HREEO ADA Transition Plan

Interior of Saint Paul City Hall - Ramsey County Courthouse

Human Rights Equal Economic Opportunity (HREEO) & ADA

Serving Saint Paul residents and businesses by advancing justice and equity through education, advocacy, and enforcement. HREEO achieves its mission by upholding the following values: trust and accountability, community inclusion, openness, and continuous improvement.

HREEO champions justice and equity by confronting issues of discrimination and providing innovative avenues for accessibility and economic opportunities for all residents and businesses. HREEO achieves these goals by consistently delivering quality customer service, being a voice and advocate within the city and metro area, building relationships throughout the community, and enforcing laws.

Resources

Accessibility ADA & LEP Information and so many more accessibility resources.

Request for Access If you need an accommodation to attend or utilize a city service, program, event, or activity, please fill out this form and the ADA Coordinator will get back to you as soon as possible.

ADA Grievance Form If you or someone you know has a complaint about a program, service, or activity of Saint Paul not being accessible please fill out a grievance form to submit to the ADA Coordinator.

Operations

- Pre-determination settlement agreements (PDSAs)
- Conciliation
- Informal mediation
- Negotiation
- Administrative hearings (for housing cases & LS cases)
Coordination of 5 city advisory boards, ensuring membership and meetings are accessible to all members of the public.
- PCIARC
- MACPD
- ACOA
- HREEO Commission
- LSAC
- Maintenance and updating of the HREEO website content
- Creation of flyers, PowerPoints, and other Know Your Rights Educational material
- Provide presentations to local groups and stakeholders to inform the public of their rights and reduce barriers to accessing enforcement processes
- Tabling at city-wide events
- Responding to inquiries.
- Certifies small and local businesses as SBE (small business enterprise) WBE (women owned small business enterprise (MBE) Minority owned small business enterprise. These certifications make businesses eligible for vendor outreach goals, with the ultimate goal of diversifying recipients of city contracts. This encompasses Ramsey and Hennepin counties
- Other entities subscribe to our CERT list and use it for their own purposes.

Service to the Community

In Person

HREEO Offices located on the 2nd floor of city hall.

St. Paul City Hall
Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity (HREEO)
15 W Kellogg Blvd.
Office 280
Saint Paul, MN 55102

HREEO’s office is open Monday-Friday 8:00 am - 4:30 pm. Call us to schedule an appointment.

Walk-ins are welcome Monday- Thursday 8:00 am - 4:00 pm.

Reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and assistance, including language assistance, are available upon request.

Online

Human Rights & Equal Economic Opportunity Webpage - stpaul.gov/HREEO

Email

Email: Contact-HREEO@stpaul.gov

Phone

HREEO's phone number: 651-266-8966

Assessment

SERVICE	WHO IS SERVED	ACCOMMODATIONS & CONSIDERATIONS	IMPROVEMENTS
LS Investigation	Anyone working within the city of St. Paul, remotely or on site. Employers who employ people within the City of STPL. General Population of St. Paul for education services. Anyone who does business within St Paul.	Language: documentation is always provided in 5 primary languages. Working to improve that program to expand it beyond primary language. ADA: LS is one of the most frequently utilized webpages in the HREEO site. OTC reformatting site to be more user friendly and accessible.	Most online docs are in PDF which are not reader friendly OTC is working to embed all docs within the website.
HR Investigation	People who lives or works or goes to school in or utilizes businesses or services in STPL. We can also receive employment related complaints from anyone in MN for transfer to agency partners.	Transferring PDFs into pages, rewording content into plain language, St Paul enforces federal law via our workshare agreement We accept walk in appointments, over phone, teams, email, in person or at their employers. Flexible to meet the needs of the public.	Keep transferring PDFS into pages, improving our page in accessibility. Can improve on outreach, our complaint form needs to be translated into various languages via MS form. We can be more targeted in our outreach. Utilizing specific advocacy groups that work within our realm.
ADA complaint intake & Accommodation request	Anyone who is requesting or has been denied access due to a disability. Any LEP individual looking for services or information in a language other than English.	Every service and communication through this process is done with accessibility considerations in mind.	Links or QR codes to the accommodation and grievance forms should be more readily available across all department web pages or event posts & flyers. I city wide SOP for responding to accommodation requests should be in affect to ensure more uniform response and traceable data. All forms should have multiple language options
Police Misconduct Complaint intake	Anyone who interacts with SPPD or knows someone who does. Also SPPD officers and staff.	Accepting complains in any form that works for the complainant. Form was updated to request accommodations. Flexibility in where to meet that is most conducive to the complainant.	More targeted outreach. Make in-person complaint process more easy and accessible.
Procurement	Anyone involved with city money or anyone who wants to be	Mostly through teams, some may have trouble accessing meetings. Pre-bid meetings are held on various site projects with varying degrees of accessibility. Website is not user friendly, but working on it w/ OTC. Docs are mainly PDF,	We can move away from PDFs where possible, add language block for forms. Offering a paper option.
Compliance	Anyone involved with a project or contract involving City money, or anyone who wants to be.	Almost everything we do is through teams. Deal mainly with documents via email, never spoke about accessibility of documents. Website is just links to pdfs, needs improvements.	Add language block to all docs. Website can focus more on education, in more broad terms and in more details
HREEO Admin	All HREEO clients (internal & external)	Doorbell Duress Alarm Replace furniture (desk/chairs) in MLK conference room. Clear pathway Self-serve Dept materials (Brochures, business cards, intake forms, etc.) within easy reach Implement HREEO’s general number (6-8966) and the different options	Switch furniture (fishbowl/MLK conference rooms) Re-configure hallway (left side hallway) & front desk area. Purchase brochure stand Inform staff to stop using 6-8900

PROGRAM	WHO IS SERVED	ACCOMMODATIONS & CONSIDERATIONS	IMPROVEMENTS
MACPD			PDFs should be avoided for sharing anything other than the most basic of files, agendas, minutes etc. All docs and links sent out in advance of meetings and paper copies provided at the meetings.
Know Your Rights (KYR) Presentation	Anyone interested in learning about the workings of HREEO	Done in audible/visual format, spoken work and power point presentation. ASL or language interpreters can be ordered upon request.	We should provide the accommodation request form up-front when planning a presentation. Most disabilities can be accommodated within our current form, but if people have a special request we can evaluate those as they come.

INFORMATION AVENUE	WHAT INFORMATION IS CONVEYED HERE?	HOW IS IT ACCESSIBLE?	POTENTIAL BARRIERS?
Website		Anything on the pages is screen readable, PDFs are not. Site Improve tells us what is and what is not readable.	Digital Accessibility standards can be hard to follow and overwhelming. We need a more accessible and user friendly tool for teaching content creators and measuring accessibility. A public info specialist will help More child pages More readable maps
Social Media	We submit requests for posts through OTC, they word and post designs and posts	We collab with OTC and they make sure it's accessible.
Flyers & Brochures	Mostly outdated, All divisions have at least one.	Paper flyers are generally accessible to most people, often preferred to digital versions by many.	Assess current haul of old flyers, update and add all relevant versions.
Annual Reports	LEP PCIARC HREEO Dept.		We need to make sure any digital version has a screen reader friendly version as well.
Email Blasts			Avoid PDF attachments Zip Files
Ads	Open House Radio Ads PCIARC Annual Summits Housing related ads		We would not have much say over a accessibility of outside media presenting the ads we pay for.
Radio shows	HREEO Director’s search Public info (HREEO’s functions and services, HREEO community engagements)
QR codes /links			Topics based pages (Housing, DSI, Safety) Landing pages. Theme based presentations.

AREA	ACCESS ISSUE	SOLUTION
Public owned spaces for committee meetings	Some are accessible, some are not	Host meetings at places we know are fully accessible.

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Human Rights Equal Economic Opportunity (HREEO) & ADA

Resources

Operations

Investigations

Seek resolution through

Post-Conciliation compliance monitoring

Process Improvements

Complaint Intake

Compliance outreach, education and enforcement

City / Federal / State ordinances

Procurement

ADA & LEP

Coordination of 5 city advisory boards

HREEO Communications

CERT

Service to the Community

In Person

Online

Email

Phone

Assessment

Facilities

AREA

ACCESS ISSUE

SOLUTION

Services

Programs

Information

Contact Us