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Home My WebLink About6/2/2026 Item 6a, Schmidt Richard Schmidt < To:E-mail Council Website Subject:agenda comment item 6a, budget revise Attachments:council ada ramps budget revise 6.26 pdf.pdf Please see attached pdf letter. 1 Re: Agenda Item 6a, Budget Revise May 30, 2026 Dear Mayor and Council, I request that as part of this budget revise the Council direct staff to ﬁnd funds to begin installing ADA corner ramps at the city’s 500+ pedestrian corners where there are no ramps. As those of you with good memories are aware, I’ve been asking this for years, whenever budgeting and goal setting happen, and staff’s response is always the same: silent treatment at goal-setting and “there’s no money” at budgeting. It is apparently going to require Council action to change this mean-spirited law-breaking on the city’s part. Here are a few facts: •The city has more than 500 pedestrian corners with no ADA ramps. This represents about 22% of all pedestrian corners in the city. •The city has been required under the ADA (a federal civil rights law) to provide such ramps since 1990, and before that ramps were required by other laws, dating back as far as the 1968 Rehabilitation Act, which set the precedent for federal projects and put cities (among others) on notice. That’s a minimum of 36 years the city has had to get its pedestrian corners legal. It seems obvious the city has dragged its heels on fulﬁlling its obligation to obey these civil rights laws. •The city brags of ramps it builds each year, and propagandizes the public about its good work. Even the council may feel misinformed by this propaganda. •The truth, however, gives the lie to what the city’s accomplishing with ADA ramps. Last year, for example, the city “built” 38 “new” ramps, but not a single one of them was at a corner where there were previously no ramps. NONE! They were, with one exception, rebuilds at existing ramp locations. That one exception, a sloping sidewalk opposite a T-intersection, isn’t really a ramp, and probably should not have been counted as one. (All these ramps were built as part of “paving projects” along Tank Farm, Sacramento, and at the new parking garage.) •This is typical of recent years: the city rebuilds and rebuilds already accessible ramps rather than extending accessibility to those parts of the city where there are none — mainly neighborhoods, where the need is probably greatest since that’s where the disabled are trying to get out of their homes to interact with the community. (It’s also where young parents and grandparents push baby strollers.) •One reason for this misappropriation of ADA effort is the city’s adopted policies which tie ADA sidewalk improvements to performing major street paving projects (which seldom happen within neighborhoods) rather tying ADA actions to community need. This policy needs modiﬁcation. •By law, an individual may request a ramp at a location where one doesn’t exist, and the city is supposed to be accommodating. SLO, however, isn’t. The response is always “there’s no money,” and the requested ramp goes onto a list of requests maintained by the city, in all likelihood never to be built within the lifetime of the requester. •I am told the current list contains 94 ramp requests and that some requests date back about 20 years. Twenty years on an ADA ramp waiting list is a disgrace. It is noncompliance with the law. •When I requested speciﬁc ramps around my part of town, I was told there was no money, and that was the end of it. No effort to ﬁnd a way to accommodate the request. No effort to budget the needed funds. My requests are now among the 94 on that list with a 20-year backlog. Now, a rebuttal to the city’s excuse “there are no funds.” This, continuing year after year, is utter nonsense. This is a rich city, with plenty of funds — that is, plenty for what the city wants to spend them on. Failure to perform ADA duties isn’t due to city poverty, it’s due to intentional city choices. The city seems able to ﬁnd funds whenever something new and sexy crosses the city’s radar screen. For example, the Council recently approved purchase of a house on Broad across from the Mission for $1.4 million. That wasn’t in any approved city budget. The funds simply materialized because city hall for some reason (unclear to the public) wanted that house. That surprise unbudgeted allocation of $1.4 million would have built close to 50 ADA ramps. But the city chose to spend that money otherwise. Then there are vanity expenditures like the $6.7 million the city is putting into the SLOREP building fund. There are still other vanity expenses like the $6.6 million the city is putting into reconﬁguring the California/Taft intersection as a roundabout, creating a dangerous nightmare street crossing for the disabled (and in fact for all pedestrians). The vehicles will never stop at this freeway off- ramp, endangering pedestrians of all ability levels. But a city that doesn’t care about disability accommodations apparently also doesn’t understand simple pedestrian safety issues like this, and is carried away by desire to show how up-to-date it is by building a conspicuous roundabout. The three vanity expenditures cited here — the house, SLOREP, the roundabout — are consuming enough city funds to build about 475 ADA ramps, and if used that way at pedestrian corners that lack ramps would go a good way towards erasing the estimated 520 corners missing ramps. So, NO! It’s not lack of funds. It’s a choice that’s made how to spend the funds available. I’m asking that in this budget revise the Council ﬁnd some funds to immediately begin reducing the number of corners without ramps. That is not a big ask. Staff can ﬁgure out how to ﬁnd a million $ or so. Here’s a start: 1. The California/Taft roundabout is slated to get an additional $2.5 million as part of this revise. Redirect that immediately to neglected neighborhood ADA corner ramps. Back off from the ill-conceived roundabout, pursue instead a less costly safety realignment of the Taft intersection (including better pedestrian safety than a roundabout), and I suspect that would free up additional funds you could reallocate within your infrastructure budget (since street changes and ADA ramps are both part of that budget) towards fulﬁlling YOUR LEGAL RESPONSIBILITIES to advance disability access. 2. I’d then ask, again, that the Council see to it there is an annual budget for continuing this ADA work where it’s needed (i.e., in neighborhoods). 3. Finally, I ask that a modest sum be budgeted to deal with ADA ramp requests as they come in — to be able to implement them promptly, not put them on a 20-year waiting list. Thank you. Richard Schmidt