CARLTON FLETCHER: Parking ‘hogs’ threaten more liberal downtown parking

Life’s a game of give and take.

— Santana

What’s that old saying about giving someone an inch and they’ll take a mile?

It seems some city employees have taken that adage and reshaped it into give someone four hours to park in one of the city’s limited on-street parking spaces and they’ll keep it for the day.

Unfortunately for others who adhere to the city’s more liberal parking rules by limiting their time in any one space to the four hours allowed, the parking hogs may soon force city officials to go back to more restrictive parking regulations.

Ward III City Commissioner B.J. Fletcher, whose ward includes the downtown central business district, championed the parking change after business owners in the district complained that some of their customers, angry over parking tickets given out under the city’s then two-hour parking limit, said they were less likely to do future business with establishments in the district.

Fletcher, an outspoken proponent of downtown redevelopment, worked with interim City Manager Tom Berry to come up with a new parking plan. The Albany City Commission eventually agreed to lift the two-hour parking restrictions and allow drivers to claim a parking spot for four hours. The city also decided that those who stayed in the same spot for longer than four hours would not be ticketed, but would instead receive “notices” asking them to be courteous and limit their parking to a four-hour block.

Which, for some, was the equivalent of Monopoly’s “Free Parking.”

Some of the same people who complained to Fletcher about the limited parking are now coming to her with complaints about employees who settle into parking spaces for the day.

“I’m firing a warning shot across the bow,” Fletcher said. “We tried to make parking downtown more customer friendly, but some of (the city’s) employees have claimed the parking spaces as their own. That’s not what we intended when we agreed to change the parking law.

“I’m putting these people on notice that we will start to monitor the downtown parking, and if I have to come down there myself and take pictures of the cars that are staying there all day, I will. We’re trying to improve our downtown by making it more customer friendly, not make it easier for people too lazy to walk a few extra steps to the places they work.”

Berry said his office will collect data compiled by the Albany Police Department and, if warranted, will follow up with action.

“The police department is monitoring the parking situation downtown, and we’ll take a look at the data they’ve collected to get a better idea of that situation,” Berry said. “We’ll reassess the situation based on the data.

“But if we’re getting the kind of thing that people are complaining about, city employees taking up parking spaces all day, we will take action. The whole intent (in changing the law) was to make those spaces available for people utilizing downtown businesses.”

Fletcher said she’s ready to take drastic action.

“If I have to get pictures of the vehicles that are sitting in a parking space all day and run them in The Albany Herald, that’s what I’ll do,” she declared. “We need for our employees to understand that our efforts to make things better for our downtown businesses is not an invitation for them to take advantage of the situation. We are going to look into this.”

Add lazy employees to the (growing) list of obstacles Berry, Downtown Manager Sharlene Cannon and city commissioners must overcome to make headway in their efforts to revitalize Albany’s inner city. Apparently there are some people you just can’t give that proverbial inch.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected].