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HomeMy WebLinkAboutParking Advisory Board - Minutes - 11/09/2015MINUTES of the CITY OF FORT COLLINS PARKING ADVISORY BOARD November 9, 2015 5:30 p.m. 215 North Mason – Community Room Fort Collins, CO 80524 FOR REFERENCE: Chair: Susan Kirkpatrick Vice Chair: Michael Pruznick Staff Liaison: Kurt Ravenschlag 221-6386 Administrative Support: Melissa Brooks 224-6161 BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: CITY STAFF PRESENT: Susan Kirkpatrick, Chair Kurt Ravenschlag, Transfort & Parking Svcs. G.M., 221-6386 Michael Pruznick, Vice Chair Melissa Brooks, Transfort, Administrative Aide, 224-6161 Holly Wright Seth Lorson, City Planner Carey Hewitt Kathleen Walker, Transfort & Parking Services Manager Stephanie Napoleon Tracy Mead Steve Schroyer Stuart MacMillan ABSENT: OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE Councilmember Kristin Stephens Michael Short 1. CALL TO ORDER Chair Kirkpatrick called the meeting to order at 5:30 2. WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS 3. AGENDA REVIEW Approved as written 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Wright moved to accept the September 2015 Board minutes as written. Pruznick seconded. Mead moved to accept the October 2015 Board minutes as written. Wright seconded. Both September and October meeting minutes were approved unanimously. Regular Meeting Minutes November 9, 2015 Page 2 5. COUNCIL LIAISON REPORT None 6. PUBLIC COMMENT None 7. ACTION ITEMS None 8. DISCUSSION/INFORMATIONAL ITEMS A. Parking Focus Group Update, Seth Lorson Lorson: October 14 and 15 Parking Focus Groups were held to have to an in depth conversation about parking management and parking downtown. It was deemed that the two hour blocks were necessary. The purposes of these meetings were to acknowledge the issues, vision, objectives, the approach and processes that are being worked on, talk about the parking plan compared to our peer communities and best practices and evaluation of strategies and tradeoffs. We spent time looking at the Spectrum of Alternatives. First was discussed in the Parking Plan, existing policy adopted by City Council now and extend on street parking past the two hour limit by paying with a cell phone. Of course this is not implemented yet. Implement on street paid parking when parking is untenable downtown and get employees to park in appropriate locations. These were the main themes. We went through what was heard from the Downtown Plan that parking is becoming a major topic. Two out of the five main goals for transportation and parking is focused on parking. The feedback we received, consider a range of options for on street parking paid parking, add more transit service and examine options for real time travel information. Feedback from the surveys was to know where there is available parking and how to get there quickly. Look for opportunities to create park n rides outside of downtown. Keep in mind that this feedback from people brainstorming. The Spectrum of Alternatives was used heavily to discuss different strategies to manage parking downtown. One of the main questions was how do we get people to parking in appropriate locations. Employees came up time again. The Spectrum was also used to discuss on street and garage management. Schroyer: Didn’t we do a tabulation people would circle of what they felt was the most important. Lorson: We didn’t do tabulation. We provided a worksheet of documents that didn’t have a ton of information. A lot of people were making comments and drawing arrows. It was less tabularize data. Looked at case studies of peer communities and what they have been doing that helped us inform the conversation. One difference between our community and our peers is that all the other communities have been doing on street paid parking since 1940. They took the risk a long time ago and it makes it different what we are currently dealing with. Everyone agreed with the issues and objectives. What was heard was to implement the other strategies before on street paid parking like get employees out of on street spaces and expand enforcement to evenings and weekends. There is fear that any decision made about parking might “rock the boat” and dissuade people from visiting downtown. We also heard that an on street paid parking pilot in a discreet location to monitor if people will actually pay for parking and create greater turnover and availability. Marketing for the (not widely known) validation program which encourages parking in the parking garages was recommended. Regular Meeting Minutes November 9, 2015 Page 3 Improve wayfinding availability. When people receive parking tickets, include a voucher to park in the parking garage. What changes happen should not shock the system, but be incremental. The main idea coming out of this was how do we get employees to park in the parking garages. A few ideas were to make sure enough parking passes are available. Schroyer: Is there truth to that? Ravenschlag: It could be valid. The one thing we are looking at is increasing our oversell rates. We are at our oversell rate, that had been previously established, but the data needs to be updated. Lorson: More recommendations we a heard are, having some kind of program that would allow employees to share a pass, reduce the cost of the parking garage, offer transit or parking passes, garages need to feel safe or require employees to park in the garage. This is the conversation we have been having for the last month or so. Kirkpatrick: Thank you Seth for the time you spent with the in depth two hour meetings and the retail ones. The retailers really appreciate your effort to come to that meeting. The tone of the discussion has calmed down some. Lorson: What we hope to have after the New Year are more focus groups. We might have to go back to the drawing table and flush out some ideas further before we move on to the recommendations from this board and the Planning and Zoning Board. Wright: Do you feel consensus or are people all over the board? Do you get an idea that people understand more about the information you are presenting and what the options might be? Lorson: When you have that time to explain it, then people do get on the same page. There is a consensus with a slow start. There are a variety of ideas out there. I think it comes from not understanding and having a viable list of alternatives and options until you start digging in. Wright: With the pilot project being on Mountain is it because there is a high demand for parking or are the businesses more open to that program being there or have you not approached that yet? Lorson: We haven’t talked to the business owners yet. Steve and Carey were in most focus groups and speculate that there might be support on the western block on Mountain. Ravenschlag: I was going to discuss this on our last agenda item but feel that is pertinent to bring it up now in regards to effectively managing employee parking on street in the downtown area. What we do in the residential parking permit zones is having timed parking for two hours for that zone. What is being done downtown is moving cars to a different block face. We tend to see employees are just moving their cars around downtown to avoid getting a citation. If we were to treat the area as a defined zone with two hour parking with in that zone rather than the block face we feel that would significantly improve the availability of on street parking. Employees working beyond a two hour shift would most likely be forced to park in the garages or find other ways into the downtown zone by walking, cycling or using transit. Wright: How big is the zone? Ravenschlag: We have the zones that we patrol. Kathleen Walker is with Transfort and was overseeing daily operations. She is now helping with Parking and is overseeing Parking Enforcement and Asset Management for Parking and Transfort. Walker: The boundaries vary, but most that we have set up now are walking zones which mean they are small. We are looking at combining zones so the Parking Enforcement Regular Meeting Minutes November 9, 2015 Page 4 vehicles can scan license plates. The downtown zone would be Maple to Mulberry and then Sherwood to Witcomb. Wright: They would really have to move their car pretty far. Walker: Depending on how it is set up they would. That is the idea that if you will be in the area for more than 2 hours they go into the garage. Hewitt: Around the library some have 2 hour parking and some have all day parking. A lot of Downtown employees will park in the all day. Depending on where you have the zones at, it might be a balance point. Wright: Isn’t Library Park one of the RP3 neighborhoods? Ravenschlag: They have expressed interest. Wright: That would be an opportunity for people to buy permits if permits were available. Ravenschlag: They could buy a commuter permit. Kirkpatrick: It would be similar to a pilot project with the meters. It wouldn’t require a lot of hardware. Ravenschlag: We are already equipped. Schroyer: Do you all any permits for sale outside of the residents with RP3? Ravenschlag: It depends on the availability of on street parking. Some neighborhoods, depending on the density of the neighborhood we figure how many units and anticipating what the parking need would be, or how many permits could be sold. That is how many permits will be sold. When someone comes in to purchase a permit we may only get 50% of the residents that need an on street permit. Then the remainder of the permits would be available to resident and business to purchase additional permits. Then what is left beyond that is open for outside the neighborhood. Lorson: This concept could coincide with the expanded enforcement. Hewitt: What is the time frame? Lorson: Right now go through the new year and next spring have solid recommendation to go to City Council. B. Free Holiday Parking/Financial Impact, Kurt Ravenschlag Ravenschlag: The DBA and the City had partnered where the DBA was providing a contribution of $10,000 (what the revenue would have been) to allow free parking on Saturdays and Sundays during the holiday season. As of a few years ago the financial contribution from the DBA has not be provided. The City continued to offer the free Saturday and Sunday parking. The lost revenue of $10,000 was not significant enough to change course and start charging for Saturdays. We will go back and talk to the DBA and see if we can reestablish that partnership. Wright: Now would be a good time to talk to them because we are doing the 2016 budget. Ravenschlag: It was just recently brought to my attention so it will most likely be a next year item. Kirkpatrick: There is some lost to Parking Services, but the sales tax benefit to the City might be the justification. Ravenschlag: It is good for the community to do this. Regular Meeting Minutes November 9, 2015 Page 5 Kirkpatrick: Would it be worth writing a letter to the DBA Board to reestablish the relationship and the possibly to talk next year about the value this is for Downtown. I will write a letter to both the DBA and DDA. C. Year to Date Parking Revenues, Kurt Ravenschlag Ravenschlag: There are three revenue sources within Parking Services. Citations are our primary then the Civic Center and Old Town Garages. We are on track for budgeted revenue. Old Town is a little ahead of the schedule, which is good. Any additional revenues from Old Town will go into a capitol reserve. Old Town has a number of large capitol repairs and ongoing maintenance. It has some deferred maintenance from over the years that have required larger capitol efforts to get that facility stabilized. Hewitt: Is it the matter for you to decide to sell more permits? Ravenschlag: For Old Town I could, but for Civic Center, we have an intergovernmental agreement with the county. If we did offer more permits we could have that conversation. Revenue from permit parking is significantly less than timed. With the new garage coming on line with the hotel would be something we will want to carefully look at how many spaces we make available for permits. There is not lot of space available to the public. There is the Chestnut lot that is permitted and will most likely be moved into that structure taking up 50 spaces. There may be a 50/50 split in that structure between timed and permit parking. These structures are operating at a 40% oversell rate. We are updating our occupancy data for the entire Downtown area and the structures. We want to keep that data updated on a routine basis. I personally feel that it is critical information for making management decisions. Right now we are feeling there is an opportunity to increase that over sell rate for both structures. Schroyer: Do the parking citation include expired plates? Ravenschlag: It does. Schroyer: I thought I saw a study that if the Civic Center and Old Town w were free and metered on street with in a certain area would generate a certain amount of dollars greater than the revenue now. Ravenschlag: It could be. I have not seen the study. Wright: How does this compare to previous years? Is it pretty stable in regards to the revenue? Ravenschlag: My understanding on the citation side the expired plates represents a large portion. They didn’t always issue citations for that. The revenue was coming from the general fund. That is a big thing that is different. I am not sure how long they have been doing expired plates. Also some processes have changed, you use to be able to show proof of your tags and they would drop the citations. You can no longer do that and it has changed some of the revenue strings as well. This is something we are taking a look at. I know there are opinions on the expired plates and whether or not it falls in line managing parking in the downtown area. The flip side is that it is a huge part of revenue for this department and how would be back fill that with operations. We are doing a deep dive into this department and all the finances. We are still in our discovery process of how the department is operating and any future recommendations we want to make of possible changes. Wright: Have we been able to see the financials of the comparisons to the other cities? Revenue from the garages nurses on street paid parking. Ravenschlag: I haven’t. I think the projected revenue from paid parking was in the 5 to 7 million dollar range. Regular Meeting Minutes November 9, 2015 Page 6 Schroyer: I was thinking three. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a test case of 50 spaces to track and have real time data and not rely on other cities? If they are sitting empty all the time we would have a problem, but if not we would know what to do. They would probably be full all the time in front of the Rio, salon, The Cupboard. The question is getting off the beaten path somewhere just on the edge what would happen. Could be priced differently, further away from Mountain the cheaper it gets. Hewitt: I want to get this process right. I don’t want to change it after six months. I think pilot program somewhere. Kirkpatrick: I am interested alternative ways to manage garages. When I worked for the state we had a large structure next to my office. It was fantastic. If I changed cars I would just bring my ticket, but when I do that here I get locked out. There could be more innovated ways to manage our garages. Ravenschlag: In Parking Services we are eager to look for opportunities for improvement. I know the entire department is energized in this process. They have done things the same way for a long time and are all excited to be empowered. Wright: One thing I have learned doing the outreach sessions with Seth is that I thought you had to have a kiosk or meters to put censors on each parking space to provide an app for open parking and that is not the case. We thought that would be great data. Have a pilot program and an app that you can see where the open spaces are and reduce the congestion and pollution. That would be nice in the red zone area. Ravenschlag: Our hope is with the new structure is to have the ability to manage the structure differently than the other two. We are proposing a non-access control garage. You pay for your time when exiting and we would be doing enforcement like what we do on street. What this would allow for us to do is to test out the concept of the app that allows you to add time. We are also hoping to get the censors in there to show the availability in the structure. Wright: We went through a budget cycle, and there was money budgeted to look at on street paid parking. What happens if we want to implement some of these? Do we have to wait another year to implement them? Ravenschlag: The funding to implement on street paid parking was originally there, but then taken out of the budget. There is always the opportunity to do an acceptation request to our City Council to see if there are revenues to pursue something like this mid budget cycle. Otherwise we would follow the City’s process for the 2016-17 budget cycle. Increasing the hours and days has been tasked to Kathleen’s group. She is evaluating the current operations and looking to see if there are ways to be more efficient with the enforcement officers’ time to where we can start scheduling them differently. Right now we have six officers scheduled from 8 to 5. If we can get more efficient at enforcing the zones, primarily by vehicle, we could start spreading hours out throughout the day. We do think there is potential to increase enforcement. Kirkpatrick: Council dedicated $50,000 for study Ravenschlag: That funding went to Seth’s effort for the Downtown. Schroyer: How much does a parking meter cost? Ravenschlag: Depending on the model type could be about 5 to 6 thousand. Schroyer: Does that include the technology to swipe your card? Ravenschlag: There will be on going costs for software. Hewitt: One meter for each space? Ravenschlag: What I was talking about are the kiosks that would cover numerous spaces. Regular Meeting Minutes November 9, 2015 Page 7 D. RP3 University North Open House Update, Kurt Ravenschlag Ravenschlag: October 14 we had an open house for residents and business for University North, which is the neighborhood just north of CSU, Laurel to Mulberry and Washington to Howes are the parameters. We had a number of changes we wanted to present to them, which we had the opportunity to present to you all. The changes were received well with the group that was in attendance. We had about 20 folks attend the meeting. It was a mix of landlords and residents who live in the neighborhood. They were happy that we were giving them the opportunity to take a second vote. There was good feedback we received and were able to incorporate into the proposed plan for that neighborhood. Primarily, the request was if there are extra permits available could it be an opportunity for residents who might need additional permits or businesses to buy out of that pool first before it was open to the commuters. We felt it was a reasonable request and will allow each resident or business to buy one additional permit. We have sent out additional information that was presented at the meeting and followed it with the ballot to vote. Since then we have received feedback from two multi- family units that are opposed to the program and the process to implement the program. Those are conversations they are having with our City Manager. They are requesting that the vote be postponed and the program not move forward with that neighborhood. The primary issue is that we are allowing just the property owners to vote and one vote per owner. Their concern is that they only have one vote, but have a greater parking need than a signal family. They feel their vote should be weighted higher than a single family home. We thought carefully about that when establishing the program and felt that the higher parking demand generated by multi family had a disproportionate impact compared to the single family residents. This is why we tried to balance it out and allow equal weight in the vote. There are also concerns because portions of that neighborhood fall within transit oriented development overlay zoning. Those developments were allowed to develop without any parking requirements on site. They feel if we manage on street parking is contrary to what the TOD is trying to accomplish. TOD isn’t to relocate the parking from onsite to on street. It was up to the developer what was commercial viable for the project. The concept of reduced parking is because there are other transportation alternatives to access those zones. These are this issues they brought forward. All I can say right now is that we are moving forward with the vote. So far we have received 54 votes. They need 110 to be valid. Out of the 54, there are 36 yes and 18 no. Kirkpatrick: Are there any plans to do a reminder. Ravenschlag: Yes we will send out a reminder postcard to the neighborhood. We will also provide status of the vote. Wright: One thing good that came out of the meeting was that landlords wanted to make sure they could park and do maintenance on their property and there are those types of permits available. I do feel for the multi units. I hope there can be a compromise. They can get one but what if they need more. Ravenschlag: One of the multifamily dwellings has 52 units but 102 bedrooms. That building would receive 52 on street permits. Then they can buy one additional permit. They would have more than enough, because they also have 47 off street parking spaces. Schroyer: Would you consider something like this for businesses? Ravenschlag: Businesses are allowed up to 3 permits and can purchase additional. Regular Meeting Minutes November 9, 2015 Page 8 Schroyer: The neighborhood to the south of the Key Bank Tower is a 7 story building and the Chophouse. The triangle block on Canyon, we own and have about 250 people working on that block. I have been paying attention the past month, to who is getting out of their cars and where they are going. There are some 2 hour and some all-day spots around it. If it is good enough for the residential community why isn’t it good enough for the business community? Ravenschlag: Right now the way the program is set up, there is nothing preventing a business area to request an RP3 zone. Kirkpatrick: The idea of making a zone Downtown we could potentially use the same model. The more we learn about residential parking especially University North. There is so much we could learn. Schroyer: When it was implement in the Sheely neighborhood a lot of those people went across the road. We are moving them from one spot to another. Hewitt: Thinking back to the library, what we are doing are finding additional parking spaces you are increasing the inventory. You are having people utilized spaces that weren’t before and impacting neighborhoods. Depending on how much the neighborhood is impacted whether they will want the program. We talk about managing what we got and one way is to increase what we got. Ravenschlag: One thing we are discovering with MAX is with very convenient transit service we can increase the inventory in the downtown with offsite parking. All the parking we have along the corridor all the way to south of Harmony can be inventory for downtown and CSU. Hewitt: I have an employee who is interested in getting a pass for MAX, is there a special price for downtown employees? Ravenschlag: Yes you can go to the Chamber of Commerce and get a discount annual pass for $50. Kirkpatrick: You can also go to the DBA. Hewitt: I think we need to retrain people. Free parking is a thing of the past. Either you are going to need a permit or use transit. It is not a huge expense. Hewitt: We should be easing into it. E. Opportunities to Weigh In on Current Downtown Parking Practices, Kurt Ravenschlag Ravenschlag: One of the first things we felt was important for us on how to manage on street parking was we needed better data. Occupancy data is what we feel is the most important data to determine where and when enforcement is needed. Kathleen has been working with her folks to conduct occupancy studies in the downtown area. We have completed one round covering six days. We are fine tuning the process and what is the best way to go about collecting the data. Eventually we are hoping to use LPR, License Plate Recognition to easily collet the data when those vehicles are out. Right now the officers are counting and keeping track of the availability. Once we start getting a good sense of the pattern of occupancy in the downtown. We are doing this during the day, nights and weekends. We can then start being more strategic when to deploy our resources. Right now is 8 to 5 and without seeing the data we don’t know if this is the right time to be sending out officers. We have just finalized that study and will be reviewing it. The other piece of that is that our officers are trying different techniques in covering their routes. We tried vehicles to cover their zones and they are being more efficient and covering more zones more quickly. There is possibly an opportunity to Regular Meeting Minutes November 9, 2015 Page 9 reduce the number of officers working each shift. Some of the concerns with the vehicles were that there would be complaints that the vehicles would be stopped issuing a citation blocking traffic, particularly on College Ave. Instead of forgoing vehicles all together, I want to see how effective they can be and maybe College Ave. is a walking area and covers the rest of the zones with a vehicle. For the structures we would like to go to a non-access facility, again this is still up for discussion with the hotel and the City. We feel that it is the future of garage parking management. It works better during special events and day to day. Mechanical equipment always has opportunity to malfunction. There are a lot of processes in place as to what to do when a gate arm doesn’t work. We have people on call unit 3 am in case someone is stuck in the garage because the gate arm won’t work. There are better way to do that. We are hoping to test out the pay machines in the structure that will give us an opportunity to add time, which could be a way to ease into on street paid parking. Also with the employee parking that I mentioned. If it were two hours per zone it might encourage employees to use structures. These are some of the things we are looking at. Wright: I look forward to what the occupancy study shows us. Ravenschlag: This is the kind of data you would like to see on weekly and monthly bases. Schroyer: There are some two hour spaces that are never utilized, especially towards the neighborhood areas. In front of our offices there are 10 two hours spaces and only one car parked there. Some of the red curbs are over marked. We personally pay to power wash off and restriped to gain extra spaces. Ravenschlag: That is something we are looking at and where there are opportunities to gain parking. University North we were looking at and felt would could get additional parking if it was diagonal parking. Kirkpatrick: When using the parking garage you have to take a ticket even when it is free there must be data collected. The gate arms are not open, why? Walker: We want to know how many people are using it. The holiday season we do keep it open. Kirkpatrick: If we are going to keep the gate down and the garages free, we should use the data. Ravenschlag: There may be other ways to collect the data. Kirkpatrick: Is there enough happening for us to meet in December for us to meet? Ravenschlag: I would say no. Schroyer: If you could do a test pilot how many spaces would it be and where would you do it? Ravenschlag: I would think it would have to be in an area that has desirable parking and people would most like be willing to pay. Mountain is a good candidate. Where I struggle with a pilot, is typically where there are restrictions in place if the restrictions are not broad enough you push it to where it will go. If pushed to the west it could impact the neighborhood. We want to put thought into that to collect valuable information. Does on street paid parking need to be everywhere or in certain areas you are trying to effect change. Wright: My understanding is you do mix it up using assortment of methods in place and don’t do the same thing on every block. Ravenschlag: Right now we are trying to figure out the best methodology knowing we want to do this on an ongoing basis. It might look different 6 months from now. Schroyer: If someone could reach out to Dennis Burns. I thought we posed the question to him about doing a pilot and he squashed the idea saying it would push people somewhere. I would like to get his opinion on that. Kurt could you reach out to Dennis Burns and ask him? Regular Meeting Minutes November 9, 2015 Page 10 9. REPORTS E. BOARD REPORTS - Kirkpatrick Kirkpatrick: The City Strategic Plan is being discussed on Monday, November 16, 6 pm at City Hall. You are all welcome to attend. It’s an update that will take place over a period of time. Ravenschlag: I would call it a minor update. We want to make sure we make necessary updates to set us up for a successful budget process that starts this spring Kirkpatrick: Should there be a December Parking Advisory Board Meeting? Hewitt: Moves not to have a December meeting. Wright: Seconds. F. STAFF LIAISON REPORT None 10. OTHER BUSINESS None December Agenda: December 14 meeting has been canceled. 11. ADJOURN The meeting was concluded at 7:09 pm Respectfully submitted, Melissa Brooks Melissa Brooks Administrative Aide Transfort