Board of Aldermen 10-13-2020 Page 60
say OK everybody should park and | do agree with exactly what Alderman Lopez and Alderman Laws has
pointed out. It’s that the people that are harmed the most are the ones who can afford it the least. But at
the same time, as a City we’ve kind of a disservice to certain locations. So for instance, I’m going to bring
up two examples of things. The first one is a home that was transferred into a multi-unit. Zoning gave
permission for that and a recommendation of 1.5 parking spaces for every apartment or something of that
nature. The problem is, one of their apartments has five bedrooms, it’s being rented out by people who
work at BAE and there are five people living in there; five vehicles. They do not have enough parking for
that so they wanted on-street parking. In this particular area it really wasn’t conducive to overnight on-street
parking. | talked to Jill Stansfield and so on and there was really kind of an issue with what the location of
that is. The problem is is that we have approved too many apartments that need a lot of parking. So what
do we do? | have no idea. | had hoped that the parking study this summer was going to help it; now
because of COVID it’s being pushed off to the spring. | hate to see this continue to get pushed off, but | do
think that we do need to do it. Reducing this down to $10.00 seems really great on the surface, but if | hear
Director Cummings properly, we basically for all intents and purposes are going to abandon the overnight
parking. If we are not giving out fines and we are not doing it and we are not actually taking, unless
someone calls, it's gone. So | think then we don’t $112,000.00 we lose $240,000.00 which | do believe, |
like that Director Cummings said that they would work really hard so that nobody loses their job. But
whether they lose hours or not something is going to happen.
The other story | want to tell is about a tractor trailer park and | will say it was right on Mt. Pleasant, it took
two parking spaces. He was getting a $25.00 every night. What would happen is as long as he didn’t have
three outstanding parking there was nothing we could do. It was cheaper for them to pay the $25.00 (audio
cuts out) night for the violation of the overnight parking than it was for them to pay for parking somewhere
else. So bringing it down to $10.00 is only going to encourage that kind of behavior and | don’t want to see
that. What was happening there at Mt. Pleasant was the tractor trailer was not leaving on time and the
teachers who would normally have parked there or the parents who normally would have parked there,
could not park there. | had so many calls from residents within that area. | don’t want to see something like
that happen. So while | do think that it is really good to keep all of our fines together, | also remember from
the Committee meeting that | believe and please correct me if I’m wrong Director Cummings, but he stated
that fines are not to penalize someone but it is to help, it’s to turn them from doing something we don’t want
them to do. So we are not trying to hurt anybody in general; what we are trying to is we are trying to look at
it as that it is a deterrent. A $25.00 fee was not a deterrent for a tractor trailer who probably would have had
to pay $50.00 a night to park his vehicle somewhere and he took up two parking spaces but we could only
give him one ticket even though there were two parking spaces. So it is a frustrating thing, there’s no right
answer to this. But! do agree that it should go back to Committee in this particular case. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez?
Alderman Lopez
Thank you. So my understanding is that this meant to change the behaviors and this is supposed to not be
a revenue generator but supposed to be something that manages how parking is available and how streets
are available and how they are safe. | think one of the difficulties here is how we are addressing that. If a
raised voice doesn’t work with a child you don’t slap them, you don’t just keep doing what you are doing
more. You have to look at why they are misbehaving and why they are not behaving the way that you
want. We don’t that as a City, all we do is fine people and increase revenue. So we have created a system
here that is self-feeding. Now at the moment, as Director Cummings has pointed out, he has turned a red
funded program which was not generating revenue because it cost more to run that it did to produce
revenue into a green one that produces revenue. That does not show that the behavior decreased at alll, it
shows that the behavior has increased.
It may show that our capacity for in our seeking has increased somewhat, but more likely than not we
haven't actually solved the problem of overnight parking, all we have managed to do is make people a little
