The Uptown Partnership board wants to budget $1 million for parking at the unbuilt Mission Hills-Hillcrest library on Washington. Is this the best way to spend parking meter money savings?
Councilmen Gloria and Faulconer have made several suggestions to promote transparency to the organization including the addition of three more board members. At their last meeting the UP board also implemented term limits. As recently as this spring’s annual meeting, only outgoing board members were nominated to run again….even though qualified candidates in the community wanted to serve on the board. So who votes for new board members? The Uptown Partnership board themselves.
Even more disconcerning is that the Uptown Partnership which is given 45% of Hillcrest parking meter money has not created one new parking space in the past 12 years. New ideas and a fresh leadership are needed. Perhaps the councilmen’s appointments will begin a new chapter for this controversial city-contracted organization.
Many believe that in the very near future there will be even more truths to be told about the Partnership. Most of all the community wants accountability of all the Partnership’s funds and expenditures and adherence to their mission statements’ primary goal which is to create parking. It really just comes down to the basic fact that the Partnership for all its years has not produced parking. What it has produced is an insular board and a bureaucracy which seems to have set its main goal to perpetuate themselves.
What some community members are attempting do is to call attention to the Uptown Partnership’s inadequacies while striving for openness and positive change. That means going to the media and getting the public involved. It is not only the community’s right to do so, but its responsibility.
