Creation of Meriden Commission on Aging and Disabilities set for hearing - Meriden Record-Journal

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MERIDEN — The City Council will convene a remote public hearing when it meets through video conference Tuesday on the proposed consolidation of two city boards into a new “Commission on Aging and Disabilities.”

The proposal would combine the existing Commission for Persons with Disabilities with the Advisory Board on Aging. The hearing is scheduled for 5:30 p.m., followed by a 6:30 p.m. meeting of the City Council. Both the hearing and meeting can be viewed live on the city’s website. 

The Advisory Board on Aging’s most recent scheduled meeting was on Jan. 8, 2021, according to meeting agendas posted to the city of Meriden website. Meanwhile the Commission for Persons with Disabilities appears to have been inactive in recent years. Its most recent posted agenda was for a meeting that had been scheduled to be held on Jan. 12, 2017, more than four years ago. 

According to language in the proposal, that commission, if established, would have 15 members, two of whom would be persons with disabilities. Members would serve staggered three year terms. One of the proposed combined commission’s charges is to “[i]nitiate and/or conduct continuous studies and surveys to determine the conditions, needs and problems of persons with disabilities in the City of Meriden in relation to architectural barriers, transportation, public education and publicity, housing, employment, recreation, health and other such matters that the Commission may determine to fulfill the intent of this article. The commission is also tasked with monitoring local compliance with existing federal and state laws regarding access for individuals with disabilities. The commission is also tasked with advising and assisting city elected officials to identify issues affecting the city’s aging population. 

The second item to be discussed during the hearing regards the proposed changes to the city’s Human RIghts Advisory Board, which would have an expanded role should those changes be adopted by the council. The board would also have a new name: the "Human Rights, Racial Equity and Social Justice Advisory Board."

The proposed changes to the board’s name and role come as Meriden and other communities look to address issues around racial equity and social justice. Those issues had come to the fore after the May 2020 death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The proposed code amendment would increase the current board's membership from nine members to 11 members. The board's new members would be sitting city councilors, with each of them representing a different party caucus.

Zoning changes, DOJ lawsuit

During the council’s meeting following the public hearings, the council will discuss a requested petition for a text change in the city’s zoning regulations. That change would replace language in sections of the zoning regulations for commercial, industrial, research and development districts regarding “places of worship” with new language. 

That language, if adopted, would add the words “religious assemblies and institutions including places of worship, parochial schools, meeting rooms, and recreation facilities customarily accessary to such uses as permitted use,” according to the proposed revision. 

The proposed amendment follows an agreement local officials reached last fall with U.S. Department of Justice officials to settle a lawsuit which had alleged the city’s denial of a mosque’s application to move into a vacant two-story building on Research Parkway had “treated the center, a religious assembly or institution, on less than equal terms with a nonreligious assembly or institution."

As part of that agreement, local officials agreed to review and amend the city’s zoning regulations. 

mgagne@record-journal.com203-317-2231Twitter:@MikeGagneRJ

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Creation of Meriden Commission on Aging and Disabilities set for hearing - Meriden Record-Journal
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