Scahill Speaks-out on Post Office Accessibility

by Nathan Lasher

During a meeting of the Armstrong County Commissioners held yesterday afternoon, Commissioner Jim Scahill commented on accessibility issues at the Kittanning Post Office.

After Commissioners Scahill, Patricia Kirkpatrick, and Rich Fink acknowledged Americans with Disabilities Act Day, for which there was a celebration held in Kittanning’s Riverfront Park Monday afternoon, Scahill spoke about accessibility at the Post Office while linking it to his family history.

“When the Post Office was built in 1929, 30, and 31, my grandmother was the Postmaster,” began Scahill. “There was no such thing as a Postmistress in those days. She was a Postmaster, and she struggled like we do with building buildings and doing everything you have to do. I’ve said this before, that she would be the first to say, ‘gees guys, don’t you get it?’ It just befuddles me, when I saw the crane and the roof being fixed I thought, ‘gees, that’s pretty good, and that means they’re going to do something about it. At least they’re fixing the roof. I hope they have some money maybe to talk about making it handicap accessible.’ Then, when I saw they were working on the steps, and the broken-down granite and the two window wells. I thought, ‘wow, they’re taking them all apart. Aha, there has been an effort here, and that’s good.’

Scahill then expressed that the Disability Investigative Group (DIG) informed the Commissioners earlier in the week that money was also spent in order to reset the steps without any addition of a ramp. “Basically, nothing was done for handicap accessibility,” said Scahill. “It’s such a false victory to redo that without having the sensibility to do what’s been asked for and pointed-out by this government, by the local government – the Borough of Kittanning, and certainly by those that are handicapped, and by those that support the fact that they should have accessibility to the Post Office.”

At the end of his comment, Scahill returned to his heritage. “All I can tell you is if ever anybody was informed of that that would be rolling around somewhere up in Kittanning Cemetery is my grandmother and my grandfather who was Postmaster before her, and my dad who worked there at the front window for sixteen years. It’s unbelievable that they would do that. But, it is what it is, so we have to keep moving on and keep helping DIG to try to achieve their goal.”

A protest was held on the steps of the Kittanning Post Office Monday afternoon. The protest followed an early celebration in Kittanning’s Riverfront Park commemorating the 20^th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Print

1 Comment

• 

  By scott_starr, August 20, 2010 @ 10:59 AM

  With all due respect, Mr. Scahill, channeling your grandmother will not get anything done.

Other Links to this Post

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.