Cutting to the Chase

AAB compliance officer Christopher Walker's notepad in front of level showing 3.3% crossslope. Click on photo for larger picture. Photo: Rob DuBuske

STEPHEN SPINETTO, Boston Disabilities Commissioner: Look. Let’s just cut to the chase. OK.

MARTIN EBEL, AAB Board Member: Yeah. That’s what I’m trying to do here but you’re dancing around with me and I'm starting to get frustrated.

-- AAB hearing, May 8, 2006.

Posted by John B. Kelly

It seems possible that the chase -- almost two years and at least four deadlines in -- may finally be about to be cut to. Massachusetts Architectural Access Board (AAB) compliance officer Christopher Walker came Friday morning to inspect crossslopes on the controversial all-brick sidewalk on Huntington Ave, which has been the subject of a NAG and BCIL complaint since August 2004. (Sidewalk runs from the intersection with Mass Ave., just above the entrance to the Green Line and Utrecht Art Supplies, to the front of Betty's Diner).

What compliance officer Walker found is without doubt enough to "put the city away," as it were. One day after the city's final deadline passed to bring all crossslopes under 2%, the very first slope measured by the Smart Level Pro topped 4%. As far as I was concerned, that was end of the story: the city is proven guilty of "willful noncompliance," well deserving of a very large fine.

The board meets Monday, July 24, to hear Walker's report, read the letters of concerned citizens, and decide how best to achieve safe access to the sidewalk for people with disabilities . It was already disgusted enough with the city's shenanigans in May to assess a fine of $500 per day since November 30, 2005 (the missed deadline-before-last), with any reconsideration pending full compliance by July 1, which was then extended one last time to July 20, yesterday.

Given the city's demonstrated record of contempt for the complaint process (it didn't even show up at the first hearing in January 2005), it's absurd legalistic arguments (it tried to argue that it wasn't responsible for its own sidewalk), its lazy failure even to properly fill out a variance request, and its repeated, false, assertions of compliance, it must pay a heavy price.

Even though a cast of characters has participated in this tragedy, the city of Boston functions as the legal "person" who owns the sidewalk, subject to the same laws as everyone else. So this "person" known as the city of Boston chose to install a sidewalk surface it knew to be both expensive and dangerous, chose to disregard its responsibility to inspect alterations to its property, and chose to resist through delay and legalistic maneuver every request and order given by the agency entrusted with ensuring that paths of travel do not imperil public safety.

Then, after being found in violation of state law not just once, or even twice, but three times, this "person," this scofflaw, ignored heartfelt request after request from the people whom the bricks were daily torturing, that the city please take the bricks up.

No, instead the city sent groups of workers out three separate times, and three times it asserted, falsely as it turned out, that it was in compliance with the law. Now what should be done about a person such as this, a person who has been over the past two years knowingly and willfully endangering the most vulnerable portion of the citizenry -- people who are elderly and disabled?

I will urge the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board to commence penalizing the city since its very first missed deadline, way back in July 2005. Otherwise, the city will continue to treat "deadlines" as optional at best, hollow threats at worst.

The board should increase the fine from $500 per day to $1000 per day, and going forward, it should assess the city $1000 per day per crossslope violation, until those violations are corrected.

If the only way to convince some people to obey the law is by punishing them when they don't, punishment must be great enough to compel good behavior in the future.

It's called "personal responsibility."