Starting with fiscal year 2017-2018 and for the next three years, the city of Apopka will make its facilities more handicap accessible including City Hall, Museum of the Apopkans, the fire administrative building, and the public services complex at East Cleveland Street.
Compliance plans that would meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards will include, among other things, the installation of Braille signs in bathrooms, switching out interior door knobs for levers, and installing ADA-compliant bathrooms with proper width entrance doors, lever door handles, commodes, and turn radiuses.
“There are various reasons why we have to do ADA improvements on our facilities,” said Robert Sargent, city spokesman.
The plan to make the facilities more ADA compliant is outlined in a resolution the City Council approved in November 2016. According to that document, the city wants to comply with the handicap accessibility requirements of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program.
The ADA upgrade schedule is also listed in the 2017 Facilities Maintenance Priority Report that the city released this summer. This is the first year of that report, and the city plans to do this annually from now on, said Jeff Plaugher, city facilities administrator and author of the report.
The 18-page report serves as an inventory of the 65 city-owned facilities, spanning from one year old to 90 years old, that have an assessed value of about $15.7 million.
Apopka has decided to complete the 2017 Facilities Maintenance Priority Report in order to gauge what buildings need what type of maintenance. A conclusion of the report is that roofs are the top maintenance priority, according to Plaugher.
An expanded version of this story appears in the Friday, September 1, issue of The Apopka Chief.
