My delegation at last night’s council meeting as a person with disabilities, as a representative of residents who reached out to me with their concerns, and on behalf of the Amherstburg Residents Forum, regarding the adverse effect on the disability community of the closing of Murray Street was met with apathy.

Not that it ill have any more effect on council than mentioning, during last night’s delegation, the AODA and the UN Convention On The Rights of Persons With Disabilities, but I emailed council members anyway.

The lack of decorum at last night’s meeting was appalling. I urge you to update the procedural by-law to include a time limit on your speeches, a limit on the number of times you can speak, and a limit on the number of questions to admin. Other municipalities do it and I know you rely on comparators sometimes. Also, a meeting of council is where you, as decision-makers, debate the issues yet admin are invited to participate in debates.

I also urge you to post the council and committee meeting videos to youtube which is a good transparency initiative that other municipalities do.

it’s very disappointing, especially during National AccessAbility Week, that the town is promoting a flag raising or wearing red shirts while votes in favour of closing off yet another public space adversely affects people with disabilities. Shame on you. 

in my opinion, it’s hypocritical to promote anything that may appear as tokenism. we already have plenty of awareness. what we need is a stronger commitment to ensuring we live in an inclusive community, free of discrimination and free of barriers that prevent our human right to equally participate. we need to ensure that we people with disabilities stop encountering attitudinal barriers and ableism. we need elected officials to take a stand and not vote in favour of barriers or spend taxpayer dollars on barriers.

we also need people to realize that input from residents like me, with disabilities, should be welcomed; it should not be met with examples like the attached. chris drew, an accessibility advisory committee member posted this yesterday to the town’s facebook page.