rearranging furniture. that is something we would call readily achievable, if you move your table out of the way to allow a person with a wheelchair access to your space. restroom facilities only come into play after you have already made the entrance accessible and you have trouble accessible. restaurants only have to be accessible if they are available to your customers and clients. and actually does not cover employee access to the restrooms. we have other priorities that come into play. [inaudible] you want that inspected to come out before you get a that letter. it is not only your obligation,

but it is the right thing to do. you want to be disability accessible. you want more customers. the best way to do that is to start planning. when you are choosing, ideally, your inspector would have a background in inspection, design, and construction. that means we have some excellent general contractors out there that could be excellent task inspectors or building inspectors as well. in order to get the legal benefits, the protections that are important, you want your inspection to be under that theory that is how you can get that 90-day [inaudible] as you start to interview your

inspectors, i would ask them to a lot of questions. do not rely on just the resume. what you're really need to do is ask a series of probing questions. you want to know what their area of expertise is, how many times -- you want to ask them if they have any references, and if you follow through on those references, you should call the people and have a heart to heart conversation. [inaudible] you also want to ask to see a copy of the tass report.

some recommendations that i think are pretty basic. you want to make sure that the inspector is pulling a full building permits. it is being felt as how accessible it should have been in the past. it is the context. you also want to make sure [inaudible] because we all are very visual people. you are going to be working on problems. you want to be able to see it. they should also be following the party's in the ada -- the priorities in the ada. your task report should also be giving you some constructive solutions. they should be tailoring it to your very specific circumstances.

[inaudible] also, you want to make sure that your task inspector has a relationship with an attorney. it could be beneficial to have that legal expertise readily at hand. the task inspector may have learned some useful information. it is also helpful if your task inspector knows the contractor because the contractor can provide you with a construction bid for what is going to take. so i want to leave you with some closing thoughts. one of them, as mentioned at the

beginning -- be proactive. do not wait for the letter. get the inspection now. the second is keep really good records. [inaudible] they had actually been doing work over the years. they have been removing barriers. but because they were not keeping good files documenting the reasons why they widened a door or replace the hardware or remodel the bathroom, tracking exactly how much money they spend, they do not get a whole lot of credit for the work they have done so far. but you also want to keep good records tissue products you will be taking on in the future. maybe you cannot remove that step this year or next year. maybe it will take you five years to get there.

but you are providing yourself protection. >> good evening. we have a loan fund for small business owners facing ada compliance issues. opportunity fund is a non-profit organization sponsored by [inaudible] to help small businesses that could not obtain a loan from their banks. we created a loan program for small businesses who are trying to become compliant. under this loan program, we can provide financing for small businesses up to $100,000.

those are the small businesses who have been sued, and there are small businesses trying to preempt of a protect themselves against these issues. i will talk about the second rocket first. for the small businesses out there that have been hearing about compliance issues and what to protect themselves and make the improvement and have inspections done, we are willing to work with you and willing to look at the plans that you have any inspections you have to enable you to have tenant improvement to become compliant. for those folks, we would recommend that you go and get a task report done and see whether the contractor can lay out the plan and complete the requirement and then come to us and show us your plan.

[inaudible] and have had complaints against them because of compliance, we are also able to work with your peer the fundamental requirement for those is that we need you to finish the lawsuit or settle the lawsuit before we can work with you in terms of providing financing. the reason for that is the conversations and these issues can go on for a long time, and we want to make sure that you fundamentally understand what you need to comply with and what are your obligations as part of the settlement of the lawsuit. obviously, it can cost a lot of

money. we have provided financing before. it is a lot of money. so come and talk to the office of small business and make sure you have professionals and task inspectors and contractors lined up so that we can be part of that conversation in terms of helping you maintain your business and helping to stay in business despite the fact that a lot of businesses are being regulated by now. if you have questions, my information is in the packet. we are more than happy to field any questions, but again, because there are different parts of this whole saga, we are all in different parts in terms of financing, but the loan program will be available.

it will be available until the ada compliance issues are no longer there. >> thank you. any questions? [inaudible] we do have legal expertise and individuals with our mayor's office of disability. if you do have any questions at all about things that you might have heard about or issues you are facing, it might be the opportunity to ask questions. any questions? >> thanks, supervisor. sorry for being late.

i heard the gentleman say that the help for small business maximum is $100,000. someone else mentioned a repayment plan. a sort of interest rate and so on and so on. business people show up here. a lot of restaurants and small businesses, and i am certain those members are very interested in this program. i myself have been faithful so long. that is why i am interested. hopefully i will be able to

learn something and pass on to the people who need my assistance. if there's any way the supervisor would be able to generate a little more activity, maybe the location might not be perfect for the small orders to attend, and hopefully, we have another similar occasion to notify all those people to attend. but thanks so much for being here. thank you. >> yes, so, the typical loan for small businesses, these compliance issues, the term depends on the loan amounts. the most we can do -- in terms of other qualifications, again,

this is a loan program, loan fund. these are not grants. they are credits. we will look at the capacity to avoid loan payments and also the totality of the situation, taking into consideration whether there are legal fees or remediation fees that need to be paid. but i will say that we want to be an alternative for folks that cannot obtain financing from a bank. this may be a combination of that. maybe they need to go to a bank and get something and we can fill the rest or if they get decline by a bank, we can come in and assist with financing. >> [inaudible] you can only do so much to get people here. that is why we are asking for help from not only our media partners, but those of you in the room. people do not often come to ask

for assistance until they are hit with a lawsuit. until they receive a complaint letter or a threat of being sued, they do not take the issue very seriously. by that time, a lot of your investments are gone. you will be exposed to lawyer's fees, exposed to having to make copier repairs immediately. these are all things that are very hard for small businesses to weather. what we are trying to promote today is the fact that you can protect yourself as a small business if you are private about it. it is a hard mentality to get people to think about, but that is what we're hoping people will accomplish. we know if you get inspections and that you really put together a plan, that over time, we might not be able to do it today, we might not be able to do it in one year, but if we can make changes over five years or 10 years, that really helps to improve accessibility issues.

that is something that is really helpful going forward pierre the other issue that was mentioned is the fact that if you are a business that has received [inaudible] from a certified individual, you received a 90-day stint. the things that would not be counted for peer you can help to remedy the problem and get help, so that your liability at the end of the day is a very small one, hopefully. we know we will be heard from from our experts on a legal side. a lot of them can really add up here this gentleman again had heard about a situation where someone had already racked up $40,000 with of legal fees. became an issue. we are not talking about what it costs to fix up which in itself would be excess of, but also the legal component. your word of mouth and the people you know will really

help. and, of course, to our media folks, people will read your articles and understand that they can really do a lot to protect their businesses early on. >> i just want to add one comment about getting our association involved. we put together a really great training. we have a panel available to you. it is only going to cost you $35 for a 30-minute conversation, and that might be the best $35 you have already spent to avoid something that will be happening in the future. that is just part of the collaborative process with supervisor chu's office, and i am very grateful to her. there is a panel of lawyers that have all attended training and

know-how to represent businesses and give you some expert advice. >> when we were first looking at the issue and working with different systems, we realize that there was an issue with how you get loans to be able to make those improvements, how you get expertise to help walk you through what you're supposed to respond to. one of the components we saw that was missing was that legal component. how do we find lawyers -- where can i find quick information -- it is not very typical that someone already automatically knows a lawyer who can help them, so they might not know who to reach out to. they really put together a huge effort to train their lawyers that they become experts in this topic. that is something that i think is really important. as julie manchin, there is a $35 consultation that is available

-- as julie mentioned. >> any other questions? there are multiple languages available. vietnamese, tagalog, chinese. just to let you can receive assistance from some very qualified individuals. >> any other questions? if not, thank you very much for coming. [applause]

>> hi, i'm corn field and welcome to doing building san francisco, we are doing a special series, called stay safe, how you can stay in your home safely and comfortable, and we know that an earthquake is coming and there are things that you can do to reduce the effects of the earthquake on your home. let's take a look at that. >> here at the spur urban center on mission street in san francisco talking about staying in your home after an earthquake. i have guests today, pat buscavich and his dog, harvey and david, and both structural engineers and we want to talk about things that you might do before an earthquake to your

home to make it more likely that your home will be ha bitable after an earthquake, what should we do? both structural and maybe even important non-structural things. >> you hear about how to prepare an earthquake kit and brace your book shelves and water tank and that is important. what you have to be careful is make sure that you are not going the easy things to make yourself feel better. if you have a bad structure, a bad building, then you need to be looking at that and everything that you do to keep your collectables in place is small and compared. if you have taken care of your structure, then there is a lot of stuff that you can do in your house that is non-structural and your chimney and water tank. >> let's talk about what the structural things might be. >> and he is exactly right. you don't want to make the deck chairs safe on the titanic, it is going down, you are going down, you have to make sure that your house is safe. there are basic things that you need to do including bracing

the water heater, not just because of fire hazard but because of the water source and the damage, but basic things are installing anchor bolts, and adding plywood and strapping your beams to column and posts to footings and foundations are really easy things to do and most contractors can do the building department is set up to approve this work, and these are things that every home owner should do, and it is a little harder because you have to get a building permit and hire a contractor. but you want to be able to after a big earthquake to climb in bed that night and pull the covers up and say i don't have to worry about going to a government shelter. >> that is the main focus that it is great to have an earthquake kit to be able to bug out for 72 hours. here is a better idea, stay in your own home and in order to do that you have to be make sure that your structure is okay. if you have a house, the easy things to do with the wood construction is feasible. if you have a renter or you

live in a concrete building, you need to talk to the building own , and make sure they have done their due diligence and find out what the deficiencies are. >> when i have looked at damaged buildings,vy seen that a little bit of investment in time and money and structural work provides great dividends. >> especially if it is the wood frame, typical house that you can do the things that i was talking about, the anchor and the plywood in the first garage area, you know if you refinanced in the last three years, get some of that savings and it is a really good investment. and the other thing that i try to tell people, earthquake insurance is not the solution to the shelter in place, if there is a big earthquake and your building is damaged, you are not in your house, you may be somewhere else, if you work in the city, it is going to be really hard to commute from sonoma, you want to do what is necessary so that your house is retrofitted and a couple of

years of earthquake premium could get you to a level that you could be in the house after a significant earthquake and it may have damage and there is still a shelter in place where you are at home and you are not worried for the government taking care of you and you are living in a place where you can go to work and you want to have your wood frame house is really easy to get to that level. on top of the wood frame house, i mean every wood frame house in the west half of the city have a water tank and the water tank fall over because they are gas fired and start fires. and that is something that you could do for yourself, and for your neighbors and for the whole city is make sure that your water tank is braced. >> if you look at the studies that are predicting on fires, we are going to have a lot of fires and for every water tank that is braced there is a potential of one less fire that the fire department is going to have to fight and we don't want to have any more fires than we need to. so bracing the water heater is the first thing that you want to do. >> and so easy, and you go on-line and you google, earthquake, water and heater

and you google the sites where you can find the details and you can put them out there on the hardware store and you can hire a small contract tore do that for you. that is a couple of hundred bucks, the best investment. if you are in other types of building it is complicated. if you are in a high-rise building you just can't anchor your building down because there are no anchor bolts, but at that point, the tenant should be asking questions of the owner's and the managers about earthquake preparedness >> and don't take the easy answer, oh, our building is safe it was designed to code. that is not the right answer, ask the tough questions and see if you can get a report that has been given to you. >> what is the right question? will i be able to stay in my home after the expected earthquake? is that a good question to ask? >> yeah, you may be more specific if you talk to the owner, if it is not a recent building, if it is ten or 20 years old see if they had an inspection done and there you will have a written before that

will tell you all about the structure. >> thanks, pat. >> thanks, harvey. and thanks david for joining us and thank you for joining us on (music) >> herb theatre,open rehearsal. listen to the rehearsal. i think it is fun for them, they see our work process, our discussions, the decisions we make. it is good for us. we kind of behavior little bit when we have people in the audience. msk (music) >> we are rehearsing for our most expensive tour; plus two concerts here.

we are proud that the growth of the orchestra, and how it is expanded and it is being accepted. my ambition when i came on as music director here -- it was evident we needed absolutely excellent work. also evident to me that i thought everyone should know that. this was my purpose. and after we opened, which was a spectacular opening concert about five weeks after that the economy completely crashed. my plan -- and i'm absolutely dogmatic about my plans --were delayed slightly. i would say that in this very difficult timefor the arts and everyone, especially the arts,

it's phenomenal how new century has grown where many unfortunate organizations have stopped. during this period we got ourselves on national radio presence; we started touring, releasing cds, a dvd. we continue to tour. reputation grows and grows and grows and it has never stopped going forward. msk(music) >> the bay area knows the orchestra. you maybe take things for granted a little bit. that is simply not the case will go on the road. the audiences go crazy. they don't see vitality like this on stage. we are capable of conveying joy when we play. msk(music)

>> any performance that we do, that a program, that will be something on the program that you haven't heard before. string orchestra repertoire is pretty small. i used to be boxed into small repertoire. i kept constantly looking for new repertoire and commissioning new arrangements. if you look at the first of the program you have very early, young vibrant mendelson; fabulous opener and then you have this fabulous concerto written for us in the orchestra. is our gift. msk(music) >> and then you have strauss, extraordinary piece.

the most challenging of all. string orchestra work. 23 solo instrument, no violin section, now viola section; everybody is responsible for their part in this piece. the challenge is something that i felt not only that we could do , absolutely could do, but i wanted to show off. i can't tell you how aware i am of the audience. not only what i hear but their vibes, so strong. i have been doing this for a long time. i kind of make them feel what i want them to feel. there is nobody in that audience or anywhere that is

not going to know that particular song by the fourth note. and that is our encore on tour. by the way. i am proud to play it, we are from san francisco. we are going to play that piece no matter where we are. i'm nicole and lindsey, i like the fresh air. when we sign up, it's always so gratifying. we want to be here. so i'm very excite