The garage is being built solely for the apartments who will then get a quantity discount that is lower than the actual cost to Ridgewood. Have you noticed the builders offering to pay part of the construction? Restaurants and stores much beyond Walnut will not get one bit of additional business from the garage but even those few won’t commit a cent to the construction. As many said, before you build a garage, see what will happen if Ridgewood starts enforcing repeat parking, marking the tires in such a way that they can’t be rubbed off or just rolling the car a little bit. Easily done with 2 marks on each outside tire at different locations so one would always be showing. Also these business complainers who blame everyone but their employees should enforce the parking rule as well. The lot where they wish to build the garage could be repaved and restriped with diagonal parking at each end and restriping of all the center lanes would provide much more parking than the garage is going to actually allow non-commuters if villagers cannot use but the ground floor. The ground floor as presently described in the garage will not even give as as much space as we currently have without the re-striping. If on the remaining downtown streets they would convert to diagonal parking on one side and parallel on the other, we would gain a lot of spaces. And lastly, take away the favored businesses extra reserved spots where their valet picks up, or where it has to be marked yellow for no parking because an illegal wall blocks parking spots. Do either of these precious to the Village properties pay the town for the parking meter charge that would be normally earned with removal of their illegal blockades? Two meters to a spot would really add up as you know they would be constantly used. Since Susan and Raymond think the Village will just curl up and die without this garage and are going to put it there regardless of objections–why don’t you two take it upon yourselves to count the total spots gained by restriping just in that one parking lot and the on the street parking? And removing the illegal obstacles! If you really wanted an accurate count of what is possible, why don’t you include as a second count all our current parking lots after repaving and restriping? I am sure you could easily come up with over a hundred. Yes, that may not help the commuters much, but who is Ridgewood really for? The commuters who park, maybe grab a coffee and a newspaper, go to work, return, unpark their car and go home? What money or convenience does Ridgewood gain from that? And again, a reduced fee for monthly parking that will not cover our costs. Or for the residents who you are expecting to pay much more in taxes to provide a convenience for the builders (do they leave any money here?). Instead you are forcing Mt Carmel members to use your garage on Sundays and other days that Church is in session (and I’m sure it won’t be free!). I’m going to insult you here but I wish you would rise up out of the poppy field in Oz, put your brains back in your head, and actually think and listen for a change. Are any of you, except Bernie, capable of doing that?
Also, many of the parishioners are handicapped or have several small children and it is a long walk from the garage even to the side door of Church.
