##VIDEO ID:0Z7_Zcq-a9U## my name is Andrea Patton and I work for the city of Boston disabilities commission the open meeting law requires that I notify the public that this meeting is recorded therefore Please be aware that an audio and visual recording of this meeting is being made by Boston City TV a part of the city of Boston office of cable communications and is being broadcast on Xfinity channel 26 RCN channel 13 bios Channel 962 and on YouTube with that I'll hand it over to our board chair West Ireland hi there everybody thank you Andrea so much this is Wes here signing uh good evening to all of you as well um I'm just going to get us hit the ground running with our meeting agenda we will begin of course with introductions I will ask each of the board members to please introduce yourselves uh speak to your role as well as which region of the city of Boston you live in and a visual description of yourselves as well please I can go first my name is West irland uh and I am the board chair and I live in in the North End of Boston I am a white male um and I am using sign language so you will hear two female sign language interpreters interpreting what I say in sign language into English throughout the course of this meeting and I will now call on each of the board members as I see you on my screen to introduce yourselves uh Carl would you like to go ahead and introduce yourself please sure my name is Carl Richardson I live in Brighton I identify as a death line individual in that I have a dual Sentry lock of here and en Vision I am a white middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and I think I'm wearing a blue shirt blue button- down dress shirt great thanks so much Carl Charles uh excuse me Charlie would you like to introduce yourself please hi my name is Charlie Kim I am a resident of the North End I'm on The Advisory Board representing uh parents and caregivers of children with disabilities uh I am a Korean American with black hair started getting gray hair so there's some in there I wear glasses and U I guess strikingly no other distinctive features I cast so that's me pleasure to be here thank you very much Olivia would you go next please sure my name is Olivia Richard I am a middle-aged white woman with um brown hair and I'm wearing in uh Boston fire department hoodie um and I represent Brighton thank you very much Olivia Paul would you mind going next please my name is Paul Karen I serve as the board's Vice chairman an honor and privilege to serve I work at the Boston planning department the supervisor also serve as a labor Foreman in Labor's local 151 the oldest Laborers Local in New England I'm wearing a blue pullover a white I'm a Caucasian male with graying hair and I serve as an advocate for mental health I have members of my family with mental health thank you I live in the West End thanks very much Paul you're welcome Richard would you go next please sure thanks Wes Richard glowski Liv in Back Bay member of the commission um I've uh kids mental health um has been a big issue in my years and I also um am hearing anded um and I live in Back Bay and I miss the introduction less apologies if I left out any oh I'm wearing a gray I have more gray hair than Paul and um I'm wearing a his SP jacket and white shirt excellent thanks very much Richard poette would you go next please even I'm poet I'm an older black woman with gray hair wearing a new shirt in a black splitter and I live in Madan mass and I'm a board member thanks pette um Andrea can you go ahead please hi I'm Andrea I'm wearing a black multicolored shirt and a yellow sweater and glasses I'm a staff member for the disabilities commission Mrs West I apologize I think The Interpreter may have misunderstood actually what I spelled um I was asking for additional board members Tera Tara thank you so much that was an interpreter error I apologize Tara go ahead thanks W um hi everyone I am Tera S I am a middle-aged white woman with BL glasses and a pink T-shirt um I am a board member and I live on on the Jamaica plane and rockberry line thanks Tara I see Elizabeth Elizabeth can you go ahead and introduce yourself please can you hear me yes hi I'm Elizabeth Jean Clow I I um live in Dorchester and a board member I am a an older uh White Caucasian uh female with uh more more uh salt than Pepper of my uh Fray here a blue and white shirt and I wear purple glasses I I think that that oh and I am a power wheelchair user thank you thank you so much Elizabeth and I think that's all the board members that I currently see on screen so I would like to ask commissioner MOS would you introduce yourself please thanks Wes hi everybody I'm Kristen mcos I'm the disability commissioner and Ada title 2 coordinator for the city of auson and I will turn it back to us oh I'm sorry I am a female middleaged with blonde hair and glasses and I'm sitting in front of an image of Boston City Hall this is Wes thank you commissioner appreciate that um I just realized Juan Carlos is with us and uh you raised your hand thank you so much I didn't see you earlier um I've got two pages of people and so I I didn't have you right in front of me I apologize Juan Carlos would you please introduce yourself hi everyone another at hi everyone my name is Juan Carlos Ramirez I'm a Hispanic male uh Liv in Boston south end commission um member as well um I'm wearing a blue shirt um Native from Peru I have Ain for injury so I use a wheelchair for my Mobility okay terrific thank you ju Carlos for that double checking triple checking just to make sure I haven't missed any other board members for introductions okay I think that's everybody all right and I'm getting a nod about that that's great thank you very much all of you for introducing yourself El we can go ahead with our agenda for this evening which I will just pull up now okay the first item we have to discuss is approval of our previous meeting minutes does anyone have any comments concerns questions uh objections about the meetings from our last board meeting excuse me the minutes from our last board meeting okay uh would someone make a motion then to approve the board meeting minutes as written this is Paul I make a motion to approve this is Carl I second that's great uh Carl thank you Paul has made the motion Carl has made the second all in favor please signify by saying I or raising your hand I I great uh any opposed seeing none opposed the board meeting minutes uh from last month are approved as red thank you very much let's see what is next on our agenda okay so today we have the bus stop management uh presentation and we have two presenters with us we appreciate your time the floor is yours uh good evening everyone uh Mr chair thank you for recognizing uh me and thank you to the disabilities commission for having us my name is Matt Moran I work for the city of Boston transport Department I'm a white male wearing a gray plaid color button-down shirt and sitting in my office in City Hall so again thank you for having us and it's great to be here uh so we're going to be talking with you about some more we working on for the last few months to really think through the city of Boston's strategy and management around bus stops we're going to be talking a little bit more about this but there are nearly 2,000 bus stops in the city of Boston and we want to think through a way that we can create a um comprehensive and orderly management structure to ensure that everyone has fair and equal access to bus stops and to make sure that we are uh using these assets and these Transportation um uh these these Transportation points as best as we can so I'm going to hand it over to we Anderson who is a co-op from North Eastern University who's been working with my team since the beginning of July who's going to give a Pres presentation about bus stops and really what we are trying to do in terms of managing them and managing them better so with that said we hi everyone thank you all for your time today my name is Lee Anderson I use they them pronouns so I'm a white non-binary um person with short hair uh glasses and I'm wearing a beige and white button-up shirt that is very soft and I'm going to go ahead and share my screen for those of us that are able to see that so as Matt said um we are here today to talk about better bus stops for Boston and I just wanted to emphasize that we are going to be speaking more so about how bus stops are managed than how they are um sorry then their design so a brief introduction to our team first and then we're going to have a conversation about what we mean by bus stops what the goal for our bus stops are why we have that goal what our research task is what we found and then what's next so project team I've introduced myself Matt has introduced himself we also have Gina on this call today she is an intern with Nelson niggard and we also have a wonderful consultant timtim who's been helping us they are fantastic um so now what do we mean by a bus stop um in this image there is it's downtown by Hay Market there's a lot of different signs going on we have some signs to 93 and there's someone riding their bike um in the bike bus lane what we mean by bus stops um bus stops are the designated area where bus riders wait to board the bus we're not talking exclusively about bus stations like Ruggles or North Station um bus stops Encompass both the larger bus stations and smaller less identifiable stops like the ones with just a pole on the sidewalk um so today we're focusing on bus stop management and then there's a photo of um a nacto bus stop that's got a shelter and bikes and green infrastructure and a light a bu stop includes curb configuration pavement markings sidewalk accessibility and clear path of travel bus stop signage amenities um such as benches and shelters and green infrastructure and so signage and all of those amenities in a street are also called Street Furniture so what is our goal our goal here is to have the best bus stops in the United States eventually and set a precedent for other cities so that they can invest in the future of their bus stops improving Transit experiences for Boston and also Beyond Boston why we have this goal buses are used by a lot of people in the city of Boston bus stops serve over 300,000 people daily in the mdta network on average um and more than half of those people are riding in Boston additionally even more people use these stops to ride link bus services uh ride share vehicles and public and private ride vehicles and public and private shuttles and here I have a photo of back Bay's Logan Express to the airport um also a side note that I forgot to add um all of these photos are photos that I took walking around the city of Boston um in an attempt to capture what the state of bus stops was in Boston today um or last week but you get the point uh bus stops are also an equity issue of all MBTA Riders bus riders are most likely to be dependent on Transit and they're also most likely to be members of vulnerable and historically underserved populations so here we have on the right um a photo of the bus stop at um Hines convention center right by TJ Maxx um it's a very narrow Street and there's someone that's walking in the street because there is not enough room on the sidewalk we have underinvested in bus stops though Corridor reconstructions and development projects can provide really good opportunities for bus stop Improvement a lot of stops outside of those projects lack adequate attention and investment um this means that many bus stops aren't accessible or they're poorly located or poorly maintained and so here we have a bus stop outside of the credential station um it's not the best situation it's definitely more accessible than some bus stops but it's really not the optimal location and there's nowhere to sit you can see um there's someone leaning against a pole uh instead of having somewhere to sit and there's one tree but it looks a little shabby so as Matt said there are almost 2,000 bus stops in the city of Boston and 85% of the 2000 do not not have shelters right now so we have really underinvested in providing a safe shelter for people waiting for the bus and then here's just kind of a map um view oh the the first image I showed was all of the different bus stops in the city of Boston there's a bunch of green dots that you can see lining all the streets and then very very very many less shelters a lot of which concentrated along major Transit corridors such as Washington Street and um over by Kenmore on the edge of the city of Brookline and then this map shows all of the different walk sheds so the darker green is much more sparse and a lot of the stops are concentrated in the center of the city and not so much down south so in in addition to being an equity issue they're an accessibility issue since beginning improvements in 2019 the MBTA still hasn't received funding to redesign 64% of 600 bus stops in their Network that they identified as having significant barriers to access um here's that Hay Market station again you see someone pushing a Mobility device on a brick sidewalk which is not optimal so what was our research task why why are we doing this project what is the work that we've been doing um our goal was to summarize the existing condition and operations in kind of the bus stop Universe outlining future goals for the operations and then providing an outline for a new bus stop manager role within the BTD Transit team for Boston transportation department uh work plan creating kind of opportunities for future bus stop programs for this potential employee so on the screen now we have a whole long list of the different people that we've spoken to for this project we have done over 25 stakeholder interviews with four P cities and five monthly working group meetings with key agency stakeholders so some of the sampling of the people we've spoken to um a lot of the people within the streets cabinet so including active Transportation a lot of people across the city of Boston like aong the disabilities commission um office of green infrastructure we've talked to people from the mbuta we've talked to some advocacy groups like R tag Transit matters um some additional relevant stakeholders we've spoken to include JC Deco which is who we have a contract with for shelters and then our peer cities we've spoken to are Chicago London Minneapolis and New York City and what did we find we found that every stakeholder we spoke to observed a lack of consistent coordination an ad hoc SL reactionary decision making around bus stop management non-standardized processes lead to inconsistent outcomes um these bus stops these two bus stops on the screen are across the street from each other yet they have very different amenities and provide a very different experience for users the stop on the top picture has a widened path for pedestrians a separated bike lane a real-time arrival screen and a large shelter whereas the stop in the lower photo has a narrow sidewalk and shared bus bike lane and also the text on the screen the top text is what the bottom is the font that the bottom text usually is trying to be a little silly there um and standardized processes lead to consistent outcomes while there is no one-size fits all for bus stops the lack of standardization that we have in the city means that Riders are not guaranteed a safe accessible or dignified experience we want to change that um there's an equitable investment in an attention towards bus stops our lack of consistent policy leads to inequitable outcomes particularly in communities that have been underserved historically by the city and that decentralized responsibility um results in missed opportunities and less implementation as a result because we don't have one point person for bus stops there isn't consistent and concentrated attention going towards the Improvement of all bus stops and that's not fair investing in a bus stop manager makes a lot of sense our stakeholders agree that the city of Boston would greatly benefit from this program and this person a full-time employee could create standard policy and deside guidelines they could strengthen inter agency coordination they could centralize responsibility ensuring an equitable distribution of investments in bus stops and set a precedent for other cities helping Boston to create the best bus stops in the United States so what's next what are we asking from for you um our next goal is to develop a work plan for and secure funding for one full-time bus up manager by 2025 our ask to you is to help us highlight the value that this role could bring to the city of Boston by sharing how it would impact you and our community and some additional questions we have for feedback are what questions you still have about the bus stop program what bus stops mean to you um if there are any more that we should document a lot of the bus stops that I have shown in photos are more downtown Boston so if there's specifically ones that you take or that you know that are terrible um I'm happy to take more photos and who should we speak to about bus stops so thank you okay great Wesley sing here so uh yes thank you for bringing down the slid for me great okay thanks a lot um now le and Matt so I'll open the floor for any questions if anyone from the audience or the board sharers have any for members have any questions that they'd like to ask may get your feedback yeah Charlie and then one thank you chair Wes um thank you for the presentation that that was it's actually very interesting I didn't realize and and while you were presenting I kind of looked up some of the numbers of actual commuters that are using coming into Boston and all that that that number of 318,000 is is very significant um and I in comparison to how many are actually coming in from outside outside of Boston to um inside of Boston Community um committing which is it it is a large number and I agree with that um I I do appreciate the presentation and um I think this is the first time that I'm hearing um when you stated that there is decentralized management of stops and that um I guess the infrastructure is not consistent which I appreciate you showing that so in in your advocacy or asking for advocacy for a budget for one person when when you're at are you is something going to happen with the existing systems or the existing I guess U number of folks that are involved with this if you have a full-time hire is that going to be a a net zero gain meaning there's going to be consolidation of these roles and responsibilities or are we asking are you asking for an additional individual on top of all the others that are not actually ordinating and and seeming that that what what it seems like from a presentation that they are collaborating amongst each other yeah a really good question Charlie so I think if I can maybe just try to if I can start start from a place of we we have a number of different teams across the city that are working on bus stops right so it's within City Hall you have uh Property Management that maintains the shelters you have some elements of Public Works that maintains sanitation near bus stops trash bins and do some snow plow and snow removal you have organizations like my my department BTD that maintains the pavement markings you have the MBTA that maintains the signs but there's really no one person or organization whose responsibility is to maintain sort of the ecosystem of bus stops right so what that means is that frequently Things fall through the cracks so if you think about things like snow clearance a lot of times that's the responsibility of property owner next store sometimes it's the responsibility of the mdta but there's no one person who's overseeing that from a systemwide perspective if we think about things like the shelters sometimes the shelters aren't placed in the most uh advantageous spot from an accessibility standpoint or from a operation standpoint and so we started to calculate the amount of hours that we as a team spend on bus stops um and we're looking at somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 hours just on the transit team which is seven people but still that's you know that is B one of one staff and then we start to add in these other teams that are working on bus stops you can see those hours start to add up so ideally this person would be a convenor they would be a point person they would be a resource and they would also help to facilitate conversations help facilitate conversations around what Nance we should be prioritizing is snow clearance is it thinking about um enforcement and then furthermore on design so as we start to think through what are the design needs of the system are there certain things that we can be prioritizing as we start to build up more bus stops when we touch a street when we rebuild a street uh that's our opportunity right and so what what are the amenities what are the design criteria that we should be considering we haven't gotten there yet but those are a few things thank you this is Wes um Juan Carlos I believe you also had a question or comment you can go ahead oh yes very briefly thank you so much Matt and Lee for this presentation um I understand a lot of things are very um it's a large organization to take care of it's it's pretty hard it's pretty tough and demanding uh I'm wondering more towards the I guess sometimes not just the infrastructure uh that perhaps people would disabilities need but it's also like a culture shift about how we allow people with disabilities as well probably Place themselves better to be visible for drivers so they can come and help them board the bus uh I think that's one of the feedback I just want to share because I think that's very hard especially when it's peak hours you know everyone wants to board the bus really quick um the bus the bus driver operator they may be very willing to help you to get in but if everyone already is inside of us they cannot deploy the ramp uh I guess there is no infrastru infrastructure that could solve that problem so there is also like the cultural I guess um shift uh or the communication that needs to be relied to civilians as well uh to so that everyone can collaborate you know towards the same goal so I'm wondering if you have um additional perspectives you can share on that matter and if there is any kind of assessment towards that and and from your perspective yeah thank you one Carl really good question uh I appreciate that that feedback as well so maybe just taking a a step back so as we think about who operates buses right in Boston so we have obviously the city of Boston operates all of the curbs we maintain the streets but it's obviously the MBTA that then runs the buses along with some private shuttle providers along with Boston Public Schools um you know along with some publicly accessible shuttle buses so but the majority of the folks we deal with I think to your point I think to the point you were speaking to are the are within the mdta and so the role that we can play is we can start to Think Through maintenance and design of our streets and we have direct control over that as the city of Boston but then the second thing we can do is we can coordinate with our partners the MTA and so as we think about that coordination we can flag issues like this for them so we can we do this already we have a uh regular coordination and checking with the NBTA around bus service around bus operations around bus reliability and I think to your point this is certainly something that will flag for that conversation and I know don't want to speak for the disabilities commission staff but I know they also have really good working relations with the MBTA system accessibility office too so we'll make sure we FL that issue and start thinking through that operational and then also that cultural shift as well thank you so much Matt thank you mat this is Andrea um just since you mention the commission I'd say ju Carlos if there are any specific bus stops where you find that you're consistently like not in a visible location to the bus drivers um there's a little bit of infrastructure stuff we can do with that in terms of like where we put the shelter related to the curb um so there's any particular ones that come to mind that you're often not visible let us know leak and document them um and then we can always follow up with a conversation about what's and what's the tea sorry to step in on on the presentation Matt and Wes thanks for yeah and thanks Andre that was a great addition too thank you uh yes thank you very much this is Wes speaking uh Richard I see your hand up go ahead please your West first of all Lee I think I heard Matt say you were an intern and I just want to say that was a very good report so to the point um you got a future someplace and thank you for that and I guess maybe this question goes to Matt but good grief you know when you hear about this stuff you wonder I get to this point um and I don't want to ask you to point fingers but is there anybody who's really in charge or is this really multiple um entities governmental or others that need to be coord ordinated and and appealed to and cajoled and is that the context we're in here which I don't Ender you having to deal with uh thanks for that question so I think to your point the as traffic as pickup drop off as sort of the the Uber and lifts the grub hubs of the world uh have sort of proliferated AC the city uh FedEx deliveries UPS deliveries were always there but with packaging getting dropped off in in greater numbers we're starting to see bus stops getting blocked more and more so some of this is an Enforcement issue but some of is also a design maintenance and I think not to steal a ter from ju Carlos but a culture shift issue and so I think this is something that we've known about for a while the bus stops have been underinvested in that there hasn't been that attention paid to them from government there should be but then it's also I think the facts on the ground have shifted especially over the last five six years and you I think the pandemic accelerated a lot of those things with the rise and e-commerce and a lot of deliveries so to to an extent I think we are now recognizing that and we as the city are thinking about ways that we can address that and so we have a new we have a Mobility team that does curbside delivery and curbside regulation issues but this s feels like something special and unique and that's why we're working on ways to address that that issue this is Le speaking um I can also add that I think in terms of talking to the peer cities the culture shift that Juan is talking about is definitely apparent um just there's a very like reactionary means that we deal with bus stops in the city kind of like mitigating harm instead of trying to prevent that and so by focusing on it more um and having one person be in charge of that um that's kind of where we're hoping to be is in the trajectory of things is to be less reactionary and more proactive this is Wes uh any other questions from board members for Le or matt okay um I actually have a question this is Wes again um I had a thought I wanted to share is is your department responsible for realtime tracking of buses as well no so that would be the MBTA so we as I you know mentioned earlier we coordinate frequently with the MBTA and we certainly pass along a concern to them if there if there is one but there's a not to get two car in the weeds but within the NBTA there's a customer technology department they're the ones who send out what the feed is and then different app companies mostly private app companies pick up that feed and we then transmit it to you via a uh tracking app okay yeah the last time I actually used a boss um I was using Google Maps for real-time tracking to see when it would arrive and how late it was or whatever um um I think people are still using that currently so it's interesting um okay I not seeing any other questions any other thoughts last questions or thoughts from the board members for Matt or Lee if not I will say thank you so much to both of you uh for your time and your presentation we appreciate it thanks very much there was one note in the chat from Tara saying I Echo Juan Carlos at not being seen as a wheelchair user at many stops especially during peak times for this reason I prefer the train first that's super Fair thank you for sh and thank you all for your time thanks so much everyone thanks so much again have a good evening uh okay um before we move on on the agenda I'm just reading the chat um Feel Free as Andrea said to follow up with the commission uh or the commissioner by email disability mass.gov if you wanted to share any further specifics about bus stops or other thoughts that you may have that you would like to be passed along to Lee and Matt for their Contin work on this issue now I'm just going to pull up the agenda bear with me one second so now in our agenda it's time for the chair's report bear with me again one second while I pull that up as well I have four I think four things that I wanted to share this evening the first thing is sports related uh sports news Achilles Boston the the Boston chapter of Achilles had a fundraiser event earlier this month and the event included watching a hockey game with the retired Bruins players the denoa and it was a successful event uh many of you may remember this organization's chapter lead Joe Lamar having come to one of our meetings and having given a presentation uh about their work of transforming people with disabilities to be able to participate in athletic programs and have social connections such as run meetups and training for marathons and things like that so that was my first item the second thing that I wanted to discuss was Hurricane preparation uh hurricane preparedness there was a recent article about using the examples of the two recent hurricanes in the American South uh Helen and Milton using them to Spotlight the challenges disabled people face when n natural disasters occur unfortunately in general Disaster Response does not include or consider disabled people people with disabilities and they are usually left behind in planning and then literally and physically left behind in evacuations and they are two to four times more likely to die or sustain critical injuries during a disaster access issues are common in Emergency Shelters including insufficient signage for blind and low vision persons lack of ramps and accessible bathrooms and a lack of training and awareness among staff and volunteers so so in light of these systemic shortcomings disaster planning that puts disabled people's lives at risk are persistent at every level in current Emergency Management Systems when the International Association of emergency managers surveyed their members on accessibility of their response system systems almost 50% said that they did not believe those systems effectively met the needs of people with disabilities in general governmental programs must engage with disabled people who have subject matter expertise and lived experience to reorganize current systems to make them more inclusive and sustainable after having learned about this article I hope that the disability commission has will continue their work with the city of Boston to prepare for disasters dis natural disasters intersectional challenges thirdly for my report this evening uh Christopher ree the actor passed away 20 years ago this month and there's a new documentary film about his life and what happened when he became quadriplegic after a free course riding accident the name of the documentary is super slashman so Superman but with a slash between super and man and it is about continuing forward with the drive and spirit that Christopher Reed modeled and instilled in us all and the documentary leads to important discussions about disability one board member Richard actually had suggested um that we have a private screening of this film for the entire Advisory board at City Hall and I will be sending out a doodle survey to everyone soon to figure out the best times for all of us to get together and watch this documentary and discuss our perspectives and thoughts on the film one question I had for the board was whether city employees should be invited for the screening and we can discuss this further um at the end of my report the last thing I wanted to mention is that the 2020 excuse me the 2024 election is now 6 days away six days until election day the mail and votes deadline was yesterday at 5:00 p.m. so there is still plenty of time to drop off your ballots at your neighborhood ballot boxes and I hope that everyone either has voted or plans to vote in the upcoming days so that concludes my report I am now open for questions for comments wow okay great thanks everyone I guess we're all set we can move on in our agenda to what is next which I believe is the commissioner's report bear with me just one second to confirm yes commissioner MOS the floor is yours we'll have your report next great thank you Wes and I know that Andrea is going to share my slide deck all righty sorry commissioner one sec okay let me try this again all right so I'm going to start off with some Department updates uh last month we told you about Civic engagement day it was scheduled for just a few days after our last board meeting in September so just to update you we had 150 plus residents come to the um morning event uh if you're remember we split it up into two events this year a morning event and an evening event the morning event was populated heavily by Boston Public School students uh transition age students in special education ages 18 to 22 we had six schools attend and it was really great to see the students um some signed up to vote some tried the mock voting um process with filling out a ballot and putting it in the machine uh they got to learn about uh joining a board or a commission they got to hear from um different city um departments about what work they do um how they could get involved in Civic activities we also had some members of the community attend in the morning and the evening and some board members I know I saw Charlie there at the morning session and Wes and Carl and I'm sorry if I'm missing other the people I thought Paul and ju Carlos may have come also um it was a little bit I was a little bit busy running back and forth but I want to thank everybody who attended um also last month I talked about our Ada day our Ada transition plan this is an update to the city's original plan from 1993 which assessed all its facilities for ADA compliance and general access to see if they were not compliant how they would make a plan to become compliant so we're currently working with a consultant uh a disability consultant to gather existing city of Boston data sets that contain information on accessibility in public buildings So currently we're getting data from the public facilities Department who recently undertook a full facilities compliance assessment for all their public buildings this includes libraries BCF centers um municipal buildings like City Hall and other office buildings that the city owns so they just um they're wrapping up that complete facilities assessment facilities condition assessment FCA um we're also getting data from The Parks and Rec Department on accessibility in Parks the streets cabinet to look at access on sidewalks what data they have regard regarding that and um curb ramps Boston Public Schools also did a thorough facilities condition assessment on all their schools so we're going to take all that data and we're going to funnel it into a web page on boston.gov that will give a broad overview um a quick look at the accessibility status of buildings and parks and things like that and then we'll have clicks to Links uh with more detailed information on accessibility so for example in a Boston Public School we have very detailed data on the accessibility conditions of a particular School say it's the um horeman the new uh school that they just opened up and it will give um very detailed information on like slopes and um you know ramps elevators all those things but it will also give we want to provide a broad overview so say you vote in that school you'll know if you can get in the front door you'll know if there's a bathroom and you'll know if it's um provides a basic level of access so um it's an exciting project we're looking forward to and uh stay tuned for more details uh we're also working with a group of students I agree that Lee did a great job with the um bus stop research that she did that they did but we are also working with a group of students from nor Eastern University um they're researching um what peer cities do when they have um people with disabilities who need case management it's uh an issue that comes up in our office frequently people will call and they may need services for in um a relative who's older or disabled and if they are older we can refer them to age strong but if they're a younger person with disabilities is really no place we can refer them that will take on like case management of comprehensive needs so if they need housing and home care and transportation we can direct people to different organizations that cover those things but there isn't really one place that we can say okay there's a 35-year-old man with developmental disability and his caretaker or his Guardian just passed away and now he's in an apartment by himself like who does he call so these really difficult cases we try our best to work on but we would really love to see if there's a um a model that we could replicate here in the city that would provide case management um you know because the the system of disability organizations and services is fragmented um you know there are state agencies that are nonprofits and it's really hard to figure out we had to send someone especially if they can't do it on their own so um we're excited about this Capstone project and we will keep you up to date on what uh research we find next slide um I just wanted to follow up a little bit on what Wes said um about emergency planning um I know that emergency um planning is in the news a lot disasters are in the news especially with climate change we're seeing so many more severe storms Hier hurricanes rain events earthquakes um you know we even have tornadoes now in Massachusetts things that we never had before so we know that um emergency planning is key but um it is difficult to hear like broad Strokes of people say like people with disabilities aren't considered because in all the work we do people with disabilities are absolutely considered so we work regularly with the um mayor's office of emergency management we work on their evacuation plans their alerts um decontamination plans um we work with them very regularly to ensure that dis disability access is built in so there's a commitment to to provide accessible transportation we ensure that they do have accessible vehicles um we work on communication for people who are blind and deaf we work on training um and training protocols that they can uh roll out to staff who are Manning Emergency Shelters so we uh we really got um kind of a trial run when Co hit and um we did see definitely gaps where people with disabilities were left behind um so I think we learned a lot from that but I do just want to reassure the board that we absolutely consider people with disabilities in um planning and training for emergency evacuations emergency preparedness and I know the state does as well um and I know that the board had written a letter back during covid about um vaccine access and so I think that was something that the state heard because since then I've seen more attention paid to people with disabilities when it comes to things like that but um definitely agree with you that it's an important issue just want to assure the board that like we do work on this issue constantly and I don't know if you remember but Colleen um invited people to the Sur program the community response um these are a group of volunteers who are trained to respond to their neighborhood when there are small scale emergencies so we had a cohort of nearly 50 residents with disabilities who graduated earlier this year and uh we're really um thrilled to have that many people respond and be trained and then they can be deployed when they are small scale events like if they were power outage and um maybe leaflets needed to be G out given out things like that so um if you want more information on that they do do those trainings every year so we'll be happy to provide more information and we'll do the next slide uh as everyone knows the election is next week um as Wes mentioned um the dropboxes go through tomorrow and early voting ends tomorrow um we can vote in person next Tuesday November 5th um all polling locations are accessible to voters with disabilities and they also have autoark machines um accessible electronic voting and absentee voting are past deadline for this year but you can always keep them in mind for next year um you can find out where your um what council races your um district is in and um look for your polling place um at the maps on the links included here one thing I did want to bring up is we have so far with early voting heard of a few accessibility barriers so I really want to implore that if you hear of any barriers If you experience any barriers with early voting with the electronic process or in person next Tuesday please let our office know let the city know you should uh send it to 311 and email us at disability boston.gov because we want to make those improvements we say you know very um proudly that all locations are accessible but if they're not we don't want to say that so we want to be a to make these improvements so please let us know if you uh experience any barriers or know of anyone who did experience barriers and I know that bcil and the disability Law Center will be doing a survey of 15 U polling sites to ask um to get a list of questions about accessibility so we will have more information on that but please keep in TCT with us um we would really like to hear that information next slide and as I've been um saying since you talked about goals that want to accomplish as a board I really want to be the one who can help provide opportunities for engagement so there are two things coming up that I wanted to open up to board members the first one is the office of participatory budgeting I know we've talked about this process many times but the city holds off a portion of its budget to let the public decide what it will be spent on so they've been collecting ideas all year including holding three visioning forums um this past month specific proposals will be developed this year and voting on the final projects will begin in January so the participatory budgeting external oversight board will be holding a public hearing on Thursday November 7th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. and they will be presenting the 15 draft proposals for the budget process that will be voted on in January so if you're interested in hearing what the proposals are it's too late to give input on them but it's very interesting to see where the public wants to direct this money so we welcome you all to attend and then the second thing is very exciting it's um the planning department has just finished a draft report on designing a diverse Boston so they would love to have the public read the report and share feedback it has it's a report about um design values and principles known as design vision and it's really about what kind of design communities want to make their neighborhoods feel like home and we know that Boston the mayor's goal is to make Boston a home for everyone so we would love it if you take a look at the design vision and the draft report some really cool interactive um you know pictures and um images and things like that and it's um it definitely talks about diversity in Boston and what we want to see and uh what we want to give people who uh who live in the neighborhoods there's a public meeting online on Wednesday November 13th and you can submit projects um comments at the project page or by emailing designv vision boston.gov and I believe that is it from oh I'm sorry one more slide um October wraps up national disability employment awareness month as you all know every year we do a webinar on Pathways to employment for city of Boston jobs so this year we did that um we did have that webinar but we added three additional ones and really they are based on our cabinet's goal of financial empowerment and economic Mobility for people with disabilities so our last webinar we had four webinars and the last one is actually wrapping up tonight um and they are all available actually I didn't put the links in yet but I'll do that before we said the slide deck out the first one was on Pathways to employment with the city of Boston where we had um Human Resources representatives from four different hiring agencies um Boston Public Health commission Boston Public Schools Boston Housing Authority and city of Boston they all came and talked about their hiring portals requirements for working for the agencies and talked about open jobs um our next webinar was on saving banking credit and financial incentives for Boston residents with disabilities things like um tax credits and tax prep um savings accounts even if you're on disability benefits so that you can try to save and get ahead our webinar last week was on finding affordable available and accessible housing and then tonight's webinar is for employees to know their rights um and this is general for everybody but um particularly f focusing on workers with disabilities and all of these webinars were um recorded so they'll be available on YouTube and we'll put in the links U before we send out the slide deck and then kicking uh actually wrapping off our um ndam month events is our first in-person hiring event so we're hosting an interview day next Monday in City Hall where we have roughly 20 participants that have been um vetted through the mass ability Mass commission for the Ed JVS and work Inc to apply for jobs um city of Boston jobs they are all um people who are disabled residents of Boston who are ready to go to work and looking for jobs so any jobs that they met the minimum qualifications for we asked them to apply for those jobs and then from um Human Resources we got a list of certain jobs where hiring managers were willing to do an interview on the spot for the jobs that they had posted so we have so far scheduled I think between 15 and 20 participants to get a first round interview on Monday so we're really excited about this because we think it um it eliminates a big barrier to employment for people with disabilities and that is getting a first round interview you don't know should you disclose your disability if it's visible or if it's not visible will we be discriminated against will there be any stigma so this way you don't have to worry about any of those barriers you can just come and present yourself and talk about your skills and your qualifications and um we think it's a big step step for the city of Boston and we're excited to um make it happen and that is it for my report so now I going to turn it over to Dan Rosengard unless we want to take questions first I was going to say commissioner Carl has a question okay yeah go ahead Carl so no it's more of a um just an announcement to go along with the commissioner talk about accessable vote on WBUR there was post an article on the website and in the radio about the agent of the Automark machines and how uh we're going to have to find new Solutions if we want to continue to make voting accessible I can put the link to the WB article in the chat if people are interested I just wanted to make people aware that that's something that the disability Community is working with hopefully the secretary St office and rev up um on thank you car I think it also speaks to what Wes was mentioning with emergency preparedness you know we can do so much work behind the scenes we do planning we work on policies we work on like products and services and then if they fail when they're in place it just looks like nobody did anything and nobody considered anybody so it is super important that you let us know and uh anything specific and also like the bus stops like we mentioned before if there is a bus stop that um is really Troublesome please let us know so we can can pay attention to it um so thank you for raising that call and I see Juan Carlos has a question yes commissioner M thank you so much for sharing all this information again um I think I think about I just want to comment about the um Seminars the web seminars those are great uh I miss this year to participate on those uh I would be interested to know I did you mention that those are uploaded later on a YouTube platform because I guess what I'm trying to ask ultimately is that um if those seminars would be available in other languages you know caption in other languages um afterwards so if it's on YouTube probably there is no problem because that can be used on um the translate options you can use them but otherwise I think those would be like a super potent um informational series for other folks as well thank you yeah we do have a YouTube channel and all our videos go on that so you can definitely use the um Google translate fun on those wonderful thank you so much all right um Wes do we want to go okay let's let's go to Dan and um then we'll come back and ask if people have more questions on my report they can do that as well so I'm going to turn over to Dan Rosengard who's the director of transportation for Boston public schools for his uh quarterly update to the board hi everyone yep hi everyone my name's Dan Renard the executive director of transportation for Boston Public Schools uh just to quickly introduce myself I'm a a white a white male from West Roxbury with light brown hair wearing a striped red button-down shirt and sitting in my office here at the bowling building in Roxbury I really appreciate the opportunity to uh to be with you all again I know I've come a few times before to give updates on Boston Public Schools transportation and the work we're doing um and just really appreciate the opportunity to to be back and to you know have some of the Commissioners time tonight to talk to you all uh our mission at Boston Public Schools transportation is to provide safe reliable and ontime transportation for all Boston students right now we transport about 22,700 students on a daily basis and that includes about 6,840 students with disabilities who receive door to-door transportation that means a you know bus service that picks them up and drops them off at their home address and we also provide transportation for 2,633 students who receive a bus monitor which is an additional adult on the bus to support that student based on their individual needs uh as the commissioner mentioned I've you know a couple times over the last few years come to share updates on our bus driver and bus monitor Staffing as well as our ontime performance and I'm going to do the same tonight before I do I just wanted to give a little bit of context many of you may be aware um but for those who aren't we implemented a uh entirely new technology system acoss our operation this year and that it's called the the zoom system prior to this Transportation had been done one way in Boston for basically for the last half the last half century the last 50 years where uh you know drivers were using paper printouts of their routes uh every day and you know we had pushed you know as far as we could in terms of making improvements and you know tightening up operations with this system but we knew that to really get past kind of the the plateau that we've been at the last few years uh stuck at about 90% of buses arriving on time you know to get past that and also to make sure that we're providing improved safety and transparency you know for families and for schools and students that we needed to modernize our system and so we implemented this year the zoom technology system which uh is a you know fully integrated across system across our operation um some of the highlights is it provides GPS navigation tablets on board buses for bus drivers and it provides a a new mobile app for families to to track their bus uh which they could do before using our old system but what's new in Zoom is they Cann now in addition to just seeing where the bus is on the map receive etas receive automated uh push notifications when the bus is delayed and get notifications when the bus is arriving to their stop when their student is picked up and when their student is confirmed is dropped off and so that was you know really important um you know to provide that additional transparency you know and you know additional safety measures for for students um so that was something very very new that we were doing this year think we knew that you know doing something this new would come with some growing pains and so I just wanted to share that context um and with that you I'm going to share my screen and show some slides here so tell me are you seeing a [Music] slide someone can give me a thumbs up or yes yes thank you um so this first slide here is showing our ontime performance which is the key me key performance indicator that we use to measure our operation on Time Performance measures the percentage of buses that are arriving at school prior to the morning Bell in the morning and in the afternoon it's you know similar but just slightly different it measures the percentage of bus that that arrive at School prior to their scheduled departure time which is 10 minutes after you know the PM dismissal Bell and what you'll see here is the the blue line for AM and PM is showing our ontime performance week by week for the first nine weeks of the school year last year and the red line on each graph is showing the on Time Performance week by week this year and what you can see is there was a significant decline at the start of this school year and our ontime performance um you know for the the first two days of the school year our ontime performance this year in the morning was 47% uh which was you know significant decrease from the first two days last year which was 73% we've made some you know some rapid improvements uh in September our ontime performance in the morning increased to 71% but that was still you know 7 percentage points below uh September last year but what we've been really encouraged by is you know in October we're now seeing higher ontime performance in the morning this October than we saw last year in October and so you know we have obviously one day left in October but through today our October ontime performance is 90% compared to 88% last October so I think you know while certainly we you know did not um intend to you know or anticipate quite such a decline at the start of this school year think you know what we're seeing the trend that we're seeing is in line with what we were expecting which is you know being able to to recover quickly and get to a point where we you know fully expect to be able to continue to improve kind of beyond what we were able to do in Prior Years and we're still um we've been improving not quite as rapidly in afternoons um but we're we're just now at the end of October kind of getting to a point where we're on par with afternoon on Time Performance compared to last year so that's our our primary metric um wanted to also talk briefly about our bus driver and bus monitor Staffing uh so we started this school year fully staffed with bus drivers and bus monitors both for the first time since prior to the onset of the covid-19 pandemic we started this school year with 744 bus drivers and 759 bus monitors and what we've seen is um you know we were also you know more or less fully St with bus drivers last year so you know we've seen very low numbers of uncovered trips with bus drivers both last year and this year we've seen a ever so slight uptick this year which has really been driven not by bus driver availability but actually by bus availability as our bus fleet continues to age and so we've really doubled down on expanding our maintenance capacity over the last month to help address some of the issues that we saw in September there and then with bus monitors uh what we've seen is we've more than haved the number of students who are required but missing a bus monitor on their bus compared to last school year and you so in the mornings right now we're averaging 63 students at not having their morning bus monitor this year so far compared to 165 students in the morning for the same time period last year and in the afternoon 104 students uh compared to 215 last year not having their morning bus monitor and again that is out of about 2,633 total students who require a bus monitor based on their individualized education plan or their 504 plan and then just the last slide I have because I don't want to take too much time and want to leave any time for questions is just you know to summarize some of the the key challenges that we saw at the start of this school year the biggest one as I talked about was this adjustment period associated with the roll out of the new Zoom technology uh you know some additional factors that we saw this year we also saw a significant number of student level changes uh that could be enrollment Chang changes you know move new new to the district or transferring schools could also be a new IEP or a change of address any type of change that requires a new bus assignment we saw a significant increase in the number of those changes in August and September this year which required us to you know change the bus routes from what they were set for when the the bus drivers got them and did their dry runs for the start of school to what they actually ran on the first day of school we saw that more than 2third of routes changed from when the you know routes initially locked you know and drivers did their dry runs to what they had for the first day of school and this was more than double the number of changes we saw you know for the first day of school last year and so this you know also contributed to some of that initial challenge that we saw that took some time to to work through and get the route stabilized and then we've also seen some significant traffic impacts um you know from changing traffic traff patterns in the city and I think most acutely from the temporary shutdown of you know a portion of the red line in September and then a portion of the orange line for most of October that being said I think you know where we're really focusing our you know our time and prioritization for you know continuing to improve ontime performance is in a few different areas the first one is you know as one of the benefits of this new system that we have we have a lot of newly available data that allows us to you know update our bus schedules in a more Dynamic manner than we were able to before to make sure that scheduled times match actual travel times that we're seeing on the road we're able to identify routes that have low or no Riders you know based on newly available ridership data so that we can use that to improve our overall efficiency uh we're getting additional data that's helping us identify and collaborate with schools who were you know longer bus loading times to help them improve their processes and then um I'm not sure if if uh you know Matt and Lee are still on but um we've been you know had really good collaboration with the streets cabinet and the Boston transportation department they've been you know really great in supporting us to help um improve School Bus operations by thinking about how can we make it easier for school buses to get around the city you know and then um finally you know internally we're we're really really laser focused on how do we improve our yard operations to make sure that bues are getting out of the yard on time in the morning so that they're you know they're on time for their their their first trip and then you know making where um there's challenges within the bus schedule that might make a bus late you know for its second or third trip of the day looking at where can we make routing adjustments for some of those consistently late buses to help the bus run more on time um so that's you know that's where we're focused right now like I said I think this was it was definitely a very challenging start to the school year and I know a lot of um you know a lot of students and families were negatively impacted by that and that's something that that we take uh incredibly seriously and are you know really really urgently thinking about how do we continue to improve and I think this you some of the this new technology system that we've put in place this year you know while it has certainly come with an adjustment period I feel very optimistic about um how it's going to help us to improve both safety of our buses and the efficiency and Timeless of our buses over the you know the medium and longer term and I think we're we're starting to see that uh right now but um hope that was helpful and you know definitely happy to open it up for any questions anyone has great Wes here all right so I think Charlie had a hand up or a question go ahead thank you um if I may before I get to my question Dan I just wanted to to uh just make a comment on the commissioner's report when she was giving the summary of Civic engagement day um in the morning I just wanted to say that when I did participate this my second year and and um I was amazed at how many students and young adults attend but this year I I stayed for the whole event and came earlier and actually sat down with some of the presentations and commissioner just wanted to say that the amount of um how the presenters engaged was great and the presentations were were very educational so they were very focused on voter registration and and people understand their rights for that and then they made sure that people took information with them so there wasn't a a pressure to sign up to vote that day or anything like that they they really explained um what each individual um could do and also some of the the laws and regulations for which that they can um look into so I just want to say it was it was a great day and then all the other presenters that came from City Hall um they nobody came unprepared I guess or or just ad hoc they definitely were very well prepared so I I really appreciate that and then also um all the caregivers and the Educators that came not only from Boston Public Schools but I I got to speak to a lot of them and and and they're so very dedicated and and bringing all the students that it was very great to hear everyone's stories and and their passion and collectively all the Boston Public Schools um Educators that came represented um a program in BPS called strive and I know that that it's an acronym um that I it's not off the tip of my tongue but I think there's a reason why it's an it's a lot of it's it's pretty long um thing but uh they they've told me and I've also followed up with some of the parents how supportive that the commission and the commissioner has been um over the years and just wanted to to to thank you for that because there is ongoing work and um that is going on for budgeting and all of these things that they're trying to have more advocacy for the the the young adults and students that are going through transition and also for Independent Living afterwards and I know that's something that is including for myself as a parent is um there's a lot of anxiety towards that those period so it was great that um on Civic engagement day that you have that but then you also have continued support not just for that day um but for the programming afterwards so just want to thank you for that yeah and I wanted to say that um Joe from Achilles he came as well as to represent the organization and a few others and um I will say too that the U Boston City Hall staff really looks forward to the event every year and Masha Fitzpatrick from BPS um she told us that a lot of the students and faculty and staff from BPS also look forward to it every year some of them have come multiple years and some of them were too young to vote when they first came and then they were able to register at another year they attended so it is a really um valuable event that um they look forward to so thank you for that and um if I may ask my question now for Dan um I appreciate you coming and I know this is challenging on other U presentations like when I um go through the to the special education parent advisory council meeting you you give the presentations and there's um a lot of questions so you have you're a very challenging position I do appreciate how much you're actually engaging and coming um and and giving the a very consistent message in the metrics I guess um what I want to ask specifically as we you know Drive in from this commission we kind of have been asked asking but also gearing towards hey specifically whether it be disaggregated data but I just wanted to ask you specifically because we focus on the students with disabilities um and some of the the metric that you're showing what are the now that you have an app that's collecting data but then also I think you've been in this role now for three years so you're hearing and seeing you're getting a lot of feedback and engaging with a lot of parents and even on the task force a lot of the time that you're putting in on that Transportation task force I mean what are you seeing as the challenges both on a on a qualitative data that that that's coming in but then also anecdotally specifically that you're hearing and seeing um for the students with disabilities when it comes specifically for uh the yellow bus transportation what are you able to key in on some of those challenges that you're working on or anything that that needs to be I guess addressed or anything that we can do to help on those yeah I think it's a it's a great question and I I really appreciate all of first the opportunity to to engage in these different settings and and Charlie all of your engagement I know we've we've spoken in a number of different um you know settings over the last couple years um I think the most consistent message that we hear from families of students with disabilities around riding the school bus is uh how can we do a better job training our bus monitors to support those students you know we have such a wide range of uh students and you know individualized needs on the school bus and it is I think you know we we provide all bus monitors with um you know with training across many different areas um but I think that where we really continue to to work to improve and think about how can we do this better is how do we make that connection with the bus monitor who doesn't work in the school with the specific students that they are serving and supporting on the bus and helping them understand what is you know what is this student need on the bus you know is it because you know is it uh you know a medical condition that the student needs a bus monitor for or is it you know the student as um you know autism or is it a you know the student needs behavioral support like there's such a wide range and the support that is required based on each student can be very very different and helping get the information into the hands of the bus monitors and giving them the connection with the with the student and with the school so that they can really you know be well positioned to support the students on the bus I think that is consistently the number one thing that we hear from from families and schools around how we can better support students with disabilities okay Wes here all right any other questions or comments for Dan or related um to the commissioner's report anything else all right not hearing anything okay well thank you so much commissioner uh and and Dan for your time I think we'll go ahead with the agenda now we'll move on to the the next line of business let's see I think we're moving on now to announcements did anyone have any announcements to make today uh that would like to share I'm not hearing anything oh I guess we can move on to Old business okay so in terms of old business um we had discussed board goal AC or excuse me board goal setting action steps bear with me just one sec I'm going to pull up some documentation so per the email that was sent out um the executive board had asked everyone to review the survey results document and come tonight prepared to discuss and I wanted to review the top five goals that we had voted on the first was broader engagement with communities of different cultural and language backgrounds of people with disabilities the second one was continued discussion of Community Living housing and emergency preparedness as a regular meeting item the third was mental health and physical health the fourth item was attempt to impact all or as many as possible of the 75 to 80,000 disabled residents of the city of Boston and the fifth was to become more proactive rather than simply being The receptors of information so those were the top five goals that we had voted on in the survey um the other things that we had asked the board members to be prepared to do was to provide some specific action steps that we could take in order to make progress towards those five goals for example the goal of becoming more proactive rather than simply being The receptors of information we uh the the executive committee had us discussed adding a section to a report out a section of the agenda to report out about what presentations they're considering sorry uh what we we the eboard had a meeting and we would talk talk about having a discussion of the announcements also the announcements portion of the agenda to be more explicitly board member reports from their own communities I would I just saw a response in the chat from one board member so I'll just look at that very quickly and Richard had wanted to share his thoughts about the goals he said related to the goal setting he said the uh commission has not had a business plan so I would recommend that we propose one goal for this year and then see how it goes he says additionally in his comment that he would suggest that that goal be a general one so for example um do our best to make improve the lives of the residents with disabilities in the city of Boston something general to that effect and then he suggested further that I as board chair appoint a small Committee of no more than three members to discuss those five or excuse me to discuss five items that would help to further the work of that one particular goal we had chosen for the year so that was Richard's suggestion in the chat um are there any other thoughts about or comments about goal setting for our work together Charlie go ahead hello um I I actually went through um the votes and I appreciate how you distilled it you know from the executive meeting and reading what Richard stated I I kind of put some thought through this and a lot of those goals because I try to categorize them right because there's so many but a lot of them crossed over and I think you guys during the executive meeting kind of Flushed this out that it it it's to me there's like the the goals that that kind of um um melded together was you know fell under like more Community engagement and representation meaning what are we hearing right from our who we're supposed to be representing and then sharing that out like today and maybe just to try to tie some of this in when we listen to the the NBTA report the bus stop report it was great to hear from Juan Carlos and and um and also Tara that the comment of their experience in briers ship and cultural ships and all of those types of things right versus just infrastructure changes because I think in there for me there was a a direct connection as as I advocate and talk about transportation for the students with disabilities I think the qualitative thing that Mr Rosengard talked about was the the actual workers that that that do the transportation or the buses how do they be be more educated on like culturally for engagement but but also to um understand from the perspective of that writer right what are they how can it be more I don't know the word inclusive is appropriate but how can they have the same ridership experience or almost a customer satisfaction experience um as as the other writers right that that or the majority of those writers and I think I agree with what you were saying but I think it's for me if there was that we were to channel from Richard says into one goal I think it is it is more of of being that Proactive or um more uh Community engagement right the people that or the the communities or wherever our our passions represent that we share more or bring more and share that you know at the meeting so I think your idea of if people give presentations right or if they're supposed to speak to something specific I think um I I I like that pathway because it it it helps me in these meetings to hear the perspective from others so when we do have a very good um participation from other members and they're giving their perspective and that allows me to learn more but then again I think I said this on the last meeting it it helps me better communicate to not only this commission but to others to help with advocacy this is Wes thank you so much Charlie appreciate that uh are there any other um comments or concerns from other board members before I call on the commissioner okay commissioner MOS go ahead the floor is yours thanks Wes um yes so Charlie I think you're right that there was a lot of excuse me there's a lot of crossover in uh the work and the goals one thing that occurred to me when we were hearing from uh Matt about the bus stop um position is that the draft report for um diverse Boston planning is a great place to give feedback for things like that um the bus stops that Juan Carlos and Ty mentioned things like really being included in the neighborhood and making sure that those things thought of people with disabilities are thought of so I think it's a really great idea to give input and if this board took the link that was in my report and shared it with all your networks especially your disability Network so people with the disability lens that would be so much input to the design vision from people with disabilities and I think that plays into Richard's comment about um setting a goal of helping improve the lives of people with disabilities we really want to do it in a systemic way and this is how we do it through policy planning and that's where you can have a real impact and um I know U Richard has talked a few times about a business plan but really all these things are laid out in the enabling legislation and summarized in the bylaws and that's exactly what you're supposed to do is try to improve the lives of people with disabilities through actions like this so I real think that the U the opportunities that I'm sending your way are direct will have a direct impact on City policies I can't emphasize that enough like this is a chance to give a disability perspective directly to the city so I really hope that you'll take advantage of some of the things that I've sent you and um I think you're you're right on track Charlie and also Richard thank you so much commissioner uh I wanted to add also another part uh in terms of these announcements I think in terms of community relations Community engagement and making sure that people have information that means that the members can also share their their input their concerns again what other folks are saying about the yes honey I see you other folks are saying about uh get sorry my daughter is just wanted something there she goes okay um about what they're hearing in the local community where they live in work as well sorry that was very distracting um let me get back to what I was thinking about um are there other comments uh other thoughts from board members with regard to the goal setting for our work together okay so I guess we could talk about setting up that smaller committee that Richard had mentioned so we can continue this effort to choose one goal and then discuss that one goal and its pieces at the next meeting what do folks think about that okay so I see Olivia nodding um yet Olia did you want to say something I see uh Charlie yep oh excuse me Olivia go ahead um yeah I I think that's a good idea and if we need a motion I'll make one this is Andrea as a point of order we don't need a vote to make committees Wes can um just appoint folks awesome okay hey W this is um let me think about it Charlie I'm sorry go ahead yes of course yeah I think that was that was my question on by looking at the bylaws but then also on Robert's Rules Andrew is that correct Wes can actually we we don't need to make a motion he can actually create a subcommittee and then appoint folks to that subcommittee to to complete this by exe um um from the executive committee correct this is Andrea that is my understanding um the chairperson has duties to appoint subcommittees as needed okay yeah that because that was that was my question and so just to give feedback I I agree with most of uh Richard saying when it comes to one goal and then drilling that down then having a subcommittee kind of report back to um to the executive committee for um by the next meeting um I think that's is appropriate because I think it's it's also um I think you guys have a lot on your plate executive committe when you're planning the other things and um getting other perspectives you know to you know delegating is fine I guess is really what I'm saying this is Wes thanks uh Charlie for that comment I'm certainly not ready to appoint people in this moment in this meeting I think I'm going to need to think about this a little bit um and I'll have a conversation with the executive committee as well uh I can plan on making a decision in the next week or two and folks who are appointed will be informed I think probably that number three that Richard mentioned is a good number uh hopefully the committee and their work will be short and sweet all right thank you very much uh I'm going to move on to the next old business item that we have and that is with regard to our bylaws and updating them to match the state standard I have comments on this as well I'll just switch screens here so we had spoken about this last month also and we're talking about a particular change of language to the city of Boston disability commission uh Advisory Board uh State Standards then there's two words that we're talking about the difference between the words are May and shall so our current bylaws for the uh disability commission Advisory Board are under article 3 in the 2013 version and it says The Advisory Board shall consist of 13 members appointed by the mayor the majority of members shall consist of people with disabilities and then one of the members may be a member of the immediate family of a person with a disability so it's that last statement one of the members may be a member of an immediate family of a person with a disability that we had talked about changing and changing that may to shall so one member shall be a member of an immediate family of a person with a disability so uh I would ask that someone make a motion to make this update to the bylaws this is Carl I make a motion that we accept the change would anyone like to Second Carl's motion Charlie I see you a second okay so then if there are no objections we can adopt the motion to amend the bylaws are there any objections okay so hearing no objections the motion to amend the laws is adopted thank you great thanks everyone for that going back to our agenda uh now we're on to new business I had a piece of new business the Medicaid estate recovery Federal requirements so I discussed this in my chair's report from last month and the Boston Globe article that I referred to cautioned that Mass health would most likely comply with federal guidelines on the estate recovery as opposed to State guidelines and I know that Elizabeth had questioned next steps for The Advisory Board and what we can do about the estate recover recovery news and whether we should explore how to push this with the federal government and I had initially last month I had responded saying yes when we considered writing a letter to the US Congress but I did take some more time to think carefully about it and I realized that since we want to focus on Massachusetts residents why don't we instead write a letter to Governor Healey to congratulate her firstly for signing this into state law and then asking her to take action on next steps to block the federal requirements to State Medicaid we could perhaps CC the letter to our state attorney general Andrea Campbell as well so are there thoughts about this commissioner MOS go ahead yeah um thanks Wes I can add a little bit of context to this issue so um I'm a member of the state's PCA Workforce Council which is a group of nine u Massachusetts residents uh most of us are consumer employers which means we um go through the PCA program that Medicaid pays for um if in case people don't know Medicaid is funded jointly by the federal government and by the state government so right now the PCA Workforce council is working with the um Mass health office to look at ways to keep the PCA program sustainable moving forward um you may all be aware that it seems like the state and probably the country but definitely the state is in for some um Financial um difficult times moving forward um Revenue has not been um what was projected or it it's definitely not as abundant as it has been in previous years so we are looking um the PCA Workforce council is working with Medicaid um we formed a specific work group to look at how we keep the PCA program sustainable and part of this work group Mass health is is um asking us to think about ways to not cut back on services or because we wouldn't support that but think about creative ways where we could um like trim around the edges or um whatever we can do to keep the PCA program sustainable so what we um all I want to do to raise the issue raise the issue that um the budget is definitely going to be an issue there may be cuts to a lot of things and this uh Medicaid EST State Recovery is going to cost the state money so I know the the governor signed it but I think we just want to be thoughtful um about writing a letter not that you can't write a letter but let's just be thoughtful about how we frame it and definitely be thoughtful about any more asks that are going to be made which would impact the budget and the PC um okay all right sorry the mass health working sorry yeah the mass health um work group for the PCA program is um open it's an open meeting log meeting and they're once a month so if anyone's really interested in Medicaid Mass health budget issues feel free to join okay thank you so much commissioner MOS um so I'm understanding that how the budget how the budget cuts are working and how that could definitely impact the um estate recovery more than that oh that was a question sorry about that yeah I was going to say more than that I really just want to um give people a heads up to think carefully about any more asks um and that's what we're doing with the PCA program we're just thinking really carefully about growth um we've seen it here in the city you know the budget issues with the city um budget growing um at 8% and the revenue not keeping up with that so um the the same thing is happening um with Mass health it's a very expensive program and they're really trying to contain costs and I am fully supportive of the estate recovery uh it actually will impact me personally and a lot of people I know so um I'm very supportive of it but let's just um maybe if we do want to talk more in depth about Mass health we can have a a small um separate subgroup or a meeting and I can um get more information for everybody okay all right yeah that sounds great thanks for that we can plan that out so any other thoughts about um the estate recovery okay hearing none let I add a follow-up discussion uh I'll have a followup discussion with you commissioner maros after this um regarding this topic because I'm seeing how we can see about how we can make maybe have a balanced approach on it um if we think about it a little bit more uh about possible letter in the future all right moving on um yes Colleen go ahead Charlie or Charlie excuse me sorry um yeah I I I guess I want to I'm trying to I'm hearing what the commissioner is saying and trying to to gather and I guess on a higher level I think it is important and if the executive committee or the commissioner can help on some of the education because it is true that that everywhere right when it comes to revenue and and expenses we're we're coming at at a a real inflection point here uh for budgeting and I think historically we've seen um a lot of the social services and and and adjustments um come after services that specifically um affect our community and it would be helpful if we could get some presenters to talk about that so we don't um I guess I think what you're kind of warning commissioner was to to advocate for something that could take away from something else right uh within the Comm you're not because this is all that you know when we talk about the the some game it's it's going to be very difficult so if you if if there is something at a higher level versus just very pointed to these two topics that we can learn about how you know what's going on and and and and if there are any um services that that are slated to be um um I guess prioritized to be de budget or you know funding to be lowered because I think that a lot of these services do affect um you know my household directly and so it's very difficult to understand how all the how all the different Levers work I can get together some um potential presenters and send it to the executive committee okay sure that sounds great that's a great plan thank you so much I think that we'll all really benefit from that all right let's see here moving on the agenda to I'm just looking at the agenda excuse me now it's time for public input this is Andrea with the commission staff I put this note in the chat but for public input please use the raise hand function um or indicate in the chat if you have a question or comment once you're recognized by the chair we can either send you a request to unmute if you wish to voice your question or pin your video if you wish to sign your question public input is limited to 2 minutes per speaker thank you so much all right Elizabeth I see your hand raised well before we we go ahead and open it up for a public input I guess Elizabeth wanted to have a comment first Elizabeth you're still muted can you hear me now yes yeah I just un the category of new business which I don't know if I missed that but we if from old business we we went to new business and I wasn't a win but that's what this would be included under um this actually is old business but it's quite old that I wanted to revisit the issue of re-evaluating the city called Plaza but we plan to do that a year after um it was uh completed and last November that didn't work out and to my knowledge it hasn't happened since I I think there was an attempt to see if there were some people to do a walk around so to speak um to examine the bricks I originally envisioned it as going over more aspects of the plaza of was the new uh design which has many positives and is greatly improved the use of that space for people with disabilities but were there any um tweaks or further adjustments but I just wanted to bring that back up as a topic for a future [Music] meeting or follow up can I um respond to that West sure go ahead yeah um just to say that you are correct Elizabeth um we had scheduled it for last year but then we realized we scheduled it for like 4:00 in the afternoon and it was after daylight savings so it was going to be pitch black so um we didn't get to reschedule it for various reasons but we can definitely do that um the weather's been really mild so we could look for a time um it's really up to board members we can always make time on our schedule to have people come in and walk around um there have been some tweaks that we've made for accessibility like wayfinding based on some feedback that we got from different residents so um we can either you know prepare something for the next board meeting or um you know we could have staff walk around with like a V the phone and video it um but we can definitely discuss uh reviewing it in the next month or so okay thanks yeah that's plan on that let's plan on that as soon as possible really before the snow gets here before winter gets here and it starts snowing all right well thank you so much for that um and we'll add it to the agenda definitely for next month and hopefully we can plan something before then before the next meeting uh before December 11th all right so we're going to transition over to back to the agenda we'll go back to the public input line of business so anyone have anything uh for public input Wes this is Andrea no one has put anything in the chat during the last few minutes of our discussion of the plaza okay if call may I make a motion yes yes yes I was waiting for that please I'd like to make a motion to adjourn okay who'd like to Second Carl's motion just Paul I second a motion yes and I see pette okay yes okay any any objection all right all in favor please say I I I okay this meeting has been adjourned at 7:26 thank you so much have a good evening [Music] everyone e