City hears offer with ADA help

Offer prompted by recent Center Street project

Gordon Woods
Posted 4/6/21

City commissioners heard Monday from a man offering advice on projects involving ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements.

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City hears offer with ADA help

Offer prompted by recent Center Street project

Posted

CLINTON — City commissioners heard Monday from a man offering advice on projects involving ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements.

Ken Bretzer, consultant at Complete Access Consulting, addressed council members about the planned modification to part of the intersection of Center and Webster streets.

“It’s unfortunate that they got some bad information from whoever they talked to,” Bretzer said.

Bretzer consults with government agencies, businesses and nonprofit organizations about being compliant with ADA and other regulations.  He said he had worked locally with Monical’s, Jimmy Johns, Clinton Church of Christ, Mach I and Save-A-Lot.  Bretzer said he also had worked locally with the city and the county.

When work was performed for the city on the length of Center Street last summer, city officials thought they could hold off reworking a small section of sidewalk at one intersection. 

At the intersection of N. Center Street and Webster, a couple of steps on the northeast corner leads pedestrians onto the sidewalk.  City supervisor of public works Steve Lobb and Terry Fountain, of Cummins Engineering, said they were under the impression they could wait to change that small element until later, but a resident filed a complaint.  The steps are not ADA compliant, so the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) told the city the work couldn’t wait.

Since part of the work is paid for by federal funds, IDOT gives the final sign-off of the work.

“If there were more information available to the City of Clinton, I think they might have avoided this,” Bretzer said.  “Someone at the state or some level wasn’t very informed on it.”

• See the complete story in the Friday, Mar. 9 print edition of the Clinton Journal or now in the Journal E-Edition for subscribers.