the city of san francisco sfgtv meeting of the san francisco building inspection commission occurring january 16, 2013, will begin shortly.

>> the city of san francisco sfgtv meeting of the san francisco building inspection commission occurring january 16, 2013, will begin shortly.

>> commissioners. >> it is a public debate, issue. >> i tried to get it moved to the first. you know? >> if it is all like... >> sfgtv, we are ready to begin.

>> good morning, today is wednesday, january 16th, 2013. this is the regular meeting of the building inspection commission. i would like to remind everyone for turn off all of the electronic devices the first item on the agenda is roll call. >> president mccarthy? >> here. >> clinch? >> here. president mar is excused. >> mccray.

>> here. >> melgar. >> walker? >> i am medicated very well. >> congratulations to supervisors on their elections. in january 2013, the state increased the fee for business licenses by one dollar, with most of the funds to come to the city and council to defray the costs and acts of service and to educate small businesses on action steps to achieve accessibility compliance. dbi is meeting with the office of small business to determine the most appropriate use of these very limited funds. and which are the result of

passage of senate bill, 1186 by the state legislature last september so that is something that is important to us based on the conversations in the past. >> acting director, director and i have recently met with the office of small business to executive director to discuss ongoing compliance issues around the number of vacant commercial storefronts. >> it does not appear that it could effectively address, vacant storefronts especially in buildings otherwise occupied. we remain available for follow up discussions on these issues. these conversations are helpful and we obviously can't accomplish the goals all of the time. but at least the communication we can come up with creative ways of assisting these issues to the department. >> dbi along with other departments is participating in the data survey, at the request of small business and the mayor's office of economic

workforce development that identifies and provides important details to the opening of small businesses, within san francisco. once all of the survey data are gathered, the city may design and launch an on-line portal, which goal would be to provide the interests in starting a new small business and require information and action steps, and required the information and action steps. thanks to mccanty in the information services as well as tony to assemble the critical information. special thanks to thomas of the building department inspection division and dan frost of the electrical division who received letters of appreciation from dbi customers. thank you for their good work there. we also convey our heart-felt sympathies and the family of former staffer, ray louy on the

passing of his father paul, and a much reported engineer who added significantly to san francisco throughout his lifetime. so our condolences to his family. thanks to all, to those who were able to attend the dbi holiday party in december. we had a terrific turn out of staff and family and we loved having all of the children there at the party. my child had a melt down about not getting a tie. we had to take him out early. >> a special thanks to the team of volunteers that included a staff from all of the divisions for making this event such a success as well as to tom huoy and. dbi managers who donated personally to put this party on and so we greatly appreciate that and it is a good morale and it was a special effort on your behalf to do this. thank you tom and your senior management. and thanks to everybody who

attended that. >> madam secretary i would like to pass it back to you. >> any public comment on the president's announcements >> seeing none, item three. general public comment, the bic will take public comment on matters within the commission's jurisdiction that are not part of this agenda. >> if i may before, the members of the public come to make the comments, i would like to read into the record, you may make comment for a period of time not-to-exceed 3 minutes, the speakers shall address as a whole is it not the individual personnel or the individual. first speaker. >> my robert davis and i live in the bay view, 91924 and i would like to ask that we talk this morning about some items one of them is an emergency demolition order for four properties on the corner of

thorton and third the buildings are still there, more trash and empty tires and more stuff. i would like to ask if we could get an update on the open notices and violation of the open director's hearing and i put together a spread sheet from the information from the dbi back in november about open notices and the number has gone up from 5700 to over 6200. and just showed you here, what those notices are and all of the, all of the descriptions. and then i put them on another spread sheet on the back. and i ranked them by, number of open notices and violation descriptions. and i would also like maybe to get an update on the open director's hearings, both the ones that are just open and the one that have been decided in the city that had never gone anywhere. there are aggregate about 250

of those. >> thank you. >> next speaker. >> madam secretary, i see none. >> if there is no further general public comment. item number four. update on implementation of local requirements sb 1186, certified access specialist on the ada out reach program. >> good morning, president mccarthy and commissioners i am the grekter of office of small business, thank you for the invitation to come and make a presentation to you this morning, there are three components which i will walk through with you, first is through the neighborhoods program we do have and recently launched and acting director tom huey was at the press conference and this information and an out reach program to

work to increase businesses, awareness around disability access requirements and what can be done to help them and the system. and then we have sb 1186 and of course, supervisor david chui's legislation that have been implemented. so first to give you just information with program that we have with invest in neighborhoods. the funds have been captured through the ssshines program and it is a small amount of money, so we are targeting first in districts four, districts one and along geary boulevard and china town and so those are three districts in the invest in neighborhoods program. we are going to be working to get the ada out reach. the out reach that we partnered with aand d, asian neighborhood design and they helped us

design this brochure as part of our... it functions as two things as part of the out reach with the ada out reach program and also as a brochure that property owners are required to provide to their tenants knew or when they renew their lease. >> there are two structures with the out reach program with asian neighborhood design. they go door-to-door in the targeted areas and talk to business owners, and we are trying this approach because we have seen that the city goes in and starts talking to business owners and they are sort of kind of a blank wall that happens and the listening, they tend to shut down and are intimidated and we are trying the approach of having a third party entity that is not government going in and having a conversation with the business owner. and so working with the business owner, and walking or doing an on-site sort of immediate kind of overview and not a detailed inspection.

so things like if there is the garbage can next to the toilet in the bathroom informing them to move that. so if it is really well and relatively easy medium level barriers and we have those identified, and some samples identified in the brochure. and then asian neighborhood design will work with the property owner. if it is high-level barriers and then it may involve some construction-related activity that might require permits from your department, and then it is immediately referred to a certified or the recommendation is for the business to get a certified access specialist opinion on the correct remediation. we don't have the funds to fund yet the cast inspection, but really encouraged the business owner to take that direction. so often, i think that many business owners are intimidated

in terms of when they hear a disability access and improvements and think it is going to be a lot money and a lot of improvements and may not understand the nuances in relationship to the law of what is actually required and what is readily achievable, and so forth. >> so that is a new program that we launched right at the end of the year. and then, next sb 1186 to start off with, so as commission president mccarthy mentioned about one of the requirements of sb 1186 is the requirement of each municipality to collect a dollar with a business regular sleighsing or a license. >> there is a series of documents i have areached for you, right after... the treasures office has revised the business registration for new businesses to include this information and to have a statement on the back about

sb1186 and why there is the additional, the dollar being collected and to do a reminder to businesses about their responsibility for ada compliance. and i am in conversation, this the notice comes directly from sb 1186, the law, which is on the tax and treasurer's form, so i am in conversation with them to also include our departments as a resource as well. so, hopefully that will take place. so just wanted to let you know. so as director mccarthy or commissioner mccarthy mentioned there is this dollar collected and we roughly have about 80,000 businesses registered in the city. and so, 70 percent of that of the dollar is to stay in the local municipality, 65, 5 percent goes to the administration of handling the funds.

and then 65 percent is to go towards past inspections and helping businesses do their construction related activities. the requirements and any kind of education and out reach. so i think that it is written pretty broadly, so i think to allow municipalities to sort of develop their own means of how they wanted to administrator the funding. and so, we will be working on that with your department together. and so, roughly that is about 52,000 dollars. should every business pay that dollar. the tax and treasury's office did let us know that with some businesses if they are just in automatic mode, they may not and they may just issue their renewals with the current business registration amount and so, for the on-line

renewals we will automatically capture that dollar but any checks that are mailed in may not. they may or may not see the new dollar requirement. and so, they have kind of made an internal determination that depending on the degree we may or may not be able to company tur that dollar. with this new program, and i am really appreciative because i think as you have heard from small businesses, small businesses were the ones that really made this recommendation to the state to put it into a law. >> next, i have provided for you what i think is a really good summation of sb 1186 for you to take a look at. a few things that i want to highlight that are small business related