't matter if you come up with new definition if that use fits within the definition of office in Prop. M, it's going to be treated as office. Apparent that there are bioscience functions that are not office.

b. Cost Benefits Committee, Terri Feeley reporting.

Committee wants to change name of committee to Community Perspectives Committee. Is working to make recommendations for the EIR for the Eastern Neighborhood Plan. Next step for committee is to draft a letter to Planning Dept. re EIR issues.

Ms. Bolaffi suggested that the Task Force take a bus tour of the areas considered for sitting biotech companies.

Ms. Pierce moved to change the name of Cost Benefits Committee to Community Perspectives Committee. Seconded by Mr. Cohen, motion passed unanimously.

4. REPORT OF TASK FORCE AD HOC WORKING GROUP

Ms. Yamauchi reported. At last meeting it was agreed that group would work on creating outline that could be the basis of the final report. Decided that the key objectives of legislation forming Task Force and Supervisor Maxwell's legislation were: to provide a regulatory framework for bioscience so that those uses are safe for the community; that we zone enough land to permit bioscience development; finally to review other City codes and policies as how they address issues and impact biosciences.

Definitions offered by Scott Williams at last meeting represent five main categories:

1) office; 2) research; 3) warehouse distribution; 4) manufacturing; 5) common activities.

Committee wants to focus on research and its subcategories: private or open labs, support labs, pilot or application labs, core labs, core lab facilities and laboratory/office. Talked about possibility of trying to define a new land use category called research that could be linked to the different building code occupancies.

Thought that different kinds of research could be regulated differently by zoning districts; that the zoning treatment should take into account. Conceived of a matrix that might be useful in arraying the land uses and their different features by zoning districts.

5. WORLD CAFÉ TOWN HALL MEETING IN SF - JUNE 7, 2004

Karen Heisler came to discuss the events at the World Café meeting in San Francisco

6. NEW BUSINESS

Tod Ewing of the Chamber of Commerce explained the Biosciences Tax Credit that Supervisor Alioto-Pier has introduced.

7. ADJOURNMENT

The meeting was adjourned at 6:10 p.m.

6. ADJOURNMENT