ZIGGY MOERTL: My name is Ziggy Moertl. I’m up here as an individual. However, in my day to day job, I work on physical accessibility in the built environment for one of…
PHILIP PEARCE (BOARD MEMBER): Spell your name for us, so we’ll…
ZIGGY MOERTL: Z i g g y, just like the little cartoon guy.
PHILIP PEARCE: Okay.
ZIGGY MOERTL: My purpose for being up here is I don’t like to make lawyers rich and one of the things that we see over and over is, you guys do these great jobs with putting out some pretty good technical requirements, but you don’t have very good definitions up front and I think you left a key one out here in defining the difference between a trail, an access route, and the built environment.
I could take you not too many miles away from here and show you a really wonderful dirt parking lot with a gravel trail, and it can’t be improved because it’s in a nature area. The problem is, the gravel trail, which is less than 100 feet long, connects to an 8 foot wide path that’s made out of concrete that runs for miles and is perfectly flat. But I can’t improve the parking lot because it’s in a nature area. Kind of thing you will see if you leave this the way it is right now.
People are going to use the exceptions. And I strongly Mr. Robb spoke a little bit earlier about, you know, you have to define this. I think if you put this out without defining this, the lawyers are going to love you because they know that they’ll be able to use this exception, that it will go to court because a qualified individual is going to challenge the use of the exception and the lawyers get rich. That’s really all I have to say is you have to define when you can apply “trail,” when you can apply “access route” and when it should be considered urban or developed you know, built environment.