Rise and Shine, Park Cities (2-22-11)
1. Public hearing tonight on the proposed SMU parking district. Meeting kicks off at 5, at UP City Hall. For more information about the district, go here.
2. In other City Hall news, tonight the UP City Council will debate….well not much more actually. The only other item on the main agenda is a vote on proposed changes to the city’s ordinance on column and gate heights. I imagine this will elicit the same sort of fervor and debate as the Legacy Hillcrest project.
3. As I mentioned last week, there’s a blood drive coming up. Here are the details, from the omnipresent Steve Mace:
March 25
Highland Park Town Hall 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.
University Park City Hall 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.
University Park’s Peek Service Center (4420 Worcoloa St.) 1 p.m. – 4 p.m.
March 26
University Park City Hall 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
4. News came late last week that mixologist/genius/mustachioed man Jason Kosmas is taking his talents to Highland Park Village, at the soon-to-be-completed Marquee Club. On the same night, I tried his New Fang (rye, bitters, equal amounts magic/sass/big ice cubes) at his old place, Neighborhood Services Tavern. In response, a letter:
Dear Jason,
If you need any help testing new drinks at the Marquee Club, let me know.
Truly yours,
Brad
So after the council meeting started, the mayor announced that even though they intended to hear citizen input on the parking district tonight, they were postponing the vote on it until next month because two council members were out of town “on business”. Not sure why they did this – they obviously had a quorum so the absences shouldn’t have mattered. A lot of people showed up, and although everyone who wanted to speak was able to, it was a waste of time. It will be especially irritating if they schedule another round of public comments for the date of the actual vote.
There was a roughly equal number of for and against speakers, but no one speaking against seemed to oppose the parking district entirely. Most of them wanted their streets added to or taken out of the district or the hours extended to cover SMU Monday night sorority meetings, and so forth. In other words, no hard core opposition.
The only drama was when some old guy who had just finished asking that his block be taken out was walking back to his seat, when some other old guy held up a grainy enlarged photo of a street crowded with parked cars and sputtered “this is your street!”, to which the first old guy, his eyes bulging a little as he bent over to get a better view, hissed back “my street but not my block!”
I would guess that the council will pass the ordinance, but you never know with this group. This was the first city council meeting I have ever attended, and I wasn’t impressed.
I wasn’t up to taking on City Hall last night so thanks for the update, Neal.
@Neal, lucky for you you’ve never been to meetings in the past. I don’t think you’d be any more impressed at either of them.
Interesting that two of our newly elected council members found their own personal business to be more important than the council meeting that was scheduled even before they started running for office. It shows just how important the appointed council members take their jobs. Since they just do what the Community League tells them, I guess there really isn’t much need for them to attend.
Still, it would at least give the appearance that they care what residents have to say.
One thing Neal left out is that a few people called out SMU as the true source of this problem. One said that if SMU would make the students’ parking pass mandatory, most of the parking would be freed up. Another told of talking to a professor who parks on their street each day even though he has a reserved parking spot because his spot is farther away than where he parks on the street.
Mayor Davis did say that the city is working on that issue with SMU, although given the mayor’s history, I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in what he’s saying. He might think he’s been talking with people in Lubbock actually.
It is absolutely amazing that the Council stated last year that they were “working” with SMU on the parking issue and now the Mayor states the same thing this year—and yet nothing has been done by SMU. Their faculty and students continue to use our streets for parking, and the Council wants to lower our property value by keeping our cars off the streets. Where do I lobby the Community League since the Council looks to them for how to vote?