HUDseen: The Plan Is To Rid The City Of The "Tyranny of the Quarter"!

By all indications from last night's Parking Committee meeting, which lasted just over one hour, things are not looking good for the roll out of the new parking kiosks which have been in a storage space at the DPW garage since early February. Let's hope they aren't covered in mold. Yet!

The meeting showed that there has been no progress since last month, with most of the discussion focusing on two topics, both of which have been previously discussed at length: parking issues related to the county's future use of 11 Warren Street and, thanks to Dominic Merante, a ridiculous amount of back and forth about how the city will accommodate disabled and elderly people using the kiosks, with committee head Jen Belton looking annoyed at Dominic. Hell, kiosks aren't even planned for the first block of Warren! It's true -- the committee trying to get parking kiosks in the ground and working THIS YEAR is having a difficult time trying to accommodate the parking needs of our friends in the Columbia County government who purchased a building on Warren Street that is located outside of the scope of the kiosk project. Can you see why this project may never get off the ground, and certainly won't this year?

Most concerning of all, though -- and what should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention -- is what Jen Belton said early on in the meeting regarding what she had recently discovered about the "costing" of the kiosk project she is in charge of: "So, it was a lot more than I thought it would be. So, I kind of did some creative thinking. In an attempt to reduce costs, I took out several kiosks..." Kiosks are now out of the plan on Warren's side streets (and, presumably, on Columbia Street), with parking meters to stay in place there for the time being. Warren Street is still supposed to have all its meters removed and replaced with kiosks, as are the four downtown parking lots and the Amtrak lot. Upper and lower Warren (excluding the first block), where no meters currently exist, are supposed to get kiosks. This is the plan, at least. The big plan. The hugely ambitious plan. According to documents the committee has published, phase one and two of the project, with many of the kiosks in the ground and being used by motorists, is supposed to happen in "the spring of 2025." This simply won't happen. Not a chance.

The parking kiosks gathering dust on Dock Street are supposed to improve the parking experience for visitors and residents parking downtown, as well as increase parking revenue for the city. Parking fees, both on-street and in parking lots, will rise. As both Jen Belton and Tom Depietro have stated at recent meetings, the kiosks will rid the city of "the tyranny of the quarter," which is about the most absurd thing I've heard coming out of City Hall in a while. It sounds like something Donald Trump might have said when he recently commented on getting rid of the U.S. penny. "We must stop the tyranny of the penny. America cannot be great again as long as we have to live with the tyranny of the penny."

In an effort to show how poorly and unprofessionally the committee (and the police department) is handling the kiosk project, I offer the pictures below of the City Hall Municipal Parking Lot on Columbia Street. If this project ever gets off the ground, that lot, with 120 parking spaces in it, will lose all of its meters and receive at least a few kiosks to make parking there easier, more pleasant and, of course, more expensive. While there has been talk at the meetings to repave one of the two city parking lots on Warren Street that Jen Belton described as "a disaster" and "a mess," there has been zero discussion about improving or completely redoing the City Hall lot. You gotta laugh or you just might cry.

To get a clear idea of how utterly unprepared and unqualified this committee is to completely redo the city's parking scheme, one need just stand in front of the so-called sign at the entrance to the City Hall lot and appreciate it for a minute or two. There might as well be a huge fucking red flag attached to the top where the light bulb used to be. If you can't find the time to have a look for yourself, perhaps these pictures will suffice.

In what year in the 1980's did DPW
stop painting the wooden poles in the lot?

Light? What light?

Here are some additional pictures showing the wonderful, safe and respectable condition of the city's largest parking lot, located directly BEHIND CITY HALL:

This surface is ready for kiosks? This lot
is ready for a parking fee increase?

Half of the lights in the lot have been
out for more than 2 years. And, unlike every
streetlight in town, the bulbs
were not changed to LED's last year.

To get an idea of how well the kiosks will improve everyone's parking experience in the lot, one need only walk a half block east to 6th Street to have a look at the county's parking lot there. The contrast is stark and telling. They actually regularly paint their poles and concrete islands! Their signs don't appear to be from the 1930's and most recently attended to in the 1980's! They don't tolerate cracked and crumbling concrete sign pole bases! They post signs with legible parking rules! They sweep the lot! They actually give a crap what things look like!

Our City Hall parking lot doesn't need parking kiosks; it needs to be completely removed and redone from scratch with a design for the future that may involve kiosks! The whole damn thing - pavement, islands, signs, posts, everything -- needs to be ripped out, sent to a landfill and something respectable and modern needs to go in its place. The fact that this isn't on the Parking Committee's to-do list before even considering putting kiosks in there is a sure sign that they have no idea what they are doing and that anything they do will fail miserably and be a huge waste of money. Jen Belton is going to have to do a lot more than "creative thinking" to prevent her kiosk project from being a boondoggle of epic proportions. One wonders if she's even bothered to spend a few minutes in the parking lot behind City Hall. One wonders if the parking consultant the city hired has taken a walk through the lot. If he has taken a look and thinks the lot is ready for kiosks, then we are really screwed.

"The tyranny of the quarter" (whatever that means) certainly isn't the problem plaguing parking in the city. The tyranny of dysfunction at City Hall, including the common council, is the real problem -- for parking and so much more. Just take a walk around the City Hall parking lot if you need convincing.