Some Bronx parks aren’t accessible enough for people with disabilities, and addressable issues that the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation identified more than a decade ago remain, a state comptroller audit found.
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office found that “too many” NYC Parks’ facilities have barriers to people with disabilities, and many don’t meet the 1990 Americans with Disability Act (ADA) standards, according to an audit report released on March 22. As part of the report, the comptroller’s office identified accessibility issues at Haffen Park, Bufano Park, Flynn Playground and Olinville Playground that were never addressed.
“Federal law demands equal access to public spaces, but we found hundreds of barriers to people with disabilities in our city parks, playgrounds and beaches,” DiNapoli said. “The city has made progress over the years, particularly making new projects accessible, but many of the problems we found have existed for years and should have been addressed long ago.”
The recent probe serves as a follow-up to a December 2005 audit that found the parks department had not identified or addressed accessibility obstacles through a “transition plan,” as required by the ADA. In response to the 2005 audit, NYC Parks surveyed its facilities and identified accessibility barriers at more than 2,000 out of 2,745 locations from 2006-2009.
As part of its survey, the city agency ranked the issues from readily achievable to fix, or priority 1, — such as adding signs, armrests or parking spaces — to not achievable, or priority 5, for locations where a solution wasn’t possible, such as historic sites or parks on top of hills. Most of the issues Parks identified were marked as priority 1, according to the comptroller’s office. This was supposed to form the basis of the plan, which was never actually finalized, according to DiNapoli’s office.
For this year’s report, auditors visited 115…
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