Holding the Town Accountable for the Blind, Disabled
Author: Greenwich Citizen, ConneticutDate: Mar 21, 2008
Last week, Kana, a Riverside resident, chose to attend First Selectman Peter Tesei's "Open Forum" at the Cos Cob Library. She was able to drive herself, but knew she would need to arrive earlier than the 7:30 p.m. start to maneuver her mobility scooter into the library meeting room.
Centered in the crowd, she listened to the first selectman's commentary on his first 100 days in office. And then she found her moment to address him with what she had on her mind.
"You need to work to have more town services accessible to the disabled," Kana said, her voice breaking. "I'm a little emotional as I'm a little upset about things in this town."
Kana told Tesei of a recent incident, of a blind Greenwich resident and his seeing eye dog who were turned away from going into the back of a town post office with his young daughters to get their passport pictures taken, she said, "because they didn't want a dog."
Her story visibly stirred sympathy and shaking heads across the crowded room.
"These things should not be happening," she quietly said. "I've lived here all my life. We've been homeowners. We want things to get better. We should have had things better ten years ago."
Tesei informed Kana that the town's disabled were receiving services from Transportation Association of Greenwich (TAG) to transport them - along with seniors and Nathaniel Witherell residents. And Town Hall, he reported, was renovating its first-floor restrooms.
He offered to put up information for the disabled on the Town Web site and told Kana, "I certainly want to learn more about this problem."
It was Kana who spurred the town more than a year ago to renovate its lavatories.
"There was a paraplegic who couldn't go to the bathroom," said Kana. "I had to push to get the lavatory fixed."
"What you caused to happen is going to benefit everyone," said Tesei.
Kana told Tesei she said that "I don't do these things just for me - this is what I'm all about." She identified herself as a group leader of the South West Advocacy Network, a branch of the Connecticut Disability Advocacy Collaborative.
Tesei related that there was now "a person designated by the town to take a more proactive role."
But, said Kana, "You need to be sure you have people who know something. You have to know the laws. Town Hall put up a nice crosswalk and traffic light but with no curb cut. We shouldn't have to be going through all these steps to get things corrected. There are so many things that need really stepping up.
"I'm bringing this up to you," she said to Tesei, "because you're new."
"We need to have more receptive attention from my employees," Tesei said. "We need to establish a special committee to look at this."
A call made to Town Hall to ask for the person Tesei referred to as the designated American Disability Act (ADA) compliance representative was met with, "What's that?" A call to the First Selectman's office directed the caller to TAG.
It was learned that Amy Seibert, deputy commissioner of Public Works, is in charge of ADA compliance for the Town. It falls to her to spot inaccessible sites and to Alan Monelli, superintendent of town facilities, to make those sites handicapped accessible. Seibert was unavailable for comment.
Kana, speaking after the Tesei open house, said she had gotten the same answer of "What's an ADA compliance officer" from the front desk of Town Hall nearly six months ago. "Every town is supposed to have one," she said.
"I think that's telling you in a nutshell about this town," she said.
"We had no van handicapped parking spaces at Town Hall," she said before her urging. Now there are two. Her acquaintance with Arlene Lomazzo, head of the Pedestrian Safety Commission, who had put in the crosswalk in front of Town Hall, had given her access to correcting the crosswalk with a curb cut.
Kana cited a number of other crosswalk sites that required that same correction.
She told the story of the paraplegic unable to use the bathroom. The paraplegic was Stan Kosloski, who heads up the Connecticut Disability Advocacy Collaborative state organization. It was Kosloski who talked Kana into taking charge of the South West Advocacy Network, which was holding a meeting on the second floor of Town Hall.
"Stan takes a break to go to the men's room," said Kana. "He had to leave the stall door open. I was mortified."
She identified the Old Greenwich Post Office as having refused entry to the blind man and his seeing eye dog. "In the last two weeks, a blind man with a seeing eye dog was refused admission to a taxi from the train station because of his dog," she related.
"It's amazing to see," she said, "that people still don't understand the rights of a seeing eye dog."
She cited the TAG offices as needing to be more handicapped friendly. And she cited the unfortunate fact that TAG was not available for evenings and on Sundays.
Jim Boutelle, TAG's executive director and a member of RTM District 8, belongs to Kana's South West Advisory Network. He described Kana as "a big advocate for disabled rights."
TAG's offices, which are in a building rented from - and across from - St. Catherine of Siena Church, he said, were ADA compliant with a wheelchair accessible ramp. But, he added, there was no handicapped bathroom.
He would like to hire a handicapped person, he said, but for the lack of that bathroom, "and some of the old doors are not wide enough for a wheelchair."
TAG offers rides from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays, and 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. But, alas, not to church services on Sunday.
It was the public bus service, Kana said, that left the blind disenfranchised. When her blind friend attempted to learn where the Stamford-to-Greenwich buses stopped, she was told by the bus company "to wave when a bus comes!"
"We are unbelievably backward," she said.
Ridgefield, a town comparable in size to Greenwich, she said has a commission on the disabled, "and that's what I want for Greenwich," she said. "That's my goal."
Kana is giving Tesei to the end of this week to get back to her on his stated intention to "establish a special committee to look at this," before she gives him a call.
