City Staff give thumbs down to mixed-use parking permits
If life is like a box a chocolates, then residents and business owners of Jack London District just picked out the chocolate coated cockroach.

In a crushing blow to community driven action, City staff just published their recommendations stating that the Public Works Committee should not implement the mixed-use parking permit plan for the Jack London District. The plan, proposed by the Ad-hoc On-Street Parking Improvement Committee and based on community feedback, requested that the City issue parking permits for residents and business owners alike.

The mixed-use permit plan was designed by the committee to give our diverse neighborhood consisting of residents and businesses, fair access to our local parking resources, while avoiding the blight of district wide parking meters proposed over a year ago by the City of Oakland. In addition the plan would enhance the availability of day-time parking to the benefit of local retail businesses that currently are unable to attract customers during the day due to the dire shortage of parking. Parking permits would be coupled with time limited parking in many areas that would prevent non-permit holders using BART, Amtrak, and working in neighboring areas from using our streets as a free all-day parking lot.

However City staff believe that the permit plan will unfairly subsidize parking in the neighborhood and discourage public transit use by local workers. This they claim this is against the city's transit first policy and hence the permit plan should not be implemented. Were City Council to approve the Plan against staff's recommendations (citing the cost of an AC Transit monthly passes and the cost of monthly parking in local lots) staff suggest that any household or business requiring more than one permit should pay $100 for the first permit, and $720 a year (or $60 a month) for additional permits, and that the total number of permits that can be issued be capped at 650 per year.

In addition to recommending no mixed-use permit plan at all, staff recommended that the 2 to 4 hour time limited parking zones should be implemented everywhere as recommended by the parking committee. This would revitalize local retail businesses while allowing the city to collect significant revenue from parking violations. The implication is that the limited time parking is the city's compromise between what neighborhood residents and businesses wanted - time limited parking with exemptions for permit holders, and what the city wanted - parking meters everywhere. The latter original scheme remains as a veiled threat for the future.

If time limited parking is implemented without a mixed-use parking permit plan it is clear that our neighborhood will suddenly have as much parking during the day as it does at night i.e. lots and lots of empty spaces everywhere. While a boom for local retail and short term visitors this will be bad news for businesses with employees and any household with more than one car. In addition this will provide hundreds of empty on-street parking spaces that the Jack London Square developer will be able to claim as a resource for their new redevelopment project. That's convenient because the Jack London Square Redevelopment Project currently has a forecast parking shortfall of more than a thousand spaces, and it also budgets for only 15% of its users taking public transport i.e. the vast majority would arrive by, you guessed it - car.

While encouraging public transit use is all well and good, the Jack London District Ad-Hoc On-Street Parking Committee Members were mindful that this is a neighborhood in a transition and that a sudden change is not beneficial to anyone. We currently have a diverse mixed of residential, business and light industrial users that are battling with the trend that wants to eliminate light industrial and non-retail business. An overnight change as suggested by the City would leave dozens, if not hundreds of less well paid workers struggling to meet the high cost of pay parking, or quickly adapt to finding public transport alternatives. Hence the mixed-use parking permit plan was designed to give fair access to parking for all current users at a reasonable rate the committe felt was a compromise between the current free rate, and future market rates. Not charging market rates for the permits was based on the knowledge that a parking permit would never guarantee a parking space as it would in a pay lot or garage; it was merely a permit to park if a space was available.

The more optimistic members of the parking committee are hoping that our local City Council representative Councilmember Nancy Nadel can help us broker a more favorable compromise than that suggested by City Staff. If not, you may soon see some of our valued local businesses looking for new locations to take their employees and a lot more fighting over parking throughout the district.

Members of the Public Works Committee would like to hear from you before their meeting on March 9th. Do you still support the original permit parking proposal made by the ad-hoc committee last September? Or would yonu prefer parking meters and 4-hour parking zones throughout the Jack London District with no permits at all? Let them know.

The Public Works Committee:

Chairperson Nancy Nadel, District 3	510-238-7003	nnadel@oaklandnet.com
Jean Quan, District 4	510-238-7004	jquan@oaklandnet.com
Desley Brooks, District 6	510-238-7006	dbrooks@oaklandnet.com
Henry Chang, Jr., At-Large	510-238-7008	cityochang@aol.com

Please send a copy of any email to letters@jacklondonnews.com
Posted 2/29/2004