A more stringent order…

While the Mayor’s Task Force was less than a month away from announcing their support for incremental change, the President of the Board of Supervisors, Aaron Peskin, introduced a Green Building Design Ordinance to the Board on June 19, 2007. Peskin proposed to amend the San Francisco Building Codes to require all of the same construction types that the Task Force addressed to comply immediately with the LEED Gold Standard (Longinotti, p14). Additionally, when applying for a building permit, applicants would have to document which measures they used to comply with the Gold standard or their application would be subject to rejection (ibid). Peskin proposed a mandatory compliance inspection after one year and failure could result in stopping the work or not issuing a permit to occupy the building (ibid). Exceptions to the Peskin ordinance would only be allowed for city projects and hardship cases determined by the the Department of Building Inspection.
An Economic Impact Report (EIR) followed the Peskin ordinance in September, 2007 and concluded that to achieve LEED Gold standing would increase estimated construction costs by 1.8 to 5% (SF Office of Econ., p3). In the short term, the economic impacts of both proposed ordinances could reduce the number of projects built in the City, increase rental rates and reduce employment. There was general agreement in the industry that the negative impact of higher construction cost would decline over time and the energy and water saved justified the short-term decline (ibid, p28). The EIR mitigation measures, like those of the Mayor’s Task Force, were to phase implementation of LEED Gold requirements. Further, the EIR suggested a tax on carbon generating activities, while providing a tax cut in other areas (ibid, p29).