Meeting by reminding everyone that the office of Small Business is the best place to get your questions answered about doing business in San Francisco. The office of Small Business should be your first stop when you have a question about what to do next. You can find us online or in person here at city hall. Best of all, our services are free of charge. The Small Business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that affect the Economic Vitality of Small Businesses in San Francisco. If you need assistance with Small Business matters, start here at the office of Small Business. The commission is now starting a new tradition of welcoming new businesses that have opened this week. We would like to welcome liberty home supply, old shanghai restaurant, Janitorial Services and kanda yoga school as unone of the many businesses that havy businesses that have opened this week. Okay. I guess we roll call first. Call to order and roll call. Commissioner adams is absent. Commissioner dooley is absent. [roll call] commissioner cartagena is late. Item 2, general Public Comment. Allows members of the public to comment generally on matters that are within the Small Business commissions jurisdiction but not on todays calendar. Are there any members of the public that have comments on anything not related to the agenda . Seeing none, item closed. Item 3, board of supervisors file no. 191150, buildingco, mandatory Disability Access improvements for places of public accommodation, extension of time deadlines. Ordinance amending the Building Code to extend for the time for existing buildings with a place of public accommodation to comply with the requirement to have all primary entries and paths of travel into the building accessible to persons with disabilities or to receive a city determination of equivalent facilitation, technical infeasibility or unreasonable hardship, to extend the period for granting extensions from those deadlines and to extend the time for the department of Building Inspections report to the board of supervisors. Discussion and action item. The presenter is tom with the department of building inspection. Come on up. So im senior building inspector with the department of building inspection. I came to answer any questions you have regarding this legislation or any questions about the a. B. E. Program in general. Lets see, i think i have an overhead. Is that showing up . It is. Okay. So this is a Snapshot Report that we did every monday. And it shows the number of forms forms, the category checklist forms, number of technical hardships that are requested, extension forms, just a senate shot of where we are a senate shot of where we are in compliance with the ordinance. As you can see, the total number is 11,977. That would be Property Owners, that might not necessarily meet, they can own more than one property. There could be more than one entrance at the property that would need to be compliant with the ordinance. So that number could actually grow even more. As you can see, that weve had vary in compliance on this. We still have about 6,000 that are potentially noncompliant. So thats one of the reasons why the director of building inspection wanted to push up a final compliance date to september 1, 2020. And all the four categories that we have. Do you have any questions . Commissioner united kingdom. Thank you for coming. I had a question about the people that applied for a reasonable hardship that received unreasonable hardship, is that correct . Thats for a number of in compliance forms, thats the number that said they were going to request an unreasonable hardship how many requested that . I dont have that information off the top of my head do you know what is considered an unreasonable hardship . Unreasonable hardships generally are set on because of cost. So many times youll have steps in front of the Small Business, and the space can be quite small, so to place a ramp that would be compliant with the Building Code would take up so much space inside the tenant space, that it wouldnt really be a viable space for anybody to lease or work out of. I have a question of who makes the determination of whether or not a hardship is considered unreasonable or not. The Building Department, the applicant would come to the Building Department with a Building Permit, and theres a form for unreasonable hardship, and its really based on cost, so they would get an estimate, they would show how much of the space potentially would be taken up by a ramp. And the Building Department would, the plan reviewers would look at it, and if they agreed with it, they would approve it. At that point it needs to go back to the Appeals Commission for ratty for ratification. They still have the opportunity to the Appeals Commission to request an unreasonable hardship. Thank you for answering my questions. I think it would be interesting to know how many people that apply with this specific case of unreasonable hardship actually are granted that. Because i know that most folks wouldnt apply for it if they dont know the process, and it would be interesting to see how many people go through the process and are granted that exception. Weve had, its gone all the way through the appeals last year, we had five out of the 300. Right. That have gone all the way through. So this is showing that when the person did the category checklist, theres a place on there to say, oh, im category 3, i have one step, im going to ask for an unreasonable hardship. So theres a bit of a delay between people coming in and obtaining the permit and then having to go to we are trying to work at that to make it an easier transition for people to do, for us too, what would we consider an unreasonable hardship. I ask this question because i was applying for the same mechanism. I dont know if i met with you. But i met with someone in d. B. I. About it, because the entrance from my Small Business lies in front of a bus stop, and we were thinking about making the corner an entrance and we would have to get hefty upgrades. I was wondering what exceptions were made. We ended up not going with the change, because it would have been too expensive. Right. Another concept in this is technical infeasibility. Thats usually something that is structural in nature. So we have had a lot of, over the years, buildings that have had the second floor tenant space used to be residential, and they turn it into a commercial space, it is a place for public accommodation. Normally in classic San Francisco you have a step or two, a door, a small landing and then the set of stairs going up. When we have that situation, its pretty much technically infeasible to make the vertical access part of it. You have to remember theres varying levels of disability. So you still need to have striping at the stairs for visually impaired, change the hardware where where so you do whatever is readily achieveable. And at the entrance. And then the rest would be basically technical infeasibility, which the Building Department can grant, and it doesnt need to go to the access Appeals Commission for approval. Thank you for answering my question. I appreciate it. Commissioner huie. Hi. How are you . Im wondering what else are you is your department or what else are you planning on doing to try to get to meet this september 1 deadline . In terms of outreach, or what are some of the barriers that people are not in compliance quite yet . Have all these people been reached . We have done a fair amount of outreach over the last couple years with the office of Small Business. And public works, Planning Department, weve sent out fliers, really the last deadline was in december of last year for compliance with just sending in the checklist to get onto identify whether your place of public accommodation and what type of entrance you have, whether you are in compliance, whether you can provide equivalent facilitation, meaning usually its done with the power door operators. Thats why you see those all around town. Where you have a step or multiple steps. When we sent out the last letter of compliance on that, we kind of went away from, hey, we have this program, heres the flier, these are the compliance dates, kind of colored brochure toiletter from the city that looks real official to a letter from the city that looks real official. We got a tremendous response. It was it crashed the voice mail, 3,000 emails. Because they finally read it. And it had the mention of Code Enforcement to it. So thats why we want to kind of dig out of that mess, try to find out who isnt compliant and then start mailing out and more outreach, weve done a few places. I dont know, probably about abt eight, 10 Public Forums and met with architects. I know that the director walked a few of the districts with the supervisors. Do you feel confident about this september 1st . Well, hopefully, we keep reaching out, we keep putting it out there, hopefully i think part of it too is the more people see people complying with it, the more you are going to see people coming in and say, yeah, this is actually happening. Its not going away. And i would also remind everybody, especially all the Small Business people, that accessibility isnt going to go away. The requirements for trying to provide an accessible environment in the build environment for public accommodation is just an ongoing legal obligation that they have. What we are sort of challenged with is were the first city in the u. S. Working to try to because this law is really targeted to the Property Owner, though it does from time to time get passed down to the business tenant. But this is something that were trying, because that obligation exists, whether youre the Property Owner or youre the business tenant, its always living out there as tom said, and its an ongoing obligation. So even if you have a fully accessible restroom, but all of a sudden your tenant, or one of your employees puts the shelf right next to the door, you know, youve now youve now made the restroom potentially inaccessible because the wheelchair may not be able to pull up and open the door to get in or out. So theres always an ongoing obligation. So i think this is our challenge is that, you know, one, its somewhat of a cultural shift to put such an obligation on to the Property Owner. And so, and its also another challenge to sort of figure out if we issue, you know, 6,000 notices of violation, the capability of the department to respond to that. I think what tom said is the last mailing bit went out in, it was november, early november for the december deadline. We started to see an uptick. So i think we are going to probably just have, you know, the information was these are your timelines, and it wasnt this really hard, you know the communication was just this is your obligation, these are your timelines, what have you. So i think its to the departments discretion, but i think probably well have to have some more forceful, you know, language in Upcoming Communications to the Property Owners. Theres also been a little bit of a challenge, too, with for those that do want to work with a certified access specialist in being able to get those scheduled as well to get the checklist in. Commissioner dooley. I want to ask if theres any changes or how it applies to access for businesses in historic districts. I know this the district that i am generally in in north beach, a lot of those folks are very confused, because they are saying one set of criteria that actually violates the historic or landmark prerequisites. There is a historic Building Code, there is a section in it that refers to accessibility. There are allowances for narrow door widths that are under the present code. Theres also a potential of having accessible entrance within the 200 feet of the primary entrance that you could create it as accessible. Its also something that were obviously, we would be working with the Planning Department if theres any type of change to the building entrance. They would probably not want to see any of the Historic Buildings altered in a significant way that would affect that. Again, thats where you would fall back on probably either an unreasonable hardship or technical infeasibility. Okay, because its just we cant undo some entrances that weve created in the past without, you know, destroying the historic nature. So thats why there are these terms in the code and in this ordinance, is because not every entrance is going to become fully accessible. The technical infeasibilities do exist. And unreasonable hardships exist. Okay. Its just trying to do things that is readily achieveable and the ordinance will say, you know, make it accessible or obtain a determination of that unreasonable hardship or technical infeasibility exists. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for coming, tom. I appreciate this. And some of us are still, just, like, learning how this stuff works. So maybe our questions arent necessarily specific to the legislation that were considering. But your information is helping us become a little bit better educated and informed about how the whole process works, which is in an ongoing classroom here, so to speak. So a couple quick questions. It sounds like the 6,000 checklist items is a bit too much for you guys to absorb in the amount of time you have left. So the purpose of the legislation is to buy some time. Im curious, this is about the checklist, right . Primarily, stage 1 . Well, yes, its about the timelines, okay, because when they originally wrote the legislation, they kind of set it up the way we did the soft Story Program where it was kind of phased in, so we would be able to handle the amount of reports coming into us in checklists. Unfortunately that didnt really work out too well because, again, we sent out that last letter that has a bit of a bite to it, and we went out on saturday, and monday morning it was the email box was full. And i mean the voice mailbox was full. So this is just changing basically all the checklists or going to be submit the compliance checklist, you should do it by, you know, on that one day, and thats all the different categories. But the category said difficult to comply with, those numbers, that pushes everybody else out a little bit more. So the challenge for your office isnt necessarily solely the checklist, but each of the steps, theres staff hours. Right. You get the checklist, and you figure out which category youre in, but if youre in category 2, 3 or 4, you may need to get a Building Permit, so then you have to come down to the Building Department to either make a compliant entrance or request unreasonable hardship or technical infeasibility, and then theres the time of acquiring the permits, potentially some of the entrances are going to be difficult to overcome between what the Building Department requirements are and what the public works and the sidewalk is saying, and then if we have historic with the Planning Department, thats why were in a theres a compliance unit that has people in it from all those and Small Business that meets to try to come up with direction for people that was my next question. Does d. B. I. Have stuff that is tasked specifically staff that is tasked specifically with Disability Access . Well, we do have three inspectors that are, myself included. Im in Technical Services, so im definitely the point person for this program. The other two are in plan check, which is a good place to have them, because they can give staff on how the process, the permits when they come in. So, im sorry. Kind of lost my train of thought. Yeah, no, thats fine. So basically three full time and two kind of on the periphery to deal with it . Well, we have theres four clerks but they do other things also. And they are the people who are dealing with the checklists, waiver forms, the different forms coming in to see if they are completed properly and has all the information. So we have four clerks working on that on kind of a rotating basis. We get a lot of questions about it. So i do have another building inspector in Technical Services that answers questions related to it. I gid the majority of the questions about it. On the secretary that access Appeals Commission also. You are wearing multiple hats. I have a lot of hats. [laughter] so somebody submits a compliance checklist, is there an arch turnaround time just for processing that part of it average turnaround time just for processing that part of it . It depends. I would say it would be probably a couple weeks at the most. You know what i mean . It depends on what type of checklist it is. So if they come in and say they are category 1, somebody has gone out there and they say they are fully compliant, well process it. Well process actually all of them. Thats just identifying it, where if it becomes a little more of a process is whe