A good meeting with the Parking Authority

(127th in a series of posts on parking)

Gadfly found yesterday’s meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee with the Bethlehem Parking Authority to be very interesting and informative.

The designated topic was the BPA proposal to raise the fine/violation structure, which got tabled.

But the discussion went well beyond that to the goals for parking, ways to change behavior, design of the Polk Street Garage, what to do when the Walnut St. Garage gets worked on, leases and contracts, etc.

The reason for the wide-ranging discussion, as Councilwoman Van Wirt said, was that “there isn’t opportunity often to interface” with the BPA.

Gadfly’s ears perked up at this similar comment by President Waldron, that “we don’t really have an opportunity to weigh in and talk about parking from Council’s point of view”:

Now, you know that if Council is a bit starved for information, we, the public, aren’t getting any.

(Gadfly would like to remind you and any Council members listening of his modest proposal — “A modest proposal: the more the merrier” — to improve the information flow by inviting BPA to Council twice a year for a friendly discussion.)

Thus, here is an audio of the entire discussion, and Gadfly invites you to listen in, learn some things, and maybe have some questions.

One of Gadfly’s goals in providing audio and video is to help you get to know your elected officials better.

See what they are thinking about, see how their minds work.

So here are time marks for the Councilmember sections of the discussion if you want to use that for navigating through the meeting: Van Wirt (mins 7:00, 55:05), Negron (mins. 18:30, 46:29), Waldron (min. 21), Reynolds (min. 29), Crampsie Smith (min. 45:45), Colon (min. 59:21).

But if you have time just sit back and follow the flow.

Gadfly will come back and highlight the main sections of the meeting shortly — there was an interesting and important action item concluding the meeting.