Free Republic

As much as you've heard about the fuss over building a wheelchair ramp to the president's podium in the Board of Supervisors' chamber, there's one point that hasn't been made. This isn't about the project's $1 million cost, nor the construction, nor the principle of the matter.This is another case of those bickering supes. Because if the six supervisors who voted against building the wheelchair ramp wanted to stop it, they had ample time months ago. And they didn't say peep."I went around to each of the supervisors' offices and asked 'Do you want to weigh in on this?' "...

San Francisco should not have to spend $1 million on a wheelchair ramp in the Board of Supervisors chambers to assure equal access for people with disabilities. There must be less expensive options than the 10-foot ramp that has been through 18 designs and consumed more than $200,000 in planning. One alternative would be to do what the board has done for the past three years - seat its president near floor level, instead of the ornate, elevated podium that would require a significant retrofit of the historic room. Board President Aaron Peskin said he would like to find a...

Where else but San Francisco City Hall could a 10-foot-long wheelchair ramp wind up costing $1 million? Thanks to a maze of bureaucratic indecision and historic restrictions, taxpayers may shell out $100,000 per foot to make the Board of Supervisors president's perch in the historic chambers accessible to the disabled. What's more, the little remodel job that planners first thought would take three months has stretched into more than four years - and will probably mean the supervisors will have to move out of their hallowed hall for five months while the work is done. "It's crazy," admits Susan Mizer,...