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i wish more people came to these board and commission meetings if only because being the only attendee makes it a very weird and uncomfortable social experience - they seem surprised to have an observer at what is normally a private event.
i guess it would help if the meetings were properly publicly noticed and not being held in violation of public meeting laws.
according to the city website, this body meets quarterly. i’ve never, not once, seen a public notice of a meeting for the parking advisory panel.
fascinated to find out this board that meets in secret is actively coordinating with a board i have no proof even meets at all 
getting right down to business with item #7 on the agenda - THE TROLLEY PROBLEM
joan fenton of the downtown business association is reiterating her concern that publicly posting signs in an affected area is not sufficient to notify people who would be affected by a change to that area because people don’t read the signs.
board members are concerned that the board serves no purpose if the city can make changes that affect parking without it coming through the board. apparently some recent pedestrian enhancements to monticello ave resulted in the loss of 14 street parking spots.
i agree that people should be notified about changes that would affect them, but as someone who parks on the street in their neighborhood, i would definitely notice and read a sign posted right where i usually park 🤷♀️
realizing the absolutely incredible fucking irony of this body, which is meeting in violation of the law requiring them to notify the public, complaining about the inadequacy of what was technically legally sufficient public notification of city projects.
really getting to the meat of what matters here at the parking advisory panel meeting
public engagement & communication is a problem vexing every single governmental endeavor. the lack of staff resources for boards and commissions leads to every single volunteer board struggling to reinvent the process and none of them really succeeding.
(that’s just my editorial commentary - the board is trying to work through the best way to contact people about proposed changes. one board member blames the fragmentation of the media market - “people used to read the newspaper!”)
they’re showing now updated maps for the monticello ave bike & pedestrian safety updates... i went to a public comment period with the firm designing it last month. none of these people were there.
cvilletomorrow.org/articles/charl…
cvilletomorrow.org/articles/charl…
since finding out about the project, members of the parking advisory panel complained & successfully lobbied for the removal of a portion of the proposed bike lane, which would’ve caused the loss of a dozen street parking spots.
“the tow committee actually met twice,” says one parking advisory panel member, with some surprise in his voice. (WHEN?! i have T R I E D to attend these meetings and been completely unsuccessful)
wow truly heartbreaking - there is no LOCAL BUSINESS that handles car booting. love the application of the “buy local” attitude when it comes to fucking with people’s day to day lives.
an anecdote about one woman driving the wrong way down a ramp in the parking garage is being used as proof that signs don’t matter or work
i knew it - the parking garage IS switching its parking validation ticket system specifically because people have been stockpiling them. if you have old validation tickets, you only have a few weeks left to use them before the system changes over.
joan fenton suggests notifying people via a printed notice inside utility bills (a common method for letting people know about really important stuff), but i don’t know that a change in parking garage validation machines warrants that kind of effort?
i suspect they kind of effort entails a cost of some kind. how many households does the city have? that’s a lot of paper.
the manager of the parking garage is really excited to have a captive audience to explain new parking technologies to.
they’re testing out some new sensors that can provide information about whether a parking spot is occupied, how often a spot is occupied, the average length a car spends parked there, etc. possible future application: linked to an app that shows you where empty spots are
they’re convincing themselves of the value of paying $5/mo per parking spot for lasers to tell us whether the spot is occupied - the bulk of the cost of parking studies is in utilization study.
according to a parking industry online forum the parking garage manager is a member of, people do not charge their electric cars in parking garages and many garage owners are now removing the charging stations due to low utilization.
the west 2nd street surface lot is switching over from meters at every spot to centralized pay stations. joan fenton wants to use the old meters as some kind of fundraiser? she thinks people would want them as some kind of memorabilia?
huh ok, meeting adjourned. love to experience a new kind of board meeting!
