Parking Meters Not the Ticket for Happy Elf Holiday

--Residents of Concord, N.H., aren’t the only ones bedeviled by a computerized meter system in the downtown garage. The new parking elf, hired to make the system user friendly during the holidays, faced his own frustrations Thursday--his first day on the job. “It’s flawed,” said Charlie Bonjorno, 76, a retired barber who was chosen to dress up as an elf after winning the city’s nationwide search. “You only get 20 seconds’ time when you’re supposed to remember where you parked your car, have your change ready and push the numbers. If you’re slow . . . that’s it, you’ve lost your money,” said Bonjorno, who moved from Palo Alto, Calif., to Concord three years ago. Ken Lurvey, city director of economic development, said the elf was hired to boost downtown shopping because parking in the garage had dropped from 100% to almost nothing. The new meter, he said, required a good memory and quick fingers. “People got confused, they got ticketed and they got frustrated,” Lurvey said. “It’s far from user friendly.”

--It’s back to the classroom for 40 of the 49 new members of Congress. They’ve enrolled in Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, which will seek to prep the freshmen legislators in such issues as foreign trade, agriculture, the Middle East and arms negotiations. But according to Paul Bograd, who supervises the weeklong program, it won’t be a fun time. “There is virtually no time for socializing or sightseeing on the schedule,” he said. “They come in and they work hard. It’s intense.” Since its start in 1972, the program in Cambridge, Mass., has trained more than 60% of the newly elected lawmakers. The faculty includes Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul A. Volcker and Harvard President Derek C. Bok.

--Religion may be forced to take a back seat because of the overcrowding conditions at the Monroe County Jail in Rochester, N.Y. The facility, which was built to house 274 inmates, now has 605. Officials, after seeking ways to alleviate the problem, started converting the jail’s confessionals into shower stalls. “We’ll cleanse their souls one way or another,” Supt. Christian DeBruyn said. But, in addition to the shower facilities, authorities have plans to house 40 to 50 inmates in an auditorium that had been used for church services.