Celebrates 10th Anniversary

In the beginning were a handful of Jewish people — mostly retirees from Northeastern cities — who gathered in homes for social and cultural activities.

Their children and grandchildren visited, appreciated the climate, played golf, spread the word. Some relocated. Schools were good, homes reasonably priced, business opportunities favorable.

FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital attracted personnel desiring Jewish identity for their children.

“I was satisfied enough that there was (an identity),” says Jennifer Fox-Furie, mother of three, who moved from Atlanta in 1998 and now heads the religious school at Temple Beth Shalom, in Foxfire Village, with an enrollment of 26.

Leonard Tufts’ covenant, as reported by Pinehurst historian Richard J. Moss, “that expressly prevented sale of property to Jews or Negroes,” was all but forgotten, along with unspoken hotel practices which “developed a system of discouraging Jews from coming to Pinehurst.”

Newcomers were welcomed. They flourished.

Beneath these chapter headings unfolds a story of faith, fellowship and above all, tenacity, resulting in a congregation of about 140, from newborns to 91-year-old Seth Hoders, a CPA and piano salesman who came to Moore County from New Jersey in 1977.

“We have what it takes to make a good congregation,” Hoders says. “Good leadership, good response to the needs of the people.”

On a cool, sun-drenched October weekend, the congregation gathered to celebrate Beth Shalom’s 10th anniversary in the temple/community center, a contemporary white building with portico and skylights rising from a Foxfire forest.

This temple does not have stained glass panels like Temple Israel in Charlotte, or guitar music like Temple Emanuel in Greensboro. Or Hardlox, a swinging downtown Jewish food festival hosted by the Asheville Jewish Community Center. The multi-function building has survived a flood (Noah, call home).

Beth Shalom operates with a volunteer staff and a retired rabbi who flies in one weekend a month from New York. Yet events are so well-attended that sometimes you can’t find a spot in the parking lot, says 84-year-old Ed Montel, who belonged to a large conservative congregation in New Jersey and now coaches 13-year-olds preparing for bar/bat mitzvah.

Beth Shalom’s history weaves the stories of founding members into a variegated cloth, beginning with Vivian Jacobson – Chagall scholar, swimming instructor, Hebrew teacher.

“Coming here was the best decision of my married life,” she says.

Vivian and husband, Ralph Jacobson, a Holocaust survivor, moved to Pinehurst from Chicago in 1989. Vivian had anticipated retirement in Israel; Ralph wanted western North Carolina. Before deciding, they visited Pinehurst.

“I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience here – a calling from God, a sense of peace,” Vivian recalls.

Soon after arriving they joined a Jewish cultural group, mostly seniors, who had been meeting since 1981. Beth Israel in Fayetteville was the closest temple.

Younger families who followed formed their own group; in 1993 Jacobson initiated Bible Camp Shalom, which offered children swimming, tennis, golf and Judaic studies.

“We were two separate congregations with different priorities,” says community leader Lowell Simon. “In 1999 we laid the groundwork for what is now the Sandhills Jewish Congregation.”

Moorecroft Regional Park plan in its final phase

The plan which will guide the future of Moorecroft Regional Park over the next 10 years is nearing completion.

After a year of workshops, open houses and public input, the Moorecroft Regional Park management plan will be up for approval in January.

“We now have the draft plan in place, we’re just getting a little more feedback on it before we take it to the Regional Parks and Trails select committee in December,” said Wendy Marshall, manager of Parks Services, for the Regional District of Nanaimo.

The plan calls for preservation of the Nanoose Bay landmark’s environmental features, such as a Garry Oak system, while removing remains of the former occupants. It also speaks to working with First Nations, who are involved in the planning process, and the feasibility of building a long house on the site.

“There are some older buildings on the property because it used to be a church camp, and a lot of those are unsafe and in disrepair,” Marshall said. “The plan calls for demolishing many of those structures, a few of the structures will stay.”

Other minor infrastructure improvements included in the plan include a new parking lot and fencing to protect the Garry Oak systems. Options will include small picnic shelters.

Dogs will be permitted in the park on leash, and staff have been advised to locate a nearby location for an off leash park.

Moorecroft Park is a popular destination for swimming, hiking and dog walking, with its open meadow areas, man-made pond, a bay in the centre and viewpoints.

“It’s got beautiful views across the water,” Marshall said.

During the public process, Marshall said park users were adamant about ensuring its ecology.

“It really came down to protecting the environment and the sensitive eco systems,”‘ she said. “They didn’t want a lot done to the park, they wanted to just enjoy the beauty of the park.”

Many park users are local to the Nanoose Bay area, but there has been a noticeable increase in the number of users since purchased by the RDN and Nature Trust of BC in March, 2011. The plan calls for a survey that will determine how many visitors are coming through the park and where they are coming from.

Westfield car park lights frustrate customers

The parking guidance systems at Westfield’s Chermside and Carindale shopping centres have been criticised by frustrated customers as unreliable and unnecessary.

Westfield partly justified its introduction of paid parking at the two shopping centres with the installation of the parking guidance systems, which were designed to direct shoppers to available car spaces.

Lights above car spaces should turn green when a parking space becomes available and then change to red when the space is taken.

Electronic signs at the entrance to each car park purportedly show how may spaces are available in a particular area, and in each aisle.

But the system appears to struggle recognising the presence of small vehicles and motorcycles.

At Carindale shopping centre yesterday afternoon, brisbanetimes.com.au observed nearly a dozen frustrated shoppers drive towards a green light only to discover there was no park available.

Meanwhile, drivers were also being misled by another green light in a different parking area, when there was in fact no free space available.

Emma Smith, 22, said she was frustrated with the faulty light indicators.

“When we drove in there were a couple of lights that were green, so we drove down the aisle but then there were no parks free. They should have been red,” Ms Smith said.

“It’s not working very well.”

Another shopper, who requested to be known only as Gwen, said she had been mislead by the parking guidance system on “quite a few occasions”.

“It actually causes more frustration, because you’ll turn into a particular area thinking you’re going to get a park there, but then you find yourself just driving around for the same amount of time you would without the lights system anyway,” the Carina Heights resident said.

“It hasn’t really solved any problems.”

Carindale mother-of-two, Michelle, said she found the system helpful, but unreliable.

One driver, who asked not to be named, said he was pleased with the system and added that a similar parking system worked extremely well at QIC Global Real Estate’s Robina Town Centre.

Westfield national marketing manager Julia Clarke said the parking guidance system worked well “on the whole”, but conceded there were kinks in the system.

“While there are some inaccuracies from time to time, we believe that the vast majority of parking spaces covered by the system – more than 2300 – are accurately reflected in the availability indicators,” she said.

“Regardless, the providers of the system are working on a continual basis to ensure that the technology is as efficient as possible.”

While parking is free for the first three hours, at both shopping centres, it costs $2 to park for between 3 and 3.5 hours and an extra $1 to park for between 3.5 and 4 hours.

Common Council committee to review proposed special event policy

The changes are a second round of adjustments to the way the city deals with special events that began two years ago when former Mayor Carolyn Peterson, in anticipation of the city needing to reduce its workforce and tighten resources, tasked a team to evaluate and modify the special events process.

Initial changes were made for 2012, but a special events subcommittee of the City Administration Committee has continued to evaluate the policy in collaboration with event organizers and county tourism programs to propose additional changes for 2013. Some of the regulations from the 2012 policy (for example, the city will only approve one special event per calendar day) will remain the same with the new regulations aiming to encourage event organizers to use volunteers as much as possible for tasks like setting up no parking signs, picking up trash or blocking off the streets.

“The primary goal is to bring our special events in line with the services and support the city is reasonably able to provide,” said Alderperson Cynthia Brock, who served on the subcommittee. “It will require increased organization and funding for managers who want to bring forward an event. Up until those points, those resources and funding have come through the city, and we are no longer in a position to ask departments who are already facing reduced.”

The new policy also requires that event organizers submit a volunteer management plan (showing how many, the scheduling etc.) as well as a resource mitigation plan that shows how the organizers will minimize use of city resources.

“This will favor special event organizations which are well established because they have a strong organizational structure, like the Ithaca festival,” Brock said. “Events that do not have an organized management team will have a harder time under the structure because the structure demands the event be more organized.”

One of the largest pieces of the policy is the addition of a fee structure for use of city resources. The fees include rental fees for city parks and facilities as well as the fees for use of city resources and staff. For example, the baseline cost for use of city Department of Public Works labor and equipment in 2012 is $70 an hour, with overtime at 1.5. Based on that figure, the policy lays out that the cost for posting and removing street block of “no parking” would be $44 an hour, delivering and picking up barricades would be $35 an hour.

“Part of the change in thinking is to not only encourage organizers to take on more responsibility on their own through the use of volunteers, but also to consider the city’s resources almost as a vendor,” said Brock. “You can either volunteer to do the services or you can pay for the services if the services are deemed non-routine by the city. And that’s obviously a definition that’s open for speculation — what is a routine service and what is a non-routine service. First and foremost the city is going to make sure that we are going to be protective of public safety. If there’s a large gathering of people at any location and it’s deemed appropriate that there should be police personnel then there will be additional police personnel to ensure public safety. So it’s open to that discretion.”

Alderperson Chris Proulx, who served on the subcommittee as well, also pointed to the fee structure as a way to encourage greater use of volunteers.

“We looked first to find ways to encourage event organizers to use volunteers in many ways, such as posting no parking signs or manning traffic barricades,” he said. “The fees, in most cases, are designed to be the second option, when an organizer does not have sufficient volunteers and when the City must perform the function for public safety purposes. In the case of new fees for Stewart Park, we were already charging fees for the use of Cass Park, so we wanted consistency and we wanted to offset additional maintenance costs for events at Stewart Park.”

The special events team, which is made up of city staff from the Clerk’s Office, Ithaca Fire Department, Ithaca Youth Bureau, Department of Public Works and Ithaca Police Department, evaluates the applications for special events and has the discretion to determine what would be non-routine for the city.

Brock pointed to the necessity of giving city staff some discretion in evaluating the applications because of the broad range of events that occur in Ithaca and how they could each differently affect city resources.

“One of the big challenges is that we have such a variety of events,” she said. “We have tiny little 5Ks or neighborhood walks all the way up to the Ithaca Festival, which could easily bring in 20,000 people. So how do you create a policy that encapsulates all of the conditions of how to give guidance of how these might be managed. This policy provides general guidelines and a great deal of discretion among staff to work within those guidelines. And I think because the guidelines are broad, it lends to a level of uncertainty for organizers who are not sure how it will impact their event specifically.”

Big plans for Bixby

A potentially major recreational facility project is slowly growing its way onto the city’s radar. A plan to combine three parks in northwest Forest Lake into one giant nature area with a host of amenities will likely be presented at a council meeting and be the subject of a public forum after the Park Board liked what it saw last week.

A landscape architect on Monday, Oct. 15 presented revisions to a Bixby Park master plan first introduced to the group in September. It entails multiple phases of improvements costing multiple millions of dollars.

Park Director Renae Reedy this week was quick to point out that discussions are in their initial stages, and any significant additions at Bixby Park are likely years out.

In fact, she said the topic came to the Park Board this fall only because the Comfort Lake Forest Lake Watershed District has major water improvements planned in the wetlands of Bixby.

“The real catalyst was the watershed district telling us they were doing some things in that area, and you want to jump on board because the timing is right,” Reedy said.

If the full plan, estimated to cost $4.8-$5.1 million, were to come to fruition, visitors would not be short of recreational options. They would follow Eighth Street NW, near what is now Cedar Park, to Bixby Park’s new main entrance and follow a wetland-facing road to a circle of parking areas. This hub of the park would occupy its southeast corner and provide walking access to one of the main features – a nine-acre, fenced dog park.

Near the parking lots would also reside a three-season building that could be rented, a community garden and plaza, a children’s play feature such as a water-shooting “splash pad,” a picnic shelter and an open lawn. In addition, a quarter-mile, paved trail loop would wind nearby and feature nature-based play features for children. An existing water tower would overlook the entire main-entrance area, and could be outfitted with a nature-themed design via a new screening product.

A second hub would lie to the west. It would include a tiered amphitheater with a raised stage, a smaller picnic shelter, and a spiraling boardwalk and trail leading to a three-story observation tower.

“It would be a wonderful overview,” the architect, George Watson of Minneapolis-based WSB & Associates, told the board. “You could take everything in without having to go any further.”

But further you could go, given that a system of paved trails, unpaved trails and boardwalks would loop around the park’s perimeter. Along the way on a northern loop, visitors could stop at a series of five educational nodes.

“We’re talking about the idea of creating these interesting observation points at various locations and what we’re trying to do at each one of those is expose people to different elements, different environments of the wetland system,” Watson said.

The bigger, northern loop would run close to Interstate 35 and Highway 8. Wetland mitigation is proposed to take up four acres by the trail near the intersection of the two roads.

Inyo answers jury’s justice-system advice

Law enforcement officials in Inyo County are working to implement recommendations made by local watchdogs this summer in their annual report.

The 2011-12 Grand Jury took a close look at operations at the Inyo County Jail and Juvenile Detention Center and the District Attorney’s office during its term, offering guidance and recommended changes to help the departments better serve the public.

In a response to the Grand Jury last week, high level officials said they are already implementing some of the citizen watchdog group’s suggestions. In some cases, officials said Grand Jury recommendations will not be implemented because the department head did not agree with the Grand Jury’s finding, or because it is not physically or financially feasible.

After meeting with D.A. Art Maillet and his staff, the Grand Jury recommended that the D.A.’s office begin issuing regular press releases to local media outlets to end what Mallet called “a flow of misinformation and misstatements through the press.”

The Grand Jury also recommended that the county establish an ongoing workshop for all county executives on ways keep and improve media and public relations.

In the county response to the recommendations, local leaders said the Grand Jury’s recommendation needs further analysis. “The Board of Supervisors would expect the District Attorney, an elected official of the county, to establish what he deems would be an appropriate relationship with the media and it is not within the jurisdiction of this board to dictate the confines of that relationship,” the response states. “The Board of Supervisors believes that the county has a good working relationship with the local news media outlets, but also recognizes that there may be opportunities to improve these relationships as well as the county’s communication with citizens.”

The Grand Jury also recommended that the D.A. work with trial judges to arrange plea agreements before trial dates are set to avoid last-minute jury cancellations. “There should be no last-minute ‘sweeteners’ offered at or on the date of the trial,” the Grand Jury said.

The county said that recommendation will not be implemented because “it is not reasonable. The Board of Supervisors does not believe that it has a role in this recommendation. The management of the courts and trials falls to the judges and the attorneys that participate in the judicial system.”

The Grand Jury also recommended that a retired judge from outside the county head a panel directed to study the current court system and recommend improvements.

Again, county leaders said that recommendation needed further analysis. “The Board agrees that such an effort could result in recommendations that would help alleviate those areas of the criminal justice system … that cause unnecessary and costly delays in both time and money for the courts, the county and the residents of the county. However, as previously stated, the Board of Supervisors has no ability to require the courts or elected county officials to implement or not implement recommendations.

In its report to the Inyo County Sheriff’s Department regarding Inyo County Jail, the Grand Jury said the sheriff and his deputies are to be commended for the overall appearance and upkeep of the facility, their “comprehensive and thorough approach to disseminating and enforcing rules and regulations” and for “highly efficient and sufficient staff providing for all inmate needs.”

The only recommendation the Grand Jury made was to have consistent monitoring of inmates in detox, as jurors found a “wide timing variations” in detox monitoring between night and day shifts.
The county said in its response that the recommendation has been implemented.

At the Juvenile Detention Facility, the Grand Jury said staff should be commended for their dedication and resourceful use of manpower, but that an aging video surveillance system is an issue, and should be rectified as soon as funding is available.

The county said that recommendation has been implemented. “The fiscal year of 2012-13 Board-approved County Budget identifies and discusses this project as a project that could be funded later this year… the department head indicates h will be able to secure funding to pay for at least two-thirds or more of the estimated cost of replacing the system.”

The final recommendation the Grand Jury made is that the county identify funding for a new fence for the west parking lot.

Designers seek input of riders to develop useful transportation apps

George Aye and Sara Cantor Aye want to help improve the experience of using mass transit in the Chicago area, and they are appealing for your participation.

The husband and wife team last year opened the Greater Good Studio, a Chicago firm that uses design methods to solve social problems. Sara Aye, an innovator and educator, is research director at Greater Good Studio, and George Aye, who formerly was lead designer at the Chicago Transit Authority, is the firm’s design director.

The couple said they believe that people are fully capable of creating their own solutions to problems, but it takes certain tools, and research, to make it happen.

A new project they recently launched, with the goal of making the mass transit system work better for commuters, starts by asking riders to pay attention to signs and posters and to listen to announcements — and identify other cues — as they ride buses and trains.

A signal that a CTA rider who sometimes missed his stop found useful was the sun shining into his train between buildings in the morning as the train rounded a certain curve in the tracks, signaling to that sleepy commuter that it was time to start heading toward the doors, George Aye said.

Wouldn’t it be great, Aye said, if there were a cellphone app that performed the same function, especially on cloudy days? Or how about a commute-planning app that tells CTA Red Line riders on the North Side whether the Cubs are playing at Wrigley Field that day?

Today’s existing transit tools — like CTA Bus and Train Tracker, transit websites operated by CTA, Metra and Pace, email alerts informing riders about service changes and commercial transit-related apps — represent bare-bones components of what commuters need and want, according to the Ayes, who last week won a prestigious design award called The City 2.0 award from TED.

There is the potential for offering much more to help transit customers know where they are and to get them where they’re going, they said.

So instead of experts observing transit riders and essentially scratching the surface by inferring what basic information they might find useful, the project invites riders to become the researchers — they’re called “urban agents” — to help design a bottomless toolbox for navigating potentially each moment of the transit experience.

“We are engaging lots of different people from all over Chicago and the rest of the world to help us create what will be ultimately the mother of all transit apps,” Sara Aye said.

Holly Swyers, a Lake Forest College professor who lives in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood, is an urban agent. Her major complaint about current transit apps and information is that not enough specific guidance is provided.

Swyers, 41, commutes to Lake Forest on the Metra Union Pacific North Line, sometimes bringing her bicycle.

“If you are a bike rider, you kind of have to learn through osmosis what to do with your bike on the train,” Swyers said. “And you don’t know until you are on the platform and the train arrives whether there will be room for bikes.”

Ann Arbor Without A Car

I should begin this dispatch with a confession: If I wasn’t sans automobile, I probably wouldn’t have trekked to Ann Arbor for the Michigan-Michigan State game. I went to Wayne State (Go Tartars!) and I haven’t been inside Michigan Stadium since 1989. Rocket Ismail ran back two kicks for touchdowns and it rained. A lot.

But since I’m carless this week and looking for ways to test the local transit system, riding Amtrak to Ann Arbor on this fine fall Saturday seemed like a good idea.

Generally, when we talk about transit in southeast Michigan, we talk about how the systems are lousy and inefficient. Amtrak from metro Detroit to Ann Arbor, however, is a nice ride.

The train left Royal Oak at 10:59 and was scheduled to arrive in Ann Arbor at 12:17. I stepped off the platform at 12:21, so they were basically on schedule. Track slowdowns in the western part of the state can make play havoc with Amtrak’s schedule—the ride home left Ann Arbor 20 minutes late—but from Royal Oak to Ann Arbor there was no problem.

I live about a mile from the Royal Oak Amtrak platform, so I walked into town to meet the train. In fact, I left home early and stopped at the post office and Bruegger’s before arriving at the platform. It’s still early, but this living without a car shtick started off right.

I wasn’t the only headed to the game on the train. Nick Metzler lives in St. Clair Shores and along with two friends took the train to Ann Arbor for Saturday’s game.

“It was kind of spur of the moment,” said Metzler. “We can party on the way up and don’t have to worry about driving. It’s a little more expensive, but it’s more convenient.”

Metzler and his friends may have made it into Michigan Stadium, but I didn’t.

Ticket prices were too steep for my blood and, after enjoying the pregame festivities around Michigan Stadium, I grabbed lunch in town at Blue Tractor and watched it on TV. At halftime, I took the bus out to the Wolverine State Brewing Company—1.8 miles from downtown—for the second half.

Ann Arbor has a fantastic transit center on Fourth and Liberty. Even though I’m unfamiliar with Washtenaw County’s “The Ride” bus system, it was easy to find the right bus. One hitch, though, bus service out in this pastoral three square miles surrounded by reality shuts down early on the weekends. I was basically stranded in a strip mall-ish part of town without a (ahem) Ride.

So I hoofed it back downtown—the wait for a cab was at least an hour—and killed some time at a coffee shop before procuring dinner and catching the 11:20 train home. The late train was the only train available after the game.

For the ride home, I upgraded to business class. Because I’m all business. Or something. Amtrak’s business class is nice, with leather seats spaced through the car so you’re not really sitting next to anyone, plenty of legroom, and complimentary soft drinks. Was it worth the $14 upgrade charge for this short trip? No, not at all. Amtrak coach is comfortable enough. That said, I could see the value of business class on a longer trip if you wanted room to spread out and work or sleep in a quieter car. For my purposes, though, the upgrade was more about curiosity than utility.

Much of that answer is relative. From a cost standpoint, if you’re heading to Michigan Stadium alone or with one other person, Amtrak makes a lot of sense. A round-trip ticket costs $30/person. Parking around the stadium was running between $40-$50. Assuming 25 miles/gallon and $3.50/gallon, gas for the round trip would’ve cost me a little under $12.

So, two people going to the game by train costs $60. It would cost that same couple $62 to drive and park at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School. I suppose there are cheaper parking options further away from the stadium, so arguably driving could be less expensive.

Still, the train offers other advantages. Game day traffic is hellacious. Even factoring in my 15-minute walk to the Royal Oak station and 25-minute walk to Michigan Stadium, I’d wager to guess Amtrak might be the quicker travel option door-to-door.

It’s certainly the less stressful choice. I might have gone full-on Michael Douglas in Falling Down trying to endure Michigan Stadium traffic. Seriously, traffic jams before and after the game were like a goddamned REM video. Instead of living out traffic hell scenarios from early 1990s entertainment, I sat on the train and watched an episode of The Wire on my iPad.

What’s more, if the planned Detroit-Ann Arbor commuter rail line ever comes to fruition, the train to a Michigan game could be even more cost-effective. Compared to fares for the long-haul Amtrak, commuter rail is generally less expensive. The most expensive ride on the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority commuter rail, for example, costs $11 and MBTA lines run with greater frequency.

It could be argued that taking the train eliminates the one activity that makes these games such a draw—tailgating. Sure, train riders can’t do the kind of tailgating that involves an RV, massive grill, corn hole sets and plasma televisions connected to satellite dishes.

Mount Greylock High School parking fees lowered after petition

In response to a petition signed by 250 students, faculty and parents, the School Com mittee unanimously agreed to reduce the student parking fee from $50 to $25 annually for the time being.

Committee members also agreed the reduction in the fee would be retroactive to the beginning of the 2012-13 school year, and students who paid the fee will each receive a $25 refund from the school.

The petition was presented to the School Committee by Mount Greylock senior Allison Tremblay, of Lanesborough, who questioned what students paying the fee were getting in return regarding maintenance to their section of the parking lot.

“There are a lot of potholes,” she said. “The parking lot is so bad that last year, a teacher fell.”

In the six years she has been a student at Mount Grey lock, Tremblay said she hasn’t seen any work done to maintain the parking lot. Students don’t think they get that much for the $50 fee, and they would like to see it reduced to a more reasonable amount, she said.

Rose Ellis, superintendent of Williamstown and Lanes borough Public Schools, said the school administration supported having the fee reduced with the knowledge that there would likely be some policy changes coming down the line regarding student fees, she said. Ellis said that in 2004-05, the student parking fee was $100, and then in 2009, it decreased to $50.

“We do try to make repairs and minimal corrections to the parking lot, but it’s expensive,” she said.

School Committee member David Langston said his experience with the student parking fee was that it wasn’t specifically for the parking lot, but was general revenue for the school.

“There was never the implication that it would go only for the parking lot,” he said.

In addition, student parking was seen as a privilege and not a right since the district was obligated to provide transportation through a bus system, Langston said.

Tremblay said it isn’t a privilege for students who live outside the school district and attend Mount Greylock, as well as students who participate in co-op team sports.

In a letter to the School Committee, Tremblay included a list of six high schools in Berkshire County and what they charged students per year to park their cars. Wahconah High School in Dalton had a student parking fee of $25 per year, and Hoosac Valley High School in Cheshire had a student parking fee of $10 a year. Drury High School and Mc Cann Technical School, both in North Adams, Taconic High School in Pittsfield and Mount Everett High School in Sheffield all had free student parking.

In other business, Ellis updated the School Committee about a visit to the high school made by representatives from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Inc. (NEASC) on Oct. 4. She said school officials were able to update the two representatives who came about where Mount Greylock was in addressing the organization’s concerns pertaining to the school’s accreditation.

Cutting It Close aka Guided Parallel Parking Video

When we recently took delivery of the 2012 Toyota Prius V Five, here at “Drive…He Said,” we called the optional, optional Advanced Technology Package “a Maraschino cherry atop a $36,300 Matterhorn sundae of family gas-electric hybrid wagons.” Consider that the $5580 price of the package makes up about 25% of the base M.S.R.P. of a standard Prius.

We heard the modest sound of the JBL GreenEdge sound system, saw the light through the panoramic glass roof and worried slightly less over freeway vehicle cut-offs with dynamic cruise control. Sigh.

And then we let our fingers do some more walking, first, over a driver’s side lower dash switch and then onto touch screen where we stumbled upon the Advanced Guided Parking System (AGPS). With a myriad of screen selections including target boxes and path markings we confoundedly turned to the Prius V User Manual, digesting as much of the fifty pages of  park assist high- and low-lights as our admitted impatience would allow.

AGPS can be used for either parallel or perpendicular parking in reverse. OK so we are skeptical about the need for the latter capability, even if we did let the park assist back us into our two-car driveway without smashing through the garage door.

Should you want to impress all your neighbors we were suggest engaging AGPS to do some night-time parallel parking. Imagine the possibilities of hawking tickets for a few performances to pay off the cost.  A megaphone squawks, “Come one, come all to the Greatest Feat on the Street. Behold, in pitch black darkness, as we shoe-horn a 15-foot long  Prius V into spots so taught that a mere foot and a half of space separates parked vehicles fore and aft.”

Upon selecting the correct screen for parallel parking, the Prius V’s 8.1″ center screen advises very slow creeping until it finds a space which it measures as sufficiently large. The park assist system relies on sonar sensors bouncing sound waves off of adjacent objects. Upon passing a suitably large space AGPS audibly advises stopping the Prius V and then engaging reverse. The center display then switches to wide-angle camera mode where a yellow grid signifies the location of the Prius V on the street and a blue rectangle is used to identify the target parking space. With a bit of practice, we learned to touch and drag the blue rectangle to a position sufficiently away from the curb to avoid the embarrassment of backing over the curb, something AGPS isn’t quite smart enough to prevent.

Upon making a final selection of the target space, with lots of faith, and beads of sweat forming, we yank both hands off the steering wheel and cautiously release the brake pedal, with right foot but a a millimeter away. Since only the driver can depress the brakes to stop the Prius V,  park guidance can tell if you are moving to fast and, take it from us , it will!

The rest is automotive electronic nannying at its finest hour. The steering wheel first saws in the direction of the curb, then opposite to straighten the whole matter out. No repetitive backing in and out allowed in this performance. As the Prius V entered the space, we measure just 4″ of clearance between the aft parked vehicle’s rear left corner and the Prius V’s front right. Success is met with the announcement of “the Guidance is Finished.” Judging by the pool of perspiration we thought our feat should be followed by a chant of hurrahs.