HomeMy WebLinkAboutParking Advisory Board - Minutes - 06/04/2021
PARKING ADVISORY BOARD
REGULAR
Monday, June 14, 2021, 5:30 PM
Zoom meeting
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1. CALL TO ORDER
Chair, Hill, called the meeting to order at 5:30 pm.
2. ROLL CALL
BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: CITY STAFF PRESENT
Nora Hill, Chair Drew Brooks, Transit Director
Adam Eggleston, Vice Chair Eric Keselburg, Parking Manager
Barbara Wilkins Danna Varnell, Business Support
Dorothy (Dottie) Spivak
Lauren Skinner
BOARD MEMBERS ABSENT: NONE
PUBLIC PRESENT: NONE
OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE: NONE
3. APPROVAL OF MINUTES – MOTION TO APPROVE MARCH 2021 MINUTES
a. Approved by Eggleston, second by Hill.
4. UNFINISHED BUSINESS
5. NEW BUSINESS
Skinner - Will there be a new parking structure/garage at the old Kmart/new
King Soopers?
• Keselburg – previous discussions did not support a parking
structure in the center of town.
• The rationale was that parking/mobility hub options would be better
suited at/around the periphery so that single-occupancy vehicles did
not drive to the mid-town area, but rather utilized public
Council Liaison: Julie Pignataro
Chair: Nora Hill
Vice Chair: Adam Eggleston
Staff Liaison: Drew Brooks (970) 221-6386
Administrative Support: Danna Varnell (970) 224-6161
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transportation.
• Eggleston – Has there been any conversations about the Parking
garage at Peterson Toyota about using their back lot as a partial
partnership for parking/parking garage? Brooks – is not aware of
any conversations regarding putting a parking garage here. The
West Elizabeth corridor is our first next step in the BRT world. We
can have conversations about the Harmony corridor in the future.
At the old Kmart location, we have observed that a lot of the folks
parking at this location currently and some are riding MAX. They are
parking here and walking to campus like the veterinary school and
other locations on campus. Last spring, we intended to do intercept
survey, asking residents what their reason for parking there, where
they were going, etc. to learn what the uses were there. Due to the
pandemic, we were unable to do an in-person survey. This is still on
our radar to accomplish. Anecdotally, it appears that many folks are
parking there and not getting on the MAX and walking across to
university property. Skinner – there appears to be a need for a
structure in that area.
Skinner - Update on the Max bus stop occupancy data. Troutman and
Swallow is where I have recently had parking issues. There appear to be a
lot of vehicles at these locations that park there for days/weeks at a time.
• Keselburg – The last study that we did was Q1 of 2019 and it was
robust. We can send that report out to new and current PAB
members to show you what that study looked like. We must do
further studies for cause of action. As far as parking along the MAX
line, these are the designated spaces we have (referencing the .ppt
presentation, page 5).
Park-n-Ride lots at the following stations:
o Downtown Transit Center/Civic Center Parking Structure.
900 spaces – pay-to-park
o University Station - CSU pay-to-park
o Drake Station - 79 spaces - free
o Swallow Station - 16 spaces - free
o Troutman Station - 6 & 12 spaces - free
o South Transit Center - 171 spaces - free
• Brooks – we need to investigate these lots to make sure we do not
have vehicles stay there for long periods of time. This is not the
intended use for these lots.
• Eggleston – Can we investigate the options for the Target lot or
behind the Barnes and Noble Book Store? There does not appear
to be people utilizing these parking spaces. Brooks – this may be a
good opportunity there. Keselburg – would like to get a handle on
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this area for a longer-term use and will investigate this. Spivak – is
there signage on these lots that indicates “no overnight parking”?
Keselburg – believes the signage specifies MAX parking only on the
south side but will verify this is correct. Wilkens – how will the City
enforce this? Wilkens also recalls in a past PAB meeting, that King
Soopers is moving into the old Kmart area and that they were not
interested in giving up any of their parking, along with Peterson
Toyota, from a previous conversation at a PAB meeting. Brooks –
this is not correct. There will still be spaces available at the King
Soopers location, as this is part of the developmental agreement for
this area with King Soopers (Kroger). If we find that most folks
using that lot are not using the MAX, this could initiate a discussion
around if we need to do permitting in that lot. Research will be
done in the future to determine the use of this lot. Hill – regarding
overnight parking, we do not want to encourage people to drive
home drunk, we just want to give them an option to stay overnight.
Skinner - Disabled parking in Old Town occupancy data.
• Devoted number of spaces? Are there any City
incentives/requirements? Discuss the lack of & accessibility.
Keselburg – ADA parking stalls in the Old Town area, they are
designated by the engineering department as how many per space.
Community feedback is also considered to meet the needs of
location and block face. Per the PROWAG (Public Rights-of-Way
Accessibility Guidelines). Refer to the presentation, page 7.
Skinner – is concerned that there are not enough ADA spaces
available in Old Town and recommends that we get more. She is
also concerned about the width of the spaces in the parking
garages. Brooks – these spaces are under a different regulation
that a normal parking space. We have addressed this with the
Commission on Disabilities at least once, to try and get some
feedback. Currently, there are no time limits on those spaces, and
this was the request from the Commission on Disabilities. There is
not very much turn-over in these spaces. We do not have a
regulation in place on how to turn over these spaces quickly. Any
vehicle that has an ADA license plate/placard, does not have a time
restriction on any place the ADA vehicle is parked. This is in our
local traffic code and a state regulation. Spivak – there is not
enough turn-over in the spaces downtown. Wilkens – what would it
take to make the ADA spots like the regular parking spots with 2-
hour parking or double it to 4-hours so there is no parking overnight
or for days? Keselburg- this would require and updated code, with
Council support for that code to change. Any ADA can park in any
parking space, for any period. This would probably be the same,
even if we had metered parking. We would work with the Parking
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Advisory Board and the Commission on Disabilities to get ideas on
what this would look like. Brooks – typically in a metered situation,
example: College & Mountain Avenues, we would want the most
turn over, speaking conceptionally, we would want a time limit.
Possibly extending the stay longer. Where there is need for less
turn-over in town, may have a longer time limit. You would still have
to pay to park in these locations, if this is the type of model the City
went to.
Skinner – On-street dining and removal of the barricades.
• The “parklettes” are fully supported by the State and City leadership
to help with the downtown business recovery efforts. Engineering is
managing what those space use and size. Engineering is just one
of about seven different departments involved in what those look
like. There is an emergency order that will allow them until
September. We are looking at code changes to help support them
and if the business chooses to relinquish them, then the City will go
in and remove them and repurpose those spaces. We are also
looking at what the long-term use would look like. Skinner – total
recovery effort, these are not conducive to helping get back, they
are taking up parking space, they are an eye sore, and they cause
traffic accidents because people cannot see around the barriers.
The issues that are being heard is that the businesses that do not
have these patios, are losing places for their customers to park.
Keselburg – downtown parking is not a destination parking spot, it is
a destination parking system, so no one should have the
expectation that they can park in front of the business, but we want
to utilize the system of parking and use the parking structures.
Currently, parking directly in front of a business is being impacted
due to these barricades. Brooks – this is a city policy and involves
the DDA. Wilkens – how many spots does each restaurant get?
Keselburg – early on, when the requests were made and the shut-
down created limited seating capacity inside, the City did work with
the businesses that requested these outside spaces to make is
usable for what their purpose was. Last count was 68 parking
spaces that were being designated for outdoor dining. It is impactful
to the block face. Wilkens – some businesses are using the alley
ways for additional seating. Allowing restaurants to use these
additional spaces takes away from the retail businesses that could
use those spaces for parking near or in front of their stores. Hill –
hears the opposite point from local businesses. Skinner – is
concerned for the businesses that have these barricades in parking
spaces, the curb appeal, and states that since indoor dining is now
allowed, these should be removed. Eggleston – economically and
politically, believes that leaving the outdoor dining spaces that are
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there currently, leads to more tax revenue generation by
restaurants out-weighs the retail revenue by a large margin.
Removing these too prematurely could have a large impact. With
the states order with to-go alcohol allowed through 2022 or 2023,
we may see these extended outdoor patios here longer based on
revenue generation and when it comes to political atmosphere,
more consumers, and taxpayers like them, they will stay longer.
Spivak – we were downtown last week eating on a patio near the
street and there were many loud vehicles driving by the patio, which
made dining there unbearable. Why don’t they put the dining in the
alleys? The corner of Mountain and College is a very disagreeable
place to try to enjoy a meal outside. Eggleston – most alleys are for
fire access. Brooks – believes this will become a council topic at
tomorrow night’s council meeting.
b. Eggleston – RFP update on Mobile Parking app.
Keselburg – we did prepare a request for information, RFI, in March just to
see what our options and availability were. It was review and we are
working with City purchasing now. This will go out publicly.
Eggleston –FC Parking app is no longer available on Androids/Android
store. Keselburg – will reach out to our IT department and check with the
vendor.
c. Eggleston – Update on Linden Street process.
Council Staff report –
Tuesday, June 15th
Phase 2 – construction planned to begin January 2022 (following Holidays)
Eggleston – will they be putting in the raised stop (posts) on Riverside and Linden?
Keselburg – there are shifts in designs but has not heard an update.
d. Eggleston - Paid Parking pilot – what are the next steps and how do we implement?
Keselburg –Through Mobile License Plate Recognition data collection efforts
Parking Services was able to compile point-in-time information specific to:
Occupancy
Duration of stay
Unique vehicles served
Conducted data collection: Summer 2020
Just completed subsequent round of data collection: June 2nd – 5th, 2021.
This information is being compiled and will be shared.
Average Occupancy by date and daypart – see presentation, page 13.
When discussing on-street paid parking there are several factors to
consider:
• Dynamic pricing
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• Pay to stay
• Duration of free session
• Block face(s) / area to regulate
Spivak – will people pay for parking after 6:00 pm? Keselburg – stated that we have
not had any formal conversations regarding what this looks like. Greeley and Estes
Park now have paid parking. Fort Collins has two different parking users – the dinner
group and the bar group. There is a lot to consider if this is the route we will be
taking. Brooks – when having conversations with the City Manager, the previous
council, and the new council, we have not discussed this topic. We have a lot of
work to do to bring them up to speed. Hill – we have been talking about the pilot for
at least 5 years. We have been talking about this since the inception of the Parking
board and have made very little to no progress. We may not have any public push
back if the Paid Parking Pilot is popular. Can we move something forward to get this
pilot moving forward? Eggleston – can we show cost initiative? Can we put out an
RFI or reach out to Greeley to see what kind of system or equipment they used to
implement theirs so we have a dollar point to give to City Council on what it would
cost to pilot this? Keselburg – one piece of consideration is if we do a pilot, and
make it App based, which has a significant cost saving verses putting in kiosks on
the street. Signage and business outreach phasing, also needs to be considered.
The sensors that we are using today do not meet our standards and we will need to
figure out something different. The technology has changed. We could do a pilot, for
relatively a low cost, depending on a few factors. If the community wants us to have
option that anyone can pay, this will require a kiosk as not everyone has a smart
phone, and this could be more expensive. Our goal is to have more people paying
for parking than paying for citations. Skinner – the revenue should go back to
Parking and the parking system if you have excess revenue.
Wilkens – Years ago the board agreed extend the parking enforcement. It sounds
like there is money for other things, but not enforcement. We also agreed as a board
about the signage. This has not changed either. Both are things we agreed to do.
Keselburg – when the pandemic hit, we had to find a 10% savings across the board.
One being the sign updates in downtown, and we shelved it. We never got
consensus of what the sign should look like. There were conversations about just
the 2-hour parking in general and we also had conversations of doing an 8-8
Monday through Saturday and really specify the time regulated spaces are going to
be managed. This project was shelved. This is a budget offer that I submitted this
year for 2022. So, if we get that funding, regardless, the signs do need replaced, so
we will have further conversations. If we extend those hours of enforcement, we
have done some off-hour parking structure management of users, so we do know
that there is a need into the evening hours a bit. If we extend our hours of
enforcement, then that would open the ability for our Parking Enforcement Officers
to regulate that user. Right now, the signs are the limit about how long in the
evening we can enforce on-street parking. Brooks – believes that there is not a
revenue increase by shifting our hours unless we are funding more Parking
Enforcement Officers. We would have the same number of Enforcement Officers,
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spread over different hours. Keselburg – it would not be a revenue increase by
department, it would be some community impact, good or bad. Brooks – if this had
been a normal year, we would have made that change. We would have had the
signs changed. We currently have two Parking Enforcement positions open that we
had intended to fill with staff were intended to work later in the evening and weekend
hours. Because we had to freeze the budget, we did not hire those two positions and
we had to dump the sign project. Skinner – was the signage already ordered for the
pilot program? Keselburg – the signs that we are talking about specifically is in the
downtown area, which are in need due to wear and tear. Even now with technology,
it was almost better that we had to wait. With new technology and QR codes, we can
provide a lot more information on the actual signage if people choose to use that.
We can refer them to parking garages, hour limits, etc. Eggleston – we are in the
mid-cycle of the BFO process for 2022, how many requests is Parking putting in?
Keselburg – we have an ongoing offer in Parking with costs associated of
approximate 2.3 million. The other ongoing offer is the Firehouse Alley Parking
Structure security upgrade. Aging vehicles, aging equipment – we are trying to
replace older equipment. Downtown sign replacement - $35k and the critical
structural and preventative maintenance, this is for repairs that were recommended
to be made in April 2021, we are still trying to find an option for some money to be
allocated this year, if not, it’s a 2022 offer and part of the scalability is for the
elevator issues that we are having at the Civic Center Parking Garage to do the
phasing of the pre-construal maintenance on the elevator issues and then phasing
into the preventative maintenance. These are the offers that we have submitted.
Eggleston – we need to start looking at the City Council’s agendas to see when they
are bringing up these topics for discussions for the BFO’s and speak at City Council
and support anything that you want to see firmed up from the Parking offers. This is
the second year in a row that I was not invited to participate on the BFO cycle.
Keselburg – they should reintroduce the public next cycle. Eggleston – so if anything
does not make this round, next year we will go back to a two-year budget cycle and
we can have more input or try to put a pilot project funding together before the next
budget cycle, which would start springtime of next year. Keselburg – this is a one-
year cycle for 2022 funding starting in springtime, we will start doing offers again for
the 2022 – 2023 cycle. It is typically a two-year cycle. Wilkens – did the DDA offer
to put some money into fixing the garages and then they were told not to put that
money in there? Keselburg – no, the DDA owns the Old Town parking structure, we
manage it and collect the revenue. If there is any maintenance to this garage, this is
out of our budget. If there is any liability stuff, for example, if a car ran into a pole
and they had an insurance claim against it, the DDA would work with them.
Maintenance and wear & tear on the facilities, comes out of the Parking budget. We
shared our offer. Last year we had an offer that was not funded for repairs, and of
course we modified it based on where we are at. The DDA did make a letter of
recommendation to Council to fund it. Again, this year, we did share with the DDA
since one of their parking structures is in the packet for more offers, so if they make
a recommendation to Council otherwise this year. Eggleston – do you think with the
timing for the next budget cycle, do you think Parking would be able to put together
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an offer for the Paid Pilot Program offer for the BFO? Keselburg – we can compile
some numbers. I would like to see the RFP and decide about it. Ideally, the cost
accrued would be the sign change-out. Eggleston – what is the time frame if we can
get movement on it? We may have to get in front of council a couple of times before
next year and I want to see if we can get something on the books or in our goal
structure to have a plan together towards the end of this year/first part of next year
where we can see some progress through either Paid Pilot Program either through
BFO or just general budget concessions if it is not overly expensive. Skinner – back
to the considerations on parking spaces, if our budget is failing that badly, that we
cannot even afford our own enforcement, maybe this is something that we directly
need address? It is an easy way with no overhead. Wilkens – one of the other
issues in the parking garage, they have no way to see if they have paid for parking
or not. One of the other things we have been told is that they would put some
cameras in so if people do not pay, which is common now since the gates were
removed. I was told that the gates were removed because of repair costs of the
gate. When I was asked the price of a gate, I was told that it was hard to pinpoint the
cost. If there is money available, it should go into make sure that people pay for the
garages, which is to get the cameras in there. That was one of the main causes of
our revenue being down. Keselburg – Wilkens and I had email discussions
regarding the gates to the gateless system, the repairs with the down gates were
only one piece of consideration. As far as enforcement or management of the paid
sessions, we do a really good job during the day. We have been doing some off-
hour enforcement to make sure people are initiating sessions for the last couple of
months to hopefully change behavior because we are seeing the same thing. The
conversation regarding the fixed LPR, which is another piece you mentioned is
having a camera into and out of the garage, that is one part of the RFP that we are
asking is having a Wallet as another option of payment or to site if they pull in or out
without initiating a session. That was a conversation we had with the DDA in
February of 2020, weeks prior to the shutdown, so that conversation of a fixed LPR
system in the garages was also shelved because of user use and the pandemic.
We mentioned early on of the transition we anticipated a dip in revenue of about
10%, we saw a dip of about 25%. We got the revenue bleed from Old Town Parking
Structure and Civic Center back up to where we anticipated, and we also saw a
revenue increase in Firehouse Alley. We believe, (conjecture) that the reason is
Firehouse Alley was built with a gateless system and that is what the users were
used to, whereas the others were transitioned. We are watching what that trend is
as people start coming back in. Our occupancy rates are still very low in the parking
structures, so it is difficult to get actuals based on user until we start seeing some
increase in vehicle traffic in those. We have already shifted some of our operation to
match some of the concerns that Barb is discussing. Wilken – I would suggest
putting in cameras. Keselburg – we already have cameras on the first floor where
people drive in and drive out. There is liability from a safety perspective putting in
false cameras. Skinner – what about a pressure plate at the gate? Brooks – these
would not be easier or less expensive to maintain. Keselburg – part of the
consideration with the gates is that they create a bottleneck at 5:00 when most
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people are exiting the garage to go home. Right now, with the prepaid system, the
traffic flow into and out of the garage is quicker and more convenient. Once we have
the RFP in hand, we will share the results with this group. By the next meeting
Keselburg should have a report on the most recent mobile LPR data provides us, as
far as occupancy, duration of stay, and unique user. The RFP has not been put out
publicly yet. Keselburg can update the Board where they are at in the process at the
next meeting. Brooks – the purchasing process is currently bottlenecked due to
everyone that was on hold last year is now getting through the process.
Wilkens – what decision was made to hold these meetings monthly or quarterly?
• Eggleston – would like to keep these monthly to keep our action
items moving forward.
• Vote to keep a monthly meeting verses moving to a quarterly
meeting –
o Yes, keep it monthly: Hill, Eggleston, Spivak, Skinner
o Neutral vote to keep it monthly – Wilkens
e. Hill – update on meeting in person
Brooks – City Council is still meeting remotely. Varnell will check the
City’s position on this and report back to the Board.
6. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS
7. OTHER BUSINESS
a. Discuss what date that the new council liaison, Julie Pignataro, can attend a future PAB
meeting.
Varnell to send a Doodle Poll to the Board to find a suitable date.
8. ADJOURNMENT
a. Eggleston made a motion to adjourn, Skinner second the vote.
These minutes have been unanimously approved by the
Parking Advisory Board on _______________
X_____________________________ Date: ____________
Eleanor Hill, Parking Advisory Board Chair
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July 12, 2021
8/14/2021