I'd like to call this um town and night Commission on disability meeting um today is 3724 we are at Prime Time 1059 CET Avenue um the time is 50:2 um this is a zoom meeting being recorded um I'd like to um have the members because we have some members on Zoom everyone um just announce themselves Jonathan Gale Tim T clerk Christin ala Kevin Smith and Nicole Meo um if we could do the Pledge of Allegiance at this time States stands indivisible and justice for all all right so we have a light agenda um in new business um I had put on member reports um Kevin had mentioned um some doing something kind of like what um the selectman do um I didn't put anyone's particular name because at this point I don't know who has report and I thought if I left it bag um anyone could jump in if they had some kind of report um and Kevin do you want to kind of go so what I had what I had pitched to Nicole was um just so we don't have like the redundancy of just constantly being k k kind of can get like boring and monotonous is and because we all kind of have different experiences um I thought it would be nice and it doesn't have to like certainly everybody doesn't have to do it every month but like we could share something that we've experienced or came across that pertains to the commission on disability um and just kind of share with the group if it's something that we can help each other with if it's like an initiative somebody wants to do or just simply like inform something that could be helpful and informative for the community so we can kind of just be able to share it um like I had a couple things myself just parks and recs related so I that's what I kind of St from and I figured know he was a TG a coordinator you know everybody's got a different aspect of uh yeah yeah just if like you came across something that you thought it would be nice for the committee to brief yeah and I think that's a good idea I think it's a great idea to start doing that and I'm leave it as M reports unless somebody gets like contacts me personally and like if Tim said oh I have a report I'll add your name and um stuff like that but other than that I'll just leave it B um so that anyone can jump in and something comes up um does anyone have anything that they'd like to I'll kind of just I'll start up quick so Parks and Rec has the Easter egg hunt coming up on the 23rd um one thing that I've always kind of struggled with in the three years that I've been doing it is coming up with like something that's inclusive um and I kind of like it's been okay but it's also been a little bit of a failure at times because I've used the math to really concentrate on like the physical access and you know putting things up at a height where where everybody can reach them and then actually a town resident actually reached out to me and um she had said what about you know um any kids with sensory issues and she had actually pitched um you know like is there like a quiet space and I like I just feel like because it won't on a Saturday morning it's not used and we have some decorations we're just going to decorate the hallway of the lower level of town hall one it's completely accessible we don't have to worry about mud and all this other stuff and putting down mats and it's quiet space so we're going to make that like the inclusive um or accessible and and Century friendly part of the Easter egg line so that was something kind of neat and a new idea that I think will work well as compared to what we've tried to do in the past it's also kind of hard to like emphasize that when we've done it outside on the track is like that's like the accessible area because you know this usually everybody just freefor all and you can't you're fighting kids off certain area so this I think this will work out well and then the only other thing I had and I'll send you guys a link and this is also somewhat par Rec related so there's a woman in Rhode Island um who has a website and a program called ramp so it's real access motivates progress um her name is Tina I'm going to put her last name so try to it's like Bernard um she um had this really really neat thing that she um designed with the steel yard Providence which is like a fabrication and art like Center um and it's called tina table so it's this wheelchair accessible table and it topwise it looks a lot like a normal picnic table one thing that's neat is one side bench and the other side has wheelchair slots and then you can wheelchair in from the end but the benches are fabricated so that the ends look like wheelchairs so like when everybody's sitting it looks like everybody's in a wheelchair it's just really neat um and U they try to make it as affordable as possible because it's really it's not something that they're trying to profit off of it's they're trying to make it a little bit more you socially acceptable to utilize this so I'll I'll send you guys a link to that something I'm going to look into do for parks and rec I just thought it was really really neat and her website is great she started she even started a program where they do um like 88 business audits for at no cost so she goes around through Island businesses and like gives them a list of things that they could do better to make the build more accessible so it's pretty pretty neat program so I'll share I'll send that along sobody that sounds good so I'm Sor Kevin are you finished or not yet can you wait one minute Jonathan because Tim has something yep okay okay um I noticed that a Town Line Redemption um has people employed there with intellectual disabilities and I I thought that was a really nice thing and I'm just wondering if there was something we could do to promote businesses to maybe consider hiring other people in the town with disabilities and there is um there are other like um origio Farms they have um some of the co-op folks come and work there um I don't know how we would go about that but that would be great to have um to try to encourage yeah even if it's well even if we just try to connects people with Co-op because Co-op has Employment Services a gentleman that that's what he does is try to connect people with um that so maybe we could advertise it somehow like to just you know advertise people disabilities you know that are that are willing to to work and you know want to be involved you know seems like a good connection with the what is it the diic is that what is the um's husband oh the the developmental all that that Spotlight right the dayon um developmental industrial committee yes um because they do a lot with businesses in town and they might be able to connect us with businesses and be able to like kind ofun it that way along those lines I'm actually be meeting with the um director of the Chamber of Commerce next week and she was at the last meeting that we had over at the Aggie and we just have been playing phone tag at different times and haven't connected but one of the things that we've talked about is having me go through the Chamber of Commerce and to a couple of their other meetings for local businesses specifically to talk about employing people with disabilities in the Dion and surround communities so yeah I think you know the goal is really to begin to get employers to understand you know what's involved in employing with people disability what with people with disability intellectual disability physical disability can bring to employment you know it can be something in a supermarket as you said earlier it could be Rojo it could be you know a Dunkin donors for that matter um it's wherever we can get people with different types of disability to be employed and it's also letting the employers know about there are incentives in some of these uh programs for hiring people with disability so part of it is going to be to give them some Educational Tools as well so stay tuned hopefully at our next meeting of the Cod I can report back on that perfect sounds good did you have anything else that was excellent um Jonathan did you have something to add a couple of things um first of all and I know Kevin has signed up for this already but there's what's called Community Access monitoring training which is the basic it's a basic two-day training session not that everybody has that time at this point and I understand that but there's a basic two-day session on Community Access monitoring which is teaching folks how to understand the things that you look at in your community in public spaces what's accessible what's not accessible what what does it mean to make it accessible how do you do the measurements what are the differences between title one through through title seven how does title two which is the biggest one that we work with in the work that people with uh disability relationships need to know so it's an educational program it's free of charge and after that you are certified to be able to provide information back to your community leaders as well and to to assist them in planning of projects and understanding what to do the planning is done and the training is done by Jeffrey Dugan from the Massachusetts office on disability and as I said I know that Kevin has already signed up I'm going to send that link out to everyone but I won't be doing it until Monday when I get back to Massachusetts or Sunday night and if anybody else is interested there are other sessions that come up as well not just in April and June were were posted Jonathan okay yeah I because I knew the April one was there and there are others and then what I also would suggest is at the same time when I send everyone the link you might want to send subscribe yourselves to the mod newsletter because it's different ways to keep informed on different events and activities that are going on not just from the mass office on disability but from the New England Ada Center on you know new things that they're working on new of innovative ideas new laws new legislation it's just it's not heavy reading it's only a couple of pages every month it's a short newsletter but it's a good way to to help everyone stay informed so that's one item the second item is for the friends of the library and to let everyone know at our last Friends Meeting um we proposed for the first time and the friends accepted to offer Ada excuse me uh cart services and ASL services for people who are hearing impaired at the 25th of March when we have the candidates night so far we haven't had any takers um and we have a a window up to 10 days prior to so I do have it in reserve if we had somebody who has a hearing disability reach out to me and say they needed cart or ASL interpretive Services if they don't that's okay but we thought and I and I commend the friends for taking the first step in town to formally say we're offering this as something for you to be able to participate in this event um and as the C might want to consider ways to support other Town activities and events town meeting things like that to do the same going forward last thing I'll say for now at least is as a member of the library new building committee I've worked pretty closely with Mark and the rest of the commit committee so that the plans that we're working on now take into account all the aspects that we can so far because we don't have a an architectural design to work with which we won't have until next week but the Architects do now know what we've done on the interior part of the building and how we've set the interior up so that there's not only a plenty of access and full access for wheelchairs other disabilities as well that includes the distance between the shelves and the bookcases it includes the quiet spaces for people to use the technology we put technology specifically for people with disabilities in quiet other places we have we're going to have a fully um a second laboratory that's fully accessible in the children's area we're working on the egresses so that we have other egresses for people with disability in case of an emergency but I think that in the end the town's going to be pretty pretty pleased and pretty proud with what we're putting together for people with disability they have on their agenda which I'm not going to be able to be part of tonight also more discussion potentially about services and programs for people with disability so we're moving forward on that whole process I will keep everybody informed because that may be a monthly update for a while as part of what we're doing right now so that's all I have for now but I wanted to share all all of that thank you Jonathan um Christina is there anything that you want to share yeah sure um the the regional CPAC has two um upcoming event um Workshop sorry one in March and that's for dyslexia um parents are in obviously invited but also teachers and other community members to learn about sleia and ways to help with that I can send you the fler for that and uh one in April is um for autism related services and that's going to be run by um Jan Randall who's a part of community a resources um so she that one's going to be in person the dyslexia Workshop is hybrid so it's either in person or zoom and that is run by people from the South Coast educational C Christina are there Facebook links or information to this available on Facebook yes could you that yeah if you would send that to me please um I'd like to be able to put it on our FB FB page too so that for the the Ada page that we have for the town of dayon Whenever there are things like is coming up if you could always forward them to me so that we can post them up there that would be great sure thank you thank you um okay so from there we're going to move on um to Old business once again discussion the K report if anyone has anything new to say on it I mean I personally don't um Christina did I send you the the access to the Google Doc with the K report yeah okay because I was that was one thing I was UN sure of um yeah I don't have anything new I know like last time we had discussed it like at the previous like full meeting um I was going to do a little bit more work on isolating some of the stuff so I got a little bit more sorting to do and I think it that will make it easier for us to get back on it um I don't really have anything and I think and I along the same lines also I haven't been able to sit down with Michael yet and go over the parts of the K report that are really going to be more related to policy and procedure for the Town versus what's not policy and procedure there's there are some things that are going to be administrative and some that are not and I think that's part of what we all need to look at too and maybe we can try to if everybody can take a look at that and if Michael can is able to join us for our next meeting um it would be a good time to really start to separate that out so that we can get going on some of those things I think too just like if everybody has a chance between now and the next meeting if you go into into the Google Doc and not necessarily edit it but like we all have the ability to add a note so like we can leave like leave some notes in there so it's like hey this is something I think we could move up or down the list instead of like sitting here and going item by item trying to prioritize it we can kind of just do that on our own if something sticks out that we think is you know should be a priority just click add note on the side and and do it that way might make it a little bit easier to streamline when we do St start discussing it all right from there we're going to go to review and approve minutes from 2:15 2024 did everyone have an opportunity to look over those minutes yes yes all right y I get a motion I will make a motion to approve the minutes from February 15 2024 um can I get a second second um and any discussion a vote please I Kevin Smith I Kev tul I all right thank you um and then we have public input do we have any public we have no public no he's on Zoom okay and nobody's here um so at that point can I get a motion to adjourn I will motion to adjourn and the next meeting date for us will be what before we adjourn is that right yes yes 5: PM yes okay thank you um and then did I take a vote no thenote I I and we are adjourned at 519 thank you all thank you