Street closures are nothing more than the city serving its community

It is not my intention to criticize anyone — especially Susanville City Councilmember Patrick Parrish and/or the Susanville City Council  oe the city staff — with this opinion piece. I am not picking a fight — just sharing my opinion because it seems to me the council keeps chasing its tail further and further down this street closure rabbit hole, and, if I may be so bold, I’d like to offer a different perspective and a super easy solution.

Parrish has famously positioned himself as the watchdog of city spending on the council, and I’m all for that. That’s part of every councilmember’s role, although I think he could find more significant budget foibles to fight about, that’s for sure.

Now if I understand him correctly, he sees the expenditure of city funds for street closures in a negative way, an unreasonable, recurring cost the city bears year after year for which it receives nothing in return. He wants the party seeking the closure to “have some skin in the game,” or to include the city’s name in the name of the event. Why, he’s suggested the city spending money on street closures should be considered a form of advertising and/or city sponsorship. Once he complained about the city’s logo being placed below the logo of a local business that actually paid to sponsor the event on an event poster, and the council directed the city manager to discuss the city logo’s positioning on the poster with the event’s sponsor. Yikes! Talk about giving the city manager an awkward task.

In large part, in response to Parrish’s concerns, the council has even directed city staff to create a policy to determine which events qualify for the city’s expenditure and are therefore eligible for street closures funding without protest and to sort through all these other issues Parrish has raised.

Let’s look at this a different way
First of all, let’s talk about the costs. City Manager Dan Newton has told the council the fiscal impact numbers included with the resolutions authorizing street closures are not hard, fixed costs. I believe they are simply costs that will be considered as the city departments create their future budgets, as in we need to budget x number of hours in overtime next year, and these fiscal impact number will serve as part of the justification. In reality, those numbers are not really the costs the city will actually have to pay. For example, the organizers of the Farmers Market on Pancera Plaza have told me they often put up the barricades to block off Gay Street, even though the city’s public works department includes a charge for that task with the resolution.

But more important than the reality about the supposed costs, the city’s decision to approve a street closure is not an endorsement or sponsorship of the event. It’s simply the city — the only entity that has the authority to approve the street closures after someone requests them — responding the wishes and desires of city residents. I think those asking for the street closures are essentially just asking the city to approve a permit. It’s all about serving city residents as on the city can.

Let’s be real. In the case of the recently debated street closure for a procession for the Catholic Church and its parishioners, the city is not spending taxpayer money to support a religious event. It is facilitating the desire of city residents who ask the city to close the streets during the procession for everyone’s safety. There is no separation of church and state issue at all. The city is not encouraging us all to go Catholic.

I hope the council can recognize the cost incurred by the street closures is nothing more than the cost of doing business and serving our community. That’s it. Seriously.

Is this something we need to haggle about every time this issue arises? I think not.