the reason why that is so important is because you have to comply with both. the california billing code is enforced when you get a building permit, and forced by the local building requirements. it says all new buildings have to be totally accessible. it also says that new buildings when you do an alteration course have to be accessible when you do a project. there's a big difference between a big project and a little project. a big project is going to be not as accessible as a new building, but a smaller project actually has a smaller level of access required in the california building code. you might think that because you got a building permit that that means that everything is good and you are complying with the ada, but it is actually the

difference in the building code because its is even if you have an existing building and have not done any improvements to that building, that you still have a continuing obligation to be going through your business and building and taking constructive steps to remove the barriers. the ada gives us some guidance on that. readily achievable says it can be done quickly and easily without a whole lot of steps. feasible means that it may require a lot more money, a lot more alteration to get that done. under the ada, you need to be surveying your property and putting together both a short- term plan and a long-term plan. the short term plan is going to be the readily achievable solution.

the long-term plan could take 20 years. i do not know. your business might not be making huge profits. you may need to be saving money for the long term. but it is your obligation to plan for the long term as well as the short term. the ada has a set of priorities that guide you on how you will be serving your property. the ada says a certain party of getting in the front door, but you are logical, you want your customers to access your services. be that steps, be that ramps, if the door is not wide enough, if the landing is not level enough. priority two is actually travel.

once you get into your business and start speculating the wits of your files. access to all of your services. [inaudible] 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 lawrence. we are doing a special series about staying safe. let's look at issues of water and sewer. we are here at the san francisco urban center on mission street in san francisco and i'm joined today by marrielen from puc and talk about water and sewer

issues. what are things we should be concerned about water. >> you want to be prepared for that scenario and the recommendation is to have stored 1 gallon per person per day that you are out of water. we recommend that you have at least 3-5 days for each person and also keep in consideration storage needs for your pets and think about the size of your pets and how much water they consume. >> the storage which is using tap water which you are going to encourage. >> right. of course at the puc we recommend that you store our wonderful delicious tap water. it's free. it comes out of the tap and you can store it in any plastic container, a clean plastic container for up to 6 months. so find a container, fill it with water and label it and rotate it out. i use it to water my garden. >> of course everyone has

plastic bottles which we are not really promoting but it is a common way to store it. >> yes. it's an easy way to pick up bottles to store it. just make sure you check the label. this one says june 2013. so convenient you have an end date on it. >> and there are other places where people have water stored in their houses. >> sure. if you have a water heater or access to the water heater to your house, you can drink that water and you can also drink the water that the in the tank of your toilet. ; not the bowl but in your tank. in any case if you are not totally sure about the age of your water or if you are not sure about it being totally clean, you can treat your water at home. there is two ways that you can treat your water at

home and one is to use basic household bleach. the recommendation is 8 drops of bleach for ever gallon of water. you add 8 drops of bleach into the water and it needs to sit for 30 minutes. the other option is to boil water. you need to boil water for 5-10 minutes. after an earthquake that may not be an option as gas maybe turned off and we may not have power. the other thing is that puc will provide information as quickly as possible about recommendations about whether the water is okay to drink or need to treat it. we have a number of twice get information from the puc through twitter and facebook and our website sf water.org. >> people should not drink water from pools or spas. but

they could use it to flush their toilets if their source are not broken. let's look at those issues. >> sanitation is another issue and something people don't usually or like to think about it but it's the reality. very likely that without water you can't flush and the sewer system can be impeded or affected during an earthquake. you need to think about sanitation. the options are simple. we recommend a set up if you are able to stay in your building or house to make sure that you have heavy duty trash bags available. you can set this up within your existing toilet bowl and once it's used. you take a little bit of our bleach. we talked about it earlier from the water. you seal the bag completely. you make sure you mark the bag as

human waste and set it aside and wait for instruction about how to dispose of it. be very aware of cleanliness and make sure you have wipes so folks are able to wash up when dealing with the sanitation issue. >> thank you so much, 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 ied to be here today.

>> your volunteerism is appreciated most definitely. >> last year we were able to do 6,000 hours volunteering. without that we can't survive. volunteering is really important because we can't do this. it's important to understand and a concept of learning how to take care of this park. we have almost a 160 acres in the district 10 area. >> it's fun to come out here. >> we have a park. it's better to take some of the stuff off

the fences so people can look at the park. >> the street, every time, our friends. >> i think everybody should give back. we are very fortunate. we are successful with the company and it's time to give back. it's a great place for us. the weather is nice. no rain. beautiful san francisco. >> it's a great way to be able to have fun and give back and walk away with a great feeling. for more opportunities we have volunteering every single day of the week. get in touch with the parks and recreation center

so come