How's That Parking Bureau Budget Looking? How's The General Budget Looking?

For at least the past ten years -- and possibly ever since the city's hundreds of parking meters were first installed on and near Warren Street and in four parking lots -- the job of collecting quarters from the meters was handled by one city worker.  ONE!  Now, it appears, the job requires two workers.  While one worker never lets go of a two-wheeled dolly (and never takes his eyes off of the quarters in the topless plastic bucket strapped to it), the other worker removes the quarter collection cans found in the meters and empties the quarters into the bucket, sometimes while one or both of them are talking on their personal cellphones to who knows who.  (Can you imagine?  A 5-gallon plastic bucket without even a lid!  Talk about secure, smart, safe and theft-proof!)

This operational change came about a few months ago, almost immediately after the Parking Bureau relocated to the HPD station on Union Street from City Hall 4 blocks away; soon after the Parking Study Committee wrapped up their kiosk work and disbanded; and at about the same time that our police chief posted on Fakebook that the "parking kiosk implementation plan" was "ON HOLD" and then went on her second maternity leave in just over 2 years. Here is what Mishanda Franklin included in her parking/maternity leave announcement on Fakebook on August 11th (any grammatical or sentence structure errors are not mine!):  We recently discovered that the kiosks purchased don't accept paper money.  Our goal is to move away from quarters - which are time-consuming to collect and aren't convenient for many people - this was an oversight.   I think it's worthwhile to note that our police chief --not the new head of the Parking Bureau (who transferred from the Treasurer's Office) -- has taken it upon herself to oversee parking matters,  It's reassuring to know that HPD has done such a complete job of ridding the city of crime and bad drivers that they can concentrate on matters not related to law enforcement, isn't it? 

If you think collecting quarters from meters is expensive,
try collecting $130,000 in useless parking kiosks, 
installing five of them in concrete, and leaving ten of them
 in storage for several months or over a year!

Earlier in the post, after explaining her upcoming leave of absence, our police chief concluded with this:  Your involvement is what helps keep our City strong.  I look forward to returning later this year and reconnecting with everyone.  

 

Parking enforcers are paid $20/hour.  As far
as I can tell, it is still only a part-time job.

There is another added expense that the Parking Bureau/HPD has incurred recently: a vehicle, likely a hand-me-down from DPW.  With city employee parking spaces available a few hundred feet away in the parking lot behind City Hall, you can often see that vehicle parked in a metered parking space on North 5th Street while enforcers are out issuing meter violation tickets.  The gasoline guzzling, climate change enhancing vehicle is likely primarily used to get enforcers to and from the Amtrak parking lot, as well as assisting in the collection of quarters.  Until very recently, parking enforcers were using their personal vehicles to handle these two tasks.  

Enforcers park the department vehicle and their personal 
vehicles in metered spaces while on the job.

The idea to install a kiosk at the edge of the city-owned parking lot where no parking meters exist and that is used during the week by employees of and visitors to the Columbia County Mental Health Building at 325 Columbia came solely from Police Chief Mishanda Franklin.  The Parking Study Committee -- headed by 4th ward council member and parking guru Jen Belton, and which Mishanda Franklin and her police clerk were involved peripherally with -- agreed that this was a wise idea and soon had a ten-thousand-dollar kiosk installed there, in mid-May, I believe.  Even though parking has always been free in all four downtown parking lots on Saturdays and Sundays (a fact that Belton and Franklin may have been unaware of), I heard it said at a committee meeting that this kiosk would only be operating on weekends. (The city does not get any amount of money from the county for allowing them to use city property as a parking lot on weekdays!)  Presumably, this expensive kiosk that the city can't use (1 of 6 installed of the 16 purchased) due to an "oversight" will have to be removed and sent back to the manufacturer (or to a landfill) sometime soon, including, of course, the 15 others.  It was the first kiosk to lose its lovely protective plastic wrap, a development I noticed in early September, over one month ago.

Ready for the business of revenue collection,
or ready for removal?

Our Chief of Police concluded her Fakebook post with these words:  We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through these issues and will provide updates as they become available.  That was two months ago.