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Alright, well as everyone said I'm Paul
it's a privilege and pleasure to be here with everyone listening to these insightful
and eloquent presentations
as is my typical mandate what I lack in eloquence hopefully I can
make up in excitement because we're excited about what we've been able to
accomplish
were very excited to be here representing Northern Durham
the Township of Uxbridge in specifics. So, what I'm going to talk about is the
culture of inclusion and how the township is working to develop an
accessible infrastructure
and I'll date back about a year ago when we met Samantha and we were discussing
some of our initiatives and although we are small in stature and we don't have
a single diversity initiative
we've incorporated that into accessibility plan so,
I'd like to talk a bit about that process. So a little bit of a background
the Township of Uxbridge is in Northern Durham
it's an amazing spot in Northern Durham if you ever wanna go up there
population of just over 20,000 and just under
fifty percent the population
is aged 45 years or older and
that's important as you'll see by the Rotman quote there that disability
tends to increase
in those persons that are 45 years old or older
so it really drives home the importance of developing an accessible infrastructure
and just looking at the definition of infrastructure
that basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the
operation of the society
or enterprise and what infrastructure consists of for us
is an educational base, policy and procedures that develop the next level
the structure and then ultimately those tangible physical
assets, trails, buildings all those sort of things
so the process that we've gone through to try to get to that point
looks something like this and this may look very utopian and streamline
but it's actually not and the good thing about this process is
is that it's constantly re- evaluated and we're constantly re-educating ourselves
because as everyone knows, accessibility and inclusion are unique to every
person so you're never
all always there. So we go through this process, knowledge and education,
integration, action and constant
re-evaluation in education and then that leads to the evolution.
So, our base of knowledge in
education; we started with the accessibility legislation with AODA.
AODA was there before but really when I came on the scene, this is where we were at
so looking at all that we assess the legislation and
although it is good in thought, maybe the layout isn't perfect
so hopefully no one from the province is offended by that but, it makes a bit more sense
maybe to attack it all at once
then doing in the sequence it does so that we can get to an end point quicker
so we looked at that and we educated ourselves and what we did need to do to
obtain all those deliverables within legislation. Then we moved on to
integration
there's a quote there that's directly from the Municipal Act and I won't bore
you with it but
Chair Anderson touched on it earlier and basically the purpose of municipalities
is
to deliver good governance. And how do you do that? Well you be responsive to
shifting
economic and demographic trends and you educate
and be educated to create an informed
discourse, ultimately with the goal of removing
unintentional subjectivity and bias, and that includes barriers,
attitudinal, technical and actual physical barriers.
So we would go through and integrate these trends into our policies.
How do we do that? Council and staff. Id be remiss if I didn't mention our Mayor, Gary-Lynn
O'Connor she's a true champion of staff
because ultimately our ideas don't go anywhere without Council support
and I also have to mention our CAO Ingress, Velness and
my boss Debbie LeRoux, who is also here the Clerk.
People sometimes ask, "What does the Deputy Clerk do?"
I quipped that I carry the Clerk's bags and get coffee. (laughter)
So, if it wasn't for those champions and going to Senior Staff and getting the
support to get these policies to you we've really wouldn't be able to get
there
Next is our advisory boards and committees
Uxbridge is small in stature in someone mentioned before about small organizations
that
we have very limited staff and we're very confined to a rules so
we rely hugely on our advisory boards and committees which is totally made up of
community volunteers, and per capita, Uxbridge I would say is leading there for
volunteerism and we've integrated accessibility and inclusion
into those policies. Next we have Accessibility Advisory Committee which I
happen to be a part of
and they've really looked it's an interesting things again we don't have
that technical expertise are the numbers to go
and do individual actions so we've it tried to educate and integrate
everything into everything we do.
And then the BIA the "Business Improvement Area"
we actually rewrote the procedural bylaws for a few of our organizations
and within those bylaws that shape the BIA
and chambers actions
is actually diversity an inclusion clauses so that they know that everything they
do is procedurally based with those initiatives.
Lastly, our community organizations again we are very
Blessed to have groups such as the Bonner Boys and a lot of other organizations that really
poor themselves into the community.
So when you get that whole network educated and integrated we can move on
to the next step of the process
Actions. So accessible infrastructure and tangible assets.
I'll go back and we'll talk about the facility accessible design structure and that's a
guideline based on universal design principles
we adopted ours from the City of London who's been long after it
and Niagara region also has one and there's about 75 to 100 organizations in
the public sector-
Municipalities, School Board's and Universities that have adopted the
standards
and what they do is they're beyond the building code
and they're beyond the legislation right now and they're saying that you build
every structure or you renovate every structure to a universal design standard
so that way instead of accommodation being the afterthought accessibility and
inclusion
is the way you start and then you make those refinements afterwards
so we're not the only municipality you add up to adopt that, I believe Ajax has
it I think Oshawa as well but
when our council did was we went a little bit further
and within the resolution and the bylaw adopting the standards
we also passed the resolution that any development proposal would be giving
the facility
accessible design structures and any developments that come forward
that have portions and development that ultimately we would assume,
we're requesting the build them to an accessible standard
so that way it's done in advance. And that goal is just to appeal the social
consciousness
and then budget as well, every year with their budget process we go through with
other capital pages and then the operating budget and we incorporate all
those little pieces into accessibility our plan.
So, some actual successes to date
The use of accessible principles are being used to make decisions
and it's great to see across staff. Come this spring, will have access to all
picnic tables in every park so much the fact that
accessible picnic tables will dominate the picnic tables and all those packs
that's very important for us because Uxbridge is the Trail Capitol of Canada.
We've also gone through the process of looking at retrofitting
all doors in all of our facilities with operator systems
and also making all of our accessible routes be on an accessible path.
Uxbridge is a culturally rich township
and we have a lot of older buildings so there's a lot involved so to see that
commitment interaction the start that process
again just shows staffs buy in.
When we get to potential sale or disposal properties
and budget times are getting tighter these days and tough discussions have to
happen about facilities going forward
and not saying it's the only point but what we've noticed is staff and council
are looking at accessibility and universal design
if we should keep these facilities long term and if we can't ultimately make them
accessible
maybe we should transfer those funds to other facilities that we can make
accessible,
so to see that kind of development is is very very impressive.
My favorite story is in October 2012 then we were just getting ready to send
the standards forward
the Director of Public Works came up to me and in our township the Public Works
budget is the largest budget by
far and they were working on the tender for new fire hall
and it had already been sent out and he had a look at these and he said okay
we're sending them out as an addendum for the tender so many designs would be
come back with those universal so the accessible design standards
and I kind of looked at him like, it hasn't even been adopted by Council but,
he sent a known anyway so to have that champion who is the key budget driver
it's really great to have in our organization.
Ultimately, just the inclusion is to have accessibility incorporated into
everything we do
and that inclusive community in developing target will just continue
evolve and will continue cycling though the process.
Thank You.