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"Records," as used in this Chapter, shall mean such paper, book, photograph, film, sound recording, map, drawing or other document, or any copy thereof, as has been made or received by the department in connection with the transaction of public business and may have been retained by the department as evidence of the department's activities, for the information contained therein, or to protect the legal or financial rights of the City and County or of persons directly affected by the activities of the City and County.
(Ord. No. 7070(1939), Sec. 1)
The head of every department shall be responsible for the preservation and proper filing of papers, film or other records of the department and the ultimate disposition of the same in accordance with the applicable law.
(Ord No. 7070(1939), Sec. 1; amended by Ord. 530-88, App. 12/16/88)
It shall be the duty of each department head to classify the department's records, using the classifications set forth in Section 8.4 of this Code, and to prepare a schedule for the systematic retention and destruction of such records, which schedule shall comply with the provisions of this Section and of Sections 8.4 and 8.9 of this Code and will be effective only upon approval by the officers and boards specified below.
Current records and storage records, as defined in Section 8.4 of this Code, may be destroyed five years after they were created if they have served their purpose and are no longer required for any public business or other public purpose, except that records pertaining to financial matters shall be destroyed only after approval by the Controller; those having legal significance only after approval by the City Attorney; and payroll checks, time cards and related documents only after approval by the Retirement Board.
If requested by the Retirement Board, payroll checks, time cards and related documents shall be delivered to the Retirement Board instead of being destroyed. Current records and storage records less than five years old may be destroyed or otherwise disposed of if their destruction or other disposition within a shorter length of time will not be detrimental to the City and County or defeat any public purpose and if a definitive description of such records and the retention period applicable to them are set forth in a schedule for the systematic retention and destruction of records that is prepared by the department head, approved by the Mayor or the Mayor’s designee (provided that the designee is not department head of the department concerned), or the board or commission concerned, and approved by the City Attorney as to records of legal significance, by the Controller as to records relating to financial matters, by the Retirement Board as to time rolls, time cards, payroll checks and related matters.
The provisions of this Section do not apply to sound recordings of radio or telephone communications as described in Section 8.3-1.
Nothing in this Section shall be deemed to apply to or authorize the destruction of any records that are required to be retained by local, State or federal law.
(Amended by Ord. 583-81, App. 12/10/81; Ord. 530-88, App. 12/16/88; Ord. 278-96, App. 7/3/96; Ord. 220-20, File No. 200949, App. 11/6/2020, Eff. 12/7/2020)
(a) The words "sound recordings," as used in this Section, mean the routine daily taping and recording of telephone communications to and from a department of the City and County of San Francisco and all radio communications relating to the operations of that department.
(b) The San Francisco Municipal Railway shall retain sound recordings relating to its operations for at least one year. The San Francisco Police Department and Fire Department shall retain sound recordings relating to their respective operations for at least six months.
(c) Any department not mentioned in Section 8.3-1(b) shall retain sound recordings relating to its operations for at least 100 days.
(d) Sound recordings of any department may be destroyed or otherwise disposed of at any time upon authorization of the department head and the written consent of the City Attorney; provided, that the minimum time limits for retention set forth in this section are complied with and provided further that in the event that sound recordings maintained by a department are evidence in any claim filed or any pending litigation, such recordings shall be preserved until pending litigation is resolved.
(Added by Ord. 583-81, App. 12/10/81)
"Records," as defined in Section 8.1 of this Code, shall for the purposes of this Chapter be divided into three classifications: current records, storage records and permanent records.
"Current records" are records which for convenience, ready reference or other reason are retained in office space and equipment of the department involved.
"Storage records" are records which need not be retained in office space and equipment of the department involved, but which must be, or should be, prudently preserved for a time or permanently in the facilities of a records center, as specified in the following section.
"Permanent records" are records required by law to be permanently retained. Unless otherwise required by law or regulation, permanent records shall be stored by microfilming the paper records or placing them on an optical imaging storage system, placing the original film or tape in a State-approved storage vault and delivering a copy to the department. The paper records may then be destroyed.
(Ord. No. 7070(1939), Sec. 3; amended by Ord. 530-88, App. 12/16/88)
The Director of Administrative Services shall provide for the establishment, maintenance and operation of a records center for the orderly storage, care, management and safeguarding of storage records of the departments and offices of the City and County and of the San Francisco Unified School District and for the destruction of storage records pursuant to retention and destruction schedules prepared and approved as provided in Section 8.3 of this Code. The Director of Administrative Services may establish, maintain and operate such a records center as a function of one of the departments under the Director of Administrative Services' jurisdiction or, in lieu thereof may contract with a reputable and experienced archival firm to establish, maintain and operate such a records center and to provide retrieval and accession services.
A representative of the Director of Administrative Services may also be available as a consultant to departments in the formulation of paper records storage alternatives such as microfilming and optical imaging records storage systems.
Within two years from the effective date of such contract, and at three-year intervals thereafter, the Director of Administrative Services shall have prepared for public hearing at the Board of Supervisors a report on the merits and demerits of the contract as compared with a municipal records center. Any of the departments or offices of the City and County and the San Francisco Unified School District may elect to use the facilities of the records center for its storage records provided that: (a) copies of an approved schedule for systematic retention and destruction of records shall first be delivered to the Director of Administrative Services and to the records center; and (b) the cost for the use of the records center facilities shall be the obligation of, and be paid by, the department or office using the facilities or by the San Francisco Unified School District if it shall use the facilities.
(Amended by Ord. 111-76, App. 4/1/76; Ord. 530-88, App. 12/16/88; Ord. 278-96, App. 7/3/96)
(a) Before any book, document, photograph, map, architectural drawing, record, bond certificate, or other material of historical significance is destroyed, the following procedure shall be observed:
(1) It shall be offered by the officer concerned, i.e., the Mayor or the Mayor's designee, or by boards or commissions for departments under their respective jurisdiction, to the San Francisco History Room of the San Francisco Public Library;
(2) Such items not accepted by the San Francisco Public Library may be sold by the office of the Mayor, together with copies thereof;
(3) In the event the Public Library declines to accept said historical material, or after sale thereof by the Mayor, any remaining such historical material may be offered to an historical society.
(b) After all the steps outlined in Paragraph (a) above have been observed, any remaining historical records, as well as any large volume of records without historic significance which are to be destroyed, shall be offered for sale by the City Purchaser. The sales contract must provide that the buyer guarantees to the satisfaction of the City Purchaser that the records will be shredded beyond identification or otherwise destroyed within a short period of time after taking delivery.
(Amended by Ord. 306-72, App. 10/19/72; Ord. 70-95, App. 3/24/95; Ord. 278-96, App. 7/3/96; Ord. 260-99, File No. 991365, App. 10/15/99)
The City Attorney is authorized to destroy or otherwise dispose of any and all obsolete law books or other published legal materials in his or her possession or control which have been a part of the library of the office of the City Attorney once such materials have been superseded or are otherwise determined to be obsolete.
(Ord. No. 3646(1939), Sec. 1; amended by Ord. 330-00, File No. 001964, App. 12/28/2000)
It is hereby declared that the public interest demands that various City and County records which would be essential to the continuity of government and the protection of rights and interests of individuals in event of a major disaster (hereinafter referred to as "essential records") be preserved against possible destruction by fire, earthquake, flood, enemy attack or other cause. It shall be the duty of each department head to develop a program for the selection and preservation of the essential records of the department and to arrange for safe storage of those essential records and duplicates thereof in the same manner as is provided for the storage of permanent records under Section 8.4 of this Code.
(Amended by Ord. 126-62, App. 5/24/62; Ord. 530-88, App. 12/16/88)
“City” means the City and County of San Francisco.
“Construction or Occupancy Permit” means any Building Permit, Site Permit (including any Addenda connected with a Site Permit), Certificate of Final Completion, Certificate of Final Completion and Occupancy, or Temporary Certificate of Occupancy, or any permit that serves essentially the same function as any of the foregoing. It does not mean an Electrical Permit, Mechanical Permit, or Plumbing Permit.
“Department” means the Department of Building Inspection.
“Earthquake-related Hazards” means any hazard of any kind that can be caused in whole or in part by an earthquake and includes but is not limited to hazards relating to liquefaction, earthquake- related landslides or debris flows, earthquake-related fires, earthquake-related flooding, and tsunamis and seiches, in addition to direct effects from ground shaking.
“Relevant Building” means the building or other structure, at any stage of design or construction and whether or not occupied, that is or was the subject of a particular Construction or Occupancy Permit.
(b) Retention Requirements. Notwithstanding any other provision of City law, the Department shall permanently retain any writing, as defined in Section 6252(g) of the California Government Code, that is in the Department’s actual possession, if the writing (which, for purposes of this Section 8.10, is called the “record”) satisfies at least one of the following criteria and no exception identified in subsection (c) of this Section applies:
(1) The record was submitted to the Department as part of an application for, or as a condition of obtaining, a Construction or Occupancy Permit.
(2) The record pertains to the Relevant Building and was in the possession of the Department prior to any decision regarding the issuance of a Construction or Occupancy Permit, regardless of the manner in which the Department obtained the record or the purpose for which the record was obtained by or submitted to the Department.
(3) The record was created or received by the Department after the issuance of a Construction or Occupancy Permit, and contains any reference to the possibility (including any question about the possibility, and any response to such a question) that:
(A) The Department should not have issued the Construction or Occupancy Permit for the Relevant Building as the Relevant Building was designed at the time that the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;
(B) Physical conditions associated with the Relevant Building are more likely to endanger human health or safety, or may endanger human health or safety to a greater degree, than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;
(C) Physical conditions associated with the Relevant Building are more likely to damage property, or may damage property to a greater degree, than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;
(D) Physical conditions associated with the Relevant Building are more likely to adversely affect the value of real property, or may adversely affect the value of real property to a greater degree, than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued; or
(E) Physical conditions associated with the Relevant Building are more likely to give rise to litigation, or may give rise to more instances of litigation, than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued.
(4) The record was created or received by the Department after the issuance of a Construction or Occupancy Permit, and contains any reference to the possibility (including any question about the possibility, and any response to such a question) of any of the following:
(A) The Relevant Building, or any part of the Relevant Building, is experiencing, or may experience, greater compressive stress, tensile stress, shear stress, deformation, strain, or deflection than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;
(B) The Relevant Building, or any part of the Relevant Building, is tilting, or may tilt, to a degree greater than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;
(C) The Relevant Building, or any part of the Relevant Building, or soil or other material beneath or adjacent to the Relevant Building, is subsiding or settling, or may subside or settle, to a degree greater than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;
(D) The Relevant Building, or any part of the Relevant Building, is at greater risk of collapse than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;
(E) The Relevant Building is more vulnerable to Earthquake-related Hazards, wind, flooding, or other natural hazards than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued;
(F) The Relevant Building is more vulnerable to fires of any kind than the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy Permit was issued; or
(G) The construction or existence of the Relevant Building, or any site preparation related to construction of the Relevant Building, has made any other building more vulnerable to any of the conditions listed in subsections (b)(4)(A)–(F), to a degree greater than, or in a manner different from, that which the Department anticipated when the Construction or Occupancy permit was issued.
(c) Exceptions. The retention requirements of Section 8.10 do not apply to any record described in subsections (b)(1) or (b)(2) that satisfies either of the following criteria:
(1) All or substantially all of the record consists of mathematical calculations underlying architectural or engineering plans that will be retained by the Department, and the Department does not possess an electronic version of the record; or
(2) The record concerns a building for which the Department has issued a Construction or Occupancy Permit for the building’s overall structure (sometimes referred to as the building’s “core and shell”); the Department has also issued, or plans to issue, separate Construction and Occupancy Permits for multiple individual units or uses within the building; and the record concerns individual units or uses within the building rather than the building’s overall structure.
(d) Manner of Retention. Notwithstanding any other provision of City law, records retained pursuant to this Section 8.10 may be stored electronically, on microfilm, in hard copy, or in any other manner that does not prevent the Department from preserving, locating, and retrieving the record.
(e) Outside Entities. The Department’s decision to issue a Construction or Occupancy Permit may not rely, in whole or in part, on any work product of any kind produced by any person who is not an employee of the City or any other government, or by any entity that is not part of the City or any other government, unless that outside person or entity agrees to give the Department a copy of any record that would, if it were in the Department’s possession, be subject to the retention requirements of this Section 8.10. Nothing in this subsection (e) shall be construed to impair any right or obligation under any contract that exists as of the effective date of this ordinance.
(f) Relationship to Other Retention Requirements. This Section 8.10 is not intended to, and does not, supplant any other records retention requirement imposed by State or City law that is applicable to the Department, and does not supplant the Department’s records retention policy. Rather, this Section supplements existing legal requirements applicable to the retention of Department records, and shall be incorporated by law into the Department’s records retention policy.
(g) Records Requests. In a prominent location on its public website, the Department shall post the name(s), address(es), phone number(s), fax number(s), and e-mail address(es) of the Department employee or employees to whom requests for public records (made pursuant to Section 6253(b) of the California Government Code, Chapter 67 of this Administrative Code, or other applicable laws) may be directed. The Department may satisfy this requirement by posting, in a prominent location on its public website, a direct link to the contact information specified in the previous sentence, provided that this link is clearly labeled.
(Added by Ord. 86-17, File No. 170031, App. 3/31/2017, Eff. 4/30/2017)
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