Again I like to now officially welcome all of you to CCDA's Listening Forum
we truly are grateful for this opportunity to have such a diverse
attendance to this event. We have began this topic back in July,
those of you who may remember we met in Los Angeles within our full Commission
meeting and we actually cut half of it off - to begin a topic of this nature to
have a listening forum, which it was our first listening form, and we
progressed on saying that we wanted to continue this topic in Sacramento in
Northern California, and so indeed here we are again taking the time to bring
together stakeholders from various organizations and constituencies.
So again we want to welcome you and thank you for coming I want to at this
time introduce to you all our vice chair of the board as he presents also a
welcome from the board, and that is none other than Commissioner Vice Chair Doug
Wiele. Thank You Angela. [Applause] As Angela said I'm the vice chair of the Commission I'm
the vice chair and chair elect of California Business Properties
Association which is how I happen to be on the Commission.
The Commission's task, our mandate is to facilitate communication between the
disability community and the business community, and I'm actively a part of
that role and glad to have you a part of the dialogue. I'm grateful that you're
here. We thrive on public input we don't do well when we just sit in our
Commission hearings without awareness of how all of you are feeling and what
you're thinking and what's on your heart. So I'm very grateful that you're here
today as a part of the conversation.
Thank you. I will share with you all that our chair had an emergency this
morning and he sends his wishes wanting to
be here but he was unable to make his flight and so we do know that he would
like to have also given you a welcome. But at this time I I just wanted to
briefly just introduce to you by name and they can raise her hands and smile a
little harder, our board members. So within the audience we have today with
us Brian Holloway. [Applause] Yes thank you that's good. I don't see Walter Hughes.
Scott Lillibridge [Applause]. Celia McGuinness [Applause].
Michael Paravagna [Applause]. And of course last but not least, Betty Wilson [Applause]. I want
to also introduce the staff of CCDA. They may not all be in here since we're all
running around, so let's quickly recharge. Our manager, LaCandice, is over there
Operations manager. Our analysts Matthew Dave, Taylor, and our volunteer has been
supporting commission is Dharon. Thank you all for making this
happen for us because this indeed would not be [applause] as successful as it is without all
your tireless work. And so at this point I want to bring to you our facilitator for
the event and that's Eileen. I just realized, Jacobowitz. Thank you I
forgot to verify this pronouncation of that. She has been a
sought-after facilitator within the state of California and so we're very
pleased to have her here with us she's participated in nonprofit organizations
and public sector for over 25 years. Her experience includes working with
Department of Rehab and other state officers such a state ooffice of AIDS
and the mental health office department. So we thank you so
much for Eileen, and we will turn it over to her at this point. I will not use this
mic here since I can't reach it good afternoon welcome to Curtis Park.
Anyone live in the area? No? I live like a mile from here so I was
thrilled when I found out we're doing this here, so welcome.
So let's take a look at today's agenda. Let me first say that we are running a
little behind, so you might feel a little time crunch but we will do our best to
make this thing work for everyone. We're gonna start today with a panel
discussion and that will be just starting in a moment with some experts
in the field around disability parking programs, and then it'll be your time to
speak and we'll have some small group discussions I'll set that up in a little
bit. It'll be your opportunity to share your
concerns your recommendations around the disability parking program. And after the
small groups then we'll give an opportunity for the some
sharing out of the small group discussions and I want to let you know
that because this we don't have a full day here and a lot of time for a full
and rich extensive conversation we do want to make sure that you have the
opportunity to provide as much feedback and input as possible. So
there's three ways one during the rotated discussions and the small groups
- you have two forms on your piece upon your table there. One is a piece of paper
that has the three discussion topics that we'll be talking about in the small
groups and we invite you to write your additional comments there and then we
also have a form on there for you to submit questions and comments to our
panelists. Unfortunately we won't have time for questions and answers with the
panelists but we do want to get your questions to them so we'll invite you to
submit those and we'll get those to the panelists and they can respond
afterwards. That sound reasonable? Okay good. So without further ado let us
introduce our panelists starting with Christina here.
Christina Mills is the executive director of the California
foundation for Independent Living Centers. She was born in San Diego and
she began her post-secondary education while simultaneously pursuing her career
in independent living. In 1999, she began working for the Independent Living
Center for Orange County. She went on to work for Access to Independence in San
Diego and served in a number of physicians over the five years she was
there. In 2001 she was appointed by the California governor to serve on the
state Independent Living Council, and as a young professional she also served as
chair of the National Council on Disability Youth Advisory Committee. In
2006 Christina left San Diego to work for the California Foundation for
Independent Living Centers as the Statewide Community Organizer of the
Systems Changed Network. She's led the organizing and planning of disability
Capitol Action Day for seven years and is a co-founder of CFILC's Youth
Organizing program youth organizing. YO right? Disabled and proud she's an
advocate and activist a wife a mother a part-time blogger a novice photographer
a serious scrap booker and proudly identifies as disabled.
I'm gonna then introduce next up is Andrew Andrew at the DMV. He's the
deputy director of DMVs Registration Operations Division and operates the
department's disabled persons parking placard and license plate programs. He's
participated in a number of national state and local efforts directed at
improving parking access, particularly for the disabled community . He's worked
in the field of vehicle registration and related transportation issues for DMV
since 1984. Since before I was born. When he started when he started answering
telephones at a DMV field office between classes at the University of Redlands in
Redlands California. And it looks like you have a partner in crime there
I'm deputy director for the Office of Public Affairs. Thank you for being here!
And last but not least, we have Matt Eierman from the City of Sacramento.
He's the City of Sacramento Parking Services Division manager. He's been
doing that since 2014. He oversees a staff of 142 employees including parking
lot personnel parking enforcement officers, the most popular people in town,
parking meter operations, city right-of-way management, maintenance, and
custodial operations. Matt was instrumental in the implementation of
the City of Sacramento's parking modernization movement. It included
overhaul of parking policies technologies operations and equipment.
All around helping get the Golden One Center up and running and all the
businesses around that. So he's had a lot of technology improvements including
online parking reservations shared parking strategies online residential
permits etc. So I'm gonna stop talking to leave you all the opportunity
to talk and I think why don't we start with - why don't we start with - You wanna start with Matt?
Ok Christina votes from Matt going first so Matt's going first. [Applause]
And Matt says he brought like a hundred and fifty slide presentation but we made
him cut it down to a hundred and ten. So it's up to you whether you want to stand or you want to
speak from there. It's probably maybe easier for you to stand so you can see
I only cut it down to two hundred pages so. Actually thank you
very much for inviting me today to talk about this very important topic.
I am the city's parking manager and we deal every day in parking right so we
have quite a bit of parking supply out there and quite a lot of technologies
and techniques that we use to manage the the parking so. I thought it would be
really good for you to understand how we do that and why we do what we do
So we have, as you can see here we have many many different types of
parking in our central city right? We're talking about about 30 blocks that are
very core to our city. And the division manages both the on and the off
street aspect of the city's parking assets. So as you can see just by the
sheer numbers of 25,000 spaces versus 6,200 parking meters, parking meters don't
overshadow the type of parking that we do. So it's not a primary way that
we do business in the parking business. In the past three years we've
modernized our our parking efforts.
Eileen talked about some of those things and we have really changed our focus to really
a compliance based organization. We want people to be compliant.
So the purpose of on street parking is to really encourage the short term use of the space.
Long term parking works better in parking garages and it's
really a progression of how we deploy those types of regulations. We don't just
come out there and put up a sign that says to our parking and think and hope
for the best. It's really a collaboration amongst us
and the the actual business owners, the centers that the parking is around
so we really have those open discussions with people. So as you can see number
four is where we install a parking meter. So it's not the first line of defense
that we use in our toolbox
So just an example on how a parking meter should work. This is a little
way from our downtown and you see that non metered spaces are completely 100%
occupied where the metered spaces are not and this really helps with
businesses and the turnover of business. If you own a shop on on a street and
you're really counting on the parking supply to get your consumers in, then you
really want those spaces to be open and available for people to do that.
So this is a really good example you can see non-regulated spaces versus regulated
spaces and how it works. Not all parking meters are sitting in
here bringing in all that money that everybody talks about.
It's just creating access for those those businesses
So the role of the parking meter is really to
turn over the space. What happens is when you put in regulations like a two-hour
regulation you have a lot of people, and believe me I do not know how they find
the time to do this. I wake up on Monday and it's Friday. Every two hours go
out to their vehicles and move their vehicles and rotate their vehicles.
I just really don't know how there's anything productive then at those places.
But when you put a parking meter in there it really stops that from
happening in those those metered areas.
So we put in a parking meter to avoid
those types of situations. It's very typical for us around big employment
centers to find a hundred percent of the parking meters used for long-term
parking and it reduces the overall supply. So if we're talking about sheer
numbers of supply and you have over 50 percent of your supply that's not
turning over. It's really not helping the city
get to its angles right and as the city grows and expands the pressure is only
going to get worse. So we have Sacramento city code that regulates how parking
meters are installed. The hours of operation. The establishment of meter
rates and it specifies how parking meter and machine funds can be used.
So here's a excerpt of the code 10.40.130 use of parking meter and machine funds.
So every dime that comes in to a parking meter is expended on eligible expenditures.
My time, the operations time. So highlighted there talks about what we
can use the the actual funds on.
So what's the what's the role of a parking enforcement officer?
Most people would think that the role of a parking enforcement officer is that they issue citations.
Well here's a list of
comprehensive duties that are important to the role of a parking enforcement officer.
And the important ones are to ensure the safety of the right of way.
We want to make sure that pedestrians are safe. People block crosswalks, people
block sidewalks. We need to make sure that people have access to a safe route
We enforce and regulate accessible parking spaces.
Making sure that people aren't abusing the systems and the rules
So let's talk about some enforcement we do, besides the typical enforcement
that someone's parked in a space without a blue placard. We also do undercover
work as well, we have a dedicated team that and this is in addition to what
what Andrew and his team does, we have an actual hotline that we have.
We also investigate all complaints and it's undercover team that actually goes out
there and and actually checks credentials and we issue misdemeanor
citations for people that have misused the placard.
So here are some of the results of the effort. Since 2005 we've issued 1,500 misdemeanor citations.
We've checked 21,000 placards and that really relates to about 7% capture rate.
It is a very difficult job it you have to go out there you have to monitor you have to
stay on the vehicle and you have to make sure that that person is abusing that placard.
So we also - I want to make sure that people understand that we do have
a way for people to report people and we want to hear about those if anybody
would like to let us know of a situation.
So how does this affect us as a city and you as a consumer or an employee of
the city are working in the city? And the short-term parking is compromised and
really it's locked up, it's landlocked, and it's not doing its job to
manage the traffic. We see quite often that people will spend 20 minutes
circling blocks looking for parking meters instead of going into parking
garages and this is because and when I go out there and I look and I
see blocks that are a hundred percent taken up and used all day for eight
hours when they were designed to use for one hour, two hours to support the local businesses.
We get the complaints from the the business owners and the
residents of our city that that can't find parking in front of their house
because these these vehicles are parked for a long time.
And it really affects you because even if you are a person with a disability and you're
looking for a space that is nearby your destination. You're often not able to do
that because of the landlocked vehicles that are parked there for a very long time.
It affects the patrons coming to our city, it really puts a perception
that there is no parking out there and the residents again are affected by this as well.
And that is my presentation. I hope you took something away for how
we operate in Sacramento. Thank you.
[Applause]
So next up is Andrew, you want to do from there?
All right let's make sure that mics on for you. I'm sure there's a button.
They taped over it.
Oh!
Do they know you or something?
Ok. Hi there, my name is Andrew Conway, I'm the Deputy Director of Registration Operations at the Department of Motor Vehicles
I operate the department's disability parking program. I've done that for about
ten years, either as the deputy or an assistant deputy. The program currently has about two and a half million
participants and every time I say that people go oh my god it's rife with abuse
just because there are two and a half million people that actually
represents a very small percentage of the California population of nearly
forty million people. It is not a subset of the driver population, many of my
customers are children, many of my customers are in institutions or nursing
homes, they're not drivers. And there's a huge misperception out there that
there's somehow a relationship between disability parking privileges and driver
licenses but there's not and we we know that. There's also at any given time
about seventy thousand people in the state with a temporary disability,
recovering from knee surgery, hip replacement, a number of things and those
people are issued red temporary disability placards that are good for up
to six months. Their physician or the qualifying medical professional will tell
us how long to issue one for. We send them out by mail, we also have them in-person
in our field offices. And all of our placards - our permanent disability placards
expire at the same time, which makes the program a little easier to facilitate
for law enforcement to deal with. It's basically they all expire
on June 30th of every odd year. So last June all the placards were replaced,
and next June they will all be replaced, and that's sort of the rule that we follow in perpetuity. It's a big job so we
start issuing them around March, hoping to get all two-and-a-half million, two-point-four-million
whatever it ends up being each year out to everybody in time for June. We get a large number of them back from
people not updating their address because they got one two years ago and
they don't think to update the address with us when they move. So we
surprisingly get well over a hundred thousand of them returned unclaimed
One of the areas that that's a big concern to us is a placard that isn't received
by its owner has the potential to fall into the wrong hands and to have
somebody misused so we work very carefully with the post office during
that time of the year to try and make sure we get them all returned back if
the mail is - if the mailing address isn't good. Another thing to tell you about on
the program is the changes that we've made this year in response to both
California State Audit Report on the program last year and Senate Bill 611
which sort of institutionalized in statute many of those audit findings
We've now moved to requiring identification in order to establish a
placard record. We require a true full name of the applicant either from a
driver's license identification card, a passport, a birth certificate. We will no
longer just write up whatever you put down there. One of the primary reasons
for this is the necessity of matching up death records that are issued in the
state later. If Andy Conway gets a placard when Andrew Conway finally kicks it,
the records won't match and that's a big problem for us and that was
actually one of the audit findings, was that we're not as good as we could be at
matching up death records. The problem with death records is of course that if
we're always issuing that placard every two years and we don't know you're gone,
we're sending it to you know the kid, we're sending it to whoever
lived at your house afterwards and we don't know what's going to happen with it.
And so we like to control placard records very carefully when people are deceased
About seventy thousand placard holders die every year, so it's a big job.
We work with the California Department of Public Health on a monthly basis to update
those records and starting some time when the Department of Finance approves
it, we're going to be working with the Social Security Administration's Master
Death File. We're also looking at third party data, looking at credit reporting
agencies like Experian who could tell us much more quickly than government
necessarily when someone is deceased. So we're always working to improve that
part of the program. The other thing that we had was, as Senate Bill 611 requires
periodic renewal of your status, that doesn't mean that a permanently disabled
person needs to be requalified, but it does mean that every six years we're
going to ask people to come to us and say I want my placard rather than just
push out an automatic renewal. We're hoping that this will also cut down on
the number of placards in circulation that shouldn't be
Lastly in terms of
program changes, I wanted to talk about the audit that everybody noticed that I
was under. It was lovely, it was a very pleasant experience. I recommend
everybody at least once in their life be audited by the California State Auditor
There were 22 findings in that program or in that audit. We accepted all of the
findings, and you had some quibbling about volumes and estimates, for example
they said that 73% of our applicants actually didn't meet the qualifications,
we dispute that. We thought it was more like 10 or 15%, maybe our staff didn't scrutinize.
It's very difficult for us when someone walks up to the counter if
they're clearly displaying evidence of a disability, there's a doctor that we
legitimately recognize that's filled out the form, we don't always
get the t's crossed and the i's dotted and the auditors are asking us to a
better job of that. So ,if in the future somebody tells you they were a little
over scrutinized at the DMV, it's because that's the message that we've been given
So I wanted to go through some of those audit findings, you all probably receive
the materials here that were distributed ahead of the meeting. One of
the first findings was a recommendation that we conduct quarterly audits with
the Medical Boards of California. We've been working with them on setting up a
master agreement, by which we'll be able to do these audits. The auditors, the
state auditors recommended that the boards conduct the audits, but they've
been reluctant to step in and ask their members to police their members. So we're
going to take the role on ourselves and develop guidance with them
The second finding was that the legislature should include podiatrists
in the program. We found a number of applications that were approved by
podiatrists. We never questioned that, we never realized that they weren't legally
authorized. It kind of makes sense if you have major problems with your
lower extremities that you would see a podiatrist and that that person would be
able to identify you as disabled. But it was an oversight in law that since been
rectified. They also asked that we use the Social Security Administration Death
Master File and as I said we're right now in negotiations with the Department
of Finance to pay for that. Which shouldn't be a problem.
They're also asking us to have applicants reapply every four years, the
legislature compromised on that and said that it should be every six years. They
didn't want people to be overly burdened by this, who could carry the moniker
permanently disabled. They also asked that we include the full legal name and
date of birth, which I just explained we're starting to do now. We had a grace
period the first couple months of the year. People were still submitting the
old form to us, the new form explains this rule and we've now started to
enforce it. So you may see people, the constituents, or people that you know in
the community who apply and have their application returned it's because they
didn't include a copy of a birth certificate or driver's license they
didn't give us a true full name and that's what our expectation is now
They also asked that we limit the number of replacement placards. This was a
really interesting audit finding. One of the things that state auditor did that
never occurred to me, was to count the number of times somebody applied for a
replacement. We have a gentleman in the Los Angeles area who lost his
placard 22 times last year. And it's clear what he's doing, he's selling them
on Craigslist. Which I said we should just give him to a roomful of disability
advocates and leave for a while, because he actually is legitimately
I have checked his records he has a legitimate disability himself and I
think he's, you know selling out his community, it's kind of disgusting. But so
that prompted us to actually purchase some data analytics tools at the
department and we've started analyzing the files. We're now looking for people
who do have an excess number of replacements. The legislature has limited
it to four every two years. Anybody who attempts a fifth one will be
asked to have their doctor re-qualify them. But we found people that are asking
for 10, 12, 22 and it wasn't just the one guy it was thousands of people who are
who are doing this and we suspect some of the placards might legitimately be in
high-crime areas lost or stolen or they may have family members that are
sneaking them away. But for the most part we suspect that these are people selling
their access on the black market and that goes for a pretty penny. We also
have been working with some fraud companies that monitor Craigslist, eBay,
and other sources so that when somebody presents an ad that would represent one
of these products, there's a special alert provided for our investigators to
immediately jump on it, check the phone number. It's usually a burner phone, but
they will investigate those cases when they're alerted to them.
They also asked
us to have the health boards check certifications and we should cancel
placards of people who are not when they are audited don't follow
up within 90 days. This is a recommendation that really didn't get
very far, but we do intend to start auditing items and questioning them and
we will cancel placards if people sort of ignore what we discover is an obvious problem.
Another important finding, I want to skip through some of these because
they're all kind of wrapped up in those interagency
agreements that we're doing. They've asked us to analyze data in the system
and I had mentioned earlier that we had purchased data analytic software
So one of the other things we're doing is making relationships, identifying
relationships between applicants looking for doctors that are the common
denominator maybe in provider fraud, which until last year I do not think
there was much provider fraud.
We're very quietly finding that provider fraud is a
significant problem in this state and we're trying to figure out how to tackle
it. One of the biggest problems we have when I work with the California Medical
Association and with a number of trade organizations, is that many of the
disabilities that will qualify you for a placard, they're mobility related and they're
very subjective. If I tell my doctor it hurts when I do that, it's very difficult
for my doctor to say no it doesn't, because they're not me
And I myself I have a very bad back, I'm actually looking at back surgery in a
couple of months and the only reason my doctors know that I'm in pain or
that I'm impaired by my problems with my back right now, is because I tell them
They can't look at a scan and it says there's nothing wrong with him
They do see a problem, but how it affects me is very subjective and so when I tell
a provider you're committing fraud by giving this person a placard they say no
I'm not. I'm listening to my patient. And the problem is well your patient
seemed to talk a lot more than his patients and and we so we've tried to
look at like at rates of of access granting for a doctor I guess you could say
Like do you issue more than another doctor. Well if your specialty is
geriatrics, if your specialty is spinal, issues, if your specialty is podiatry
it's very likely that you're going to be over-represented in the pool
of doctors approving these documents. So that has been a very
difficult thing for us. But another thing that we're gonna be doing as a result of
the audit is providing local police and parking enforcement people hot lists
So beginning this coming December, I think it is, local law enforcement will be able
to download from us a file with every disability parking placard that
we've cancelled. So that as they go down a row of cars, any placard that's in use
that we've already cancelled, i.e. I get twenty two replacements, well there are
21 cancelled placards out there.And so we're gonna put them on these hot lists
and local law enforcement be able to download those files and as their
parking enforcement people encounter placards they'll be able to know if that
placards been cancelled. They'll know if that placard was obtained on the
secondary market. And we think that that's gonna be a great benefit to them
that was something the state auditors recommended to us and and we're
currently underway with. We have a similar program for DUI offenders, people
that have two, three, four, DUIs in the record. They're on hot lists and
license plate readers identify these people when law enforcement encounter
them driving and they shouldn't be. And so this program will operate very
similarly to that. I also thought I would want to tell you some of the
things, the other things that we're doing are we've were creating a training video
for our staff on how to treat people with disability and at the counter with
respect and how to how to interact with people properly, but also how to sift for
fraud, how to look at placard applications suspiciously. but with a
little tact and how we can mark those records and investigate them later.
We're also working with our investigators and Armando is going to tell you a little
bit about that, because it involves a lot of media saturation. Now each one of our
regional investigations offices does a minimum I think one a month - yeah every
office is doing a minimum of one a month in LA, San Diego, San Francisco, they're
doing a number of undercover stings. As Matt said it's very time-consuming, the
only way to really catch somebody is if you see them at the car coming or going
That only is going to happen twice in the day and you better be there when
it happens. And that's very difficult to do, it's very difficult to direct law
enforcement resources to that activity all day. To give you an idea of some of
the things that we're also trying to do as outreach and to better
the way our program is received in the community, we've been participating in a
number as you mentioned in my bio a number of local efforts to try and
change public perception, to try and shape public policy. In 2012 I worked
with my good friends at SF MTA on a program called SF Park and they came up
with some accessibility recommendations for the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors. That resulted in some attempts at legislation to change the program.
In 2016, I wrapped up a program with the LA Department of Transportation
and the Metropolitan Transportation District down there. And they're putting
recommendations in front of the LA City Council and the LA City Council is
looking at advocating for public changes in the legislature in the next year or so.
This past year I did that UCLA analytics tour that I told you about and
that's resulting in a number of tactical changes in how we operate the program
A nd this past month I wrapped up a national effort at best practices for
these programs for an organization called the American Association of Motor
Vehicle Administrators. They basically took a number of us from all over the
country and we got together and we've produced a best practices document for
how to operate disability parking placard programs and how to operate
enforcement programs on these. It includes tactical discussions of how
stings operate, how government should approach these, what are some of the
issues associated with benefits to the parking program, and those are just some
of the things that we've done. One other example of something that came out
of the audit, and Armando is going to speak to, is a public outreach program
that we are trying to basically shame people into stopping their abuse of this
program. And Armando do you want to talk about that?
Sure, I don't know if this
microphone is on? Yeah it is on. Okay. Thank you Andrew, and I think you should
talk to a Hollywood producer to get onto a 48 hours or something and
an investigative series maybe. I'm in charge of the Office of Public Affairs
of DMV, and as part of that office deals with developing and carrying out
different media and marketing plans. And one of them as Andrew mentioned, is this
one - this particular one regarding. What we thought to do would be a good
thing to do, for many years investigators, we have a large number of investigators
and I think it's like 300, 400, investigators around the state. And what they do, for
many years they've been doing this, operations where they go in a certain
area where they get reports of a high number of people abusing the
disabled placing placards. So, but they were doing it a kind of low-key, not too
much media would be involved. Once in a while some media interest there, will be
a couple of stories etc. Well we wanted to bring it up a notch and we
developed this marketing campaign, it includes a lot of different things.
We launched the first part of this awareness campaign in March of last year
And we did it by providing or organizing with investigators every time that they
would go into a high media market, high volume media market, like LA, San Diego,
San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento etc. We would alert media ahead of time so they
would be part of the campaign, so they would be there when people are being
caught using this plates and placards. When they're being cited etc., to raise
more awareness. So, we did it last year with operations in the cities that I
mentioned also in Fresno. And what that does it it created a buzz and it
generated hundreds of news reports on TV, radio, and also and those things that we
used to call newspapers and they're still some of them are still around.
And we've tapped a lot of our operations. Well some people don't read them anymore. [Laughs]
We've been holding or investigators have been calling as many as 24 operations
each month in various parts of the state. Every month we publicize their results.
After the fact of all those operations we put them
together in one document that we call a media release or a press release that we
send it out throughout this state. And we keep count of how many people have been
have been ticketed using those plates and placards in an illegal manner
So we keep count, and the number keeps raising and raising and raising, and by then
by doing that we're also raising the awareness of the other people who might
be getting a little bit worried. We're also sending out a public service
announcement, we've developed a PSA video. PSA. Some of you might have seen it it's
currently running in some stations. And they're doing it the stations are doing
it for free. We recorded, it we videotaped it with the help of our DAC Disability
Advisory Board and DMV. And I noticed that especially Channel 3 is carrying in
airing that PSA quite a bit here in Sacram ento and some other
stations around the state. The part of the campaign we also produce brochures
that we are - we have in our field office and in certain several other places
i brought a few. I didn't I didn't know how many to bring, but I'll leave them up in
the front and perhaps you can you can take a couple. You're welcome to call
give us a call and we can provide more for your business, or for your
office, or wherever, for your organization. We also created or an outreach webpage
A sole web page dedicated to this problem and this campaign where you can
just click and you can get all the information. You can download our posters,
you can download our PSA, you can download everything, and you can do the
printing yourself if you want. So all of that was part of the initial
campaign. the first phase. The second phase started this month on the first
and we created a new slogan, and a new emphasis, and this one is more saying
"Save the Space". We have different posters, yeah that was the
original one over there. And it just says "Need A Written Reminder?" so we had
a lot more emphasis on the the citation that people would
get by using it illegally.
Let us give Christina some time, we want to hear from you too
Those stories, I wish I can say that they were unbelievable, but I really do believe
them in some instances. Quickly to Andrews point on enforcement at the DMV
I just want to point out that at one point. You know I have a visible
disability, I've used a wheelchair all of my life, and yet I was parked in an
accessible space with my placard visible and getting in my vehicle when I had an
officer approached me and ticket me because I wasn't able to show the little
certificate that goes with the placard. So needless to say ever since then I
have been holding that certificate in my purse. And I understand the importance of
enforcement and what having a visible disability and having a placard may not
still appear to be enough to an officer who is citing me. I want to thank
everybody for inviting the California Foundation for Independent Living
Centers to join the conversation today. And Angela for specifically making sure
that the disability community was represented here on the panel. Our former
executive director, Teresa Favuzzi, she recently passed away.
She was very engaged in this conversation and I understand that the
forum that happened down in Southern California was participated by one of
our executive directors in the Los Angeles area. So I appreciate that.
Again, I'm Chrristina Mills the Executive Director of CFILC and it's exciting to
see that the California Commission on Disability Access is in action.
CFILC was one of the organizations that worked to create the CCDA with former
Senator Ellen Corbett. I want to talk about a few points and first I just want
to give you a summary. CFILC is a statewide disability rights organization.
We've been in California established for over 35 years and we serve as both a
statewide organization of programs and services to people with
disabilities, but also we're very unique because we are the membership
organization of independent living centers across the state. So we are
serving on an annual basis anywhere between one, let's hope it never gets
that low, and twenty eight of the Independent Living Centers.
Independent Living Centers are service and program organizations, not places that you live,
that are run by and for people with disabilities. And they through the
twenty eight of them, some of them cover one county, some of them some of them
cover multiple counties. But regardless of where you are in the California you
will be served by an Independent Living Center if you so choose. And just to
talk about you know parking and the future and where we're headed.
You know, I think that it's really important that we think about while we
are in a world that is continuously changing because of electronics, and
because of self-driving vehicles, and what the future may look like, that
people with disabilities are going to be having more of an opportunity to be
behind the wheel so to say . We're really looking at autonomous vehicles as an
opportunity for people with disabilities to increase their employment options
and be able to be active community members because of the way of the future.
And what that means for us is also making sure that infrastructures are
accessible to our community as well. Quickly, I just want to share with you a
couple of stories as a wheelchair user who's been driving for about I don't
know, twenty-five years or so now. You know I want equal opportunity as much as
the next person who's driving a vehicle, but I also mean when I say that that I
want an accessible opportunity. So when I am going into a city that charges
disabled people with placards to pay a fee, I'm going to be okay with paying
that fee as a person with a disability as long as I can pay it. Going into a
parking structure that doesn't have a service worker there and doesn't allow
me to put in my ticket and take out my ticket on my own because of where it's
placed is a barrier for me. I am lots of times forced to use metered
spots, not because I want the free parking in a metered spot, but because a
parking garage might not have an attendant that can take my ticket or a
lot of these new fancy pay machines that aren't accessible to somebody of short
stature like myself or a wheelchair user. So that often happens also at gas stations.
While we look to the future as the electronic world, we need to also
think about how are we creating these infrastructures accessible to people
with a variety of disabilities. And sometimes what that means is when you're
putting parking pay stations in place instead of a meter, that is what is
considered easier to some people, making sure that that pay station screen is low
enough to where a person using a mobility device or who's short stature
can actually use it. I can't tell you how many times I've gone into a place to
actually pay but been unable to pay and in some cases cited because I didn't
have anybody to explain to that, hey I want to pay but your your service
station is on a curb and it's like a curb with no curb cuts and I can't get
on it to pay it. Or that the screen, the electronic screen, that tells me to
choose between credit or debit is so high or has a glare on it because it's on
a tilt, that I can't see what I'm actually choosing and therefore I
can't sit there and guess all day what button I'm hitting to figure out what
I'm paying or what I'm supposed to be paying. I also just want to point out
that accessible spaces are becoming more limited as the future grows and you know
I can attest to that personally. We have a new 365 grocery store open in my
community and while I was really excited to get good produce, I'm really bummed
out that I have to wait a long time to get that accessible space. Because for
me that means being able to deploy my wheelchair and have a wide enough space.
However, I have to wait now for a longer period of time because of all of those
nice electronic, what do you call them, powered energy-efficient vehicles that
took up our spaces. I'm doing loops, I'm now not doing loops for the metered
spots because I can't just use the garage down the street, I'm also doing
loops around the grocery store because there was a new vehicle parked there
that is an electronic vehicle, whatever you call those vehicles, the e-vehicles that
you use that have been taking up placard spaces. And I did notice that the emblem
on the the parking enforcement sign said that it could either be, you know an
electronic vehicle or it could be a disabled vehicle. But my understanding is
that it you have to have a placard in that vehicle to use that space so.
I haven't tried it to be cited yet, because I've just paid too many parking
fees in my experience of life. Also I want there to be ways that we can when
we're talking about self-service stations, figuring out is there an option
to call somebody if you need help. And when you do hit the button to call
somebody, is somebody actually going to pick up and be available to provide a
service that you need. Whether it's to pay at that station or put your ticket
in to get out of that garage or not
Make sure I hit all of my points.
And I also just want to say that I really appreciate people with disabilities
being invited to this conversation and you know, as we all age the chances are
of us becoming disabled at some point in our life are very high and I know that
for my grandmother it was very difficult for her to give up her driver's license.
And I'm sure it's gonna be difficult for a lot more people but if we have options
that make driving more accessible and available for people with all types of
disabilities, I think that's about us being forward thinkers and thinking
about people with disabilities and the disability community and all
conversations. Whether it be structural or non-structural systems, pay systems
that we're always taking disability into consideration when we're creating what
we think is a better way of doing business. Thank you.
[Applause]
Thank you Christina.
Thank you, let's do it again for all of our panelists. [Applause] We certainly appreciate
you being here and all the work you're doing for the disabled community.
So we just heard from them and now we get to hear from you. The hope is that their
conversation will inform your conversations in the small groups and
provide you some context for your small group discussions and some food for thought.
Note that we've got, the commissioners
have had just a couple minutes to actually summarize things and jot down
the theme so give them a little break if they didn't capture everything. So we're
gonna start with Commissioner Holloway. Where is he? There he is alright.
Ok our plan for summarizing the program innovations was to pick five we thought
were the more popular ones. So number one would be really doing a
public awareness campaign to the public about the difference between a
van space and a non van disabled space. There's a big difference. I personally
had never noticed that before. And so the point is there's a difference and try
and leave the van spaces available for vans because they really need that extra space.
One of the other ideas is taking the placards and integrating RFID
devices or photos of the owner of the placard, so that enforcement would be
able to either drive by and recognize the plate or the placard.
And then also, and this one had a little bit of controversy about it, about having the
actual owner of the placard's photograph on the placard might clarify some things.
For some people, might be a little bit of a privacy concern for others.
Oh, one other idea was allowing, as you can park for free with a placard at
a meter and then yet many times you'll go into a parking garage and you have to
pay to get in or pay to get out. And so the disabled spots in the parking garage
are really not free, but opening up those disabled parking spaces in parking
garages allow those to be free as well. The fourth item was public awareness
campaign, that most people don't know that with a parking placard you could
actually take two normal parking stalls. I had no idea you can legally do that.
You occasionally might get keyed, but, which has happened, but legally you know
let people know, that if you know, there is nothing else available that you can
with your placard, take two spots. And then the last one be
accessible vehicle options for ride-sharing programs like Lyft and Uber.
Having those being available for disabled customers. That's it! Thank you.
[Applause]
Thank You Commissioner. I'm gonna walk
across the room here. We have the folks on the phone unmuted right?
I mean we're unmuted right? Okay just making sure.
All right Commissioner Paravagana.
First of all I'd like to thank everybody, this was a great three discussions we had.
We were looking at, and I'm abbreviating it here,
this essentially based on what you've heard today ,and your experience
regarding accessible parking, what's working and then of course the other
side of that you know what's not working and what kind of suggestions do you have.
And so in terms of what's working,
it was kudos to DMV for the program and the work that's been
done secondary to the audit. There was a recognition that a lot has occurred in the
last few months and that took a lot of work to to make all that happen.
There was a sentiment that there's better public awareness, obviously
there's still a ways to go with that. And that education is better and one person
said that one of the things that he felt was working well were these meetings
because of the discussion that comes out of that. And then looking at what's needed, and
it's interesting because sometimes things showed up in both categories,
education is needed. Education for building inspectors, planners, the whole
gamut, and the public so that people understand the impact of the built
environment on somebody trying to use it. More accessible street parking, a great
discussion about whether parking should be free or should be something people
pay for, and if they have to pay should it be on a sliding scale.
Interesting issue. Enforcement was seen as lacking and a greater need for that because
people don't feel that there's really a viable resource they have to call when
they see that things are going bad. And there was also some concern about the
design of garages for parking. So and the thought was that that puts more people
out looking for parking on the street if vans will not go into accessible places
in garages. But again my kudos to all three groups, that all three tables,
because you guys did a wonderful job. Thank you.
[Applause]
Thank you Commissioner. Now we're moving on to Commissioner Wilson.
We had quite a lively discussion in our groups, and it seems as though
I can sort of echo almost everything the other two commissioners have done there now.
But one of the things that in our group, they talked about technology.
We talked about that, and how technology can actually help to increase awareness or
increase accessibility access to parking. And to protect the rights of those
who legally should have parking and those who are not actually are abusing the system.
The recommendations actually comes through, if I look at our
committees we have our legislation and our education outreach committee, which
would help a lot once we get our program put together with the help of everybody.
That would have the legislators hear it and have it get out into the community.
The need for education to the medical community, that was another thing
that really came across. Because someone made a comment that maybe some of the
doctors or medical professionals had no clue as to what is acceptable and what
is called disability and disability access. We are - we have a long way to go,
we've got a long way, we got a long way to go, I agree with that. We are also
looking at the problem, not so much of enforcement about how DMV
could really help with that education. How our community organizations could
help with it, our community agencies, and other parts of the government that you
know protect our human, civil and human rights. So we've kind of really
touched on so many things, but technology was a big winner and I think
that's about all we could go with right now because you've already heard a
lot of it. It seems like it's a very common thread among all three groups.
That we need to deal with this problem at point of view, of those points of view.
Thank you.
[Applause]
Last but not least, Commissioner McGuinness.
Thank you. So I had
the good fortune to speak with all the folks on the phone, and we covered all
three of the topics, so I'm going to just go through, sorry to have my back to you folks.
I'm going to go through the issues that I haven't heard raised on the three
different topics. Briefly starting with parking access, I will reiterate how
happy everyone was to hear about DMV's new approach to enforcement and how
grateful they were. One issue that was raised is that private parking
lots and businesses are refusing to enforce the disabled parking spots, and
people would really appreciate it if the DMV and law enforcement would provide
education to private businesses about their obligations under law to
enforce the disabled parking rules. They also called out government agencies for
not providing sufficient numbers of disabled parking spots and called it a
systemic problem. The third issue that came up was street parking where
cities provide disabled identified parking spaces, but they either put them
in the middle of the block or they do not have curb cuts. And so the disabled
person parks and then has to drive in the street, in their chair, half a block
or more to try and find a safe place to go up onto the street, which is a very
serious danger. So those are the issues that came up that folks were hoping that
the panelists would hear and be able to assist with. In the program management
discussion, one person said that they recently had their permanent placard
renewed under the new protocol and they complimented the DMV about how smoothly
it went even under the the new heightened scrutiny.
So they were grateful for that. One person asked, actually a couple of people with
visual disabilities asked if the PSAs that were coming out could be more
accessible for people with visual disabilities. And to reiterate with
Commissioner Wilson said, people really wanted to know what kind of judgment
call doctors were able to make when they issued placards. And I understand that
some of the organizations of medical professionals are leery about
working with the DMV on these issues but, it seemed to the people that were on the
phone that this is a real problem of doctors not understanding both what
is needed and what is best practices. And they were really hoping that the DMV
would exert extra effort there to educate doctors about both what the laws
are on what constitutes a disability and what - whether a person has a technical
disability or has a real need for a placard. And third they identified
another category of misuse of caregivers and IHSS workers using the placards of
their employers when the employer was not in the car. So going out grocery
shopping and using their employers placard, and they weren't sure how to
solve that problem but they did identify it as a problem. And lastly on
innovation, apparently in the state of Illinois and in Portland there's a
two-tier placard system, where people with mobility disabilities have parking
but they pay for it and people who have problems with arm
function or are shorter stature don't have to pay for it because they
don't have access to meters or to the ability to pay. And that was just raised
as another topic. In addition people talked about putting the - an ISA
wheelchair sign on your driver's license, so that you don't have to carry your
little certificate around, you don't get cited for not having it in the car.
Some people also raise that as a problem with privacy, because if you have to
present your driver's license for other purposes you don't necessarily want to
have to identify yourself as a person with a disability. And finally people
asked if the DMV would consider providing education to placard holders
when they get the renewal of their placard, to remind them of their
responsibility not to let other people use their placard and how to use their
placard responsibly. So I thought that was an interesting idea. Thank you.
[Applause]
Sounds like some very lively conversations and a lot of common themes.
So thank you for your participation and thank you to the Commissioners for facilitate -
let's give them a hand, the Commissioners for facilitating. [Applause]
Thank you for that, and I'm gonna hand the mic to Angela.
We are at the near closing of our session, and I too just want to thank our panelists.
You created a great stimulus
for this discussion, and the information you provided is invaluable for us
because it's learning a new innovative, and what you're doing, what you're trying
to do helps the full community to understand where we're at. And also the
reality that we constantly have to be reminded there is people
behind these policies that we're making. So all of you I thank you so very much.
Locally you're presenting an aspect Matt, that we here in Northern California or
Sacramento but we do have a variety of folks on the phone as well here in the
building that is representing a variety of cities and communities. And all of you
have shared and have done a tremendous job in assisting us to help bring
information together. Because our job as the board is to help legislation, to
think about what the stakeholders, what variety of stakeholders are really
thinking and considering and are the concerns. So this is, do understand
you are providing great support to us as a Commission and so again I thank you.
The Commissioners for facilitating and leading
the way on this particular topic. We value it tremendously. Now I know that we
could literally go on the whole day on this topic, and so as we mentioned
earlier there are cards on the table that if you felt there is something we
did not cover, please take the time to write it down. Those of you on the phone
or in Zoom, please take the time to reach out to CCDA. We do want to hear from each
and every one of you, it is how we best present the information to legislation
about the things that the stakeholders are asking or suggesting. So that we do
ask for and then there also we learn every time we come out.
Commissioner Wiele was saying, "man there's a lot of logistical things we do every time."
And we try to get better we really do.
But there are opportunities that we know we may miss and so we look
for your responses, your evaluations. So we do have evaluations on the table and
we ask that you please, it is important to us, to each and every one of you take
the time to provide that feedback to us because we do need it. Those are on the
phone, we ask that you also send your feedback. We provided on the web for
evaluations of how your experience was on the phone. Then I close out to say we
have a session what we're calling the coffee chat with legislators. Those of
you who can make it back we appreciate it.
We actually, I'm really proud to say because one of our representatives for
the afternoon session for Senator Pan's office is here and he said, "I'm going to -
I want to hear the whole thing." And so he came out, I appreciate that from
Deputy Director Joe Debbs, he came and participated the whole time. He'll be
part of the afternoon session along with our some other assembly and
representatives of legislation at 5:30. So again we thank you and then last of
course our facilitator, amazing woman we just really appreciate how she got -
pulled this together for us. And I thank you so much Eileen, we look
forward to continuing relationships, but now I'll hand the mic back over to you.
Thank you, thank you, and I love getting the last word. I think that's exciting.
I just want to talk a little bit more about next steps, so we have the coffee
chat coming soon down the hall. And just know that all of the
the notes from this session, the feedback the conversation, will be compiled into a
report that will be available on the website and you'll hear more about that.
But I just want you to know that this is not being lost, it's being captured and
tune in for more about that. I guess I want to do one more plug to thank the
panelists for being here, for your opening comments and your thoughts and
your sharing your experiences and for participating as part of the small group.
So thank you very much for that. Where's Christina? Thank you Christina.
[Applause] And thank you also to the staff for making this thing happen.
So thank you very much and safe travels back wherever you're heading.
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