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]

>> the san francisco cons tri of flowers in golden gate park is now showing a new exhibit that changes the way we see the plants around us. amy stewart's best-selling book, "wicked plants" is the inspiration behind the new exhibit that takes us to the dark side of the plant world. >> i am amy stewart. i am the arthur of "wicked plants," the weeds that killed

lincoln's mother and other botanical atrocities. with the screens fly trap, that is kind of where everybody went initially, you mean like that? i kind of thought, well, all it does is eat up bugs. that is not very wicked. so what? by wicked, what i mean is that they are poisonous, dangerous, deadly or immoral or maybe illegal or offensive or awful in some way. i am in the profession of going around and interviewing botanists, horticulturalists and plant scientists. they all seem to have some little plant tucked away in the corner of a greenhouse that maybe they weren't supposed to have. i got interested in this idea that maybe there was a dark side to plants. >> the white snake root. people who consumed milk or meat from a cow that fed on

white snake root faced severe pain. milk sickness, as it was culled, resulted in vomiting, tremors, delirium and death. one of the most famous victims of milk sickness was nancy hangs lincoln. she died at the age of 34, leaving behind 9-year-old abraham lincoln. he helped build his mother's casket by carving the woodallen petition douche the wooden petition himself. >> we transformed the gallery to and eerie victorian garden. my name is lowe hodges, and i am the director of operations and exhibitions at the conls tore of -- cons tore of

flowers. we decided it needed context. so we needed a house or a building. the story behind the couple in the window, you can see his wife has just served him a glass of wine, and he is slumped over the table as the poison takes affect. a neat little factold dominion about that house is actually built out of three panels from old james bond movie. we wanted people to feel like i am not supposed to be in this room. this is the one that is supposed to be barred off and locked up. >> the ole andersonner -- oleander. this popular shrub is popular in warm climates. it has been implicated in a surprising number of murders and accidental deaths. children are at risk because it takes only a few leaves to kill them. a southern california woman

tried to collect on her husband's life insurance by putting the leaves in his food. she is now one of 15 women on california's death rowan the only one who attempted to murder with a plant. >> people who may haven't been to their cons tore or been to -- do serve tore or their botanical garden, it gives them a reason to come back. you think let's go and look at the pretty flowers. these are pretty flowers, but they are flowers with weird and fascinating stories behind them. that is really fun and really not what people normally think of when they come to a horticultural institution. >> "wicked plants" is now showing at the san francisco conserve tore of flowers. unless next time, get out and