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Committee advances ordinance extending deadlines, waiving DBI inspection fee for disability access upgrades
Summary
The Land Use Committee voted without objection to amend and forward an ordinance that extends compliance timelines for mandatory disability access improvements for places of public accommodation and waives the Department of Building Inspection permit fee; sponsor said staggered dates give small businesses more time to comply.
Supervisor Katie Tang, chair of the Land Use Committee, moved amendments and the item forward after explaining the changes she proposed to the city's disability access program. Tang said the ordinance extends the schedule for compliance by building category and clarifies definitions, adding that the local rules are intended to align with state and federal accessibility law. “If you fall into category 1 building, your new compliance date for the checklist would be 01/01/2019,” Tang said, listing staggered deadlines for categories 1 through 4 and noting all subsequent filings would be similarly extended.
Tang told colleagues the program — modeled on the city's seismic retrofit effort — requires places of public accommodation to file a checklist, seek a building permit and then obtain permits to complete required work. She emphasized outreach to small-business tenants, saying the ordinance requires property owners to notify small business tenants at least 30 days before filing a permit application so tenants understand potential impacts.
Bill Strahan of the Department of Building Inspection told the committee DBI supports additional time for compliance, noting the department has run multiple notifications and public workshops and plans further outreach. “We have another public workshop coming up in May,” Strahan said, and described the department's ongoing outreach to encourage permit filings.
A public speaker representing merchants' interests, Henrik Henry Loewitz, said he supported the extensions and the fee waiver and estimated a large number of storefronts could be affected, arguing the changes could reduce so-called “drive-by” accessibility lawsuits that target small businesses.
Tang clarified the fee waiver applies only to DBI’s building inspection permit fee and cautioned other department fees might still apply. The committee first approved Tang’s amendment and then voted, without objection, to move the ordinance forward as amended with a positive recommendation to the full Board of Supervisors.
Next steps: the ordinance will be forwarded to the Board of Supervisors (and, per the clerk’s reading of the item, the clerk will forward the ordinance to the California Building Standards Commission as indicated in the referral language).
