Late yesterday afternoon, a group of Downtown business owners met with employees of the City of Columbus Department of Public Service to hash out the latest in an ongoing series of battles about parking meters, valet practices and patio dining.
The loosely formed group known as the Gay Street Collaborative was led by Chad McCoury of J.Gumbo’s, who made clear that the Department of Public Service fails to provide fair customer service and support to small business owners who seek to operate in full compliance with city code.
Examples were cited where code inspectors would descend upon restaurant businesses at the peak of lunchtime rush hour to harass owners about minor code infractions with patio railing flower boxes and threaten to revoke patio dining licensing.
Public Service Director Mark Kelsey denied knowledge of these types of enforcement practices and stated that it was against internal policy to visit business owners about code infractions during peak business hours.
“We do not want to lose sight of the fact that Mayor Coleman invested $9 million in Gay Street”, said Director Kelsey.
“The Mayor didn’t invest that money,” said Joe Spinelli of Spinelli’s Deli. “We invested that money in Gay Street. It’s our city and I’m sick and tired of the poor customer service from our city government.”
McCoury asked for three specific actions from The Department of Public Service during the meeting to help resolve these issues:
- The transfer of Downtown right-of-way jurisdiction from the Department of Public Service to the Downtown Economic Development in the city’s Department of Development.
- That the Mayor demonstrate a strong show of support for a successful, thriving Downtown by suspending the enforcement of right-of-way code until updated code and administrative policies can be enacted; ending the harassing, overly-aggressive behavior by city regulators; updating administration and department policies for sidewalk lease policies and enforcement; and calling on the City Council to conduct a comprehensive review and modification of right-of-way code.
- That the Columbus City Council, led by Council President Andrew Ginther, immediately begin a comprehensive review of right-of-way code with input from businesses, residents and other stakeholders, and revise the code in-line with regional best practices to ensure our city has laws that reflect a growing, modern major metropolitan area.
Kelsey said that code enforcers would go through customer service training to address any aggressive behavior, that business owners should contact him directly to report any future aggressive enforcement behavior and that a subcommittee of Public Service officials and business owners should be formed to jointly review city code for updates.
“This is the same problem that we had two years ago,” said Jeff Mathes, owner of Due Amici and Barrio. “The difference is that there are new business owners experiencing it.”
“Everyone in this room wants this Downtown to be great,” he added.
Additional follow up meetings are taking place this week to further address details on specific issues. We’ll be conducting an in-depth interview with several folks at the Department of Public Service on Thursday, so feel free to add your specific questions below.