bob planthold. >> good afternoon. this mic is not on. >> good afternoon. i am bob planthold. i want to bring to your attention what i think is a lack of consideration of people with disabilities and of responsiveness when there is some construction going on of various nature. the one example, i will bring up that is really irksome. the art commission got approval to put some chairs actually fixed to the sidewalk. i reported this about six and a half weeks ago and it's an obstruction. i have been told by a staffer it's partly in the path of travel, but even if it's moved the fact is that this art project, which is permanently affixed is of a dark bronze color. so that at night many people whether or not they have got a visual impairment aren't going to see these things. it's a trip liability hazard. and so far there has been nothing really done to move this. somehow it seems nobody at the art commission or dpw public works thought of this. we are too often the back-end of various projects. there is other projects within the mta regarding trying to promote bicycle usage and saf

bob planthold. >> i'm bob planthold. i think win of the major concerns and needs frankly is simply money. let's face it ihss hours are cutback. adult day health care services are cutback. programs are in peril that affect people. we hear talk there isn't money, but i want to bring to your attention last fall san francisco voters passed a tax-change measure. and the mayoral spokesperson in a later article indicated there likely could be more money from this new local tax measure that replaced an outdated one. to the extent that the office of disability, department of aging and adult services and mod can monitor the income from this new tax, i'm going to suggest that some of that extra money could be devoted to restoring some level of the cutbacks already made locally. but statewide is the larger issue. that is where the major changes have come. so i also wanted to alert you to a program called "a california budget for all of us." it's convening groups include well-known groups like the western center on law and poverty, h

. >> eye bob planthold. i was fortunate some years ago to be given the beacon award from the disability council. some of you weren't on then. that's why i am reminding you of that, so now i want to turn around and ask you folks to consider what level of active involvement and advocacy you're actually showing , and i will suggest what to me is a simple project. here at city hall over the past few years i complained repeatedly that not all of the elevators on the floors ding and it's a varying situation from one time to the next. as you folks come in and out of the building for these and other meetings test them out and make a log. i made complaints over the years to ken. i have given up just because it's more than one person's data can provide and that's a simple thing. but when i ask about action i want to suggest that you folks could have a better impact if you were more visible than just at these meetings. i will give you examples. we don't see or hear from members of the council individually when there's

. >> i am bob planthold. i was a proud member of the board of directors of the predecessor for 10 years. i wanted to point out that the merger of the two groups is upon play upon their strengths. they have with trying to teach people to empower themselves and advocate for themselves, but there's things you folks also can do, and i will go back to the very formal legalistic approach. last year the department on the status of women did a survey about the demographics of the appointment of commissioners and that included looking at how many people with disabilities were appointed to commissions. far too few in terms of the overall percentage of the population, and i put that in contrast in context to the fact that the city's voters passed a charter amendment several years ago when jake mcgoldrick was supervisor, an amendment saying that the supervisors when they make appointments have to take into diversity consideration disability as well as gepder, sexual orientation, ethnicity and so forth. it ain't happening

activist bob planthold and represents from the department of motor vehicle, and so on. it's a daunting task and we talked briefly before the meeting started about good luck with that. [ laughter ] we're actually making some progress and so far, we have been reviewing what other city and states have done to try to get a sense of best-practices. we are just now starting to discuss possible changes to current law. but we plan to bring this project before the mdc soon, probably starting with the physical access committee. next i wanted to go through a few highlights of 2012. we have accomplished a lot. on the program side, at the mayor's office on disability, the work done by joanna fraguli and ken stein and heather kittle, we resolved over 100 ada complaints. these complaints could be anything from denial of service to people who use service animals, who use our transportation system or public health services. they could be complaints about issues with accessible housing, or the homeless shelters. or they could be about requests used alternative mobile devices in city faci