City council will ask administration to review the slope of the Rotary Centennial Bridge and to look at options to make it more accessible for people with disabilities.

Mayor Ernie Bourassa unveiled the plan at Monday evening's council meeting.

'We will work diligently to make sure this is redone to meet your requirements,' he said.

The pedestrian bridge will officially open Thursday afternoon. It connects the Millennium Trail across the Yukon River from Riverdale to the Robert Service Way.

The slope of the bridge became a prominent issue July 15. That morning, the Yukon Council on Disability brought attention to the fact that the incline on the Yukon Energy side is approximately 6.2 per cent when the original plan indicated the slope would not exceed 3.2 per cent.

'I have never in my experience seen a bridge that goes uphill much at all, let alone one that has an incline two-thirds of Two Mile Hill,' Len Slann, co-chair of the council on disability, said Monday night.

Slann said concerns were ignored by the engineering department as the process for the building of the bridge went forward.

The current slope makes it very difficult for those with disabilities, or possibly even families pushing strollers, to cross the structure, he said.

He added that as a structure, the bridge should be flat.

The solution suggested by Slann was an overlay deck with a taper to reduce the grade to five per cent or better.

The addition would be meant to have as little impact on the present structure as possible, Slann said.

It would need to be about 15 metres long and taper down almost the entire descent grade working from about 10 inches at the bottom to virtually no grade at the top.

The current paved ramp leading up to the bridge would also need to be raised, he said.

It would have been much easier to deal with the situation during the design phase, said Slann. The bridge could have had a much shallower arc and likely cost about the same amount, he said.

'The project appears to be completed in very short order,' said Jon Breen, former executive director of the Yukon Council on Disability.

He added he now believes the city's administration will likely take a stance of: 'It is now too difficult to do anything, because the project is already complete.'

Breen said the end product is a sad conclusion to what started out as a good relationship with the city in the attempt to make the community more accessible to those with disabilities.

'I do not wish to be seen to be supporting this sad end to what started out as a very positive statement about community inclusion for people with disabilities,' said Breen.

He asked for a refund for the wooden plank he bought during fundraising for the bridge and to have his name removed from the list of contributors.

Breen told city council he was disheartened to see that the Yukon Council on Disability's name was removed from the grand opening ad for the bridge placed in papers last week.

He said he was once asked to be among the first two people to officially walk across that bridge, but now that invitation seems to have disappeared too.

Coun. Jan Stick said she was also bothered by the impression that people are now being excluded.

Bourassa said he wanted the disability council present at the grand opening.

'Jon, we do want you there. I want you there,' he said.

'So please do come out to the grand opening on Thursday. It is important to us and I think we would all be remiss if we didn't make sure you were represented there, so please do come out.'

Coun. Doug Graham said the city should get to fixing the bridge to make it accessible as soon as possible.

'We should be saying, How much does it cost? What's the design? And, let's get at it,'' he said.

'I think we should get to the real problem, which is the design of the bridge, and fix it.'

In the meantime, city council has approved a recommendation brought forth by Coun. Bev Buckway that would see the formation of a disability advisory group and a universal access design workshop, both to be implemented this fall.

The recommendation was approved by council.

Buckway said she hopes the initiative will help Whitehorse be more progressive. It isn't meant, however, to make the concerns about the bridge go away, she added.

The standards of accessible design are constantly changing, said Buckway. An advisory group would help promote a better understanding of the issues and challenges.

'It wasn't an intent to make this other issue go away,' she said. 'I would really like to see by putting these recommendations in here, that we are going to be proactive.'