Posted on 05/28/2015 8:31:23 PM PDT by rey
Santa Rosa’s use of its $4 million Fountaingrove fire station has been delayed by questions about whether the new building is sufficiently accessible to people with disabilities.
The 5,300-square-foot Newgate Court station was supposed to be ready for occupancy in April, but last minute inspections by city staff trained in the requirements of the Americans with Disability Act highlighted numerous potential violations.
The discovery has perplexed many at City Hall, especially given that the city has spent about $6 million over the past 5 years improving the accessibility of existing buildings, parks and sidewalks under the watchful eye of the U.S. Department of Justice.
It’s still unclear whether there are actually significant ADA or building code violations in the station. The fire department has hired an outside ADA consultant to review the facility and help determine what, if any, shortcomings exist, what changes need to be made, and how much they’ll cost.
“The building is ADA-accessible,” said Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner. “What we’re struggling with it does it need to be fully accessible, and if so, what that does mean?”
The nine firefighters who will work and live in Station 5 are able-bodied by definition and obviously don’t require toilets, showers and counter tops in the station to be wheelchair accessible. But as a public facility built with public money, questions have come up about how much of the building needs to be open to the public and therefore ADA-accessible.
(Excerpt) Read more at pressdemocrat.com ...
wheelchair accessible showers??
The only way for many government bureaucrats to justify their continued employment is to **** with people.
Yes. But what is so funny here is that they are messing with themselves. One gov agency after another. It is foolishness.
This is the problem many have; you design a structure, get it permitted in a certain year, finish it years later and it has to conform to the new standard? It is like trying to hit a moving target.
ADA laws are perhaps the most asinine laws of all
I can remember when ADA first came around and the crazies were insisting that it mean making golf course SAND TRAPS wheelchair accessible.
I’m serious.
Also they wanted any elevated platform for nude STRIPPERS to be wheelchair accessible.
You think I mean for patrons, right?
NOPE! They meant STRIPPERS in wheelchairs.
Yes, I’m serious, and they were, too.
They're in the process of refurbishing many of the aircraft hangars over at the Navy base where I work. The heads and showers are now all ADA compliant, even though the only people who will ever use them are able-bodied sailors.
They removed four standard commodes and showers and replaced them with two of each standard and one of each wheelchair accessible.
I guess it's not as simple as that, but when I saw that I wondered , "What were they thinking?"
Oh yeah, they also took away two standard height urinals and gave us one standard, one midget.
They're thinking of the ADA lawyers who do nothing but drive around all day with a tape measure to make sure handicapped parking spaces are compliant and raise holy hell if they aren't. Putting a braille sticker on an ATM machine is a lot cheaper and less of a hassle than dealing with these guys when they're demanding a check.
It’s not a midget. It’s just that some of us hang a bit lower, doncha know....
The preschool our kids attended was in a charming old community house. One year, a curmudgeonly family showed up and forced the city to spend huge dollars on ramps to accommodate their daughter’s needs. The construction was done at great expense to our little town. The week before the new preschool term started, they withdrew their daughter and went to some other school. I’ve often wondered how that poor girl fared in life.
I was recently involved in the design process of a new building. We had to make the entry to a commercial kitchen ADA compliant, while every piece of equipment in said kitchen was not. Now we have a bunch of wasted space that is useless to a kitchen environment.
ADA=Attorneys dreams arrived.
But, they’re messing with each other at taxpayer expense. It’s all fun and games until someone loses a pension.
Yeah well I mean we all pine for a quadriplegic stripper don't we?
Wheelchair-accessible fire poles!
Regards,
Years ago there was an ambulance-chasing “ADA activist” in Tampa who would try to extort $$$ from various businesses that supposedly weren’t handicapped accessible. He even tried to sue some strip clubs because the stages weren’t ADA compliant.
Local jurisdictions have commissions and boards that rule on compliance with the ADA often staffed with disabled volunteers. These members often act like parasites. It's not the bureaucrats. It's runaway disabled who are not held in check.
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