To Menlo Park City Council
via => e-mail

             I note next years budget priority projects list has an item T5, titled "Downtown Parking Study." It has a budget of $90,000 and is to be funded form the general fund.

             It currently is listed "above the line" so at this point it would be approved when the budget is adopted.

             I fail to understand why such a study is needed. Having been in an office for 15 years that overlooked a parking plaza, I can tell you that increasing the time allotted say from 2 hours to 3 hours is only going to increase the number of workers who use these plazas for all day parking and do not have parking permits. They know when the parking police are making their rounds, and they time moving their autos using the present 2 hour time limit. If you let them stay an hour longer, there will just be many more of them using the plazas, thus freezing out potential retail and commercial visitors.

             Let me suggest a simple and cheap way to test the situation, which might save the City $90,000. Buy some decals, which you can paste over the present 2 hour limit and say paste 3 hour decals on all the plazas. Use this as a test for 3 months or 6 months and do some monitoring of the results.

             If this test is not conclusive or raises other issues, than maybe a study should be implemented.

             Similar could be done, at the same time, on time limits for the on street parking.

             The City is facing a budget deficit out into the future. This is a small fix to save $90,000.

Morris Brown
Stone Pine Lane