Taxi stands return to Albert Avenue after E.L. City Council vote
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East Lansing City Council voted to move downtown taxi stands back to their original Albert Avenue location and also created six additional spaces on the street during its Tuesday meeting at City Hall, 410 Abbot Road.
Police officials’ concerns about safely walking through poorly lit areas toward the M.A.C. Avenue stands prompted the decision. After business owners complained of possible congestion with proposed stands behind the Grove Street Ramp and in the alley behind city parking Lot 1 — a surface area lot on Albert Avenue between Abbot Road and M.A.C. Avenue — the city concluded the nine stands at the 100-200 block of Albert Avenue and an extra six on the street’s south side 300-block were the best option, said Nicole Evans, East Lansing city clerk.
“What it pretty much came down to is we tried pretty much every place we could to establish a taxi stand but were running into a conflict with our businesses,” she said. “And we don’t want to do that because the whole idea is to serve those patrons at these taxi stands.”
The stands will operate between 6 p.m. and 4 a.m. to offer most late night customers a ride home.
Dan O’Connor, East Lansing parking administrator, said he believed Albert Avenue was the best spot for taxi stands.
“They’re more visible and accessible to the customers of the downtown,” he said. “They looked at several other locations on M.A.C. (Avenue), south of Albert (Avenue), in the alley just south of Albert (Avenue) … they just looked to see wherever they could make it work and make it fit.”
Service charge tabled
Councilmembers approved people a $2 fee to access property and tax information online, creating a net savings of $4,810 for the city.
The city previously offered free property and tax information through Bath Township-based BS&A Software by paying the company an upfront $3,610 annual fee. The city rid itself Tuesday of this cost by charging users $2 per hit, with 80 percent of each hit going to BS&A and the remaining 20 percent — an estimated $1,200 — to the city.
Taxpayers still will be able to access their own records online for free and anyone can view records in person at City Hall. People still can look up who owns properties free of charge, but information beyond that point — such as outstanding taxes and assessed home values — is subject to the $2 fee.
Beard said he was hesitant to charge area residents who might just want to access such information to get a better idea of the surrounding neighborhood. He did, however, agree that shifting the system’s overall financial burden to the appraisers and realtors who use the service most frequently made sense.
Councilmember Roger Peters said any avenue to cut costs must be explored. He said although the amount saved through the proposal doesn’t seem like much, every penny matters as the city faces difficult budgetary choices.
“Right now we are so focused on saving money on everything we can that so called little things like this, they do add up,” he said. “We are going to have to focus on as many things as we can to help our budget situation and this may be one of those things.”
Commentary
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Eliot Singer
(02/03/10 8:22am)Report
If the city wants to make it harder to look up information about property ownership, then it needs to list commercial and rental properties on the main roads on its own web-site (for free), with the names of landlords and commercial property owners. Outside the downtown business district, these property owners never keep their public sidewalks clear of ice and snow, often causing a significant risk to public safety, and city government has shown no interest in enforcing laws against “business interests” (just in blaming students for all negligent behavior in East Lansing). These properties are often also out of code other times of year. The names of negligent landlords and commercial property owners should be not only publicly available, but widely available (students should know which landlords have bad reputations with neighbors, because most residents cut slack with students until a house gets a reputation for being a nuisance, and that is the landlord’s fault).
As to saving $1200, that’s nothing when you look at all the money the city wastes in self-promotion and hiring consultants to tell it what it wants to hear so it can pursue pipe dreams.
Also, since I cannot get city government to openly discuss the fact that there is a pervasive problem with icy sidewalks, for which many single-family homeowners are to blame (not just students), and do so much as send out a letter to the community informing them of ordinances and asking them to salt, I find the amount of angst from City Council over taxis rather silly. An elderly lady who might fall and break her hip walking her dog because she has a lazy neighbor is something that needs to be talked about. Taxis? One 5 minute discussion should have been enough.
RECKLESS SPENDING LEADS TO MORE TAX INCREASES
(02/03/10 12:01pm)Report
When we give $30 Million Dollars to a lying crook developer, then the rest of us have to pay, even nickled and dimed, for basic information.
We cannot find out about Nathan Tripletts dirty dealings, insider purchase of City built and owned homes, violating a conflict of interest as a City Council Member. We cannot find out about Mayor Loomis the slumlord, with his rental property on Hagadorn.
PLEASE EDIT YOUR ARTICLES!
(02/03/10 12:06pm)Report
DO THE MATH! THE CITY PAID $10 per day for the service. NOW PEOPLE WILL BE CHARGED $100,000! Based on the number of individual hits by the various users. And for this, the City gains $4000? This makes no sense. Do the math. We insist on responsible journalism, and you do not even know the appropriate questions to ask!