Mayor Joseph Curtatone
City of Somerville, MA

May 5, 2008

Dear Mayor Curtatone,

Enclosed please find letters of resignation from four DisAbilities Commissioners.

We keep trying to help your staff upgrade to the 21st century, and provide resources so that the community can benefit from improvements in accessibility and usability of city services.

Between the four of us, we have served your administration for over 14 years and have over 250 years of accumulated knowledge, experience and resourcefulness in overcoming barriers.

Unlike the other Commissions, we have not been granted administrative support, nor permitted oversight in order to build capacity and communicate respectably with others. We continually witness your designated ADA liaison withholding our mail, not forwarding our phone messages, insisting on keeping our membership list and procedures illegitimate, censoring our web page, misrepresenting us to other staff members, and either stonewalling us or answering our questions and concerns with unreliable assertions.

The last straw came this April. Our monthly meeting was once again officially closed down by your team, who referenced one sentence in our 1992 By-Laws stating that our regular monthly meetings happen on Monday evenings. Over the years, our regular meetings have reasonably migrated to other regular monthly days, per majority vote, in order to facilitate maximum participation. For example, the last time you visited us during one of our regular monthly meetings was on a Tuesday night in August 2005.

While we do not argue, and in fact have been discussing, the amendment of our By-Laws to reflect relevant conditions, your City Solicitor and ADA Coordinator found it necessary to compel us to shut down, utilizing undue scrutiny of this document (which Ms. Campbell sent us on March 3, 2008). This is indicative of the type of legal double standard imposed upon this Commission. For example, the community has recently been informed that many City employees do not currently reside in the City, yet, we do not find that they have “ceased to be employed by the city,” per the 1978 Residency Requirement, (Sec. 2-310 (d) of the Municipal Ordinance). More relevantly, issues of ADA noncompliance, State access building code violations, and noncompliance with Ordinance Sec. 2-5. Handicapped-accessibility of city offices (Code 1963, § 3-29) for example, are obvious municipal liabilities that should be receiving comprehensive, proactive, solutions-oriented attention. Instead, your legal team spends valuable city time manufacturing methods to prevent us from assembling to openly discuss these matters.

Currently, there appears to be no appropriate local grievance procedure, and apparently no oversight of the City ADA Coordinator’s activities. Instead of carrying out the Federally mandated responsibilities of her position, your ADA Coordinator is wasting taxpayer’s dollars censoring us from protecting and promoting the rights of Somerville residents with disAbilities. This is an intolerable situation. We see no evidence of a good faith mutual endeavor and can only expect that similar behaviors will continue under your administration in order to deny this Commission a meaningful voice in city affairs. Therefore, we have concluded that our current Commission titles hold no value for the greater public good. We are moving into other arenas to continue our advocacy.

In the event that you were not fully aware of the dishonest and, frankly, discriminatory behavior of your liaison staff, this letter represents an opportunity for you to respond directly to us, and demonstrate that the buck stops with you.

Please contact us at P.O. Box 434, Somerville, MA 02143 by May 31 if you wish to have a forthright discussion with us and other community leaders who share our deep concerns about these issues. If we do not hear from you, we will consider sharing our findings with the broader community. We welcome your response but will not respond to any proxies.

In conclusion, we noted your comment, quoted in this week’s Somerville Journal, p.1: “How do you identify opportunity? I don’t think you hunker down in a corner and wait for better times.”

We couldn’t agree more, Mr. Mayor.


Sincerely,
John Ciampa
Eileen Feldman
Thomas Gilbert

Enc.: 4 resignation letters:
John Ciampa, Commissioner since 1983
Eileen Feldman, Commissioner since 2005
Thomas Gilbert, Associate and Commissioner since 2006
Joe Medeiros (retiring), Commissioner since 1992

In light of our experiences, we must note:
Any intimidation, harassment, coercion, threats or perceived retaliatory efforts by yourself, or anyone associated with you, in response to this letter or to any DisAbilities Rights advocacy work will be immediately brought to the attention of the
Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.