Mayoral Leadership Challenge: Respect the ADA, Obey the AAB.

Posted by John B. Kelly

Following is a press statement released by Neighborhood Access Group to coincide with Mayor Thomas M. Menino's announcement due Friday, July 25 of a curb cut repair program.

If you keep scrolling down after this entry, you will run into articles about Huntington Avenue, NAG letters to Mayor Menino, and a petition.

Statement For Immediate Release
July 25, 2008

Mayoral Leadership Challenge: Respect the ADA, Obey the AAB.

"Public safety should trump aesthetics every time."

When Mayor Thomas M. Menino observes the 18th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Friday by announcing a curbcut repair program, not present will be the grassroots group of disabled people who first raised access as a civil rights and public safety issue. Neighborhood Access Group (NAG), which has been featured in a score of news pieces on access over the last five years, says it cannot celebrate the landmark civil rights law for people with disabilities while Boston continues to disregard the orders and fines of the leading enforcer of ADA rights in the Commonwealth, the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board (AAB).

The Access Board, whose access regulations mirror the ADA, ordered the city in 2005 to repair the dangerously noncompliant all-brick sidewalk on Huntington Avenue. After city appeals were twice rejected by Suffolk Superior Court, the city's neglect was met in 2006 with a Board fine of $500 per day, retroactive to November, 2005. Even after the administration received a demand for payment last April, it would not budge. The unpaid fine, imposed for "willful noncompliance," has soared to $490,000.

"The mayor is certainly ignoring the fine," said NAG member Eileen Brewster of Ruggles. "I say: respect the ADA; respect the AAB." Brewster, who moved into the area for its access, has been unable to ride on Huntington Avenue since the bumpy bricks were laid in 2003-2004 over the protests of disabled residents.

"We just cannot in good conscience celebrate the ADA with an administration that has been willfully violating its most basic mandate for years," said NAG founder John Kelly. "The city doesn't even have a plan to make Huntington Avenue safe again."

The two plans that the administration have floated, driving markers into the bricks and grinding them down, have been rejected as discriminatory and unrealistic. Access advocates have been calling on the city for years to restore a concrete path of travel down the avenue. Residents report that the bricks cause injury, pain, muscle spasms, vision problems, incontinence, loss of wheelchair control, and dangerous falls for cane users and elderly alike. Bricks are also extremely slippery when wet and icy, frequently go missing, and cost four times as much to install and much more to maintain than simple concrete. The city now says that it will entirely reconstruct the avenue, but "can make no guarantees" regarding its surface.

"We invite the mayor to come down to Huntington Avenue and see what we experience," said Symphony Plaza resident Pam Beeler. "It was a fall on bricks that put me in this wheelchair."

The city, which has been deluged with hundreds of AAB complaints filed by NAG and the Disability Policy Consortium, continues to miss board deadlines. The dangerously slanted sidewalk in front of Symphony Hall on Massachusetts Avenue was ordered repaired by July 1, but inaction has led to the scheduling of an AAB hearing for October. And despite assertions of improved procedures, curb cut and sidewalk construction continues to be done incorrectly and certified falsely as compliant.

"The city says that it has learned from its mistakes and wants to work together with advocates," Kelly said. "We have told them time and again that we need a concrete solution on Huntington Avenue, with bricks along the curb edge for people who like to look at bricks."

City Councilor Michael Ross has been proposing this compromise for years, but has run into opposition from the institutions along the avenue, which sponsored and helped pay for the brick sidewalk. The Fenway Alliance, the consortium of institutions that line the avenue, have claimed as its greatest achievement what it calls the "beautification" of Huntington Avenue. Northeastern University has been installing the bricks everywhere on its campus.

"We challenge the mayor to show leadership," Kelly said. "It's one thing to allocate extra money for curb cuts, it's another thing to go up against powerful interests like Northeastern University and the Fenway Alliance and declare once and for all that the safety of all is more important than the aesthetic preferences of the well-connected few. Public safety should trump aesthetics every time."



Contact: John Kelly
Neighborhood Access Group
Phone: 617-536-5140
Email: John.B.Kelly@verizon.net