Colleges Won’t Meet Access Requirement

The Ventura County Community College District will not meet requirements of the federal Americans With Disabilities Act even if it gets the $1.6 million in state money it is seeking to make its colleges more accessible to people with handicaps, district officials say.

District administrators designed their accessibility project four years ago, before the federal government released ADA guidelines, said Gil Putnam, the district’s director of facility planning. With the help of handicapped students, college officials toured the Moorpark, Oxnard and Ventura campuses to determine what improvements the district needed.

State officials are considering final funding approval for the project, Putnam said.

If all goes as planned, the project will be completed in about a year, and Moorpark, Oxnard and Ventura colleges will have new wheelchair ramps, railings, elevators and automatic doors, among the many improvements planned, said Robert Coles, an architect with the Ventura firm that designed the project.

The money will come from voter-approved state bonds, college officials said.

Coles said he hoped that within the next few years, the state chancellor’s office will approve more funds to bring the district up to ADA requirements, allowing officials to install improvements such as increased access to some staff areas and handicapped-accessible library stacks.