Review: Americans with Disabilities Act Access and City Parks
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Rachel's Council Review |
As usual for the review, my comments are in red and italicized in the context of the latest Council Preview by Bronwyn Beatty-Hansen.
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The Ames City Council meets on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall. The agenda includes the following. Note that you can generally click on individual agenda items below to get the full staff report or other explanation.
- 1. Presentation on Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Access Audit & Transition Plan of City Parks and Recreational Facilities.
The Parks and Recreation Department recently hired a consultant to do an audit of our parks system as it relates to access and the ADA. The consultant looked at many factors, such as trails, toilets, doors, parking, and more, and will help Parks & Rec create a Transition Plan to improve access to our parks system to all users. The purpose of this workshop is to bring Council up to speed on the progress to-date. While initial input will be gathered, no specific direction is being asked of Council at this time.
The City Council and Parks and Recreation Commission met jointly to review the results of the ADA Access Audit, performed by WT Group. The workshop covered what the ADA requirements are, the auditing process and project scope, and common issues Ames parks have in regards to parking, accessible routes, amenities, playgrounds, restrooms, and more. We also covered what each park's audit sheet looks like and the future methods for putting each of these 51 site reports into a transition plan. While WTG provided an initial phased retrofit schedule with cost references for planning purposes, the overall goal is to work these into a draft ADA Transition Plan for the Parks and Recreation facilities and bring this back to council later this year.
Communications to Council: The following items are requests and communications to Council that aren't published on the agenda, so we won't deliberate them substantially. This includes staff reports and communications or requests from constituents and developers. Typically, Council will ask city staff for more information, put the item on a future agenda for deliberation and possible action, or just accept the communication, taking no further action.
- AGBRAI.
Council took no action on this request at this time. - Electric charging stations.
Council moved to place this item on a future agenda, which passed 6-0.
Thanks for reading,
Rachel Junck
Ames City Council, Ward 4