Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Parking, part 2

I was going to post a reply to jpink's comment below, but I thought it deserved a full post. Two ideas:
  • Here's the thing: we need to put something in motion now or the whole idea of neighborhood action will wither away for us. Let's get this going and then see if there's enough political will to go farther. It's important to act while we feel united. Even if we only achieve an imperfect solution, we've proved that we can act in concert.
  • Or - Here's the thing: this solution resolves the problem but not well; no one's needs are ultimately met by a short-term compromise. We need to have another community meeting on this issue only. We need to decide if we want to fight city hall and insist on different parking restriction on either side of Louise.
Any ideas?


Parking News

The petition for getting parking restrictions on Louise is, finally, in hand. The city will require signatures from the majority of property owners on both sides of the street -i.e. people who live on LaSaine and on Babbitt- so we will need to reach a consensus on what we want to put in place.

The city requires the same restriction on both sides of the street. Since the LaSaine (west side of Louise) residents have access to their homes from Louise, they have, understandably, different needs.
At the March meeting, several Babbitt residents brought up the issue of poolside and backyard privacy during the day, mentioning the prying eyes of truckers and city workers in their high-cabbed vehicles

A "No Parking" zone between, say, 7PM and 7AM would seem a likely compromise: this lets residents on LaSaine use their side of Louise to park during the day when they might be using their garage for other projects or need vehicle access to their backyards, and also advances privacy, security and a measure (at least) of quiet for both Babbitt and LaSaine residents during nightime hours. This soulution, does not address, unfortunately, the daytime privacy issue.

Let's see some chatter in the "comments" section below about this. Shall we take what we can get most easily, or is there another possible solution? I suppose we might be able to wrestle the city into approving separate restrictions on each side, but this seems like both a long shot and a guarantee that nothing would happen for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooong time.

Please speak up.