Star Tribune
Meet the folks working to make Minnesota more accessible — more than 30 years after the ADA
To the staff members at the Minnesota Council on Disability, making businesses and government facilities accessible to everyone is long overdue. It’s been 34 years since Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act. Executive Director David Dively, Operations and Program Director Linda Gremillion and ADA Director David Fenley say there is much still to be done.
From drivers illegally parking in spots for people who are disabled to business owners who are unsure what they can do to improve their facilities, the accessibility champions get several calls a week for help.
Eye On St. Paul recently visited their offices at Snelling and University avenues to learn more about why it’s taking so long to break down even some of the most basic barriers to inclusion. Disclosure: Because of multiple sclerosis, I often need to use a wheelchair. This interview was edited for length.
Q: Is it true there’s a debate between people who look at equal access as a right, but are forced to ask, and those who think people with disabilities seek privilege?
DF: Yes.
LG: Why do [disabled people] even have to ask? No one else has to ask.
Q: Why are there still so many inaccessible businesses and buildings?
DF: Well, enforcement is a big deal. The burden’s on you. You either have to sue or complain to the Department of Human Rights. There’s no proactive mechanism. ADA is 100% reactive.
DD: You have to get hurt or discriminated against and then you can try to fix it. But nothing happens proactively.
Q: Why is that?
DD: That is how we designed the whole system. What it means is that if a certain type of family, or employee or voter has the means to push it, they need to. And that’s not going to be true for everyone.
Q: We’ve written stories about the attorney who threatens to sue Mom and Pop businesses because they’re inaccessible. What does the ADA really demand of small businesses?
DF: You’re referring, I think, to Paul Hansmeier, who’s not the most upstanding dude in the world. That’s not to say the lawsuits were frivolous. Just because a lawyer is shady, doesn’t mean there are still not barriers and discrimination happening. Initially, the burden’s on the individual with a disability. I’m pretty sure that was a compromise [in Congress]. How did they get the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on board? How was it bipartisan?
LG: [Former] Sen. Tom Harkin [Iowa] talked about how they had to take enforcement teams out in order to pass the legislation.
Q: So, they had to remove teeth in it to get it passed?
DF: No proactive teeth. It’s more of an administrative fix. Where a health code is proactive, inspectors come out and say, your food’s cold, there’s no rat poo. You pass and you can now serve food to people. This is reactive.
DD: There’s a public interest in ensuring safety, health, hygiene, spreading disease, all those things. We don’t place the same value on a smaller group of people’s lives.
Q: What percentage of people need to use a wheelchair to get around?
DF: You’re looking at 27% of the population has a disability as defined by the ADA. That’s everything from things like anxiety and ADHD, alcoholism — all the way to sensory disabled, quadriplegic. From ages 15 and up, the percentage of the population with an ambulatory disability, something that limits mobility, I think that is 14% or 15%.
Q: Yet, customers push back on businesses providing so many handicapped parking spots.
DF: Then you have people who need those disability parking spots who say, “Whenever I pull in, they’re all taken.” And you have folks who use wheelchairs saying things like, “Those spots should be for me only. Because I have a wheelchair and I need to be that close.” But most disabilities are invisible, and a lot of those invisible disabilities still require a closer spot, like a heart condition or a lung condition.
Q: How many tickets are issued for illegally parking in a disabled spot?
DF: You’d have to reach out to every [jurisdiction]. It’s very much locally driven.
Q: Have some police and sheriffs have told you they’re not enforcing that?
DF: Multiple agencies have told me without missing a beat, “We don’t enforce disability parking.”
Q: Why not?
DF: Because they have other things to do. Or, because they don’t want to issue fines on members of their community. They’re actively making a decision on who gets rights and who does not. ADA is civil rights legislation. People say, “Oh, how nice, you get to park close.” No, I get to leave my house.
Q: My wife will call neighborhood theaters and ask if a movie is upstairs or downstairs, because if it’s upstairs, we’re not going.
DF: Is there no elevator? They would have to move the show downstairs, legally have to, if you request it.
DD: You’d have to sue to make them. Theory and practice are not the same thing.
DF: That would be adjudicated in court if you sued and the decision was made by a judge. Are you disabled enough to require this accommodation?
DD: Is it appropriate, is it reasonable? Depending on what you asked for.
Q: Are inaccessible businesses grandfathered in?
DF: It’s not true at all. It doesn’t matter when your building was built. If it was built in 1890, you still have an obligation to remove barriers on an ongoing basis. Obviously, some things are technically infeasible. Some things are so expensive that you just won’t do it. You’re not going to put in an elevator in a Mom and Pop flower shop on Main Street Alexandria.
Q: They can make a case and say, “It’s too expensive?”
DF: You see it in the news media when it comes to these types of things. Most of the stories are framed, oh, poor businesses. They had to shut down because they couldn’t be ADA compliant. Well, there’s Title II and Title III of the ADA. Title II applies to governments. Title III applies to businesses. The main differences being businesses only have to make things accessible if it’s cheap and easy. Only a judge can determine it. There’s no equation. People have this notion that it’s black and white, all or nothing. It’s a case by case basis. Find creative ways to be accessible. If it’s going to break the bank, you don’t have to do it.
Q: What’s the incentive for business?
LG: I think when you put the onus on the disability community to enforce an unfunded mandate, you create ill will. You’re participating in what can be a fair and equitable society. If your business model has anything to do with fairness and equity, it just behooves you to be in a leadership position. It’s in your best interest in multiple ways to do the right thing.
DD: It’s entirely economically based. A hundred-plus years ago, we had people returning from wars overseas with disabilities. They couldn’t work or get into their government buildings or be part of society in that day. That issue started things like vocational rehabilitation to get people able to work. I think it’s all economics. There are very few times where how you design your store excludes 15% of your customers.
DF: Let’s use the theater example. If they don’t move the movie, you just don’t go. I guarantee you folks with disabilities know where they can and can’t go to spend money. So, you have that perspective. Then you have the perspective of the business owner who says, “Oh, I never see those people in here anyway.” They don’t view that as lost revenue. There was a time when folks with disabilities were just institutionalized or hidden away. Now we’re taking steps, but you still don’t have that ongoing removal of barriers. The places that are accessible get all that business.
Q: You’ve said government has a greater responsibility to be accessible. Talk about that.
DF: They have no excuse.
DD: They don’t even have the opportunity to say it’s too expensive.
Q: So how can they take years to act?
DF: Because the enforcement is exactly the same.
Q: People have to sue?
DF: Yes. Unless somebody makes a stink and fights for it, and it usually takes years, things just stay inaccessible.
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
