FOR more than a decade, disability advocate Bob Triming has been asking for upgrades to an inaccessible accessible toilet.
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It's budget time for Bathurst Regional Council and yet again it appears the project will miss out on funding, with no allocation in the draft document.
The toilet in question is in the foyer shared by the library and Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG).
While it met the standards when it was first built, the standards have changed and the toilet now falls short.
Mr Triming is unable to take his electric wheelchair into the bathroom.
Instead, he has to park in the narrow corridor outside and "hobble" in and out of the bathroom.
"It's a real pain," he said.
"I'm fortunate that I can get out of my wheelchair. What about the 95 per cent of people who can't get out of their wheelchair without assistance? And what happens if I have a fall?"
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With the toilet largely inaccessible, Mr Triming said he rarely visits the library.
"My wife is a member of the library. She is always going down and getting books, but for me to be able to spend any length of time there I need to have access to a toilet," he said.
For the toilet to be accessible to everyone with a disability, Mr Triming said the bathroom has to be about twice the size, have an inward opening door, and the corridor needs to be wider.
"You should be able to go down the corridor and turn on a 90-degree angle. You can't do that in my wheelchair," he said.
"My wheelchair is the wheelchair they use for determining Australian standards around."
He said that council has done a good job with improving some public accessible toilets, including recent projects at the National Motor Racing Museum and the Bathurst Visitor Information Centre, but the library toilet continues to go without funding.
"To be fair, councillor Ian North is supportive, but my beef is the councillors have to allocate the money," Mr Triming said.
"My beef isn't with the senior staff; the councillors say what is in the budget, [the staff] can't just pluck $40,000 or $50,000 out of the air."
Council's director of Corporate Service and Finance confirmed on Wednesday that there is currently no allocation for the library toilet to be upgraded.
Councillor Jacqui Rudge is one councillor certainly supportive of upgrades, feeling that with more people in the central business district, toilet facilities need to be up to scratch.
"It most certainly needs an upgrade," she said.
"We've got such a lovely art gallery and a fantastic library and I really do think we need something done."
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