[0:01] being into quadrants. Then I'm going to
talk about the program and policy
[0:06] portion of the requirements. uh address
public
[0:11] feedback, talk about uh how to treat
existing sites, and then talk about the
[0:18] the key deliverable, the transition
plan, and then make some comments about
[0:22] reporting that will occur between now
and when the project ends in September
[0:28] of 2026.
[0:46] All right. Can you advance it? Yeah. All
right. You might be able to work now,
[0:50] too. Right. But quickly, what is the
ADA? It became effective actually quite
[0:56] a ways back. January 26th of
1992 for the 89,000 units of local
[1:02] government across the United
States. Obviously, it prohibits
[1:07] discrimination on the basis of
disability, but it defines
[1:10] discrimination in a way that might
surprise you. It says that an existing
[1:15] site that's not accessible is
discrimination on the basis of
[1:18] disability. uh it says that programs and
policies that are not inclusive of
[1:23] people who have a disability uh rise to
the level of discrimination on the basis
[1:28] of disability. So those are all parts of
the scope here and because the scope of
[1:33] the ADA is so broad I think
appropriately so the Westcog project
[1:37] scope is broad as
well. The ADA doesn't just tell you you
[1:43] can't do certain things though it also
imposes some very affirmative mandates.
[1:47] Those two have been worked into the
scope and I'll touch on those too. Just
[1:52] a comment about things in Washington DC.
This is not a political comment. Uh we
[1:57] see this thick political approach no
matter who is elected from which party.
[2:03] There's generally when there's a
Republican elected as president, there
[2:07] are fewer civil rights staff. It's
happened every year for the last 33
[2:11] years. So we expect as much as a 50% cut
in civil rights staff, but that's not
[2:18] going to change the content. When this
has happened in the past, the content of
[2:23] settlement agreements and court
decisions has remained exactly the same.
[2:27] But we do think there will be an impact
because there will simply be fewer
[2:32] Department of Justice staff to receive
complaints and investigate complaints.
[2:38] Um, we are still seeing a continued
trend from towns and cities and special
[2:44] purpose districts of issuing RFPs for
ADA compliance. So, 33 years into the
[2:50] life of this law and agencies are still
realizing that they want to do this and
[2:56] need to do it in part because of the
changing demographic groups.
[3:00] Uh our firm is an architectural and
engineering firm but we added access
[3:05] consulting in 2008. Uh we work all over
the country and are licensed in all 50
[3:11] states and we serve just about
everybody. We are an MBE uh in
[3:18] collaboration with our partner Draft
Pros and we have about 340 nationwide.
[3:23] our accessibility practice of just the
nine of us and unique to other ADA
[3:29] consultants. Seven of the nine of us
worked in local government and I had the
[3:34] pleasure of being an
[3:37] administrator. Um so what is the quad
approach?
[3:42] So there is no way to do all 16 of the
participating uh Westco communities at
[3:48] once. We did briefly consider that, but
that was just not going to be effective.
[3:54] So, we tried to balance that by putting
you into groups of four. The scope of
[4:00] work for all 16 is the same though.
Project management, inventory
[4:04] verification, access audit, site
reports, program policy review, public
[4:09] feedback, uh transition plan, a capital
report that gives you a cost reference
[4:15] for planning purposes about direct. And
then of course interactive final
[4:20] reporting and we're going to do that on
the quad
[4:25] basis.
Um we tried to balance the quads by
[4:29] population, proximity, number of parks,
trails, and facilities. I'd say we hit a
[4:34] home run on a couple of them and maybe
missed on a couple of others. Uh but it
[4:40] is still working. Quad one started with
Darien, Reading, New Milford, and
[4:45] Norwok. Uh that's going to last roughly
September of last year through July of
[4:51] this year. Quad two is Stanford. In
fact, we have a team in Stamford this
[4:56] week, Westport, Weston, and Wilton.
That's going to run through roughly
[5:01] August of
2025. Um we do expect some overlap
[5:09] here. It went back
[5:17] Try one more forward for
me. Quad three is Bethl, Bridgewater,
[5:23] Greenwich, and New Town. And then quad
four is Danbury, Brookfield, New
[5:27] Fairfield, and Sherman. And we expect
that to take us roughly through August
[5:31] of
2026. We're also including reporting to
[5:36] Westcod on a periodic basis. And then of
course that the project
[5:42] includes I think when a lot of people
hear the Americans with Disabilities Act
[5:46] they think brick and mortar and that
certainly is a piece of it but this is
[5:50] really an important part uh programs and
policies or opportunities that each of
[5:55] the municipalities makes available to
your
[5:58] residents are also subject to the API.
So programs are defined of course as a
[6:04] thing that meets at a certain time that
I say it before and it been a certain
[6:08] location and it lasts for eight weeks.
But it's also a sidewalk that's been
[6:12] decided by a court as a program. Uh it's
also playgrounds, trails, beaches,
[6:17] campsites, public comment at one of your
board meetings. So that's why the scope
[6:23] includes evaluating your programs and
policies and talking to your staff about
[6:28] how they invite
uh analyze and fulfill requests for
[6:34] reasonable
modification. From a policy perspective,
[6:37] we'll look at things like service
animals, other powerdriven mobility
[6:41] devices, uh rental and reservation
forms, and so forth. But this is a
[6:46] really important piece. It ends up in a
separate report that
[6:51] talks about how you matched up against
the title two regulation. Uh so again, I
[6:57] think a lot of people think of brick and
mortar first when they hear ADA. You
[7:01] know, I would urge you to greenlight
this for your staff. We've had a couple
[7:05] of staff ask us, is this really a part
of the scope? And of course, it is. It's
[7:09] part of what title two requires and it's
part of uh the Westcog project.
[7:15] Community engagement is another piece.
So I'll call these two the sets of soft
[7:20] tasks involved here. You can't have a
transition plan without community
[7:24] engagement or public feedback. So this
is a really critical uh piece of this
[7:30] and as we go through and I'll use town
of reading as an example. We just did
[7:36] their community engagement March 3rd 4th
I think it was. And the point of it is
[7:43] to ask your residents who have a
disability, do you have a preference or
[7:48] priority as to the order of retrofit?
Um, and is it something that is
[7:54] meaningful to you? Because that can
influence our final recommendations to
[7:58] the town or to the city. We recognize
that each city, each municipality is
[8:03] different. So you'll get in Sherman a
different report than uh petal will and
[8:09] bridge water
will want to kind of tie your own
[8:15] citizens preferences into that. So again
I ask you to greenlight that too. We've
[8:22] had a couple of times where staff have
said is this really a part of the
[8:25] project and indeed it is. We do public
feedback in two different methods. One
[8:31] is an in-person freestanding meeting.
Since the pandemic, candidly, we I'm
[8:37] surprised if we get 10 people to show up
at an in-person meeting. These tend to
[8:41] be fairly positive in nature. Wouldn't
you agree? Yeah, I would agree. I mean,
[8:47] it's it's been a positive process for
lessian so far. There's no great same
[8:52] with us in writing. Absolutely. Really
consistent with the process with the
[8:57] public outreach. I learned a lot even
that you know I think you've warned us
[9:01] you may not get a lot of people at these
in public sessions but the feedback that
[9:05] you did get was really insightful and
invaluable I felt so plus the second
[9:10] piece is the the online survey that we
did and kind of reading has almost as
[9:15] many responses as we got from the entire
state of Texas on a related project but
[9:20] we're calling reading Texas
don't mess with us
[9:27] um so what's an exist existing
site. Pretty silly distinction here, but
[9:33] it's anything that was designed and
constructed after January 26 of 1992,
[9:38] that's subject to the 1991 standards.
And then if it was uh designed and
[9:43] constructed after March 15 of 2012, then
it's subject to the 2010 standards. U
[9:50] the 1991 standards just included typical
built environment assets like parking as
[9:55] doors and restrooms. The 2010 standards
added park assets, uh, playgrounds,
[10:02] sports fields, things, basketball
courts, pickle ball courts, skate parks,
[10:06] and so forth.
Um, you've got pickle ballers out there
[10:10] playing today in the drizzle. Uh, it's
important to to know the rag and the
[10:17] standards though, so that you can stay
in the driver's seat. If you wind up in
[10:22] a settlement agreement or being
compelled to compliance, you have to do
[10:28] everything in three years. If you stay
in the driver's seat, you can stretch
[10:32] that out over a period of time that
matches your resources and still meets
[10:37] semantic.
Um, what's a transition plan? Pretty
[10:44] simply put, it's a it's a phased
schedule of retrofit. It has to identify
[10:49] every deficit. So your site reports and
the transition plan may be long if
[10:55] especially if you're a larger
municipality. Uh has to recommend a
[10:59] solution or a treatment for each deficit
and that can include leave it as is till
[11:04] it's later replaced or altered. U you
have to identify the position
[11:09] responsible for the transition plan. So,
director of public works or ADA
[11:14] coordinator or whomever you wish for
that person to be. And then you have to
[11:19] note by when the work will occur. We
typically recommend that this occur in
[11:24] phases with each phase varying from
three to as many as five years depending
[11:29] on the number of deficits that you have
and the number of resources that you
[11:33] have. Uh we always add costs. That's not
a requirement from the ADA, but we know
[11:38] that no municipality can make a plan
like this uh without
[11:42] cost. So reporting and communication
uh we want to do this
[11:50] uh we want to do this individually. So
for each municipality as we near the end
[11:55] of the cycle for your project uh we will
arrange for reports to your
[12:01] stakeholders. So whether that's staff
leadership or governing board or both,
[12:07] um we're happy to do that. Uh at the end
of the project, as I mentioned earlier,
[12:13] Westco will also receive a cumulative
report that will kind of summarize what
[12:18] we saw for each of the 16.
Um staff leadership piece is
[12:24] particularly important. All of you have
designated somebody as the contact
[12:28] person for us and so we'll work with
them to identify any others on staff
[12:33] that uh we need to participate. Couple
of resources before you bombard me with
[12:40] questions. Um DOJ has a really good
hotline. Um they do a good job of
[12:49] separating enforcement from technical
assistance. So don't worry if you wind
[12:54] up calling the
202514301 number when you show up at
[12:59] work the next day. There's not going to
be a bunch of people in suits from
[13:02] Washington DC. Uh they're great for
program and policy question. If it's
[13:08] brick and mortar or dirt and grass or
beaches, call the access board. They're
[13:13] the small federal agency that created
the standards for design and
[13:18] construction of outdoor assets and park
assets and buildings. They know this by
[13:23] far better than anybody else. And
they've got a great technical assistance
[13:27] service, too. There is a national ADA
network. They're happy to talk to you
[13:32] about anything, including employment,
including uh universities, including uh
[13:37] things that we haven't even thought of.
So, uh you can reach them at 800
[13:42] 9494232. There are seven of those across
the country. They all use the same phone
[13:47] number, and they're more clever than I
am. they can figure out where you're
[13:50] calling from and they connect you to
your local uh ADA uh assistance center.
[13:56] Um we love to talk about this. So sorry,
I did two there. That's me.
[14:05] If if your team raises a question and
you call Westcog or you want to reach
[14:12] out to us, feel free to do that. Um as I
said, I lead the accessibility practice.
[14:17] Tatum is our master of logistics and
information. Uh I will say we've had
[14:25] great working experience with the
Westcock staff. Mike Wilson who I know
[14:30] is not here but I believe is he's on
virtually.
[14:34] Hey Mike. Uh he has been great to work
with. Uh if he doesn't know the question
[14:39] or the answer to the question uh he gets
to us as soon as he can. So, and Chris
[14:44] has been a pleasure to work with and the
occasional times that we see Francis, he
[14:47] too has been easy to work with. So, I'll
back up not literally here on the
[14:53] screen, but can I answer questions from
any of you about the project or uh
[14:59] anything related to compliance?
[15:06] Yes, I'm sorry. Okay. Um, how often do
these plans need to be updated? That's a
[15:13] great question. U, the Title 2
regulation doesn't have a a date
[15:18] requirement for updates, but many
accredititation programs. So in
[15:23] particular for parks and recreation,
it's
[15:27] recommended actually it's not
recommended for a municipal parks
[15:32] department to get the commission on
accreditation of park and recreation
[15:36] agencies. They have to have a fresh
transition plan every 10 years. From a
[15:40] smart practice perspective, that's
probably about right. uh especially a
[15:46] community your size you're replacing
things you're changing out playgrounds
[15:51] you're act you're acquiring something
new you're raising something old so I
[15:57] think about once every 10 years makes
sense so John with with this if you're
[16:02] going to do an update every decade or so
would it make sense for municipality to
[16:07] have a log of improvements and changes
they made in interim just to facilitate
[16:11] the update to the plan yes and so one of
the things that we can do in the final
[16:18] deliverable is give you what we call
task track factor. So it's Excel. I'm
[16:24] sure that somebody can convert it to a
smart sheet or some other tool. Um so we
[16:30] we developed task tracker when we were
working with a handful of communities
[16:34] that were under department of justice
settlement agreement. So it has all the
[16:38] information that transition plan has.
Then column K says
[16:44] uh playground replacement included in
town budget January 1,
[16:50] 2029. Uh bids let for playground
replacement April
[16:55] 2029. Uh playground installed June of
2029 and then playground inspected by
[17:03] name of town employee on August of 2029
and signed off as client. So, that's a
[17:10] great way for you to kind of keep track
of here's the here's the literally
[17:14] thousands of projects that we would have
done over the course of 10 years. And
[17:18] some of the projects aren't going to be
brick and mortar.
[17:22] It's going to be making sure that
garbage and recycling bins aren't stored
[17:25] by the door so that they block
maneuvering clearance if I use a
[17:29] mobility. So, a lot of these are low
hanging fruit things that you can do
[17:33] with current human and physical
resources.
[17:40] others.
[17:45] I surrender the clicker. Okay, very
good. Which I used. One other question.
[17:51] Um I'm kind of curious what happens
when compliance is a a matter of
[17:59] judgment say along the continent that
says full compliance in an extreme case,
[18:06] right? which would require either
substantial remediation or design or
[18:09] actually just tearing everything down
and starting over again. Say to describe
[18:13] hypothetical extreme versus something
that gets close enough, right? In other
[18:17] words, there's an elevator on the far
end of the building, but not one right
[18:21] here on this side of the at what point,
how does that those types of cases where
[18:26] it's a maybe a judgment call as to just
pouch far someone's got to go to comply
[18:31] with these regulations and how is that
adjudicated and how can municipalities
[18:36] do a a better job in their own work to
uh make sure they don't cross over say a
[18:42] line?
That's that's a good question. There are
[18:46] a handful of places in the title 2
regulation where municipalities are
[18:52] given some discretion or where you can
say that a circumstance exists that
[19:00] makes compliance technically feasible.
Some of you have very hilly communities.
[19:07] So where you have naturally occurring
steep terrain for example, if you have
[19:10] trails, it's going to be hard to make
the trails meet the compliance slope. So
[19:16] that is a technical infeasibility issue.
Uh there might be in the event and
[19:22] honestly candidly we don't see this very
often but there might be an undue
[19:26] economic burden where the cost of a
project that would retrofit an asset uh
[19:32] is so great that uh you can claim that
it's an undue economic burden but you
[19:37] have to consider the entire fiscal
resources of the jurisdiction before you
[19:42] do that. Uh there are some others too.
So, I mentioned the soft task, the
[19:46] program and policy
analysis. If you have a building that's
[19:50] not accessible, but you've got another
building that is
[19:55] accessible, you might find yourself in a
situation where you leave the building
[19:59] that's inaccessible as it is, but you
take those same programs and duplicate
[20:03] them and offer them in the building that
is accessible. There's nothing wrong
[20:07] with doing that either. Uh the
Department of Justice has also in
[20:11] settlement
agreements given jurisdiction one, two,
[20:16] three years to make an inaccessible site
accessible. So we often find somebody
[20:23] has plans to build a new community
center. The old community center is not
[20:27] accessible. It gets to continue to
operate until the new one is constructed
[20:32] and open as long as it's within a
three-year period. So there are some
[20:37] interpretive things like that. And I I
should mention staff training. It wasn't
[20:41] one of the slides, but um we in our
response to WCOG offered
[20:48] um to each quad two free staff frames.
So one will be on infrastructure and it
[20:55] will review real life disputes and what
the requirements are and the other will
[21:01] be on program and policy issues. So, we
had originally thought that we would
[21:05] offer all those toward the end of the
project. We're not going to do that.
[21:08] We're going to offer them as a part of
each quad. So, sometime around the end
[21:12] of this first quad, we'll work with
Westcog to schedule both a program and
[21:18] policy training and an infrastructure
training and it'll address questions
[21:21] exactly like that.
And you can feel free to go to the
[21:26] training that's for quad four or for
quad one or go go go to all eight of
[21:31] them if your staff want to. Yes. Just in
answer to John's question, we did uh
[21:38] have a complaint filed on parking. And
what we ended up doing is measuring the
[21:44] slope of all of our parking places. The
library had to repave an area in order
[21:49] to be in compliance and it wasn't off
that much.
[21:53] Um, we had to restripe several areas and
there's a conflict with uh DOJ in the
[22:01] state of Connecticut relative to the
signs. Yes. Uh there's a federal sign
[22:06] and a state sign. And we had just
ordered all the state signs thinking we
[22:11] were doing the right thing and they said
no, they're not allowable. But
[22:15] apparently at the end they've allowed us
to go with those until we replace them
[22:19] with the new federal. Yeah, there is
that. The Connecticut sign is for those
[22:24] who haven't seen it, it's the more
mobile looking racing figure
[22:30] icon. The the argument from the DOJ side
is that that standard sitting icon has
[22:37] been around for 45 50 years and it's
recognized by everybody. So why why mess
[22:43] with something that everybody knows what
it looks like? It's kind of like
[22:47] changing the logo for Coca-Cola, I
guess, for exit signs in Connecticut.
[22:50] Exactly. Well, I'll take your word for
that. Um, we would lean
[22:56] towards the Connecticut sign as being
more stringent because it's different
[23:01] than the federal sign, but I'm not the
Department of Justice, but we would lean
[23:07] towards that. We've seen signs like
that. We've seen different size striping
[23:12] for accessible parking. So that's a a
key part of this too. You have to meet
[23:16] whichever is more stringent the federal
requirement for the the and it's been
[23:21] two years and just now our attorney sent
hopefully is the final agreement back
[23:27] that we owe J. Yeah. Can you have both I
mean it seems silly but can you have
[23:31] both federal and state signage? You can
but I don't I don't think you'd want in
[23:36] the same spot. I'm not saying I want any
issue right now. I also don't want
[23:40] people getting sued. Right. I am also
don't want people with suits and guns
[23:44] showing up. So, well, just it's not that
bad. You know, relief under the ADA is
[23:49] injunctive in nature. So, if you put up
the the racing icon sign for parking and
[23:55] somebody does file a complaint, the
worst that's going to happen is that
[23:57] you're going to be told to replace it
with the I'm standing still in my
[24:02] wheelchair sign until the state of
Connecticut shows up and says, "Where is
[24:06] the racing sign?"
Yes. John, I'm wondering how you
[24:12] selected the grouping towns because for
instance our two towns are the tiny
[24:17] towns where stride New Milford why
wouldn't we all be in the same spot I I
[24:23] know and I' I've driven through both on
the way to New Milford
[24:27] um some of it was readiness um if we had
a complete site list from New Milford
[24:34] then that elevated them to quad one u I
think we are still lacking I'm looking
[24:40] for
uh I think we're still lacking a couple
[24:44] of site list but that's fine there's
another 18 months of project so that
[24:49] would factor as well
[24:54] others just there's no state of
Connecticut DOJ right I don't believe
[25:02] are that enforcing yeah I don't I don't
believe so there is a Connecticut human
[25:05] rights act um and some states like
Illinois where we are headquarters
[25:11] uh the attorney general's office does
have a disability rights bureau and they
[25:16] do go out and enforce Illinois
requirements as well as the ADA
[25:22] requirements too. The final question I
have is when we do a capital project are
[25:28] we in fact required to allocate 20% of
that cap capital project to ADA
[25:34] compliance? So that's a good
question. One of the crystal clear
[25:39] pieces of the ADA is that if it is new
construction, it must be fully
[25:46] compliant. But if it is an alteration or
let's say it's an addition to this
[25:51] building, if there's an addition to this
building, then the addition must be
[25:55] fully
compliant, then
[25:59] 20% is allocated to the path of travel.
So, think like you're a wheelchair user.
[26:08] Path of travel starts as you're pulling
into the parking lot. So, I've got to
[26:12] have accessible parking. There's got to
be accessible signage. I've got to be
[26:15] able to get to the door on a slope that
doesn't exceed 5%. There's got to be a
[26:19] level landing there. The door's got to
open with less than 8.5 pounds of force.
[26:23] I've got to be able to get in there,
maneuver through the hallway, find this
[26:28] door, open it with less than five pounds
of force. So all of that could add up to
[26:34] the 20% depending on the type of
addition that you're using. So I would
[26:40] say the answer to your question is no,
unless it's an addition or an
[26:44] alteration. But if it's new
construction, it's going to be fully
[26:48] compliant. And I will guarantee you that
for some of you who have new
[26:51] construction, we will find things that
are not compliant. Access is a function
[26:55] of did the designer get it right? Did
the contractor get it right? then you
[27:00] know darn well that the interface
between design and construction is never
[27:04] perfect. And then are your own team
maintaining the asset correctly? So all
[27:11] three of those factors can make a site
not be
[27:14] accessible. The standard of
accessibility change over time. So, if I
[27:20] built a new building that was ADA
compliant at the time it was uh received
[27:25] its CO and I maintained it, can I expect
it to stay in compliance or uh are there
[27:32] changes to the regulations that we have
to understand and um that could
[27:39] potentially take a certified building or
an ADA compliant building and uh make it
[27:46] out of compliance? No. So the standard
the design standards have changed just
[27:51] twice 1991 and then in 2010 in a normal
world I'd say look for a change around
[27:58] 2030. Um so that's typically then the
cycle. So you're just held to the
[28:04] standard that was in existence when the
building was constructed. Correct. So
[28:08] it's called the concept of safe harbor.
If you diligently made sure that the
[28:14] 1999 building complied with the 1991
standards and then the size of the
[28:20] restroom changed in 2010 or the height
of reach range for operating mechanisms
[28:26] like light switches changed in 2010, as
long as yours were compliant with the
[28:32] 1991 standard, you don't have to go back
in and change it. So reach range was
[28:37] allowed to be 54 in. So when we audit,
if we know the building was built in
[28:44] 1999, but your light switches are at 56
in, not 54 in, you fail. And now it's
[28:52] got to go down to 48 in, not 54 in. Does
that make sense? So safe harbor applied,
[28:58] but I mentioned that park assets were
not included until 2010. There's no safe
[29:04] harbor for park assets, but there is for
the
[29:13] Thank you, John. Thank you all very
much. And when do you expect to wrap up
[29:17] the uh project? What is the timeline on
that? Summer 2026.
[29:22] Yeah, late summer.
Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.