Councilors Flynn to Hold Hearings on Services for Women Veterans, Accessibility & Public Safety Infrastructure 

See Press Release Below:

BOSTON – Boston City Councilor Ed Flynn will be chairing three hearings in the coming weeks centered on veteran services, accessibility, and public safety. These hearings will include a discussion on how veteran organizations and V.A. hospitals can offer gender-specific services for our women veterans, ways to ensure public facing televisions provide closed captioning for persons with certain disabilities, and equipping our waterfront with water rescue infrastructure.

Women comprise nearly 20% of serving military personnel and 10% of the veteran population, making up an important part of our military. However, despite their contributions, women veterans often don’t receive enough support, and the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) hospitals do not have medical facilities that provide the necessary and adequate maternity care for women veterans. Moreover, 25% of women veterans experience Military Sexual Trauma (MST) during military service, and they are more likely to struggle with childcare, homelessness, and mental health challenges. This hearing will focus on how we can best support our women veterans, and offer them gender-specific care and resources. This hearing is co-sponsored by Councilor Lydia Edwards, and will be held virtually via Zoom on Tuesday, November 9th, at 10am. To provide public testimony, please email [email protected].

As TV programming is an important part of relaying information, especially in this pandemic, it is critical that our residents with disabilities are able to access information from televisions in public spaces. Unfortunately, many of the public-facing televisions do not enable closed captioning, and therefore are not accessible to persons who are deaf and hard of hearing, or have hearing loss due to age or illness, developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities. This hearing aims to discuss ways for the City of Boston to expand communications access through public facing televisions, and ensure that persons with disabilities have full access to information and resources shared to the public. This hearing will be held virtually via Zoom on Tuesday, November 9th, at 2pm. To provide public testimony, please email [email protected].

Boston is a city surrounded by water, and over the years with the increase of visitors and tourists to our city, we unfortunately see incidents of people falling into the water. In recent years, there have been several incidents where people have fallen into the water and required assistance from our first responders, and residents have advocated for a life saving ring to be installed at Fort Point and near public docks in case of accidents and other incidents of people falling into the water. There are also suggestions that all docks and marinas along Fort Point and the South Boston Waterfront should be equipped with water rescue equipment such as life saving rings and other floatation devices as part of the city’s public safety plan. This hearing is co-sponsored by Lydia Edwards, and will be on Thursday, November 18th, at 11am. To provide public testimony, please contact [email protected].

“Veteran services, accessibility, and public safety are all issues that are top priorities for me, so it’s important that we have these discussions on how we can best serve our constituents in these areas,” said Councilor Flynn. “I want to thank Councilor Edwards, the Disability Commission, and our first responders for their partnership on these hearings, and look forward to hearing from stakeholders about how we can expand and improve on these topics.”

For more information, please contact Councilor Flynn’s office at 617-635-3203 and  [email protected].