ADA Advisory Commission Meeting - August 2025 - Part 1

Jessica Oswald, Ryan DiGiovanni here in person, and joining us on a Teams meeting is Crystal Blair and Bridger Reed Lewis.

Absent at this time is Dean Paul.

Ananomi. Okurumi.

We do have a full quorum.

Do we need to go and approve the agenda at this time? [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Anomi?

Hello, Anomi. This is Ryan speaking. Are you joining us virtually? I hope you guys can hear me. We can.

Okay, good. Okay, great.

Thank you for joining us. So we'll go ahead with the approval of the agenda. Would somebody make a motion? Motion to approve the agenda.

And we need a second.

Second. Move. Crystal motion, Jessica second. It's fine. We're good.

Have the committee members had an opportunity to review the minutes from our previous meeting?

This is Krystal. I have.

I have.

Yes, we noticed the last meeting was— right. Thanks, Sue, for that. That was a good catch.

So the last meeting minutes, are there any concerns, any discussion points? Just a concern, or rather an edit. So, for the roll call, they have— you have me as present, but I was absent.

I was absent for July.

Okay. Thank you for that. Mm-hmm.

We will correct that and make those updates.

Motion to approve the minutes.

Do we have a second? [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] If there are no objections, then we'll go ahead with the approval of the minutes.

Seems like there are no objections, so the meeting minutes are approved as amended.

We do have a few unfinished business items on the agenda from our last meeting. Dean Paul was supposed to present on the topic of accessibility improvements in real estate. And because he's still not here, I recommend that we continue to assign that to the— that we table that until the next meeting.

Are you guys okay with that? Yes. And I am so sorry, there is one error on the agenda. You have it listed down for Thursday, July 14th rather than August 14th.

Yeah, we, we pulled that up a minute ago too. Sorry about that.

Yeah, we already corrected that. Jessica let me know and I made a note of it, but thank you for making sure we took care of it. So we'll move on to the transit workshop. That'll be by Bridger. Are you ready to move forward with that?

I am, yes. Um, so I'm going to use my notes real quick and I'm going to go ahead and start. Um, uh, that I, that last month I got invited to participate in the city's 5-year transportation workshop along with a large group of, um, um, uh, of others who, um, varied across other industries. One thing that appeared was a love for our, for, for accessibility and safety and Anchorage. It was two of the largest areas brought up in the group to ensure these issues that affect those disabilities are at the front stage and taken seriously, help to bring these ideas to the mayor with these ideas below, which in my opinion would make Anchorage more accessible and safer, in my opinion.

And then one of my ideas was expanding the UPASS program to agencies that serve Anyone vulnerable, anyone in a vulnerable population with the idea of offering free bus fare, including anchor rides for clients and employees. And then I put little tiny notes. One of them is removing the clause for clients being required to be in an educational program for whatever is defined as an aid. For whoever is defined as an agency group home or a government entity, the UPASS programs would base the cost analysis on the size of the agency, paying more if they have a ratio of more employees and clients. Discounts would be made for nonprofits and those running group homes.

And then the UPASS program wouldn't exclude those based upon the size of the organization. But instead foster the, the bit of a co-op idea of combining the contracts with other agencies to ensure the clients get the services they need. Any comments on that one before I move to the second idea?

Bridger, maybe a general question. I don't know if everyone's fully familiar with what UPASS is. Is that Could you just do like a couple-sentence executive summary of like what UPASS is and how it's funded and how that fits into just to kind of catch everyone up? From what I understand is the UPASS was set up in the '80s or '90s originally for the university for students, staff, and faculty. And how it works is they pay a portion.

Let's say, I think right now it's about $5 per person each year or semester. I forgot what it is. And of course, that ratio to pay for someone had to change. And then that goes into a fund, and then that goes and gets sloshed around in a sense to allow for more of a universal transportation fund for these organizations. And it allows for those to have effectively limited transportation to and from work, events, hospitals, doctor's appointments, you name it.

And it's extremely accessible to those with disabilities like myself who use it around town, who have limited mobility and struggle in the wintertime and can't handle the normal bus system because of safety issues. And this would open up a lot of doors for individuals because of the isolation a lot of people with disabilities have not being able to get out of their home because of the costs associated with anchor rides and just the normal bus in general.

Thank you, Bridger. Appreciate it. Yep. And, uh, are you guys okay moving on to the next one?

This is Ryan. Can we hold on that? I do have a question. So the U-Pass program started with the intent to service those at the university setting, correct? Yep.

Okay. So if we expand that, it would probably be a different program. It would no longer be U-Pass, correct?

I would assume they've already done that for the hospital and other organizations for the list. I believe, uh, Figaro would actually have a list, and I've actually worked with them already to hopefully work, uh, to set up this for, um, sort of a pilot with.

The Ark of Anchorage, but you bring up a good point. It technically wouldn't. It would be effectively a universe.