Dana, thanks for this information.

This process is such a scam. I have been trying for a full year now to get the city staff member who handles the downtown parking task force to help me plug in with it, but to no avail. Back in August 2007 when I first contacted him about the task force, he replied that the initial meeting where the Mayor gave instructions to its members was a private function. So I was expressly excluded from the meeting. About five months ago, there were some researchers from UNC who reportedly inquired about the task force, and they were denied any information about it. A couple of months ago I asked staff for a list of the members of the task force, but the only thing he was able to give me was mailing addresses, as if I was going to send letters to the members through the postal mail. And I had to follow up multiple times just to get that. He said last night’s forum was originally scheduled two months ago, but I am on an incredible number of email lists and plugged in with a lot of different people and organizations, yet I hadn’t heard a word about it at the time. So the fact that it was a complete no-show indicates to me that the public is almost completely disconnected from this process that is supposedly public. Staff continue to refuse to share any information (official or unofficial) about the task force, yet they deny the process has been secretive.

After trying repeatedly to learn more about this process for an entire year, I am extremely frustrated. They claim they wanted “public input” last night but they would rather keep us completely in the dark so they can take us by surprise because it’s less work for them that way. And the City Council paid $300,000 for this process that is supposedly public! Such a scam.

I’m sorry that Steve has had so much trouble getting information. To be fair, I got an email on July 10 about this meeting. However, a combination of wanting to wait until the meeting was in shorter range and being extremely busy during July led me to wait until the last day. I hope that the meeting went well and didn’t melt down to the-only-solution-is-transit. Parking decks are ungodly expensive, too, so some good solutions really need to be found if we are going to have any sort of density in downtown.