Tab on ramp for SF supervisors' chamber adding up

[The Northerner]

What costs more: a home in San Francisco's Sunset District, or a wheelchair ramp in the Board of Supervisors' chambers?

If you picked the house, you're wrong.

By the time the final tab comes in, the cost of designing and installing a ramp to the president's chair at the Board of Supervisors - a project now under way - is expected to top out at $699,413.

That is about $50,000 more than the median cost of a home in the Sunset.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/28/BA7I1KMRO0.DTL#ixzz1WRN9WUOv

[ananda]

1. Insane.

Utter insanity.

[sharp_stick]

2. Too bad we couldn't bid on it

I'd do it for 650K. One trip to Home Depot, maybe I'd even treat myself to an air driven nail gun.

[Lance_Boyle]

3. ADA madness.

This is a "reasonable" accommodation? Would be cheaper to hire two people to carry someone's wheelchair up.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

4. As a San Franciscan this issue pisses me off.

This whole thing was instigated by Michela Alioto, a supervisor who is disabled. She was upset that there was no access to the Board president's chair. She knew the fix was going to be very expensive but pushed for it saying that disabled people need to see that they have full access to the highest levels of government. The Board president at the time said he was perfectly happy to sit down with the rest of the supervisors, and it was floated that the whole higher chair thing be done away with altogether, just shut the damned thing down. But she would not hear of it and so now we are looking at this very expensive retrofit.

I am all for reasonable accomodation and access, but to insist on this retrofit instead of just saying let's be done with the president's chair altogether is a ridiculous waste of money at a time when our City needs every dime it can get. As a City that provids Universal healthcare for the population, I can only say to Michela, "How many sick people could we have treated with that money?" :mad: