Last week, issues between Downtown businesses and The Columbus Department of Public Service came to a boil at a meeting where some heated words were exchanged. Small business owners on Gay Street want to see friendlier practices within the Department and modernized city code that allows them to continue to bring life and vitality back Downtown.
We recently sat down with several officials within the Columbus Department of Public Service to hear more about what is being addressed, why things have unfolded in the way that they have, and what sort of changes we can be seeing in the near future. Below is the second half of the transcript of the interview conducted with Public Information Office Assistant Director Rick Tilton, Division of Planning & Operations Administrator Patti Austin and Division of Mobility Options Administrator Randy Bowman.
(Click here to go back to part one on the interview)
Walker Evans: At the meeting on Monday, Director Kelsey said that the Downtown core was scheduled to be patrolled by enforcement officials on foot every two weeks. I have a three-part question about that. What are the boundaries of the ‘Downtown core,’ how often are outer-lying areas patrolled on a scheduled regular basis — such as Bethel Road or Sullivant Avenue — and are those outer-lying areas are patrolled on foot or by car?
Patti Austin: To start with, the Downtown core is roughly the areas within the innerbelts. However, not all of those areas have sidewalk dining leases so they are not focused upon. We focus more on the areas along High Street, and along Gay Street – the areas that have the sidewalk dining leases. The other thing you’ve got to understand is that we have other Public Service employees throughout the city. We have street maintenance investigators that call in complaints on a regular basis. Outside of the Downtown core, those right-of-way investigators will respond to complaints. But they may be complaints that came in from either another city department, or from within the department from other things during the regular street maintenance investigators patrol. Every investigator has an area. The city is broken up into five areas and they are on patrol every day, looking for these kinds of issues.
Gay Street is a wonderful street and I love it and I eat there every day myself. But the other thing you have to understand is that one of the reasons why we are on Gay Street and High Street and those areas every two weeks, is because of the outdoor dining and the amenities we’ve put on Gay Street, we have really squeezed the pedestrian envelope down to the point where we’ve got no room for error anymore. We really don’t have any room to give where maybe up on North High Street, they’ve got a sidewalk dining lease but the sidewalk is 10 foot wide and they are only using four feet of it, so we’ve still got six feet that we can play with. Here, we’re down to four to five feet in areas. The minimum is a four foot path. On Gay Street, there’s areas where we are very very close to being at that minimum. So we have to be very careful to keep that open for everybody. It’s kind of the nature of the fact that Gay Street is so much more active and so much more vibrant that we’ve created this closing of the pedestrian envelope. So now you’ve got four feet and someone puts their advertising sign within that four feet, and then the sidewalk is totally blocked from an ADA perspective. In other areas of the city we just don’t have those issues on a daily basis.
Walker Evans: Are those issues not present in other areas because they’re not reported as such so they’re not patrolled as heavily? Because I’d have to imagine that there are infractions in other areas. If you go up to Clintonville, maybe the sidewalks are six feet wide, but if you stick something out in the middle of that it quickly restricts it down to less then three feet on each side.
Patti Austin: No, it’s not that they’re not as patrolled as heavy. It’s pretty easy to drive up and down High Street and see the violations. Gay Street and most of the Downtown, you really have to look at it at more of a pedestrian level. No, I don’t think it’s an issue that they have more violations because they are checked more heavily.
Walker Evans: But you’re more likely to spot minor infractions on foot and can stop and use a tape measure and inspect minor details, whereas when you are driving, you are obviously occupied with the act of driving and will miss the details.
Patti Austin: Right. But the other thing that I really want to make a point about because this is really really important — there’s no citations being issued. People talk a lot about violations, but we don’t record these as violations. And that’s why it is really hard for us to reconstruct post mortem because if an investigator stopped in someone’s shop and said ‘hey your sandwich board is too far out, can you move it in’, they don’t even necessarily keep a record of that, it’s just part of their normal patrol. I don’t want everybody to think that there’s ‘violations’ being issued because there really isn’t. There’s no monetary fines, it’s really just more, ‘hey this isn’t in the right place, we need to move it.’
Randy Bowman: The actual form of permission that a business obtains to do a sidewalk dining is a lease of the right-of-way, not a permit.
Patti Austin: So for the most part we don’t issue any kind of violations. We did send written notice to Tip Top Kitchen and Cocktails about their trash cans, to move them from in front of their business. That’s the only written thing that I know of personally on Gay Street from the last several months.
Walker Evans: Director Kelsey said at the meeting that some form of customer service training would be in order for the officials who are out there on the street. What specifically does that entail?
Patti Austin: We are meeting with our internal employee systems program on Tuesday to develop the training and the head of the employee systems program is going to run it. Everyone in my division who deals with the public, including those street maintenance investigators I told you about that go to the outer-lying areas of the city, will go through this training. So I can’t give you a lot of specifics, but what I see as the issue is that a lot of these guys are very direct and they come from an engineering and technical background. They’re very direct people and they’re very much by-the-book people. We need to get them to the point where they’re helping people find solutions and not just pointing out problems. So. That’s what we’re going to focus on in the customer service training.
Walker Evans: Some of the code being enforced that has been problematic lately is over 50 years old. Will the committee that is reviewing the code going to be reviewing just specific codes, or is some sort of holistic approach being taken to review other bits of city codes that small business owners may run into problems with down the road?
Patti Austin: My charge has been to look at the code as particularly as it applies to the dining areas in the right-of-way. That’s been my charge. I know that Safety is going to be joining us and talking about things like the Pearl Market and how to allow more of those types of venues. But again, those are outside of the right-of-way issues. So again, if you’re talking more comprehensively like getting in to building code; we’re not going to get into private structures. It’s really going to center mostly on the right-of-way.
WE: About a year and a half ago there were issues between Downtown business owners and the Department of Public Service with regard to parking meters. There were also issues with the rewriting of valet parking codes and addressing those concerns. Do you think that if a comprehensive approach isn’t taken, there’s going to be another issue with something else down the road?
Patti Austin: I think that with this code, we’ll have addressed everything within the right-of-way. Anything beyond that is going to have to be an interdepartmental meeting with Building Services to talk about how they interact the inside of buildings with people. And I will bring that issue up to the Building and Zoning Services Director right now. We have not had that as our focus. I think it’s a great idea to take a holistic approach, but I also want to produce results. Sometimes if your project gets too big you never get anything accomplished. I want to get something accomplished for these guys to make their lives easier on a daily basis. We can solve this problem, and if there’s other problems that come up we can look at that too as part of that process. But at least we’ve solved some of their problems and some of their challenges on a daily basis.
Walker Evans: Perhaps a major code update and revision in 2012 could be a good contribution from the Department of Public Service for the Bicentennial Celebration.
Patti Austin: Yeah.
Walker Evans: Director Kelsey mentioned on Monday that only a small portion of the department was funded by fees or fines collected from violations or other things. Do you know exactly how much of the department’s budget is funded by that?
Patti Austin: I could not tell you that number right off – but I can tell you, none of it is funded by violations because we do not get money from violations. Even if someone does get a ticket, it goes into the city’s general fund and not into our department’s operating fund. We don’t have the ability to write tickets in Planning and Operations. Randy’s division does with parking tickets, but we don’t have the ability to write tickets for right-of-way infractions. That’s not how works. We can only tell businesses that they need to bring things into compliance or else they’re not going to have a lease because they have to be in compliance with their lease.
The vast majority of the money we get is from the motor fuel tax. We get so many cents per gallon of the fuel that’s pumped within the Columbus area. That funds the vast majority of our operations.
Walker Evans: Is it possible to make a public records request to find out how many written citations have been issued?
Patti Austin: Yes. What we can do is search our right-of-way files for the businesses along Gay Street and we can produce any citations that have been issued. Also, just so you know… about two years ago, we used to send everything out as a violation in writing. The businesses responded back that they prefered a phone call or a visit in person instead of a written letter. So switched to having Jerry or Hank stopping by and saying, ‘this is a violation can you move it’. So a lot of that activity has become undocumented. Now we are hearing that business owners want a different way to be communicated to, and we’re responding to that. I’m all for calling them in advance. I eat on Gay Street, and I know how busy these guys are. I understand it’s frustrating when they are trying to run a register and a Public Service employee is bugging them about flower boxes when you’ve got a line out the door. I totally get that it would be annoying to any human being.
Walker Evans: There’s a large group of business owners on Gay Street who are in the process of forming a business association so that they can work collaboratively on a number of issues — special events, marketing, beautification, etc — but they also want to be able to address these city code issues in a clearer and unified fashion. Does the Department of Public Service support the creation of this business association?
Patti Austin: Oh yeah, I think that’s wonderful. As a matter of fact, they’ve invited me to one of their upcoming meetings and I’m more than happy to attend and answer any questions they have anytime. We really do support that because it helps us. The one thing you really do have to understand from our perspective is that I did not personally know that there was a problem with the way my inspectors were handling issues on Gay Street until I read about it in the Dispatch. No one ever called anyone above Jerry Riser and said that they’re having problems. So yes, I welcome that and everybody out on Gay Street has my cell phone number now. They can call me if there’s any issue and them joining together will educate everyone on who to call when you have specific issues with any department. It will help them share information among themselves and be more informed. I think that’s a great thing.
Randy Bowman: As far as my responsibility at Mobility Options goes, whether it’s parking or biking accommodations or pedestrian safety, we’ve got great experience in working with civic associations, business associations and historic commissions. We talk to all of them regularly. We like to work with them because we think they’ve got a finger on the pulse on what’s going on in the community and that helps us understand better how to work with them. Particularly when it comes to the covered bike shelters that we’re doing around town. We talk a lot with the business and civic associations and get their input as we look for spots to put in those covered bike parking areas. It’s a great way to work with the neighborhood. Of course we work with individuals too, but I think that collaborative effort when businesses can work together is really great.
Patti Austin: One last thing I did want to add is that this regulation can really help out Gay Street businesses too. One thing that one of my investigators is currently dealing with is three businesses on the edges of the Downtown core that have tables and chairs spread out in the right-of-way, but don’t have sidewalk leases. So he’s working with them to get them legal. That’s really not fair to the Gay Street businesses since they did everything right to begin with. So our enforcers need to make sure these other businesses do it right too and follow the rules. So in that perspective our enforcers can really help everyone have a level playing field so that all of their business models are the same.
Walker Evans: Great! Thanks again Patti, Rick and Randy for your time today.
Click here to go back to Part 1 of our interview with the Department of Public Service.
More info about the Columbus Department of Public Service can be found at publicservice.columbus.gov.