New parking regulations are vexing owners of Downtown businesses, and they sought relief, or at least encouragement, this morning when they came face to face with the six contenders for City Council seats at a Candidates Forum heading into the April 10 election.
In a quest for increased revenue, the City Council expanded parking meter coverage from 6 in the evening to 11 o’clock, and from six days to seven.
Members of the Downtown Business Assn., sponsors of the 80-minute forum at The Actors’ Gang –including Alan Schulman of the Akasha restaurant and moderator Ken Kaufman of Rush Street – said they have seen enough of the regulations that only went into effect two weeks ago.
Typical Akasha diners invest 2 to 2½ hours in a meal. They are not happy about interrupting their visit, the owner said, to dash outside and reset their parking meters.
Severe changes in the formerly relaxed meter regulations are breeding “an inconvenience that is bound to have a long-term impact,” Mr. Schulman said. “I want to know what you guys are going to do to re-evaluate and adjust what currently is going on.”
Unsurprisingly, everyone on the theatre stage, around a rectangular table, was sympathetic. They appeared to promise relief if they are employed on Election Day.
Mostly they regretted using years’ old parking survey data as their main guideline.
“I don’t believe (the present arrangement) is a done deal,” said Councilman Andy Weissman.”The reality is we are beginning to receive feedback, Please continue to communicate with us.”
Former Councilman Scott Malsin said it was wasteful for a financially starved city to blow $100,000 for quickly out-of-date research by experts.
Mayor Mehaul O’Leary wished “that you had come in while we were discussing this.” Despite implementation, the parking rules can be reversed, he said. “This is not a done deal.”
On the other hand, Meghan Sahli-Wells’s hunch is that the regulations “are a done deal.” But at least, she said, “we should keep the two hours of free parking” in the three city-owned parking structures.
“It is ludicrous,” said Jim Clarke, to have parking meters turned on until just before midnight seven nights a week. “We seem to value experts instead of paying attention to wehat people around us are doing,” he said.
Declaring that he is “cheap,” Steve Murray said that he walks Downtown. He suggested a shuttle as a solution to unhappy parkers.
In some cases, the intimate gathering of about two dozen DBA’ers and the Council candidates was a shmooze among pals. During the two-minute introduction that is standard at candidate forums, Mr. Weissman said he wasn’t going to talk about himself because “literally, I know everybody in the audience.” A Downtown attorney in the Meralta building, he helped create the association 17 years.
Ms. Sahli-Wells resides within the perimeter of Downtown. While Mr. Malsin is a Culver West resident, he spends much of his business day Downtown.
The closest anyone came to an arguable assertion was when Mayor O’Leary, owner of two enterprises, said, not for the first time:
“I am the business guy of the group, and I care more about business than the other guys do.”
