City fellow outlines language‑access and accessibility plan, proposes annual disability summit

Jacob Metz, a Bloomberg‑Harvard City Leadership fellow working with Rochester staff, presented the city’s draft language access plan and an accessibility change‑management proposal to the City Council on April 14. Metz said the work focuses on making city services accessible to residents with a non‑English language preference (NELP) and to people with disabilities.

Metz told the council that “a little over 7,100” Rochester residents have a non‑English language preference and that the top five non‑English languages are Spanish, Somali, Arabic, Khmer and Mandarin. He said the figure and language ranking come from a mix of American Community Survey data, Olmsted County court interpreter requests and school‑district data.

The language access plan groups operational steps into four initiatives: 1) a negotiated language‑line contract available to 311 and several departments (Metz cited a negotiated interpreter rate of about $1.05 per minute); 2) a pilot language‑pay differential that awards a stipend to tested employees who…