17 DON'T THROW STONES IF YOU LIVE IN A GLASS HOUSE

The Salem, Oregon downtown was vibrant, growing and traffic-choked in 1965. The City wished to create a Parking District with which to acquire vacant properties on which to build parking lots and structures. But the Chamber of Commerce generally was opposed, preferring as a "solution" to the "parking problem" the total removal of parking meters, conversion of all parallel parking to the much denser angle parking pattern, and the elimination of all parking restrictions and enforcement.

A Prescription for Disaster. We City officials knew that the prescription of the Downtown Merchants Division of the Chamber would be disastrous. But they persisted until, one day at a Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors meeting, numerous accusations of the City government and its parking program and enforcement efforts were made and ratified by those in attendance.

The contentions were that the "meter maids" [a then-acceptable and then-politically correct term] discriminated against certain merchants; that none of the downtown business people parked in front of their own businesses thereby blocking spaces from customer use; and that the strict City parking enforcement process was totally to blame for the growing "parking problem."

We knew otherwise. The Police Department had experienced all sorts of devious devices designed to cheat the City out of revenue and to facilitate the parking of business owner and employee vehicles in front of their own establishments, and for long periods of time.

Let's Tape `Em. Video tape wasn't yet in common use in 1965, but the Salem Police Department did have a movie camera with telephoto lens. There was one high rise office building in downtown Salem with an unobstructed view of several of the downtown street blocks where the alleged greatest "City offenses" took place.

So, on my instruction, the Police Chief arranged for his film crew to spend a week atop the highrise, surreptitiously filming various parking-related activities taking place on the streets below them.

The merchant's antics, activities and methodologies for evading parking restrictions were both amazing and spectacular.

Evasion and Avoidance. The resultant movie showed numerous merchants and occupants of downtown offices trading places for their cars with one another; getting down on their knees and rubbing off chalk marks made by the meterettes; and providing rolls of nickels to the "town idiot", together with a dollar bill as a tip, for him to "feed" the meters at which the merchants were parked -- feed them all day. All these activities were illegal under the City's Parking Ordinance.

Further, we caught EVERY ONE of the Chamber of Commerce Downtown Merchants Division complainants in various stages of parking evasion activity. And filmed their cars parked in front of their own places of business, for days on end, contrary to their statements that such practice was not allowed to their employees, or to themselves. And the employees emulated their employers. It took a while to check the license plate numbers, but everyone was tied to one of the complaining downtown merchants.

Who Is Using These Spaces? We calculated that more than 200 of the downtown parking spaces located in the six block area viewable from the top of the building were occupied from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily by those merchants who were both complaining and reliant on such spaces being available to their customers.

Once the film was made, it was edited for brevity and pointedness. It showed each and every complaining member of the Chamber Board, and numerous other prominent downtown business persons as well, in the act of violating every City parking law and regulation that existed and, in the process, utilizing most inventive and devious methodologies for those evasions.

The Coup de Grace. I arranged for a projector to be available at the next Chamber of Commerce Board meeting.

The meeting started, the item on the agenda at which point I was to make a "report responding to Board complaints regarding parking" arrived. I asked for the drapes to be drawn. The projector came out, I announced that the film would run for 20 minutes, the film went on, and it ran for exactly 20 minutes.

Just before the film ended, and before the lights were flipped back on, every one of the Board members rose and filed out of the meeting room and building.

The subject was never raised again, by either side of the "parking discussion". And not one of them ever again broached the subject to me, or to a City Councilmember. Nor did they ever take on the City again on a subject which was destructive by its nature.

Development of a Fine Parking System. Salem today has a fine system of municipal parking lots and structures and one of the most viable, active and prosperous downtown areas for a United States city its size. When I left there in April of 1968 for Inglewood, California, it had two major downtown shopping centers and only one outlying mall of any size. And it stayed that way for decades. And municipal on-street, parking lot, and structure spaces were abundant.

All because of some telescopic camera work.

Rocks and Glass Houses Revisited. Amazingly, I had been in Inglewood, California for less than a year when downtown parking en- forcement criticism of the City arose in an almost identical fashion to that experienced several years earlier in Salem, Oregon. And again the Chamber of Commerce and its Downtown Merchants were the source. By this time, however, video cameras had been developed, and the City Police Department had several of them. So, again, I had the Police film crew "stake out" downtown, by means of an undercover van equipped with several video cameras.

The same editing for brevity took place, but this time, via the use of a VCR. The video was shown at the Chamber meeting in the same manner with the same result. And the same ends were achieved in Inglewood, California as in Salem, Oregon, less than a decade later.

Another Parking System. Inglewood now has an excellent system of parking structures and lots, financed through a Parking District created in 1969. There was no opposition from the Chamber of Commerce, or its member merchants, to what the City did and how the City established, financed and operated its Parking System. Of course, they didn't say anything in support either.

And the Inglewood Chamber never again took on the City in an adverse way. They didn't necessarily like me, but they certainly respected my research and presentational skills.

Neither incident ever showed up in the local newspapers.

No Hard Feelings? And apparently there were no extreme residual hard feelings about me. I didn't rub their noses in the film/tape in either case. All I did was show it, without comment or follow-up. Both of the Salem and the Inglewood Chamber groups could have gone for my jugular and quite possibly could have had me fired. But I suppose that between their embarassment and my not having made a "big deal" of the matter, they preferred to forget, then forgive.

I never sought love; just results that were good for my City.

And this episode reinforced forever my adage: "For requests and presentations made to a governing body, research is the difference between being effective and being a nuisance."

© copyright by Douglas W. Ayres 1999

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