City to make Sports Park ADA compliant

By 10:15 p.m. at Tuesday's City Commission meeting - four hours after the officials had convened - the commission chambers on Elizabeth Street were all but empty.

Sergio Zarate looked at the meeting's agenda with his hopes rested on the final item.

For more than seven months, Zarate had been pushing to make the soon-to-be-built Brownsville Sports Park handicap-accessible. When the commission voted unanimously to make the park more than 40 percent accessible for those with disabilities, it was a triumph for Zarate, who serves as vice president of Down by the Border, an advocacy group for children with disabilities.

"I went home and just hugged my little girl," he said. "I told her they were going to be building a new park for her and her friends."

According to Zarate, no local parks even come close to 40 percent ADA accessibility, making the City Commission's promise a landmark for his organization. The park is expected to have a "soft opening" in August and a full opening in January 2009.

The U.S. Department of Justice, whose civil rights division monitors ADA compliance nationwide, inaugurated Project Civic Access in 1999. Its goal was to ensure that public parks, schools and buildings were following the law. Such facilities must have accessible parking, restrooms, concession stands and other amenities for those with disabilities.

The crusade for a handicap-accessible park began at Down by the Border's October Children's Festival at Dean Porter Park, when the mother of a wheelchair-bound child approached Zarate.

"I thought this would be a different park," she said reluctantly. "My child is not welcome here."

For Zarate, it was a revelation.

"Are you going to avoid it and say nothing?" he asked himself. "Or are you going to do something?"

Along with his wife Dolores and Delina Barrera, executive director of the Brownsville Community Improvement Corp., Zarate chose to act.

He spoke with city officials, playground designers and state politicians. He uncovered interesting facts about ADA accessibility. An ADA accessible park, he learned, is only marginally more expensive than a park that offers no options for children in wheelchairs.

Brownsville's City Commissioners and Mayor Pat Ahumada were an easy sell.

"It's extremely important because not everyone is the same...when we build parks, we need to look at the entire population, not just a select few," said Commissioner Edward Camarillo.

A survey by the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found 10.2 million children in the U.S. have special healthcare needs, or 14 percent of all U.S. children. More than one-fifth of U.S. households with children have at least one child with special needs.

Local advocates of disabled children didn't want to stop in Brownsville. They contacted Rep. Eddie Lucio III, who now plans to bring the issue of ADA accessibility in front of the state's House of Representatives.

"We're excited that our own city is being proactive without a statute," Lucio said. "In the future, we're hoping to require 20 percent ADA access in new parks from this point forward...We need to integrate children with special needs."

Lucio plans to introduce the bill during the House's 2009 session.

For now, Sergio Zarate is still basking in the City Commission's decision.

"It will be one of the best things the Commission has ever voted on," he said. "Not only is it great for children with special needs, but it will also be an education for other children."