Board lets revocation stand after split vote in Foster Interstate sign case

The San Francisco Board of Appeals on May 18 heard Foster Interstate Media’s appeal of a Planning Department/DBI request to revoke a renewal permit for an advertising sign at 926 Howard Street.

Sarah Ossowitz, an attorney for Foster Interstate, told the board the renewal permit had been properly processed and approved and that revocation harmed Foster’s reliance and marketing efforts. She said Foster identified several renewal permits previously issued over the counter and argued the Planning Department had no written policy requiring routing ‘‘upstairs’’ before approval.

Dan Snyder of the Planning Department and Joe Duffy, a senior building inspector, said the renewal permit had been approved over the counter in error and that evidence suggested the earlier 1999 permit had lapsed and the prior sign had been removed in 2003. Snyder maintained questions about abandonment and a notice of violation should be resolved by an administrative law judge, but he said the revocation of the renewal permit was appropriate after the city found the counter approval to be erroneous.

Commissioners debated whether the renewal permit was valid as issued, whether notice had been provided to property owners, and which department’s time frames controlled the entitlement. Commissioner Tanya Peterson moved to overrule the zoning administrator’s revocation request. The motion produced a 2–2 split; because ordinance requires four votes to overturn a departmental action, the board did not overturn the revocation and the department’s revocation remained in place by operation of law.

What happens next: the underlying notice of violation and questions about abandonment were identified as matters for the administrative law judge; the revocation stands unless set aside through further administrative proceedings.