The Committee on Human Services, Housing, Youth and Elder Affairs convened on May 17, 2022. The meeting began with the adoption of the minutes from the March 15, 2022 meeting, which passed unanimously. The committee then received a report on the Youth Violence Prevention Week, held from April 25th to 29th, 2022. Chris McCluskey, Youth Services Coordinator, and Michaela Gagne, an Adjustment Counselor at Diamond, detailed activities such as an information presentation at the Boys and Girls Club, policy dialogues, gang presentations, and an art contest. They also highlighted ongoing efforts like the Diamond Family Wellness Day and the "You Matter" campaign, which provides mental health resources via QR code magnets. Councilor Pereira expressed concerns about bullying and the severe lack of mental health services for youth, suggesting the use of ARPA funds for billboards to promote the "You Matter" campaign, a suggestion the committee agreed to explore further. The resolution regarding Youth Violence Prevention Week was adopted unanimously. The second major item was a resolution to discuss ADA needs and improvements throughout the city. Dennis Piscelli, Chair of the Commission on Disability, and Dan Robert provided an update. Piscelli explained that Fall River completed an ADA self-assessment and transition plan in 2019/2020, which made the city eligible for state grants. Initial improvements included a handicap ramp, leveled areas in the hearing room, and braille signage in Government Center, funded by a $237,000 grant. Piscelli also discussed the commission's fund of approximately $169,000, derived from disability parking violation fines, used for ADA issues, home modifications, and a disability scholarship program. He highlighted ongoing efforts to improve street accessibility, including testing audible pedestrian signals. Councilor Pereira emphasized the need for the disability commission to be involved in city development and site plan reviews. The committee requested a detailed list of completed and outstanding ADA improvements and decided to table the resolution to allow for further research and a future meeting with the commission.
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committee of human services housing youth and elder affairs now be called to order pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed in knowledge and permissible madam
0:21secretary the role please counselor here yeah present first item on the agenda is citizen's input we have any citizens input no student's input so we're going to move on to item two which is the minutes from the march 15 2022 meeting motion adopt second motion to adopt made by council kadeem second by council pereira any discussion all those in favor aye aye opposed the eyes have it third
0:52item on the agenda is a resolution committee on human services housing youth and elder affairs announcing the youth violence prevention week to be held april 15th to the 29th 2022 which was adopted on 322 2022.
1:09we have some representatives here to report back regarding youth violence prevention week if you want to come on down yes we will state our names and where we come from for the record please chris mccluskey youth services coordinator for the city of fall river michaela gagne i'm an adjustment counselor diamond rachel excellent thank you for both being here um so i know we just discussed at our last meeting the
1:41upcoming youth violence prevention week so i wanted you to come down and kind of talk to us about what happened during the week some of the positives and what we can do to continue to move forward so mr mikowski if you want to begin so youth finance prevention week took place april 25th through the 29th which unfortunately was the week after school vacation for some reason this happened
2:03later in april uh and so to do a little bit of curveball for some of our plans and initiatives but some of the highlights were the annual youth violence prevention information presentation that we held at the boys and girls club uh the target audience was really the local delegations and other key stakeholders talking about the shannon community safety initiative the safe and successful youth initiative as
2:25well as other state funding that was coming down to the into the city and the best part of that program is hearing from the youth who are involved in this in these programming and how it has impacted and changed their lives so some other activities that took place were policy dialogues gang presentations by the police department's gang unit and the peace and positivity uh art contest
2:51with the the winners are still displayed outside of the atrium facing uh 19 prime and as we had mentioned the last time that this is only one week a year but we do activities all 52 weeks and that's really our focus and just really stressing to to raise awareness and educate about the importance of violence prevention and how everybody in the community has a role to play everybody can be a piece of that peace puzzle
3:23so although those activities took place during that week recently there was the diamonds family wellness day um michaela can speak about that right now yeah so yeah we've had a lot of other exciting events so um the diamond family uh wellness fest was this past weekend was open to the greater fallover community um got blasted out there like i said last time similar to when we had held one of the boys and girls club
3:48prior to covid um and you know similar similar style probably three to four hundred people come through there which was awesome um learn you know in getting involved in all kinds of forms of wellness from dance to art to drum circles and music so it was really exciting um we we heart fall over we were part of um this past weekend as well that's where we actually announced um the peace and
4:11positivity art contest winners and we had our own little section of of chalk art that was going on and kids were getting involved in but that was it was a really nice activity if you got to see it in terms of just kind of having kids of all ages be out there participating in a lot of different fun activities recreation has a block party coming up and we also have the uh the district
4:31attorney's teen safety summit next week as well with each of these events it's more of than just giveaways it's really that focus on uh mental health mental well-being and social emotional learning uh so that's something the school department had embraced prior to covet and because of code really stressing that and then some other events that we're looking forward to is the uh end of the summer block party
4:59as well as we're gonna revive the police in public palooza uh and then hand out our heroes of peace awards at that event um which is stressing going back to everybody has a role whether it's elected officials or service providers and just tying in what you're already doing into our bigger picture of promoting peace and positivity excellent councils council pereira yeah a couple of things that i have
5:26um i know that there's been a lot of talk about bullying and bullying goes on and with all of the uh social media outlets bullying doesn't stop when you're leaving school or whatever that kids are seeing this i know that sylvia rudman and i have done bullying programs with her at different high schools throughout the county but we never were able to get one in at derpy and that was when meg mayo brown
5:52was here so it was quite a while ago but could that be something that you look into she does an excellent excellent job she does them give to parents to educators in the schools and to the youth um it might be worth a call to her she runs the child sexual abuse unit at the da's office but she's phenomenal has worked with autistic kids and she just has lots and lots to offer
6:24the other thing is i i was asked to go to henry lord then i'm going to morton next but to meet with kids there like i did once before at diamond and i was really struck at some of the questions that were asked there was probably 50 to 60 children in the auditorium and one kid asked how do you get somebody you love to get off of drugs
6:57and it was just like a knife in my chest like you know one person isn't going to be able to do that but you know there's supports at school that you can talk about maybe they can give you some different avenues for help because i knew that kid needed help then the majority of kids talked about mental health about feeling suicidal about feeling hopeless and i know from my past you know work history that mental health
7:30providers are so difficult to get i mean you can't have a child waiting six months to talk to a thera a therapist about an eating disorder you want to get that child in right away um and i don't know how to do that i'm wondering too with all of the parks we have are there intramural things that we could be doing at different parks maybe volleyball or pickleball and get kids from those neighborhoods and other
8:01kids who have transportation i know transportation for us is kind of difficult i wish that we'd get some trolleys so we'd be able to transport kids around the city or maybe music venues through the summer i know housing authority used to have them for a lot of the elderly housing units i think it was on wednesdays that they would have them maybe there's kids from the music store on south main street that play i know
8:28he's trying to get involved and do stuff because my daughter told me um you know that he wants to get groups of kids together there are so many kids doing such wonderful things in fall river and we don't hear about it i wish that there was a way that we could get the message out whether that's through a facebook page the social media page on our website whether it's through bcc or durfee getting something
8:59to tell kids what's happening maybe in the middle of council meetings between finance and and regular meeting that something scrolls by maybe the school committee when they go into executive session forever that you have something there instead of just seeing an executive session but some of the teachers up there did they did a great thing at christmas time going around the whole school
9:23they sang a song some kids sang it the janitor sang it the principal and it was just like real lively i don't know but if there's anything that i can do to help with that i would certainly be willing to help i it just i am points you you brought up in terms of you know the kids have been expressing in terms of feeling suicidal these long waiting lists i know we had mentioned last time
9:48we had started a you matter campaign um in the city with business card size magnets um that say you know need to talk you matter it has a qr code that goes to a website we constantly update with all kinds of resources and we had also spoken to kids they were worried about their mental health but a lot of kids said sometimes i don't want to talk to anyone i know or i don't want
10:07to tell someone at school because i know they have to call my mom and that'll make it worse or right i might have to go to the hospital sometimes i just need to vent so that's kind of where we spearheaded this from and now that it gives access to all kinds of 24 7 emergency crisis lines both texts and calls that they can do there's lgbtq domestic violence every hotline you can
10:25imagine we have there so it's at their kids fingertips we kind of started the program um in the summer where um the diamond students had it when they opened their locker you know um in the fall we've spread it to a lot of the middle schools now somerset has them we've kind of spread it into the greater follower community but a lot of our other service providers recently just got we've got thousands more magnets
10:47just got their hands on them so they're really starting to spread especially in the last couple weeks around the community which is really good you know to see and we want to put some of that um we're looking at ways to put that you know that q arc of something larger like where can we have this in a larger place you know whether it be in a park or whatnot so we've been brainstorming some
11:02ideas around that can we do some billboards on that sure i mean we have a money i think that would be great opera money to have a billboard that says that i'll request it i mean maybe we can request it from this committee put a billboard people see it kids see it i don't know about that qr code or whatever that is yeah that's good it's good stuff i i don't know so usually you
11:25just take a picture of it and then it automatically brings you to the link but if it was on a billboard i could take a picture of it yeah yeah and it's great because we update it whenever we need or we get more resources whatever we want to add we're also hoping to maybe put some kind of map on it that's been talked about a map but like safe places
11:40kids could go like so how can we expand and grow it more so yeah that's kind of so i just wanted to touch on that because you specifically brought that up and that is a major concern the schools are i mean the referral list is still really long at the number of kids that talk to me about agencies are shut down from taking referrals right now our major agencies
11:58most of them are just shut down from you taking referrals they can't catch up and they don't want to give you a promise of nine months whatever it may be it's it's sad it's so sad and what's crazier is in the summer it kind of catches up and the waiting list gets smaller but that's not a good thing it means that a lot of kids miss appointments in the summer so now
12:14they get kicked off the counseling so now all those kids move up but those kids still need the counseling so it's this like revolving door of you know just needing more and we need more counselors in the area where there's just not enough license counselors like you know that's a whole nother world of issues but it's you know pay all that stuff and project red and black at durfee has
12:35been doing some service project service learning projects one of them was working with star and creating or making known the resources available to youth as well as developing a a some sort of support they were making their final presentations this week so looking to follow up with principal demaris and see if that's gonna catch any traction and all the middle schools are participating in uh civics
13:03engagement i believe it's june 3rd there's going to be a presentation here on the atrium um and so before covered it was amazing what the two pilot programs did at talbot and one as far as identifying issues important to the youth in their community and whether community was the greater forward community or their own school community which the talbot did and so not only identifying the issues
13:25but developing plans to address those issues i did get a call yesterday from one of the civic engagement groups one of the children calling asking what i thought about litter what could we do about litter and um that type of thing um was interesting it was a really good conversation but if durfee's doing that that's great i mean years ago there was a need for um like an allen on meeting at the school
13:50there seemed to be some issues and my cousin my grandma's called and set up a meeting and marilyn rodriguez got involved with him and there were other people and we were talking about it um last week how he was shocked he thought maybe there'd be 15 20 kids that showed up he said there were 90 kids the first meeting they had to like rearrange the room and get all the problems
14:14so you know it's it's just a resource that's that's needed do you do its matters too at your school at durfee do they do that at different so you you matter we give them the magnets so now it's following up and doing like a pr campaign okay making them aware of it they don't have lockers so it made it trickier in terms of each kid kind of getting that individual piece but we did give them
14:36some encouraged um like putting on the inside of bathroom stalls locker rooms areas where kids might feel you know comfortable grabbing them and having them how much is the um billboard does anybody know i didn't advertise with billboard so i don't know don't ask me no i think i i think i spent 20 on my campaign yeah sorry nobody wants to see my face on the billboard anyways yeah they didn't want
15:00to see miami that's why no comment here can i put in a resolution that we request from this committee that the mayor give a hundred thousand dollars to the ismata campaign from oppa money i i think i think it's a good suggestion i think i'll ask you the question have you applied for any any of the open money at all we never even thought of billboards yeah i think the last
15:26billboard we did was like what during 100 best with the the digital uh billboards offer a 195. and i remember one earth one people of the sun that always used to be the one right on yeah but on durfee street well let's try so i guess along those lines i support something like that but i'd just like to see what exactly i think you would get if it's 100 000 or you you tell us as
15:52opposed to us putting a dollar amount associated with um you know a donation or a funding from opera right so if you feel like you need to more pr if it's if it's billboards messaging whatever that may be if that's twenty thousand for that you know another thirty thousand something else just i think we can get a schedule and then we can make a actual recommendation to to kind of just strategize exactly
16:14what it's for i mean the billboards sound amazing our our first thought is we really wanted some big signs whatever that means it looks like in the parks right somewhere where you can in the pops yeah yes can you come up with something by next week and research because let me just ask me what i had to put for offer if i had anything i'll push for it okay now bouncing back
16:36to your bullying uh the former public schools worked with mark out of bridgewater mass aggression reduction center and they provided two events one virtual one in person i think the first it is the focus was parents the virtual one i don't think got any parents and then uh the second one the in person uh had a few parents participate so they're trying to provide something similar to what mrs
17:04redmond would provide but uh the participation was could have been much better i will say our our parent forum so i've been running a lot of parent forums over at um diamond and then some have been greater fall over on parent forums you kind of need a draw so for us it's kind of been you know all participants get a gift card it's the difference between 20 people and 120 people signing
17:26up and that's you know definitely been a difference or even at least a drawing for some things at the end so i think that's where kind of you know we have a lot of great speakers who are you know some of them are reasonable cost and whatnot but sometimes you need that money for those prizes draw them in and and then they'll they'll take in the information we got to get them there
17:44and then now back back to your parks uh with with recreation summer of the parks and that's dependent on youth actually attending i know when i went to the fox as a kid there was that intramural baseball but it was like my brother who worked there transported the entire team in like one vehicle so so inter park would be difficult but i know uh the police department do something at night and
18:12bring activities or or something to youth whether that's at a park or to housing development uh but offsetting or complementing what's going on during the day with recreation okay do you yield counsel i do okay council of the team no i'm good okay i i just wanna i would echo what council pereira said if there's an opportunity where i think the city can get some return on investment on some of
18:38this money this should be the perfect opportunity because i think in highlighting to what you said michaela i was present for the the event this weekend over down the street here it was just so nice to see how empowering it was we have so much good so many good kids in this city we're doing some great things they need to be highlighted but we also need to highlight those resources to help them
18:58as well because unfortunately situations like this it's very quiet they don't get the help they need so if we can support that in some sort of way i think that would be fabulous so if you could come up with something that we could possibly revisit and then go forward with i think that would be fabulous are there any guidelines for what that money can be used for or something we could review too just to help us
19:20brainstorm yes i i think yeah we can have that conversation i think we can figure out like as far as what can we do and what resources are available to us and then we can kind of proceed from there so and i think council prairie you mentioned about possibly finding a resolution we want to discuss how we want to frame that after they put something together for us i think that the alpha money is pretty open
19:41as far as what you want to do this is why i think a tourism director is badly needed in fall river because that would be somebody that could help you because it's with promoting and getting the message out there and that's you know like i know that beaver fall river wants to do something like take five where on the highway so people would take five minutes come into forward you know take a break um
20:05i don't know where that's going we've only been asking for that for what 10 years 10 years so i don't know where that's going i think they want to give money to other people i don't know but but i laughed at the draw because when i owned harry's restaurant the only way we'd get all the merchants on south main street to have a meeting is if we had you know cocktails on hors d'oeuvres then everybody came
20:27you know if it was just leaving nobody game so i get it some of the money can be used for that absolutely thank you so much thank you for all thank you thank you i appreciate it so i think we've satisfied this resolution so i'm just saying emotion directly to what's wrong emotions homemade second motion made and seconded all those in favor aye aye you guys have it item number four is a resolution the
20:54committee in human services housing youth and elder affairs to convene with the chair of the commission of disability to discuss ada needs and improvements throughout the city we need a motion to lift from the table so moved second okay first made by accounts of kadeem second by council fire all those in favor aye opposed the eyes have it the resolution is as follows whereas upgrades are being made to
21:21government center to address barriers to accessibility whereas the city of florida will receive the municipal ada improvement grant to fund these capital improvements and whereas more improvements are needed throughout the city of fall river now therefore be resolved that the committee on human services housing youth and elder affairs convened with the chair of the commission on disability to discuss
21:40upgrades and improvements that needed throughout the city and it further be resolved the city council president consider appointing a city council liaison to the commission on disability we have some guests here
22:07there's a microphone here okay okay sir if you can state your name and address the record please dennis poselli 420 quickest shannon street thank you so much mr piscelli for being here and it's nice to have you here as well we have danny coming down too yeah danny's on the commission too okay it's up to him danny do you want to come down i think he's coming around coming around all right so
22:56i know we have some information and some update here from the city as far as where we're at as far as that progress is concerned and we'll allow that conversation to bring hold
23:14up
23:28do you have another microphone possibly um so i think that captures okay everything if not gotcha there you go hello sir can you state your name and address for the record please dan robert 145 or second streak all river of the disability commission thank you sir all right so let's start with an update where we stand from the city thank you and we'll go from there so we did um let me turn the microphone focus
24:04we did an ada self assessment and transition plant for the state back in 2019 slash 2020.
24:16um and through that plan we received a grant to do that plan from the state um and to bounce off of that going forward we were able to apply for project grants which is how we did the handicap ramp here and leveled off downstairs in the hearing room that was a project which we now are eligible to apply for because we did the self-assessment and transition plan that was actually due when was that due dentist
24:55to the state well it was due i believe it was june 30th 2018.
25:06we had a we had a briefing on november 2019 on the plan what they what they found and what needs to be done a transition plan is is your it's like a bible of what needs to be done that you go through buildings you might go through parks in this case i think they went through buildings they went through parks they went through polling places um you can also do schools but that's up
25:35to the school department um and the transition plan under the ada was actually due in 1992.
25:48um i wasn't in fall river in 1992 i don't know if there was a transition plan done then but um but that's that's what the law required um so we did ours updated one i guess in 2018 2019 so they went through all the buildings they went to the fire stations police station they went through this building and the first project we undertook once the transition plan was done was government center
26:22besides the ramp in this hearing room i'm sorry in this council chamber there was uh um i guess ada work done um in the hearing room there was absolutely no braille signage in this building at all except for the elevator so that was done so we have to determine and now with the transition plan what other buildings we want to work on and polling places as well the transition plan is over 500 pages
26:59so i got mine electronically because if i got it in braille i'd have to move out of my house it would amount to almost 2 000 pages actually you count maybe some of the graphics and plans that may have been in the plan we've also been updating our public access counters as we've been doing office upgrades so many offices already have their ada accessible counter space in a few to go
27:36okay and any of those projects already started as far as right now the ones you need to address in government center the government center office upgrades have been just ongoing so we just did um second floor we just did the new traffic office so when it was purchasing that counter hadn't been done yet so we just upgraded that one we're moving purchasing up to where traffic was that one's already been upgraded
28:08there's a nice new one in the city quiet office i saw that last week yeah majority of all the second floor has been done now for the public access counters okay council prayer some of the questions that i had and one of the reasons i had filed this resolution and dennis and i know each other and we've spoken for a while one of the problems is city hall and not being ada compliant
28:41and like jamie said a lot of those have been updated but one that really irks me is south main street because when you go by south main street and you have people that live you know in some of the buildings downtown that are either in a wheelchair or have scooters and you can't get around and there's these orange or red colored pads that you put at an intersection so that someone who can't see
29:07by the dots you know which way to go and they're leading to the street which makes no sense to me it should be that it's leading across a driveway or across a street but you know the curb is there and it goes across the ones that are near the courthouse both of those lead out into the street and i believe that the commission receives money for any handicap dennis would you know how much money the
29:38commission has presently in their account um i'm going to have to give you a round figure and then can i will i be able to comment on some of the issues that you just raised around the city okay um the last figure i saw was around 169 000.
29:58so let me explain how that works um under massachusetts general law chapter uh h8j hj um municipal municipalities towns and cities can establish commissions on disabilities those are those are um you know approved by board of selectmen in the case of the town i i've gone through two of these processes like i went through starting one in framingham so i had to go to town meeting in addition to the board of
30:35in fall river dan and and i know councillor pereira you guys have to go through city council on and there are anywhere up to 9 to 13 commissioners appointed by the mayor there has to be the majority of commissions have to be persons with disabilities there can be a a relative or a parent of a person with a disability a family relative and there also is a representative from the mayor's office
31:09in the case of a city or town manager in case of a town that sits on the commission the second part of that is called 22g and that allows commissions on disabilities to whenever there's a disability parking violation um the money that's collected of the fines that are collected go into a separate account controlled by commissions and disabilities and that money has to be used on anything that's related to disability
31:41so it can be used on ada issues it can be used on assisting with home modifications it can be used for educational purposes for the past two years now this will be our second year we have established a disability scholarship program where we have had students from the city schools all five of them including the two charter schools so those schools can select people with disabilities as long as
32:14they're residents of fall river and we've a lot we've awarded three thousand dollar scholarships to the colleges that they've been accepted at so those are just a few of the things that commission money might be used for if i can comment on getting around the city that kind of is the next issue that we're working on right now there have been issues with curb cuts ramp cuts not only can there be curb cuts but they're
32:43the regular curves are important to preserve because a person who's blind uses those curved regular curves to square off with their cane so you square off with the cane you listen for the traffic on the parallel side of the street it used to be i say it used to be because cars are silent now but when i was taught you listen to the parallel side as soon as the person steps on the
33:10brakes the lights read the person can go across the street a number of municipalities when i went to school in watertown because it's a school for the blind they had what's called audible pedestrian signals those audible pedestrian signals allow a blind person to know when it's red and when to make a street crossing we have one on the corner of south main and dwelling on monday after wednesday afternoon next
33:36wednesday afternoon i'm going to be going there with my mobility instructor and i think there's going to be another blind student involved and we're going to have somebody from a department that i just learned about recently it's called the division for signaling i never knew that paul river police department had this but it's the division of signaling and we're going to check out that audible pedestrian signal
34:02to them to make sure that it's loud enough because we've had concerns that it isn't loud enough in some cases and the signaling division just turned up the volume last monday but we also want to make sure that the signal doesn't make sounds like chirping sounds which would confer confuse a blind person with the sound of birds so you might think it's a bird or you might think it's a pedestrian signal
34:29when it might be a bird so there are signals that make that sounds we want to make sure that that's not happening so that we can install more of the signals around the city but those are very important signals in terms of street crossings i used to be much braver than i am now with street crossings and stuff but i'm gonna try it out on wednesday and see what it's like
34:55dennis i don't know if my colleagues um know a little bit about you a little bit about your resume and could you share with them some of what you have done um and what you've served on because dennis is very well versed on ada more than any of us i think well i worked at framingham state university for nearly 30 years and 15 of those years i was disability services director and i was responsible for
35:31making sure the university applied or complied with ada on campus students staff and faculty making sure that there were asl interpreters for sign language interpreting making sure that textbooks were available on tape or available in in braille we didn't have many blind students go to framingham state but we had a lot of students with with learning disabilities and pre-disabled students so i did that
36:04um i started the framingham disability commission and chaired that for seven years before i retired in 2009 so we worked very closely with the town now the city of framingham and i worked very closely with the university administration um and whenever new construction was made make sure that the new construction complied with ada standards so i've been through a number of transition plans
36:38both in the town of framingham and on campus um and then here in the city of fall river um i started the independent living center in framingham um and that's kind of a reader's digest i don't know if i want to go on i yelled i just wanted you to know all that my friend has done i appreciate that counselor kadeem thank you so uh with regards to the resolution so we had
37:04done a self assessment um in order to get the grants so obviously the self-assessment would i identify all the improvements that need to take place in the various municipal buildings the parks um and throughout the city so how much um would you say in terms of total because usually they give a dollar amount associated with it and i'm sure um it's a little antiquated if it was a couple years back so i'm sure it's
37:27higher now in terms of some of the repairs that need to be made to get uh you know either various buildings up into compliance do you do you have a an idea a rough idea or estimate as to how much um based on that assessment we would need to put into ada repairs okay when i get my hands on the transition plan again because uh it was sent to me electronically and
37:53the way they sent it to me the links are no longer available i didn't know that that happens but i guess links expire so i'm in the process of getting from the massachusetts office on disability another electronic file that i can store permanently but there is a cost analysis in the plan that i am aware of there is a total cost listed i don't want to um i don't want to um
38:23quote it without double checking again no that's that's fair enough i'm sure it's significant i'm just trying to figure out these we did all the fire stations this building the parks um library police station right so just for this i guess for this committee just to be able to have an idea of how much you know the cost estimates would be if we were to improve it and then um
38:51i guess on a second question would be how much are we spending on average either within the operating budget or utilizing grants now that we're because we did the self-assessment are able to access all the grants how much are we spending a year to to make some of these improvements well this past year we didn't go out for the grant because you know we were on the hook for the last grant that i had to whip
39:17together like really quick when um the previous director left okay so you know and i still don't know like my future as far as a position goes so i haven't talked to the microphone i haven't um really looked into starting many new projects okay so that's just moving moving forward do we know how much we've spent i guess two days since the self-assessment was submitted uh for ada review obviously but how much
39:51we've spent on eating in a year roughly i know like for the chambers in the hearing room we received i want to say 237 000 off of that grant we've been budgeted 50 000 in our operating budget for a year i haven't hit much of that this year if i hit 15 000 because we just actually started picking up the pace on doing office renovations and with the cost of materials and stuff
40:32so i've been trying to apply what i can to the operating budget but we just started to pick that up again in i would say february okay thank you yeah so i think for me as i as i read through the summaries of of the list of variety of things that they recommend to be done i guess i want a better sense of where we stand from until now so it
40:56would be possible to kind of get a list compared to this the summary of all the different things they want to do what has been accomplished what still needs to be addressed and you know and mr pacelli said some of it for example falls into the school department because it's within the schools and the polling places i'd like a better understanding of where we stand with that the only
41:15thing we've done since that came out is the council chambers and the hearing room and the braille signage and you know we just applied for one grant because that is you know the timeline that we had and we didn't apply last year because of our situation okay and has there been any conversations with the administration as far as where we're going to move forward with this well it's time we do yeah
41:42there has been conversation and it is ongoing about streets and sidewalks and audible pedestrian signals in fact the demonstration i'm going to do on wednesday with my mobility instructor there are going to be a number of city officials there um can i also inform the council of this committee that uh web accessibility was also part of the transition plan yes and and i'm glad you brought that up
42:12mr paselli because one thing that i have discussed with the city administrator was the building of the new website and that is a conversation that i'm going to have as again educating myself running through this um through this document that we printed there's definitely a lot of information of things that should be considered when the new website is built so that is going to be passed along to the
42:35administration as well as far as i know they're in the process of getting a website a new website built so we should look at look at some of these things that are highlighted and make sure that we don't build a new website and then have to kind of pedal back and fix it we've already been told that we will be part of that process this will be at the table for that process excellent
42:55and when i say that i haven't had any conversation i can only vouch for the buildings i can't vouch for like the i.t stuff and the street stuff because that's not in their mind yeah that's fine i just wanted a better idea of where we stand and where we go from here all right i i just wanted to council foreign i just want to add that you know the disability commission wasn't put together for
43:22just one focus it was put together for a lot of different things that when they're doing a development in the city disability commission should be at the table when they're doing site plan review disability commission should be at the table not just you know the electrical inspector the water department you know the building department the engineer etc commission for disability needs to be at the table as well
43:50and that's something that and you know because i worked downtown for 10 years that was always a gripe for me uh so i think if we're going to look at priorities i think a priority as mr pacelli said was look at the lights uh you know crosswalks bringing in mrs ferreira into that as well and the money that the disability commission has if there's a grant with matching monies they may be able to
44:17match and get a whole lot more money with you know a portion that the disability commission could put towards it but they'll get more bang for their buck um but mr pacelli thank you so much for attending and would it be easier for us to have these meetings and have you present on the same day as a disability commission meeting would that be easier for you for transportation purposes etc
44:47i don't think it particularly matters okay you know i i don't think it particularly matters um we're still working out details about when we can come back and we've been doing by teleconferencing um since cobit so we're still we're still in the process of working out when we can actually get back into in-person commission meeting we have members on the commission who are um who are still prone to everybody's
45:17pretty much prone to the virus but still i mean those are issues that are still a lot of meetings in the disability community i know the meetings that i attend with the mass commission for the blind and the mass office on disability a lot of those meetings are still in zoom or teleconferencing or going hybrid and that's another thing you're going to be seeing a lot more in the disability community you're going to
45:43be seeing more hybrid meetings because it maximizes participation from the disability community to be able to have either zoom or telephone access to these meetings and that may be something that chairman can look into for after yeah i was actually going to ask mr pacelli when your next commission meeting is and is it open to for me to be there oh it is open um the meetings are and we're still
46:09um i'll just explain what i do um as chair of the commission what i do and what i'm doing now is our next meeting will be on june 8th what i usually do is the agendas are all posted under regular posting procedures but what i do is i include a dial-in number okay this is all done by phone because um some of our commissioners feel more comfortable on the phone than than using um than using zoom
46:39i am not i know how to access a zoom meeting but i don't know how to host a zoom meeting so what i do is i provide the dial-in information the access code the way you would under the regular posting procedures so when i post the agenda that's the way the agenda will be it will have a dial-in number for the public so that there could be public input
47:06so i can do that but i'll make sure that you get a a um i'll also make sure that you get the agenda for our next meeting i would appreciate that i'd like to be there for that so this way for myself can learn more about what are some of the issues that you're looking to tackle and how we can kind of assist you with that as well so counselor you mentioned you know how
47:26important it is for the commission to participate i just want you to know that dennis did read every braille sign that we had made and he proofread everything and there was about 200 of them i believe yeah he did find one mistake yeah i also did durfee high school so durkee high school was very we did two accessibility um tours of durfee members of the commission and um i checked out all the braille signage
48:01there too and durfee's very very impressive not only from a regular public standpoint but from an accessibility standpoint thank you excellent thanks for coming now council is anything else nope i would i'd like to entertain a motion to table this because i'd like to visit this again second second uh made by council kadeem second by council pereira all those in favor aye aye all posts you guys have it thank you very
48:29much folks for coming in motion to adjourn anything else the agenda motion to adjourn made by council geneve second by council for all those in favor aye all opposed the eyes have it thank you very much