City will ask post office for eight parking spots
Andrew Edwards
The City Council voted Tuesday night to ask Mayor Cheryl Kinsman to
take on a quest to allow the public to park in eight spaces recently
reserved to post office employees.
“We will take our jousting tools and go forward,” Kinsman said
after the City Council voted unanimously to assign her the challenge.
Her task is to negotiate with postal officials for a trade, if the
post office would agree to allow short term customers to use the
parking spaces in the Ocean Avenue lot, the city would give post
office employees free parking in the Lumberyard Lot or City Employee
Lot. Both parking lots are near the corner of Forest Avenue and
Laguna Canyon Road.
Councilwoman Toni Iseman, who brought the proposal to the council,
said she thought employees could be convinced to walk to work from
the Forest Avenue lot, and compared the journey to walks made by
employees of large facilities, like a college.
“Walking a block to work is not considered a long way to walk in a
lot of work situations,” Iseman said.
When asked about whether it would be acceptable to park further
from work, a postal employee said everyone at the post office had
been instructed not to talk about parking issues.
As of Wednesday, trade talks had not yet begun. City Manager Ken
Frank said he had spoken with postal officials about opening up the
spaces on weekends and after-hours, but that an arrangement on those
ideas was not reached.
“They didn’t think that would work,” Frank said.
The parking lot is owned by Koss Real Estate Investments, the firm
that also owns the Lumberyard Mall. Property Manager Anthony Haas
said he did not know if the trade idea would work.
The station manager for the Downtown post office, Fernando Romero,
said he had not yet heard of any ideas for a trade.
With Downtown parking at a premium, a successful negotiation would
be a boon to many post office customers.
“I think it would be a big thing. The 30-minute thing was great,”
Lagunan Ginny Nicolaus said as she exited the post office.
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