Council meeting

The Council meeting tonight was about parking, initially, and then expanded into a discussion of the implications of parking on downtown development. The businesses want the city to give them something, apparently, before they will make any effort to upgrade themelves, seemingly as a demonstration good faith on the city's part. The voice of reason, believe it or not, was Billy when he said that it is a 2-way street where the businesses have to meet the city at least half way, do their part. Lob concurred with that concept. A local businessman volunteered to renew and reinvigorate the Chamber of Commerce to act as a liason with the city. There are several concepts that are low cost and low tech, like paint and signage, that could be intitiated by the businesses and the city respectively, as a show of good faith and a willingness to work together. Baby steps perhaps, but important baby steps that could lead to further cooperation between the two entities, and progress for our businesses. As taxpayers we have bailed out a lot of businesses lately, and we dont need to bail out local businesses too. However, we CAN help them to help themselves by facilitating the permitting process and making our administrative processes more business friendly. We are still in a difficult economy and its not clear that tax credits will help our revenue shortfall at all. Grants are one possibility, and the Mom and Pop grants will be coming up again this January, according to Ms Ator. Perhaps if we could put together a sum of money we could LOAN the businesses at a friendly rate to renovate their properties would be one possibility. That would create a new level of costs to administer those loans, etc. tho. Do we really want to consider eliminating our parking codes to encourage businesses? What are the other possible alternatives? Parking is surely an important part of any downtown enhancement process, but is only one piece of the puzzle.