Disability Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the Disability Advisory Committee meeting for the City of Charlestown. Today is Monday, May 18, 2026, and the time is 5 o'clock. We are being live streamed by Under Production Multimedia. We'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Let the record show that all committee members are present, with the exception of Cindy Perkins and Christina Gilkey. Our board is now complete with seven members, and we would like to welcome our newest member, Donna Downs. Thank you for joining our committee. We have studio attendants. Andrew Frazier, president. Amy Benavides, president. Ashley Toms, president. Cindy McNeil, president. Donna Toms, president. All right. Okay, so. We have an agenda that's been provided by Andrea, our secretary, and I need a motion to approve that agenda. I'll motion to approve. All right, thank you, Ashley. And can I get a second? I'll send. Thank you, send in. All right. Make sure you have your vote. So we're going to take a vote, and I need all in favor to say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. So, motion is approved. We have our standing business, which includes the minutes from our prior meeting, which was on March the 9th, 2026. And I need a motion to approve that. Motion to approve. All right. Any second? I'll second. All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All right. Motion approved. All right. And at this time, I would normally open up the floor to see if we had any public comments, but we do not. So we're going to skip right over that and go on to our old business. Do we have any updates on our old business from March? Anybody have anything they want to add? No? Okay. What about the upcoming events? We have Founders Day coming up on the Friday and Saturday of June 19th and 20th. A lot of good music starting 5 o'clock on Friday. I think the music actually starts at 7. Anyways, and then on Saturday during the day the vendors will be out throughout the day, but the music and things will be in the evening for that as well. We have some good spaces for the handicapped over at the old H&R Block parking lot, which we still have not named. We have Life Springs, so Life Springs will be also handicap parking. There will be, even with that being said there will be the golf carts and the things with the city drivers that will go around that way in case somebody does need a ride depending on where they can get the parking at that'll also be for anybody that doesn't have disabilities that's you know the golf carts go up and down the roads all day just picking people up and give them a ride up to the square. Everything will be on the square this year, so that's going to be pretty cool for safety purposes, because everything's just kind of contained this year. Does anybody have anything they want to add about that?

I was going to ask, because I know Christina had brought up concerns with the parade and the heat. I know she asked about controlling the speed of the parade, and I know last year was so hot. Is there going to be any kind of water stations along the route?

We had not planned on that. Happy to try and coordinate that for the walkers, but typically we're concerned about people we just encourage anybody that would have a heat sensitivity not to walk in the parade to ride on a float or in a car or some other mode of transportation and not subject themselves to to walking we have technically shortened the route We don't do it in the morning. What we find is that overall, this is many of the parades that you go to, parade attendance is down, like the viewing of a parade is down. And so last year we tried to collapse the time a little bit. Remember last year we got rained out right after the parade. But we tried to collapse the time down to where you had the parade and then immediately the events so that more people would come to the parade to view the parade and then immediately go to the events. If we have it first thing in the morning, there's too big of a gap, and what happens is people don't come for the parade, because they just wait to come in the evening. They won't come to the parade, leave, and then come back. They just don't do that. So we've scheduled the parade this year for 3 o'clock, because the event on Saturday, so I can give you the time and rundown of everything. Of course, Founders Week is a week long of activities, and the flyers out. For the two-day festival, The only thing going on Friday night would be from 5 to, from, at 5pm is the Mad Taxpayers opening up for J.D. Shelburne who comes on at 8. There will be a Balloon Globe down in Greenwood Park. I think we have at least two balloons that are going to set up down in Greenwood Park on Friday night just to educate people about the balloons. But then Saturday is the all-day festival, and the vendors will be set up on Friday as well. But Saturday at 10 o'clock technically starts with the vendors being open and the real square band is going to perform as they usually do every Saturday. We're still giving them that space. There'll be a DJ on stage starting at 12, and that's just mainly to entertain the folks that are coming to shop the market early. And then the Cornhole Tournament is at 1 p.m. We have the parade set to start at 3, again trying to get it closer to that window where the bigger events start. There will be a tethered balloon ride down in Bremen Park that night, so two nights of the hot air balloons. But the parade route is changing this year. We're starting at Charlestown Elementary, lining up there. And so the parade will actually start on Clark Road, will come out there by the library, down Clark Road to Market Street, turn right on Market Street. So the actual parade route is just that section of Market Street from where the old Dollar General was at Clark Road to Main Street. And so at that point, we would encourage anybody who is walking to either come in behind the police station and wait for, we'll have the golf carts kind of lined up at that time to bring them back to the elementary school because Spring Street Hill is a beast. We don't want anybody forced to walk up that hill. If they can't jump on a float with somebody and ride up, you know, we don't want to trek that way back to the elementary school. But that's what they'll do is turn right on Main Street and then just circle back up to the elementary school. But the actual parade route will be just that stretch of Market Street. If people are watching other places throughout those races, that's fine. But, you know, we don't especially have candy to throw out that far. Because that would be a much longer route. But we're hoping by condensing the actual parade route down like that, and then lining up the golf carts to be able to transport people who can't hop on a float, that'll help with the walking. It's just complicated to have a water station in that window, in that area, safely, without people running back and forth. The speed, not a problem. I can absolutely tell the pace car... But I also think with fewer turns, without having to come out of the high school and come down to Park Street and then turn on, I think that will help keep the parade condensed to where that speed can be maintained. But we do encourage people that have a difficult time walking or who are susceptible to heat issues to not walk. And then we will have the train available for any of you who want to ride on the train. We'll have a car available. We always, of course, let the prince and princess ride. And then we always open it up to elected officials as well. And our grand marshals this year are collectively the 4-H. Since we're leading up to the 4-H fair, last year we had to compete with them, and this year we just embraced them. And so we moved our festival up a week earlier. And we're kind of using it as a way to kick off 4-H fair week as well, and saying, hey, we love you, 4-H grows America. It's America 250, let's celebrate it all together. So we're hoping to get some involvement from the 4-H barns as well in the parade. We'll certainly do what we can to help out, but we encourage people to just be careful.

If there's no other questions about that, do you want to just go on into your ADA assessment? Because that was next on the list, and then you should be done.

I'm sorry. So, there's a new federal rule Which, you know, we try, it's our goal to be ahead of federal rules, but we became aware of this. I cannot find my email right now. Essentially, there's a new rule whereby the cities and towns under 50,000 must adopt new standards for ADA compliance and all our digital communication. And we, the city, has to adopt this by 2028. So to get ahead of that, Brian Smith, our media director, and I went ahead and signed up for a webinar to learn what changes are required and how we can go about being thorough with those changes. So we participated in the webinar. I emailed you all a link that Brian sent about some of the summaries of what we're looking for. We will also have our website company. This is what they do. We will have them review our website, but we would also like the commission members' eyes on it as well. If you see things that are clunky, hard to manage, if you see something, this goes beyond just accessibility features, but also information. If there's additional information that you would like us to put under the Disability Advisory Committee area, Disability Services area, let Brian know. But this includes our agendas and everything. So your agenda will look, we will send out a new template because this is not The state passed this law that we had to put this information on the agenda, but this is not ADA compliant. And what it is, is it's connecting with readers. It's people who use auditory readers to read the text out loud. This format doesn't work for them, for the readers. So we are going to reformat all the agendas, and we will send out the template for you, for all of your agendas. We are encouraging and adopting policies whereby all city communication will be in a font that is readable font. something like Calibri or Apparel that's legible for the readers. And we are also encouraging everybody to use emails in those fonts as well, because basically every public document that is created, we want it to be compliant with the DAA standard. This also means everything we post on social media. So we are making sure that our images use the descriptor, So that, again, the readers, when people use the reader, it describes the image. And we're being very careful with all of that already. But we wanted to bring that to your attention, that we want to be in compliance before we're required to be in compliance in 2028. We'd like to go ahead and take action to get that done. Really, we're hoping that over the next six months we can make significant changes so that in 2027 we can actually roll out a lot of this stuff. So if you see something, or you look at that link, or you have additional information that we should post, please just reach out to Brian and let him know, and he'll get right on that. Thank you.

Alright. Any other additional items? Yeah. Well, as you know, I'm a senior citizen, hidden disability, but it makes that topic kind of near and dear to me, I kind of feel like all senior citizens are somewhat disabled. You know, vision, mobility, hearing, even cognitive declines. And I know that a lot of senior citizens experience social isolation, particularly in my generation. My generation did not grow up with computers. My generation was more stay-at-home mom. So there's a lot of senior citizens in our community who are socially isolated, who either lack of information or misinformation about the resources that are available to them. It's my hope that we can find ways to pass along some of that information. I'm gonna work, I believe, with Brian, and I've been compiling some lists of resources and just where they are, how to get to them, I mean, phone numbers, web addresses, and then he, Trude suggested that maybe he could put some on the back of the city

newsletter because you know we all get those lovely utility bills and before you go any further with your list let me reach out to becky rash who who leads or she did i'm not sure if she is right now but i'll reach out to her there's a senior citizens group right here in town and they meet at the ad center very frequently and and they do things at the family activity park so like i went over and talked to their group and talk to them about what we do and things. And they have reached out, multiple people have reached out to me when they have questions about things. About half of them are on social media or have family members on social media. I know that they do have some resource information, so let me try to get that for you before you double up on that work.

I want to attend one of their meetings and kind of I'll find out all that.

I'll reach out to her.

And then I know we have a health fair, and I thought maybe, you know, if the disability committee is represented at the health fair, that that might be, whether it just be a sheet, an information sheet, or a little pamphlet or something, there's some grants that are available, like AARP, and some different ones, that We could defray the cost maybe of printing those if we did some kind of a little pamphlet or something. And it's not something that I think that we're going to see tomorrow. I know it's going to take some time to put together, but it's just something that I think is important and I wanted to present and ask for support.

I will reach out. and see what they have. They may have something already similar to that, where we could just include it in the stuff that we do. All the different events that are like that, I go to all that stuff. We sometimes don't have a booth, but I'm there in my shirt, and I'm talking to people, and they know who you know, who I am or whatever. It's a lot of the same people. So, you know, I've made a lot of contacts through, like, and those same people come to, like, all the events. They're usually vendors at all the stuff, like the Halloween and things like that. So, yeah. And all those different groups have stuff. So maybe it might be that I just need to get their information, put it all together in, you know, a a packet and then for each of us to have that way if someone reaches out wanting something specific and we know so we can pass that along yeah just work yes yeah yeah well i will get with her when i leave here i'll send her a message and and we'll we'll start on that and that's something we could try to because i know that's something that you've been interested in trying to get together as well. But before we do the double work, let me make sure that they don't have a resource packet together.

Like I say, the systems are there. It's not like we have to do a program for this or that or the other. The programs are there. I just feel like the people that need it the most are the people that don't know

And I'll let you know this week as soon as I got a response from her. Okay, let me know.

Like I said, I was going to kind of go to one of their meetings anyway, just to see. Yeah, I'll find out the next meeting for you. Thank you. Tuesdays.

Every Tuesday. Oh, it is every Tuesday.

Early.

So were there any other, on that note, any other additional items? Did you have anything, Ashley? I was talking to Treva about any kind of event that we could do, because I know we had kind of talked about doing like a breakfast thing, and Treva had suggested that maybe we plan for maybe doing something with the health and wellness fair. She said she was going to get with the parks department and kind of figure that out, but just as something we're looking about doing, and that way we can catch the participation of the people that usually go to that. Yeah. So I think that'll be good. Okay.

Good partnership. That sounds good.

All right. Okay. Anything you need to... Nope.

Anything, Miss Donna? No, not yet. Alright, so our next meeting is scheduled for July, because we are doing every odd month. So, goodness gracious, July. So, with 4th of July being on Saturday, are they going to still do the 6th for the Common Council meeting or will they skip that to the 13th?

Typically they will not do it on the 13th because there's a plan commission and board zoning. I actually have you guys down for 5 o'clock on the 13th. Oh, you do have us down? Okay, well good. I put it on my calendar for the odd month meeting. Alright, so then there we have it. They'll probably do their meeting on Wednesday the 8th.

Oh, okay. I didn't think about it.

Actually, I'm sorry, 4th of July, we're off on the Friday, because it's on a Saturday. Okay. So Monday's normal business for us. Okay. Yep.

Alright. But we're still, okay, so we're going to do our next meeting on Monday, July 13th at 5pm. Excellent. Alright. That sounds good. Okay. And if anybody doesn't have anything else to add, then let's get a motion to adjourn. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion is approved.