Council Chronicles: START bus stop stopped, Chamber chamber pot flows, peds impeded

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

By Jake Nichols

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-“Bus stop, bus go, she stays, love grows.” So sang The Hollies in 1966. “Bus Stop” was a Top 10 hit for the British group in the U.S. and U.K. But it doesn’t play in East Jackson. Not on Larry Hartnett’s hi-fi, anyway.

Janice Steiner proposed building one of START’s three new bus stops across from Hartnett’s quickstop emporium that comprises his law office and the newly expanded Bud’s East Side Liquor store. It was met with several objections from attorney Hartnett. When Steiner contended the current St. John’s stop was well-utilized, Hartnett countered: “Not a lot of people are using the START bus there.”

He then offered to videotape the five or so people who board every weekday rush hour from 4 to 6 p.m.

“The location of the stop will need to be moved east, closer to the intersection of Broadway and Redmond,” was Steiner’s second stipulation. Impractical, argued Hartnett – the lethargic 35-foot Wackerly wagon will barely be up to traffic speed when it pulls out there.

If Hartnett wasn’t rankled enough, Steiner poked the hornet’s nest with one final request: In order to move the stop, the parking on that block needs to be rearranged. “Now you’re messing with commerce,” read the thought bubble above Hartnett’s head.
After four years in the grocery business, Hartnett found booze moves better than bagels at 582 E. Broadway. “Beer sales are up 40 percent over last year,” he boasted.

He wasn’t about to let some straphangers crowd his 15-minute, Bud Light suitcase-run parking spots. Camel smokers might walk a mile, but Jackson’s eastside rummies aren’t going to lug their livers a half-block for hooch. After all, the west side has them fancy drive-up liquor stores.

The council asked staff to look into “moving the bus stop to the shrubbery area next to the fire hydrant on the grassy knoll,” as Mark Barron put it, in order to placate all involved.

Chamber pot
The council’s bathroom break to consider a Chamber of Commerce home above the Home Ranch restroom reconstruction hit the predictable clog with Bob Lenz. Previously, the councilman with a crush on the Home Ranch had objected most sternly to any increase in johns and decrease in parking spots.

“The dynamics of that parking lot are very important,” Lenz said. “It’s visible, accessible, and convenient. Here you have a parking lot that is totally full all the time in every season. I think the Chamber needs a better place and I’ll support it anywhere else. The Home Ranch parking lot is sacred. I say the people on the Square deserve better.”

Lenz also called the Visitor Center one of the best in the West, if not the nation, and saw no reason for the Chamber to compete with it. “The Chamber can be anywhere in town,” he said.

The redesigned Chamber potty could come in at 8,000 square feet – stacked vertically over two floors. It received blessings from Wort GM Jim Waldrop, Pathways’ head Tim Young, and Jay “Plaintiff” Varley – provided it was built on wheels for easy moving when parking becomes more important than peeing. “Sometime in the next 20 years or so,” Varley said. Don Harger also offered some sound business advice: Whatever you do, rent to the Chamber, don’t sell it.

The Council voted 3-1, with Lenz against, to ask CDC Architects for a refined conceptual site plan.

In other business
Any discussion on jacking the housing mitigation rates will have to wait until newlywed Councilwoman Melissa Turley returns from her honeymoon, Obringer insisted. A workshop will be scheduled for sometime in October.

Mayor Barron wondered why no one was writing out tickets to out-of-town bullies who have never seen a pedestrian right-of-way. “Is there a reluctance to issue citations for people ignoring the pedestrian crosswalks?” Barron asked JPD’s top cop.

“That’s news to me,” answered Dan Zivkovitch. The Chief admitted he had never written a ticket for it, but he has made stops to educate self-centered motorists.

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Council Chronicles: START bus stop stopped, Chamber chamber pot flows, peds impeded | Planet JH News Article: Council Chronicles

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