Our meeting with Mayor Garcia's staff

Jason Harris has had an email dialogue with the Deputy Chief of Staff in Mayor Garcia's office. We were invited to a meeting with the Mayor's staff along with our parking consultant, Mike Kodama.

Both the Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of staff listened patiently. Unlike some City officials, they didn't need convincing that parking is a problem. However, they said they didn't think the parking issue could be resolved even with the types of actions that we discussed. We understand that this is a big issue and that this was the first time they were presented with this large idea of a comprehensive plan that includes many components. We had hoped to leave the meeting with more support but we still hope that they will consider what they heard.

They did take an interest in the fact that the City has not had a parking engineer or manager for a few years. They remembered that the City had one once. We told them that the City was in the process of hiring someone part time. The City has been breaking up parking jobs between various departments but hasn't had someone trained in parking at the helm.

They also showed some interest in the parking studies that we mentioned from other cities. We will send them these.

We have more actions planned like meeting with other officials who have shown support as well as community leaders.

About those City Council candidates for the 2nd District... the campaigns have been respectfully civil until recently when the campaign flyers took a turn toward the negative. We encourage you to google the senders of those negative flyers.