Disability Commission Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Welcome everybody. We'll begin very soon.

Okay.

Welcome to the advisory board meeting of the Disability Commission. This meeting is being recorded, and it will be posted on YouTube. Closed captioning is available. You can access it by clicking on the CC button at the bottom of screen. And if you have trouble accessing it, please chat one of us from the Disabilities Commission staff for assistance. ASL interpretation is also available. If you would like to have the ability to multi pin the interpreters, please chat disability staff for assistance. And remember to refrain from interrupting the ASL interpreters to allow time to let them finish translating before speaking. Per the agenda, public input is near the end of the meeting. Residents will be given two minutes for questions or comments.

You have a question or comment before that, please use the chat. And if there's time, we may be able to answer it before the public input period. Please use the Zoom raise hand function if you wish to speak and wait to be recognized to begin. Please And identify yourself before speaking. This increases access for blind, low vision attendees. And with that, I'm going to pass it to the Disabilities Commission Advisory Board Chair, Jerry Boyd.

That's quite a mouthful, Colleen. Thank you so much much, and welcome to the June Disability Commission Advisory Board meeting. And now it's time for introductions. I am I am not always great about recognizing board members or seeing board members. So if I miss anybody, please please, you know, don't be shy.

And as of this moment, I don't believe we have a quorum. So hopefully, some more folks will will join as they can. I'm gonna ask Olivia to introduce herself.

Hi. My name's Olivia Richard. I am the vice chair for the Disability Commission Advisory Board, and I am from Brighton.

Great. And I should say that my name is Jerry Boyd. I am the chair of the Disability Commission Advisory Board. As Colleen mentioned earlier, I am from the neighborhood of West Roxbury, and I am a white male with salt and pepper hair and green Jayson Tatum, Salt Lake's jersey on. Next, I would like to call on Paul to introduce himself.

Hi. My name is Paul Karen. I live in the West End, and I serve as on the executive committee as the advisory board, excuse me, is a mental health advocate. I am a Caucasian male with salt and pepper hair, and I am wearing a green shirt. And thank you for the opportunity for letting me serve.

Thank you, Paul. Next, I'd like to hear from Tara, please. Hi,

everyone. I'm Tara Suthers. I live on the JP Roxbury bury line. I am a woman, Caucasian, short stature, and I wear glasses.

Great. Great. May I hear from Wes, please?

Hi, everybody. This is Wes signing.

I am using sign language to communicate. I will do so throughout the throughout the meeting. I have two female voice interpreters, so you'll hear a female voice. But I myself am a Caucasian white male. I've got short hair, and I'm wearing a black shirt, and I live in the North End.

Thank you

very much.

And I think that's all the the board members online currently. Correct me if I'm wrong, Colleen.

Actually, Paulette Durette has joined.

Oh, Paulette. Okay. Great. Paulette, could you introduce yourself, please?

Good evening, everybody. My name is Paulette Durette, and I live in the Batterpan section of Boston, and I've been on the board for three years. Great. I'm an African American female.

Thank And Colleen, correct me if I'm wrong. I believe with Paul Paulette joining that we do now have a quorum. Is that correct?

Correct. That brings you to seven. That's what you do.

Great. Awesome. Great. Because the reason one of the reasons that's important is that the next thing on the agenda is the approval of the main minutes. And in order to approve the minutes, we need a a quorum to vote on it. So do I have a motion do I have someone who could make a motion to approve the main minutes of the Disability Commission Advisory Board?

This is Paul. I make a motion to approve the main minutes. Any seconds?

We need someone to second. Don't be shy.

This is Olivia. I second.

Great. Thank you.

Thanks

Olivia. And someone's not being being shy. I like that very much. Great. Thank you for seconding seconding that, Olivia. All in favor, please say aye or raise your hand.

West, saying aye.

Aye. Great. Aye. I should have asked, is there any discussion? But I didn't anticipate any. Hearing none, we'll go with the ayes and the motion passes. So moving right along on the agenda, we'll have a presentation from the Boston Housing Authority. Amy Tran and Dan Gletch. Is that correct? Forgive me if

David Gletch. I'm sorry. Gletch. Yes. Thank you, Jared. It's okay. Nobody's ever gotten that right the first time. So

Great. So feel free to feel free to start your presentation, and thank you for joining our meeting tonight.

My my pleasure. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen, which is I have some PowerPoint slides and assuming everybody can see that. So so my great. So hi, everybody. My name is David Gleisch.

I'm the Caucasian male. I have a baseball cap on, some glasses, and salt and pepper beard, some scruff I haven't shaved in a few days. And so I'm here to talk about elevators at the Boston Housing Authority, and my title at the Boston Housing Authority is deputy administrator of housing programs. I've I've worked at the housing authority for oh, since 2004 off and on, but and I've and I've overseen many different programs, The and now I have oversight of the voucher programs, so where where people can have a ticket voucher and rent it in the private use it to rent housing in the private market, but also the public housing portfolio, the brick and mortar building that the BHA owns. More recently came into oversight of the of the BHA's public housing portfolio, and with it, the elevators that function at the Boston Housing Authority.

So, obviously, elevators are critical for people to access their apartments, especially when those buildings are have many floors. It's difficult to climb, you know, 10 flights of stairs to get to your apartment, especially if you have some kind of mobility and disability. But, you know, for anybody really to climb 10 flights of stairs is a pretty steep burden to get to your apartment. So just I wanted to give a little background on the VHA and who is housed at the housing authority. And so first and foremost, we administer federal and state subsidized public housing at the BHA.

We have federal and state programs there. In our public housing programs, we have a little over 9,000 households, and that's about 16,000 total family members in that public housing portfolio. Of those, 5,400 are family members with disabilities, another 4,700 identify or are elderly, and then, you know, those that are elderly and disabled, there's about 3,000, so it's a combination of those who are elderly and those who are have disabilities. So obviously for the BHA, because of the who we serve, accessibility is a critical issue for the BHA, and obviously when it comes to elevators, elevators are critical for accessibility. So I'm moving on to the next slide, which is really kind of a background of the of the elevators at the BHA, and so just to give some context about how many elevators we in fact have, there's a 104 elevators within our within our buildings.

We have in our elderly disabled portfolio of elderly disabled housing, and we have family developments as well, there's 47 elevator cabs that are doubles or triples, and so that means they're kind of side by side cabs, and so if one goes down, there's another one there that should be working. We do have four cabs that are non redundant or single cabs, and so we're currently working, There's a project right now which I'll talk a little bit about to make those non redundant elevators redundant, so putting in an elevator right next to that cab, so if one goes down, there's another one there. And then in the family housing portfolio, we have 10 cabs that are redundant, and all of those are at our Ruth Barkley housing development, and then we have 37 other cabs that are singles. So, again, if those one of those 37 cabs go down, especially if they're in a, you know, larger or higher building, it makes it very difficult for residents to get up and down to their apartment. And then and then we have some elevators in the administrative buildings, are not as critical because they're not serving the residents, but we have some at Chauncey Street location downtown and some other administrative locations throughout the authority.

So and, you know, one of the locations where I have the most trouble with elevators is our Ruth Barkley development. And, you know, so Ruth Barkley is actually a family development. It's not an elderly disabled development, but because a lot of the residents at the BHA stay with us for quite a long time, we end up having a lot of elderly folks in family developments. So people age in place, which is great, and we'd love to we'd love to continue to have our residents. But, you know, sometimes because of that, folks get into elevator buildings where or or buildings maybe that are not necessarily appropriate based on some of the issues that come with age or potentially disability.

So the the when we have some non redundant elevators over at Ruth Barkley, and sometimes because of the age of those elevators, those elevators go down, which it can be extremely problematic for residents. So the the idea behind my presentation tonight is to talk about, well, what are we what are how are we trying to improve things? What are we trying to do? What do we do when an elevator does go down? And how are we trying to improve elevator service across the housing authority?

So so first and foremost, obviously, if we had unlimited money, we would not have any problems with our elevators. But elevators, unfortunately, it turns out are a very expensive thing to upgrade, to modernize, and to repair, and the Boston Housing Authority is an underfunded agency. And to provide some context to that issue, the BHA across its portfolio has about a $1,500,000,000 in capital needs, so those are things that need to be repaired in its buildings, but the federal government only gives us about $30,000,000,000 a year to address those those needs. And so the BHA has to be very kind of we, you know, we rely heavily on that those federal allocation of dollars. We try to, you know, get money in other ways, and actually the city of Boston has been extremely generous with funding some of the projects that I'm gonna talk about in more detail.

But essentially, the BHA spends money on elevators in three separate ways. Number one, we have capital projects which are things that we, you know, we say, okay, we're gonna spend that 30,000,000 of capital dollars that we receive, we're gonna spend x amount on this particular elevator project. We also spend money just like through ongoing maintenance, and then oftentimes we spend money to improve elevators through emergency work once something goes down, but we don't have time to plan through the capital planning process. So And I'm gonna give some more detailed examples of those. So first and foremost, right now, we're planning on spending approximately $7,000,000 at Ruth Barkley to update to modernize and upgrade the high rise buildings, which is a project currently in the design phase.

So we have a so we have an engineer basically assessing the high rise elevators, telling us what will need to be done, and that's coming to completion. And soon, there'll be some documents going out to bid to actually modernize those elevators at the high rise elevators at Ruth Barkley. One of the high rise buildings is already ongoing an upgrade, and that's at 42 Harrison Archway. There's two elevators there, so it's a high rise building. One of the elevators has been completely upgraded and brought back into service.

The other one is currently out of service but being upgraded as we not as we speak, but, you know, the the the contractors there every day working to bring that back into service. But there are three other high rise buildings at Ruth Barkley that also require significant upgrades. So that's a $7,000,000 project plan there. We are undergoing a $6,900,000 addition of two elevators at Commonwealth, and those elevators, again, I mentioned that some elevators are just single cabs and not not redundant, so it's not a side by side situation. So we're spending $6,900,000 on our Brighton Development Commonwealth to make those elevators side by side, so that if one goes down, there's still access to the apartments in that building.

And then we are doing a $5,400,000 modernization of two elevators at for a UNIDED, and that's the towers in the South End. And and again, same situation as the 42 Harrison Archway project at Ruth Barkley. One of those elevators has been fully modernized and the other one is out of service while it's being while it's being modernized. And then we also recently completed a $1,100,000 modernization of elevators at Hassan. So you can see kind of we are there's a lot of planning at the VHA to improve the service of our aging elevators, and you can see the significant costs to actually that it takes to actually upgrade elevators.

They are very expensive, not only to maintain but also to repair and to upgrade. So so so those are some of the capital projects, but we also have we also spend dollars on elevators to improve them just through the regular maintenance contracts. So obviously or maybe not obviously, but the BHA does not do any kind of elevator repairs or maintenance itself. We employ maintenance contractors. So right now, I think we have at least four separate contractors working on various buildings and, you know, you may see like, for example, one of them is Otis Elevators, another one is Schindler Elevators, so these are kind as you're as you're walking around the city, you may see these companies like working on elevators or working on escalators or something like that, but they also do work for the VHA.

And so one of the things that they would do, like, for routine maintenance, for example, at Ruth Barclay, we just signed a a proposal that they would clean all of the hoist ways and repair all of the door hardware, and that was a proposal for 670,000, and they're gonna start working on that to just make sure that the doors, you know, are opening properly, closing properly, and just upgrade old hardware, but also, you know, having the hoist ways or the kind of the the the tunnel where the elevator sits be clean, it's important to prevent any downtime in those elevators. And then we're also doing within the maintenance contract improvements to some of the smaller six story buildings where you have single cabs at Ruth's Barclay, and we did some improvements to an address at 19 Monsignor Reynolds already, but there's similar elevators at 10 And 20 East Brookline and 29 Monsignor Reynolds that are gonna get the same improvements. Fortunately, the elevator at 19 Monsignor Reynolds has been I think it's been three months since it's had any downtime, so the improvements that we did do to it have proved extremely effective. So those capital projects, that's the kind of some examples of the maintenance contract spending, and then we have emergency repairs that we do sometimes.

So and that just means, when I say emergency repairs, unfortunately, when you're really overhauling an elevator, it doesn't happen very quickly, but sometimes we want to start a project without going through an elongated public procurement or public bidding process. So sometimes we do we get a waiver and we get bids from our contractor to repair an elevator so that it can happen as quickly as possible, and so that's the process that was used at 42 Harrison Archway, again, a Ruth Barkley elevator, and again, as I mentioned, that's underway, and one elevator repaired, and United Elevator is working on the other elevator there. So that's kind of some of the some of the just background on on on or just kind of a quick outline on what the BHA is doing right now. And I wanted to talk more about what does the BHA do when an elevator does go down. How do we, you know, mitigate the inaccessibility to people's homes when the elevator or elevators are not working in their building.

So, of course, access to your home is a critical issue for anybody. Right? So and we take it very seriously, so we understand that you cannot access your home as a DHA resident, that we need to do something to help you. So we we've worked on our what we call our elevator down protocols several times over the past few years to make sure that, you know, if you can't get to your apartment or or if you have to take the stairs, then we have and the elevator's down for a substantial period of time, that we have staff that can help you bring groceries or whatever it is that you might need to your apartment or assist with deliveries or packages or what have you. Or if there's, you know, a critical medical appointment that you need to get out of your apartment and we need to we can do some things to get somebody to help, in fact, carry you down the stairs if need be to get you to that medical appointment with some, you know, unfortunately, we do need some advanced notes to that.

But also, if the elevator is gonna be down for a substantial period of time, like more than forty eight hours, we are we offer a transfer. It doesn't have to be a permanent transfer. It could be a temporary transfer to another apartment. We also offer to put our residents up in hotels if the elevators are down for a significant period of time. And so, you know, I think we've done a lot of work internally to ensure that when the elevators go down that we are following our protocols precisely and also providing notice to our residents what kind of options are available to them when when the elevator is out of service.

And so to that end, we post a summary of kind of what the important parts of the protocol are in each outside of each elevator cab, but also within the cab. There's

the

number there to call, but also there's obviously the emergency elevator phone, but there's a number there to call, and it does say kind of what things are available to a resident, but also what they can expect from the BHA when the elevators go down. There's a BHA uses kind of a when an elevator does go down, BHA uses like a group texting function that's called it's a software called OneCallNow. And so when an elevator goes down and it gets reported, a message goes out to every residence to tell them, hey, unfortunately, the elevator's down, and the same kind of message goes out as soon as the elevator is restored to service. And then, you know, if the elevator's gonna be down for a significant period of time, that's when we start, you know, knocking on doors, talking to residents, letting them know that we expect the elevator to be down for a significant period of time, and that these are the various options that are available to them. And so we have a full version of our elevator down protocols posted at bostonhousing.org/elevators.

If you accidentally leave off the s, you'll still get there. So and before I open it up for questions, just on the elevators, I just wanted to talk about some other areas of kind of maintenance and systems improvements that we are trying to make that I think also help with elevators, but just kind of living conditions generally at our developments. Number one is that oftentimes with elevators, sometimes sometimes vandalism or unauthorized occupants can be an issue in terms of why the elevators get, you know, brought out of service. So to that end, we are at all of our elderly developments, we are looking at upgraded door access systems that have like a video component and are tied to resident cell phones, but also can be accessed with a landline and but essentially, it lets residents know who they're letting in. Existing systems are basically push button systems.

You can, you know, kind of push any button and say, hey, let me in, or just I see a lot of people when they go to the existing systems just push a bunch bunch of buttons until someone opens the door. So we have kind of these new video enabled systems that I think will much better control access to our buildings. We have them at a number of sites already, and I think they've been they've been well received, and so we're also looking to install them at a number of family sites as well, and we should have the majority of that installation done by the end of of this year. We've also done a we've also changed a lot of systems related to work orders, and we I think we've we've done a much better job in terms of just when somebody calls in a a a when I say work order, just a a regular maintenance issue associated with the apartment. We've done a a really good job in the past year bringing those numbers down.

And in fact, you know, be when we came out of COVID, we had a significant backlog of work to do in units, And, you know, we were around 17,000 work orders in our portfolio, and now we are down right around 1,300 work orders across our portfolio. So a dramatic reduction in work orders, and I think that's done a lot to kind of, you know, gain some faith from our residents in our in our ability to actually resolve problems as they arise. The other thing that's been extremely helpful in terms of communication is that all of our maintenance staff now have cell phones, so they're much quicker to respond to issues and but also much easier to dispatch. Another, I think, really improvement that's been helpful to residents is we no longer require residents to go to the office to complete their annual recertification. We we allow kind of digital remote recertifications if that's if that's something that our residents want to take advantage of.

And lastly, we've really tried to kind of improve over the past couple years, improve our customer service systems, and so that means we've put some new management in place of the work order center, and you can reach the work order center, that's anytime you have any kind of maintenance issue at our our public housing sites, you call 988-4357, which is 988 or you can call the general customer service number which is 988-4000 and we've used a software called Zendesk which allows us to kind of ticket every customer service issue and really keep track of those things and so all those things have really helped the VEHA with its communication. I know it's not directly related to elevators, but it it it is a little bit in the sense that, you know, just our communication with residents I think is is has been improving, and we continue to try to improve that moving forward. So that, I think, concludes, yes, my portion of the presentation. So I think that's a good time to pause and ask if that any questions about elevators or about any of the stuff I talked about in the past fifteen minutes or so.

Any questions from the advisory board? That was a lot of information, and I appreciate the thoroughness of the of the prison presentation, but are there any questions from members of the the advisory board? It's difficult for me to see.

I can see that Olivia has her hand up. Sorry to interrupt, Cherry.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Because it's difficult for me to see folks right now. Go ahead, Olivia.

Thank you. This is Olivia. Thank you for presenting this. This was a lot of information that was badly needed. I don't think that bostonhousing.org/elevators is well known because in some of the buildings like what I live in here at Pat White, where we have three elevators but only two of them go all the way up, sometimes what happens is those two will be down, and so people can only get up to the 5th Floor.

And I think if we distributed the information to the tenants a little more directly.

I think that's helpful. Yeah. I I in terms of the in terms of the notifications, like the phone calls that go out or just the general information?

The general information.

Okay.

I think a lot of people receive and have signed up for the text messaging because I've heard from other people when the building goes down, they're getting texts, particularly water and elevator.

Can I can I ask you, are the are there are there notices posted outside of each elevator that provide information about what happens if the elevator goes down? No. I will okay. I will make sure those get posted very shortly. Okay. Thank you. That that will provide the link that I talked about in this presentation, but also some kind of facts about what what should happen when the elevator goes down. So thank you, Olivia.

Any other questions from thank you, Olivia. Any other questions from the advisory board? I don't see any at the moment.

Oh, looks like commissioner Oh,

actually, commissioner McCosh had a has her hand raised. Go ahead, commissioner.

Thanks, Jerry. Hi, David. Thank you so much for putting together this presentation. It was extremely thorough and informative, and we really appreciate it. So we've been working with you for a long time on a lot of these issues. And I was wondering, I know you've been in various states of compliance with the AAV, and there have been some complaints outstanding. But could you just give us just, like, a really quick update on where you stand with the AAV and what your plans are as far as just AAV in general. I'm sorry. Just so the board members are up to date on that.

Yeah. Sure. So I'm sorry, David. And could you explain, AAV mean AAV stands for? Sorry. It's the architectural access board. Right.

And so and so there and so the and, you know, I think I have this right, but the architectural access board is ensuring that residents with disabilities have access to their homes. And so, obviously, that's a obviously, it's an important issue to us, but, you know, it's an important issue to architectural access board as well. And so because the elevators have been sitting down so frequently at Ruth Barkley, we've received a of complaints, and the complaints come in address by address. So we have a number of open complaints at 19 Monsignor is one of them. 23 Monsignor Rentals is another one.

I think 42 Harrison Archway is another and there may be others, which I can't recall, but there's basically an open complaint on several different addresses at Ruth Barkley development. And so Go ahead. At this point, we're kind of meeting with the architectural access board monthly on each address, and and what they really wanna see is some kind is, you know, obviously the elevator not being down for a significant period of time before they close that complaint. So we've done a lot of work with our contract vendors to make sure that the elevators don't go down. For example, at nineteen, Monsignor Rentals, which has an opening complaint, I mentioned in the presentation that the elevator has not gone out of service for I think almost three months now.

Hasn't had a day of downtime and so we did some upgrades, but we'll continue to meet with the architectural access board on that elevator until they're kind of satisfied that, you know, it's running well and it's not going to go out of service. And I think the language that they use is that it really shouldn't go out of service more than one or two times a month for some, you know, maybe routine maintenance things or maybe there's some other issue. And I think so we met that threshold at 19 senior, but I think we have a few more months before maybe we can get out from under that complaint. 42 Harrison Archway is another one where the upgraded elevator is performing wonderfully and has not so and this is a high rise building where there's two elevators. Only one is running now, but the one that is running, that's been upgraded, is really performing beautifully.

We're just waiting for the second elevator to be upgraded, which should take another couple of months. And I imagine the AE is gonna wanna continue to monitor performance at that address as well until they're satisfied that, hey, this elevator these these two elevators at 42 Harris And Archway are are running well, and and residents can consistently access their apartments. Twenty three months senior rentals, things are not going as well, but we, you know, we have contractors on-site that are performing maintenance right now, and so I so and actually, because of the performance issues at twenty three months, senior rounds had to put a number of households in hotels and offer transfers to folks. But the contractor is telling us that that elevator should be restored by Monday at the latest. So so we still have our struggles at at at Ruth's Barclay, but we are in a better place than we were, I would say, even two or three months ago.

Yeah. I really just wanted to point that out to let the board know that BHA has been a very cooperative partner with us and with the AAV and that we're all really working together to to look at these complex challenges because we know a lot of the housing stock in the BHA is very old. A lot of it is and not to make excuses, but I know a lot of it is replacement parts are difficult to find. A lot of the buildings probably have outlived their useful life and are looking to be rebuilt, but the elevators need to be working in the meantime. But it's a balance between how much money do you put into an old building versus trying to budget for new buildings. So it's a very complex situation,

but we're really glad to

I appreciate that, commissioner. And I and I would just say the other thing is that the the when something happens to an elevator, you know, the repairs don't always they're not always quick fixes, unfortunately. You know? And and that and speaking about now, the fire the fire department was in there over a couple weekends ago and because there was an entrapment, but, you know, in addition, the doors were really significantly damaged because of the fire department, the methods they used to to, you know, pry somebody out and then, you know, it takes days and again, for parts to replace. So unfortunately and and, you know, and we're at the we are at the mercy of the elevator contractor as well.

If I could, I would go out there and fix the elevator myself. But So what just one final point

to make on this is to board members, if you can share this information with your communities, one thing that I would emphasize to share is that, like David said, that people who are in these positions where an elevator will be down long term do have the option to be moved to accessible housing, and we know that it's not it's never anyone's first choice to leave their home. It's not gonna be convenient. But the master office on disability has a really good resource, which we'll send out after this meeting, which talks about tenants' rights when an elevator goes down. And I think it would be helpful if you can spread the information that people do have options that, unfortunately, is elevated. It's too breakdown long term, and it's not a quick fix that people can still have accessible housing.

So, really, we're all just trying to work together to make it make the most accessible house we can for our Boston residents. So really appreciate your time, David and Amy. Look forward to working closely with you as we move forward and work with the AV to wrap up all these issues so that we're all in good shape.

Great. Thank thank you commissioner. So I can turn it over to Amy now or back to Jerry. I don't know. Or if there are more questions. I don't know. Sorry.

I don't see

How much how long is Amy's portion of the presentation? Do you know?

I can try to keep it within ten minutes.

Great. That's great. Okay. Go right ahead.

Alright. Good evening. My name is Amy Tran. I'm the deputy director of development, part of the newly formed department of planning, construction, and development at the BHA. My department is involved with redevelopment and comprehensive renovation efforts at our BHA properties.

I'm a Asian female, black hair, glasses, wearing white shirt. Thank you very much for having me join the meeting this evening. I'm I'm here to give an update on our redevelopment efforts. But first, as David mentioned, the BHA has 1,500,000,000.0 in capital needs, and we just don't have the funding to pay for all that work. So because of this lack of funding, we had to think of creative ways to pay for to create ways to improve our housing communities.

And in the past, we have turned to developer partners to help secure funding to pay for our large redevelopments such as Mission Main, Orchard Gardens, Washington Beach. And our developer partners have the expertise to raise the funding to carry out these really complex transactions, and they can get the buildings constructed on time and on budget. And we still continue to work with developers on a few of our redevelopments, but we're starting to take on our own redevelopment efforts, and I'll explain that more later. So this first slide here is our development principles that help guide our work, our development effort, and we strive to further BHA's mission by providing stable, accessible, and affordable housing. So in our development efforts, we we maintain we typically enter into a long term ground lease with the new owners so we may take control of the land, and and we build in these affordable require affordability requirements to keep the units of deeply affordable in the long term.

So even though BHA does not typically own the buildings in the new construction redevelopments, we still have control over the land and keep the units affordable in the long term. We also strive to do one for one replacement of our units. So if we take down a 100 units, we will have to rebuild a 100 units. And when possible, we try to expand and build more affordable housing. We have tenant protection in place where we maintain in our in our new redevelopments, residents will continue to pay 30% of their adjusted income towards their rent.

In developments where residents have to relocate, we provide relocation counseling services and help cover the move, and residents have the right to return to the redevelopment. And we try to maintain the same grievance procedures that in in our public housing developments that we currently have in our public housing development and when they and carry it over to the new site. And then we also try to maintain high quality design. The new developments have are energy efficient and sustainable. They are accessible and adaptable and modern amenities at the site.

So next slide. So Old Colony is a development in the South Boston neighborhood back in twenty twenty o nine. Over a decade ago, we secured funding to for the first phase of the redevelopment at Old Colony. And about almost fifteen years later, we've we've almost completed the redevelopment of the site. So originally, Old Colony had a 100 and sorry.

840 original public housing units. We've slowly demolished the site over six phases. The six phase six, the final phase was scheduled to complete the end of sorry, the beginning of this of 2026. And and once phase six is complete, we will have replaced all originally the original 840 public housing units, and we've added a new we've added 47 new units to the site. And all units at Old Colony are affordable for households in between 5060% area median income.

So this slide has an image of an aerial view of the Old Colony site and a few pictures of the new buildings in phase three, and then we have photos of some of the townhomes in phase one and mid rise buildings in phase three and phase six. Next slide. So Bunker Hill is our largest public housing site in the Charlestown neighborhood. There are 1,100 units in forty five three story walk up buildings. It was built in 1940, and as others mentioned earlier, our our buildings are old and they're obsolete in the living space and and building systems, so it it needs a lot of work.

And so our plan for Bunker Hill is to build a new mixed income community because Charlestown Bunker Hill is in a very in the neighborhood with high rents, we feel that there's an opportunity to build mixed income housing. So we are working with our developer partners, Joseph j Corcoran and Leggett McCall Properties. They are leading the effort in redeveloping the entire site, and the plan is to build 1,010 replacement units on-site and add one thousand sixteen eighty nine new market rate units for a total of twenty six ninety nine units at the site, and we're also planning to build 100 replacement units within the Charlestown community. So this new Charlestown Bunker Hill redevelopment will also have 50,000 square feet of new retail and the plan is to build a new community center and 2.7 acres of new public open space. So I've included a aerial view of Charlestown neighborhood with a rendering of one of the one of the mid rise buildings and a rendering of the site plan with a few of the new buildings.

So currently at Bunker Hill, we just completed the construction of the first building in the redevelopment. This first building has 102 all affordable units. We've finished we just finished leasing up the building back in April, so we're excited to have the families move back in. And then we're currently working on the financing for the second building at Bunker Hill, which will be our first mixed income building, hoping to secure funding and close on that next building later this year. Next.

So Mary Ellen McCormick is similar to Charlestown where it's it's our our oldest public housing and also one of our largest public housing site with 1,016 units. It was built in 1936 and also in distress and in need of of of improvements. And so Mary Ellen McCormick is located in South Boston, another neighborhood with high rents where we feel like we could leverage the market and build new replace the existing units and build add new market rate units to the site. And so for Mary Ellen McCormick, we are partnering with Wynn Communities. And right now, we're focused on redeveloping the first half of the site where we plan to replace 572 units and add 793 market rate units totaling 1,365 units.

This will also include 44,000 square feet of retail space and a new community center as well as 2.3 acres of open space. For Mary Helen McCormick, we just closed on the financing for the first building. This first building is all affordable, 94 units, and it's scheduled to complete 2026.

Next slide.

So Faneuil Gardens is a state public housing site the Brighton neighborhood, also built in the nineteen forties. The Fanuel Gardens has currently has 258 units in 10 buildings. BHA is partnering with the community builders where we plan to demolish the site in 10 phases and to replace all 258 units and add new income restricted units to the site. So in total, there will be 445 new units. And the new affordable units will be income restricted between 30 to a 120% area median income.

So right now, the community builders is trying to secure funding for the first phase of the redevelopment, which will be a 110 units. So we're hoping to break ground for this first phase in sometime in 2027. Next slide. So Mildred c Haley, it's a very interesting site. There's a lot of activities happening here where we have portioned off half of the site where it's we're planning to redevelop 253 units at the site, and then the remaining half, the 516 units, we're planning to keep the units within under the Boston Housing Authority and modernize the site.

So for the redevelopment side, we are have partnered with the Center Street Partners, which

is

a development team consisting of the community builders, Jamaica Plain, Neighborhood Development Corporation, and Urban Edge. They are leading the development effort to replace the 253 units at Mugen C. Haley and also adding new income restricted units. And these income new units will be in will be between 30 to a 120% AMI. And the first two buildings of the redevelopment is scheduled to complete later this summer where we will bring back 91 replacement units and add and new affordable units.

And then the remaining half of the site, BHA is planning to modernize the site. We secure the city of Boston has provided $50,000,000 to help fund this modernization work, and we just started the first phase of the modernization. And the upgrades will include new kitchens and bathroom, new appliances, new heating and cooling system, new lighting. There'll be an intercom door system, new windows, and new interior finishes. So this what the first building that's under construction is scheduled to complete in two months and will slowly renovate one building at a time in the modernization phase.

So here we have a site plan of the redevelopment portion of Haley showing the existing buildings at the site and then a rendering of what the new buildings will look like after redevelopment. And in the middle here is a image of the two new buildings that will be built. That'll be ready later this summer. And then the image below on the bottom left is an aerial view of the two new buildings coming online. And then we also included a site plan showing the redevelopment area and then the modernization area that we will slowly renovate in phases.

Next slide. Okay. And then so as I mentioned before, BHA here at the BHA, we're starting to take on our own redevelopment efforts where we take the lead in securing funding and carrying out the managing the construction of our our developments. And so we recently received $30,000,000 from the city of Boston that will help us renovate our elderly and disabled portfolio. This $30,000,000 will help us leverage additional resources to pay for the renovation work.

And and and currently, we are about to close on the financing of for Saint Batoff Apartments, which is our an elderly disabled site. And our plan is to upgrade the plumbing, heating, electrical systems at the site, make our buildings more energy efficient, reduce utility cost. We wanna improve accessibility for disabled residents and visitors. The plan is to renovate common areas and renovate kitchens and bathroom and new flooring for that or unit. I think that's about it.

Next slide. Oh, here, I included our contact information if you need to reach us. So I included David's email and and phone number and my number and phone number as well.

Great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Amy, for that for that presentation. Again, both you and David provided us with a with a lot of information that I think as commissioner said that we'll be able to take back to our communities and really, you know, share with our with our, you know, fellow neighborhood residents and family and friends who who are in, you know, BHA or who are considering BHA for their for their housing needs. So we really appreciate that.

One question that I had is, you know, and I might have, you know, maybe should have asked this earlier too because, you know, David used the term that that you have you have different groups of housing. Have and you just mentioned toward the end of your presentation, you have the elderly and and disabled, but but, you know, when you were going over the redevelopment of the other of the other sites, I assume that each one of those developments will have, you know, a certain percentage of of accessible units in them regardless of whether the the the development is considered elderly and disabled.

Is that correct? That that is correct. Yes. So in our redevelopment, 5% of the units are accessible. So to meet the section five zero four requirements.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Mhmm. Thank you. Any questions from other members of the advisory board before we move on? I don't see any. So I guess we will thank you guys for your presentation. Thank you for leaving your contact info, and I'm happy to hear from the commissioner that you do work with, with her her and her staff closely. And and if we have any further questions, we'll certainly, be in touch. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having us, and thanks for all your work with the board. Appreciate

it. Thank

you. So

much. Thank you. Have a good evening.

Thank you. Next on the agenda is my report, and I will keep that very, very brief very, very brief so that we can move on move on with the agenda. I would just encourage everyone, you know, to attend the the ADA the ADA thirty five event coming up on July. I'm sure commissioner will talk more about it during her her report, But I would just encourage everyone, if at all possible, to attend the event, have your family and friends attend the event, you know, people in your in your existing housing buildings, if you do live in apartment buildings and whatnot, because this event really is to just to highlight the need for to protect the rights of all persons with disabilities and and whatnot, and I think it's very, very important that we get as large a turnout as possible. The Boston Center for Independent Living is one of the one of the big engines behind the event as well as as the commissioner and and staff, and and they're really putting it together, and I know it's gonna be a great event.

Hopefully, it won't be too hot, you know, as has been the last few ADA celebrations, but you never know, especially with global warming, but but, you know, hopefully, we'll have a great turnout. Please please do try to attend and and get as many of your of your friends and family and and, you know, colleagues to to attend as well. With that, I will turn it over to the commissioner for her report.

Thanks, Jerry. Good evening, everybody. I am Krista Makosh. I'm the disability commissioner and ADA title two coordinator for the city of Boston. I am a female, aged woman with blonde hair and glasses sitting in my office. So Colleen is gonna share slides so I can give my report. And I also wanna mention before I dive in that I will be sharing my report as well as the slides from after the meeting. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get them out beforehand, but just so everybody will have a copy, we will send them out tomorrow. Okay. So we'll go to the next slide.

Okay. So I'm gonna start off with a few updates just from City Boston. So as Jerry mentioned, we know we're all in the middle of a heat emergency. It seems like they're beginning earlier earlier every year. It's only June and already been over a 100 degrees.

So it's really important that we get this information out to the general public that during heat emergencies, the city of Boston opens cooling centers, pools, spray, and splash pads, and has a cooling resources map to keep all residents safe and cool. So, again, one of your biggest roles is to share this information with your communities. So make sure that you let people know that if they are too hot, if their apartments are too hot, especially during the day that the city has options, they can find a place by looking at this map, a place close to home where they can go and cool off. Our office works with the Office of Emergency Management and the Boston Public Health Commission to create, update, and push out extreme temperature information for people with disabilities. We have fact sheets specifically for people with disabilities, those with chronic illnesses, and older adults among others where they have specific tips to that conform to each group to help them stay safe and healthy during these types of extreme weather events.

Our safety tips are available in 12 languages, which includes ASL. So we have ASL videos embedded right into the messaging online. So please be sure that you spread this information so people who are deaf and use ASL know that they can get the information right in their primary language. Another update I wanna give is on Boston Open Streets twenty twenty five. The city does this program every year, and this year is no different.

We will have open Newbury Street every week from July through September actually, through December, but more streets more weekends will be done from July to September and then a few others through December. We also have five neighborhood open streets in Roxbury, Hyde Park, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Jamaica Plain. And our office will have a table at each of the open streets to give out information and resources for residents with disabilities. We work very closely with other city departments to ensure that the neighborhood is not impacted in accessibility during the open streets. Okay.

Next slide. Thank you, Colleen. Just some updates from our department I wanted to leave everybody. So as you know, the letter that you wrote to the Abilities Expo was successful, and then the new owners responded right away, and they're interested in setting up a meeting to talk about potentially coming back to Boston in 2027 or 2028. So I just emailed the owners, and we're waiting to set up a meeting to talk about different strategies and ways we can lure them back to Boston.

So, again, I just wanna emphasize that this is a great use of your collective power as a city board, and I hope you will continue to use this as example as a way to move your agenda forward over the next year. Wrapping up our disability community forum from May, we always take a list of questions that we didn't get to answer and put out a q and a document just to wrap up the event. So that document is finalized, and we'll be posting it this week. Colleen is still working on her library tour. She is visiting every library branch in the city throughout 2025 to meet community residents where they are, give out information on our services and other things that happen in the city, as well as to do kind of an informal assessment of the accessibility of libraries because we do work closely with the facilities department at BPL to ensure that we have as much access as possible in our branch libraries.

We know properly it's pretty accessible, and we wanna make sure that the branch is also accessible. And then we've mentioned several times about the mask protocols. I know a few of you have asked for information last month. We hope you were able to join, and we still wanna push this out to encourage other board members to attend the monthly calls if they're available. Next slide.

And

then at the beginning of the year, I mentioned that I'd like to talk about some opportunities for board members to get involved in different things during our reports every month. So a couple of timely things that I thought you might be interested in. The first one is the article a b modernization project. So you may remember a few months ago, think it was February, that a staff member from the Boston Planning Department gave a presentation about a program called Article 80 that the city oversees. And this is a project that looks at all the impacts of potential development, everything from traffic to shadows and noise and every way that this development will impact the city.

So one of the big pieces that we look at is accessibility. Will this project be fully accessible? Will it replace sidewalks? Will it, you know, have dining in the public right of way, or will it impinge on the sidewalks? All things considered accessible are embedded in the our a review process.

So we would love to invite members of our board as well as other people with disabilities to join the focus group. It's gonna be for an hour and a half on Zoom on July 31, a Thursday evening. And this focus group is just gonna look at different materials that the planning department is trying to put out to help monitor whether or it's the out of a project. It can be really dense and not friendly to people who are involved in building. So we're really trying to open up the development process so more people can give input even if you're not an architect or an engineer.

If you just live in the neighborhood and you wanna know what's happening with the development, you should be able to be able to understand it easily and give input easily. So we encourage you to attend if you're available and also push this out to your communities. Colleen is developing a flyer which will explain it in much more detail. But really, basically, it's just an hour and a half to hear from you about accessibility of the materials that you're looking to do in this updated project. So it sounds a little dense, but hopefully, it will be impactful if you are interested in getting involved.

Another thing that we've talked about many times is the participatory budget. This is a group of pile of money that is available for residents to decide how to use it in the budget. So we talked about last year that you could vote on certain ideas. So that cycle has wrapped up. And now this year, we are at the point where they're looking for new ideas.

So we wanted to know if the board is interested in proposing some ways to spend $2,000,000 of the city's money. The ideas and action piece kicks off in July and runs through February. So a lot more time to think about this, but just keep in mind that you can try to figure out what you think $2,200,000 would do to make some accessibility improvements in the city. So we'll send out more information over the next coming months, but click online and take a look at it. And, you know, just try to think outside the box.

Like, if we can designate this $2,000,000 somewhere in the city, that would have a big impact on people with disabilities. I've already had a bunch of ideas I'm thinking about, so I'll send out a separate email to see if anyone's interested in exploring this a little bit further. It's really exciting. Next slide. Thanks, Colleen. So finally, as Jerry mentioned, the ADA thirty five event is one month from today. Four weeks from today, it's gonna be Wednesday, July 23 from twelve noon to 2PM. The event is rain or shine. It's not gonna be a hybrid event. It's fully in person.

And as we said before, it's not our usual ADA day celebration. We're not having a resource resource fair or a tent or food, but it's really gonna be a rally and a march. We want to spread the word. We wanna be out there in full force, proud, proclaiming the need for disability rights and the need to protect the ADA because we know we're living in uncertain times in a lot of ways. So we wanna make sure that we our voices are heard that the ADA must be maintained and strengthened and that accessibility is not on the table for any cuts.

So the event is gonna happen at twelve noon on City Hall Plaza with our first ever disability flag raising. We're really excited about that. So we hope everyone will come to the plaza. Get there early because we'll have t shirts. We've done a different design this year, so we wanna make sure everyone gets T shirts.

Then after the flag raising and comments from some city officials, BCIL is gonna queue people up to march along Trimont Street to the Boston Common. We're gonna gather at the rep we're gonna get gather for a rally at the Embrace Memorial, and we'll have a microphone and a stage, but we're not gonna have a formal speaking program of politicians. We really wanna hear from advocates, like, why the ADA is important to you and why we really need to fight for our rights, to keep fighting for our rights so that we don't lose anything. And on that note, we really wanna get as many people as possible to come to the event. So with the ADA celebrations on the big celebration years on the twentieth, the twenty fifth, and the thirtieth, we've done these collaborative events.

And on the twenty fifth anniversary, we had over 2,000 people come out to city to Boston Common. So if you can add that to City Hall Plaza, we get about two to 300 people every year. So we'd love it if we get two to 3,000 people this year again. But to do that, we really need your help. So I'm gonna turn it over to Colleen to talk about the outreach toolkit that she made, which is really incredible. It has a lot of resources that are easy to share and promote. So I'm gonna ask Colleen to click on the link and take us through the toolkit to show how you can help spread the word. Can everyone see this toolkit? I hope you

can because I have one screen. So this is a toolkit that you all have access to, and we really encourage you to use. It includes a strong call to action that you can copy and paste and put in email, or your social media. Includes some background in case people ask you questions about the events, why we're doing it, or any logistics. You should be able to find it right in there. And then the actual outreach materials. These are tools that you can use, like I said, in emails, social media, anywhere that you seem fit. You're all connected to many different organizations and disability movement groups. Please, we encourage you to

share

it. Don't assume somebody else is sharing it. Repetition will help, so share, share, share. Those tools include the web page, which is just boston.gov/ada30five. We have a registration link.

Registration is not required, but it is encouraged, especially if you know people who would like a reminder a week or so before the event. We have a social media content template that we encourage you to use with the hashtag eighty eight thirty five Boston. This is a sign that you can print yourself and write your thoughts about the Americans with Disabilities Act. You can share what it means to you, and there's other prompts on that sign. We also have a social media flyer that you can that decides so that you can post on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms.

And we included alt text for you to just copy and paste and include with your post. We also sized a a image to be shared on your stories, If you really prefer to share on stories in your Instagram and Facebook, you can click this link right here and it'll be sized perfectly for your needs. Finally, well, almost finally, we have outreach flyers that you can print. And we have a bunch printed here in the commission. So if your apartment building or local library or coffee shop, if you know the place that this printed flyer could be posted for the next few weeks until the event, let us know or please take the initiative yourself and print out a flyer and have it posted in your building.

Those flyers that you can print are also available in languages other than English and you can click those right here. Finally, I said almost finally last one. We have social media posts that we've already shared that you can just go on and share yourself. We also have examples that you can copy and paste and put into your own social media. Oh, and there's more.

A newsletter blurb. If you guys have newsletters that you, manage or write or collaborate on, you can copy and paste this and include it in your newsletter. But don't feel that you have to just do what is copy and pasted here. You can write your own newsletter blurb if you want. The eighty eight thirty five logo is also available to be shared everywhere. We have it in PNG format, which is best on digital platforms. Please make sure you use alt text, which is above in the toolkit. And we also have it in a vector format, in case you wanted to print it on a banner, a t shirt, a sign, a flag, something like that. And

Colleen, can you pull up the placard to show people? Pull up the Say it

one more time. The what?

The placard that people can use to take a picture of. Oh, yes. It's all open.

Yes. I can do that. So are you seeing the ADA template PDF?

No. We're we just have an image of all the attendees from the screen. Uh-oh. If you can't find it, it's alright. But just to explain it a little bit more, it's basically a template that just says the ADA is important because or the what the ADA means to me. And we did this oh, here it is. Yeah. We did this during ADA thirty in twenty twenty because we couldn't do our planned marching rally because of COVID. So we actually just asked people to take a picture, holding up this card, filling in their own thoughts, and then we made, like, a virtual march of everybody with the picture. So we streamed online, and we had hundreds and hundreds of people doing it.

So the more people we get pictures of holding up the sign, it will be like a virtual march. And we'd love to get all this out before the rally, so please encourage people to fill this out, take a picture, and you can email it to disability@boston.gov or there's an email address at b c I l. You can send it to once you have it done.

And I realized that was a lot of information about how you can help Outreach. I'm more than happy to talk to any of you one on one. Like I said, we have less than a month to get the word out, so I hope to hear from you soon. Back to you, Christian.

Yeah. And that is the end of my report. So I will pass it back to Jerry, unless anyone has any questions.

Thank you, commissioner, and thank you, Carlene. Definitely definitely a very, very crucial way that that we all can help support and make make the AVA thirty five event success. So I encourage all of us to use whatever we feel comfortable with in, you know, in that tool kit to to spread the word for the on the event. And again, I know it's during the day, so for those of us who work, you know, it may be difficult for us to us to, you know, take the time off, but I think this is so important and we live in such, you know, uncertain times, you know, for people with disabilities and others that I think it's you know, I would encourage all of us to make time to to attend the event and to have, you know, and spread the word in our communities. So thank you.

Thank you commissioner and staff for for, you know, doing all this logistical work and and, you know, putting together the toolkit and making it easier for us to spread the word. I really appreciate that.

Colleen, can you put a link to the toolkit in the chat? Yes. I can. Thanks.

Great. So next on the agenda is the architectural access report with Patricia Mendez.

Thank you, Jerry. Hello. Hi, everyone. My name is Patricia Mendez. I'm the director of architectural access for the disabilities commission. I am a female, short dark hair, and I'm wearing glasses. Colleen, do you mind sharing the slides, please?

Oh, no. I don't mind.

Oops. Sorry.

No problem.

Okay. Are we are you seeing your slides?

Yeah. Perfect.

Perfect. Okay.

Yes. Thank you. Okay. My my report is gonna be brief and it has two parts. The first part is to let you all know that we did a training with the facilities department, our Boston facilities department, and we trained their new staff and also the existing staff as as a refresher.

And we had lunch and learn in person, and we did a lot of discussion on our building code, on accessibility, on our state code code 521 CMR, and also we touched on the the newer code, PROAG. And then happened just this month. And we also discussed how in the CEO Boston, we like to go above and beyond the minimum set that's by code. We would like to focus on ideal design and best practices. And we also discussed some design challenges and how we problem solve and we can get to a point of maybe not perfect accessibility, but some accessibility which is better than better than and just as a little bit of more background, the CEO Boston facilities department is involved in construction and planning and design of major renovation on city owned buildings such as libraries, fire houses, police department.

And I'm showing a picture of City Hall Plaza, one of our proud projects that is recent, and I think we're all familiar with that. Next slide, please. Okay. So this was our first training in recent years, but there was a lot of interest and a lot of interesting questions, So we're hoping to to meet a few times a year, maybe quarterly, in order to have space for questions and problem solving with the management team, the project managers, and my team. And we can we can find accessibility solutions for their tricky buildings.

And by tricky buildings, I mean existing old facilities that are are not easy to just magically make make everything perfect accessible. Accessible. So we are we want to get more into variances discussions and then try to improve accessibility in their existing buildings. Next slide. Okay.

So the other part of my presentation, which I'm also very proud to announce is that our architectural access specialist, Sara Leon Leon, at a national conference. Actually, it's international because it includes Canada. She was invited to present and to represent us to this big conference with cities many many cities and representatives from the National Association of Transportation Official designing cities. This happened just last last month in May, was short four days, and it it convinced a thousand public sectors design and policy professionals to advance the state of transportation in our cities. Next slide please.

Okay. So this is photo on on the right. This is a photo where we see our Sarah Leon presenting with a big screen and some some graphics. She was asked to be part of a panel called one size doesn't fit all, and they discussed design problems by thinking outside the box. This panel included the city of Seattle, Boulder, Austin, and the city of Alexandria.

And what Sarah particularly presented on is accessibility solution of a very common problem where we encounter trees in the sidewalk. And what Sarah presented is balancing city of Boston goals for access accessible sidewalk, sustainability goals, and increasing citywide tree canopy. So the strategy that she was discussing is our close collaboration with the public works departments and design using poured in place, permeable materials that allow for storm water to penetrate the surface and to irrigate the tree roots. Other strategies include tree bump outs and as always our interagency collaboration. Okay.

So this is the end of my report, and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Patricia, and great job, Sarah. Congratulations on the opportunity to to present to at an international conference. That just goes to show that that the good work of of of the architectural team at at the commission must get around if you're invited to to conferences like this, and and I hope it was a great great experience. Is there any questions from the from the advisory board for Patricia regarding her report? Just a quick look.

I don't see any. If somebody can confirm that for me. See any hands, Jerry. Yeah. Great. So so we will move move on. Thanks a lot, Patricia. I really appreciate it. And again, congratulations for on all the great work and and being recognized. So

You're welcome, Jerry. Thank you. Yeah. Great.

So next on the agenda is open is actually the the board member engagement shout outs. I I wouldn't this is the time of the meeting where where folks on the commission advisory board can can highlight either important work that they're doing or or have have done since the last meeting, like like interesting training you've went to or or interesting meeting that you've attended, either a city meeting or or state meeting or or whatever with stakeholders that that may be of interest to to to the disability community here. So feel free to take and there's no pressure to to share anything. It's just the opportunity that we built in every month for for folks to to highlight the important work that they're doing, know, between our our advisory board meetings. Does anyone have anything they'd like to share?

I'd like to share something. This is Paul.

Great. Go ahead, Paul.

This June is National Men's Mental Health Awareness Month, dedicated period aimed at increasing awareness of the distinct mental health issues that men encounter. It's crucial to recognize that mental health struggles can affect anyone regardless of gender, yet men often face societal pressures that discourage them from seeking help. So if anyone has any questions or anything, I can be reached at Paul.Karen@Boston.gov through my, you know, trial and error advocacy work with with city residents and family members. And there's also NAMI that has a website that is that is httpssemicolon/www.nami.orgslash, and that can also be be found in if you contact the Disability Commission, we can further you any kind of awareness. Thank you.

Great. Thanks thanks, Paul, for bringing up that the importance of of seeking mental help if you're, you know, if you're a male or anyone really, that there are resources out out there for folks in in need of in need of, you know, who wanna deal with any issues that they're having regarding their mental health. You're you're a tireless advocate for that, and I really appreciate that, Paul. Does anyone else wanna share anything? Seeing none, I will share one thing.

One of our esteemed colleagues who is not here this evening will be Carl Richardson will be on a panel discussion at WGBH tomorrow tomorrow under a discussion called Disability Reframed. It's a it's an annual meeting that WGBH puts on. It's kind of a resource for you, but then they talk of then they usually have a a panel around, you know, particularly around portrayals of people with disabilities in the media and whatnot. And I I just happened to see I was planning on attending the event anyway in person, and I was I just saw that that Carl is is is one of the panelists this year. So it is an in person hybrid event, an in person and virtual event.

And for more information, you can go to www.wgh.org/events, and you can sign up for for the event. It's from six to nine tomorrow at WGBH. And, you know, really, I would encourage folks who have the time to to sign up to attend and and and to give and at the very least show support for a a fellow board member. So great. So with that, I will move to the next next portion of our agenda, which is old business.

There are a couple of items under old business. I'm gonna skip down to the mayoral candidate questionnaire. We did have some input from the city of Boston's legal department. Maybe, commissioner or or one of your staff, maybe you could you could share a little bit about, again, what the what the legal department is advising us?

Sure. I'd be happy to. Thanks, Jerry. Hey, everybody. It's commissioner Makash again.

Wanted to let you all know that I did speak to our assistant corporate counsel in the city's law department, and they basically told us that as you are all special employees, quote unquote, of the city of Boston, that it really would be strongly recommended that you don't participate in any sort of survey or questionnaire on our elections because you all were appointed by mayor Wu. So if you are interested in this sort of work, they suggested that you do it through, like, other groups you're involved with, like, nonprofits who are part of BCIL or if you're part of any other disability organizations, but to not take it up as members of the disability commission appointed under AOU. So I feel with that advice, I'm going to close the topic as far as the board is concerned unless anybody wants to discuss it further.

Yeah. I think that's important, commissioner, to to close the loop on on this topic and put it off take it off the agenda for early going forward. I would encourage us all to we can work as the commission advisory board on on, you know, spreading the word and getting out getting out the vote as we try to do every election cycle. I know that we've had, you know, various presentations from the the elections commission or the commissioner has has brought it up in her her reports about how, you know, they they work to ensure that polling places are accessible various different, you know, different forms of of of accessibility and the way that people can vote and access, you know, the vote. You know, but in terms of participating in a in a questionnaire, I agree.

You know, thank the commissioner for getting getting that advice from the legal department that we should take it off. Take that off the the the agenda for moving forward.

Yeah. I would definitely second Jerry's suggestion of encouraging people with disabilities to go and vote. There's so many ways now for electronic voting, online voting, early voting. You can just go to a place that's convenient at your home, or if you work downtown, you can go to a place that you work. So I think as we get closer to the actual election, I can bring together some resources for at the meeting that you can all use to promote getting the vote up getting off the vote.

Great. And I'll just second the early voting. I I've you know, in the past several several election cycles, you know, since early voting has been been available, I've I myself have taken advantage of that, and it's very, very, very easy. I've I've voted at several different early voting locations including at city hall, you know, and and it was very very easy and very convenient, and and, you know, it was just a a way to make sure that, you know, because we all get busy, you know, particularly around the holidays and in the fall, and and this is just a way to early voting is just one example of a way that to ensure that we all can make sure that our vote is counted, you know. So There is commission.

There is a hand up from Wes.

Okay. Go ahead, Wes.

Hi, everybody. This is Wes speaking. I wanted to thank, the commissioner for the update from the legal department. I understand the decision not to move forward with it, but my question would be about whether there are any changes with regard to the bill that BCIL was proposing. Would this affect that at all? Oh, sorry. The interpreter may have misunderstood. Will we be letting Bill from BCIL know about this? Thank you for the corrections. Thank you.

Jerry, are you in touch with with Bill? Yeah. They working on it?

Yeah. I mean, I can certainly I can certainly let him know. I I, you know, I don't know. You know, I did try to put him in touch with with US. I don't know if he did respond or reach out to you. You know, I don't know if I haven't that's

heard from him.

Yeah. I don't know if it's something that's on their their radar to do a survey. I can check-in with him again though and and see. But, you know, again, as I as as I think I mentioned in previous meetings or email communication, that doesn't just because, you know, VCIL, that isn't necessarily taking the lead. That doesn't mean that any other disability rights organizations that we're affiliated with or that individual members of the commission are commission advisory board are are familiar with are affiliated with, you know, doesn't preclude you from working with any any other organizations.

So feel free to reach out to them. And again, I think the important message, you know, going forward and as we get as we're getting closer to election time is to is to just encourage, you know, our communities to get out and vote. So

This is Wes. Gotcha. Thank you very much.

Great. Next on the next on the agenda for old business is the court captioning state state bill. I know that Andrea, I believe, sent out copies of the bill and and a statement from the court reporters association regarding a particular particular language in the bill asking them to to either strike that language or or, yeah, in opposition for that language. And basically, what that meant from my understanding was that that that that the court reporter's association is looking, to strike language that or an opposition of language that in the bill that encourages the use of of artificial intelligence like chatbot, you know, in court reporting. And they brought up several examples of where use of AI transcription, you know, was detrimental to defendants in in court cases.

So, you know, I know we we do have a quorum, you know, so we could vote today on on whether to whether to, you know, draft a similar letter to, you know, asking the asking the committee chairs to to strike strike that language and encourage them to to include language in the bill to to use live court reporters and not use artificial intelligence. We could we could, you know, ask for that or or we could not vote or we could just decide that we're not gonna take up this issue at all. So I'm more than happy to to to, you know, have a discussion right now for many members of the of the advisory board on what you'd like to do going forward. Any any discussion on the topic?

This is Wes, if I could have the floor.

Go ahead, Wes.

Hi. So I did review the materials that were sent, that Andrea sent, and I thought a lot about it. And I had gone to some events when I believe they were using I used my live transcription app on my phone and compared it to the live cart reporter that was working in the space. And what I noticed is that there's two differences. The AI transcription is a lot faster compared with the human CAR provider and the information that they're able to produce.

I think the accuracy is probably about 98% accurate for the AI. And my thoughts are that if if the bill allows for AI to happen, then will those, you know, live card providers be able to catch up, you know, whether they will be able to continue in their careers because of the difference in production?

From the way I read it, communities could use either AI or or, you know, a live court reporter. Someone from the commissioner's office, if you if you have an understanding, could you could you chime in?

This is Colleen. I'm not sure.

Yeah. I'm not very well versed unless you're the jury.

Sure. Sure. But good good point, Carol. I mean, good point, Wes. But I I do think it's it's got the way the the the letter was was written the way I interpret it with the materials that Andrea sent was that at the National that the Court Reporters Association was concerned that if they if the the bill included that language, it that that it would mean that it would that it could mean mean jobs.

Basically, they they could use AI in place of in place of the the live court reporter or court reporter.

West, I just my my question was of the role of the sorry. The role of what? The role of the court reporter during the transition and the responsibility of who will be marshaling the responsibility of accuracy in that transition to AI?

Mhmm. That I don't I I don't know. And I don't I don't know if Andrea knows. We could try to get more information, but

Okay. Yeah. I because I think that information would be very helpful, in helping us to make a decision about whether we wanna proceed with the letter or not.

Does anyone else have any other comments? So it's so it sounds like for right now that we are not ready to make a decision as to as to whether we we wanna sign on with another letter, you know, either supporting the court report the court reporters position to strike that language or to have any sort of comment regarding that. What I can try to do in the you know, as part of the our role in the executive committee is is kind of touch base with Andrea when she gets back and see if we can get some some clarification in regards to that. I had a question around whether we asked them to strike that language, whether that means we would have to oppose the whole bill because the the the bill itself is from my understanding, would allow would allow hybrid meetings to to to take place in in all municipalities in the state. Someone correct me if if, that's not a correct interpretation.

So I wouldn't wanna see I wouldn't wanna see, communication access, denied for any persons with disabilities. So so I guess we'll table it for now and and we'll we'll bring it up. We'll keep it under old business for next month's meeting. And moving on Thank you. Go ahead, Wes. Sorry.

All set.

Does anyone have any new business that they'd like to discuss?

I'm just I wanna say that I am in support of looking at

Will Bee. You're looking at

I'm just in support of the next steps for the planning of this. Great. Great. Thank you.

Does anyone have any new business they'd like to discuss? And Colleen, you're my you're my double check your eyes here.

I'm double checking. I don't see any hands.

Great. Alright. And now this is the this is the portion of the meeting that that Colleen mentioned at the very start for public input. Does any member of the public have any anything that they would like to to address? And please keep your comments to two minutes. But again, I will ask Colleen if she sees anyone. I don't see anyone. I

don't. And just a reminder that if you are from the public, you need to raise your hand so we can send you a request to unmute. But I'm not seeing any hands, Jerry.

Great. So does anyone have does anyone can anyone make will anyone like to make a motion on the advisory board? Would someone like to make a motion to adjourn the meeting? And again, don't be shy about about that.

Missus Powell, I make the motion to adjourn the meeting.

Any seconds?

Missus Olivia, I second.

Great. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

This is Wes. Aye.

So we'll with that, we'll adjourn the meeting and we'll see everyone next month. Again, thank you for all your all your efforts. Do work on, you know, using the toolkit for the AVA thirty five and and and getting as many people to that event as possible. I I know that our our next board meeting is is prior to that, to to the event, but I I just wanna emphasize that that that it would be great if we got as many people to the a d a thirty five as possible. Thank you, and have a have a great night, and keep cool, everyone.

Thanks, Jerry. Thanks, everybody, for coming. Bye now. See you soon.