all right that's takes us down to page two of the agenda fourteen two point two overnight street parking and i don't know to what extent we need much background on this i think the briefer the better so we can get to discussions and this is sort of a preliminary to look into the matter further i will not disappoint you in being brief it is my turn to make this presentation there have been others in this room that have done so previously and now i need to do my part i say that because i know the council is split on this and your staff is split hence there is no recommendation you do have three options that are displayed one is overnight parking on street around i think that's what you heard from the hope college students that did the study option b is overnight parking may to september one so may want to september one the other is no overnight parking on the street which maintains the status quo i will just say that you have a full fledged report in front of you the planning commission has been through this the council has been through it at least twice before formally and had votes and you have heard presentations from a number of other you know like whole college students and i'm sure there are audience that want to speak to this i will say that other communities i've served have had on street parking during the summer months holland is different however holland has hope college and holland has some areas of density and valving multifamily and rental properties more so than the other communities i've served so i will not say that holland needs to be like other communities needs to be what is best for holland although you do have the data in your packet on what other communities do in terms of pros and cons for all your option a there is four advantages and fifteen disadvantages listed for may through august september one there are seven advantages and eleven disadvantages to maintain the status quo there are four advantages and three disadvantages so more even split on the maintaining the status quo however the cit survey signified a majority of fifty five percent believe that there should be some experimentation or pilot project so with that city staff after your study session two weeks ago put this forward to tonight so you can tell us whether you would like us to proceed further i'm one of these options and in which case we would do so with subsequent discussion on costs and ordinances and signs and all the details associated there what i would just stop by saying that i want to thank greg robinson who pulled a lot of this together and all the city staff who helped many of whom are in the room and would defer at this point to greg if there's anything significant that you think needs to be mentioned at this time it was a great summary believe it happy answer questions anybody have any questions for staff before we open the matter up for discussion thing on sorry seeing we just want to clarification what we're trying to do tonight we're not going to determine a b or c we're just saying do we want to go further or do we want to basically we've got a not a three point question but  think i think as i you know we had a discussion at the study session a few weeks back and ultimately at the end of the long discussion we sort of came to the right realization that you know we could talk to each other for months and perhaps nobody's mind would change so it's a matter of putting it to a vote and the thought was rather than putting forward a very deep having a staff create and put forward a very detailed proposal let's just do kind of a gut check type of to see whether we want to go forward with any sort of change to the for the way the rules are right now suggest in the form of a motion like for example the seasonal overnight parking or the all year overnight parking as to whether or not that gets voted on or if it's just sort of we'll see how it be and we don't have a motion on the floor at the moment but i think that nothing that happens tonight will be the final word on the matter there's no specific proposals before us and all the specifics of how that proposal works it's more along the lines of council is very split on this particular item and if we have a majority who want to go forward with some degree of change in our existing program then let's have that vote first and then figure out the details and have another vote on the details la can be all right that fine folks in the audience have sat through lots of stuff that they probably thought what in the world so now we will open up the microphone give you up to speak again counsel rules are simple name residential address for the record pl biggest trap thirty four east thirteenth i will read my remarks to reduce any chance that my appearance or comments will again be misconstrued or misrepresented we have before us tonight a proposal to allow on street parking all night it's called a pilot program but we all know there is nothing so permanent as a temporary solution i'm concerned because this appears to be another one of those neighborhood issues that are dealt with in a piecemeal faction whether it's parking this tonight or behavior problems maintenance infill ordinance changes zoning etc with overall plan a too often appears but the city is encouraging out of town landlords to build trenchant and student housing at the expense of long term residents it appears that next year there may be as many as eighty students living on my block that probably means there will be about seventy cars owned by students who are unwilling to secure college parking permits parking is already a challenge because a seminary does not provide parking community kitchen patrons need parking and there are frequent chapel activities now by adding overnight student parking it will seem like perpetual tulip time government all too often seek solutions before understanding the problem how serious really is a need for overnight parking has any survey been completed to determine the seriousness of the issue just how many families are experiencing problems or are you dealing with a few outspoken individuals would be rise to gather data before starting a pilot program we drove around the area early sunday morning before most people were up and about we did see houses with up to four cars we couldn't tell how many were single family structures or how many were rental units or boarding houses where the landlord failed to provide adequate parking in places it looked like some people vehicles had been there for a long time maybe awaiting repair or potential restoration projects concerns have been expressed about public safety road work street cleaning including snow and spring fall clean ups but what will be done to limit how long a vehicle can be parked in the same spot how could those limits be enforced i think we've all been in cities where there are cars that look like they've been there for months and i don't think we want that look downtown it's present parking ban is not uncommon as we travel and we see many signs prohibiting overnight parking particularly in communities that attract visitors tourists these places seem to consider it an individual responsibility to provide parking spaces before the person or family chooses to have multiple vehicles they should have a plan of where they're go to provide adequate parking perhaps once base for each unrelated adult it s it's what is being proposed as a plan to convert public parking to private parking and some spots will be tied up for long periods of time shouldn't there be a fee for taking over these parking spaces so it's this is the most republican place on the planet earth perhaps a republican market solution would provide extra overnight parking and that would be appropriate should we allow some of our landlord so open parking lots and various neighborhoods so they could rent spaces to anyone needing additional parking it might be an attractive investment aside before the mint before the many or inconvenience for the benefit of the few at least until hard that is secured another option is to provide additional parking or explored thank you exists right now you're looking at an option of making a study the issue of on street parking between the hours of two and five is a contentious one as evidenced by a review of the local editorial page or the discussions we have here in this chamber but i'm not going to address the direct issue of that because that's really not what you're voting on here tonight you have heard the eloquent arguments of mr peters you have heard from constituents you've listened to can end the dance of vehicles which goes on all over the city every night and every morning while advocates of the status quo may fear that revocation will turn our fair city into a dark miasma of crime and anarchy the point is we just don't know and that as i understand from the agenda what is at issue tonight it's whether or not will conduct a study to gather information to guide decision making on the issue in a larger sense than it is whether or not council will make policy based on empirical evidence or on speculation both for revocation and against that entered ition the that's the way we've always done it model of governance the true discussion should be about how the study should be conducted and you have apparently two options in front of you with lots of details that could be worked out in the meantime the discussion really should be about the details of that study because that will determine whether or not you get valid information in short it's reasonable and indeed prudent to question of the design of the study but it is but to oppose it altogether is to choose to remain uninformed a truly dark place from which to make policy decisions many of you i think most remember a show on t v called dragnet where a favorite character joe friday played with the late jack webb at a signature line that he always laid on the loquacious witnesses he interviewed just the facts ma'am that's what we need just the facts and i think the study will help us bring to that point that anything i might say he's going to you know certainly it's not going to change anyone's mind but the only thing my wife sarah and i want to just add in as we've read the articles over the past year or two with some interest in occasionally there just a little tone of at least the way we interpret some of the letters there's a little tone of you know we're behind the times or we've got to get with the times or you know holland is growing so like other big cities we need to you know make certain changes and things but you know we thought that's kind of a backward way of looking at it you could also argue that we're ahead of the times because we look at the future and what we hope for how on the whole planet is you know leaner and greener and cleaner and all that good stuff prettier seats or prettier streets excuse me and prettier cities and you know i know that's a little pie in the sky and you can roll your eyes and say that doesn't help you know all you know parking issues right now but we just wanted to throw that in that we want holland to continue to think future oriented and we would prefer that our streets not be used as parking you know areas we know that there is difficulty for families we understand that but we hope in the future to see more bike riders you know and prettier streets and you know a greener city and and that sort of thing so like i said our point was maybe we're not behind the ball maybe we're still ahead of and let's keep the ban and let's continue to make the city greener and pretty girl that sort of thing so thank you very much thank you i came to speak in support of the pilot program for overnight on street parking and recognizing that my opinion might not be popular with some of my neighbors it's my understanding that a recent professional survey of city residences alluded to by the city manager indicated support for changing the parking policy or at least studying this and hope the council will use those survey results as an indicator for the sentiment of the community rather than merely giving way to those persons like myself who are able to take the time to speak at tonight meeting i've lived in holland for the last eleven years it's a great community with a lot of advantages but no place is perfect in my opinion i've often thought that one realistic change that the city government could make that might have  the biggest positive impact with negligible cost would be to allow overnight on street parking prior to living in holland i lived in terre haute indiana have referred pennsylvania stevens point wisconsin growing up as a child i lived in a working class neighborhood on the southeast side of chicago all those places allowed overnight on street parking wasn't a headache in any of those places it was a convenience my life would have been a little more difficult had not been allowed and some of those places were few or no houses had driveways there were a lot of cars parked on the street you know other places where many houses a driveways there are only a few cars that are left parked in the street my opinion is that holland where the houses have driveways are probably likely end up with few cars parked on the street but why listen to my opinion or the opinions of anyone else make a decision based on data and information to a pilot study and evaluate the results i find it interesting and almost amusing to listen to the list of disasters in the making at the city were to change its policy yes i have noticed how crowded west twelfth street is on sunday mornings when churches are meeting i've also noted this condition only persists for a few hours on homes it just doesn't make sense to me yes holland delivers a lot of city services although some are more easily accomplished didn't nights when streets are currently empty such other such as garbage pickup recycling leaf and branch pickup and snow plowing are done efficiently during the day when parking is allowed other cities and municipalities accomplish these services while allowing overnight on street parking someone saying how one wouldn't be able to do that it just doesn't make sense to me residents of other cities understand that overnight on street parking comes with regulations and restrictions we holland residents already understand since we managed to keep the streets clear after two am if someone saying that holland residents couldn't figure out how to follow sensible restrictions it just doesn't make sense to me public safety safety concerns are certainly important to quality of life many cities which allow overnight on street parking have excellent public safety records just like college some cities which prohibit it or public safety record someone saying that allowing on street parking will turn holland into kabul or beirut or baghdad or even detroit or flint it just doesn't make sense to me but maybe my problem is that this is not an emotional issue for me i look at my experiences in holland and in other communities and common sense tells me that having overnight parking improve my quality of life not a lot but a little bit i'm not coming before the council tonight claiming that hollow will become a utopia overnight parking is allowed but on the other hand i don't understand the hyperbole hyperbole of claiming that a laundry list of negative impacts would ensue it just doesn't make sense i thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight may urge the council to institute a pilot program for overnight on street parking followed by an evaluation no it's positive and negative impact thank you you thank  when i moved back i likely have a driveway so i can park my car but i was very surprised to find out that parking between two and five am is not allowed in holland and my first question was and still remains why i mean i have grown up in cities as this other gentleman did that allowed parking overnight and there were no major difficulties i can't see holland being so far behind that it can't cope with things that other cities do readily i mean i've heard the thing that we you know due to snow plows well nine months out of the year we don't have snow although sometimes it seems like it's more i must admit especially coming from manhattan beach california and so the other thing is do you penalize everybody for those three months or do you look at the bigger picture the other part is i've been told the snow plows need that time well yes they do but i live in a very busy intersection twenty first central state and i have to tell you that i can tell you exactly when five am starts every morning because that's when the snow plows go in just as amtrak goes at eight twenty one in the morning and saturdays if i'm not awake i know what time it is so i do think there are going to be times when the snowplows need to be out i don't think it's the norm i've heard that there might be a police issue that potentially you know the bad guys will be hiding behind cars or whatever well guess what they can do that during the day they can do that at one forty five t five am is not going to make a humongous difference there was a study done in the l a times a few years ago that showed that actually the bad guys kind of sleep in the wee hours of the morning so they're not really up robbing too often at four am either so i don't think that something  should necessarily do be a major thing or otherwise you could just say guess what let's just not do parking at all in the evening sunset to sunrise nobody gets to park but i don't think that makes sense i think there are a variety of things i've heard this concern that all of us in these students that are paying six thirty seven thousand dollars a year some of whom live on campus some of whom are not are suddenly going to get cars and decide that they don't want to pay one hundred fifty dollars to hope college and they're going to park on the street well my answer to that is twofold one of which is unless they're blocking your driveway why do you care secondly why can't they i mean the streets we don't own the streets in front of us so i think that they should just like any other citizen should should have the opportunity to park their cars the other thing is that i don't think like others that this is an either or what i'm saying is i think there are issues that need to be addressed and so what i'm asking you to do is consider studying at doing the pilot program to me overnight parking all year makes sense but overnight parking made a september may make sense may have left issues i just think that we need to have that opportunity because again other cities throughout the united states including in the midwest the east you know great plains and all that cope with things like snowplows cope with things like police handling things all year round cope with colleges in their backyard where they have students that are parking and aging myself a little here we're not dealing with our parents buicks anymore when we were growing up we had one car in the driveway because everybody had one car now you have multiple cars one for mom going to work one for dad going to work some for students who are have summer time jobs or might have other types of jobs and in my neighborhood i watch them do the jumble mambo dance when they're trying to juggle the cars to get them and so i just think some of them are trying to take a chance of now blocking the sidewalk and to me that's worse because the students can't get down to black river or the old delhi people can't get to evergreen commons which i see quite often by the way if you want to see a busy corner evergreen commons six a m monday morning trust me you can't find a spot in anywhere within three blocks so in closing please just consider voting to look at the pilot doing the study and going on because i have total faith in holland and i think that we can be the best of them and that this could be a decision that will help make us even better for tourists and as somebody who lived in a very small city like manhattan beach which the streets were this wide they allowed parking overnight and yes we had tourists too and somehow it worked out  the world did not fall apart and there are other places like venice who actually have alternate parking you know one side of the street one day one side of the street and to address the one concern about how do we make sure that those things aren't there forever and all that well that something when you're doing your study that you can incorporate like you know they have like a sticker do whatever but thank you for your consideration thank you very much and welcome back by the way good evening and welcome good evening america one twenty one east twenty fifth street and i wasn't going to speak but i have to i was born and raised here when i left for college i wanted to get as never going to be some compromises the constant juggling of christ does not necessarily have to be one of those compromises thank you thank you luck the comment i would like to make on this issue i mean the options available today i would urge you to consider option b some of my fellow citizens have mentioned that this is not necessarily an emotional issue or it shouldn't be an emotional issue it should be about policy and how policy gets made and it's never good policy to make policy based on emotion and you have to make policy based on data you have to make policy based on information so there is there have been some comments about well is this really necessary to the people will really want it well if we take the survey findings of the for if we take the findings of the frost survey seriously fifty five percent of the people say yes fifty five percent is a majority so something is going on in the city amongst our residents that says that that's an important issue to them so it deserves some consideration so deserve some kind of research so to do nothing is to say to fifty five percent of the people we've heard which have to say but we're really not interested in acting upon it having said that i mean there are a couple of things about whether or not having a pilot itself is an important step there is this idea that maybe it's a slippery slope if we have the pilot then it will simply lead on to some permanent stay i'm not really sure i'm not quite sure i buy that the pilot is to do exactly what it is is to allow the talented creative people in our departments in this city to craft a policy a temporary policy which again i'm with be so from may to september to say what is feasible what works for the maximum  of people what causes the least oh shoot that's double negative what won't cause in can what won't cause a lot of inconvenience for people but then what allows us to figure out ok what are our limits what is the city capable of doing what's our capacity and again i think our departments from our street departments from public safety departments they're full of creative people and they're going to have input on this pilot how it's implemented where it's empty so where it's implemented it may not be downtown in the historic district perhaps it's south of twentieth street i don't know perhaps park i don't know perhaps it's on my street i don't know in fact i have several neighbors who would really appreciate if it wasn't twentieth street so i would really encourage to say if we're going to make a decision on policy let's make a decision that's based on data let's make a decision that's based on a full the full contribution of the city department to craft something meaningful and then let's implement that for a couple of months and let's find out in september how people feel how city council feels what our department heads feel and then let's make a decision on whether or not to suspend the pilot extend the pilot or to kill the pilot altogether but at least at that point everybody here can say we did it based on the best amount of information possible thank went ok i will close the public hearing all right so there you have it what show we do in the best way to do it is to get some degree of  motion on the floor so we can have a discussion and think about mr merrett like to make a motion i will love to i'd like to hear i would like to make motion that we direct staff to prepare details associated with in overnight on street parking for a trial period beginning may two thousand and fourteen in the form of option b ok so expiring that the end of september of twenty four to asser right that is the motion that is on the floor is there support for afford it bordered by hoekstra ok discussion for cation i think it would be expiring the end of august of twenty fourteen august thirty one before the students come back i don't know if that's well and had to be that the call this is the maker of the motions to determine well we have a motion that's been supported right now so and it was pretty clear that it was through the end of september so if somebody wants to amend it in the future they may do so that's the motion that's on the floor is there discussion down talking tonight about this particular thing and they're everybody pretty much has a viewpoint on this either pro or con there doesn't seem to be too much wiggle room on this particular thing but a couple of things that i jotted down here is that the city of holland the one of the things that we're really trying to do isn't hants neighbors neighborhoods we're trying to increase value we're trying to reduce blight we're trying to  increase garages and i've got several people who side even though i have to move cars i don't mind moving cars i don't like it but i'd rather do that than see on street parking and you know i think as far as the renters are concerned you're probably has some groups of people who maybe have students come home for the summer and i can understand that as a situation you probably have people who are renting who are not going to be there long term so they probably don't have that same self interest but i don't really care what chicago does or what spring lake or what i care what holland is and i think we need to think about what we have gone through a lot of cities loved a lot of different places i was come back to holland and i like the clearness of like the cleanness i like the organization that it represents and i'm not sure what it is quite ready to give that up i'm sorry if you have to move cars but that's the way life is  there's other things that we do that are inconvenient so i've been prefer that we maintain what we have you know that would be my position good to others i last time this came up i don't know who wrote your comments don but i think i basically said the same thing i know you wrote them favor of a test run a pilot project whatever you want to call it but something that gives us information data resources to actually make decisions because we haven't made decisions on anything or based on anything we've made our decisions based on fear and you know what could potentially happen i don't like making decisions like that  i have the same concerns of staff or some of staff who think that there will be too much parking there will be abuse of this policy but again we don't actually know what will happen we may have as many people like myself who preferred parking garages or in the driveways because our vehicles are technically safer in that area i think we'll find that to be the common behavior but i don't know what that is we need to find out what that behavior actually is i think one thing i brought up last time we talked about this was expanding the policy of getting a waiver from the police or doing what the city of chicago does when i go and visit my friends in the ravenswood neighborhood which is packed with on street parking they get just a little sign that goes in the driver side and these are the drives by and see it right there it goes on the the rear view window or even mirror and getting a system of that going  could that alleviate things we don't know need fact so again i'm actually in favor of option b to start in two thousand and fourteen i'd like to see a test i'd like to see an experiment of the system right thank you others anyone armstrong i'm so tired so i'm going to say a whole lot we've been through this a lot we've tried having a pilot program before and got to late into the year and it was wasn't practical so would we just didn't get there mean favor of this pilot project because for the same reasons that brian's talked about col other concert have been made i like to make decisions based on stuff that i know a lot of the discussion around this subject has been about quality of life and sort of less quantifiable for fein's to make decisions on of which have value i don't want to diminish that but you know we were talking about something that we we need to have some facts on and it seems to me that  instituting a pilot program we'll be able to have a situation where we can actually see the effects of what we're talking about and quite frankly i think that i'm not so certain that the results of this trial program  will answer every question there has but i think at least it will give us a better real life when they say these days real time i don't know what that means really but a little better information on how this will actually play out in real life if we were to institute it and i'm also from the may to september thing i think we'd have to think about some carving out some excluded areas like the downtown area i would look at the area around the college as it's on the issues that are connected with that the idea of a permit is an interesting idea but in order to do that i think we still have to know whether or not allowing cars on the street around the clock is a good idea so we've talked about a lot of things were interesting only one thing that hasn't been the least i haven't heard is the effect of park cars on the street in terms of traffic calming and the effect that has on but extreme traffic do a lot of things with our streetscapes and that sort of thing to try to hurt small traffic down and i know that  we can make a better informed decision on what this is rather than talking about it in terms of emotion and quality of life and whether it makes the city nice or not nothing experimentation sometimes i guess i would like instead of naming one choice status quo i would say maintain the quality of highland i just you know i'm we talk about we don't have any facts we have really gifted public safety people that are out there all through the night when most of the rest of us are sleeping they know what it takes to find people to watch over us through the night i believed them i've been out with them at night i know how much better you can see with the situation we have with our streets i really don't have to have any more facts and figures to believe that i do think it's much safer for children we just had presentations by people in a neighborhood that didn't like the cars parked so close on each side that children would come darting out they were afraid for the children they were having trouble driving down the street they had trouble turning they were backing up traffic on both streets that was because cars were parked everywhere we talked to the holland moon people a few weeks ago and they told us about how holland was given a national ward for it tightness its overall impression people come to here come here and say i can't believe how beautiful your streets are how well people take care of things how nice the full hours are everywhere one of the people in the historic district told me they bought a house in the historic district because there were things in place to control the quality of their neighborhood they they were willing to accept those kind of stringent sometimes requirements so that they could keep the neighborhood at a certain level of quality and they said you know we we've lived all over the world we chose to come back to holland because we like the quality here and if we had to have cars parked in front of our house where the tulips are planted and then we plant other annual later we're not going to take care of those flowers anymore  nobody's going to see i'm in fact we may not even be able to park in front of our house because someone else chose to leave the car there and we would rather not do that i do think we have a huge issues with hope college and downtown and i i mean i've had student my kids went through the whole college a couple of them and both of them got parking tickets because they parked in the wrong place but they didn't have to pay too many of those before they learned better habits but if nobody had to i'm sure they sure wouldn't have gone to wherever they were supposed to go and they would just park on the street i go to the chamber of  events that were center and everybody tries to get there early so that you can find a parking place if students could park wherever they'd like the park i don't know how far we would be driving to get to chamber events events at the hayward center we say the streets are public and but if we allow everybody to park on them the public will have no place to park and i know people can tell me that i'm  chicken that says the sky is falling and you're just quivering in your basement over over this and if we just have the facts and figures and if we just do a pilot it's all going to be clear there are principles that work in a community and when you mess with them you lose some of that you lose the standard that we have here that we really appreciate about how  it doesn't come naturally it's hard work it's not easy to keep up the level of the community that we do and it involves a lot of sacrifice and several people have contacted me saying you know moving my car is nothing compared to watching the quality of my neighborhood go down i've had other people that said you know safety for me is number one if anything jeopardizes a stay fifty of my neighborhood i could care about moving a car i don't know i i just think that if you say we try it and nothing horrible happens everybody says oh see you're just worried you're just fearful and it's going to be fine and i think you know none of us not the community is not going to be destroyed right and we will keep our streets as clean as we can we will take care of the snow as well as we can and we will do the best job as we can within the parameters of whatever is set up but it will not be the same it will not be as good it will not be that extra ten percent that puts a community on the map i will not hear from tourists that come over and say wow i just cannot believe how people keep up their property around here it's not just downtown it's not just hope college it's not just the hospital it's everybody's house just looks so good because we communicate a level of quality here that that is really i think second to very few communities and for me it's worth it and i know it's not popular to make statements like i don't need any more facts and i don't think a pilot program is necessary but i really think it's the best thing for the community in the long run i don't want to labor to give the police force more things to do with chalking tires and watching abandoned vehicles and marking things and counting cars and all the other stuff they'd have to do in order to make sure that we didn't have abandoned vehicles and checking all of that i don't want rental properties to be full of visitors that can come and park anywhere they want because now is the parking for that rental property is no longer limited by whatever the land letterhead landlord has set up but they can park anywhere they want and so they can all come from anywhere they want we ted talks through this pilot idea before and we'd set up parameters and then we started thinking ok now we'll put up signs at the end of every one of these streets ok it stops at fourteenth street well fifteen through one of the fifteenth street people going to say well why should i not be able to park on the street if the fourteenth street people can park on the street well if i can't park in the street then i'll just go to fourteenth street and park there and then what does that really tell us how good are those specs and do we really want to make all those signs all those posts all those all that washing over everything and exactly where would we put it and there's not much acceptance of doing the snow thing so then we're limiting it to certain months and then we have a whole college issue and then we have the sign issue and then we have historic district there's just it is very complicated and i know most people that i'm not to say most there are people that will say you know why not do a pilot program i think that makes sense that everybody should just try it and they'll be good and then we talked through some of the issues that that well cared for in the city and the kind of work that's done and why it is as good as it is here they say oh yeah you know i never thought about that i never really realized that i guess there's more to that than i ever thought of and i just feel that it's my responsibility in this position to know things and trust people that take care of this community and back them up and back up the quality of this community for the people that have decided to move here because they love it here and they don't maybe always understand why it is at the level that it is clearly we have some strong feelings about parking on the street and you know what i do i really respect everybody's opinion i honestly do i think it's we're all the sum total of our life experiences and how we make decisions and how we think things will impact it there's no good or bad is just how you get to where you are and it's like a serious life decisions crime abandoned cars public safety cleanliness i want i don't want any of that either but knowing how my block operates knowing how my black operated on one street where i grew up knowing how the black operated it hope when i live there knowing how downtown works is i lived here my whole life i'm having a hard time seeing how much things are how things are going to be drastically different because we're just the same people are here they still have their driveways they still have their cars some have a few more cars and i don't think everybody's going to get up tomorrow and say let's park all us all park on the street and if that happens i will be the first to say at the end of this pilot i'll be the first to say you know it's one of those dumb let's go back when talk about the whole thing about principles and cleanliness  i don't know how to make that connection from giving folks in a live in our community who are stressed trying to attract people to central neighborhood when the keep when the neighborhood impact committee and the planning commission the planning staff are the ones who are encouraging us to try that those are the folks i think we should be listening to here is what i do know this stored in its is pre one nine hundred forty it has words in it like undertaker the undertaker is is not it doesn't have to worry about this ordinance was last time you used the word undertaker many of these houses were built at a time where someone eloquently said it was warden june cleaver one car one driver well lord son got divorced he moved in the other kid went to college couldn't get a job moved back he's got three cars there he's got one driveway and i hope so my colleagues heard how many people got up today and said look what happens in my neighborhood the cars the shuffling that goes on that's a very real thing and i've seen it my whole life and maybe i'm the only one that gets the vast majority of people who have anything to say about honesty parking i think on the one they call saying i struggle with there's parts of the city where we don't even enforce it because there's no curb or gutter because it's too hard to know if the car's on the street or not so i have the car i have the city does you know this is going the people who are most inconvenienced with it are in our immediate central downtown area hope college is definitely an issue we've got to think long and hard about of what we do a pilot with that fate how do we make that work and work with them they have parking issues too i would think that something might come out of this pilot that might be enlightening to hope college as well the d d a clearly has residential parking real retail space they've got to be a part of this discussion and we have probably at the car of the d d a out in some of the downtown issues all of this i think is is infinitely doable and i think about the survey fifty three percent of people said you know what i think it's i think we like to try it i think is another nine percent or so it's said that so far off my radar screen i don't care if you tried or not wired of the sixty's i think we owe it to some folks to say you know what let's just try this thing let's try it let's do it well let's  let's make sure we know how to measure what some of those things i'm sure that the police department is going to have a something to say about it i'm sure the fire of the fire is going to have some observations street department when we plant flowers children safety get most of the children safety things or if we're really worried about that we shouldn't park in streets during the day because that's when they're out having that running around in the cars so i don't think it's any surprise anybody and i think this is a reasonable idea at a reasonable time it's being approached in a very reasonable manner i'm going to support it that's private i'm dumbfounded actually jay when you started talking i turned out because i know you're going to say no no just kidding i'm so used to things like you're at home all right anyone else  i said it two weeks ago at the study session that we can't be dealing with emotions here simply can't be doing if it's not the reasonable thing to do but i find it very hard to believe that if we don't have this study that we're working in a cave i've got plenty of facts from people already people that i trust people that have done studies other cities that have done studies for every city that you say you've got on street parking i can give you another one that doesn't we can banter this all night long  i have the information that i need to leave it the way it is as many people as jay has had talk to him about yeah let's give it a try i've had just as many come to me and say please don't do that we like what we've got there's a lot of people that come and say we moved to this city because of this well i've got a lot of people that move to the city because of that we can go back and forth all night the facts are the feeling is excuse me let me clarify that the feeling is if it ain't broke don't fix  the trial period i guess i'm going to question that right off the bat if we're not even going to believe the facts that we have in front of us why would we believe the facts of the trial period i don't know how we can separate quality of life issues and so on and so forth because that's what we're talking about some people are free feeling that their quality of life is being impinged because they can't park in the street and i have been going back and forth on this for quite some time he grew up on one street i grew up on one street we had the same issues we had four cars in the driveway you want to know i live right where the post office is now four cars in the driveway we made it work think something that already is starting to bother me about this is we want to carve areas out already d d a said they don't want to be part of college at one point and they may have changed their mind at this point but at one point said they didn't want to be part of will have to re clarify that i don't take gospel on that but the pilot program during the summer to me even if we depending on what we do if we are looking at overnight parking all year a pilot program in the summer is futile  we still have an issue if we're going to it's getting late my mind is wandering here so i'll try to be concise i have an issue with part of the private pilot program because one of our options appears overnight parking all year round we don't know what the how the effect is going to be if we just do this small period of time i don't know if we're getting a good reflection of the city if we do it just this small period of time do we have the impact of all the residents here are we trading the college students which number i'm not even going to guess three thousand with do we have three thousand visitors coming into summer i don't know  again we can banter the pros and cons of the study who's going to believe what personally i don't know that we're going to get any more imperial data than what we have already there's been some in depth studies done there's been some facts and figures that are given out we have a city staff that said they would work with whatever decision although it's going to get an inconvenience but they will be willing to work with us we'll work with what the the residents of said are you willing to pay more for that it's a question you have to ask if they have to come back a second time and pick up the leaves if they have to now come back again in re plow the roads because the cars were there and you moved into the other side with the on even parking it's going to cost you more money but that's a splaying simple fact whether you like the believe me or not it's a plain simple fact some more things to consider i cannot support the trial period i think we have what it takes right now we have a system that's working for the majority do we need to look at maybe enforcement across the o the whole city jay i can argue with that and i don't think the chief could even argue with that be a little bit more consistent which would affect the area that i represent i just i guess up close by saying if it ain't broke don't fix it all right going going furiously ok my initial inclination on this is to was to stay with the status quo having heard what i've heard tonight  willing to consider the possibility of a pilot depending on what the what the staff brings to us not saying i necessarily will approve the pilot but i'm willing to consider that as a possibility so for the time being i say bring it bring us a proposal and we'll vote on what whatever they bring us  i just want to say d d a did vote on this on tuesday and i should have updated you that they would like to not be involved subject to whatever you eventually conclude all right all right my  i think somewhat unchanged since the last time this was around and as i recall the last time this issue came up it was right after the gallup second happiest city thing came out and they seem to recall doing a bit of research at that point that herman you know our compatriots in that list did they allow overnight on street parking or not the not some of the course it's just unfair because of the who cares they have much different issues than we do as a pertains to snow and those kinds of things and i seem to recall there was a split  some did some didn't and so ultimately to me this is a situation where my gut says you can't say a city's good bad based upon whether it allows overnight on street parking or not we can all  as we think about what outweighs what in terms of the balance it seems to me that some of the convenience issues that you know we heard great discussion tonight about you know i don't consider them to be trivial matters of inconvenience and truthfully those are things i have to worry about i've got a wide driveway two cars even veers into a third spot and i really i've got plenty of space of this is this is not something i personally have to deal with but i can imagine how frustrating it would be to have to deal with it and i can imagine how much of a disincentive it can be if you're thinking about where to buy and what to buy you like everything else about the neighborhood but mackerel how in the world might have to deal with this issue all the time now that said i think that the balance flips a bit as we get into our winter months you know we get close to one hundred inches of snow annually around here places like chicago less than half of that  and you know leaf picked up in those sorts of that those are not trivial considerations and concerns either so i think my gut says that b is probably something like b is strikes that appropriate balance between  providing some relief to those people in our community those residents in our community who have to deal with living in a twenty first century world infrastructure designed for early twentieth century while at the same time understanding that you know what it's not going to be a universal reprieve of the struggles so those are my gut feelings now maybe if we do this and we'll learn that in fact it just simply doesn't work here for a whole host of reasons that have been out lie i'll blind tonight or ones that are in previous reports and those kinds of things and that's fine i'm willing to you know try it and if it doesn't work i'll flip my vote and that's ok but that's the point of this and i think that when we have  i think a reasonable compromise when we have something that has a pretty good sized majority of people on a statistically valid survey saying they want to try a program just like the one we're talking about here tonight i don't think that i can necessarily say you know what i'm going to dismiss that so reasonable minds can differ on this is where i that's where i fall down on it and i think i'd like to see more detail in a pilot program i think i'd like to see a pilot program along the lines of what we've generally talked about and we can work out those details in the coming months for next year everybody understands the motion is to vote a pilots to generally give direction to staff to create a pilot program for essentially the summer months of next year beginning may one ending at the end of september is what the motion was of course this does not actually cement anything all it does is create those beginning drafting stages and we ultimately have to vote on something else more specific regardless of how you feel this issue thank you for spending four hours in this room that takes dedication and we certainly appreciate it moving through the balance of the agenda for the evening  we go down to fourteen e file point one some gifts and the city manager's office is pleased to report gifts parks recreation and transportation services department received donations totally nine twenty five thousand dollars has been received from an anonymous donor through the barnabas foundation in support of the women eileen organ restoration program donations resulting from the april twentieth two thousand and thirteen does one windmill project restoration auction organized by the howland area youth council special committee was from boat works restaurant in in the amount of thirty four dollars and eighty eight cents and tech center breaking department for the sale of windmill cookies of one hundred thirty dollars a donation of one hundred dollars has been received from the harbor are howland arbor garden club planetree to come commemorate arbor day at when the island gardens donations total one thousand five hundred dollars has been received to cover the paint printing cost of the graphic nature center from dr douglas and elizabeth not men robert vander camp and how in garden club eight nine hundred fifty dollars donation has been received from the hauen garden club for hanging flower baskets in centennial park community you human relations department international relations commission received donations in support of the international relations commission festival that was held on may eighteenth from destination education in the amount of twenty five dollars and how a news connection program received in amman and that i missed donation marry amount to fifteen thousand dollars to support the hauen youth connections program it is recommended that the said donations be accepted with appreciation and expression of gratitude be forwarded to the donors what's the pledge of coun supported by the board i don't want to sort of even though it's late overlook the significance of some of these don't all these donations but you know there are some ones that really stick out the twenty five thousand dollars for the organ project  and the fifteen thousand dollars for the youth connections program especially noteworthy and both are anonymous so all we can say is well we can say two things one we can vote yes with the motion to accept the british asian into we can say thank you all in website but washington avenue is proceeding through here and basically people should go to fortieth street and back up the pine i think thank you write south over up or thank you thank you nick ations for me this evening not much terribly new to report course always get a hold of us city of holland dot com try to push as much info as possible on to the city's website  aside from what we've already reported on in the gift feature we do a gift agenda item we do have nothing major necessarily to report on the when will allen project but the donations are certainly coming in and i think i said slow it's summertime in holland and what a great time of year it is so just remember we get to live in a place where other people choose to vacation communications from coun mr mayor mr weightman i would like to make a motion but before i do so ryan would you be kind enough to pull the map up from our thirty first street discussion larry i would like to make a motion that we direct our traffic committee to bring us some thoughts and contemplation on similar signage  relative to the bump out as you see just below the black van roll t ave the one on the east side of the road just north of that that which which is a bit bigger and you'll see a portion of a bump out on the north side of the school building just to the left of the compass that stretches almost the length of the school as well and i would like us to have some information have the traffic committee contemplate similar  passes any other motions resolutions this evening just more if you're growing i think more to that point i forgot what i was going to start i don't think you did move