News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The city of Cookeville allocated some $50,000 in this year’s fiscal year budget to make the customer service area of City Hall more ADA-compliant.
City Manager James Mills said the city plans to lower counters to make customer service and tax collection areas more accessible for citizens in wheelchairs. Mills said few changes have been made to these areas of City Hall in its 60 years of operation.
“To make it more accommodating and in compliance with ADA is the primary purpose, but it’s also part of a bigger process where at City Hall we’ve been doing, over the past couple of years, a number of renovations to spruce up the building,” Mills said. “We plan on being here for several more years and it just needed some overall maintenance and sprucing up.”
Mills said Cookeville plans to begin this project following the completion of the Fire Station One modernization project. Mills said city employees work on these projects to keep costs down.
“We hope to get them up here to address the customer service area hopefully sometime next year,” Mills said. “It all depends on how much longer it’s going to take on the fire station, but we have budgeted money and we intend to start this project, and if all goes well, complete the renovations to the customer service area this fiscal year.”
Mills said that in years past, the city has added an ADA-compliant front door and a ramp to make the building more accessible for disabled citizens. Mills said customer service was next on the list.
Among other improvements to City Hall in recent year, Mills said the council approved a $1 million replacement of the HVAC system, installation of energy-efficient windows, and plumbing work.
