{"id":245069,"date":"2012-05-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/uptown-parking-district-operations-manager-hits-the-ground-running\/"},"modified":"2012-05-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-11T07:00:00","slug":"uptown-parking-district-operations-manager-hits-the-ground-running","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/uptown-parking-district-operations-manager-hits-the-ground-running\/","title":{"rendered":"Uptown Parking District Operations Manager hits the ground running"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por Margie M. Palmer | Reportero SDUN

\"Uptown
Uptown Parking District Operations Manager Ben Verdugo. (Photo by SDUN)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

District Three Councilmember Todd Gloria recently said at a press conference one of the biggest complaints he gets from the community is about parking. Uptown Parking District\u2019s new operations manager, Ben Verdugo, said he has a plan to address that.<\/p>\n

Hired in April, Verdugo has years of experience overseeing neighborhood improvement projects. Prior to his tenure with the Parking District, he served as the program manager for the Greater Golden Hill Maintenance Assessment District. The transition from his former position to the new one, he said, has been smooth.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdministratively, it\u2019s been seamless,\u201d Verdugo said. \u201cI\u2019m still working with many of the same people on a day-to-day basis. These are people I\u2019ve been dealing with for the past few years, so that makes things a bit easier. There have been many similarities but it\u2019s still a whole different animal.\u201d
\nHis primary agenda item, he said, is to increase the number of Uptown parking spaces as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

Citing numerous ways to increase parking, Verdugo said, \u201cOne of the fastest ways to accomplish that is by changing bumper-to-bumper parking to diagonal parking, or even head-in parking. As long as we can obtain a 75 percent approval vote of residents and businesses [in front of the spaces and] as long as the street is wide enough the process can move forward fairly quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, diagonal and head-in parking modifications are being evaluated for Vermont Street and Seventh Avenue in Hillcrest.
\n\u201cVermont [Street] is well into the process,\u201d Verdugo said. \u201cThe petitions have been signed and the diagrams have been set forth. Once it\u2019s approved by the Uptown Planners, we can start on getting things changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Seventh Avenue corridor, he said, may be more difficult to convert.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now we\u2019re evaluating whether the street is wide enough, and we\u2019re still looking into whether there are other restrictions that would prevent us from moving forward,\u201d Verdugo said.<\/p>\n

Hillcrest Business Association Executive Director Benjamin Nicholls said Verdugo\u2019s hiring was at the hands of the new Parking District board of directors. The Parking District, formerly referred to as the Uptown Partnership, had been inactive and the money collected for the inactive Uptown Partnership remained unused. <\/p>\n

A new board of directors was elected earlier this year and their goal was utilize the money to implement parking improvement projects, Nicholls said, adding, \u201cThe priority was to hire someone that would move projects forward.\u201d <\/p>\n

Nicholls was on the Parking District hiring committee. Though there were a number of highly qualified candidates, what stood out most about Verdugo was his \u201croll up your sleeves, can-do attitude,\u201d Nicholls said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was more about what can we get done today, tomorrow and down the road as opposed to a big-picture, 10,000-foot view,\u201d Nicholls said. \u201cHe\u2019s going to be somebody who takes ideas and gets them done.\u201d <\/p>\n

Nicholls also said, \u201cHillcrest, Middletown, Mission Hills and Park West each has their own parking committee and each has ideas as to how to solve parking problems. Ben [Verdugo] is really going to have his work cut out for him.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Margie M. Palmer | SDUN Reporter District Three Councilmember Todd Gloria recently said at a press conference one of the biggest complaints he gets from the community is about parking. Uptown Parking District\u2019s new operations manager, Ben Verdugo, said he has a plan to address that. Hired in April, Verdugo has years of experience […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":746,"featured_media":245070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Uptown Parking District Operations Manager hits the ground running","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11550,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-top-stories","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/746"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}