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Capital District Coalition for Accessible Transportation (518) 273-1110 (A Grassroots Disability Coalition located in Albany, New York's Capital Region)
Members of: The Council for Community Service of NYS, (CCSNYS) The National Alliance of Public Transportation Advocates, (NAPTA) Americans for Transportation Mobility, (ATM)
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CDTA Disabled Advisory Committee
The New CDTA Disabled Advisory Committee Updated: March 19, 2008 2nd meeting of New DAC: More to come
Updated: January 1, 2008 1st Meeting of New DAC: I thought about starting a brand new page for the New CDTA Disabled Advisory Committee but then, how would we learn from the past without keeping a record of what happened to the old committee. To bring you up to speed, CDTA disbanded their old DAC (Disabled Advisory Committee) after years of holding meetings with only a couple of people that showed up. To be honest, from what I heard, the committee was not always informed of meetings in a timely fashion and the meetings went from quarterly to semi-annual without any notification much less committee choice. Members had drifted away and given up for the most part. CDTA decided mid 2007 to create a new DAC and CDCAT was invited to a seat on the committee. We accepted with hope that our participation would help with addressing disability issues with public transportation, particularly with STAR that still has many problems. To be honest, I'm pleasantly surprised at the first meeting. Many problems were brought up that CDCAT has said to CDTA for years. Considering we're always being told we're the only ones that mention these issues, imagine our surprise when many of the new DAC also brought up the same issues: Long bus rides, the 25 minute arrival window, a difficult and confusing " STAR user manual", late buses and other issues. Ray Melleady, the CDTA director said he was going for more relaxed meetings, quarterly for about 1 hour. What can be accomplished in 1 hour (including a lunch by the way) - We suggested 1 1/2 hours which was accepted by the committee. Since no mention of a record of the meeting was announced, the Coalition also suggested that there be a meeting record. This was accepted too. I did a lot of listening at this meeting short of bringing up those things above. Meeting participants seemed genuinely concerned about especially STAR problems and solving them. Quite a few representatives are from dialysis centers and other businesses that work with people with disabilities and illnesses. Not all of these representatives know how STAR works or that there are Federal Laws governing paratransit (STAR), or that STAR won't provide anything beyond the minimum service. This may make it more difficult for them to address issues. There was no one else with a disability who uses STAR there other than me. Hopefully this will not be the case at future meetings. Since Mr. Melleady determined that relaxed meetings without a chairperson or any of those pesky committee details would benefit the committee, I guess this is the way it will go for the future, at least untill the brand new committee begins to get used to working together. At that point, they may decide to make this committee decision for themselves. No one wants to be viewed as a problem or "pain" at the first meeting by disagreeing with the executive director's suggestions. We do hope in the future that the committee be allowed to make their own suggestions without quite so much input from CDTA management. For this committee to survive and do any good, we must be free to speak our minds. Several people afterward contacted Mr. Melleady about committee membership and were told that it was the committee that decides such things. The next meeting is on February 15th. There should be more information then. You can find CDTA's meeting record of this meeting under the public meeting tab on the left. Oh - We'll be doing CDCAT meeting records as well in the future. Perhaps I can get a real committee picture for here too! ____________________________________________________________________ Updated: June 25, 2007 Well, it had to happen sometime, CDTA approved the creation of a new Disabled Advisory Committee. The good news is that a board member, Denise Figueroa, was approved as Chairperson of this new advisory committee. Ms. Figueroa is the only member of CDTA's board of directors that is female. She is also disabled and is the Executive Director of the Independent Living Center of the Hudson Valley (ILCHV) We have great hopes that this new disabled advisory committee will be a fair one. Our thoughts on what the new committee should include: 1. Committee members need to actually show up for meetings. 2. The members of the Disabled Advisory Committee need to be MADE PUBLIC so that consumers can CONTACT THEM DIRECTLY, by mail, email or phone, should they have questions or problems they wish to bring to the committee. Anything other than that isn't reaching the "Disabled Community", it's just resolving problems the people on the committee face or see. Not being able to contact committee members directly means that a customer would have to contact CDTA first and many customers are too afraid to talk to CDTA for fear of retaliation or simply being thought of as a problem person. 3. The Disabled Advisory Committee needs to have meetings that are open to the public, so that consumers can go there and LISTEN, even if they can't speak with committee members during the meeting or have a limited period to speak 4. We need people on the committee to know that disabled customers have transportation rights and that there are laws that govern paratransit services (STAR). 5. The Disabled Advisory Committee needs to have accurate meeting minutes that aren't slanted. Preferably, the committee should chose it's own secretary from it's members. The meetings need to be public and be distributed on request within a reasonable time. 6. CDTA needs to keep their committee members informed and not make decisions on disability issues without them! The committee chairperson and members should decide how often they want to meet, and dates of meetings. Both CDTA and the committee members should be able to add issues to the agenda. 7. Last - Advisory committees are just that - for advice. Much of the time they are there to appease the public and as a Public Relations move - It shows "the company cares". These committees have absolutely no authority or true influence to make changes. Many transit agencies use them to quickly run by things they want to do and only give one side, or incomplete information or one sided information to the committee. This is why good ADVOCATES are needed on the committee. All in all, transit agencies nation-wide use these committees as a whole as mostly rubber stamp or PR. It helps them tell everyone, "We ran this by disabled citizens and everyone loved the idea." (while they still have capacity constraints, ADA violations) and dish out shoddy service to the majority of the disabled public. If CDTA wants to have a Disabled Advisory Committee, THIS TIME, they need to run it fairly, that includes adding in advocates that WILL speak up and KNOW THE LAW! CDCAT will be adding this committee's public information and meeting minutes to our website so you can keep up with what's going on. Updated February 17, 2006 This was a - now 2 year defunct committee that CDTA had at one point. The problem with advisory committees is that they have no true capacity to make change. They "advise" only. Nationally, most transit systems set these up to "rubber stamp" approvals on what they need to run by "the disabled community". The committees are run by the transit agency, not the participants though the transit agency sometimes allows the illusion that the participants run it. The Coalition is the only organization of it's type in the Capital Region that is run by people with disabilities for people with disabilities without any assistance, funding etc from CDTA or any transit authority. We believe any other situation would create a conflict of interest.
Updated January 23, 2005 A little birdie told us that CDTA is trying to pour more people in this 1 year plus defunct "committee" and bring it back to life. They haven't met in over a year. Why resuscitate it?
Updated July 23, 2004 - This committee is now officially considered defunct by CDCAT. It hasn't met in over a year.
Updated October 11, 2003 This is a CDTA advisory committee made up of many CDTA staff, some agency advocates and a few consumer advocates they gather. They did meet quarterly, up till this year. Then somehow CDTA seems to have forgotten that these meetings were quarterly. We asked and were told not only did they just meet semi-annually, but that they ALWAYS met semi-annually. But we kept hearing from some members who were on the committee that these meetings were supposed to be quarterly and had been up till lately. We figured it all out by looking over the meeting minutes for the past couple of years. Meetings were quarterly and there's nothing in any meeting minutes stating that a vote was taken to change this but somehow meetings have gone from quarterly to semi-annually without much in the way of being noticed or even now.. remembered by CDTA staff. There's no noted record of a vote on this so we just can't explain this fully. Anyway, The Disabled Advisory Committee has been around for some years now. We've asked a lot about this committee and this is what we've heard from CDTA and others: Originally, Last October, we were told this was a committee "just like ours" that CDTA met with. That wasn't correct. This is not just an "independent committee" that meets with CDTA like we do. CDTA calls it their "advisory" committee which means it's THEIR committee. Being called an "advisory committee" doesn't give the committee any genuine power as they can only "advise", but it does give CDTA the ability to claim they consult with people with disabilities on a formal level as they "meet with people with disabilities and have a formal advisory committee". This committee is run by CDTA staff. CDTA tells them when to meet, arranges the date, agenda and from what we've heard reported, runs the meetings as well. They also type the minutes for the committee and distribute them. If CDTA doesn't do these things then the committee doesn't meet until they do. ---- They also seem to have gone from quarterly to semi-annual meetings in 2003 without notifying their committee members or without any notice of a vote shown in meeting minutes. (We haven't heard there was any vote on this.) This committee began 2/14/96 as a spin off of a Federal ADA mandated committee called CAT, to monitor the implementation of the 1992 ADA compliance plan for CDTA. It began with 1 CDTA rep and now there are 4 or more CDTA reps involved, sometimes more CDTA staff present at meetings than people who represent the disabled community. While it's nice to see so much interest from CDTA staff we'd hope this committee, which has a lot of potential, would have double the number of independent advocates involved. Since the committee began, apparently no one has ever set up a structure for this CDTA Advisory Committee. There is no consumer as chairperson (or any official chairperson) for the committee. There are no officers. There is no mission statement for what the purpose of the committee is. (We have to wonder if CDTA's Board of Directors even receives reports on the "advice" offered by this committee as we've not seen anything that was stated as an advisory committee suggestion even mentioned in CDTA board meeting minutes. ) Our take on the mission statement is that if you don't outline what your purpose is, in writing, it's easy to stray or not to accomplish your goals. For that matter, goals should be in writing as well. It helps to clarify a group's purpose. From what we read in their minutes or hear from committee representatives, we hear we do have in general, similar goals to improve transportation as the of the representatives involved in this committee, though the Coalition operates independently of CDTA. We are also involved with multiple types of transportation issues aside from dealing with issues with CDTA and actively advocating for change in other transportation areas. The public is now allowed to attend Disabled Advisory Committee meetings. (7/23/04 note: after this was stated no more meetings occurred.) We consider the people on this committee as representatives of the disabled community like us. However, there is no way for the general public to easily know who they are or get in touch with them. They have no website or way of contacting them. CDTA makes no mention of them on their website. We figure the disabled community should know of all the groups out there that are representing disabled consumers regarding the transportation issues which is why we are putting the information here.
For this committee to be effective, they need to attend their meetings and to demand that they have a mission statement, goals. (Personally, they probably need more than semi-annual meetings.) They need to pick their own chairperson and officers and their own members. Make no mistake, so long as they are working for changes to benefit people with disabilities on transportation issues the Coalition backs the member's efforts. We want them to be as effective as possible. We're in this together! In any case, we extend a offer to any and all Capital District groups involved in transportation issues for people with disabilities, and particularly to the Disabled Advisory Committee. We offer some free advertising on our webpage and WANT and HOPE to write much more positive information about this committee in the future. Send in information, such as a Mission Statement, web link, etc. and we'll get the news out.
Together we stand.. Divided we fall..
Last Updated: 03/19/2008 |
