Letters to the Editor

Letter to the Editor: Burlington Town Meeting Leading the way with the ADA

The following is a letter to the editor and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of BNEWS. 

 

I am a Precinct 4 Town Meeting Member who needs an accommodation, per the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), to attend Town Meeting remotely. Prior to this May’s Annual Town Meeting, the Town purchased some new equipment and upgraded the audio/video system in the high school auditorium to make remote access fully functional, so I was able to fully and equally participate in Town meeting by clearly seeing and hearing the proceedings and being able to raise my virtual hand to be recognized and clearly speak to the people in the auditorium. I have been working with the Massachusetts Disability Law Center Director of Advocacy and know that this puts Burlington ahead of the game compared to most other towns when it comes to providing ADA accommodations for Town Meeting.

I want to give shout-outs to several people and organizations who made this possible. There is Bob Cunha, Director of Operations for the schools, Jose DeSousa, Network Manager for the Town and schools, and Joe Bongiorno, Critical Systems Administrator whose perseverance made this a reality. There are the BCAT folks, including Jennifer Dodge, Executive Director, and Robert Zahora, Engineer. All of these people and organizations were extremely professional in installing and connecting up the equipment. I really appreciated their work since I am a retired electrical engineer. There is our Town Clerk, Amy Warfield, who worked tirelessly with one other remote attendee and me, as well as with IT and BCAT, to ensure that all aspects of the system worked as needed for Town Meeting. There is our Town Administrator, Paul Sagarino, and Assistant Town Administrator, John Danizio, who supported this project by allocating funds for the technology upgrade. And, of course, there is Representative Ken Gordon, who got $100K appropriated in the State’s budget for Burlington’s technology upgrades to facilitate hybrid public meetings, about $5K of which was used for the high school auditorium upgrade. Burlington is extremely lucky to have such dedicated, talented, and hard working people working for it. I’m sure I’m leaving people out, so please forgive me if I did.

I want to close by saying that I hope we can expand on what has been done to help more people. For example, I know there were several people who could not attend the May 20th session of Town Meeting because they were traveling for work. However, they could have attended remotely. At that session Article 25, the Marshall Simonds field article was heavily debated and discussed. It turns out the article passed by a very large margin, but if it had been a close vote, it would have been a shame if this article, or any article for that matter, was decided one way or the other because some people couldn’t attend in-person. And more importantly, it really is our constituents who are helped by this as it ensures they are fully represented by their Town Meeting Members.

Let’s keep Burlington leading the way forward, and thanks again to all who helped make this possible.

— David Miller, Town Meeting Member Precinct 4