Ronnie Polaneczky: Cold, hard fact: PPA almost human

GOD, IT WAS cold in the newsroom yesterday. I sat shivering at my desk, my breath crystallizing in front of me, as I tapped out this column with blue-tinged fingers.

That's the problem when hell freezes over. You never see it coming, so you don't dress accordingly.

In this case, I couldn't imagine writing a positive column about the Philadelphia Parking Authority. Ever since July, when I told the tale of a Good Samaritan who received a parking ticket while rendering aid to a car-accident victim, my in-box and voice mail have been slammed with story after story from drivers who claim to have been wronged by the PPA.

Some of their woes resulted from cluelessness and incompetence that appeared so systemic at the authority and its sister agency, the Parking Bureau of Administrative Adjudication, I thought hell would freeze over before either place got its customer-service act together.

Well, yesterday, the frost started gathering at PPA headquarters, at 3101 Market St., where executive director Vince Fenerty shared some jaw-dropping news.

Over the summer, the PPA used an outside agency to conduct an "undercover professionalism audit" of its parking-enforcement officers, to assess their behavior with the public.

Basically, 123 unsuspecting officers were harassed and insulted 155 times by undercover operators to see how they responded. Fenerty wouldn't describe the resulting interactions except to say that seven officers' behavior was "negative," six were "cautionary" and 142 were "positive." By which he meant that his officers never lost their cool, no matter how much they were provoked.

Fenerty said that the exercise, which will continue, showed that not every officer knew how a driver could dispute a ticket. Nor did they know that some disputes can be handled without a hearing (saving that dreaded trip to 8th and Filbert to fight a ticket).

So, now, all officers will carry information cards to share with the public. Which makes them more than scary parking enforcers. They'll be parking ambassadors.

The idea is so sensible, I swear I saw ice forming on the podium where Fenerty was standing.

The PPA has also contracted a diversity expert, Dr. David Hall, to conduct sensitivity training with staffers at every level to make sure they understand that this city is a big, complex place where differences - especially gender ones - need to be respected. Fenerty said that management became aware that training on lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender issues was needed in the wake of a column I wrote about two gay citizens who had been disrespected by a parking-enforcement officer.

When I heard that, I think it started snowing in the conference room.

But for me, the big iceberg hit when Fenerty announced that Susan Cornell, PPA's government-relations liaison, had been named director of customer service.

This single appointment, my friends, could change the way the PPA deals with us.

I am a huge fan of Cornell, to whom I've referred some of the more egregious complaints from readers who've clearly been wronged somewhere along the parking-ticket process.

Usually, these frustrated citizens have tried and failed to get someone at the PPA or the PBAA to take just 5 minutes to listen to their complaints.

I refer them to Cornell. And within 48 hours - or, sometimes, under an hour - their mess is resolved. In fact, it sometimes seems like the longer a citizen has been trying to get a mistake straightened out, the faster Cornell is able to wave her sparkly wand and make it vanish.

Not every issue gets resolved the way a reader wants it to, by the way. Cornell is no pushover. If a complaint doesn't pass the smell test, she won't budge. Her gift, though, is that complainers at least feel that they've been heard by the time she finishes her investigations.

After each interaction with the pleasant, always professional and eminently reasonable Cornell, I always ask myself, "Why isn't this person running the entire customer-service operation?"

Now, she will be. And I am doing a happy dance. But it hurts like hell.

Because frostbite is killing my feet.