I should have known trusting the Atlantic Highlands Borough Council or its paid attorney would never resolve a simple request from and 86 year old lady with a vision problem to get some help so she could attend government meetings. I should have known they would never agree to a reasonable accommodation … even though the Federal Government, The State of New Jersey, and the Supreme Court of the United States say they have to. (The Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination)
DELAY AND POSTPONE
Delay and Postpone … The Atlantic Highlands Borough Council is good at it.
Look at regionalization;
Look at cannabis;
Look at St. Agnes School;
I should have realized that asking for a reasonable accommodation for my disability … something that could have been easily resolved with a ten minute conversation … and a cell phone at a government meeting was too much to expect from a governing body which had already proven themselves time and again during the year of delaying and postponing.
This group of elected residents has delayed, postponed, and finally spent a bundle of money but offered no resolution on major issues in town throughout the year … and continues to delay and postpone on other issues.
Why ever would I think they would listen to a lone 86 year old resident who cannot see clearly and doesn’t have any prospect of ever having that corrected and has every appearance it can only get worse?
After all, this is the same council that spent money to look thoroughly at the question of regionalization and got their very valid report, certainly enough information to let the residents vote on the question. But instead, they kind of ignored the expert advice they were given and instead enabled the regional high school board and the two elementary school boards to do yet another report, one, ironically, that flowed with the one the towns together had authorized.
FIDDLING OVER REGIONALIZATION
Then they fiddled some more over that, listened to the paid employee of the three districts explain the school boards needed to have more to say, though none of the boards had said anything at all, and still have not, before letting the voting residents who pay the bills have their say on what they want.
When it got close to a fait accompli, did that happen?
Nope.
They wanted to blame the other town, Highlands, for slowing up the process.
To move it along a little, everybody agreed to mediation. And it was the Atlantic Highlands council’s counsel who was the person selecting the mediator. Even though he couldn’t make a meeting or two because he was busy elsewhere. So here we are, at the end of the year, the residents never got the chance to put the question on the ballot last month, and the mediator has not even been announced, let along started his mediation.
Stall and delay, delay and postpone …
Why did I expect anything different?
THE CANNABIS STALL
Look at the cannabis question.
Same thing.
Spend money, draw up the ordinance, pull it away before the public has had its say, and postpone and delay it until next year.
Why did I expect anything different?
SAINT AGNES SCHOOL PROPERTY
Look at the St. Agnes School property. That’s been three years of pospone and delay and an abominable attempt last month to change the use of the land while right smack in the middle of negotiating the contract for purchase … without informing the seller.
That was not only a postpone and delay, that was downright sneaky. Even the proposed ordinance hid the well known name of the property, identifying it by lot and block rather than as St. Agnes school which would have caught every taxpayer’s eye.
Not only that, but they never clued in the church’s attorney they were doing all of that, and that poor soul only found out about it when the taxpayers heard it for the first time in response to questions from alert taxpayers. You could even hear the gasp of shock about residents at the meeting when they heard it for the first time.
So why did I expect anything different?
THE LIST GOES ON
Look at the parking ordinance, or;
Look at the new million dollar plus Kappa Construction company building at the harbor that did not meet CO requirements but was still leased to tenants almost two years ago. Not sure if all the corrections have even been completed yet. Or the lawyers have agreed on anything.
So why did I expect anything different?
A SIMPLE REQUEST
Why did I expect anything different … because I had faith. When I realized a year and a half ago my eyesight disease was so severe I could not drive at night, I simply asked for a reasonable accommodation that would still enable me to attend government meetings.
My eyes were ill and deteriorating, but my desire to know what’s going on in my hometown and inform others of it were as visible as ever. So I asked for an accommodation under the state laws on handling problems disabled people have.
I was told I couldn’t have anything.
So I tried again.
That’s when a simple phone call and an invitation to stop down borough hall one day and talk about possible solutions would have worked and resolved everything. The Court refers to it as the “Interactive Process”.
But that didn’t happen.
I had no alternative but to file a complaint with the state division on Civil Rights.
I did that 18 months ago.
No surprise
It has taken until November to get to the mediation stage. I had given dozens of dates I could make myself available all day long; the attorney couldn’t make any of these, or any the mediator expected would work.
Instead the attorney said he couldn’t make it until next week. Not only that, but my request, which could have been settled with communication and a cell phone, is now in the hands of not only the borough attorney but the borough’s insurance company’s attorney as well.
Oh, and by the way, both Highlands and Atlantic Highlands have the same insurance attorney. Even though the complaints against the two towns are for different reasons. There’s a lot of irony in that as well, but that will be in the Highlands story.
New Jersey issues a mandate
So back to Atlantic Highlands’ postpone and delay tactics. New Jersey, one of the 50 states that makes up our United States governed under the Constitution, has made it mandatory for me to sign never to talk about the mediation, the agreement that prompted the first chapter of this story. So I asked if they would accept an amendment to their policy of non-disclosure. They agreed, but only if both parties, that’s me and Atlantic Highlands would agree to it and promise to keep the state out of it. I, of course did agree, since I believe the people have the right to know everything their elected officials are doing and how they’re spending their money and wasting time. Atlantic Highlands, of course, would not agree. Did you pick up on the irony? Atlantic Highlands wants to chill my First Amendment Right when discussing violations of my Fourteenth Amendment
Letter to NJ Civil Rights Division
So this week, the Civil Rights Division got another letter on my behalf spelling out how unfair the entire scenario has been and how Atlantic Highlands stall tactics are resulting in more money spent, more time wasted, and still……people with visual disabilities are not being accommodated at government meetings. More than a year and a half after being notified.
Those stall tactics? Well, just to cite the recent ones:
The Attorneys moved this mediation out a full month past the mediator’s suggested time frames.
The Attorneys delayed for a month responding to the state’s inquiry as to which representatives would be attending mediation;
The Attorneys changed the time of the mediation;
The Attorneys ignored the States request for a representative with “full settlement authority”; which means, without that, we could spend a day talking, could agree on something to resolve the issue, but then the attorney would have to go back to the Borough Council to see if it would agree to what we had all agreed on during that day long mediation.
The Attorneys required a Non Disclosure Agreement the one that said I couldn’t even talk about what was going on.
THE STATE ACQUIESCED TO EACH AND EVERY OF THESE CONCESSIONS,
So that’s Atlantic Highlands’ partial history on postponement and delay hoping it all goes away.
THEN THERE’S HIGHLANDS.
They don’t stall, they don’t delay, they simply do some things without even telling the folks. Or they simply don’t do anything at all and believe no resolution is needed because they want to act like they have done nothing wrong…
But that’s the next chapter.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
You might call this a Tale of Two Cities. Or how an elderly person who cannot see like everybody else can be denied rights and courtesies in two different ways by two different governing bodies of two different towns. And how the state can simply look the other way and say both of their means to avoid action are okay.
Two towns. Two different systems. One result. And the feeling it leaves?
Damn the ADA
Damn The Rehabilitation Act
Damn the LAD
Let the disabled be damned.
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