Human Rights Commission and ADA Transition Plan Information Session   1/18/2024

Thank you.

It's very, very important.

We're not live yet, right?

It works for a while, so.

Yeah?

We are live.

No one else is live, so.

Oh, good.

All right.

Well, it is, I mean, we'll go with the data.

You know, there's work to be done.

Recording is in progress, by the way.

No, no worries.

This is where you want me, correct?

I think that's what you did last time.

It works.

You got it.

This is going to happen.

What's the thing we re-do it?

Yes, so Paul is out sick, unfortunately.

What's that?

That's probably going to get taken, but...

Charlie and Matt work together.

Yes, yes, I'm working with him, yes.

I'm helping with the community engagement aspects.

Perfect.

How do you feel about that?

and Will Scangi.

I don't know if you've met Charlie or Matt.

Nice to meet you.

Thanks for letting us know about the sandwiches.

Yes, thank you for sharing about the sandwiches.

I don't know.

Yeah, I know.

Sorry.

I didn't realize.

Still, it would have been good.

It was probably 30, OK?

I'm sorry.

That was my choice, if you take questions or read it Nova, I won't read it Nova.

Thank you for being here.

Of course.

It's not the official view of the city.

All you have to do is just tell us who the queen is.

I have one of those.

Thank you for that reminder.

I was too lazy to walk away now.

If you want to look at this or you, I also dropped it.

This is in like 30 seconds.

I'll guide you through it.

Yeah.

You know, it'll be my moderately incredible way.

You might know what I do.

And then, you know, you want to catch it.

So then I don't keep you on it.

Yeah.

Right.

So grateful for the food again.

Thank you.

Good.

I get a storm.

I think everybody's here that's going to be here.

Let's see.

and Stephen Porter.

Good.

It's going to be there for three months.

Hello.

How are you?

Good, thank you.

Cool.

Where was my invite?

Where was my invite?

Yes.

Yesterday, what I thought I had said.

We'll go ahead and call this meeting to order at 6 36 p.m. on January 18th.

2024, I believe 18 days of this year have gone already.

It's just got out of 2022.

Will do.

Ernest?

Present.

Jeanette?

Present.

Mary, are you virtual?

Is Caroline and Mary on the participant list or waiting to get in?

No?

Okay.

Thank you.

We'll keep an eye out.

Charlie, it looks like you may be on Zoom.

Yes, I'm here.

Okay.

Thank you.

Angela, is Angela Estes on Zoom by chance?

Okay.

We'll have to keep an eye out just until she's able to join.

I think she's out of town as well.

Wolfgang.

Present.

Kathryn.

Suzanne here, and I believe Andy has let us know that he's not able to make it this evening.

All right, so thank you.

Thank you, Charlie.

And if anybody hasn't heard, don't know, Charlie and Angela, that we made reference to those names, are new commissioners that are filling in for spots that were vacated before their terms were up.

So we're excited to have them be a part of the commission.

Now we will recite our mission statement.

Let's begin.

as strong advocate to justice and equal opportunity by providing citywide leadership and guidance in the area of civil rights.

Thank you.

That is sound good.

So those, remember that we have a public evidence-based briefing.

If you haven't experienced technical difficulties, you may call 434-970-31

one five that is four three four nine seven zero three one one five and the staff person will assist you.

All right thank you Ernest.

So this is the one time of year where I take the meeting over

While we go through officer elections, I'm going to follow the procedure that's outlined in the rules and procedures for the Human Rights Commission.

So if it seems complex and you're wondering, why is he doing all these funny steps?

It's because that's how it's written down.

And I do my best to follow the instructions.

So I'm going to chair the election process.

After we elect chair and vice chair, I'll hand it back to the chair.

First of all, I think we have one spokesperson from our election committee, Jeanette.

Okay.

So what we'll do first is we're going to go through election process for the chair and maybe do the same for vice chair.

Yeah, sure.

Okay.

And the second?

Multiple seconds.

I'll give you that second.

All right.

All right.

Are there any nominations from the floor?

No.

Okay.

Hearing none.

We're going to close nominations if there are no more from the floor and

We're going to deviate from the procedure a little bit and ask if you have anything you'd like to share with us before the elections.

Yeah, I rolled some stuff out.

Did you?

No.

Thank you, Alan.

Thank you to the commission.

Let's go ahead and hold the vote.

And we'll do it's a majority vote.

So if the majority votes for you as chair, you will be chair.

You can vote for yourself, in fact.

I won't do that.

All right, here we go.

I'm going to start with you because that's the order in which I have this on the list.

Ernest.

I will abstain.

You're going to abstain?

That's fair.

Very modest of you.

Let's see, Jeanette.

Yes.

And no, Mary.

Charlie.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Angela is not here.

I don't believe.

Okay.

I like the drama.

Suzanne.

Okay.

And he is not here.

Congratulations, Ernest.

You are the chair.

I move to nominate Wolfgang Keppley for vice chair.

Do I say your name right?

Yeah.

Yeah, Keppley.

Any nominations from the floor?

OK.

There are no nominations from the floor.

We'll close nominations.

Very good.

If we're ready, we'll vote.

Here we go.

Ernest.

Yes.

All right.

Jeanette.

Yes.

Not Mary.

Just checking.

Charlie.

Yes.

OK. Angela's not here.

I don't believe.

No.

Wolfgang.

Yes.

I'm putting myself.

Catherine.

Yep.

OK. And Suzanne?

Yes.

All right.

And Andy is not here.

And congratulations, you are vice chair.

I'm going to turn the meeting back over.

Thank you.

There you go.

Thank you.

Again, thank you commissioners for trusting me with meeting the commission.

I know I stand.

on some really tall shoulders for people that have done a great job leading us, especially in the last couple of years of what we've been doing and where we've been heading.

So I'm thankful.

And I just want to keep things moving in a positive direction.

So thank you.

So I look forward to working with Wolfgang.

We need to accept the minutes from December the 7th, our regular meeting, and on January the 4th, our work session.

Great.

Would you vote for each of those?

Yes.

Are there any?

I'm sorry.

I did not ask.

OK.

Very good.

OK. Ernest.

Yes.

Jeanette?

This is for both of them.

Just the first.

I'm going to be able to print December.

December 7th.

So.

Mary.

Charlie.

Who was the part of that meeting?

Yeah.

Charlie, may I interrupt and say, if you'd like to abstain, you can, because I don't think you were at that meeting.

OK. OK.

I'll abstain then.

Angela, not here.

Yes.

Approved.

Kathryn?

Yes.

Suzanne?

Yes.

And not Andy, so those minutes pass.

Thank you.

Should we do the vote for the January 4th work session minutes?

Okay.

Ernest?

Jeanette?

Charlie, you were there for the

Wolfgang.

Approve.

OK, both sets of minutes are approved.

All right.

Thank you, everyone.

This is matters of chair update.

I don't have any updates.

I just received a nod two minutes ago.

I don't have any updates as of yet.

So I'll pass on that.

I can start us out.

Please.

So we just this past weekend had the community walk in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

That was a good time.

It was a success.

A lot of people showed up.

including Jeanette.

Thank you, Jeanette.

And there are a couple upcoming events in your agenda packets as usual.

Let me know if you would like to attend any of them.

And the outreach data is up to date in that report for December.

I am still conducting one-on-one meetings.

If anybody would like to schedule one, please let me know.

Thank you to Wolfgang for participating already.

And I have a few of you on the calendar going forward.

And finally, we also just rolled out today a newsletter for our office.

I don't know if some of you might have received it.

That's good to hear.

But I will, once I determine how to add subscribers, I will

forward that to the rest of you to subscribe to future publications from us.

That's all.

Thank you.

Thanks for bringing that back to life.

That's good.

Just very briefly, as usual, the report is in the packet.

If you have questions about any of the information on the report, feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email.

What I would like to also add that's not on the report, two things.

One, we are getting ready for a retreat, or it's hard to say what we should call it, maybe an annual planning meeting.

We've been going back and forth about what to call it.

A couple of things I want to think about.

We need to select a date for that.

We're interviewing three potential facilitators for that tomorrow, in fact, so we'll be presenting some recommendations to Ernest to think about and looking to think about in terms of facilitators, but what we'll probably

want to do is select a Saturday.

And so once you'd be thinking about that, we'll circulate that via email about dates.

But the other thing that we want to do is solicit your ideas ahead of time in a survey.

The survey is ready to go.

Okay.

And so if you recall, in the past, we solicited ideas for topics of focus or areas of focus, gathered ideas from you, and then based on that, created another community-wide survey to then get public feedback on what they would like to see the commission focus on.

And then we figured if we could do those two things before the retreat planning meeting,

Then you may have a better idea of where to put your energy or it can at least give you some information to think about in terms of what the public wants.

So is everybody feeling good about that idea?

Okay.

I think we talked about that before.

Just wanted to make sure you are aware of that.

The other thing I was going to ask, and remember a while back we switched from

Your group email was your personal emails, right?

So we gave all those to our IT department.

They create a group and then we send emails to you.

We've since converted to city emails.

Wondering if that presents a barrier to access for some and wanted to offer folks the opportunity to add a personal email if you choose.

I know Charlie and Angela are only on personal emails because we haven't yet had the orientation to get them set up for city emails.

But does anybody, I'll say this, you don't have to tell me now, if you'd like your personal email to be added back onto the list in addition to your city email, we can do that.

So just let me know if that would be, make it easier to access the information and stay in the loop on commission stuff.

So keep in mind that for FOIA purposes, we're going to keep the city emails on there.

I think that's all.

Sorry, can I ask a question?

On the survey, or is the survey for the annual meeting or whatever we're calling it, will that also include possible dates?

Great question.

So now that you've said that, yes, I think it could very well include that.

And maybe we will ask that question when we meet with facilitators tomorrow and see who's available when and then include that on there.

Good.

That's great.

Brilliant.

Oh, you're welcome.

I want to ask, when do we traditionally have, it uses right after we get the new commissions, correct?

Yeah.

So in March, I figured that we probably won't schedule a work session, but we'll just have one big meeting.

And we've messed around with Saturdays.

We've done regular time, like 6.30 time.

I think talking with, kind of thinking about this with facilitators and so forth, they've suggested

I'm just wondering, we've done it with and without facilitators.

Was there a choice to have a facilitator for this one?

Great question.

Yeah, so we presented the idea to Ernest just to say, does that seem like a way to get everybody to be able to participate more easily without having to focus on running the meeting?

I mean, Ernest is in charge, so I will defer to Ernest.

Give me a love-hearing.

It's probably a very personal choice.

One is it just seems like an expense that could go to other things.

Obviously, it's not my money, so you know.

The toughest part is finding someone that does our work specifically.

That's what I want.

And finding that type of person would probably be very expensive.

And I don't know, I mean, how many people

do Human Rights Commission things that we were talking to and are in the area that would give us what we want.

So I know that I want at least to have someone connected, I won't say names, do a history lesson for us as part of that time.

So that will definitely be at least an hour, if not more of our time.

And then the rest of that time being spent on what we want to nail, what we want to focus in on for the year.

And that's why I want to change it from a strategic planning to our annual work

ideas for the for the year because you know when I hear strategic plan I hear something that's three to five years and this is not something this is per you know year and it changes for what we are looking to uh support you know I know right now we're looking at housing and affordable housing and and helping to help you know support um liberal steel building everybody's working on affordable housing in the city of Charlottesville so my goal is to um

Get more information so we know more about what's happening and that we don't get sidetracked in supporting something that is not beneficial to the city as a whole.

So we will continue to talk and I hear what you said and I agree with that.

I don't like a lot of, you know, I hate going and

Going to a meeting in a process of a planning session and we did not touch on anything that was beneficial to the whole.

And that's what I want, is that it's gonna be beneficial for all of us coming out of it.

So we will continue to talk about what we hear from our facilitators that'll come in and see what's best and we'll let you know.

Yes, ma'am.

All right, I think my questions were answered.

So, all right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think so.

Well, just in response to the office, I don't know if this is an update or a response, I did attend the walk on Sunday.

It was really great.

And I especially appreciated the collaboration.

between the Albemarle Office of Equity and Diversity and the Charlottesville.

And one of the things they shared was that they'll be doing monthly walks in different parts of the city to have like to cultivate that deeper understanding.

And the walk on Sunday was part of the prolific route.

Is that right?

So we went through some of those things.

So that was just really a positive thing.

And I

I just want to say I think the outreach that the office has been doing is really is having that impact that a few years ago we had around community outreach.

Thank you.

Okay, so you have that on your radar to send out?

Awesome.

Thank you.

Anything else?

That's it for staff updates.

I have something I just want to share.

I apologize for missing last, the work session.

It just, I just missed it.

But it was really important.

I appreciated reading the notes and the conversation that you all had.

And I will say, like, given that our legislative priorities were focused, were wanting to focus on housing, I did talk with, you know, in my new position at Piedmont Housing Alliance, I'm learning more about the different ways that coalitions in Virginia are working towards legislative priorities.

So there is the Virginia Coalition or the Virginia Housing Coalition that has a list of legislative priorities that they put forth.

So I was going to share that with everyone.

And then also the two, the chair and the vice chair,

Joy Johnson and Sunshine Nathan have offered to come and speak to the commission at any point if you all would want that.

And maybe we want to wait until we're closer to next year's re-upping of the legislative recommendations.

That would be super cool.

Yeah, just started.

Anything else?

Awesome.

All right.

So next steps.

Confirmation of our work session.

Will we use our work session on February the 1st?

We need that.

I will say this, let's come back to that before we adjourn, remove that, and come back to that before we adjourn.

you know just yeah I'm not sure I agree as of right now he'd be February 1st so let's come back to that before we adjourn make a note of that please yep

All right.

So I don't have to close this session, do I?

No, just part of your meetings.

So we're going to move on to our work session and we're going to have ADA transition planning information session, which is we're excited to have

Charlie Soule, and we were also supposed to have Paul Riddesoul, but he is sick, not feeling well.

So we have Charlie here, and we also have someone that works with him, Matthew Shapiro.

I try to work on names, man.

You did great.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

He's here with Charlie Soule.

I mean, I know as far as commission, I've been hearing about the work that we've been trying to do with ADA for a while by trying to get some information out with a pamphlet, make sure we had it in different languages, and some of the other things that I know that we've talked about in the commission.

So, Charlie?

Yeah.

I think we'll pass it over to you, man.

All right.

All right, that's working very well.

You're good?

It's hard to make him turn around.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Are you sharing your screen?

Go to, go back, open Zoom back up.

Oh, I see.

I'm actually sharing the screen.

Okay.

Oh, I'm sorry.

There we go.

All right, well, thanks everyone again for having us here.

Excited to speak with you about the transition plan.

I am very excited about the work that we're doing and look forward to answering any questions that you might have.

Feel free to jump in at any time.

Any questions, anything you want clarified, please go ahead and stop me.

Obviously, we can make this more of a conversation than a presentation.

So what we're going to do, quick introductions.

We're going to go a little bit through what the ADA is.

Matt, we'll talk on that.

I'll speak on what an ADA transition plan is.

We'll go through what Charlottesville is doing as part of the ADA transition plan.

And I'll give you some updates on where the plan stands today.

And then we'll have a little discussion on personal experiences, which can last really as long as we like.

So this is me.

That's my boy Theodore.

We're at Wrigley Field.

I'm not a Cubs fan, I'm a Mets fan.

Wrigley Field is a special place for all baseball fans.

So I made sure to drag him there.

Despite, I think it was like 20 degrees, he was not happy.

Paul, not here, unfortunately, but this is Paul and his daughter.

I've been working really closely with Paul on this plan.

Really enjoy working with him.

It's been very helpful with getting this project underway.

Sure.

Good evening, commission members.

And again, sorry, I have my back to you.

But I am Matthew Shapiro.

I'm the founder and CEO of my own disability consulting company called Six Wheels, but also partnering with PIM on this initiative.

32 years old, soon to be 33.

My birthday is on Monday, so.

It's my birthday.

Thank you.

A wheelchair user.

is obvious.

And then I was very pleased when Charlie said that he was at Wrigley Field because I am a Cubs fan.

That was completely unintentional by the way.

And then I just have a ton of ADA transition plan experience, assessment experience.

I am a certified ADA coordinator, but a lot of my assessments I look at from the standpoint of

I use this terminology in my work, the idea of inclusion above compliance, because something can be compliant by the standard of the ADA, but still not be fully inclusive for all people to use.

So in doing this plan, I am trying to bring that perspective of while Charlie is certainly collecting wonderful, wonderful data, also trying to think that there are people behind, there is people behind that data and how can we make sure

That everything is fully inclusive for all people who visit this lovely place that we call Charlottesville

So, for those that may or may not know, the Americans with Disabilities Act is the guiding legislation that supports and protects individuals with disabilities as they navigate the world.

It was signed in 1990 by the first

Bush, President.

There you can see him on the signing of the ADA.

Funny story that I've read and heard from people who were actually at that event.

It was on the lawn of the White House and the one of the White House at the time was not accessible, which is ironic.

And so there was a lot of maneuvering and things that had to occur in order for people to be there to celebrate this monumentous occasion.

And so, yes, all of our

Decisions are based off of what the ADA says as standards, but again, also from my perspective, going above and beyond what the ADA requires to guarantee full inclusion.

And then in doing this work, we are constantly thinking about two different types of disabilities, right?

First are those disabilities that are visible and as kind of obviously stated, those are disabilities that are immediately apparent when somebody rolls, walks, or enters a room.

Obviously you can pick up that I'm a disabled person by the fact that when I enter a space, I'm doing so in a power wheelchair,

and other examples may be somebody who's blind or visually impaired due to a service animal, somebody who is deaf may be due to having implants, different things of that nature.

And then the other example is invisible disabilities.

So those are disabilities that are not immediately apparent.

So those could be your ADHDs, your learning disabilities, your rheumatoid arthritis.

There is not necessarily

Not to put it this way, but this makes sense, not necessarily a dead giveaway that that person may be living with a disability.

So this is sort of the context we are looking at when we're undertaking this transition plan.

And I will turn it back to Charlie to dive into some of the data.

Yeah, ADA transition plan.

So what is an ADA transition plan?

First of all, it's a requirement.

Every city with a certain number of employees is supposed to have a transition plan on file.

Charlottesville does have a transition plan.

You're also supposed to update it relatively consistently.

Five years, ten years, somewhere in that time span.

The reason being is that data is constantly changing.

People are constantly changing.

And if you're not consistently reassessing where you stand, you might be working off of data that is no longer relevant to today.

So what is a transition plan?

It starts with what's called self-assessments or self-evaluations.

You'll hear multiple different terms used for really what amounts to the same thing.

This is when you look at all the things in a city and assess whether or not it is compliant with ADA.

So what does that mean?

Facilities, publicly accessible facilities.

We're looking at right-of-way, so sidewalks that people are using.

We're looking at programs and services that are being provided, guidance, communication with people in the city.

We look at all of those items and we determine whether or not they are being done in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the various different

So an example I like to use for programs and services is if there is a knitting club that is being held in the basement of a library and you can only get that club by stairs, a simple suggestion would be to hold it in a space that doesn't require the use of stairs with an elevator or some other way.

So we're looking at things like that, small, easy solutions, but also some larger, more complicated items.

So once you have that self-assessment, the next step of the process is to develop what's called implementation plans or action plans.

Again, what's amazing about this is that even though it is a requirement, even though it's been 30 plus years now, there's still lots of different terminology that gets used to discuss the same exact things.

The idea is you do the self-assessment, self-evaluation, and you come up with a plan to remediate the barriers that you find.

You're looking at your budgets, you're looking at

at public engagement results, you're looking at a whole host of different factors and coming up with some sort of concrete plan to move from inaccessible non-compliant to accessible and compliant.

That plus some other bells and whistles makes the transition plan a reality.

And sorry, how old is the current transition plan?

2013, I believe.

Okay, so we're about.

Yeah.

So where are we in the process?

We started with the PRO-AG right-of-way assessment.

PRO-AG, actually, these are no longer guidelines.

They're now standards.

They were just adopted.

I think in September, they became official standards after, this is not an exaggeration, I think it's about 20 years.

of Development.

They just in September became the actual standard.

So it's kind of like the Super Bowl for for ADA related issues.

So we did use PRO-WAG, even though they weren't the standards at the time, we knew that they were going to be the standards soon.

So we used PRO-WAG standards for our right of way assessment.

So we completed that assessment.

It was 165 to 167 miles of sidewalk.

We had self-assessment technicians walk every single square foot of that sidewalk, and we were looking for, I'll get a little bit deeper into what we were looking for farther down in the presentation, but we had every single mile was covered.

Public engagement.

We've done a survey that's available to the public.

It's still available to the public.

We did first public

and we've also just been in constant communication with various stakeholders within the community.

We've reached out to groups that we think might be interested in knowing more or learning more about what we're doing to make sure that anybody who wants to have any kind of input on the plan has the ability and can offer their input.

Other items that we did, finished, we did a transit assessment, 219 transit stops within the city.

We have done a park assessment, so all the publicly accessible parks, that was 30 parks.

We are going to be starting the facility assessment.

I say starting next week, it might actually be the week after that.

But very soon we're going to be starting the facility assessment.

And that will take probably about two months, two months of additional assessment time.

Program services and website, that process is ongoing and I'll go a little bit deeper into what that means a little farther in the presentation.

After all that happens,

Then we start working on the report and then we deliver the report following the completion of that drafting.

The drafting process can be time consuming.

There's lots of data analysis that goes into it.

There's lots of people within the city of Charlottesville that we need to speak with, lots of members of the public that we need to speak with.

Again, you want to get this right.

No point of collecting all this data, no point of spending all this money getting this data if you're not going to have actionable results on the back end.

So that's something that we really focus on is making sure that we're not just collecting data

so that we can put it into a binder and throw it on a shelf.

That's a waste of money.

It's a waste of time.

We are in the process of making a usable, actionable plan that is going to make people's lives in trouble go better and make this city more affordable.

A little bit about public engagement, just how the process runs.

Starts with fact finding.

In this case, what I mean by that is who should we talk with?

You know, who should we contact?

Obviously, I'm not from Charlottesville, so often I'll speak with people who are from Charlottesville or staff members or members of the community, just trying to understand who does have an opinion on an ADA transition plan, who is an advocate.

Then we start with education.

This goes both ways.

That means education for PIM, our company, and also education to the public about what a transition plan is.

Engagement, that's when we're trying to get

Personal stories, personal thoughts on the transition plan, and then synthesis, the final step where we're taking that information that we've learned and we're adding it into the report.

And this is actually an important component.

So Matt makes a great point about this when we spoke about this a little before the meeting, that data is fantastic.

We love data.

Data is really good.

It's a great way to make plans.

It's a great way to determine where we should be spending money, where we should be focusing

If you don't use the pupil component and add it to the data component, sometimes things get lost in the mix.

So the public engagement portion is not just sort of a box check.

There's a real reason for doing it.

And for instance, if someone was to in the survey mention that they struggle to get from their house to a transit stop because there's a missing curb ramp, we would prioritize that curb ramp for remediation

ahead of another curb ramp that there wasn't a personal story attached to.

So public engagement does have an input on the final plan.

This kind of goes back to the beginning, but which office is the ADA transition plan working under in the city?

Yeah.

Anyone else?

Yeah.

I don't know if we're allowed to ask questions.

We analyzed every single public right-of-way mile.

Well, is the amount of street mileage the same as the amount of sidewalk mileage?

Right.

So here's the map.

Here's the grid.

This has a sidewalk, but this street doesn't.

Do you know of the amount of residential streets, what percentage are sidewalked?

I don't know that.

I'm just trying to think through how we would get that information.

I will talk with Paul and the Public Works Department and see if they have a GIS layer which would have that information.

I would be shocked if they don't have it.

And in that case, what we can do is we can take that streets layer, which will have a certain mileage associated with it, and just subtract and we'll have an answer.

OK. Yeah.

That is a critical Charlottesville issue.

And that was part of the assessment.

So for instance, if we're walking on a sidewalk and then it suddenly ends, which we found plenty of instances of that, we would know that.

Can I ask, you talked about priorities and engagement being critical for priorities.

Yes.

Yes.

You're getting, you're getting to my punchline.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, that absolutely is the answer.

So I'm going to, I'm going to zip through this so I can get to the right-of-way, right-of-way side, because we're going to talk about more about the prioritization of how, of how

So, survey, we got lots of great input, lots of people with targeted specific input about the city sidewalks, overgrowth, vegetation, a lot of sidewalk obstruction issues, which frankly makes sense for a city the age of Charlottesville.

Yeah, I was talking with Todd about this earlier.

A lot of these sidewalks were built before the idea was a thing, so there weren't

People weren't thinking necessarily along the same lines that they're thinking now.

So it's an older city.

We're going to find lots of instances of this.

Here we have a comment about no sidewalks.

All right, so here we'll get into the public right of way assessment.

This here is a map showing all the locations in the city that are missing curb ramps.

And this is one of the most important parts of an ADA transition plan, of the ADA in general.

Curb ramps are a high priority because they are essential for navigation and accessibility.

So all of these areas, I'll get to the exact number a little later in the report, but you can see it's quite, quite a few.

For each curb ramp that was here in the city, we did a full assessment, a full pro-leg assessment.

So we looked at things like, was there detectable warning mats?

Were the detectable warning mats the right size, the right width?

Was there a flush transition between the curb ramp and the street?

Is the running slope, which is the slope parallel to the direction of travel, is that the correct slope?

Is the cross slope, which is perpendicular to the direction of travel, is that the correct slope?

We assessed for all of these items,

to see if, okay, there's a curb ramp, yes.

Is the curb ramp actually meeting the specifications?

Is it compliant?

Obstructions.

I think I heard it groan when I mentioned obstructions.

And you can see we found quite a few.

All these pictures are from Charlottesville.

So this is a telephone pole that seems to take up most of the sidewalk.

So that's a major instance.

And then you have instances like this on the top right where, you know, utility is encroaching in the right away and is reducing the width of travel space.

Vegetation is a big one.

And then you can see in the bottom right, you see signpost, telephone pole again, fire hydrants.

I'm sure you've seen them all.

You're familiar with it all.

We did find quite a few of those.

Vertical height displacements, this is going to be your largest, your largest deficiency category.

These are areas where the sidewalk panels have heaved or settled for any number of reasons.

Tree roots, sedimentation, washout, age, trucks, any number of things can cause these issues.

They're extremely common.

Under ADA regulations, anything greater than a quarter inch is out of spec.

And let me tell you a quarter inch is not much.

If you run your foot between two panels and that foot catches the least, that is out of spec.

That's sort of the unofficial way to test whether it's fine or not.

Sidewall caps.

This is to your earlier question.

areas where you can see there was a sidewalk and suddenly there's not anymore.

It just runs into someone's yards, runs into vegetation.

You also have instances like the bottom left photo here where there are worn footpaths showing that people clearly, the people are voting, you know, they want a sidewalk there.

For this one, they're going from the bus stop to the food bank, mostly.

I was going to say that's Rose Hill.

There you go.

All right, so what did we find?

I'm going to prepare everybody.

We found a lot.

It's normal, is what I'll say.

Especially for older cities, like I said earlier, many items are going to be non-compliant just based on when they were built, as infrastructure ages.

So don't be too alarmed by the numbers, but they are, you know, they're substantial.

So extreme cross slope issues.

We found 521 instances and each one of those instances is at least 50 feet in length.

50 feet in length and 4% or greater slope.

Cross slope is perpendicular to the direction of travel.

So if the cross slope is too extreme, it's going to direct someone into the street.

If you're in a wheelchair, it's going to, they're naturally going to want to be going into the street.

So 4% is a pretty extreme slope.

50 feet is a pretty extreme length.

We found 521 instances.

Really the only solution for a situation like that is to start over, demolish and replace that area.

Redesign, demolish, replace.

Driveway cross slope issues, this is a very frequent one.

We found about 4600, a little more than 4600.

This is areas where the driveway is cut through the public sidewalk and up until recently they wouldn't design it so that the sidewalk stayed level.

They would just have an extreme cross slope where that area is.

So you go on certain streets and every 15 feet between houses you're going to have this extreme cross slope and running slope issue that's pushing people into the street or presenting a hazard on the

walking path, a tripping hazard.

Again, not too atypical.

It's very dependent on when a neighborhood is built.

A newer neighborhood won't have this problem.

Obstructions, we found 6,383.

That includes vegetation.

That includes what we call ground obstructions, which would be something like a fire hydrant.

It also includes what we call vertical obstructions, which would be like a signpost that's not high enough.

So someone might inadvertently hit their head as they're walking through because if they're using a cane for navigation, cane might not hit the post.

Okay.

Yeah, absolutely.

Sidewalk conditions, that's our catch-all term for vertical height displacements.

That's the displacements between the sidewalk panels and also degraded panels.

So you have a couple of different issues with sidewalks.

First, you have what we call the vertical height displacements, the trip hazards.

And then you also have panels that are just no longer functioning.

Extreme cracking, extreme spalling, which is when the top of the sidewalk panel starts to disintegrate.

Uneven sections, voids underneath, all of these issues, there's no solution for them aside from demolishing or replacing.

Trip hazards, you do have solutions that are more efficient and a little bit more cost effective.

Sidewall caps, we found 167.

Sidewalks with less than four foot width, we found 313 areas.

And again, that's going to be of different lengths.

So that 313 areas, that is going to be, you know, probably 30,000 linear feet of sidewalk that are less than four foot width.

The only solution for that, start opening some options.

Pedestrian signals, there were 225 instances where the poles are not in the right location.

The city did just get through with a retrofitting plan to make those signals now compliant with the current ADA regulations.

The poles were still not always in the right position.

So you have compliant signals, but the pole itself is not in an accessible location.

Crosswalks, 436 crosswalks that have some sort of deficiency.

This is usually associated with the running slope, just meaning that the slope of the crosswalk itself is too extreme.

Missing curb ramps, 551 instances.

And then this is the one that I, please don't be shocked, completely normal, 2,760 curb ramps that have some form of deficiency on them.

And that leaves a grand total of 53 that are compliant.

So about 2% of the crosswalks in town are, in the city are compliant.

and that is actually perfectly normal, that is within the lines of what we find with other cities.

So what we do, let's see what the next thing is here, prioritization right away, prioritization.

So let's talk a little bit about the prioritization.

Obviously we have all these issues.

We need to figure out how to spend money, when to spend money, where to spend money to make the city as accessible as possible, as fast as possible, to do the most good with whatever money is budgeted as quickly as we can.

So we do that in a couple of different ways.

First, we look at deficiencies per mile.

How many deficiencies do we have per mile on a given street?

So each street is broken down.

and we simply count up the number of deficiencies that we found on that street divided by the length of that street to figure out which of these streets have more risk per mile.

Amherst Street is one of the top five streets that has 824 deficiencies per mile.

So this is a situation where we would take that data and this is where the personal stories come in and this is where the equity considerations come in.

So this on its own is one of the streets that we should prioritize for remediation in the near future.

However, there's some interesting data about the street.

This area is one of the least traveled areas.

Denver Street is not a significant area for pedestrian travel.

So even though this has the most risk by the deficiencies per mile metric, it still might be something that we want to prioritize a little bit lower than an area that sees more pedestrians on a consistent basis.

Pedestrians, and we're also using equity considerations.

So we're looking at no car households, people under the age of 18, people over the age of 65.

We're looking at race, poverty, and also people with disabilities.

And we use those use those factors using census data.

And we can reprioritize based off of the weighting assigned to various different equity groups.

And that's something that we'll be working on in the near future to figure out exactly how to wake those groups to make sure that, again,

The money is going to those who need it the most fastest.

Any questions?

So I know you're not with the city per se, but do you think Charlottesville has enough money in their ADA budget or should they be?

No one has enough money in their ADA budget.

I don't have a good sense of where Charlottesville would stack up against other cities.

That is something that I could work on to Germany, though.

And I'd have to come up and think about some sort of good metric for how we can make sure it's an apples to apples comparison.

It's very difficult because the way things get funded is often different city to city.

It's not, you know, for instance,

is under Public Works, often the budget is with some other department.

So it's very difficult to determine how much money is actually being assigned to ADA issues in any given city.

I mean, obviously some of it, I mean, I know like right now we have a sidewalk plan, which we have not had a consistent sidewalk plan.

Absolutely.

Exactly.

Is there any, I don't know, any algorithm, any way to think about whether we should be putting, or maybe we shouldn't even be, not a zero-sum game.

I mean, there's a lot of places that need sidewalks, right?

And we have a plan for building sidewalks.

There's clearly a lot of sidewalks that just are useless, basically.

It's a great question.

I don't have a good answer from an ADA perspective.

It really comes down to a city priority perspective.

It's going to vary city by city, whether increasing sidewalk access is more important than fixing the sidewalk access that already exists.

So we're talking here about infrastructure.

Is there any work being done thinking about sort of ongoing issues?

Like right now we have snow on the ground, right?

And one of my sort of pet peeves is that we prioritize

So we get out, we plow the roads, and there's no city effort to clear sidewalks.

And even when the roads are plowed, they plow them into those curb cuts, which make the curb cuts useless, often for much longer than the sidewalks are covered with snow, right?

Because they pile up with ice and become useless for a long time.

Absolutely.

That's exactly the type of feedback we're looking to solicit in venues like this.

It's the type of feedback that can make it into the report as a recommendation.

Obviously, the report only carries the weight that it is given by the city.

But we can make a recommendation like that.

It's a great example of a situation where that means might not be getting the same consideration that automobile traffic is getting.

So yeah, absolutely.

And Charlie, I think there's a scenario too where you could get

Community members to speak on specifically like using that example of snow on sidewalks.

For me as a wheelchair user, I would then not be able to navigate.

The survey is still open.

So one, if you haven't taken the survey, please go ahead and take it.

I will say I had to give the city a little bit of kudos because I did see guys out getting to sidewalks in different parts of the city on

I think it was Tuesday.

Yeah, it was Tuesday.

There were people that were out in different places.

Now, 165 miles, so it's a lot of sidewalk to be clear.

Right in the middle of the road every day because they're full of ice.

But I will say that there was something that I did see that there were guys out in different parts of the city as I traveled around that were cleaning sidewalks.

But they do clear the city sidewalks.

So like I live up Preston.

When I walk out of my house, if I'm walking, I go down a hill.

It is always a disaster because whoever is supposed to be clearing that sidewalk doesn't do it.

And then I come up to Washington Park and it's beautiful.

So then I've got like a block and it's beautiful.

And then I come up, right?

And then it's a mess.

Yeah.

One thing I do want to say is by nature of the self-assessment we're focusing on things that aren't going right, but it is a process.

This is just a zoom in on Amherst.

As you can see, every single one of those icons there represents some form of deficiency.

It's a pretty dense street for deficiencies.

So it makes sense that it rose to the top of the ranking.

It's pretty crowded.

We're also doing assessment in the parks.

We have finished the parks assessment.

We found a grand total of about 1100 deficiencies in the parks.

So a couple of examples of what this means, signage in this situation,

This was an accessible restroom that didn't have the proper identifier on it, so you wouldn't know it's accessible necessarily.

Simple suggestion is to have correct signage.

Another example we're looking for is parking, accessible parking.

There's a requirement for a certain number, if you have a certain number of parking spaces, you're supposed to have a certain number of accessible spaces as well.

So in this situation, there were 34 total parking spaces.

Transit stops, I mentioned that we did transit stops, 219 is what city

We're looking at the boarding and the lighting areas to make sure that they're accessible.

We're looking at the slope within the transit stop connection to the pedestrian access route.

So in this situation, what we'll do is we'll look at the assessment that we did of the right of way and the immediate area around the transit stop.

This is another way that we can do prioritization of repairs, for instance.

Is the city able to do anything with accessibility if the bus stop is in the county?

I'm assuming it's a no.

This is a VDOT thing then.

The reason I hesitate to answer is because I'm not always 100% familiar with how the money flows.

Yeah.

Hi.

I'm Ashley Reynolds Marshall, deputy city manager for social equity.

She, her pronouns.

If a bus stop is in the county, it is not necessarily that it is VDOT.

VDOT will control the roads, but CAT has to get permission from the county to place any bus stop.

So if there is an issue with that, that would be under the purview of the Board of Supervisors and the county administrator.

And if the bus stop is on UVA property, that is under the purview of the university.

So even if it's

Right there on the corner and technically it's in the 10 square miles.

If it's on UVA's, if it's on grounds proper, then that is a university issue.

And we have that question and I know Charlie's had to field that question a lot.

If there's a deficiency at UVA, their ADA and their ADA coordinator needs to fix it.

If there's a deficiency in the county, their ADA and their ADA coordinator

or who would be in charge of creating that fix or that plan to do the fix.

But if it's in the 10 square miles, not on grounds, not in the county, that's us.

I have spoken.

Yeah, Director of Transit.

And Garland has asked if it's possible that we'll do additional assessments on the county bus stops so that he can think about it from more of a holistic perspective.

But we haven't gotten there yet.

Transit findings, 184 out of 219 with some form of deficiency.

This would range from a trip hazard within the bus stop to a slope that's completely too extreme to

O'Hare,

which facilities are public, then we perform the assessments, generate the reports.

Once we have those reports, they'll have the same equity lens applied to them as well.

Yes.

And a super technical question,

The census zones are pretty big and Charlottesville is pretty small.

There's 11 census zones.

I wouldn't swear to that number, but it's somewhere around 11 census zones within Charlottesville.

So it's as good as you can get.

It's the most granular level of data that we have access to.

Help me real fast on program services website.

So Dr. Jenna Burke,

She's a nationally known expert in ADA issues.

She ran the Rocky Mountain ADA Center for a number of years, served as the ADA coordinator for Colorado Springs for a bit.

We're very lucky to have her on our team.

When I say that she's nationally known, it's not an exaggeration.

She's done thousands of trainings, hundreds of trainings on ADA related issues.

And what she'll be doing is this program services review.

This starts with information.

getting information from the city, documents, public outreach documents, public engagement documents, emails that have been sent out.

And she will scan through thousands of pages of material, looking for items that are not ADA compliant, and then making usually very simple, low cost recommendations to make something compliant.

That's the good news about programs and services.

Usually it's just a process change that can make things ADA compliant.

The website,

A program would be something like the proverbial knitting club, something that is offered by the city or is hosted on city property.

Some parks and recs programs.

Okay.

Or KF, for example.

All right, that's the end of the presentation on the transition plan.

Yes.

In the 2013 transition plan, they discuss emergency preparedness and evacuation guidelines.

So there will be evacuation guidelines created.

That is something that Jana will 100% be reviewing.

Same thing with housing.

The last transition plan, the city discussed what the city had obligation to, but also what the city valued and wanted to go above and beyond.

So the idea that Matthew was talking about the inclusion beyond compliance.

Not necessarily.

So actually one of my suggestions is going to be, I know that I was talking with Todd earlier, that part of this commission's role and responsibility is to make suggestions.

And one thing I guess I would challenge you all to do as a person with a disability, right, is take all aspects of everything that you're doing and intentionally put them through the accessibility and disability lens.

as well.

Housing broadly all over this country is a challenge for people with disabilities.

There is not enough housing options, but do that in every sort of angle and conversation that you're having because more than likely there is challenges.

The data is available.

And then the youth have spoken mostly to physical disabilities.

I think the ADA covers mental health disabilities as well.

Program and services would be the primary location where that would come into play.

But but all of these regulations, all these accessibility guidelines, they touch on not just physical disabilities, but, you know, for instance, like signage at locations would be something that is not necessarily a disability.

Dr. Michael Kochis,

If there's not, then that is a priority to find and or have done so that you can collect that data.

You touched on transit.

But again, some of that can be of course added.

The ADA and accessibility is a huge topic.

People devote lives, departments to increasing accessibility.

It's a journey, not a destination type situation.

So the scope of this particular project focused on right away, facilities, parks, program services, website.

Of course, you can break each one of those components down.

in the

In 10 years, there's not another version of me standing up here giving this report.

And realistically, you can, in my mind, right?

You can look at this as like a starting point, right?

Like.

Fix the things that Charlie is illuminating, right?

And then as you have stated, like continue to go down the list of like, okay, what do we need to think about next?

Is it policing and how that is incorporated?

Is it something else, right?

Pick whatever issue that is there.

This is,

Again, this is a starting point and use this as a continual way to update this document, to add to this document as Charlie has stated.

Fantastic information.

I'm very excited.

Obviously, I gave you the raw accounts for what we found.

I am extremely excited to share with you the final prioritization.

I think you'll be impressed.

I hope you will.

We really pride ourselves on, again, actionable data.

This is much too big of a project to try to get your hands around in one year, two years, three years.

So what we want to do is give a

So we spend a lot of time with the data.

We do lots of quality assurance on the data.

The last thing in the world we want to do is have it all go to waste.

And I think in about a month to two months, we'll be able to produce the right-of-way prioritization plan.

And that'll be, again, kind of a starting point to discuss different

And I would definitely challenge you all as commissioners, right, having some authority, right, to not let it be, as Charlie has said a bunch, not let it be a static plan, right?

Continue to refer back to it, continue to, as your all's positions, right, like continue to ask those questions of like,

Can I ask a question?

They seem so obviously not ADA compliant, right?

Just so obviously not ADA.

Is it because they pre-exist the ADA that we cannot force Dominion power to move in those polls?

Like, I feel like that we ought to be able to, right?

It is, you know, it's odd.

I don't know when they were put in or I don't know the reason behind each poll that was placed.

There was some discussion about the relationship between Charlottesville and Dominion and how Charlottesville works with Dominion on issues like this.

Another issue that was brought up last time is wires hanging down from the power poles, which are often in the right of way, which we would have captured some of those in our data gathering if they were directly in the right of way, but they're all over the place.

So we did discuss this.

One of the photos that you showed was those yellow poles outside the gas.

And like those were installed this past year because they did that at my house as well.

It looks like to me it's like an issue of where like city, I don't know, city and ADA compliance are like conflicting and the city is superseding something.

And so another example you gave was

You know, private property encroaching on right away.

And so you have this like, I don't know, the utility, the city, private property all conflicting.

And these, as you said, this is like we have a very normal challenge.

But so this is a common challenge, which means there hopefully are like common ways of addressing that challenge.

It's always a struggle.

You always have competing priorities.

And it's not that atypical to have regulations within a city conflicting with the ADA regulations.

It's an area where Dr. Burke's work, we'll get into a little bit of it.

But again, it's a situation where the amount of regulations and rules and procedures within the city, it's going to be too wide for us to

to get our arms running for this particular project.

We're going to catch a lot of it.

But it's a long way of answering your question, which is it just requires constant vigilance from advocates and from people who care.

In a situation like this, raising that with Paul, the ADA coordinator, might be one quick way to start a discussion, because he's probably going to have to have a discussion with someone in the city about why they're doing that and then have a discussion about priorities.

There might be a valid priority, or there might not be.

And Charlie, wouldn't it be prudent, I guess, to, in ways that can be done, right, try and have partnership where there's agreement between where you can, right, I understand that there are

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a best practice communication about the conflicting priorities coming to some sort of agreement.

Again, it requires constant vigilance, constant advocacy on your part.

We'll do our best.

We'll call it out in the report, but the report is only as useful as the people who are sort of carrying the torch with the report.

And one thing I'll say about those particular polls, and this is where it gets complicated, you know, it's real life.

Most places where those poles are installed, they're not non-ADA compliant just by being installed.

Two feet wider maybe.

Yeah, it just depends.

If it's not a six-foot-wide sidewalk, which there's plenty of six-foot-wide sidewalks out there, it's not a problem to have those poles where they are.

There's still plenty of clear width for people to travel.

Where it's a more narrow sidewalk, then it's a situation where

Where it is, it is not in line.

The competing priority here is that the utility box right there to begin with is probably not in line.

So it might be a situation where they're attempting to protect people from not walking into something that doesn't belong there in the first place, that's not in line with the ADA, by putting something that reduces the width of travel even further.

So there's the regulations,

And they're somewhat clear cut about what is and is not acceptable.

And then there's real life scenarios that you have to try to apply the regulations to.

And sometimes there's going to be areas where, and this is part of the idea, things are not practical.

You can't make it compliant.

The key though, again, is to pay attention and to make sure that if there is a decision to make something non-compliant, that you're making a decision, not just doing something unwittingly.

We got some good feedback.

Yeah, this is a great conversation.

Anything else that is top of mind in terms of anything that Charlie or I talked about in terms of this transition plan that we didn't touch on?

I would love to know more about the inclusion beyond compliance and what the city is doing that we can try to promote and do more of.

I certainly would leave that more to the city, right?

I know that that is something that Charlie and I have talked about in trying to incorporate more into this continued work that is part of some continued conversations that we are going to continue to have

with the city.

And truthfully, that is sort of my side of the world, right?

Again, I know the data is completely necessary and it derives our decision-making, but again, something can be compliant by the standard and the data that Charlie is sharing, but if I as a user still can't actually use it, how good is it for me?

And so, you know, we are,

Going to continue to have some conversations with the city on how can we incorporate some of that into the facilities assessment that Charlie said will be getting underway here in the next couple weeks.

Yeah.

And it's something that can be added to the report.

So it rests with the people who care to make sure that the report is worth something.

When you look at facilities, so clearly you're looking at public buildings.

Do things like programs that the city relies on to be compliant with other things like

Like churches that do rotating shelter for the homeless in the winter.

Do they have to be ADA compliant?

It wouldn't fall under the facilities.

It would fall under programs partially.

And Charlie, just to make sure also I'm clear on this, that was a great question.

It would apply to a program that we were running, but if a nonprofit was using a church that is independent of the city,

Then if that church is not compliant, that is not something you would check if we are not, if either we don't own the facility or we're using the facility for a program we are running.

Because the ADA is, Title II is only applicable for states and local governments that have 50 or more employees.

Okay.

Thanks.

No, that's not to stop you to

to go into those churches and asking them to consider doing an assessment or other things.

And again, that's, that could be a role that you all play, right.

Did you want to add something?

Well, two things, one, I, you know, this, this was the wishlist of the

The conversation between the city and Dominion and whatnot is, as you all were talking about sidewalks and all of the accessibility, et cetera, it's not lost on me that the lack of lighting also plays into I am

I am fully mobile and able, and there are sidewalks where I will- For now, I would add.

For now, thank you.

You are for now and for now.

Thank you.

And I will walk in the road at times rather like at night when I can't see the lights so I can imagine somebody.

So anyway, so that was just kind of a side thought, but I also just wanted to underscore and very much appreciate the conversation that you all were having in terms of

equity given the numbers that we see up there and really understanding where are the biggest needs within the community.

I mean, the Amherst Street, which I was like, where is Amherst?

And so, being really cognizant of where the highest usage is and the highest needs are, particularly in

I'm going to guess that the city does not have an unlimited budget for this.

I have a question.

I doubt that you all can answer, but maybe Todd or Dr. Reynolds' about where this lands in the city.

Like, I know it's in your department, but where are the funds coming from?

Are they from public works?

Is it a special ADA budget?

How will that move?

Who was making those decisions?

Sure.

So I can respond to that.

Thank you for the question.

For the first time, honestly, our ADA coordinator has control of a specific line item in the CIP.

And so the ADA streets, sorry, sidewalks and curb cuts, I think is what it's called.

Please forgive me for missing the exact title of the fund.

is controlled by Mr. Rudisill.

In addition, one of the moves that was made by former interim city manager Rogers and is fully supported by our current city manager was to move ADA from being an NDS to being in the Office of Social Equity.

And that move was specifically created to foster more collaboration in other departments.

Sometimes when something lives somewhere, like other people don't think they can utilize that service.

So since Paul's move, for example, I happen to be having a conversation with our director of our regional libraries.

And Paul went and did an assessment of Central Library to see if there were any

fixes that could be done other than renovation fixes to help improve it.

That maybe wouldn't have happened before only because Mr. Punkett wouldn't have thought, hey, I wonder if this person could help provide me with some assistance.

So there is already collaboration that is occurring between our different agencies and departments and Mr. Rudisill that has really never happened before.

As far as funding allocations for it,

One of the things that I will tell you is, is his fund going to be enough to fix, I don't know, three of the things that Charlie's found?

I might be able to fix three little things.

Maybe.

We know that.

But one of the things that the city manager would like to do to make sure that he is, of course, a good steward of taxpayer dollars and can inform council as much is to see that new transition plan.

The one we have that was created in 2013 is stale.

It's old.

We know that.

And so part of the impetus for creating this plan is so that we can get the information to be able to say, hello, council, as well as, by the way, the planning commission has mentioned this very openly.

This is what we see, as he said, when I happen to be sneaking in.

It will be multi-millions of dollars to fix everything today.

However, here are implementation plans that have prioritization suggestions.

And with those prioritization suggestions, if we look at the CIP, we think we could accomplish X, Y, and Z, barring changes in construction costs, for example, for this much in fiscal year 25, this much in fiscal year 26, and so on.

Very similar to what you see for our climate action plan, for example, they have a very big work plan, but it's split out among the years and it is prioritized based on the amount of greenhouse gas reduction that they can achieve.

We will do the same thing, prioritizing both on

I'm going to call it need.

A highly trafficked street, even if it is not in a disproportionately, I'm going to call it forgotten area, may need to be number one because everybody's walking on it.

But number two may be a smaller side street in an area that maybe happens to have individuals who find themselves on a low income or maybe has individuals who happen to be some of our older community members.

It maybe wouldn't hit a normal priority, but that is one of the things that is very important to not only PEM, but also to our ADA coordinator and myself.

I've already had a conversation with Charlie about prioritizing based on equity.

So please know that's already occurred.

We've already talked about some ways that PEM has done it with other jurisdictions so that we can learn from what other people have gone before us and done.

So that is important.

But one of the reasons why you will not see a large increase in the funding line item for the CIP that was already presented to council for this upcoming fiscal year is because we don't have that report.

I want to be able to ask my boss for what I really need and not make a guess, because there may be something that comes up in the facilities, for example, that isn't done, where my answer to my supervisor along with Paul is, I need this money now.

because this is something that is extremely critical.

It had not been identified before.

I have to fix this in fiscal year 25.

This one I can fix in fiscal year 26.

and thoughtfully to what is presented.

During this meeting, the public comment period will take place during the ADA transition plan town hall discussion section of the agenda, which we are at right now.

Each speaker will have three minutes to speak.

The total number of speakers shall be determined by the available time remaining of the meeting.

The authority to extend the meeting beyond the posted end time of 8.30

Resides solely with the chair of the commission.

The commission requests that members of the public be free from engaging in personal attacks against commissioners and staff members and ask that comments and questions focus on matters related to the ADA transition plan.

Do we have any comments from members of the public?

Anyone virtually?

No.

Commissioners, you guys have any more questions?

So thank you both for being here tonight and very, very, very, very informative.

Thank you.

So thank you.

Anything else on this?

I remember that.

Let's come back.

Yeah, remember that.

I remember that.

We have a work session planned on our calendar for February 1st date.

Do you have any pressing issues that we need to talk about, that we want to meet to talk about the work that we want to do for the year?

Once we've found out who we have as a perspective

Facilitator.

If we.

We are driving the retreat.

I'm thinking that we would talk to see what we want to do and then say, can you meet, team meet us where we are to the facilitator and go from there.

I'm open to whatever.

I did hear Todd say earlier that typically the decisions about what our meeting are based on the assessment that we do and then the public assessment.

You do have one more regular meeting on the 15th that you could also use for that as well.

OK.

So no meeting on the 1st of February?

So?

OK.

And I believe I will be joining you virtually for that one, perhaps?

Yes.

All right.

That should be interesting.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.