REPORT-MV-949XX

11/07/04
Mr. Hunter, City Manager
City of Mill Valley
Mill Valley, Ca. 94941
Mr. Hunter,
To date, I haven't heard from you with regard to our recent phone conversation during which we discussed the remodel project at the Mill Valley Safeway located on Miller and Camino Alto. Yesterday, I did receive a letter from Mr. Aherns, the Mill Valley Building Official, along with my written complaint (written on your REQUIRED complaint form) indicating that the information I had provided on the form about my complaint regarding the Safeway was inadequate and incomplete. I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss Mr. Ahrens letter with you at your earliest possible convenience.As I explained in an earlier email sent to you today, I will be out of the Country from the 12th to the 22nd of November and would appreciate being able to discuss this complaint with you as I had been promised. As you will recall, I had contacted you a few weeks ago because during my review of the project permit documents at the Mill Valley City Hall, I found that the public bathrooms on the main floor had been closed for plumbing repair work but the general public was being allowed to use staff bathrooms on an inaccessible floor of the building while persons with mobility disabilities were provided an "accessible" portable toilet and sink at the front of the store (as you know, neither was accessible). There is still a problem with the fact that the general public has flush toilets and running water sinks to use while those of us with mobility disabilities have to use portable equipment that is certainly not "equivalent". This condition could possibly be acceptable for a VERY short time, but it seems that the plumbing repair project has now turned into a complete store remodel that has been in process for months and may take months more to complete! To assure that persons with disabilities would have sanitary facilities during the plumbing repair, I had to work with both Safeway and the portable toilet rental company to assure that a truly accessible portable toilet and sink were provided. Why did your Building Official approve the store remodel project permit without the necessary temporary facilities being included in the store's permit? Additionally, a new "accessible" parking space has recently been installed (with no accessible path-of-travel from that space to the store or the temporary store pharmacy in a trailer in the store parking lot) and although the entry to both the temporary trailer and store are "blended" with the vehicle way that pedestrians must be cross, to date, no detectable warning surface has been installed, probably because it wasn't required as part of the permit work. This is not only unsafe for Safeway's blind and low-visioned customers (many of whom live at the Redwoods retirement facility and come from across Camino Alto to the Safeway site) but, I believe, a violation of state building code (I also believe that Safeway's architect should have included that feature based on federal access regulations). I will be home most of the day tomorrow, Monday, November 8th, and can be reached at my home or mobile phone numbers which are listed below.
For your information, I have attached a copy of a letter from Mr. Lockyer, California Attorney General.
I have also copied into this email a recent Marin Independent Journal Newspaper article which discusses the public and business community's apparent image of how small businesses are being unfairly "attacked" by the disability community with inappropriate and unreasonable lawsuits. The access violations in the Safeway case and others access violation cases that I have brought to the attention of the City of Mill Valley and California Department of Justice are typical of the kind of access violation cases individuals with disabilities must face when in their communities. I believe that they are filing these lawsuits because it's appears to be the only way that they can gain their legally mandated access to these businesses. The effort that is required of the disability community to gain those rights includes using the difficult and non-functioning process cities like Mill Valley have developed and apparently use to discourage the filing of access violation cases. The access violations that are and will be found when individuals with disabilities attempt to function in public facilities are created by the lack of knowledge and effort on the part of public permit agencies (building departments) to assure that permitted projects within their jurisdiction meet access codes and when built and are accessible. There is also a glaring lack of professionalism and code knowledge on the part of architects and contractors when they design and build those projects. These are the State licensed professionals whose license requires them to design and build these projects with all of the code requirements, including accessibility code requirements. Obviously, they don't! For a person with a disability to make this "broken" system work for them makes getting the access that is needed and required a daunting task. These are individuals who are already having to live with their disabilities yet they also have to "deal" with these violations and the people who created and permitted them. In other words, the whole system that is, by law, supposed to protect those of us with disabilities, not only doesn't work, but also demands that we be code experts and the "enforcer". Something is wrong with this picture! Two examples of how bad the problem is was indicated by the recent action taken by the California Attorney General's Office against the City of Mill Valley and the County of Marin. These actions weren't brought because the two public entities were doing their job correctly. Are more cases like those by the AG's Office required before the problem