The Council is going to meet on an ongoing problem about parking in the Downtown Troy area. Street cleaning has become a problem with the cars that are parked there overnight. We all know it is a problem for the Residents who live in Downtown, many of these apartments do not have off-street parking, garages, or if they do, not enough room to accomodate all who live in the apts. as many have been broken down into multiple living spaces, OR the Tenants that live in them have mulitple cars. Troy was set up in the Horse and Buggy days and modern times have really made an impact on original plans for the City. Folks who lived in Troy in the middle to late 1800's, lived downtown and worked downtown and it was much easier to stable your Horse and or Buggy than it was to park a car or more. Vendors delivered goods to your homes or traveled the streets with their wares and you went out and purchased from them instead of having to leave you house to travel elsewhere.
We all know, it comes down to the basics, move your car for the cleaners or you have to suffer with dirty streets. Most if not all know the cars need to be moved as signs are posted and once you live there you know the drill. But there ARE occasions when it is purely an oversight of the rules or someone may be sick and not able to move their car, or lost track of what day it is or whatever the reason for an accidental leaving of your car there. People who do it purposely get no sympathy from this BLOGGER.
Resident Kevin Luddy has come up with an idea of using modern technology to notify Folks that their car was in the way of the cleaners. I believe the basics of this so far is an EXCELLENT idea, you GO Kevin. I do not though believe this should be the responsibility of the City though. We ALL know the next step will be lazy Folks who don't move their cars because the 'City' didn't notify them. The City already has through signage. This could be a very very good organized way of solving the problem. One person could take charge of registering each Resident whether by email or Twitter whichever technology that person possesses, and send out a 'reminder' of cleaning times. It is similar to all of the Cascade lists we all use to use via telephone. I think this will also foster great neighborhood relations which as we all know leads to less crime when we all know our neighbors and their habits.
Are there other Folks out there who have a similar idea that could be tossed out here to help solve the problem? No matter what the issue may be, when everyone cooperates, usually the problem goes away.
Hats off to Kevin!! He has put on the thinking cap to help solve this problem..
Please feel free to post your comments!
Each year the City of Troy holds an auction of properties that have defaulted on their taxes. The owners have given up on these properties, neither fixing and maintaining them nor paying the City's back taxes.
ReplyDeleteSome of these never get sold. No one seems to want them even at low, low auction prices.
I have oftened wondered... why the City doesn't foreclose, knock an ugly building or two down clean up the lots and offer them or rent them as parking for residents?
The City has in the last few years demolished as many of these severely blighted houses as they could with the budget they have. Many of the houses that need to come down suffer opposition from those who see some type of Historical value in them, though for the life of me, once a house is so far gone, unless you have the money to buy it and bring it back you should not fight the City on its demolition. Also Folks that live adjacent to the properties that have been torn down, have been able to purchase them from the City and extend their yards or made off-street parking. A manicured yard is much more pleasing to the eye than a vacant lot full of garbage. Now some of the houses HAVE been bought at Auction and then just stripped of their valuable interiors for re-sale, and then the house is just a empty shell that no one wants to buy as it costs way too much money to make it liveable again. This practice should be stopped and the Buyers be fined very heavily for doing this. Thanks for caring about Troy. If more of us did, it would be a better place to live.
ReplyDeleteTina