Off Street Parking Commission hard at work in Lynn

LYNN – A new design for the Andrew Street parking lot is in the works, plans to repair and reseal the other city lots are underway and Desman Associates has been retained to help develop a scope for an audit, which all adds up to a very busy summer for the Off Street Parking Commission.”Tuesday’s meeting was unprecedented,” said commission Chairman Taso Nikolopoulos. “There is still work to be done but we got a lot done to say the least.”It had already been determined that the Andrew Street lot would be the first of the city’s parking lots to be automated but commission Vice Chairman Jamie Cerulli said the design was worked out Tuesday.”We need to rebuild the fence, install two bollards and a concrete pad for the automation,” she said. “Community Development is paying for the work.”Community Development is also paying for the kiosk that will sell parking tickets by the day, week, month or even year Nikolopoulos said. He said the plan is to eventually automate all of the city’s lots but the ticket kiosks cost roughly $15,000 apiece. Nikolopoulos said that mean eventually the commission is going to have to talk the City Council about funding.Off Street Parking hasn’t been funded for some time, he noted.”Our revenue goes into the general fund,” he explained. “What will help us is the audit.”In May the commission voted to conduct an audit on the Off Street Parking account after it determined that no one really understands how the commission’s finances work. Cerulli said Desman and Associates offered to help determine audit’s scope as a pro bono case.”The scope is really overwhelming because the Parking Department and Off Street Parking is so intertwined,” she said.The Department of Public Works and Lynn Water and Sewer are also jumping in to help clean up the lots by repairing sink holes and potholes, Nikolopoulos said.Nikolopoulos said he doesn’t know what the Off Street Parking Commission has been doing for the 20 years prior to this current board taking over but it doesn’t appear to have been much.”A lot of this is common sense stuff,” he said. “My biggest concern is the trash generated daily in the lots.”He said Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy’s youth effort, which has been out cleaning up the streets this summer has also tackled the lots, but Nikolopoulos said they can’t keep up with the garbage that collects in them. The commission toured the Union Street, School/Ellis, Buffam Street and Andrew Street lot last week and the Andrew Street in particular looked as if someone had upended a bag of trash.”I said, ?When was the last time this lot was cleaned?'” Nikolopoulos said. “Yesterday, I was told. Where are the barrels? I couldn’t find any trash barrels.”Businesses by the School/Ellis streets lot are using trash cans but they don’t contain garbage bags, Nikolopoulos said.”We need to police these areas more,” he said. “I would like to see security cameras in all the lots. With cameras we could see anything that happens.”Nikolopoulos credits Kennedy for commissions new found energy. He said she put together a commission comprised of people that want to move things forward and are all on the same page.”And (Parking Department Assistant Director) Bob Stillian is eager to get things done,” he added. “We just want to do everything right.”