Glencoe leaders consider liability, ADA issues in street-ends debate

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Updated: February 27, 2012 8:38AM

As Glencoe’s Street Ends Task Force sorted through the issues of how to handle mini-beach access, it seemed possible that a solution might be reached that pleases lawyers and insurance agents more than anybody else.

Glencoe village attorney Vic Filippini’s description, at a Jan. 19 meeting, of possible risks of liability and of coming a cropper of the Americans with Disabilities Act, led him to suggest a way to get down the bluff from Dell Place to the narrow Dell Place beach that was more a compromise than a favorite of anybody talking that night.

A wooden staircase might be seen as unfair to those who can’t climb one, and a hazard if maintenance is neglected. Leaving the rugged slope alone may bring little liability or ADA problems, but is an accident waiting to happen and doesn’t solve anything.

In between is a modest improvement of the existing pathway consisting almost entirely of regrading. It would be less likely to form the basis of a suit under the ADA, the lawyer said, or by someone who tripped and fell.

It was a little too little for at least one member of the task force to take. Laurie Morse, a proponent of a restoration effort centered around a wooden staircase, stopped Filippini repeatedly during his explanation.

She consistently referred to a proposed staircase as a “pedestrian trail,” which under ADA doesn’t have to be disability-friendly. Filippini kept maintaining that a trail is something that is an attraction in and of itself, that people seek out to walk or ride upon. A plain staircase, he said, is nothing like that, because people don’t walk up and down it for fun, but just use it “to get from point A to point B.”

Another member, Michael Glass, agreed with Morse, and asked, “Can’t we just call it whatever we want?”

He asked if anyone had a problem with that.

“I do,” said Gary Edidin, a resident of the Dell Place bluff. “I think it’s inaccurate. From the materials we’ve read, it’s not a trail.”

But Glass made another, perhaps more telling point.

“There are probably hundreds of staircases like the one on Spruce Street (in Winnetka),” he said. “And there’s never been, as far as we know, an ADA lawsuit.”

Filippini argued that many of those old stairs predate 1990’s ADA, and so aren’t in a lawsuit’s cross-hairs as long as they’re not improved.

Nothing was settled or decided, and the meetings will go on, probably at three-week intervals, chairman Joel Solomon said.

The next one will embrace the subject of parking around Dell Place — will it be banned or restricted to keep it quieter for the neighbors?

During the meeting, Joel Solomon, a village trustee, ruled that a separate meeting of the neighbors should be held to decide their take on the issue, which would then be brought back to the task force for more discussion. Asked by a reporter after the session why the neighbors’ debate should be held outside the larger forum, Solomon said, “They have more of a vested interest in what’s happening in their bailiwick.”

About a half hour later, after talking with Assistant Village Manager Will Jones, who advised against the decision, Solomon sent out e-mails canceling the private meeting.

“I’m not inflexible. I heard it twice, and I thought, right, we don’t need to do that,” Solomon said.

“There’s a transparency issue and open meeting issues, and it didn’t occur to me until all these professionals were bringing it up.”

Some, however, feel that the entire idea of talking about parking is premature. Member John Tuohy questioned about trying to settle parking before the shape of Dell Place access is known. Others, however, expected decisions about access might be easier if the residents of the neighborhood had confidence they wouldn’t be inundated by cars and the people who rode in them.

The next meeting has not yet been scheduled.