Noise waiver challenged for Outside Lands permit

Two San Francisco residents troubled by the amount of noise generated by the annual Outside Lands festival want the Board of Supervisors to place clear-cut volume limits on musical acts before they consider a 10-year permit extension for the event.

Andrew Solow and Stephen Somerstein are appealing a Planning Department decision to exempt the permit extension from a review under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, the state’s bedrock environmental protection law.

Solow and Somerstein want the board to insist on a review of the permit extension that includes noise pollution, as required under CEQA, according to Richard Drury, their attorney.

They want the city to establish concrete noise limits for the festival that would require the event’s organizers to turn down the volume once the sound reaches a certain limit. Under the terms of the permit, sound engineers are supposed to respond to noise complaints and adjust volume levels accordingly.

“We’re not opposed to the festival. My clients don’t want to shut it down or drive anyone away,” Drury said. “But the city has not imposed any numerical noise threshold. There’s no level at which the noise is just too damn loud.”

The board’s Budget and Finance Committee approved the permit extension last week, and the full board is expected to hear the residents’ appeal of the CEQA waiver in March. The Recreation and Park Commission signed off on the permit extension last month.

Held in Golden Gate Park each year, the three-day festival has become a hugely popular arts and music attraction. It brings in over $3 million to the Recreation and Park Department alone in rent and fees associated with the event. The current permit for the event expires in 2021, so the extension would set the terms between the city and Outside Lands’ organizer, Another Planet Entertainment, through 2031. Another Planet needs a three-year window to line up artists and equipment each year.

There were 212 noise complaints last year related to Outside Lands, a spike from 80 complaints in 2017. The Recreation and Park Department said it was working with Another Planet to mitigate the noise and that officials take the noise complaints “very seriously.” — Dominic Fracassa

San Francisco will soon be on the lookout for a new point person for pot after Nicole Elliott, director of the city’s cannabis office, leaves for a job in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration on Thursday.

Elliott will become Newsom’s senior adviser on cannabis in the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. She’s been leading San Francisco’s cannabis office since it was created in 2017 after previously working as then-Mayor Ed Lee’s director of the Office of Legislative and Government Affairs.

Wednesday was Elliott’s last day as a city employee. The cannabis office’s deputy director, Eugene Hillsman, will lead the agency until Mayor London Breed selects Elliott’s successor.

In leading the cannabis office, Elliott steered the creation of the retail cannabis industry in San Francisco after California voted in 2016 to legalize recreational marijuana for adults. It was an often bumpy process: Not only did Elliott have to navigate a tangled and politically fraught city bureaucracy, but she also had to implement an equity program for would-be cannabis entrepreneurs, which gave advantages to people impacted by the war on drugs.

Elliott couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday. She’ll be joining her husband, Jason Elliott, in the Newsom administration. Jason worked as chief of staff to Mayors Lee, Mark Farrell and Breed. He worked on Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign and was later appointed to work as the chief deputy Cabinet secretary for the executive branch.

— Dominic Fracassa