Report addresses ADA accessibility
By Jeff Gallatin
North Olmsted
Published Jan. 2, 2008

City officials believe the recent report on how to make North Olmsted Municipal buildings more accessible for the handicapped has the city on the right path to fixing long-standing problems.

After the report drawn up by architect John Patrick Picard was given to the city in December, several officials said it can help the city fix many accessibility issues in the city. Workers have already started implementing some of the smaller solutions with the officials saying others are likely to be included in the 2008 budget being finalized in coming weeks.

“It’s a blueprint we can use for many years to come,” said Mayor Thomas O’Grady. “The sad truth is that the city has had compliance issues in the past and we weren’t in compliance with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements in different ways.”

O’Grady cited as one example how long it took to bring the entrance to City Hall up to ADA requirements.

“It took much longer than it should have to get that done,” O’Grady said. “For years, we didn’t have the funds to deal with the issue or plans to do. Then when we did get a plan together, it got caught up as a political football with some members of council.”

Council initially voted not to approve the plans for redesigning the entrance and other portions of City Hall, with O’Grady saying council did not honor an agreement or ask relevant questions about the project even though he said the administration had provided the needed information.

Some of the council members in turn said the costs for the work kept escalating and that they had not received all the needed information. A plan was eventually approved when then council Finance Committee Chairman Ron Tallon changed his vote and supported the project. Tallon said he still had reservations about the project, but was voting for it because there was strong public support for bringing the front entrance up to the ADA requirements.

“We don’t want issues like that to become political footballs again,” O’Grady said. “This report gives us a strong plan for how to do such work well into the future.”

Ward 2 Councilman Paul Barker, who was chairman of council’s buildings and facilities committee the last two years, said the plan will help in many ways.

“It’s a very detailed document which shows problems as well as potential solutions,” Barker said. “It’s an excellent document, like the one recently released about the city’s wastewater plant facilities and rates. Both do more than just point out problems, they offer potential ways of dealing with the issues, which is important.”

A former member of the citizens advisory group for the Community Development Block Grant projects before he become a councilman in 2005, Barker said there has been discussion about ADA issues for years in the city.

“We tried to get funds for it, and other times people just didn’t move on the issue,” Barker said. “With a document like this, we can show other funding agencies that we have a document in place and specific ideas and ways to address the issues now. We stand a much better chance of getting help as well as doing it ourselves if we have a specific way to proceed.”

Barker said the plan also makes more sense than many government studies.

“It’s realistic,” Barker said. “It gives common sense solutions like fixing water fountains and other facilities in a reasonable, cost-effective manner.”

City Service Director Duane Limpert said his staff has already begun utilizing the report and begun fixing smaller issues which can be handled in the current budget.

“We can’t do any specific big projects like, say, the ramp at the police station until we get a new budget and the administration and council settle on how to proceed,” Limpert said. “But, we can do the small maintenance-type work which can be fixed with a few repairs or alterations.”

In his report, Picard recommends beginning the work in  public areas with high use.

“I would ask you to consider which facilities are utilized most often by the general public and rate them from most used to least used,” Picard said in the report. “For instance, the North Olmsted Recreation Center being the most used by the public and the Waste Water Treatment Plant the least used.”

Picard said the fire station, police station and service department “may rate somewhere in the middle,” and that the senior center may benefit more immediately from barrier removal than the recreation center.

Council President Kevin Kennedy said the recommendation is logical.

“Depending on what the city decides to do about the current recreation center and recreation facilities, I think it and a building like the senior center, which get heavy use from a lot of people, certainly should be looked at as being done fairly quickly,” Kennedy said. “We need to put some time and money into this work.”

Councilman-at-large Michael Gareau said he would like to see the plan used to also help correct problems such as portions of relatively new facilities like those in the City Park are brought into compliance.

“We shouldn’t have problems like that,” Gareau said. “Those need to be dealt with. Then we need to work on setting up a plan on how to proceed with dealing with various work to be done. We also need to make sure we maintain our facilities properly or we’re going to head right back for problems like we have in some other areas of the city, like some streets which weren’t maintained and now we have to fix them again.”

O’Grady said it’s something that the administration and council will work on together.

“We can build up our facilities and infrastructure in the right way now with this to help us.”