Getting back up to speed.

Well, obviously NAG website has been dormant for a while here. Just the sort of dormancy that has kept me from hosting a blog in the past. In the words of George Bush, "I take full responsibility. But, it's really all the fault of the people who said they would write things for the blog but didn't."

Believe it or not, dental-hell has continued. I just went in for stage two of my double root canals last Monday, and because my teeth still hurt, I'm going back in on Tuesday. But, as all great athletes would say, "I'm not making excuses."

The real problem is that I have a very hard time being productive when I must spend a lot of time in bed. I have had some skin abrasions on my butt brought on by sitting in my wheelchair in a way that my butt doesn't like. The new wheelchair is the obvious culprit here, so it will take some working out to get all the adjustments correct.

Back to NAG

Here's where things stand right now with the Huntington Avenue sidewalk. To recap, I filed a compaint against the city of Boston before the Architectural Access Board (AAB) last August. The city, as is its wont, failed to respond to every notice that the board sent it. We finally had a hearing in early January, where a lot of disabled people from the neighborhood came out and told the board how awful brick sidewalks are in general, and Huntington Ave. in particular for us people with mobility and visual impairments. The city did not show, and the board ordered it to bring the sidewalk between Massachusetts Ave. and Gainsborough St. up to code by July 1.

Then the city came up with the novel idea of arguing that Huntington Avenue had passed out of the city's ownership with the construction contract. It was all the MBTA's fault! By virtue of the fact that the MBTA was managing the project on behalf of the city, the sidewalk actually belonged to the MBTA, not the city. It even went into Superior Court to argue its case, which was scheduled for this summer.

The AAB, annoyed by the city not showing up to its hearing, scheduled another hearing to consider whether it should fine the city. But when Para Jayasinghe, chief city engineer, showed up and began arguing that the sidewalk was not Boston's problem, the AAB forgot the purpose of the hearing and started grilling Jayasinghe pretty thoroughly, with increasing incredulity. Jayasinghe and the city's lawyer kept repeating that the city would not accept the project until all access requirements were met. "But how much was left on the project to do?" the AAB asked. Turns out all that remained was some landscaping (installing live trees where dead ones stood) and finishing the disability community off for good by laying brick crosswalks.


On and on the hearing went, but when it came time later in the day to lay a fine on the city, the AAB realized its mistake - the hearing was to fine the city, not re-hear the case. So to cut the story mercifully short, the AAB decided to continue the case. "Continue" in regulatory agency speak, means to do nothing and to wait a while. Oh well, it was fun watching anyway.

Meanwhile, we got some good local press out of our victory, the city refused all comment, and we started planning for the next stage of our campaign. Here things got distracted a bit by all the snow, but we did get a petition printed up and are now distributing it among the residents of 333/334 Mass Ave., a.k.a. Symphony Towers.

We also learned that Mass Ave. itself is scheduled for a good dosing of bricks, supposedly advocated for by the South End neighborhood groups. We have begun trying to reach out to these groups, but have not met with them yet.