Council backs off parking reduction

Barbara Diamond

The City Council didn’t have to be rocket scientists to figure

something was up when a whole neighborhood came to the meeting

Tuesday -- all in agreement.

Diamond Crestview residents were united in opposition to a

proposal to eliminate substandard parking spaces along the

substandard streets of the close-knit enclave. The council

unanimously decided to rethink the proposal.

“All of us have heard from you. We know you are unhappy with the

recommendation,” Mayor Cheryl Kinsman said. “If an entire

neighborhood is unhappy, maybe we have made a hash of this.”

Neighborhood spokeswoman Sally Wilde couldn’t have agreed more.

“Leave us alone,” Wilde said. “We have enough problems.”

The proposal to eliminate substandard parking spaces was approved

by the council at the Jan. 6 meeting. Sticking to the city’s code

meant eliminating about two-thirds of the parking spaces along the

congested streets.

“We have substandard streets; we have substandard parking,” Wilde

said. “It has worked for us since the 1990s.”

The longtime Diamond-Crestview resident helped the city staff

devise the parking, which, she said, took into account the space

needed to allow traffic to pass safely by parked cars.

However, many -- most -- of the spaces measured a foot and half

narrower and four feet shorter than the city’s standard of 7.5 inches

wide and 20 feet long. In some cases, the spaces were too narrow to

allow the passenger’s side door to open, which Councilman Wayne

Baglin considered to be another problem.

“Some of the spaces measured only 5 feet 2 inches,” Baglin said.

“That’s what got me on this in the first place.”

He said safety and convenience were the issues on his mind in

January when the council directed staff to modify the parking spaces

to meet the city minimums. Forty-four of the 50 marked spaces didn’t

make the cut.