The US National weather service has issued a Winter Storm warning for Otsego County which is expected to last until 1 a.m. on Saturday. Weather.com predicts that snow showers will begin at 4 p.m. this afternoon, Thursday, December 15.
The City of Oneonta has issued an advisory that they expect significant snowfall and residents are not to park on the streets after there have been 2 1/2 inches of snowfall. The city parking garage and municipal lots will be available to Oneonta residents starting at Noon, Thursday December 15. Any vehicle parked on the street in violation will be ticketed for $100.
The National weather service advises that the storm will bring heavy, wet snow with expected accumulation of between 9 and 15 inches. Wind gusts of 35 miles per hour are expected. Travel is expected to be difficult to impossible, if you must travel be sure to have and extra flashlight, food, and water in your vehicle in case of an emergency.
Update: The top level of the Oneonta Parking Garage will be closed from Thursday, December 15, through the end of the day on Wednesday, December 21.
Trustee Cindy Falk explains why she does not support the three-hour parking limit. (Parker Fish/AllOTSEGO.com)
COOPERSTOWN – Village residents will have to wait at least another month to see the Pioneer Street parking issue come to a close.
At their meeting tonight, village trustees set a public hearing for their September meeting on the proposed parking layout for the northernmost section of Pioneer Street. The layout, proposed by the street committee, returns the street to parallel parking, and would create two handicap accessible parking spaces on the northern end of the street closest to the lake.
The proposed layout would also turn what was originally all-day parking into three-hour spaces to accommodate park goers, as opposed to employees in the village looking for all-day parking.
The lower section of Pioneer Street, as seen during experience with diagonal parking. (AllOTSEGO.com photo)
COOPERSTOWN – Parking on lower Pioneer Street may soon be back to where it was.
The Village Board’s Street Committee this evening planned to recommend “return to parallel parking” after two months of heated debate over installing diagonal parking there.
A couple innovations in the proposed diagonal plan remain: One, designating the northernmost spot for handicapped parking. Two, reducing all-day parking to three-hour parking.
The village streets committee, chaired by Trustee Cindy Falk, met last Thursday and developed the new proposal. The trustees meet at 6:30 p.m. at 22 Main.
UPDATE WILL BE POSTED AFTER THIS EVENING’S MEETING
Pioneer Street neighbor Rick Hulse urges the Cooperstown Village Board to restore parallel parking on the northern section of Pioneer Street at this evening’s trustees’ meeting. The trustees decided in June to re-evaluate parking on the section of Pioneer Street closest to the lake, and conducted trial periods for two different parking schemes involving angled parking on the east side of the street at Lakefront Park. Residents living on the street immediately voiced displeasure, and reaffirmed their sentiments at the public hearing at tonight’s meeting. Ultimately, on a motion by Trustee Lou Allstadt, the board moved to approve Local Law #4, essentially returning the parking back to the original layout, but the motion did not pass with a 3-3 tied vote. Proposed Local Law #6, creating six new parking spaces with a mix of angled and parallel parking, saw the same fate with a 3-3 vote. The other issue facing the board this evening, a special use permit to turn The White House Inn, 46 Chestnut St., into a hotel, passed unanimously. (Parker Fish/AllOTSEGO.com)
Cars are currently parked diagonally along the northernmost section of Pioneer Street in front of Lakefront Park, Option 2 under consideration by the Village Board. (Parker Fish/AllOTSEGO.com)
The White House in, 26 Chestnut St., may be redesignated as a hotel this evening.
COOPERSTOWN – The Village Board will hold two public hearings at 7 tonight at 22 Main, and perhaps act on one or both of the plans under consideration, according to Trustee Cindy Falk:
Diagonal parking on lower Pioneer Street.
Option 3, which resulted from neighbors’ objections at last month’s meeting, would shift diagonal parking to the north. Under the previous plan, headlights would be shining into the livingroom of the Leist family at 5 Pioneer St.; Option 3 eliminates that. It also creates three parallel-parking spaces across from the Leists, raising the number of parking places from 23 in Option 2 to 26 in Option 3 Or the trustees could go back to Option 1, the traditional all-parallel-parking scheme.
Redesignation the White House Inn, 46 Chestnut St., as a hotel.
Cooperstown resident Tony Casale speaks up during this evening’s Village Board meeting. Casale was less than pleased with the board’s decision to conduct a parking trial on the lower portion of Pioneer Street, switching from parallel parking to diagonal parking, with no prior warning to the neighbors. Also discussed at the meeting was the petition created by Veronica Seaver, calling for stricter enforcement of the village noise ordinance laws in light of bands playing downtown. (Parker Fish/AllOTSEGO.com)
COOPERSTOWN – Villagers whose heads may still be spinning over on-street parking, P&D machines and downtown parking permits, now have another concept around which to wrap their brains.
Residential parking permits.
The Village Board has scheduled a “workshop meeting” for 10 a.m. Friday, Nov. 20. Mayor Jeff Katz anticipates a free-floating discussion to see if there is any consensus on the matter. The public is welcome, but no public comment.
“No one on a residential street wants those tourist buses on their street,” River Street resident Chip Northrup tells the Village Board this evening. After hearing Northrup and residents Jim Howarth (seated at right), Roger MacMillan (seated at left), Charles Hyman and others, the trustees created a committee, chaired by Police Committee chair Ellen Tillapaugh Kuch, to study the matter and make a recommendation. Police Chief Mike Covert will be a member. The neighbors had presented a 57-signature petition asking not only that the tour buses be banned from their streets, but that buses and “heavy vehicles” be banned from the “village core” altogether. They said there should be exemptions for school buses, ambulances and trolleys. (Jim Kevlin/allotsego.com)
