On Mon, 4 Jul 2005 03:28:43 -0400, "Upscale" wrote:

"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
construction project at one church where the number of required
handicapped
spaces was absurd relative to our known requirements, and now being
involved in another construction project at a different congregation
where,

I know for a fact that many churches in Toronto have made significant
changes to enable access for the disabled. I consider churches to be private
organizations,

Unfortunately, in the US, governments don't, thus they are treated as
businesses and must set things up according to the federal formula of x
spaces per y occupants of the building in question. As a church, we would
not want to have any of our members with disabilities unable to access the
church, thus regardless of the number of members or guests with mobility
difficulties, we would make provision to accomodate those people. As I
mentioned in my examples, in one case when we added on, we were required to
provide 4 spaces -- in the entire history of the congregation we had never
had more than two people at a time who needed such accomodation, and for
long periods of time, we had no one who needed them -- for a small
congregation the expense of adding parking lot and then consuming 50% of
the expansion for spaces that would not be used was a burden on the members
that didn't seem right. At our current congregation, we have a large
number of elderly people (for some reason Arizona seems to attract that
type of person :-) ). Strictly following the letter of the law would
leave us short by several spaces the number of accomodations we need to
provide to accomodate all of our members.

not part of the commercial apathy that pervades Toronto's
business community when it comes to disabled access. It would make sense
too. As far as I'm concerned, a church survives on the good will of it's
congregation, many of them who might be disabled or elderly. Access makes
sense, something completely lost on Toronto's business community.


Both good will and also simply because it's the right thing to do out of
caring for those in our midst.




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If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

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