State Board to Determine City's Fate Re: Huntington Avenue Sidewalk

Posted by John B. Kelly

After the city was certified to be noncompliant on the Huntington Avenue sidewalk from the corner of Massachusetts Avenue to Betty's diner, the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board will decide tomorrow how much of a fine to levy.

The board already imposed a fine of $500 per day since November 30, 2005, one of a group of missed deadlines.

I wrote this letter to the board:

To the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board:

May this be the last letter you receive regarding this stretch of sidewalk on Huntington Avenue.

It is now incontrovertible that the city has been out-of-compliance, without justification, since July 1, 2005.

It is as if the city has been conducting an experiment to discover how much contempt it can heap upon people with disabilities and the state board commissioned to protect us; how many legalistic absurdities it can put forward; how many deadlines it can miss without excuse; how many variances it can fail to fill out properly; how many hearings it can come to completely unprepared to answer even the most basic of questions; and how many times it can attest -- falsely -- that the sidewalk is in compliance, and yet suffer no penalty of law.

This experiment has gone on far too long. Hundreds and hundreds of hours have been expended by people with disabilities trying to secure justice. And still, people suffer because of this stretch of sidewalk. People are in the streets risking their lives because of the deliberate actions of city officials. Someone could easily have been killed by now.

Please: credit our suffering, respect our efforts, uphold the law, and penalize this scofflaw to the limit of the law.