By Sarah Rae

City Hall’s lack of disabled access highlighted

Dec 8, 2016 | 4:00 PM

Next year could be the year when North Battleford finally addresses accessibility at city hall, after the topic came up in recent budget deliberations.

Although the multi-level city hall building has a ramp and lift to get disabled patrons to the customer service level, that’s the most that can be said for accessibility. There are no washrooms on the main level and no elevator lift to the next floor, which also contains city council chambers.

With a lack of accessible washrooms and no way for someone to get to chambers without using the stairs, city council meetings aren’t accessible to all members of the public with physical disabilities. It would also be difficult, if not impossible, for the city to have a staff member with a physical disability work in the building or a council member with a physical disability.

“If we had a staff member that was mobility challenged they couldn’t actually work here because you’re on the main floor, there’s no bathroom there, so it’s really an antiquated type of facility that needs to be updated,” city manager Jim Puffalt said.

He said the city hasn’t yet had an employee or someone who wanted to attend a council meeting and couldn’t get up the stairs, but it’s a problem that could arise. He said people often struggle to get up the stairs to pay a bill and even the former Mayor Ian Hamilton had trouble getting to council chambers after a back injury.

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“We’ve had a couple of knee replacements downstairs and it’s just horrible to watch them hobble down the stairs to get to and from the bathroom,” Puffalt said. “In this day and age you shouldn’t have stuff like that. At some point in time you have to say ‘yes we’ll do it,’ otherwise we’ll be here 10 years from now going ‘well now the building’s falling down and the mechanical system’s shot and the walls have had it’ and we’ll have to build brand new.”

Puffalt said the location of city hall is perfect and the bones are great, the city just needs to update it and make it more accessible. He said the city even has an unused building right next door that could be involved in the renovated building.

The 2017 draft budget includes city hall renovations to improve disabled accessibility in its capital projects, but the funding source is the raised debt limit, which hasn’t yet been approved by city council.

City council will start the approval process for the 2017 budget Monday, but Puffalt warned any projects that rely on the increased debt limit may take a while to be approved as the debt limit will need a lengthy discussion.

Sarah Rae is battlefordsNOW’s court and crime reporter. She can be reached at Sarah.Rae@jpbg.ca or tweet her @sarahjeanrae.