Letters

    Delray Beach officials have dithered away their time this summer ignoring the parking problems they are responsible for solving.
    The city paid a consultant $90,000 in 2010 to prepare a comprehensive parking study that addressed traffic, parking lots, employees competing with shoppers for parking, and parking garages downtown. The city’s staff parking expert, together with the city’s Parking Management Advisory Board, used this report as the basis for preparing an overall parking proposal for downtown.
    This was completed in June. As of this writing, the City Commission hasn’t seen it.
    Instead, at their Aug. 13 workshop, commissioners supported spending $750,000 to design a new garage downtown.
    Why do this before reviewing staff’s parking plan for downtown? 
Especially when the consultant’s report argued against new garages “without ensuring that the existing parking facilities are fully utilized.”
    Regarding the proposed garage, Mayor Cary Glickstein said: “I think the timing is good in terms of developing the overall parking strategy.”
    Whose overall strategy? Can’t be staff’s, since he hasn’t seen it.
    The mayor and commissioners obviously don’t care about consultant reports, staff reports or advisory board recommendations. Otherwise they would have told the city manager, “Show us staff’s parking plan.”
    Despite the the mayor’s comments at City Commission meetings about protecting the integrity of Delray Beach, in this case he seems to have chosen expediency and personal preference over facts.
 
Kevin Warner
Delray Beach