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Home / Albums / Tags Atlantis Community
+ Board Meeting + articulated buses 2
ADAPT (80)
Rocky Mountain News [Headline] RTD board stalls action on bus lifts By JERRY Brown News Staff Photo by Jose R. Lopez, News: A man sits in a manual wheelchair with a somewhat disgusted look on his face. He is wearing glasses, has a goatee type beard and a powerful looking body, in that CP, non-body builder way. He holds a coat in his lap. Caption reads: Leroy Duran speaks at RTD hearing on the subject of wheelchair lifts for 89 articulated buses. He was one of more than 20 people, many of them handicapped, urging RTD board members to reverse a decision not to buy the lifts. The Regional Transportation District board of directors made no decision after spending three hours Tuesday listening to appeals from the handicapped community that the directors reverse a decision not to put wheelchair lifts on 89 articulated buses scheduled for delivery in 1983. With only ll of the 20 members present for the special meeting, the directors postponed action on a compromise proposal to put lifts on 45 of the high-capacity articulated buses until its regular monthly meeting on Dec. 17. Eleven affirmative votes are required for any board action, so it would have required a unanimous vote of those attending Tuesday’s session to reverse or amend the board's Nov. 19 decision not to buy the wheelchair lifts. Most of the board members at the meeting also attended a secret two-hour staff briefing on the issue before the public session. L.A. Kimball, RTD executive director, said public notice of the board briefing wasn't necessary because it wasn't a formal board meeting. At the public meeting, more than 20 speakers urged board members to reverse their decision not to buy the lifts. Attomey John R. Holland, who represented the Atlantis Community for the handicapped in an earlier lawsuit against RTD, said the decision not to put lifts on the articulated buses violates a 1979 negotiated court settlement under which Atlantis agreed to drop a lawsuit against the agency on the accessibility issue. Gregory D. Jones, RTD's legal counsel, disagreed. In that agreement, RTD promised to make its fleet accessible to the handicapped “through a program of accessible new bus purchases and the wheelchair-lift retrofit of existing buses susceptible to retrofit." In a separate policy statement, the board members promised to make half of RTD's peak-hour service accessible to the handicapped — a policy that some board members have suggested should be rescinded. Even without lifts on the articulated buses, Kimball said, RTD will meet the commitment to make half of its.peak-hour service accessible to the handicapped. RTD has [846? the number is very difficult to read] lift equipped buses in its [646? unclear] bus fleet, but only 60 of the lift-equipped buses are used for wheelchair-accessible service. Kimball promised that the lifts on the remaining 286 buses would be operating by next summer. The buses first must be equipped with wheelchair restraints, RTD officials have said. Holland also said RTD may be required by state civil rights legislation to make the articulated buses accessible to the handicapped. Members of the Atlantis Community have threatened to sue RTD an effort to force the agency to put lifts on the buses if the agency doesn't order the lifts. RTD's staff recommended that the lifts be eliminated from the bus order because of the cost — $1.1 million, or more than $12,000 per bus — and expected maintenance problems. Eighty percent of the money for purchasing the lifts would come from federal funds. RTD originally ordered the buses with the lifts, but on Nov. 19 the board voted 11 to 5 to rescind the decision to buy the lifts. When the buses were ordered in March, federal regulations required that wheelchair lifts be installed to all buses purchased with the aid of federal funds, but that rule has since been withdrawn by the Department of Transportation.
ADAPT (82)
PHOTO, News Photo by Steve Groer: A view from above down into a room filled with people, most in wheelchairs, sitting in a rough circle with one person in the middle. Next to that person is a desk with typewriter and paperwork on it. Caption reads: Members of Atlantis Community stage protest at RTD headquarters. Handicapped protest lift vote RTD’s rescission of plan assailed By JERRY BROWN News Staff About two dozen handicapped people, most of them in wheelchairs, staged a two-hour sit-in at the Regional Transportation District’s executive offices Thursday after RTD’s directors voted to rescind plans to install wheelchair lifts on 89 articulated buses scheduled for delivery in 1983. The protestors, all from the Atlantis Community, agreed to leave, but only after: * RTD Executive Director L. A. Kimball and three board members promised they would try to arrange a meeting between the full board and Atlantis members unhappy with Thursday’s vote, with the possibility that the board will reconsider its vote. * Kimball agreed to delay implementing the decision to rescind the lift order until after the proposed meeting takes place, if possible. Before the compromise was reached, the Atlantis members said they were prepared to spend the night at the RTD office -- unless removed by the police. RTD official called police and Denver paramedics, and they waited in a nearby room, ready to remove the protesters if the negotiations failed. Co-director Wade Blank said Atlantis members are prepared to stage daily visits to Kimball’s office and take the issue to court if the board sticks by the decision not to buy lifts. Blank said Atlantis members also plan to stage demonstrations during Kimball's public appearances. Blank said Atlantis members say Kimball, who became RTD’s executive director Sept. 14, is the one who persuaded the board to rescind the order for the wheelchair lifts. Last spring, when RTD ordered the articulated buses federal regulations required that all new buses purchased with federal funds be equipped with wheelchair lifts. Eighty percent of the $2l.6 million purchase price of the buses, including the lifts, will come from federal funds. Eliminating the lifts would reduce the purchase price by $1.1 million, or $12,571 per bus, according to RTD. The regulations requiring wheelchair lifts on new buses were rescinded by the Department of Transportation in July, and Kimball said Thursday that eight of the nine other bus agencies who have ordered the articulated buses as part of a consortium that includes RTD have decided not to buy the lifts. Anticipating that the regulations might be rescinded or overturned in court, RTD and the other bus agencies included the wheelchair lifts as a revocable option in their order. RTD has until Nov.27 to cancel its order for the lifts without penalty. After that date, RTD would have to buy the lifts or pay a penalty to drop them from the manufacturer's specifications. More than 100 handicapped people or representatives from agencies providing services to the handicapped were present for the board vote, and more than 20 speakers argued against rescinding the lift order. With only 16 board members present and 11 votes required to rescind the lift order, it appeared at one point that the speakers had swayed enough board members to win their case. But the board voted 11-5 to revoke the order for the lifts, with chairman Lowell Hutson casting the deciding vote after he counted to see how many board members had voted on each side. The Atlantis members then left the board meeting room in the basement of RTD’s headquarters at 1325 S. Colorado Blvd. and occupied part of the building's fifth floor, where Kimball and other RTD executives have their offices. Nearly two hours later, Kimball and board members C. Thomas Bastien, Kathi Williams and Mary Duty came upstairs to negotiate an end to the demonstration. Atlantis, which has long advocated making all of RTD‘s buses accessible to the handicapped, staged a series of sit-ins and other demonstrations against RTD a few years ago because the agency wanted to provide separate service for the handicapped. Relations between the two organizations improved significantly two years ago after RTD agreed to make half of its peak-hour service accessible to the handicapped.