Huh?

The Dispatch/Argus has a curious piece about parking enforcement at the new parking ramp in downtown Moline. (Which is yet to be completed but apparently allows parking nonetheless.)

The reserved spaces are so far only marked with plastic covered pieces of paper until permanent signs can be put up. They sent out a photographer to get a shot of one such sign. It seems that one or two people have experienced people parking in their leased spaces. (Horrors!) So the Dispatch decided this was a story.

Hey, slow news day. You'll have that. One might suspect it was the space of someone with the paper which was taken, but who knows?

"Hmmmm. What have we got for today?"
"Nothing."
"Well, someone parked in my parking spot. Let's get a reporter and photographer on that."
"Will do."

At any rate, the story discusses this non-issue and explains how complaints from the two people who had discovered their leased spaces taken resulted in emergency action from the city to start fining these outlaws. (there was no ordinence allowing fines in the new ramp apparently.)

But near the bottom of the piece is this interesting passage:

Revenue manager Keith Verbeke said the city has a parking committee that has been working for more than two months to come up with solutions to parking issues in downtown Moline.

It recently made recommendations which include the new ramp, which it forwarded to Moline Centre Partners' parking committee. The organization, made up of downtown business owners, approved the recommendations on the committee level.

This morning, the Moline Centre Partners board of directors will review the recommendations. If they are approved, the recommendations will be taken to the city council for its approval.

So let me get this straight...

The city has a committee, which may or may not consist of paid or elected members, which worked more than two months to come up with "recommendations" regarding downtown parking regulations.

But it then gives over it's power to an an organization of downtown business owners and waits for the OK of some committee of this organization.

It passes the committee, but now the city must wait until the "Board of Directors" of this organization decides if it's ok with them. Only if this group of unelected business owners then approves, will it then be sent to the council for their presumed rubber-stamp approval?

How in the world is that right? We now have unelected business owners directly controlling taxpayer financed city assets? Private "boards of directors" now have veto power over city regulations before they're even put before the council? How did the cart get in front of the horse?

I hope there's some logical explanation here, because something's definitely wrong with this picture as it appears.