Public Comment

If you go north on Shellmound st in Emeryville, past Ikea, there is a street sign that says: ‘Bay st.’ However, if you make a right turn you don’t end up on Bay st. Instead you are trapped into the entrance to the mega-garage that ‘serves’ the stores, the theaters and restaurants. If you think you can park on Bay st. (or just drive down to admire the myriad of shops) you will have to find another entrance. 

This may not seem to be a high priority in the scheme of injustices these days, but it represents a good reason why people are so fed up with their governments...be they federal, state or just local. I have tried for nearly a year to get the city of Emeryville off its complacent buns to put up an accurate sign indicating that the street sign leads to the parking lot, not the street. I’ve spoken to Mayor Atkins, City Manager Patrick O’keefe and the Madison-Marquette parking lot manager Ron Weller. All I get is the usual ‘we’re taking care of it’...or more recently: ‘don’t you have anything better to do?" 

It’s bad enough that this cumbersome, money-sucking monstrosity of a garage exists in the first place...on hallowed Indian burial grounds, no less. But it shouldn’t take a concerned citizen numerous attempts and insults from these jokers to get something as simple as a sign change to be accomplished. If our local government is enmeshed in so much inertia and cynicism, why should its citizens be any less so? If they can’t change a deceptive, and perhaps fraudulent street sign, then what can they do?