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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010 1116 Minutes Open_APPROVED Meeting Minutes — Approved as Circulated 1/18/11 Mayor's Advisory Committee For Equal Access (MACFEA) Tuesday, November 16, 2010 Mo'ikeha Meeting Room 2A & 2B 4444 Rice Street, Uhu'e, HI 96766 Members present: Rita Manriquez — State Traumatic Brain Injury Advisory Board (STBIAB); Dr. Lucy Miller — DCAB (Disability and Communication Access Board) Board member; Dawn Cummings — Family Advocate; Betty Bell — Kaua'i Federation for the Blind; Linda Nuland-Ames — Director RSVP, Elderly Affairs; El Doi — Kaua'i Developmental Disabilities Council (DDC); Rhoda Rojas — Hawai'i Center for Independent Living-Kaua'i (HCIL); Roberta Eiben — Consumer; Sharry Glass — Advocate, Teacher/Trainer. Guests: Ana Valdez — Consumer (proposed new member); Laura Burman, Director Hawai'i Red Cross. Staff members also present: Christiana Pilkington — ADA Coordinator; Barbara Davis — Staff Secretary. Captioner: Karen Yates, Caption First. Members absent or excused: Kathy English — Hawai'i Disability Rights Center; Elena Costales — Consumer, KCIL Volunteer; Marc Guyot — Staff Attorney Call to Order The meeting was called to order by Chair El Doi at 12:02 pm in the Mo'ikeha Building, Meeting Room 2A & 2B at 4444 Rice Street in LThu'e with 8 members present and the 9th member joining the meeting prior to the approval of the minutes. Approval of Agenda Ms. Bell moved to approve the agenda as circulated. Ms. Glass seconded the motion. Motion carried 8:0 Approval of September 21, 2010 Minutes Ms. Rojas moved to approve the minutes but asked to clarify her report from last month to reflect that Ms. Nakamine spoke to the HCIL self advocacy group regarding private hires rather than personal assistants and aides. Ms. Bell seconded the motion. Motion carried 9:0 Business o Review and discussion of the Mayor's Complete Streets project Ms. Pilkington explained that Mayor Carvalho signed a complete streets resolution but there are still some changes that will have to be developed before there can be an ordinance. Ms. Pilkington said she would send information out to the committee members in case anyone was interested in being on one of the various state or county committees that will be working on complete streets. Complete streets are more MACFEA Page 1 pedestrian-friendly, wider and are primarily focused at built environments, children walking to school, streets being friendly to different types of transportation and multimodal transportation. o Bus Transportation and the cost of bus passes for people with limited allowances Ms. Pilkington said another item that was brought up at a recent transportation forum was that transportation is costly and people with developmental disabilities right now are getting a stipend of$50 a month of which $20 of that amount goes to a bus pass which leaves $30 a month to cover personal hygiene, entertainment and food. One way to alleviate that problem would be for the County to waive the bus fee for people with disabilities but other than that there isn't too much the County can do as this is a legislative matter. Ms. Glass noted that our population is aging which will increase the demand for paratransit and asked if there are plans to accommodate this larger senior citizen population? Ms. Nuland-Ames said this had been addressed in the five year plan which has to go before Council for review. It did include responding to the increased numbers of what used to be called baby boomers but are now called the Sputnik generation because it is more exciting, more scientifically oriented. Dr. Lucy added that there are also a lot more veterans returning with disabilities. In responding to a comment regarding people who are 65 not being eligible for paratransit transportation, Ms. Pilkington said age is not the criteria for paratransit, people are eligible for paratransit if they have a qualifying disability — regardless of their age. However there are transportation programs specific to seniors on Kaua'i through the Office of Elderly Affairs. Ms. Nuland-Ames said they were looking at reorganizing some of the programs based on where the needs are but it was not considered a cut- back. Ms. Glass said age was not a criteria; it was based on a person's physical ability to walk and how far they lived from an existing bus stop. Ms. Rojas said she attended a meeting about the original long range land transportation plan for the island of Kaua'i and the discussion was about the long range plan for the state highways to be for multimodal transportation but she would report more on this later. Chair Doi asked the Committee if they would like someone from Transportation to come to a future meeting to answer questions regarding paratransit. ACTION: Ms. Bell made a motion to request that someone from paratransit be scheduled to speak to MACFEA on items such as scheduling, frequency of busses and late afternoon and evening service. Ms. Glass said paratransit is only required to offer equal opportunity for transportation that is offered by the regular bus and presently the regular bus does not run evenings or weekends either. It is all equal access; paratransit can't provide things that the Kaua'i Bus doesn't provide. Ms. Pilkington said inviting Transportation to a future meeting would be the time to bring up experiences that could offer improvements or ask what type of training the bus drivers get with regard to working with people with disabilities but it would not be a time to discuss problems or specific issues with specific bus drivers. MACFEA Page 2 ACTION: Ms. Glass reiterated Ms. Bell's motion to invite someone from Transportation to speak to MACFEA to answer any questions the members may have regarding Transportation. Ms. Rojas seconded the motion. Ms. Pilkington asked the members to email her with questions they would like Transportation to address such as how to read the bus schedule, bus routes, positive feedback on experiences with bus drivers, what the future looks like for extended hours on weekends and evenings, and what are the plans for expanding bus shelters and bus pads? Ms. Pilkington further advised that complaints or concerns should be filed on a complaint form with the Transportation Department. If the complaint is regarding discrimination, or someone does not feel comfortable filing a complaint with the Transportation Department, then they should be sure to file a complaint with the ADA Office. Ms. Glass said she would also like to ask why a person with a permanent disability and permanent residence is required to complete a new form every year. Motion carried 9:0 o Public notification of ADA accessibility of public and county events such as the Disaster Drill coordinated through the Civil Defense Ms. Rojas said that the disaster drill a couple of months ago did not have the notification information on how to request an auxiliary aid for anyone who may have wanted to participate in the drill. Ms. Bauman, who is the new Director for the Red Cross, said that being on the MACFEA committee and working with Randy from The Garden Island newspaper who sits on her advisory board for the Red Cross, could work together with Mark Marshall at the Civil Defense to get the appropriate information to the public prior to an event. Living in a diverse community we need to work to support victims, be they victims with disabilities or victims without disabilities. The MACFEA members agreed that important information should be disseminated in the newspaper, on radio and television as well as by E-mail. Ms. Manriquez said the Department of Health has been trying to put together a list of people who need special help but one of the difficulties they are running into is that people don't want to share the confidential information that is asked and secondly, the information cannot be transferred to other departments. The crawl line across the bottom of the TV seems to be very effective for communication access regarding emergencies because many people have their TVs on constantly. Ms. Pilkington said whatever information goes out to people needs to go out in an accessible format so everybody can receive it. o MACFEA membership and review of attendance and member's responsibility MACFEA membership is coterminous with the Mayor's term; over the next thirty to sixty days letters will be going out from the Mayor's Office reappointing members to the various boards, commissions and committees. MACFEA Page 3 o January training on new access guidelines Ms. Pilkington invited the MACFEA membership to attend the ADA Design and Construction Standards training for the new 2010 access guidelines on January 20 but noted that not all members would be interested in learning the specification changes such as how wide a sidewalk has to be or what the grade has to be. The training will mostly pertain to architects and county engineers although the members of the Contractors Association will also be invited to attend the sessions. Reports: o DCAB's report for August and September, 2010 — Dr. Lucy Ms. Pilkington explained to the new MACFEA members that DCAB, a State agency under the Department of Health, is the acronym for Disability and Communication Access Board. DCAB has several divisions of which one handles accessible parking, another section helps with education for parents of children with special needs (SPIN — Special Parent Information Network) and the communication access division handles all the testing for the Hawai'i certified interpreters. And under HRS 103-50, the facility access reviews all State and County design plans to make sure they comply with federal ADA access guidelines. Dr. Lucy urged everyone to put the website www.ada.gov into their favorite's folder pointing out it is a very user friendly website. They list about five new rules that were passed; there is also advanced notice of upcoming legislation on another four rules for which they are seeking public comments. Dr. Lucy also said that the deadline for all theatres to show captioned films is 2012 which will be a struggle for the smaller local theatres. Congratulations were given to Dr. Lucy for her service animal passing the public access test; the goal is now to have Muffin certified by the end of the year. o Members' reports Betty Bell: The State conference for the National Federation of the Blind, which met on Kaua'i on October 17 and 18, was very successful. The hotel was great and all the service animals were treated very well. Roberta Eiben: Debbie Remejio and I will be going to O'ahu on December 4th for the Special Olympics State Bowling Tournament. Rhoda Rojas: HCIL Kaua'i will be starting the low impact seated physical fitness program this Thursday and anyone interested in joining in should call 245-4034; you will need to have signed permission from your Doctor before you can join the program. Rita Manriquez: Dr. Ross on O'ahu has been conducting a study of athletes who have had concussions, which he feels are a form of mild traumatic brain injury, so he started a webinar for coaches and parents regarding concussion awareness. Also the President of the Brain Injury Association of Hawai'i has been training the Honolulu Police Department to recognize brain injuries because many people with traumatic brain MACFEA Page 4 injury do not know how to react when they are asked questions quickly by the Police; the Police in turn automatically think the person is drunk or on drugs which is usually not the case. Once the training in Honolulu is completed the program will be taken to the outer islands. El Doi: The Disabilities Council held several meetings recently and the topics that kept coming up were transportation, education and the $30 stipend; these areas are of big importance and the people want the State to address the issues. Next MACFEA meeting: Tuesday, January 18, 2011 Adjournment: The meeting ended at 1 :26 pm without a quorum present. Respectfully submitted by: Barbara Davis, Staff Support ( ) Approved as is ( ) Approved with amendments. MACFEA Page 5