Common Council To Form Parking Committee at Next Meeting

The Common Council on Tuesday night decided to table the formation of a Downtown Parking Committee until its next meeting, hoping to get a broader representation of membership.

The council will announce the committee at its next meeting on December 12. 

The former parking committee was comprised of downtown shop owners, commuters and city officials. Under its tutelage the city explored paid parking, which never came into existence as electronic gates and pay machines were erroneously not considered when council voted on the ordinance. 

Council President Dave Bomgaars said this time will be different.

“The new committee will be comprised of people who have a major interest in it,” Bomgaars said. “Downtown landlords and property owners and tenets and residents who live in downtown, small business owners and council and city employees.”

Once the committee is formed, it will pick up where the former left off with paid shopper parking, which was voted down by the council in June. 

“But there still seems to be many who feel this is the way to go, along with the equipment, which back in June and July, the city staff had not done an extensive search of what equipment might work best, technology and then whether or not we should look at the Desmond study to see if there should be a parking facility,” Bomgaars said referring to the parking assessment study performed in 2010 by an outside firm.

New City Solicitor

Tuesday night brought the announcement of new city solicitor Tom Scrivo, who replaces the outgoing Barry Osmun.

New City Web Site 

Director of Community Services Beth Kinney presented the council with an update and a run-though of a completely redesigned city Web site.  The site, which features a cleaner look and greater navigational ease, is scheduled to go live on Friday morning. The city’s Web site address is: http://www.cityofsummit.org/