Disgraceful Maintenance of Roanoke Courthouse

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I know the City of Roanoke doesn't maintain anything worth a darn, unless maybe it's the City Manager's office. The City has a long history of building something bright and shiny and then not taking care of it.

Certainly the Courthouse maintenance is an embarrassing disgrace, and that's what I'm writing about. The courthouse has parquet flooring, and it's showing its age.  Parquet will pop up and the city will cover over it with a piece of carpet duct-taped around the missing area, or they'll block off a section for three or 4 months (happened on the stairwell) until they do an ugly patch job. About a year ago a huge pile of carpet squares was delivered to the courthouse to go over the parquet flooring. It's still piled. But this is just City of Roanoke Maintenance as usual.


Here's what's really ticking me off:

For several MONTHS, the 'automatic doors' used for Handicap Access on the west end (nearest the Mayor's private law office) have been broken. Periodically there are paper signs loosely taped to the door saying 'push', but they are usually torn or blown off in a few days. The doors require too much effort for a disabled person on a walker or in a wheelchair to open. Given that my daughter has been in a wheelchair all her life I'm particularly sensitive to access issues.

As I understand it, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that handicap accessible devices be maintained in working order.

While the thought of embarrassing the City of Roanoke and its manager (who is fortunately on short time now) with a public Americans with Disabilities Act suit is very tempting, I'm more interested in getting the problem fixed, now.

So I emailed my comments to an Assistant City Attorney I work with from time to time, and asked him to forward my concern to the appropriate powers-that-be.  I also suggested that they confirm to me by 4:30 PM this Friday (Nov. 13) that the repairs have been ordered and will be COMPLETED by November 30.  If so, I'll be quiet.  If not, I'll review how Rossiferous I can really be.

I'll let y'all know what happens.  This is why I moved to Salem - it woulda been fixed in a week.
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