METHUEN — The city’s disabilities compliance coordinator and longtime chairman of the Disability Commission resigned last month, accusing the mayor of not taking access compliance seriously and halving his pay in political retribution.
Sidney Harris said he resigned after Mayor Stephen Zanni told him he had other priorities in the city, adding he felt it was payback for work he did through his business, Valcom Web Services, on Zanni opponent Jennifer Kannan’s campaign webpage last year.
Zanni said Harris refused a contract he offered, though at half the previous pay because Disability Commission rarely met last year and the work of the coordinator needed to be evaluated after six months. Politics had nothing to do with it, he insisted.
On Monday, Harris filed four complaints listing dozens of alleged access violations with the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board, a state regulatory board within the Massachusetts Office of Public Safety that develops and enforces regulations designed to make public buildings accessible to and safe for use by people with disabilities.
Harris said he handed Zanni his resignation on Aug. 7, when the mayor told him he did not have money to pay his stipend. Harris said that was paid out of a disability fund, not the mayor’s budget.
“He told me flat out, I’ve got a line item in my budget, and said I’m only paying for six months and you’re done,” Harris said.
Zanni offered Harris a contract for $4,800 per year, half of the previous $9,600 pay Harris had received. The mayor said the Disability Commission only met four or five times last year, instead of the 10 meetings scheduled. And the contract included a review in six months of whether the position was necessary.
“He claimed all these things are wrong, well what has he done for 31 years?” Zanni said in an interview Thursday.
Harris said his job as access and ADA coordinator was to review access issues for disabled people in the city and compliance with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, and report back to the mayor’s office and City Council. He does not have enforcement or spending power and cannot take care of any issues on his own, he said.
“I don’t have any regulatory compliance mechanisms that I can go out and just tell departments this is what to do,” he said. “It comes out of the mayor’s office. The mayor oversees the departments. My responsibility is to identify access problems in the community.”
The commission, which is comprised mainly of residents with disabilities or the caretakers of disabled people, has trouble mustering a quorum, meaning they often cannot hold their meetings, he said.
“It’s hard to get people in. That’s the reason for the access coordinator position,” Harris said. “It’s a liaison for the commission to bring issues forward to get them resolved because the commission doesn’t meet very often.”
City Council Chairman Jamie Atkinson, who also is a member of the Disability Commission, said he supported Zanni’s decision to offer a lower pay rate.
“The commission as a whole, there needs to be more interaction with the mayor’s office,” Atkinson said. “The mayor said that’s something he wants to work on. It was something that needed help from both sides. … A lot of that has to do with work Sid has done. He has shown that there are things that need to be fixed and changed to make the city ADA compliant. That will help moving forward.”
On Monday, Harris filed four complaints alleging 30 to 40 violations against the city with the Architectural Access Board, including some curb cuts on Jackson Street and accessibility at Nicholson Stadium.
“I’m confident the state will side with me,” he said. “For 31 years, I’ve tried to get the city to understand what their responsibility is. This whole thing is insane.”
Zanni said stadium issues will be addressed in the renovation project getting underway.
The job of the access and ADA coordinator will be taken on by building inspector Gene Walsh, Zanni said. After six months, he said he plans to evaluate whether Walsh has time for those responsibilities on top of his existing ones.
Harris said the building inspector previously did the ADA coordinator job, but that the duties were too much, leading to the creation of a separate position.
Harris served as chairman of the Disability Commission for 31 years, and as access and ADA coordinator for more than seven.
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The last say: by Sid Harris – I resigned my position because this Mayor was nothing more than a liar. He praised me for my work just months before when I submitted my annual report. However when he mentioned he was disappointed with me because I campaigned against him, well let’s just say he didn’t like my response. And what that does that have anything to do with the position and my work? Zanni used his office to hunt down and attack those he believed campaigned against him. Overwhelming evidence clearly shows his vengeance against others and I guess I was on the list.
I was not an active supporter of his opponent. As a web developer I was asked to set up her website to which I did. She had a volunteer manage that website.
When the Mayor told me that the city council approved the stipend in his line item I simply called him again a liar. Funds under an ordinance for this position came directly out of the disability fund and the city council never approved it as a line item in his office budget.
When he told me that he had other issues to deal with and that disability issues wasn’t going to be addressed at this time is when I gave my resignation and decided to move in another direction. His statement “what has he done in 31 years” is a testament how disrespectful he is and that he’s never paid attention to the progress we’ve made over the years because his self serving agenda never included helping remove architectural barriers for the disabled community. I’m not a fan of the “when you pay you get to play” political requirements. I choose not to do that.
Sid Harris