Tossing the ED Coin: Heads, You Win

I’m talking about economic development, folks, not erectile dysfunction. That's a whole nother post entirely.

Let me tell you, economic development happened here in Syracuse the other day.  Not the traditional, ‘give a company a boatload of tax breaks and hope’ kind, but the real, every day kind that happens in cities all across the country, on a very regular basis. 

There are two sides to the economic development coin – and as with most coin tosses, one side is good for someone, the other less so.  When the coin was tossed here, we saw both winners and losers.

You may have heard the tale of The Sound Garden, the downtown Syracuse staple, home to concert tickets, vinyl music, and other second-hand entertainment.  Part of a two-store chain (the other’s in Baltimore), at Sound Garden they buy yours, you buy theirs – CDs, albums, games, movies, the whole gamut. It’s a funky vibe like no other in Syracuse; they have a devoted following (my Albany brother-in-law can't visit Syracuse without making a pit stop there, for example); they're in Armory Square -- so you'd think they had it all going on, right?

Well, not so fast.

Syracuse has an updated law on the books that requires second-hand stores to log all of the used items they purchase, and provide reports to law enforcement. They are also required to hold items for seven days before re-selling them, and only stay open until 8PM. The point of the law, which was changed last summer, was to better allow the Syracuse Police Department to track down 'stealers-sellers', the people who rip off the big box stores and dump the merchandise wherever they can, and to make it harder for them to make their quick buck by instituting the early closing time on merchants who sell used stuff.

The consequence was that it also cracked down on music collectors and funky people.

The logging and reporting part that was a big issue for Sound Garden.  With over 40,000 used items purchased each year, the costs of implementing a computerized system for tracking and reporting, and to hire the two full time employees to do that work, were prohibitive.  

Bryan Burkert, Sound Garden's owner, and Jake Barrett, head of the Common Council’s Public Safety Committee, butted heads in talks to get a compromise deal worked out. Burkert preferred a total exemption from the law, something he says other cities routinely give record stores. Barrett (the same guy who wondered if we needed to be a little kinder and gentler to parking scofflaws), offered concessions on hours of operation and a two-day reduction in the hold period, but wasn’t going to go any further. After things fell apart, Burkert announced that he would close his Armory Square shop and find someplace else to do business, outside the city limits.

Sadness hung over the store; the entire process, played out in the press, left a bad taste in our collective mouths. Surveys were circulated, a Facebook fan page was born, and just about everyone waited to see what would happen when the lease was up.

When all seemed lost,  Mayor Stephanie Miner and Councilor Khalid Bey (in a past life, he was a hip-hop star known as The Most Talented) worked out a compromise with Burkert and his local attorney that would allow Sound Garden to stay open later than 8PM Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and require them to only log the first five items they purchase in any single transaction and summarize the rest. For their part, Sound Garden will continue to get a copy of a photo ID for all transactions, which should help Syracuse’s Finest track down people who steal items from one store and resell them at another. The compromise was approved unanimously by the Common Council yesterday. 

And so Sound Garden, Armory Square, small business owners and funky people everywhere, call it in the air.

Heads, you win.

The Update Desk: 4/3/2013

A couple of updates for you on some recent posts.

First, I now know a lot more about the umbrella factory that's being proposed for my neighborhood.

You'll recall I was hoping it would either be those little cocktail umbrellas, or else the big patio umbrellas - both of which I'd be willing to QC.  Turns out that it's actually going to be artistic umbrellas, if it gets approved. And I stand corrected: even though the postcard from the Zoning Board of Appeals seemed to be directing me to stop by and visit them, to see the proposal, I was able to find it online. You can check out things that might be happening in your neighborhood here.

The homeowner is an artist specializing in inspirational designs, and will take care of printing the umbrella fabric with his designs.  The 'factory' aspect comes in because there will be one employee, working one day a week, turning the stamped fabric into umbrellas.  The end products will be sold online, of course, but also at at religious conferences and to churches. 

My neighbor even went so far as to engage a couple of law students from SU to help with the application. Overall it seemed like a pretty good package. Minutes from the meeting haven't been posted yet, so I'm not sure if the proposal was approved.  

Next, you all know how unimpressed I was with the suggestion by Common Councilor Jake Barrett that Syracuse might want to offer an amnesty program for parking ticket scofflaws, before ramping up booting efforts.  The boot locks the car and won't get removed until the tickets are cleared. 

Not surprisingly, I was not the only one who thought that was a dumb idea - especially after the Post-Standard published the list of the top 55 illegal parkers.  Number one on the list owed close to $8,000 for his tickets, which were collected between 1997 and 2011.  Another person, according to the article, was paying off her debt - over $4,100 - at the rate of $25 per month. At least she's trying. And of course, there's an elected official on the list, because it wouldn't be nearly as much fun without one.

The best part, other than the amnesty idea being dead on arrival, was that this past Monday, the Common Council approved the contract with PayLock, the company that currently provides the boots, so we're going to start collecting some much-needed cash for the city coffers. The three-year deal with PayLock also means that we won't be paying Syracuse's Finest to handle the booting, which was logically a low priority.

Can you say win, win, win?

Amnesty? Shamnesty!

The Syracuse Common Council, long referred to as "Syracuse's greatest deliberative body" by the late Post-Standard columnist Bob Haggart, could have voted this week on whether to hire a company to boot the cars of parking scofflaws. But they didn't.

Some history: Syracuse started booting cars back in 2008; to receive the yellow boot, a person has to have three delinquent parking tickets, each at least 90 days old.  In 2008, there were 12,819 boot-eligible vehicles, owing $4,800,000; by 2012, there were 19,457 vehicles owing $7,900,000, according to a published report.

Here's a story from July of 2008, touting the benefits of the new booting program:

Since Syracuse's booting law took effect Jan. 1, the city has taken in $2,186,000 in parking tickets, surcharges and late fees, said Richard Scheutzow, director of the city's Parking Violations Bureau. The city is on track to top $4 million this year, more than twice the amount collected in any year during the past decade...  The bulk of the revenue comes from people paying their tickets voluntarily or through a collection agency, Scheutzow said... It's clear that fear of the boot is driving scofflaws to haul themselves in to the parking bureau before they are caught, Scheutzow said. The increase in parking payments started in October, when the impending booting law was announced, and it has held steady since then. Scheutzow and city police agree that the booting effort has increased compliance with parking laws and payment of parking tickets. "It's working out fantastic," said police Lt. Joe Sweeny, who oversees the booting program.

Since 2008, revenues from the booting program have fallen significantly. Part of  that was because having police officers cruising parking lots looking for boot-able cars was not an effective use of their time; it became even a less effective use of taxpayer dollars when the Police Department starting having officers handle the scofflaw cruises primarily on overtime. Mayor Stephanie Miner ended the overtime booting in 2011.

So now Pay Lock, the company that has provided the boots from the beginning, wants to take over the whole program, including the scofflaw cruises, for 28% of the take. They'd have people on the streets seven hours a day, five days a week, and the city would not be on the hook for salaries and benefits. And, with the increased effort, the city would see an additional $630,000 more than is being collected today.  Seems hard not to like this idea, doesn't it?

But then, there must be delieration, because it is the Common Council after all.  Deliberation including discussion on whether we need to have an amnesty period before changing the program. 1st District Councilor Jake Barrett offered this:

Maybe there's a fairness issue. We're changing the system. Let's give them a chance to pay.

Um, the people who need to get the boot have ignored at least three parking tickets for at least 90 days each.  They've been notified. They owe the city almost $8,000,000. The city is in dire financial straits.  Do we really need to consider an amnesty program because we're "changing the system" and being more aggressive in collecting the millions of dollars that these folks owe? 

And on the subject of amnesty, let's go back again to July 2008; here's one last comment from the article on the booting program.

Scheutzow  said that, given the success of the program, the city will never again need to offer a parking amnesty program to violators. The last amnesty in 2003 forgave late fees and penalties and brought in more than $1 million.

We don't need to, and cannot afford to, forgive a few million bucks to be kind to scofflaws.  What we do need to do is get back to the aggressive enforcement and revenue collection. 

Here's hoping the Common Council votes to approve the contract with Pay Lock at the earliest opportunity, April Fool's Day, and that Pay Lock gets to work as soon as possible.

Fools they would be if they do otherwise.