Farrell takes up Ed Lee’s housing proposal

Shortly before his death in December, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee called on the city’s Planning Department to speed up approvals for new projects, in the hope of meeting the insatiable demand for more housing.

Mayor Mark Farrell took up the task, saying he shares Lee’s goal to build 5,000 new units a year and keep projects from languishing in city bureaucracy.

On Tuesday Farrell introduced legislation to create standard noticing requirements for any planning decision — be it a new second-story deck on a house or a large apartment building.

His bill also would eliminate the need for multiple hearings, set up an administrative process to approve minor alterations without a hearing and allow 100percent affordable housing projects to move forward without always having to go before the Planning Commission.

“It’s no secret that we need to speed up the red tape and bureaucracy that has existed for years inside City Hall, to build housing quicker and more efficiently in San Francisco,” Farrell said.

Lee started the effort with an executive order last fall, which laid out a vision for a more functional entitlement process. City planners have long been stymied by noticing requirements that change from project to project — they have to be delivered within a varying number of days on paper of different sizes — which leads to errors that take time to rectify.

Under the new rules, all notices would be published on the Planning Department’s website 20 days after they are mailed to residents who live near the project site. They would be written in a uniform font, and no longer placed in newspapers.

Once the city reforms that process, it’s expected to save 12,480 hours of staff time per year — the equivalent of about six positions. Those people could redirect their energy to approve housing units faster, “not just work on the mechanics of notices,” said Ken Rich, director of development at the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

Farrell’s bill will be heard in May at the Planning Commission and the Historic Preservation Commission.

— Rachel Swan

Ross, again? A vote that Supervisor Jane Kim made six years ago has resurfaced in the mayor’s race as grist for a new attack ad that will start airing Wednesday.

The ad by an independent expenditure committee called San Franciscans Against Domestic Violence chastises Kim for joining three other progressives to reinstate Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi after he was convicted of misdemeanor false imprisonment.

Mirkarimi allegedly bruised his wife during a heated argument.

“It’s still very relevant,” said Andrea Shorter, the former president of San Francisco’s Commission on the Status of Women, who is featured in the anti-Kim ad. It was funded by Gayle Conway, the wife of angel investor Ron Conway. She chipped in $200,000 to start the committee. Her husband is widely seen as a patron of Supervisor London Breed, one of Kim’s opponents.

Conway said Tuesday that she was “deeply offended” by the 2012 vote.

“And while some have forgotten that she betrayed survivors of domestic abuse and sided with the abuser, I and many other women have not.”

This isn’t the first time Conway has funded an effort to punish a candidate for the Mirkarimi vote. She also contributed $49,000 to a committee that went after Christina Olague ,an appointee of former Mayor Lee whom Breed defeated for District Five supervisor in 2012. Shorter helped run that committee as well.

Shorter is also the chairwoman of It’s Our Time, another independent expenditure committee backing Breed.

— Rachel Swan

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cityinsider@ sfchronicle.com, rswan@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfcityinsider, @rachelswan