My name is Vittoria Comin. I am the namesake and manager of Trattoria Vittoria, a small Italian restaurant on Victoria Street owned by my nonno since 2006. As one of the many restaurants painted in a callous light as a result of this incident with the parklets being forcibly removed, I felt it prudent and appropriate to speak to the issue in a public format.
It is admittedly a rather bizarre experience for me — I usually hear complaints from my family that I am overly liberal — to be writing about unreasonable ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] compliance requirements. However, I think this is a prime example of how local government and bureaucracy undermines the true spirit of accessibility and equal treatment by virtue-signaling on issues like these and taking actions that seem purely performative, without actually addressing any problems.
I would like to start by clarifying that our parklet, along with many other long-standing local businesses, like Ca’Dario’s across the street from us, is fully compliant and has been acknowledged by the city to be compliant. They are forcing us to remove the parklets anyway, since we were unable to make them compliant within the unreasonable timeframe given to us and lack of proper noticing. We had gone ahead with the thousands of dollars of repairs we had scheduled in good faith, even after we received the removal notice. We believed the city would be reasonable about the fact we were simply unable to get anything scheduled sooner. From the time we had actually received our notice, damage from recent storms made local carpenters' time very limited, plus the fact that every other parklet on the same timeline was attempting to book these same carpenters for many of the same repairs as Trattoria Vittoria. As you know, "reasonable" could not be further from what has happened.