The City Council will be having two separate public hearings about the Americans with Disabilities Act and making sure buildings are following codes.

The presentations will take place at 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. at City Hall Tuesday.

Mayor John Inyart said the ADA often assesses public buildings to make sure they are up to date with the ADA standards.

“We had a company come in and do an ADA assessment of all our buildings,” Inyart said. “As a part of the public requirement for this process, we have to have a public hearing to let people know what they have found.”

He said the council might start adopting policies for the sites that need to be worked on.

“This is a long-range process to make sure all of our facilities are ADA compliant,” Inyart said. “It’s more than just wheelchair accessibility—it’s a lot of stuff.”

The council will be evaluating policies after the evaluation at its regular meeting at 7:30 p.m.

“Part of the evaluation process with this company is the evaluation of our policies,” Inyart said. “One of the first things that has to be done is we have to have a hard and fast policy that talks about how we will deal with any accessibility issues.”

Inyart said this policy will not physically change the buildings but details how the staff addresses and reacts to concerns about accessibility.

“This is just a roadmap through the rest of the process,” Inyart said.

The council will also be looking at alternative natural-gas suppliers.

“Once a year, we have a small window of opportunity to contract with a supplier of natural gas,” Inyart said. “We will be changing to a company called CenterPoint Energy Services Inc.”

Inyart said they will be voting to amend the terms of the agreement with Ameren to allow the city to go to another company for natural gas.

They have to approve this before they can vote to approve the agreement on a contract with CenterPoint.

Inyart said this allows competition of the cost of natural gas.

“It allows us to bid out that amount of natural gas we are expected to use and get a better rate,” Inyart said. “It saves the taxpayers money to do this.”

This bid could save the city more than $30,000, he said.

The council will also discuss the bid to a company to repave State Street north of the city limits. Inyart said they are waiting to see the bid, and based on recommendations by the staff, they might be prepared to vote on one.

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812 or slmcdaniel@eiu.edu.