Author Archives: Eric Celeste

Area 21: Write or Call City Council Today, Join us Wednesday

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This is it! City Council holds its hearing on the Area 21 parking permit petition this week, on Wednesday 3/21. The hearing will be at 5:30 in the basement (Room 40 A & B) of City Hall (15 Kellogg Blvd). Please join your neighbors in support of the petition one last time.

Whether or not you can be at the City Council meeting on Wednesday, please consider writing to members of the council. I’ve prepared a list of their addresses (PDF), that includes their email addresses since snail mail probably won’t arrive before the meeting. Phone numbers are also on the list if you wish to give them a call. It is most critical to communicate with Russ Stark (who represents those of us on Lincoln west of Prior) and Chris Tolbert (who represents residents of Lincoln east of Prior), but we need support from everyone for the petition to be passed. Please let them know why you support the changes and extension of the Area 21 permit, give them a sense of who lives in the neighborhood and why this is important to us.

We will only have a few minutes to make our case on Wednesday, so we should really coordinate the message we want to get across. If you can join me tomorrow evening, Tuesday 3/20 at 7pm, 1993 Lincoln Avenue, that would be very helpful. I’d like to talk over testimony, make sure we cover all the bases.

MGCC Board Sends Area 21 Permit Change on to City Council

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The Macalester Groveland Community Council Board approved the resolution of its Transportation Committee to support our Area 21 parking petition in its journey to the Saint Paul City Council. As has been the case at each hearing so far, opponents of the petition did show up, but they were all from residences outside the petition area.

The board more or less felt it was their duty to pass along our petition since we’d done everything we were asked to do and were following a clearly laid out process. Some members of the board expressed sympathy for those who don’t believe parking permits are an appropriate tool for those living in the city, but only one board member ended up actually voting against the resolution.

Next stop: City Hall.

We expect the petition to be heard at the March 21 meeting of the council. Public comment starts at 5:30 in the Council Chambers, Room 300 at City Hall, 15 Kellogg Blvd. W. This is the final step of the process and we will definitely need all the advocates we can get at this meeting.

Highland Villager: Concerns raised over changing permit parking area near St. Thomas

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Jane McClure writes in the Highland Villager: “Concerns raised over changing permit parking area near St. Thomas.” (Wednesday, 8 February 2012, page 12, is anyone else as annoyed as I am that the Villager is not online?)

The article covers the 1/23 MGCC Transportation Committee meeting. She quotes several neighbors, misspelling names along the way:

“Permit parking is not popular,” said Eric Hess, who lives in the area of Lincoln that does not have permit parking now. “People would love to have the street back in the evenings and not have to use visitor passes.”

“We’d like summers off,” said Lincoln Avenue resident Kristine Anderson.

McClure also covered the opposition to changes in Area 21 parking:

“What we’re concerned about is that we’re taking one block’s problem and pushing it onto another,” [Lenny Russo] said.

The article notes that the full MGCC board will be voting on the Area 21 parking permit request tomorrow evening, February 9, during their 6:45pm meeting at the Edgecumbe Rec Center. Neighbors concerned about the issue should consider attending to make sure the board hears from all sides of the issue.

City sets 3/21 hearing date for Area 21 parking permit

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It turns out the that code change that brought us the 75% threshold for successful partitions also brought a few other changes. While we were grandfathered in to the 60% threshold due to when our petition began, one other change will slow our petition process down a bit. The city is now required to give 30 days notice of hearings on parking permit changes instead of 10 days notice. This means that we cannot have our hearing in February, and instead are now aiming for the Saint Paul City Council meeting on the evening of Wednesday 3/21. I’ll share more details as that date nears.

Another change is that notice must be sent not just to the petition area, but also to anyone living within 350 feet of the petition area. If our MGCC experience is any guide, we can anticipate those opposing the petition will show up to make their case. We will have to, again, be sure that strong advocate are present and testify to city council.

RSVP sewer line requests due 2/10

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If you would like the City of Saint Paul to repair your sewer service within the right-of-way as part of the upcoming RSVP project, Lisa Falk-Thompson asks that you get your request in to her by February 10. You may choose to have your sanitary service connection at the main replaced, or to have the connection and the service from the main to the property line replaced. The estimated costs are from $1500 to $2400, depending on what you choose to do.

Please use the Request for Sanitary Service Repair form Lisa has prepared. Any questions about this should go to her at lisa.falk-thompson@ci.stpaul.mn.us or 651-266-6117.

Sewer

Just a reminder, Lisa expects that our “Prior/Goodrich” RSVP project will be put out to bid in February and construction will run from May through November.

MGCC Transportation Committee Recommends Area 21 Parking Permit Changes to City Council

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After a very vigorous citizen discussion, the MGCC Transportation Committee voted unanimously to recommend that City Council approve the Area 21 parking permit changes, including the expansion on Lincoln to Prior. Our next target for advocacy will likely be the 2/15 meeting of City Council, I’ll keep you posted.

Thank you to everyone who showed up to speak for the permit and lend your support. It really helped.

Don’t Forget the Parking Permit Meeting Tomorrow!

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Even though we gathered more than the 60% support for changes to the Area 21 parking permits, the Mac-Groveland Community Council’s Transportation Committee refused to support our petition in December. Instead, it will be brought up again at their meeting tomorrow (Monday, 1/23) at 6:30pm, at the Edgcumbe Rec Center. We really need as many advocates for this permit as possible to join us at this meeting!

In December some vocal neighbors from Lincoln between Prior and Howell complained that the transportation committee would only be nudging the St. Thomas parking problem eastward by supporting permit parking on Lincoln between Cleveland and Prior. This may be the case, but we are following the process the committee laid out for us at their January 2011 meeting. We were offered no resolution for St. Thomas parking issues by either St. Thomas or the city except this permit process. Now is the time to turn out to advocate for the parking permits!

Both traffic calming petitions fail to gain enough support

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As reported a few weeks ago, the bumpout petition for Lincoln Avenue between Cleveland and Prior was not very popular and we stopped gathering signatures after the no’s passed the 28% mark.

Now I am sad to report that the traffic circle at Lincoln and Prior also failed to gain enough support. We needed 75% of the “linear feet” of each block from the intersection. Today was the deadline and we’d reached only 68%. Again, we got 28% nos.

The thing that feels so awful is that even though over two thirds of our neighbors wanted to see a beautiful small traffic circle as a gateway to our neighborhood, we won’t have it installed. The RSVP project will leave the intersection of Lincoln and Prior as it was.

Two things really got in the way of success on the traffic circle. One was that a neighbor who lives on one of the corners was vehemently opposed the petition. (The other three corner owners supported the petition.) The other was that the owner of the large apartment building at 1940 Grand, which has substantial linear feet on Prior, refused to sign the petition. Missing those two large chunks of footage really made the mission impossible.

The galling thing is that until this Fall the threshold for petitions of this sort was 60%, a threshold we easily surpassed. City Council changed the rules, though, and trying to get three quarters agreement proved too much for our neighborhood.

I’d like to share special thanks with Joe Frank and Susan Hinze who spent many hours knocking on doors. I also appreciate all the support we got (two thirds!) and all the thoughtful concerns that were expressed along the way. It was great to get to know more neighbors through this petition drive.

Petitions Update, Join us on 1/23

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Welcome to 2012! Quite a lot will change on our block this year, it should be exciting. As you know, we have been circulating two petitions for modifications to the street as part of the RSVP project and another petition for parking permits passed a couple months ago but is in a bit of trouble at the neighborhood council level. We need your help with all of these, so here’s an update.

Parking Permits

Even though we gathered more than the 60% support for changes to the Area 21 parking permits, the Mac-Groveland Community Council’s Transportation Committee refused to support our petition in December. Instead, it will be brought up again at their meeting at 6:30pm Monday, 1/23, at the Edgcumbe Rec Center. We really need as many advocates for this permit as possible to join us at this meeting!

In December some vocal neighbors from Lincoln between Prior and Howell complained that the transportation committee would only be nudging the St. Thomas parking problem eastward by supporting permit parking on Lincoln between Cleveland and Prior. This may be the case, but we are following the process the committee laid out for us at their January 2011 meeting. We were offered no resolution for St. Thomas parking issues by either St. Thomas or the city except this permit process. Now is the time to turn out to advocate for the parking permits!

Traffic Circle and Bumpouts

In December we worked with the city to draw up two petitions for traffic calming modifications to Lincoln as part of the RSVP process. Neighbors have been circulating these petitions since mid-December. The bumpouts have not been very well received, and that petition has already failed. The idea of a traffic circle at Lincoln and Prior that matches the one installed at Lincoln and Finn last year has seen considerably more support and is currently on track for the 75% approval required to succeed. You check up on these at our petition progress page.

We less than two weeks to complete the traffic circle petition, though. There are 22 houses on Lincoln that we have failed to reach. If you can help out with door knocking or phone calls to these neighbors, please let me know! The petition is due at the city on Friday, 1/13.

Transportation Committee fails to support Area 21 parking permit changes

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Last night’s presentation of the Area 21 parking permit did not go well. According to Sara Mountain and Steve Gorg, a few vocal opponents carried the day and got the Transportation Committee of the Mac-Groveland Community Council to table the permit instead of lending it their support. Luckily, this is not the end of the road for our parking permit petition effort, just a significant speed bump.

It is best if these permit parking petitions get the support of community councils so that the city council gets a clear sense that the process was a good one and the support of the neighborhood is present. However, the deciding agency on parking permits is city council, not the community council. We can and will still carry this petition forward to city council.

We are not sure which city council public hearing will include our petition as an agenda item. It is likely to be not he evening of Wednesday 1/18, 2/1, or 2/15, but details have yet to be worked out. It is very clear that every one of us who support the new Area 21 permits, including the extension of permit parking to the remainder of Lincoln between Prior and Cleveland, be present at this hearing when it happens.

We took the neighborhood council for granted. We let Sara and Steve carry our burden alone, and that was unfair and unsuccessful. Be ready to speak out yourself for the importance of this parking permit to city council. We will keep you informed about the details of the upcoming meeting.