And ida claire with the division of state architect. She couldnt be here today. We had sue mo with the division of state architect who couldnt be here. We have stoyan [inaudible] of housing and community development. [applause] and we had participant from American Institute of architects, California Council kirk [inaudible] and gary [inaudible] [applause] we have one of our other commissioners michael pairvana. Looks like he is in sacramento at this point and we got more envelopes. Who am i leaving out . Myself. [laughter] [applause] [inaudible] with that i hope i didnt omit anybody. Thank you very much for all the hard work and the group [inaudible] and product and look forward to evolving this thing and making sure it is working for everybody. Thank you. [applause] just to conclude our section we look forward to all of you continuing the work on making california one of the most the most accessible state in the union because believe me i travel a lot and we are better than most, but we have a long way to go, and thank you so much for being here, and witnessing this historical moment actually. Okay thank you. [applause] now at this point in our meeting i have great pleasure to introduce the next person on the agenda. Yoni fong manages the Disability AccessCompliance Program for the Coastal Region of Sutter Health. She works closely with facility planners, architects, contractors and im sorry, architects and contractors that are responsible for completing barrier removal projects on existing sites. Prior to joining Sutter Health she was the executive director of the california berkeley based center for independent living Whose Mission was to promote inclusion of all people with disabilities so at this point it gives me pleasure to turn the meeting over to yomi to run the balance. Thank you. Can everybody hear me okay . Great. So its a great honor to be here. I am not a building inspector or an architect but i work with them and i appreciate all of the hard work and the focus and the attention to detail that goes into what it is that you do, and as a person with a disability i also know what it feels like when we miss the mark, and we miss opportunities to catch things, so i think that this is an exciting moment. It is a historic moment and i think it falls in line nicely with the 25th anniversary of the americans with disabilities act which is what our country is celebrating this summer so congratulations to the commission and to the subcommittee that put this together. It looks like a lot of work went into it. I mean its just a couple of pages when you fold it out but i know its a lot of detail involved so were going to spend about the next 40 minutes or so having a discussion with people who work in the field who are going to talk about the checklist and about some of the challenges and opportunities that they see today, so as i call your name and start to interviews introduce you make your say up to the stage. Gary lehman has developed surveys and inspections in california and nevada since 1987 and in construction for over 35 years, building inspection, plan review since 1987 and a california licensed contractor since 1995. He holds a bachelors degree in Construction Management and masters in public administration. He is a certified accessibility specialists who has performed more than 500 accessibility evaluations for public accommodations and public facilities so welcome gary. Jeff bytheway and has experience as a licensed contractor and serving the city of los angeles since 2006. He is a senior building inspector with the city of los angeles. Has served as the Training Officer for the los angeles building residential and energy and zoning codes and a certified access specialists. Welcome jeff. Randy goodwin. Randy has 30 years of experience in building architecture and open space development. He earned his degrees in architecture from Montana State university and randy works for the city of West Sacramento as the architectural projects manager and city architect and Building Official. Its a lot of job and a commissioner serving on the seismic safety commission. Welcome. Arnie lerner. Here we go. Hi arnie. He earned his bachelors degree from the university of kansas in design and has been a architect in the preservation and accessibility committees for the last 30 years and became a specialists with the California Division of the state architect. In addition mr. Lerner has served on the board of directors of the san frapt San Francisco architects board and on the Access Appeals Commission serving as the president for the next year. Elizabeth rider. She is a constant advocate for the Building Code and its proper use. Most especially to ensure that accessibility is followed through both on plan review and in the field. Mrs. Rider currently serves as examiner for commercial and Residential Projects and done numerous inspections of accessible features in commercial facilities and served as Building Official, plan examiner and building inspector in numerous jurisdictions and she is currently employed by csg consultants and serves as the Building Official for the city of pacifica. Jeff james is the chief building inspector for the county of fresno and spent the last 17 years working for public agencies as a plans examiner and Building Official and holds a bachelors degree in architect and you are a masters degree in eek logical design and certified plan inspector and Building Official and jeff is a director with the California Department of Building Officials so welcome to the panelists so im going to just throw out an open ended question and whoever would like to lean in and answer the question feel free so kind of two fold. What are some of the challenges you face to improve compliance with accessibility regulations, and how might this new checklist might improve your efforts . Go ahead randy. Sure. I am in a small jurisdiction first of all i want to thank the commission for inviting me. Im humbled and i am surrounded by people who are much more knowledgeable than i am and i hope i can share something today, and one of those things is my appreciation for the checklist. In my jurisdiction we are in a building boom as in many jurisdictions and we see high rise buildings coming into a small jurisdiction that hasnt had them before and we had one 19 Story Building at completion its a classic story it had accessibility problems and the only way to deal with them was really to go in structurally change some things, so this list as simple as it is would have helped dra dramatically and it was before i was Building Official and i heard the nightmares and this will assist the developers and the clients it will also assist those behind the counter, the regulators and i talked to my inspectors and they are graciously thankful, and they do use the list now. The one thing that they one of my inspectors one of his favorite comments is make it look like the picture and his comment was more pictures. The fact that its a word document and i will take that back to him makes it we do perform numerous over the counter permits to check for accessibility. We review the plans the same but most of it is accessibility comes with commercial. However, when they come for say theyre putting in a ramp for barrier removal because i have a process in the city of orvil to come in and pull permits for that that i will actually provide them with the information and handouts that are specifically out of the code to be able to do that to assist them in the process, so thats how i assist with over the counter permits if it comes to that with commercial. Thank you. Can Somebody Just talk about how this checklist might help Small Businesses better comply with californias accessibility regulations . This is steve dolim and as part of that Checklist Committee i would have to say remember this was a list geared to trained building federals who d officials and have the code at their fingertips and more knowledgeable with the code than the common business person so i would say this is not geared to the common business person but to a practicing business official and may encourage that they need counsel as a Small Business before embarking on their changes. Yes . I think the value for a Small Business person is that it makes a list in simple terms of the kinds of things they need to be asking about for their store like doors and series. What does it mean . And it allows them to ask the question and if theyre energetic they can see the code online but allows them to ask the builder or architect what does it mean and introduces them to the code opposed to going to a code document they would be lost. Thank you. So just wondering how your departments have engaged california as access specialists in plan review and site inspections . Has this helped to improve accessibility compliance . Gary. I will jump into that. I unfortunately have not successfully passed the test yet. I have taken it a few times. I have come close, but that knowledge and cass specialists that we work with we often refer businesses its a good segue from the prior question because we have Small Business many Small Businesses that say weve been asked to comply and what do we do . So we refer them typically to a certified access specialists. We help them as well. We have certified access specialists who work with us through a local consultant and its a program that not only has served the disabled community its helped Small Business i think significantly. Anyone on the panel who is a certified accessibility specialists want to talk a little bit how you work with Small Businesss if thats at all part of your scope . This is gary lehman. Im a certified access specialist, and i am also the chief Building Official for the city of orvil so what i do in assisting the Small Businesses in our community is i reach out to them through the chamber of commerces. With the chamber of commerces what i provide to them once again as i indicated proactive is the ability that i will for free of charge because i am Community Service go to their site in their business and walk the business. Have them have a list and i will indicate to them what kind of barriers they may have within their business and they put that list together. This is then what generates the barrier removal of the barriers in a kind way. What it has done is open the businesses to come in freely and feel comfortable coming into the Building Department and be comfortable with myself coming into their business because im not going in there saying you have to do this and knocking at the doors to shut them down. Im going in and saying , well heres the things that i see and when you have the money and the time to get them done that you can then you can come and get a permit for one at a time. You dont have to do it all at one time, and this has been very helpful with our community, and at the same time when they come into the Building Department i have the handouts ready for them and a lot of time is providing a ramp or providing accessible counter or providing accessible seating, simple stuff they werent aware of. A lot of times its move the planner out from the strike side of the door so individuals can use the door so sometimes its not even requiring a architecture barrier to be fixed but just to be relocateed. And i bet theyre relieved when you give the short punch list of the easily removable barriers the low hanging fruit items and they dont have to spend a lot of money to do that. They are. Once again we have advocates in our city like many cities. Some speak louder than others, but the advocates also feel comfortable with the process that goes, and they see that businesses are acting in a positive way and a positive approach and this helps them sleep at night better because they dont have this overwhelming shadow over their head not knowing what needs to be done but not always able to afford a cass to come in and give a full survey. I have a question for either jeff or liz about Code Enforcement in your jurisdictions, so how are accessibility regs currently enforced in say los angeles, a very big city or pacifica which is a little bit smaller . Well as we look at the commercial buildings and thats really where we need to concentrate we have a group of guys. I have 85 to 89 commercial building inspectors that work the 465 square miles of the city of los angeles and theyre responsible to make sure that the accessibility is done properly, and as the Training Officer excuse me, one of my jobs is make sure theyre updated on the code, and last week when i got the finalized version of the checklist and quite frankly our the city of l. A. s guru had a hand in that. In fact she asked me to review it months back and i made a few suggestions and i saw that they were on there. I dont know if they were on there or before or not but the nice thing about the code is it doesnt have the pictures. The pictures takes up too much room and i gave it to the guys and they were appreciative. One of the reasons they were appreciative of it a year after the new code came out theyre not comfortable finding it and 11b was a total rewrite and most of the inspectors in our city are lets just say were not Spring Chickens anymore. We came in after working several years as contractors or what have you and our average age is in the higher 50s and learning a new code as big of a change it was was not easy for them and this is nice. This gives the code section. They know the measurements. They dont need it written down or pictures and scope has changed and they get that but for the most part the numbers havent changed that greatly. Theres a little bit and the thing is in the last three code cycles between 2010cbc to the 2015 change we changed the placement of the toilet three times really, so the numbers are a list are not always going to be there, and so we actually like the fact that its condensed. I was trying to get it if i could have gotten it in one page it would have better form but you cant and you look at the ada ones and there is a four part one that i looked at yesterday, 88 pages. We already have a code book. We have pictures in the code book. But what we need is something to go through. We have a plan and its the set of plans that we can go off of as well so just a reminder when we should be looking at things. Some of the big things we get the big things and the toilets where theyre supposed to be and when i check the fas set a certain size and we need the reminders that okay are we looking at a Doctors Office . Do i need to relook at the parking . If someone wants to change something okay is it allowed under the new code and gives a checklist to make sure were not running because the plans arent always the way the plans are when they get built so this has been well received. If nothing else it helps them to go to answer the questions and gives the sections they need to go to and one of the things that the guys really like. Its only been a week. I havent gotten a lot of feedback with. If its five pages theyre not going to use it. Two pages yeah we can use it. Thank you. How liz how does the enforcement play out in pacifica . Its permit based that its in most of the jurisdictions on the peninsula and the checklist will be used in our jurisdiction and many like it more as a reminder so we dont have what we refer to as the late hit, so the construction project is done and guess what the parking is in the wrong place or the ramp is missed or no handrail or whatever, so we can use it in the field just to go down and as we are there and read down and before the inspection and okay what am i looking at today . Okay. I have it in my head and now you go out in the field and look at the plan and i have it all done and it was easy because we have the check list now and we will use it and it will benefit the contractor because were not going to be out there as long. We dont need to be because we have a checklist and go boom, boom, boom and go around the site and do it one time so its beneficial for the code and everyones time. Thank you. So randy can you talk about generally some of the challenges you face in access compliance and if there is anything that this particular commission could do more for people that are in your industry . Its a great question. Thank you. Well, i think many of the challenges have been shared by other panelists, and and i share them. Cass Small Business. We talked about that a little bit. They in particular i think the cass legislation and rule making is centered around the Small Business person and a list like this and i know one size fits all. It has to be pretty generic but something that is focused for Small Business. I spend as others do a significant amount of time helping Small Business with accessibility and compliance, and walking them through that. Thats a big part of my job, and a very important part of my job. If we can assist Small Business in a more robust way i think that would be significant. [inaudible] okay. I would like to thank ccda for having us here today. I can tell you as a board member and [inaudible] i would like to thank ccda for a job well done. This checklist had been helpful. I will bring it back to my jurisdiction and have builders call us out for a consultant and encourage that and dont end up like we talked about and randy alluded to as well and we dont want the cold shower at the end of the job and by the way you need to tear this out and this isnt correct so with that being said i believe the checklist will be very useful and spoke to before its a living document so we will make changes along the way and do that and good document. Are the cass changes low audio and during final inspection . Yes i found that to be true. Yes. I agree. I dont know if there are any questions that have come in from over the phone . I also invite members of the public to ask questions if they have them. Yes, could you come to the front . Thank you. If you can identify yourself, speak into the mic. Thank you. Dominick octave i dont with the city of delano. We know a common complaint from businesses is my business was inspected by a inspector in and passed and final and how do you think the checklist will help when a business is not compliant and how will it benefit inspectors in the field . I can take part of that. The one good thing the list is brief and for the time that inspectors have to check code items and they have all of these things and accessibility is another one to be checked and what is grated its a tickler checklist and what its intended to be and the code is on the side if you need to dig deeper and were talking about the dialogue with the contractor, the developer, even the owner, and lets have that discussion up front about this, so thats the benefit i see. And to piggyback on that a little most inspectors have the code book in some version with them on the job site. A lot of them have it on an ipad or tablet. Some still have books in the car but when the contractor wants to know how to fix a problem they want the number how far does my toilet have to be from the wall . And if you couldnt remember that there is the check list and the code book and bring it up on the ipad, show it to the builder and do it, great done and move on and its an immediate answer and thats what they want. This commissioner dolim and i will expand it slightly and we have it as a guide when removing barriers or a permit active . Front of us in front of us but what i got out of the question its a relatively small percentage of the built environment out there today is currently under permit or active in the permitting process. Theres a whole another facet probably the majority of our buildings are existing buildings that theyre not in the process of any permit work. They might not have the benefit of this but from the publics viewpoint there seems to be that thought that well it was