THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 2, 1994 TAG: 9409010259
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 45 lines
Take a deep breath and wade on into the Labor Day weekend. Hit the sales, char the beef; and if you head for the Oceanfront festivities, bring company manners, comfortable shoes and, as the crowds grow, $5 to park in a satellite lot and walk or bus (free) to the beach and the bands. It's less hassle in the long weekend. It's practice for the future, too.
The American Music Festival seems to have been a terrific draw for resort hotels and motels. Add the day trippers, and traffic and crowd control edge anticipation with anxiety. The city has learned the hard way to make plans, and contingency plans. The hard part is the fine line between preparing for potential trouble and borrowing it, between accommodating hordes of happy campers and heading off problems that can develop when tens of thousands pack into 30 blocks. The key is to make everybody feel welcome, and expected to behave.
The most confusion heading into the weekend is the city's ongoing exercise in behavior modification, mostly of its own citizens and better known as paid and permitted parking. Most Oceanfront residents and regular visitors aren't used to parking restrictions and fees, particularly on the street.
To take some of the sting out of its quick implementation, City Council made the residential permit and one guest pass free through year's end. It was a wise public-relations move the city and its special-events contractor, Ocean Occasions, might have repeated. The $5 parking fee may well cover the cost of the buses. But just this once, pegging the parking fee to distance from the Oceanfront, or dropping it altogether at, say, the Pavilion might have recouped in visitors' good will and cooperation what it cost in lost fees.
The Resort Area Residential Parking Program was rushed into effect, but not without reason. Some glitches are fixed. Others need to be. City Council promised time and attention to citizens' complaints and comments: Must the residential permit cost $15? Must the restrictions apply year-round? The time for asking and answering comes post-Labor Day, when more rights and wrongs of the permit plan will have surfaced. by CNB