State Street in Subcommittee Purgatory

This past Tuesday, City Council opted to play a rousing game of “kick the can,” thereby sentencing State Street to a minimum of three years of continued closure. The consultant-aided future design process continues unabated, but the current configuration of the downtown has languished in stagnation due to the indecision of the council. This is not a design issue, but a management problem. The eventual design is not dependent on maintaining the current use of the downtown corridor. This will be our fourth summer of status quo without innovation, experimentation, or a return to aesthetic standards.

I was not in office at the time the street closure was authorized. It was the right thing to do, providing relief for the beleaguered restaurants who were fighting to stay alive. But, I don’t think anyone imagined we’d be facing our fourth consecutive summer with no changes, no trial configurations, and no cogent policies to handle this interim situation. While I’ve so far remained at arm’s length, thinking that current conditions were finite and that a strategy was forthcoming, it’s apparent that it’s not the case.

Yet another subcommittee was proposed to, ostensibly, move plans forward. The current subcommittee’s only tangible product, however, was a rent structure for State Street parklets, which they then joined council in voting against. That rent structure, by the way, was calculated and intended to recover the costs of maintaining the “promenade.” That vote resulted in a $350,000 per year shortfall in our General Fund budget. It was suggested that somehow, inaction was the fault of the administration. Nothing could fall further from the truth. The seven of us on the dais are precisely where “the buck stops.” Policy decisions don’t happen in advisory subcommittees nor by individual suggestion to the City Administrator. They only happen per a majority of the council.