The Athens City Commission on Disabilities plans to sue the city of Athens for not making progress on plans to meet minimum ADA requirements.
The ADA is a civil rights law passed in 1990, requiring equality for people with disabilities, including mobility accommodations in public spaces, equal access to government services, equal employment consideration and more.
The Commission wrote a letter to Athens City Council requesting the city fix crosswalks, curb ramps and sidewalks, as well as pass legislation on a 10-year transition plan to make the city more compliant with ADA guidelines.
The Commission also requested increased funding to make businesses and housing developments more accessible.
Davey McNelly, chair of the Commission, expressed his frustration with the lack of accessibility in Athens.
“It’s been eight years asking for things, for crosswalks and curb cuts that make the ADA, which is federal law, and they keep not getting done,” McNelly said.
While the city claims that this impending lawsuit would take away funds for making the city more accessible, McNelly said the commission believes this is the only way to get city officials to act.
Athens and the Commission have focused on sidewalks and curb ramps to comply with ADA guidelines. However, the brick streets remain an unresolved accessibility issue.
“Generally, cities that have brick streets will pull those up and set a good underlayer,” McNelly said. “The city of Athens just doesn’t do that, which creates sinkage. It creates gaps on the crosswalks …the bricks have shifted to where your wheels get stuck.”
McNelly said the Commission met with the Historic Preservation Committee five years ago, where they jointly requested that the city redo the brick crosswalks with concrete that looks like brick.
The city has yet to take action on this plan, although City Council President Sam Crowl agrees it needs to be done.
While the Commission remains unsatisfied, the City Council has made several attempts to make the city more accessible in recent years.
“We had a project on East Union Street many years ago where those intersections where the curb ramps coming to the street were to be ADA compliant, and the contractor simply did not do a very good job,” Crowl said. “The city has committed money to fixing that issue at that intersection, and no (other) contractors bid on the project.”
According to Crowl, the city received a $1.8 million grant from the Ohio Department of Transportation that will make crosswalks and sidewalks more wheelchair-friendly.
Despite the discussion of projects, Crowl acknowledged that little progress is being made.
“I think it is fully within their sort of prerogative and their mission to be very vocal and to threaten the lawsuit and to sort of insist that we’re not moving quickly enough,” Crowl said.
The Athens City Administration plans to start Phase 1 of a project to make curb ramps more accessible in high-traffic areas of the city to be completed in 2025. The city is waiting for a contractor to bid on the project.
