Municipal Partnerships to Improve Recreation Access in Rural Communities
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Captioner Trish Messinger

 
This text is being provided in a rough draft format.  Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. 

 
 
SCOTT:  All right.  Well hello everyone.  My name is Scott burling aim.  I'm a board member and a facilitator for today.  ... I want to mention a few housekeeping items before we get started today.  First when you scroll over a screen a menu bar pops up.  Depending on what device you're on, you can find that menu bar on top or at the bottom of the screen.  
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And with that it's my pleasure to turn the presentation over to Diane.  Welcome, Diane.
DIANE:  Thanks so much Scott.  Hi everyone.  Welcome.  We are so excited to be here today to share with you our presentation municipal listened to increase recreation access to rural communities.  My name's die tie, I'm the check executive office at disability west Michigan, I use the pronouns he and her and I'm a white woman who wears glass, I've brown yous and long brown hair and I'm presenting to day with my colleague Brad Hastings.  Brad would you like to introduce yourself?
BRAD:  Good afternoon everyone.  My name is Brad Hastings and I'm the advocacy and ADA coordinator for disability network quest Michigan and I'm a white male with blue eyes and a shaved head and a beard.  And I have a tan room in the background with a guitar hanging on the wall of this morning or Ann depending where you are.
And we're going to move to slide two.
DIANE:  For the overview of our presentation today, we'll focus on building the capacity and relationships needed to advocate for inclusive recreation opportunities in your area.  We'll talk about ways to support accountability from those municipalities with service agreements and accessibility reviews.
We'll quickly review accessibility basics for Park and Rec equation, and then we'll be sharing some specific examples of advocacy measured that we've had success with in improving recreation in our area.  Moving to slide 3.  Just a quick background of disability network west Michigan, we are one of 15 centers for independent living in the great state of Michigan.  And the 5 counties we serve, 3 of them share the beautiful lake Michigan shoreline.  So our on the slide we have a map of Michigan and we are on the west side of the state and the 5 counties we serve are circled in red.
Accessible recreation in our area has grown to be incredibly important because of the vast opportunities to recognizeuate outdoors.  We have over 300 miles of lake Michigan shoreline, lighthouses, statement parks, rivers, and inland lakes, and so knowing your region and some of the key features of it is a great way to dial in where you can start with some of your advocacy for accessible recreation.
Moving to slide 4.  Our region has one main urban sent hear the hosts about 35,000 residents, but the majority of the surrounding area is quite rural.  Outdoor recreation is huge for both local and tourists.  Tourism industry is quite vital to our local economy, so for us this was a great way to influence positive change.  With all of the parks in our area, we were noting how old the infrastructure was and how many of the local parks and opportunities for recreation needed updating to be more inclusive and accessible.
So we have lots of hiking trails, campgrounds, playgrounds, boat launches, and marinas, but the majority of lacked accessible features.  So about 4 years ago we started to focus more on advocating for improvements in this area specific.  And then we have an image description here which is a picture of lake Michigan with its Sandy beach and one of our peers and lighthouses in the background.
Moving to slide 5.  So once the decision was made to focus more intently on accessible recreation, we reached out to other centers in our state to learn more about their experiences.  And we also realized we needed a role to focus specifically on building this capacity.  We of course like many centers had individuals on our team who were knowledgeable on the ADA and of course their own lived experiences, but we felt like it was necessary to create a role specifically focused on vagueing for these changes.  And so that's when we made the decision to specifically hire someone in this capacity and that's when we started working, we hired Brad and I'm going to turn it over to him now to talk about some of the steps we took in building this capacity with his role.
BRAD:  Yes.  So after I was brought on, one of the first priorities for getting into my role was to make sure I was knowledgeable about the Americans with Disabilities Act and about accessibility in general.  So there are quite a few opportunities for training and education around this.  The biggest one that I think was most helpful for me was the ADA training coordination ... out of the University of Missouri.  And through that you have to go through some course work and take a final exam in order to get certified.
They also the main certification there is entitled 2 for state and local governments, but the ‑‑ they offer some additional training as well in Title III, there's an employment specialization now as well as a healthcare specialation.  There are also in addition to that webinars available all of the time through accessibility online, the regional AA DA centers offer a lot of training opportunities.  And also the United States access board.  And sometime it is webinars are collaboration between all of those entities, the accessibility online week narrows will feature staff members of the access board of of the ADA ...
There's anen wall ADA symposium that they do each year.  And also some ADA coordinator conferences in the fall and in the spring.  And those are great opportunities to continue your education but also to get in contact with other people who do the work that where you do who are knowledgeable about the things that yourself trying to know.  Great way to build relationships.
Advance to slide 6 now.
Diane, would you like to handle this?
DIANE:  Yeah thanks, Brad.  So once the decision was made to bring on that focused role with Brad's role, it was really important for us to bring a long the rest of our team and our Board as well, and include this in our strategic planning and our long standing goals moving forward with these significant si measures.
This helped build the intentional connection and a lot of cross‑training for our team which was great because so many of our team members had incredible lived experience, but having that technical expertise through Brad's role really helped broaden their knowledge as well, and then of course their experiences and expertise helped Brad in learning his role.  So it was a really important to have your full team and leadership on board to move something like this forward.
Moving to slide 7.
BRAD:  So now we're going to talk a little bit about the intentional process of building relationships in order to be a better advocate for accessibility in your community.  One of the things I want to encourage people to do is to attend different community meetings.  A lot of times there are nonprofit collaborative groups that work together between human services and healthcare and sometimes city or municipal governments as well.
There are chambers of commerce a lot of times in communities.  Those are great ways to connect to the business community.
City and county commission meetings are great as well, good to meet your E officials who control some of the things you'll be trying to advocate for.
It's good to go to these meetings and give public comments about your organization, even if it doesn't pertain to the agenda items that are on the agenda that day.  But you can also ask specifically to be on the agenda to give a brief presentation about your organization, what you do.
And use that as a platform to sort of build relationships with the commissioners and just let them know you're there as a resource for individuals with disabilities in your communities, but also for them and for governments and businesses so that you can let them know you have the expertise the knowledge and the we can do the disability community to help them be more accessible and inclusive.
A lot of communities also have municipal volunteer committees.  They have downtown development authorities, planning commission, equal opportunity offices, and Park and Rec equation commissions, and these are all great ways to volunteer and be involved.
And I also wanted to mention, your center could pay for your time serving on some of these committees if the service on the committee is going to advance the mission of your organization.  Moving on to slide 8.
Oh I'll do there's a photo on this slide as well that's of the city commission chambers in the city of miskey gan(phonetic) ...
Now slide 8.  So when you're building these relationships you want to offer your center expertise, introduce your venters and its programs, do an inservice training.  You can do things that are sort of topic focused or more general things.  You can do trainings on the ADA, we do a disability decorum ... talks about the history of the independent living movement and disability civil rights.  And also basics on just respectfully interacting with individuals with a disability.
You can create opportunities for your consumers to be a part of this feedback and relationship, you know.  And get them engaged with their local communities.  You can write letters of support for funding opportunities to showcase a focus on increased accessibility.  The Michigan department of natural resources has really doesn't something pretty cool where for their grant programs they're now given additional points to grant applicants who get in contact with disability groups to provide feedback on their plans.
So that's allowed us an opportunity to review some plans for park improvements and engage in a conversation about what's good, what isn't.
And provide feedback and then eventually if we agree with the improvements that they're making and believe that they do improve access, we can write a letter of support to help them get that funding which will ideally increase the access at the park they're writing the grant for.
And it's also important to use data to highlight the importance of accessible recreation in our area.  We'vety an mentioned earlier that accessible or that recreation is huge in our area, it brings a lot of tourism, making sure that you let people know that increasing access opens up a larger customer base and brings ‑‑ allows more people to come to your area.
One of the things that I like to say when talking to folks about the sort of economic benefit is you're not just creating these opportunities for an individual with a disability, you're also creating it for the people that might be with them.  You know, if a person with a disability wants to go out to eat, they might be with other people.  And they're not going to go someplace that is inaccessible so it's important to take that into consideration as well.  Most people when they gout to eat they're with a group of folks and these true of individuals with disabilities as well.
Getting involved and ‑‑ I'm on slide 9 now.
It's important to educate your municipal staff and elected officials.  A lot of times people aren't aware what their responsibilities are under the Americans with disabilities act and even if they are, they probably don't have a super clear idea what they might need to do.  And you can do this through formal presentations as we talked about earlier or even just informal discussions.  I think it's important just to go to these meetings where your community gathers and have conversations with people about what your center does, how it functions, what you can ‑‑ what benefit you provide to the community.  And how you can be a resource for them.
A lot of municipal ADA coordinators often have other primary responsibilities so a lot of them are equal opportunity folks or HR and their ADA responsibilities are often something they do as needed.  It's not something they know a ton about.  At the ADA symposium, they usually ask people a question where they say how many of you got hired to be an ADA coordinator and not very many people raced their hands.  And then they ask again how many of you came to the work one day and you were told that you were not going to be the ADA coordinator and so many people raised their hands.
So a lot of people this is something that's an extra of their job, it's not something they know a lot about so you can position yourself to be a resource and educate that person or the government in general about what their responsibilities with.
And governments with less than 50 employees which is pretty common in a rural area are not required to have an ADA coordinator so they might not have anybody on staff who knows anything about the ADA.
You know, we're going to talk a little bit about goning your expertise as an additional revenue source for your center for independent living.  We have centers are charged with resource development in their federal regulations.  There's a lot of work going on right now in conversation around diversity, equity, and inclusion.  You can come alongside that and let people know that disability is a part of human diversity.  You can be a person of color or a member of the LBGTQ community, but you can also be a personality with a disability, it transcends all other identifiers.
Another thing is people might say, well, your center it's part of your mission to do this work.  And that is true.  But there are private consulting firms who operate all over the country who will charge a lot more to do this work and have less or no connection to the disability community.  So you can position yourselves as nommable and also connected to the disability community and you have an edge over these private firms who will come in and charge a lot more money to do the work you're able to do.
And it's important to say rooted in your role of advocacy and inclusion.  You're advocating for above and beyond the bare minimum compliance of the ADA and it's important to educate people about that and to let people know that the ADA is a bare minimum standard, it's not ‑‑ it doesn't always provide full access and inclusion.
Going to slide 11.  Sometimes when you're working with municipality, you might want to help them develop app action plan.  You may develop a service agreement.  Sometimes you can develop a service contract or agreement that where they might pay you to do access billty reviews for parks or playgrounds for their public buildings.  You can evaluate public rights of way so sidewalks and street crossings.  You can help them create better accessibility at temporary events if you have a county fair or a music festival, you can help advice on those as well.  And so make sure they're as accessible as they can be.
You can also help review design plans and that's something we're done for some of the DNR grant, but also our local communities in general will show examples a little bit later.
You can also audit their policies and procedures, you can make sure their hiring practices are not discriminatory, make sure they don't have discriminatory practices on how people with access information.
You can help them develop transition plans, so if they finish ‑‑ if you do an accessibility review you'll like my make recommendations on how they can fix something and this transition plan says how, when, is who's in charge of and it potentially how much it costs.  I always tell folks I'm not a contractor or an engineer, I don't know how much it's going to cost to fix things but I can give suggests how they might do it.  And then you can provide technical assistance.  Oftentimes they have one off quick questions and you can Dr. That with or without a service contract as well.  They can call and ask questions, you know you want to be able to provide the information to them.
Also we are called to do this as a part of our systems vague si work, right, to do the ‑‑ to provide this information, to make our communities for accessible.  But I think having a service plan creates some financial buy in from the municipalities.  If this is something you off them for free, they might have you do it because it's free to them.  But if it's something they're paying for, that creates a little bit more interest and they want to make sure that it's something they're going to use if it's an investment for them.
Moving on to slide 12 now.
So we're going to talk a little bit about the accessibility basics in Park and Rec equation.  I'm not going to go a ton of technical detail because there's a lot of it, but I want the talk about some of the things that are required to have accessibility, where you can find that information, and just give a few examples.
So there are two main sources for accessibility standards for Parks and Rec equation.  So the fist is the Americans with Disabilities Act 2010 standards.  And these apply to places of public accommodation, commercial facilities and local and state government facilities and new construction alterations and additions.
So places of public accommodation are any private business that does business with the public.  And the ADA standards are required for new construction or if you're going to alter something as a general rule if you touch it, you fix it.  So if something was built a long time ago, you want to update it, you have to make sure it's compliant with the ADA moving forward.  And those standards are found in Chapter 10 under recreation facilities.
And then second is the architectural barriers act ... and that's also in Chapter 10 of the recreation facilities.  These are not enforceable for people covered under Title II or III of the ADA but they're still considered best practices.
And I just want to enforce that these are bare minimum standards.
Also the architectural barriers act standards there are additional things that are required to be accessible under there, but you still want to use those as bare minimum standards as they're moving forward.  It's like they after different federal rule making those will apply to title 2 and 3 ent things under the ADA.
So the Americans with Disabilities Act Chapter 10 covers ... I just want to clarify too that I'm going to talk brief pry about some example requirements for some of these, but it's important to remember that at any of your Parks and Rec facilities you're going to have requirements to make sure that there are accessible routes to and from each of these things.  If you have restrooms, drinking fountains, benches, those are all going to be required to meet ADA or ADA standards depending on what is covered.
So the Chapter 10 covers amusement rides, new amusement rides are required to have a wheelchair space or a transfer platform that allows someone to transfer out of a wheelchair.
Recreational boating facilities are required to have accessible piers and ... at a community park, 25 percent of the railing needs to be no greater than 34‑inches above the ground.  And this is to allow someone who may be using a wheelchair to better cast or really a fish up over the edge.  Reel.
Miniature golf facilities are required to have accessible driving area as well as an accessible route alongside that would allow someone to reach over and hit the ball.  Golf facilities don't traditionally let people drive their golf carts on the green, but if someone is using an adaptive golf cart is course is is required to allow them to go on to the green or driving y.
And play areas are required to have access via a transfer system or a ramp.  And that is determined by the number of elevated play components that are provided.
And so that stuff gets pretty complicated and technical.  But if you are interested in finding that the access board website has a ton of great information about that and helps you navigate when the requirements apply and how.
Swimming pools, waiting pools and spas have accessibility requirements ... and shooting facilities with firing positions so if there's a shooting facility they're required to have app accessible right ... so a 5‑foot circle that would allow someone to turn around.
Moving on to slide 14 now.  So this is covering the architectural barriers act, recreational facilities Chapter 10.  So that act applies to all of the things that were discussed under the ADA as well as these additional things.  So outdoor constructed features things like grills, bench, picnic tables, those are going to be having ‑‑ they need to have required amounts of cleared space around them.  They need to have accessible routes to and from.  Picnic tables are required to have wheelchair seating and there's determined by the amount of linear feet along the edge of a picnic table.  And you would have to take the total number of picnic tables, look at your linear feet and decide how much wheelchair spaces you would need to have.
If you have camping sites that have accessible of mobility features, those are all going to be required to have accessible parking spots and that applies not only to standard vehicle spaces but also recreational vehicle spaces.
Tent pads and tent ... provide ... where it's a raised platform that someone could set up their tent on which would allow a wheelchair user to transfer out of their wheelchair at the level of their at the present time.
... trails, beach access routes are all going to have accessibility requirements under the architectural barriers act.
Moving on to slide 15.  Is when you go out and you are evaluating some of these things F that's something you've decided you want to do, there are a couple of resources that you can use.  There's a great website called ADA checklist.org and someones that developed these handy checklists that cover each feature you might need to evaluate when going through a facility or a recreation facility.  And some of checklists that are provided allow notes and photos to be added.  They're fillable documents.  And you can insert your photos right in there.  You can add additional notes.
I have think formatting for those can be a little messy and not every barrier is going to apply to each facility that you're evaluating so there's going to be lots of extra space.  And for me I feel like it's more important to focus on the barriers than to just have empty space for things that are not wrong with a facility.
So there are 4 different priorities identified in a standard facility checklist.  The first is the approach and the entrance, which covers parking, doorways, sidewalks.  The second is access to goods and services, so that will be interior spaces, hallways, built in counters.  The third is toilet rooms, which applies to restrooms.
And then the fourth priority is other elements such as public telephones, drinking fountains, fire alarms.
So when I write a report under each priority I give my context that might be relevant.  And then have findings so any of the barriers that I've encountered I put those in there, I take picture, notes of everything that I found.
And then there's for each finding, I put the applicable standards under a section after that called standards.  So that would be the literal text and any drawings from access board that are available, on what that is supposed to look like, what is standard is.
And then a recommendation under that.  I think ‑‑ I mean some of the recommendations for the ‑‑ that are built into the checklist are a little bit lackluster and not super helpful.  So for instance if you have a stall in a restroom that's too small, the recommendation in the checklist might be make restroom stall the proper size.  But you could say something a little more helpful in your own version and say move the partition and revolve the second toilet to create the required 56 by 60‑inch clear space.  And also install rear and side grab bar.
So I think that's a couple of ways that you could make your own process for this., but I have found this to be helpful and allowed me to make things more digestible.  I want to make sure the things I'm producing are helpful.  I don't want them to be confused and turned off.
In the chat you can see there's the link to ADA checklist.org.  I'll also ... but just sort of an example so you can see what it looks like.  We do have a sort of page on our ‑‑ on the front of our reviews that say who disability network request Michigan is, what our mission is, and also lets people know that we're not an enforcement agency with the ADA.  The ADA is enforced federally.  Our purpose is strictly to provide information and resources so that these places know how they can be more accessible and they can use the information to become more accessible.
Moving on to slide 16 now.
DIANE:  There are a couple of questions in the chat.  If you want to take those real quick.  Up with is by Joanie T company I work for recently resurfaced in our large parking lot.  They have 6 spaces facing each other.  There's a 5‑foot access aisle making, one space van accessible spot.  But the facing spot one would need to back in for van access.  There's no access I'll between the other spaces do.  They need some access I'll between all spaces designated accessible?
BRAD:  Yeah.  So each accessible space is required to have an access aisle or be adjacent to an access aisle.  They are sometimes allowed to share an access aisle.  But each accessible space should have access to an access aisle.  And if it's a van ... 11‑foot wide with a 5‑foot access aisle ...
DIANE:  There's another question.  But I will save that towards the end because I know we'll county that a little bit.  It's a question how we decide what our fees for the ADA services.  And hen the information you just requested, Joanie would like to know where he or she can find that info.
BRAD:  So Joanie you can go to the access board website and I believe ‑‑ I mean there there's a big if you go to the section guidelines and standards, there's an Americans with Disabilities Act section and under that there will be a chapter break down on the side and you can find the parking spaces specs under there.  Chapter 2 is gobgoing to have the scoping requirements.  And then I believe the technical requirements are in Chapter 4.  And Diane, do you want know address the other question that's in there as well.
DIANE:  Sure.  Yeah, I thought maybe we could address that toward the end because I know we'll be talking about that more.  Thanks, Brad.
BRAD:  Yep.
All right so slide 16 here, I always let people know that when I hand you my report.  That's not the end of our relationship, right.  I want to make sure the report I'm giving you is something you understand and that you can use.  And so I'm always available for follow up questions to go back out and take a look at something and help that explain what I meant if they need further clarifications.
And just it's important to follow up and see what people are doing.  Are they making use of the report that you've given them V they come up with a plan to address it, have they decided what their most urgent fixes are and how they're going address them.
So moving on to slide 17 here.  So one example of a service agreement that we had recently done is with the city of light hall, which is in northern Wing geencounty, very small community.  They identified items that they wanted reviewed and so we reviewed their city hall, we looked at their downtown sidewalks and on street parking and store fronts.
I didn't measure each store frond to look at all of the technical requirements for that, but what I basically was identifying which store fronts did not have an accessible entry, so if they had a step ... and this was something the city was going to try to follow up and address.
We did both of their public parking lots and then their 7 City Parks which included multiple sports facilities, tennis courts, basketball courts, baseball and softball fields, playgrounds.  And a municipal marine nah.
I should have mentioned earlier too that sports facilities like baseball fields, tennis courts, those are going to have requirements for an accessible route to and from the yand also to applier and spectator seating and they're going to have ...
Moving on to slide 18.  So this is an aryl photo of good rich park in white lake marina in white hall.  This is just an example of one of the parks we had to do.  It was pretty involved so the white lake municipal marina has 50 boat slips.  They have restrooms and showers for marina users and wifi access for boaters.  Good rich park also has restrooms for park user, picnic tables ... playground equipment, a gah see bow, 960 feet of bicycle/pedestrian paths ... and the photo shows this ... there were a number of issues this review ended up being 40 + pages long.
It was quite extensive.  It had been a while since things had been updated.  The playground in particular.
Moving on to slide 19 and I'll let Diane take over here to talk about a couple more examples
DIANE:  Yeah thanks Brad.  So you know the exciting part of our efforts here have been the engagement from our local communities as really been quite supportive and exciting.  Brad mentioned that many of these entities just simply are not aware of their responsibilities, but oftentimes we find there is a desire to increase their accessibility effort, they just don't really know where to start or how to go about that.  So being able to connect with them on these issues and build that relationship has been absolutely incredible.
Another way we've been increasing local accessibility is that in the state of Michigan centers have identified the go logo or the accessible icon as a legislative priority to help change the perception of people with disabilities.  And the go logo transforms the enter arable symbol of access from one of a person with a disability and a stationary setting to one of active independence.  So on the slide here we have that go logo with an individual in a moving forward position as opposed to that stationary stance.
This is a bill that centers for independent living and the state of Michigan have brought forward to both the house and the senate.  And we've been successful in getting it through both so far.  But what this has allowed us to do locally so talk to our businesses and our local municipalities in updating their logos within our communities ahead of the the bill being passed.
The bill would help encourage the removal of the term handicapped from signs and other communications at state and local levels.  And the legislation would also only affect signs going forward any new placement or replacement or acceptable signage would ... but we've already been ... in having our local businesses and municipalities adapt this through local advocacy measures.
And then moving on to slide 20.  Another example of improving our accessible recreation, we mentioned beaches in our area a couple of times now.  If you haven't been to west Michigan, please come visit us. isobeautiful.  But we were lacking accessible beaches.  So in 2 of our most popular local beaches we've installed board walks to make them more accessible.
And we did this through a creative fund raising effort where we actually sold the boardwalk sections and people would purchase them and have them engreater weight of the evidence or have it dedicated to a loved one.  And write messages on them so the community actually paid for these boardwalks through our efforts in creating these.  So that's been a really exciting add decision locally for us.
BRAD:  Can I add something here Diane.
DIANE:  Yes please.
BRAD:  This isn't necessarily a direct result of our own advocacy, but one of the other cool things that has sort of happened to increase beach access is that miskey gan State Park ... you can call the State Park they will bring a track chair to the beach that you can transfer from your wheelchair into that and you can go up and down the beach for several hours and those have been pretty cool.
DIANE:  Yeah, thanks Brad.  Moving to slide 21.  So on this slide we have a picture of a newly installed accessible kayak and boat launch on our musky gan river.  This features a ramp to enter and exit as well as an area to stage a eye quack or a canoe with a transfer platform ...
And so this was an.  With a local small township in getting this installed and again having that buy in from the community.  And now we've been able ‑‑ we use it for staff outings or to feature to our community some of these updates that are happening with inclusive recreation in our area.
And then moving on to slight # 2.  And back to you, Brad
BRAD:  Yeah so I get particularly excited about playgrounds.  I think you know if you're going to deal with prejudice and dealing with discrimination, I think it's best to start with children.  And so kids are yogoing to Playgrounds.  it's better if they can interact with people who are different than they are, so one of the ‑‑ a couple of the exciting things that we've been able to do in the city of musky gan is improve ... this particular ... believe market beach.  It is a blue and green structure with ramped access.  And so this ‑‑ our CIL got involved with the city when this project was going, and originally the plans were only providing 30 percent of access to the via the ramp.  And then essentially after working with our organization they have increased it to nearly 70 percent.
And pause of this work the city is now reaching out to us about playground projects in advance, before they decide which ones they're doing and they're looking for input on their proposals.  And so that has lead us to this final example here, which is a play ground ground in the city of musky gan that they're updating.  In the photo you'll see a ... repped everything of the playground it's not the actual structure.
But the city reached out to us and they had 3 different proposals for this playground.  And they asked specifically in their request for proposals here to provide optimal accessibility on this playground.  To this playground provides am ramped access to 26 of the 28 elevated ... and a yawn their rubber surface so there's access to all of the ground level components as well.
And have this is I think just a good example of some of the positives that have come out of our very deliberate attempts to build relationships with our municipalities.  They're reaching out to review these, to do ‑‑ I ended up having conversations with the manufacturers, making sure that the figures they had in each of the plans was accurate.  And this one the community voted and they actually there were 3 different options.
This was the option that the community thought was the best as well so our visions aligned there.  And there was a second one as well that they asked for.
Above bare minimum standards but not quite this level of optimum accessibility and our preference for that park and the preference of the public was different, but what ended up happening was the city agreed to take the accessible elements from the prose pose that will we liked and ask that it detained into the propose that will the community chose.  So that one will now have ramped access to more of the structure and also provide a yawn tear rubber surface that will allow great access on the ground.
Questions if anybody has questions, I'll look at the Q & A here.
DIANE:  And Brad, while you doing that, I want to just to mention how we've included our consumers and the individuals in our community and nsome of these projects.  For the peer market playground for example, we were able to bring together parents of children with disabilities, the kids themselves who had a myriad ‑‑ spectrum of different disabilities, and talked to them about what elements of a playground are frustrating or have worked well for them in other areas possibly.
And with that direct input not only from our consumers, but our staff, being able to increase that accessibility from 30 to 70 percent was a direct result from that and is a really important component when we think about looking at and reviewing these plans.  It's great to have Brad's technical expertise but to also layer that with the individuals who would be utilizing the equipment or those space themselves has really elevated it to that next level.
BRAD:  Absolutely so in the chat we have a question about how we decide what our frees for ADA services.  And I'll tell you that that's kind of a work in progress.  You know essentially what we're looking to do is to cover the cost of staff time to go out and do these things.  And particularly the reviews don't take a ton of time, writing the report takes a lot of time because you want to make sure you're giving good suggestions and you have to insert all of the standards that are relevant.
It's just takes a long time.
And so we're engaging with our other centers across the state of Michigan with their ADA coordinators and other people who do this and we're trying to figure out a sort of solidified fee structure.  We haven't really established that yet.  But the goal is to cover staff time and make sure that it's something that is generating or covering stuff time, making sure that our time is paid for.
DIANE:  And I did have a question as well on the legislation we brought forward.  I'm going to drop the link to the legislation and the specific wording of those bills into the chat.  We have a website specifically for the go logo in our state.  So that was another great question.  And I will paste that in the chat.
BRAD:  And on the last slide here we just have our contact information.  I always like to offer the opportunity that if you have questions, feel free to reach out to us.  If I can't answer your question, I'll try P find people who can or at least point you in the correct direction for resource.  And I'm sure Diane will say the same.
And also there are some slides additional that you will find in up the loaded presentation that contains advocacy strategy dos and don'ts.  There's a slide about different tools you might need when doing an accessibility review.  Yeah.  Thank you all so much for having us to day and for allowing us to talk about this.
>>:  Thank you all.  Remember when you close out your screen, there will P an evaluation that pops up, please do fill that out.  We use them to help make our conference stronger.  Thank you so much to Diane and Brad for this very important information.
BRAD:  Thanks for having us.
DIANE:  Thank you.