Parking kiosks could land at SLO airport

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• Government Watch: Roundup of this week’s agendas

  Government Watch: Roundup of this week’s agendas

  Arroyo Grande City Council. Meets Tuesday. 473-5400. Request from South County Sanitary Service for a trash-pickup rate increase; review the city’s draft housing element — one part of its general plan — and authorize it to be sent to the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

  Atascadero City Council. Meets Tuesday. 461-5000. Nominations for new mayor and vice mayor appointments; consider changing Walmart/The Annex environmental study to provide an option that drops The Annex.

  Oceano Community Services District Board of Directors. Meets Wednesday. 481-6730. Notice of public hearing for proposed trash-pickup rate increase; discussion of possible letter to local agencies, including the county and the Nipomo Community Services District, to “stop the flow of seawater intrusion misinformation” regarding 2009 tests of a sentry well in Oceano.

• County taking first steps toward new San Luis Obispo airport terminal

  County taking first steps toward new San Luis Obispo airport terminal

  County supervisors have taken the first steps toward designing a new passenger terminal at the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport, although they acknowledged that the money that will be needed to actually build it is uncertain.

  Supervisors on Tuesday authorized a current “budget adjustment” of $1,147,502. Of that, $1,090,127 comes from a Federal Aviation Administration grant, and $57,375 from passenger facility charges.

  The money would go toward design of a new terminal by consultant Reynolds, Smith and Hills.

• Our helping hands

  Our helping hands

  You may not know them when you see them, but they are everywhere throughout the county — in the parks, at the libraries, the airport, polling places, the jails and elsewhere.

  They are volunteers for the county, and there are thousands of them, donating hundreds of thousands of hours of work, saving taxpayers millions of dollars, and giving local folks help they otherwise would not receive.

  “It’s just a wonderful thing,” said Library Director Brian Reynolds, who joined Tuesday with other department heads and the county Board of Supervisors to recognize local volunteers with a proclamation declaring April 15-21 as “National Volunteer Week.”

• Counting change going out of style

  Counting change going out of style

  I saw something new at San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport on Easter Sunday. Mamie and I drove down there to pick up our daughter, Sandy.

  As usual, we parked in the short-term parking lot across from the terminal. Mamie now uses a walker or a wheelchair, so we park in one of the disabled-accessible spaces. While driving in, I noticed some new contraptions here and there. At first, they looked like stunted grandfather clocks.

  A puzzled-looking man was studying one of them. It dawned on me they must be parking-fee kiosks. I’d heard of such things, but I had never seen one. Then I noticed the old meters were missing from their posts.

• No respite for handicapped at the airport

  No respite for handicapped at the airport

  Somehow, it made the world seem less friendly. I’m talking about the rule I read last week on the website of the San Luis Obispo County Airport. It said: “Handicapped patrons are not exempt from paying parking fees.”

  That decree was news to me, so I quoted it in the column I wrote last week about the airport’s new parking-fee kiosks. I had thought people with disabled license plates or placards didn’t have to feed parking meters.

  Some people who read the column e-mailed and phoned me. They said the official instructions that came with their disabled placards say they may park in “metered zones without paying.”