Deputy Mayor Gibb’s comments during today’s budget deliberations:

He’s heard a lot over the last couple days about accessibility of Open Air. He’s personally pushed a wheelchair downtown, and cannot believe the relief to be able to get off of uneven sidewalks with trees growing out of them and all kinds of obstacles; they’re not wide enough. To him, Open Air makes the downtown more accessible for people at least in wheelchairs because try and push a wheelchair down one of those downtown sidewalks and see exactly what he means. With Open Air there’s no worrying about trying to maneuver the wheelchair on a narrow uneven sidewalk so that was his two cents.

I guess the town could fix the sidewalks to remove all the barriers Deputy Mayor Gibb mentioned, but the solution is to close the streets and place barriers there instead for 20 weekends?