Nevada woman urges county to do more to serve disabled

"You have a much greater area of land than even the city does that needs to be accessible to those who are handicapped," Earll said. "If a disabled person is arrested, are all features of the new jail going to be ADA compliant? Are the cells accessible?"

Presiding Commissioner Bonnie McCord assured Earl that the new jail is being designed with all the latest features that meet the ADA's requirements.

"The new jail does have handicapped accessible cells," McCord said. "The architect is making sure every nook and cranny is accessible."

"There is a raised area here," McCord said, pointing to an area on the plans for the new jail. "We realized that there needed to be something done so a ramp was put in so that if we had a jailer in a wheelchair they could get to that area."

Earll questioned who would be responsible for ADA compliance at the jail after it is built. McCord responded that the commissioners didn't have direct oversight of the running of the jail because the sheriff would be responsible for it once it was up and running.

"Each elected official is responsible for their own office being compliant," McCord said. "I'm the ADA coordinator for the county commission and have been since 1992 or 1993. As for the jail the chief jailer will probably be the ADA coordinator since it is under the sheriff."

Earll said that there are several grants that could be available to the county to help bring county property, including the courthouse into better compliance with the law.

"There is a grant that you are eligible for that would allow you to repair or replace windows, the foundation, floor joists, ceiling joists, all sorts of repairs to the courthouse."

Northern Commissioner Neal Gerster said the county had already applied for that grant last year but didn't get it.

Southern Commissioner Kennon Shaw said that one holdup was the fact that many grants required the county to put up money also.

"One thing about it is that a lot of these grants require the county to put up matching money so we would have to approach it on a year-to-year basis," Shaw said.

Earll said her research on the courthouse had turned up an interesting fact, if true. She said she had found an interview Judge H. A. Kelso did from the late 1970s in the Daily Mail where he described watching workmen from the Works Progress Administration paint over a mural painted by one of Missouri's most famous artists, Thomas Hart Benton. Earll indicated that the mural was on the outside of the courtroom on the third floor of the courthouse but its exact location has not been determined.