Accessibility Advisory Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, welcome to the Tuesday, July 14th, 2026 meeting of Grafton Mass Accessibility Advisory Commission. I'm Roger Trahan, the chair, and I call this meeting to order. And first, because we're meeting via Zoom, I will make sure everyone is here and can be seen and heard. So I'm going to call a quick attendance, Christy Proctor.

Here.

Tracy Sharkey.

Here.

Sarah Salbu-Young. Here. Roger, your hand here, of course. And all right, first item on the agenda, welcoming our newest member, Sarah Salbu-Young.

Yay!

And do you include the Salbu when being introduced formally?

Yeah, it really doesn't matter. You can just call me Sarah Young. That's probably easier. But whatever you want to do, I go by Sarah Salbu-Young, so... But I'm not picky.

Well, welcome aboard. Thank you. Just by way of introduction, Christy. Yes, hi. A bit about yourself.

Yeah, I'm Christy Proctor, and I've lived in Grafton since 1998, and I am a post-secondary disability specialist, which means that I work in the college setting to provide accommodations and access for students, visitors, and faculty now currently at Quinsigamond Community College.

Tracy. Tracy.

Hi, Tracy Sharkey. I'm the building commissioner, also the ADA coordinator, and the select board delegate for the commission. I live in Oxford, and I've been working for the town since November 2023. So welcome, and I appreciate you volunteering your time for this good cause. It's very noble of you, and we really appreciate you for coming on board.

Of course. Yeah, I'm happy to be here.

And Roger Trahan, current chair. I can't seem to shake that. But it's been great. The commission was originally formed in 2009, but then had an eight year hiatus between 2011 and 2019. And so I took the initiative to kind of get it back on its feet. So I've been one of the sort of quote unquote re-founding members as has Christy since that time. And I just stepped off a board of library trustees. So now I have just one committee. Whereas you, Sarah, tell us about yourself and how busy you are.

Sure. I mean, you guys sound very busy and so cool to meet you. This is why I'm interested in doing this. So my husband and I moved to Grafton in 2020. So we were living in Boston and then we were like, oh, work from home. Let's start driving towards Connecticut because that's where my family is. And his family's in Ohio. So we're like, okay, at least we'll be like somewhat close and found Grafton and absolutely love it. This is definitely home. And so I have two young boys. I'm now... a full-time parent and two years ago got involved in the Affordable Housing Trust, which I've increasingly really enjoyed. And so I just have found it to be so... I just... want to contribute to the town, A, because I have young boys here. And so that's my goal. But then my second reason is I really want to learn. And so, Roger, I saw you speak at the town meeting and then again on the select board meeting. And I know that some committees just aren't that active. And so given your enthusiasm, I was like, okay, that's a committee I'd like to be a part of. And then I do have a friend actually because I joined the Affordable Housing Trust Then she lives in Shrewsbury. She joined the Accessibility Commission for Shrewsbury. And so then I've been hearing about that experience. She's like, oh, well, you did it there. So she was inspired to get involved in that. And so it kind of then bounced back to me. And I'm like, okay, now I'm going to get involved in that one in Grafton. So that's why I'm here. So just I don't have the accessibility experience that you all have. Um, but I am here to learn and I just want to contribute and my background professionally is communications. Um, so I feel like that's hopefully where I can maybe help with outreach or, um, things like that because that's kind of my, my area of expertise. But yeah, anyway, so just here to learn and contribute as best I can.

All right. Thank you, Sarah, and welcome aboard. And without you, we wouldn't have a quorum. Okay. Well, there you go. That works. No, that is really awesome. And our next item on the agenda is remembering Paul Letourneau. Ah, Paul Letourneau. had been on the commission. Paul passed away back on June 26th, and he had been on the commission since 2023. So I will say a few words about my thoughts regarding Paul, but first I want to offer a moment of silence. Okay. All right. Paul Letourneau. It was cool that Paul was able to be on the commission. I know that Paul had... know he didn't have his own transportation and uh coming going to and fro from uh in-person meetings really would have been a challenge for him so the fact that we met via zoom really allowed him the accessibility to uh consistently be able to join our meetings and um so i i think zoom has been um Sort of God sent to a lot of people, and I think it was for, you know, Paul being part of our commission and and he was he brought a unique perspective, including his age. He was in his early 80s and he was. He was a real disability advocate who had served with me on the board of Genesis Club in Worcester for those with supporting those in recovery from mental illness. And so, you know, I had known Paul for almost 20 years. And so it was kind of neat that we reconnected. in Grafton. He was living up at Forest Lane. So I had visited him a few times in recent months before he fell ill for the final time. And so, yeah, he was just an all-around great guy. So I'll miss him as a member of this commission and as a friend. Okay. Catherine Dupuy, whose term expired back on June 30th, did not re-op. She had since moved out of Grafton. And that... kind of blends into the fact that we now have three uh vacancies on the commission uh one expiring next june 30th 27 and two on 6 30 of 28 but before um making further comments on that uh katherine um had been a sort of re-founding member back in 2019 along with christy and myself um And, you know, I really appreciated her input. She was someone who was great to work with, a really just kind human being. And she, in the past, had... hopped on board uh and you remember this christy with national night out when we hosted a table and you know paused for people and our our accessible barbie um set up that year that was that was cool um but always uh contributing and um um, just a, a great, uh, person. And she's since moved out of Grafton. And what I'd like to do is, uh, just, uh, uh, have, uh, I wish to write a letter of thanks on behalf of the commission for her seven years. So. Do we need to make a motion? Uh, probably not. I think we can do that by consensus. Okay.

Anyone object? All right. Uh,

We're pretty informal here, Sarah. You know, we don't get wound up in Robert's rules.

Sounds good to me.

Yeah. And so getting back to the three vacancies, I had come before the select board and Sarah had, I saw the meeting where you applied. So thank you for your kind words, by the way. You know, it was good to hear that, you know, you know, that it caused you to, you know, to come to action, which was neat. And so I then put something on All Things Grafton recently. making note of the three vacancies. I don't know if I mentioned three vacancies. I may have. I'll say tongue in cheek that maybe I think I'd get more traction if I sort of offered some random free town trash bags. And then you have to read the, if you read the posts and commented on it, you know, maybe that would, would gain some traction, but it, I don't know, really, and maybe, Sarah, with your communications expertise, kind of get more word out regarding trying to advertise at a high level what we do and what the commitments are. So I included that as sort of a placeholder on the agenda. Getting back, Sarah, to you and I, we had a chat back and forth texting regarding a friend of yours who was deaf, and we had chatted about closed caption capacity. And I doubled back with Christy on this as to, and I will ask Christy to weigh in on just the closed captioning piece, how accurate it has been for you as far as your experience for someone who would need captioning in a live setting and how much of a delay there is just for that versus using other assistive means.

So to answer this question, I just have to ask, Sarah, are you used to using closed captioning as a default?

So I, yeah, I mean, I've just, at the last company I worked at when we had like all company meetings, they would turn it on, but I don't know the IT about that. I know it's not always accurate, but at least you can kind of get a sense of what's being said. And I just think... So, yes, my friend, my good friend, Laura, she's our sons know each other. That's how we became friends. And so actually being on that these meetings are only held on Zoom actually puts us potentially at, you know, at the opportunity to include her without having to bring an interpreter. So. So, yeah, because I don't sign. I actually just we just use notes app on our phones. So that's how we communicate. Yeah. But yeah, so I don't know if that's something that we could enable. And I'm actually going to see her tomorrow, so I can even talk to her about her interest. But in addition to Laura, what I'm thinking is, and this is why I'm excited to get involved and learn more about these different projects, what I would say from a communications perspective is... I think it's great to reach out broadly in the Select Board meetings and all things Grafton meetings, but I think we can also think about, you know, who are the populations of people that are affected by the projects that we're involved in? So is it, you know, student populations and their families. So maybe a parent or a grandparent that would want to get involved, you know, someone related to someone, you know, in connection to the senior center or something. So, you know, where can we be just a little bit more focused and targeted with our outreach, even if it is like one-on-one conversations, just thinking about Just kind of the populations that are being affected by the group that we're doing. I think that's going to be kind of lead us to potentially sourcing people. I mean, the broad getting the word out there is needed, is a must. It's useful to get that awareness. But then getting that next level to actually get that engagement for someone to, you know, get really engaged is kind of breaking that down. And then thinking about what groups of people... We would want to go even engaging the library. You know, is there anything, are there any groups that participate in things that use the library space? Maybe we could connect with them. You know, I'm not sure. I'm just kind of throwing ideas out there.

Well, if Laura uses sign language, then we would have an interpreter for our meeting because that's her first language.

Okay. Okay. Yeah.

And whether it's using video remote interpreting, which means that we would have an interpreter join us in the meeting remotely, or if we would have someone, you know, the town might have a contract with interpreting services or an interpreter. You know, that would be set up, I guess, through Tracy or, you know, the T.A. 's office. But, you know, again, it goes back to if that's her first language, that's what we need to have interpreted, not the captioning, because the captioning is OK for us who understand a lot of the words as they're spoken. And even though the pronunciation, excuse me. The spelling can be atrocious. You know that it's not our first language, so we kind of live with it. But for someone whose first language is sign language, then we would because that's their first language. They need it. And to provide access to her, now with the new regs for the ADA, we need to be able to provide the chosen communication method in real time. And yes, there is a lag to some captioning. I use captioning all the time, so even in meetings with no deaf people, I just always use it now. So, you know, please let Laura know that you cannot hold her back or preclude her from joining the commission.

Yeah. Okay. Awesome.

Cool. And I would add that it would... Because we meet predictably on the second Tuesday of each month, that that should be something that it's not like a last minute thing. You know, there would be proper planning. I would simply want to be sure that if there's ever a last minute cancellation event, that we have a backup, because I recall one recent town meeting where we were actually planning on having an interpreter or interpreters, and one or both couldn't make it. And so we had to, on short notice, nix that idea. And that shouldn't happen. And that may have been different. I don't know. I think that for a town meeting that has gone multiple hours, I know that it's preferred to have two interpreters and they do 15, 20 or so minutes and then they trade off. I don't know whether our meetings, which typically don't go beyond 60 to 75 minutes, would require two interpreters. Christy, would you have, or Tracy, have a sense of whether a committee meeting such as ours typically doesn't go beyond 75 minutes, whether that would require one or two? Two. Okay.

And then we would also send the meeting agenda in advance for the interpreters to read.

Okay.

And review.

Okay. All right. Yeah, Sarah, I would encourage her to apply, and we would arrange for interpreter services for the select board meeting. Okay. And the select board meeting doesn't require in-person attendance. They are hybrid. However, it would be easiest – I know that some interpreters are not as close by, and so – You know, so however that would work, either in person or both being Zoom for the application interview, we'll just make it happen. Okay. Yeah.

All right. The other thing you mentioned, Sarah, to even extend this further, you know, the populations that we want to touch upon, may not only have a disability, but what if they're second language users? So I just think of how with Worcester Public Schools, every meeting we have with them, there's always a Spanish language interpreter every time we have parent meetings. And I don't know if we're going that way, but I know that a lot of our websites, when you log into them, they are even, let's be honest, even if you're on the phone and you're calling Verizon, they say, what language do you want this to be in? They have like three choices or the hospital has 10 choices. So that I'm sure will become something we're going to talk more about in the coming years.

All right. Yeah, awesome. So moving on with announcements, Americans with Disabilities Act 36th anniversary on July 26th. So that's right around the corner. I know that we have typically not done a whole lot regarding the recognition other than put something on the town web page. or even on the town website. Christy, what's the most recent thing we had done as far as advertising?

I'll show you. Right now, the ribbon for the Accessibility Advisory Commission just shows the roof of the high school that says Grafton High School.

Okay.

OK, that'd be great. But if you happen to go to the Facebook page for student accessibility services, you'll see we have the 36th anniversary and we also have the flags for Disability Pride Month. So we have two things going on. So, you know, and that's in many places, if you're looking at different types of. either services or, or programs that support people with disabilities. So, right.

I know that on social media, I've seen numerous things regarding disability pride and the flag and almost, almost, um, universally the folks that i've spoken with regarding disability pride month have confused it as a sort of offshoot or an extension of um june's pride month and um i've gotten confused as to what it is um because they both have multi-colored flags and um and so i don't know if anyone else has run into that but i certainly would on my own social media, I've always done this, advertise the ADA anniversary on that day. And maybe we could also put something on our webpage ASAP. Would that be through Would that be, or yeah, probably William.

William.

I would think so. Or I'm sure Amber or Cindy have sort of equal access to put those logos up. Whatever we would send to them. Anyone want to volunteer? Yeah.

Well, you want me to send along the Disability Pride Month flag because the one I use explains what each color means and what the black background means. I mean, it's where did I steal it from?

Human wear.

I think I took it from human wear. But because it's tagged, so that's good. It has the alt tags on it for anyone who's looking at it.

There's only so much real estate on our page. Where and when would we put the Pride Month? And we're like halfway into that right now. And then the ADA anniversary logo. on the page. Because if we're going to contact William or someone else in the TA's office, we would want to give them some specific direction of how prominent and where we want that without bumping the content. And so I don't know whether we... We take up a lot of real estate with the vacancy ad on our page.

Well, here's my question. You know, not many people go to our commission's website. Let me go to the home page of. See, I don't think they're going to put anything up. It just says events and spotlights and it has meetings and the floating wheelchair ribbon coming ceremony and the pay as you throw trash bag increase. You know, I mean, it's not it's not really newsy news.

Are you talking about the town web page?

Because that would be a great way to, you know, really place it. The banner right now shows. In fact, let me just share my screen because it's just so inspiring. You need to see this. Let's see. Oh, sharing's not turned on, Roger. So let me describe this for you. It's a winter scene.

Can I do share? How do I do? Share screen. All right.

Yeah, it's a winter scene of the new...

I think you can share now.

...firehouse. Okay, let's see.

Can you share?

Yep, here we go.

I turned it on. Okay.

Unfortunately, this is not anything that's... I mean, in fact, it's interesting because we view this banner. There's so many different banners that you actually have a slideshow with different events coming up. Like, you know, for our programming, that's what we do. And instead, they just kind of have a static, which, you know, that's their decision. Maybe it doesn't use as much bandwidth, but, you know, it's a pretty... Pretty long scroll here to get to anything that even is timely, you know. So it's unfortunate that this is what you come up to and nothing's going on here. This would be a great space to put, say, Disability Pride Month, Grafton Night Out, Grafton Celebrates, the end of August. You know, it would be interesting, but that's not my... And then the ADA anniversary. Because this is our website. It just has this. So we don't really even get a lot to do, a lot of room to play with.

So anyways, I'm just sharing that. Do you know one way or the other, and Tracy, maybe you may know being in town hall, whether those can be interchanged without much fuss?

I believe it's page by page. So my landing page is a little different. It shows, I think, a building in the common area. What would ideally you like to see? Would you like it to be scrolling photos?

No, scrolling slides, like digital slides so that there's different things that are coming through. If each slide contained a graphic or a photo, that would be great. But at some point, we're going to have to make sure that's all accessible.

This is mine. This is my photo. So you have a different photo than me. yeah page and they all and it looks like they all um yeah it looks like whatever time you log in at that's the photo you get so it can be very random okay so you're looking for slides sliding through at the top here yeah okay and what would you want the slides to show

Well, depending on what their design is, if they had four, you know, the next town meeting is, you know, like, you know, you just have the upcoming events, but this month is, like, we could have had the parade information for the 4th of July. I mean, I feel like they're missing an opportunity to use that space. Yeah. to really promote Grafton instead of these pictures that just are static. And there's not even an explanation. This is Grafton's new municipal building or whatever it is. So Sarah, you're the communications person. You probably know web design much better than I do, but it's just... It's just hard to see something. I'll be honest with you, stay the same since we got the new website. So this is old in media terms, like not rotate and keep things fresh. You know, but maybe that's their goal. So I don't want to be too...

Yeah, and it just depends on, you know, staffing and time and, like, how many people actually visit the website versus, like, you know, you got to think about what's the... you know what's the biggest bang for our buck here and in terms of people's time and effort and i i totally understand what you're saying um and that's valid but it's possible that people aren't primarily getting information about town news on the website it could be mostly on facebook um i don't know i don't know but that's a potential just what i'm gathering from these clues that um Yeah, so tough to say. Yeah, I'm just not, you know, I can't speak on behalf of who's involved in running it.

Yeah, it may be the setup. So this is Shoesbury's landing page, and it may be this Civic Plus. Yeah, so this Civic Plus layout may only offer the one picture, but I can absolutely double check that.

So who would and would we want to then are you saying requests that both Disability Pride Month and the ADA anniversary be superimposed side by side on the town web page or at the very least our accessibility web page?

And technically, you're right. Today's the 15th. So I know it's already too late, but. Something for next year to remember.

It's not too late if we get it done in the next day or two. It may seem like it's being announced later than we would like, but there's still two weeks left in the month.

And we can always really strive to get the National Disability Awareness Month, Employment Awareness Month in October. That can be our next target.

So what would we want to do and where would we want to put it? on just our webpage for starters? For starters. And what would we do? I'm of the opinion that if we were to get it done ASAP, that even though Disability Pride Month is half over, that any advertising days are better than none. And we are also, we have time in advance of the ADA anniversary. So do you want to pick a couple logos and then ask that they be put side by side on the top of our webpage?

I say we ask. Now, Sarah, you're a communications person. Can you define that a little bit? Because that's pretty broad. Like, can I just throw something at you and you can whip something up in Canva? I don't know. Yeah.

So I just want to take a step back. I want to understand. Oh, you're directing that to me? Yeah. Okay. So, okay, just taking a step back, this sounds very tactical to put a logo or an image up on a website. And I think we need to think first about what is the strategy? What are the goals? And who is the audience? So before a tactic happens, what would we even want? What's the purpose? What's the goal of having someone read this? Because it's potential someone wouldn't... They might see, oh, a picture with colors and then not get any value from it, not take any action or not learn anything. So I think... My communication expertise is this is actually, and sorry, I'm jumping right in. I think this is too tactical. And I think this is fine. I think this is a good direction. But I think we first need to define like, what, what is the strategy? And what do we want even people to do or learn or understand?

I understand where, you know, exactly what you're saying. I know that in the past we had discussed having regular sort of a switcheroo each month and and sort of doing some planning of this, not just one off.

So it sounds like we want to do a content calendar. So we want to have a plan, like a document that we can look ahead. So for example, October is the employment. So thinking about, okay, in support of that, what would we want employers to know? What would we want employees to know? It sounds like it's all education-based, right? and so that would be an opportunity for us to maybe pull in articles videos literature and kind of provide supporting materials whether that's linked to on the site um but yes I think that's maybe I mean this is fine I think given the timing and wanting to support and acknowledge the anniversary and this month I think there's nothing wrong with that but I think um just my perspective, my experience doing kind of campaigns or anything like that is you definitely plan ahead and think of, you know, what are supporting materials? What do you want your audiences to do? What do you want them to understand? That type of thing. So I think we need to like answer those questions before we start jumping to, yeah. So I don't want to take anything away from the momentum. I don't, but that's- Yeah.

And I know that we have discussed this where on under the announcements section of the top of the meeting, I've tried to sort of cherry pick some of the quote unquote important or more prominent type of recognitions throughout the year. But when you really look at it, there's probably a dozen. January is And there's a list of a dozen. It's name a condition, an illness or whatnot where it's this month. And there's a dozen or more in every single month throughout the year, a different color for a wristband. And so, you know, I found myself sort of in an attempt to be inclusive and the list got so long, you know what I mean? That it's like, okay, if it became almost too expansive, that it isn't just one thing in January, one thing in February, one thing in March, it could be ten, it could be 20. So.

Well, I believe we did have this discussion a couple months ago, and we were going to have kind of a main highlight, you know, we're highlighting this, but there's others and I just think we didn't quite get to it. And I think it's mostly public outreach, public awareness, not really much more than, um, kind of doing the best we can to increase our awareness. If someone calls me, I can just point them to whatever, um, whatever's on our website. I think that's really great if it's already set up and then they can, they can, you know, if somebody calls me and says, Oh, I'm interested in what's going on. And then I can just send them the link. Let me email you the link. And then they go and they can, they can poke around themselves. But if there's not even any information at all on the website, I think just participating community participation and increasing, um, you know the availability to the public for us um i did get a copy of a survey that shoesbury did i don't know if you guys took a look at that i did send that to the commission a little while ago um so i can send it again and i'll include you sarah but you know kind of um what is our I guess what's our mission statement and for me it would be if there's an issue we're here we there's available avenues to have your issue addressed and then for educational um and just general knowledge say oh wow I can't believe you know I have this disability and it's this disability's month type of thing the camaraderie and finding common ground and recognition for the people that it's, you know, their disability month, I suppose. That's why, right, you use flags, you use this. I think that's the only, it's as far as that. And maybe somebody would reach out to us and say, hey, there's this really cool event, or can I present, you know, to your commission about this? I think this would be helpful for whatever disability, you know, other people going through it. I think that's, for me, I think that would be useful.

How about then, maybe it may be beneficial to this table list for more long-term planning that then could be an extension of, you know, not necessarily a subcommittee, but Sarah, a couple, three years ago, we did have a subcommittee where we got together. The commission eventually voted on it. that if you go on the Accessibility Advisory Commission's web page, there's this whole column of items that have hyperlinks behind them. That was all the result of subcommittee work. all these resources that are available and such. And perhaps it may be as simple as adding one more that happens to coincide with monthly recognitions. So we wouldn't necessarily have to prominently put it on the web page, but we could consider it as part of the resources that already exist. So are we in agreement then to just table any action on this? Okay.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, if, if, if I just want to go back, I don't want to kibosh the idea of putting that, um, you know, July awareness month on the accessibility page. I think if, I think that is a great idea. I just think it also prompts me to think about more of kind of stepping back and, and I'm happy to, is it okay if I, like I can put together like an outline that's, it's kind of a communications outline. Um, and then it would lead to us building a content calendar, but I think it gets back to kind of back to our mission statement, our kind of our goals. Um, is that, is that something like, would it be okay if I put a draft together and it would just be like, and I can email it to you guys and then it would be prompts for us to discuss.

Right. Yeah. That would be great. The only thing we couldn't do is, um, Well, a quorum of us equals four and we have right now three vacancies. But what we couldn't do is have a series, a concurrent or a serial conversation outside of a posted meeting that included all four of us. So it would be permissible for any up to three of us to sort of go back and forth on this in between meetings. It just couldn't entail what eventually would be a quorum of us deliberating through a serial conversation.

Sure. Okay. I think we, yeah. So this wouldn't, I would maybe just send it to you, Roger, and then we could like post it on the agenda and then we could just review it a day or two in advance and then discuss it. That would be great. That would be great.

Oh, she's up and running.

I just said this for the Affordable Housing Trust. I'm like, oh, yeah, my outline.

It's a different topic, but I'm in the zone.

Momentum. Thank you for doing that, Sarah. So, yeah, just send that over and I'll include it on the next agenda. So I'm just July agenda. And it's funny, I have I'm a visual guy and my to do or I have my blue highlight and I highlight things in blue as action items. So I'll include that on July's agenda. We have a couple more announced, two more announcements under item F, the floating wheelchair ribbon cutting ceremony. which is Tuesday, August 4th at 11 a.m. on Silver Lake Beach. So Grafton Rec Department was accepted as a grant recipient through Smile Mass. And so there's going to be a ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday, August 4th at 11. And I actually have that on my calendar to attend. So it was interesting when you put the town website on there, it was prominently displayed in that, you know, this, I don't know if you can, my camera's just kind of blurry.

That's good.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, but so that was really cool that we got the grant and Adam LaPointe really did a great job in, This was, I think, the third attempt at securing this grant. And so it's been a few years. And so one more piece of accessibility within the recreation space. And the final announcement, families recovered together 26th and Wiffle Ball Tournament. which is not for a couple of months, Saturday, September 12th from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Nelson Park. And it's hosted in partnership with this is an acronym Miracle Mamas Inc. and Gap Recovery in recognition of National Recovery Month. And today's focusing on connection, awareness, recovery support, and celebrating the strength of individuals and families impacted by substance abuse recovery. this going to be a ton of activities um bouncy house face painting tie dye ice cream um and so it's all centered around a wiffle ball tournament and there will be uh music uh recovery speakers and information that will be handed out so uh i think that's a block party i will not be missing so uh And I included in the meeting packet a couple of the flyers for that particular event. So anyone else have any community announcements that I didn't include in the agenda? OK. And moving on, external correspondence. There wasn't any external correspondence, and sometimes that has been sent to me, but other times it's been to the accessibility at graph-ma.gov. There's also a disability commission at grafton-ma.gov, which is no longer in use. It flows into the accessibility web distribution list. Sarah, did you... I actually sent the meeting packet link out to you both through the accessibility and your personal email. Did you receive it twice, which would tell me that you are now part of the distribution list? I did get it twice. Oh, good. All right. Good. All right. So we didn't receive anything collectively. But what I end up doing is outside of the town clerk's office in that little room. the mail room where the photocopier is if i'm in the neighborhood i will pop into town hall and see if we've gotten something uh you know paper versus electronic communications and there hasn't been any for months so and i went there just a couple of days ago uh all right agenda item three meeting minutes april 28th regular meeting. And I will accept the motion to approve the draft minutes of our meeting of April 28th, 2026.

I'll make the motion.

All right. Do I have a second?

Second.

All right. Motion made by Chrissy, seconded by Tracy. Any discussion on the motion? All right. I have one item. And I don't know, Christy, if you need to share the screen or...

I'm going to share them right now, if you don't mind, that way everybody can see.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay. My only comment was a grammatical correction on the second page. 1D under announcements includes it's transposing the C and the L after the word park.

Yeah. I thought you were going to ding me for the spelling of the word Engvall.

No, I think Engvall. No, I think that is correct. Engvall. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the only... item i had and uh thank you once again christy for unbelievable minutes i'm just looking for anything else that's red and cc'ing let me just okay okay awesome and uh the other thing is um so so sari you may not be aware of how efficient organized and resourceful christy is but um like literally after this meeting is over very shortly after you'll get the draft minutes from tonight and then what you'll be on the copy end of christy's email to the town clerk of the approved minutes from april so so chrissy amazing chrissy good for you do not ever leave us do not ever leave us um and uh i i just wanted to uh they used to be part of the open meeting law which is no longer uh sarah that um You can choose to abstain, but you don't have to. You are allowed to actually vote on any draft minutes for which you weren't present. That used to be a no-no, but... It was preventing, as committees change, it prevented a quorum from ever approving some older minutes. So they realized that that was probably not the greatest idea. And so just to let you know, you can either abstain or vote yay or nay on those. So any other discussion on the motion to approve the draft minutes of April 28th? right hearing none all those in favor by roll call um christy yes tracy hi sarah hi roger i declare the motion carried unanimously for nothing awesome her first vote yeah all right

You are now officially out. That's the hazing.

That's it.

We're making things happen.

So moving forward, U.S. Department of Justice memorandum. How is Roger or why has Roger included national U.S. Department of Justice items into a local memorandum? advisory committee meeting here's why and i actually had made note of this and it kind of snuck by all things grafton because i was announcing basically an agenda item and within this i put on the agenda the scope of olmstead versus lc this decision regarding individuals with mental disabilities having a right to live in the community rather than in institutions. And what I ended up doing is, and this maybe was a bit random, in the meeting packet, the ARC Massachusetts nonprofit had a, it's thearkofmass.org, had a three-page summary of how this all came about. There was a Supreme Court ruling. I should know what year it was. 1999. And that ruled that unnecessary institutionalization is discrimination under ADA. And the court at that time held that people with disabilities had the right to receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate to their individual needs. And there were three things when community based services were appropriate. That the person wants to receive services in the community and that the community placement can be reasonably accommodated and. What happened in June of 26, just last month, is that the DOJ, Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, issued a legal opinion that actually narrowed how the federal government interpreted and enforced Olmstead and the ADA. Okay. And the DOJ basically argued that the ADA did not broadly require states to provide community-based services through an integration mandate and suggested that states have greater flexibility to determine when institutional settings are appropriate. Leading to my final point, which all of these points I lifted from the AHRQ summary, that The Olmstead decision remained a binding law. However, the DOJ opinion may change how aggressively the federal government investigates and enforces integration requirements, and that there was a concern that this could make it more difficult to protect community living rights. And so the extent to which we're an advisory commission to the select board, And we are in that capacity focusing on the greater community, which includes community living environments, including group homes or public housing or other settings that in yesteryear would have been maybe even a forced institutionalization. I think we've come too far. And that there could be, if we were to slip back to the sort of old model, there could be people, numerous people within the grafting community in different housing settings that could be impacted. And so I wanted to at least bring it to the attention of the commission and to the public through our meeting that this national issue and this 1999 Supreme Court decision, now 27 years later, gets kind of turned on its ear through a DOJ ruling that says, well, that's not really how it should be interpreted. And then we go back to this model where somehow institutionalization is the default versus community housing when appropriate. So that's my spiel. So I'll sort of open it up to any comments or impressions regarding this particular agenda item and the meeting packet. Don't all jump in at once.

Thank you for the information. I think we'll have to kind of digest that and say, I know. Yeah. Yeah.

It's no, that's fine.

It's a challenging topic.

It really is because, and it can be an emotionally charged topic, you know, as well. So I just wanted to at least throw it out there that, that maybe to be a little bit provocative too, that we also, and expansive of what some people may consider our role as a commission, I know that I had thrown on the agenda various housing issues in the past regarding, you know, accessible and adaptable apartments within multifamily housing. You know, when are elevators required, you know, know four stories and above those types of things so um i'm kind of bringing in sort of um more items and maybe other accessibility advisory commissions may consider to be sort of local issues um but in the end even supreme court decisions have by and large, risen out of local issues. Like almost every single one of them, there's some impacted individual who says, wait a minute, I think I've been wronged. It goes all the way to the top. And so I figured I'd throw it out there for everyone to digest. I certainly don't expect this to be an action item tonight, but I wanted to at least call it to everyone's attention. So,

Yeah, I think this is great. I don't have, I mean, yes, it's a complicated topic and it's something I definitely need to learn more about specifically, but I appreciate and I understand what you're doing is as an accessibility commission, we should be aware of larger things happening because yes, it feels like, oh, it's a Supreme Court decision, but that ultimately impacts everyone, right? Or, you know, it will have an impact. So I think it's nice for us. It's a good motivation or like a good push for us to be in the know and aware of what are these things happening nationally, even potentially globally, even for inspiration. You know, what are some cool things happening all around the world that could potentially influence or just help us feel more informed as kind of accessibility experts as we're, you know, growing into that.

Right. Right. Cool. All right. Yeah, there's a lot of reading to do. So we never know everything, but I try to sort of do as much reading as possible on pertinent things. Kind of I'm that nerd that'll go on and start perusing through the Mass Office on Disabilities website, see what's going on, because there are things that are pertinent to what we do and the greater community. All right, moving forward to old business. annual town meeting, yeah, back on May 11th, town meeting voted to appropriate 90,000 in community preservation funds for the feasibility and concept study regarding the Blackstone Valley Walkway slash bikeway. And I spoke in favor of that as we had done in advance, we had talked about, and I had included after the fact, the letter that I wrote on behalf of accessibility advisory commission to community preservation committee. So that was formalized. And then I spoke in front of Tom meeting in favor of that and it passed overwhelmingly. And so I actually look forward to any expansion of that walkway bikeway because it's, As we discussed previously, it adds more accessible space. All right. Under old business. Oh, God, this one. 5B, outstanding meeting minutes. We had started to chip away. Thank you, Christy, for the ones you got to the town clerk. I'm going to have to look at these. These were all during 2020. And I'm pretty sure that there weren't any meeting minutes that we didn't approve. And I think out of these six dates that I had listed for 2020, under the TownClicks webpage, five of those six dates have a little television icon. which means that those are televised. So I'm going to have to I put this as a placeholder so I wouldn't forget it. So I'm going to have to go back and check it out because the attorney general's office routinely reminds and I'll use that term gently reminds town clerks to be up to speed on all committees that have posted an agenda. Did you meet? And if you did, where are the minutes? All right. Town survey, Old Business 5C. I don't know. I don't recall where we left off on this. I know, Tracy, you had been in touch with Shrewsbury. I know that. um without getting into details yet about what a survey would look like at the last select board meeting it was mentioned that what's this a survey monkey or one of those sites is set up to do those types of things where did we leave that as an action item anyone recall Was I supposed to do something? Tracy, you had, you had contacted Shrewsbury. How did we leave it? Because we, there was a few meetings where we didn't have quorum. So we haven't discussed this in a few months.

I emailed the survey questions. I received the copy and I think it was Google. Let me just take a peek. I sent it over. Um, And I sent it to the commission's email, I believe.

Oh boy.

I'll tell you the date.

All right. Yeah, please. Get up my blue marker again and put it as an action item too.

Well, it was just kind of like, okay, what did they ask?

Was it short and sweet? Is that the sort of approach that works? Don't overload people with too much?

52726, I said, below are the questions from Shrewsbury. Let's review for the next meeting. So I sent it to you personally, plus the commission. If you wanted, I can share it right now on my screen.

Yeah, could you? Yeah. That slipped me to include in the meeting packet.

It's okay. Okay. So... I'm trying to move this so I can see.

Can you see? Yeah.

Okay. And he actually, I think, changed all the words for me to town of Grafton.

How many questions are there total?

Any use Google Suite? There are 10 questions.

Okay.

About you. accessibility of town services, how accessible do you find the following in Grafton? That could be interesting. sidewalks, public buildings, park racks, town website, public restrooms. And then if there's a challenge kind of identifying the shortfalls of accessibility within the town and maybe getting feedback from people going through it, you know, having the challenge.

Okay.

Which of the following services or supports would be helpful to you or your family? Do you feel informed about disability related resources available through the town? And how would you prefer to receive updates or information? Sarah must be loving this. All the communication. one thing that Tom could do better. I mean, even if a person answered one of the questions or one set of questions, I think it would be helpful.

Awesome. So how many did they, when, when did they do this survey and how many responses did they get? Like how, in what manner was it put forth to the community? And are these like editable docs? Like, and then you go next, next, next, and then fill them in and then submit. Is that how it works?

So it was. We could use Google Suite. That's what Shrewsbury uses. You can paste this in the prompt box when creating a new Google form. It should format it perfectly for you. And then what we had seen at a previous meeting, maybe last year, they actually had it on their home page and click for the survey. to take the survey. And I cannot remember, I believe they did publish their numbers. Let me see if I can find it and the results of the survey.

Hmm. And this was Shrewsbury's? Yes. Commission that initiated this and ran it?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I'm pretty sure it was last spring they did this. Okay. I have lost April. I have lost track of time. Well, that's okay. We kept kicking the can down.

You're saying 2025?

Yeah.

Okay. They did it. I want to say they did it in the spring, so it must have been spring of 2025? Mm-hmm.

That's fantastic. I mean, some of the findings, not directly, but some of those findings would be relevant for us too, of just kind of general concerns. And they would just be actually really helpful for us to have that if we could get like a summary of the survey results and then the specific stuff for Grafton and Tom website, et cetera.

I wish there was some way to reach people who are younger to do it too, like those in school, school-aged, because they're still using the town and they have disabilities. Even if we could make the language as simple as possible and have it go out in a variety of places.

They do not have any of their minutes posted, but I'm seeing on the June 2nd, they did go over the community survey results. So they might still be going over them, but they do not have their meeting minutes posted, at least for this year. Oh, they have October 7th was the last. Uh-oh, they might need you, Christy.

Yeah.

Nope, she's taken.

Christy has a new gig, right?

Yeah, I know, really. Yeah, they're a little behind. Yeah.

Some of that survey, though, I feel it's too open-ended. And I don't think we're going to get what we really want. Too many options for writing it? No, it's too general. So what do you think the challenges are? Like, you know... like what are the challenges that you encounter in communication? What are the challenges you encounter in traveling around Grafton? You know, just keeping it general, but let's give it some context.

Yeah. So I will, I will share with you the meeting minutes from the October and can everyone see my screen?

yes now 34 people responded and they're a city yeah no they're not a city yeah it's city well it's town of shrewsbury but they're considered a city in terms of their population oh okay yeah 40 000 or so 35 yeah they still they still have the government of an admin they have in a select board Yeah, but I mean, when you compare them to us, 34, that's terrible.

So that's that in a nutshell. I think we'd have to do some sort of, so seven emailed stating they'd like more information. You know, I think the person that is upset or negatively affected, I think to have these things available to them to speak their mind and to have a way to get answers. I think that's what the goal is, not necessarily trying to improve the entire town. I think it's that person that ran into this odd thing that we don't know anything about, and then it's brought to our attention and we can address it. And that makes a big difference in their life. You know, a lot of things I deal with a lot of complaints and I would never know about them until somebody actually called me and said, hey, there's this thing happening over here. And then I'm able to address it if I can. So it brings attention to whatever shortfall that we have. and it makes the person instead of feeling like they're not heard or that it doesn't matter at least there's something like this maybe even if it makes one person's life different you know and and better and it they've been living with it for years and no one's ever asked them hey can i do anything for you if even there was you know 10 people saying oh this is the sidewalk is broken and every time I do this and I almost fall over, whatever it is.

Let me ask you this, Tracy, and Christy and Sarah as well. However we do a survey, I'm thinking that it's standard that at the top of the survey, it's advertised what the running time is. So people know that, okay, what's the expiration date of this survey? And whether we put some of these in hard print as well for various areas of town, not everyone uses computers. And is there a typical window of number of weeks that is sort of standard for, for these types of surveys, three weeks, a month, what, what?

I think it should be rolling. I think you should just leave it up there.

All right.

You know, you want to send us some feedback. These are kind of inquisitive and thought provoking questions. And maybe we have a clipboard with, you know, hard copies and we go to the senior center or we do our, the big truck night. And we, would you like to participate in the survey? It's anonymous. And then, you know, maybe we do it that way. Maybe we don't call it a survey. Maybe we just say questionnaire or get your opinion on something. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it counts.

So a paradigm shift then, because I'm thinking that, you know, this whole boxing myself into this window and then we have to gather the results, but really it's, it's more just feedback. Like I don't, Like for me, I don't need the formality of, you know, quote unquote results other than what's being brought to our attention and what's being done to address it.

Well, I think it could be possibly very productive for this commission to actually work towards addressing the concerns from these pieces of paper or these questions.

Right.

you know, we want to have more community involvement and make a difference, not only with just putting information on the website and having these meetings and hoping somebody will call us and tell us, Hey, this, you know, I'm having an issue with this, but you know, life is very busy. So if we're at the senior center, if we're at the various, um, events, And just have it available, have it on a table. You know, you could get creative where, because you know that when you have an issue, you want to tell somebody, you want to tell the right person. So if this is just an available form, you know, you might be able to get your concern to the correct person.

Right.

And people have good ideas that are living it. They have good ideas on how to fix things. They have good ideas on, you know, so no one else can have the challenge, whatever it may be.

Right. And even absent someone tackling one or more of these questions, I guess also more prominently and frequently advertising our own commission's email address. The people may just want to one-off shoot us a question or some feedback or opinion or an area of improvement or something. Compliment. Hey, those are always good.

Yeah, we can hope.

Yeah, I'll tell you, when I was on library trustees, when I first that was on from 23 to 26. And for the first year, there was this awesome part of the agenda where the library, I think they still keep track of these opinions where someone will either send an email or write a little note on a little piece of paper. And it's all these positive comments and they're like pages of them. So-and-so helped my child do this. Or so-and-so was really gracious in addressing my frustration regarding logging on to genealogy. There'd usually be a few pages of these sort of kudos. And it's refreshing compared to just hearing when people are dissatisfied.

Yeah. I don't know what that's like. No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah, but that's why they pay you the big bucks, Tracy, right? Yes.

All right. Yep, exactly. I can take it. I can take it. There you go. Yeah, I think through my experience of dealing with the challenges, having an avenue for someone to communicate with us what it is, is just everything. So even if we put it out there forever and we get two people a year, You made that person's year. Right. If you could fix what their concern is.

Right. All right. So let me ask you this then. Time frame. All right. What are the next steps? Action items, time frame, the scope of what we'll do and such.

We could reduce the questions if we think it's too long. You know, take a 30 second questionnaire. Leave your comments in 30 seconds. People will do that. I don't even think they would do two minutes, but they do 30 seconds.

I think to ask people for their specific disability information. I mean, we don't need to know their this, that, or the other thing, just say, Do you have a physical, psychological learning? I mean, just keep it again, broad, four categories and another. You know, we don't need to say, are you deaf? Are you blind? Are you chronic health? Are you medically? I mean, you know, we don't need to know that information. Just some broad brush categories, not the specifics.

Yeah, because if people are leaving any, if they come from a, it becomes actually technically anything is a public document if it's electronically transmitted with an identifiable email, no less, that I would not want to illicit private information, but would certainly, there's ways to sort of tap dance around that to get useful information of how certain facilities or services are impactful, either positively or negatively?

I think it's fine to remove the question.

Mm-hmm. Or is there an option to have some questions required and some not? Like maybe we have like the what is the challenge or comment as the only required question or something? I don't know. And that way someone can still go through and fill out as much as they want. I agree with simplifying and even taking out some of those questions, but we could just even do that. So that way you can participate in the survey to the extent that you want to.

Do you want to, Tracy, resend what you sent us back on the 27th of May? And then we can maybe bring some ideas to how to truncate it?

Yes. Are you a mind reader? That's exactly what I was doing.

Oh, I am a mind reader.

Oh, good. That's a good skill to have.

There you go.

Yeah. So everybody should have that fresh right now.

Okay.

And we can, I'm okay with keeping it casual too. And if, you know, you never know which direction this could take off in.

Okay. All right. So. So let's think about some of these things and then we can maybe bounce things around in our August meeting. Sure. All right. All right. Thank you. Awesome. All right. Moving on. Any other old business I threw on there? I can't think of anything. Then new business, which... Could have been old business now that I think about we spoke about it at our last meeting, but new business. National Night Out is Tuesday, August 4th. So in the morning, I get to go to Silver Lake Beach. And then in the afternoon, we are hosting South Coast Wheelchair Tennis Foundation again at the Grafton High School tennis courts as part of National Night Out. I think that National Night Out, technically the window is 5 to 8 p.m. And I have been in touch. Everything's in place. Tom Dodd at the Tennis Foundation, he and I connected. He's up and ready to go. And I obtained, I booked the courts. Funny thing is that we really only needed one set of courts. But there's no way to book just one set on the school website. So we have the tennis courts between 5 and 8 PM. And I obtained the insurance certificate that the school needed, the general liability certificate. And so everything's in place for the facilities and the insurance certificate. to move forward with this. So we will not be and we discuss this, where we had the pause for people last year and in prior years, and we will not be doing that again this year. So the only thing we'll be doing is the hosting the tennis. So I will be there. Anyone else planning on being there? that would want to represent, uh, us. I'd love to be around.

I'm going to be out of town that week.

I'm so bummed.

I'm in Maine that week.

Oh, okay. Well, I will definitely be there. I was not able to make it last year. I was in Nova Scotia and I heard it when I heard it went over very well. And, um, I guess, uh, They also invited folks to either play against them on foot or in wheelchairs. And so I know they'll be bringing extra chairs. And so just as a reminder, the only difference between wheelchair tennis and non-wheelchair tennis is using the entire court, the doubles perimeter, For singles And being allowed Two bounces of the ball Versus one And that's basically it As far as I understand So And then what they have is what's called One up one down Where if I'm not in a wheelchair And I'm standing and playing against Someone from the foundation I'm only allowed one bounce But they're allowed two So Yep. And that that's advertised on their website. They call it one up, one down. So, um, so Sarah, you've been to national light out, right? I actually haven't. It's like the biggest, hugest block party on the planet. It's, um, it's held on the police station grounds and, and it extends into the high school. Um, uh, just, it's a, it's, um, It's really primarily advertised as a public safety event, but it's really more of a community block party where all the committees in town have tables set up. The sheriff's department has tables set up. They have the SWAT team there. State police have come in with their dogs in the past, and they have games and prizes and bicycle helmet giveaways and all sorts of swag. Oh yeah. It's, and it's a three hour event that, um, yeah, it's, it's on, yeah, it's on the police station, uh, uh, grounds. So, so it's, it's, it's, yeah. How did you miss that? That was, I don't know. That's so that, yeah. told anyone with kids it's like you gotta you gotta go there you know and so um so i don't know if if now that you'll be there whether you want to get bogged down as is trying to you know hold down a place as part of the accessibility advisory commission but versus going there as a mom um but i will definitely be there um the entirety and i think last year they Were you there, Christy, on the front end?

I was the only one there last year.

Was it from 4.30 on?

I was there from 4.30 on. Okay. It was a long night. But, you know, it was fun.

It was. And the year before, they couldn't, even though it stopped raining, unless the court is completely dry, it stopped raining in the morning, but the court, was not completely dry and that was a a slip hazard so we had to like cancel it literally last minute so anyway um so all right then i will i will take charge of this and i will take plenty of pictures and i'm wondering um you know what i'll do i'll call a community advocate if everyone's okay with that Maybe they could cover that and graph the news as well as graph the news. All right. I'm just going to highlight that in blue. All right. Any type of – advertising of those types of events is awesome and um any other new business um are we premature in discussing graph and celebrates the holidays i think we may be i think we did a lot of great work tonight Cool.

All right.

Yeah, no, no. Right. Right. Yeah. It's already, we're already eight o'clock. All right. Any other new business? I just put that in as a placeholder. So does anyone else have any new business? Okay. Our next meeting will be Tuesday, August 11th at six 30. Okay. and via zoom and on that note i'll certainly entertain a motion to adjourn so moved all right and do i have a second second all right sarah second all right all right uh motion made and seconded all those in favor by roll call christy yes i sarah Aye. Tracy? Aye. Roger, aye. I declare the motion carried. This meeting is adjourned at 8.03 p.m.