Skip to main content

tv   [untitled]    September 23, 2013 9:00am-9:31am PDT

9:00 am
they couldn't read our signs and they had a hard time finding their way through our library. and one of the interesting bonuses, is people with mobility disability told us they loved it because they can stand at a distance and see whenever they needed to go instead of getting close to each one of our shelves and climbing along them to look for something. that's our collection learning differences. software for our computers is 3,000 and read and write. we have them scan things and highlighted as they read on the computer. the users mobility. mostly going back to those doors and push button door opening that's one kind of at.
9:01 am
related to computers we have tables on the 3rd, 4th and 5th floor with assistive computer technology on them and they have push button adjustment. raise them lower and they have good keyboard trays that can be adjusted and monitors so they can pull close to them. and they are lighted for ease to use. one of our toughest ones to use and that's dragon naturally speaking. i believe with the next new computers that are coming in the next few months, people are going to be able to easily export their files and hang onto them and work better. it has nt work for us
9:02 am
for a while. there is one called a library or wheels that is for seniors and residents and activity centers. they have regular schedules for library on wheels. 3 of our locations is wheelchair accessible. when we buy another, it will be wheelchair accessible. the final slide here goes back to our mission statement about the joyce of reading for our diverse community. one of the things i think is great in our collection are the books that maybe useful for people with disabilities in many ways, figuring out how to cope
9:03 am
with hearing loss and how to make their home more accessible so they can age in place. their a lot of books that are just fun and i have here wonder struck which is a wonderful graphic novel. an award winning middle school book called reaching for son that i really love. it's by a young girl. it's a great book. and an auto biography, one of my favorite books called moving violations by john hocken berry. we enjoy reading about folks like us. my final slide is simply one that tells how to contact me with any questions or concerns. i am marty goddard, the access service manager at san francisco public library. my direct phone is
9:04 am
415-557-4557. my e-mail address: mgoddard @ sfpl.org. thank you all for inviting me here today. >> thank you very much, marty. councilmembers are there any questions for marty? seeing there is no questions for you, oh, denise. excuse me. >> hi marty. i don't have a question. i just want to compliment you on your presentation. it was excellent. it showed total inclusion in
9:05 am
how you serve the disability population no matter what aspect and i thank you for that and i have a complete comprehensive overview exactly what you provide. so you did an slept job. thank you for what you do and the serves you provide there. >> thank you very much, denise. it's really is my pleasure and my passion. >> thank you. any questions from the staff? >> thank you, marty. i just want to add my appreciation. i think the accessible services that you provide at the library continue to set the bar in other departments could try to reach. it's just clear that you have so much passion and that your staff carries that out too. this you so much for coming today to tell us more about your program. >> your welcome and thank you for those remarks. i just have to say, i
9:06 am
appreciate your staff, carl a the mod staff is the best. thank you so much for your support of our program. >> we have a councilmember with a question. >> how long have you been with the library? >> i'm a little embarrassed. almost 24 years in november. i came as the deaf services center manager. >> thank you for all you do. >> thank you. >> really, thank you so much marty. i appreciate you. i use that library. i go there. i love it. you can get your own private room. it's amazing. thank you so much, marty. right now we are going to
9:07 am
welcome back, public. we are trying to get everyone back. be patient. we are going to get started with our next presenters. are they here. the san francisco ada transportation plan program update. >> i'm project manager for our
9:08 am
curb program. curb ramp program. >> just so everyone knows, materials are sitting on the table for you to follow along with. >> thank you council for having me here today. my name is ken spielmen. we have information for anyone who wants to request curb ramp accessibility. i have my card and information. i
9:09 am
have the agenda. it looks like it's set to go to each individual agenda item. i will first overview the ada curb ramp requirements and then we'll talk about request procedure, priority matrix and status and talk about our program funding and also our construction and request results. our outreach and then finally new initiatives that we have coming up for our program. so, the ada transition plan that department of public works has, we have that in conjunction with the mayor's office on disability. it's required under the ada. it's forecast cost and construction schedules for curb ramp construction throughout the city. it also
9:10 am
talks about sidewalk construction. although i'm not here to talk about sidewalk reconstruction. it also deals with implementation requirements, making sure they are consistent with the priorities that are outlined in the transition plan. that transition plan is available in the mod website. our program is fairly well driven by request that come in today city from people throughout the city, our citizens for curb ramp and accessibility issues in the public right of way. each department has an ada disabilities access coordinator, sometimes it's called a dak for public contact. the department of public works coordinator is
9:11 am
kevin jans on. >> i want to go over our procedures. if someone has a request for a curb ramp program. they can contact 311 or dpw directly or contact the mayor's office on disability. then usually the procedure would be if it's related to specific curb ramp concerns, that's forwards to kevin jan son, department of public works, he reviews the question and contacts the city and routes them to the proper office. most of those request are forward to the department of public works, the streets and highway engineering group. they go out and investigate the request. they report the findings, make recommendation, back to kevin jan son's office and the
9:12 am
information is entered into data base, the program information system or chris we like to call it for short. it's our chris data base that keeps nearly 50,000 potential curb ramp locations out that the city. with that information with the data base and all the request that comen over time, mod and dpw look to prioritize those situations. we are in our annual priorization process for all districts looking at all the request, what we've done in the past year and what we need to do in this upcoming year in terms of curb ramp design and construction. so, this slide shows our curb ramp priority matrix which is in our transition plan. i'm not going
9:13 am
to spend a lot of time on this. ien currently you -- encourage you to look at this plan available online. it generally drives our priorization process. the highest priority is a 1 or a 2 priorities which are request that come in from people with disabilities where there is no curb ramp or there is a curb ramp that is in poor condition. and in our data base we have a way of tracking the condition of the curb ramp. so we have like a hundred points is nearly perfect, and then we have certain deductions based on the condition and we use that to help determine whether or not the curb ramp is in good shape.
9:14 am
generally that priorization, the highest priority being a 1 and moving diagonally down to this matrix down to e 5, being the lowest priority of our request. curb ramp status as of last friday. again this is pulled from our data base. we have nearly 50,000 potential curb ramp locations throughout the city. some of those we can't putten curb ram ps for whatever reason or there shouldn't be a curb ramp there but we still track it in our data base. there are over 26,000 ramps that have been constructed over the years. not all of them are in good shape because some were constructed 20 years ago. we have curb ramps that are constructed in over 26,000 locations. we have nearly 12,000 curb ramps that
9:15 am
are compliant to our current city standards. essentially those are the curb ramps that have been constructed after 2004 when we upgraded our standards and those curb ramps all have the detectable tiles, the yellow tiles on them. a little over 12 thousand location do not have curb ramps but need them and so we have a lot of work to do. there are probably another seven,000 -- 7,000 locations curb ramp location need repairs. we have about 1300 curb ramps a year that need repairs. >> could i just ask a quick
9:16 am
question. using those numbers of 1300 curb ramps to be built, about how long do you think it would take to actually replace or build curb ramps in the city so they will be fully saturated, what is your estimate? >> somewhere between 15-20 years for full saturation and sometimes we look at that as being at least one good curb ramp for corner in certain areas and some places there has to be two curb ramps. most places there should be two curb ramps at each corner. we are looking at between 15-20 years. it depends on funding and there may be some other conflicts that cause delays. >> so this slide shows our
9:17 am
funding situation for curb ramp program, our transition plan program. and we have funding coming through the mayor's office on disability. some funding coming through proposition k which is the half cent sales tax from the city. some funding from the transportation development act. tda which is a state transportation funding source. there was some older funding from the american recovery and reinvestment acted that was the stimulus funding that came a few years ago and we no longer have that. but that's listed on here as an older funding source. so you can see that our totals, so from the fiscal year 10-11 it was $7 1/2 million and
9:18 am
from the 12-13 amount of funding for our program went down because of the federal funding part was because we had some specific funding for the school district and that school district work was finished a couple years ago. so we no longer have that funding. there has been an adjustment down because of those two funding sources. we are looking at funding going up this year 13-14 funding. we are looking at probably another half million in funding that will help us do more curb ramp work around the city. this slide shows curb ramps constructed. this is not only constructed by my program but also by other programs throughout the city. and this is taken from our data base. so we look at these numbers as being on the conservative side.
9:19 am
there are more curb ramps being built throughout the city that we have not been able to pull in our data sets yet. the line shows our transition program that is my program. it shows how many curb ramps have been constructed over the past 3 years. there is a little bit of a down turn in this past year, 2013, part because of the aura funding and the school district funding and that project that's been done. health and -- also, we had a delay in contracts. the curb ramps under those contracts, were not done during 2013, they are going to show up in 2013-2014. we have delays in getting that into the data base. one thing it shows is the
9:20 am
paving program that provides quite a bit of curb ramps constructed throughout the city. you can see that most of the curb ramps throughout the city are done by the the paving program. also the bottom line, the totals actually show that we are exceeding our expectation of at least for right now of 1300 curb ramps per year. >> and thank you, ken. could you elaborate a little bit about the paving program actually builds curb ramps, describe the projects and constitutional right in a that gets set. -- criteria. anytime a paving project goes through an intersection they are required to construct curb ramps to make that area fully accessible. any project, not just paving projects, but other projects, sewer projects, any project that trenches within 8 feet of a corner. they
9:21 am
have to upgrade that corner. there are various requirements. paving projects, if they end the intersection or actually enter the crosswalk, they are generally going to pave through intersection but they have to upgrade that full intersection with curb ramps. >> all right. i have a couple of pictures here. many people like pictures of what we've done around the city. first is, a before picture, a corner at athens and excels yoir. this shows no curb ramps which is not ak sybls -- accessible and they have the after pictures that shows the new
9:22 am
sidewalks and detectable tiles the yellow tiles and new curb and gutter and the street paving just outside that gutter to make a good transition from the new work to the street. this is carla because i always have to say something about curb ramps. what's helpful to note here is that the city set a standard that we were going to construct curb ramps because it's important to align them with the crosswalks so people with low vision and so people are not unsafe in traffic areas. looks like the ada follows the rule
9:23 am
and this is the national standard. it will be two required in the future. >> right. that directionality as well. we've been doing that for nearly 10 years that's part of our standards to putten. if there is a crosswalk we need a curb ramp with that crosswalk and it's directional with the crosswalk. now this chart shows the request that have come in to the city to dpw for curb ramps. this is a count by intersection. certainly at the end of my presentation, we can always go back and check some of these if you have any questions on the numbers. but this shows the request that have come in and whether they are open, which means they have not been addressed yet. so they are on our books and we are
9:24 am
working to take care of them if possible. and then the next line shows the intersections that have been assigned to projects. current projects that are either in planning, design or construction. then the bottom line shows that they are resolved or closed. usually they have been constructed and those corners are now accessible and there are some cases where curb ramps can't get in and/or it's been sent to another department because it's in their jurisdiction. so, but anyway, this shows the kind of a general summary of where we stand with request. if you notice the line that's open, they have not been ascend to project. the no. 40 stands out.
9:25 am
most of them are sidewalk base ments that are considered technically and feasible for us to comen and dig a hole will there in the sidewalk and break into someone's base many. that's been a problem over the years where we break into basements. we have been addressing those issues and working with the property owners and trying to make changes to their basement structure in order to get curb ramps into those locations. that is an issue we are working on. as you look out, let's say the most current year, this past year 2013, you know there is still a lot of locations that are opened and we have not gotten to them. in our prioritization meeting we are taking care of those as quickly
9:26 am
as we can. we have some outreach items that i just wanted to go over. the mod website has a service request link. so anyone that wants to put in a request can go to the mod website. we have wer try the to update the website for mod sites. we have information cards that we hand out. i have some here at the front table. we've had 3 x 5 and went up to 4 x 6 and now we are going to have 5 x 7 cards to hand out at meetings and give to supervisors at our offices. a couple years ago we put bus
9:27 am
ads in the munis buses and we had requests come in. so we are going to do that again. mod put a one page add in the voter pamphlet last november. we'll work with mod with trying to do that. that seems to be a great way to get the word out. so here we have this next one, we have a photo. this is from a recent sunday street. first the outreach i have is for utilities companies on curb ramp design an construction and we met with pg & e to talk about better design options. that's an on going issue that we have with companies putting incorrect programs if we have to. we
9:28 am
recently did a seminar for dpw engineers for disability awareness. so that had a great response. then this photo goes with this item, sunday streets. we've been to the last couple of sunday streets. there has been in a last couple of weeks on mission street. we are going to have a table out this and trying to meet with some of the citizens out on the street. some new initiatives that we have coming up.. i mentioned this already. our subsidewalk basement abatement program. that's always been a problem for us. putting in curb ramps, making them as assess i accessible.
9:29 am
we have identified locations where there are subsidewalk basements. it's going to be a large program and take a while for us to work on this. along market street, the curb ramps along market street were built about 20 years ago. they are nice looking but they have some issues with them. the market street, the better market street programs coming up soon and they will be redoing all the of market street and all the programs. all the ramps are built with a lip at the bottom of the curb ramps. they are a problem for people with wheelchairs. we are looking at them that are greater than a half inch and putting a patch so to make it less of a barrier for
9:30 am
wheelchair users. we are about half way done with those on market street. then the photo goes with this initiative to replace the worn out plastic detectable tiles with concrete tiles. over the last almost 10 years we've been putting in the plastic tiles but we found they are not holding up as long as we had hoped especially in high pedestrian traffic and they are wearing out and breaking. so we have a program for replacing those as they wear out and now all projects that involve curb ramp construction should be putting in the concrete tiles rather than the plastic tiles. that's been a change in our program. and that photo