An important message from Unit President Brian Samuels
This message is to solicit your support to help solve an extremely serious problem that is facing us and puts at risk our ability to continue to use our beautiful Bridge Center.
As you are all aware, we do not seem to have enough parking for some of our games – especially Monday, sometimes Friday and occasionally on other days. There are always parking problems when IFES is hosting a large event while we have one of our games.
This week we received a letter from the City of Mountain View warning us that we may be in violation of the Use Permit that IFES has to allow them to rent our Bridge Center to us. This agreement is with the City of Mountain View and prohibits us, and anyone else who uses the IFES center, from parking on the street. So, we are not allowed to park on Stierlin Rd. or on any of the other side streets.
Unfortunately, there are neighbors who are monitoring our compliance with this agreement. These neighbors are taking photographs of any violating cars and sending them to the City of Mountain View Planning Department. For repeated violations the city has the right to withdraw the IFES Use Permit, which would mean we would not be able to use our new Bridge Center. Also, at some point in the future, the Use Permit will have to be renewed and a history of violations accompanied by the testimony of unhappy neighbors would be a disaster for us.
You may park only in the following 2 areas:
1. The IFES parking lot. Please note that there is a lot of additional parking on the north side of the building (Shoreline Blvd. side) and some at the rear of the building. Most people are not aware of these spaces. Please use them. Also, please be courteous and park parallel in your spot so that it will be easy for cars to park on either side of you.
2.There is one small exception to us not being allowed to park on the street and that is we can park on our side of Stierlin Rd but ONLY between our 2 driveways. No other street parking is allowed.
Please start to carpool so that we can reduce the number of parking spaces we need!
We have formed a committee with the objectives to get this problem solved and eliminate any risk that we will lose our Bridge Center because of parking violations. The committee members are: Mike Atherton, Alan Cummings, Sue Griswold and Alan Templeton. This committee will be coming up with additional actions, recommendations and communications to help us all participate in solving this problem. Please feel free to speak with me or any of these people if you have any suggestions, comments or questions.
In the meantime, we need your absolute compliance with the parking guidelines above.
I am very proud to be the new Unit 503 President. Thank you very much for supporting me and all of your 2013 Board members. We are looking forward to serving you and the best interests of bridge in our Unit. On behalf of your Board, I would like to wish you and your families a Happy Holiday and a happy and healthy 2013, filled with lots of challenging and fun bridge.
Thank you for your help and cooperation.
Brian
Brian Samuels
briansamuels@yahoo.com (650) 703-9510