Posted on 03/14/2012 3:40:44 PM PDT by grundle
Many hotels are faced with making improvements to pools by Thursday or falling out of compliance with the latest accessibility laws for disabled people.
Hoteliers must have pool lifts to provide disabled people equal access to pools and whirlpools, or at least have a plan in place to acquire a lift. If they don't, they face possible civil penalties of as much as $55,000.
There are about 51,000 hotels, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association, and most have pools.
The lifts are required by regulations made in 2010 stemming from the Americans With Disabilities Act, a civil rights law that bans discrimination based on disability.
With just days before the deadline, some hotels are considering shutting their pools or whirlpools to avoid penalties or possible lawsuits.
The 93-room Town & Country Inn in Quincy, Ill., for instance, has halted reopening its newly renovated pool and whirlpool for fear that it would buy the wrong type of lift and not meet the new rule.
"If we have to close our pool for a month, that's fine," says Dax Fohey, the hotel's general manager. "Our pool is a nice amenity, but it's not the main feature."
A pool lift costs $3,000 to $6,000. New hotels, which fall under different rules, are being constructed with built-in lifts.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Some of the ADA rules may seem "over the top" to some people with the accommodations for handicapped folks (and I'll admit, like any gov't bureaucracy they tend to get bogged down in minutia.) But it's usually "over the top" for those folks who have won the health lottery, so to speak, and still have their mobility. Lose your ability to get around without a wheelchair, and then talk to me about the inconvenience of curb cut construction...I guarantee you you'll be for them, not against them.
Hill says hotels can comply by doing what they can afford to do, even if it's installing a portable lift that's stored when not in use. If a hotel lacks the money to buy one, she says, it can create a plan that shows when it expects to get one.
>> Their agenda isn’t “equality” — it is revenge on the abled.
Qualify “they” instead of assailing the entire spectrum of crippled folk.
When the ADA act passed years ago I wrote in this forum that it opened up a cornucopia of perpetual legal suits for the law industry. It was written by lawyers for lawyers.
Now it seems that I was exactly on point.
With the government the camel’s nose does not have to even slip under the tent, he just charges right in.
Don’t forget to thank GHW Bush for all this.
And while you’re at it, give a kind thought to Richard Nixon for the EPA and high gas prices.
If the handicapped require such devices to get in the pools, they are clearly limited in their ability to get OUT. Now pool may need 24x7 life guards capable of handling the handicapped.
Insurance risks and lawsuit risks may turn those pools into gardens.
In reality it is one tenth of maybe .01% of the disabled making all the insane demands. The ADA should have only applied to Government facilities. Congress should not have had any authority beyond that on this matter. For example a person in a wheelchair should be able to conduct their needed business in the county court house etc.
My wife and I were in a Wally World about 8 years ago. There was a woman in a wheelchair pitching a royal screaming fit because the restroom was not accessible to her. The manager told her several times that the restrooms in the rear of the store were very accessible. She didn't want that rest room she wanted this one. My wife got mad real fast & told the lady to grow up and shut up. My wife is a quadriplegic.
In our area there were many very generous businesses who of their own free will made generous concessions to disabled persons. On was a theme park who allowed a person in a wheelchair and one other person with them in for about $5. It made sense as they were limited to the things they could enjoy. Along came a couple of lawsuit happy morons with slight disabilities who nitpicked the park over even the most trivial issues and the park then went to full price. I hope the ones who made the demands enjoy it. The ADA was Poppy's Disaster IIRC.
In a health care facility that would require a licensed person such as a Physical Therapist to either operate or oversee operation of this.
OTOH....I can't go join Augusta for NO good reason other than I'm female...yet some people have super rights and can demand access to anything...pool..hot tub...exercize club...strip club..even if its near impossible to get them there...
imagine a very large obese person ...like over 400 pounds....demanding that carrosels make bigger horses...
my disclaimer is that I have a diabled dtr (mildly) and a cousin wheelchair bound with ALS....
its not a constitutional right to have a clean river nor is it for somebody to be able to get into a hotel pool....
these laws get a foothold and its a lawyers dream...
A person needs to be able to access sidewalks etc and those are government issues in most places. Installing a pool lift is way over the top. Disability brings with it limitations as to what a person can REASONABLY do.
My wife is disabled from Transverse Myleitus 26 years ago. It hit her at C-5 and C-6 incomplete quad. It's been motorized wheelchairs ever since. I'm disabled 17 years now. Only with my disablility I can walk. But things like loud store P.A. systems can trigger seizures. So should I have the right to demand Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot, etc not make announcements and keep their stores quiet to accomidate my disability? I also walk with a cane now due to balance issues. I have enough common sense especially after four falls last year to not climb ladders anymore. Does that mean government should come clean the leaves off my roof now or force a landscaper to do so uncompensated?
ADA as applied to private businesses is an unfunded and Unconstitutional mandate. Some of its requirements can get quite expensive especially for Mom and Pop stores. We frequent a Mom and Pop gift shop on a regular basis. The owners go out of their way to bring my wife items she is looking for to give as gifts. Their store is in an old one story building with about four different floor levels on the ground floor. To adapt it and make it accessible would take most of their retail space. I do not think anyone especially government has the right to force a private business into upgrading to meet ADA.
. They are stuck in a quandry. If they want to expand in any way the codes will make them do such to make meaning the entire store ADA suitable. No part of government should have the authority to mandate this insanity into the private sector which is where the real issues and abuses are occuring.
Pools will start closing the first time someone drowns; you can’t have a lifeguard at a hotel pool 24/7. Well, you could, but the free market tends not to do so.
Do I think the ADA should meddle in the affairs of private business? Heck no, I’m not for gov’t meddling. But I look at the ADA the same way I look at the codes department in my city. Should the codes department be able to tell me how and what to do to my house? Heck no, but it’s the law and they do.
We put on an addition to our home...and in order to get the permits, the codes department said the entire house had to come up to Miami Dade hurricane standards (we live in Florida.) That involved replacing every door and window in our home (not just the addition) and probably costs us an extra 20K than we would have spent to just put on the addition. Did we comply, of course, because it’s the law, and whether I believe the gov’t should be able to tell me how or what to do to my property, I have to obey the law.
I feel the same way about the hotels and the ADA requirements. Unfortunately, the ADA is law (passed and signed by GWB in 1990.) And just like with codes in municipalities, the requirements of the ADA are ever evolving, and their “tentacles” are invading more of the lives of individuals and businesses. If the ADA says they need to do it, they have to bite the bullet and do it just like we had to bite the bullet and pay much more than we had anticipated for our construction (as I pointed out in my post, the cost is minimal for the hotels after all the requirements were explained.)
Is it right to have the gov’t involved with one’s private property or private business...not in my book, but it is what it is.
They’ll always be “Out Of Service”. The obese folks in those scooters will have them busted in less than a month.
Exactly.
It isn’t your property anymore.....the govt. just lets you use it.....if you are a good liitle boy.
Good grief..
Raymond
Ping
Exactly. Someone drowns because they can't get out. So essentially all pools will be required to hire expensive, highly trained people to watch things. Just to cover the one person per year who may show up.
Obama doesn't want people to use more than their ration's share of water. (His gauge.)
And Obama views swimming more as a white-man's sport and pastime--as blacks are less-likely to swim, and given which--look to the bizarre measures he took to hobble the tanning bed industry.
He wants to cripple communal and private commercial pools first, then he'll move on to private personal pools...for all the same reasons--as well as that--homeowners shouldn't have that much extra personal property, or self-sufficing water on hand, as is. (Especially so.)
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