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HomeMy WebLinkAboutParking Advisory Board - Minutes - 02/08/2016MINUTES of the CITY OF FORT COLLINS PARKING ADVISORY BOARD February 8, 2016 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 GM & Parking Svcs. Manager, 221-6386 Holly Wright, Vice Chair Melissa Brooks, Transfort, Administrative Aide, 224-6161 Bob Criswell Seth Lorson, City Planner Carey Hewitt Stephanie Napoleon George Newman Nora Hill Michael Short ABSENT: OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE Councilmember Kristin Stephens Steve Schroyer 1. CALL TO ORDER Chair Kirkpatrick called the meeting to order at 5:30 2. WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS 3. AGENDA REVIEW Agenda was approved as written. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Wright moved to accept February meeting minutes, Napoleon second. Minutes were approved unanimously with the correction of moving Hewitt’s name from present to absent. 5. COUNCIL LIAISON REPORT Regular Meeting Minutes Page 2 February 8, 2016 None 6. PUBLIC COMMENT **Public comment occurred at the end of the meeting** York: I am on the Transportation Board and we talk about getting people around town and how the bike plan impacts parking. There needs more talk about how to get people get to and from downtown. The conversation tonight did not include infrastructure and making sure there is a place for them to get dropped off and picked up when using other transportation like Uber. If you want downtown employees to use long term parking you have to give them a reason to do so. People have choices on how they are going to get around. How do we facilitate those choices and influence their choices. When gasoline prices are low people are going to make the choice to drive everywhere. If parking is difficult, to you are going to change how you get to a location. If you know you can get downtown by catching MAX and then get your ticket validated, there is a reason for you not to park downtown. The only time I park in the garage is when I am in a hurry. I would encourage you to think more about the goal. Is it to get more people in and out or is it just to park. There needs to be more interaction between the Transportation Board and Parking Advisory. We meet the third Wednesday of the month at 6 pm in this room. 7. ACTION ITEMS A. Approval of 2016 Work Plan. Ravenschlag: The bulleted list represents the conversation that was had at the last board meeting. We set a schedule to help keep the board on task to accomplish the work plan and when we need to bring the information to the board to do so. Kirkpatrick: It is good to have actionable items with the board making recommendations and evaluating programs. Wright: In June and July, talking about parking enforcement, will that be based off of what the Downtown Plan recommendations are? Ravenschlag: It will include elements of that, but also what we are identifying right now in our current process of looking at the enforcement practices will be part of that conversation. Kirkpatrick: Do you anticipate this to be an annual activity for the Board? Ravenschlag: Absolutely. Hewitt: Is there data to work with about parking enforcement? Ravenschlag: We have the ability to collect some data and are looking for ways to improve efficiencies in the data collection processes. Hewitt: Should we be looking at enforcement before we look at recommendations to the City Plan? Ravenschlag: The Downtown Plan will just be providing recommendations. Parking enforcement is not completely centered around the conversation of on street paid parking. We also want to look at how we do enforcement in the RP3 areas, look at the days of the week and time of day that enforcement could be utilized and how we manage the garages. There are conversations we can have that will be productive that are not tie to on street paid parking. Hewitt moves to approve the 2016 Parking Advisory Board Work Plan, Newman seconds. The Board members voted unanimously in favorer of approval. Regular Meeting Minutes Page 3 February 8, 2016 8. DISCUSSION/INFORMATIONAL ITEMS A. Downtown Parking Community Dialogue, Staff Recommendations, Seth Lorson Lorson: I have recommendations that have come from all of our outreach and I will be asking what information you need to make decisions on those recommendations. The central question is how we get people to park in the most appropriate location for their type of trip. Short-term should be on street, long term should park in garages. Recommendation right now would be: 1. Implement a monitoring program to determine occupancy and turnover. 2. Adjust enforcement: a. Explore weekends and evenings b. Limit 2-hour parking to an entire zone 3. Create a Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Program. 4. Explore other ideas: a. Improve communication and wayfinding b. Improve parking garage program such as validation and employee passes. First we set up a monitoring system and then do these other things first and see how it affects occupancy and turnover on our on-street parking spaces. What we heard was try other things before we go to on-street paid parking. If we are not meeting our availability and turnover goals, we pilot on-street paid parking. What information Do We Need? (Anticipated questions) 1. Implement a monitoring program to determine occupancy and turnover. a. New technology or augment our LPR and enforcement system? b. Cost of new technology? c. Is it mobile app friendly? d. Will it sync with a possible future on-street paid parking system? e. Can it be used for enforcement under our current system? Hewitt: I am curious about the collection of data to understand turnover. Couldn’t you hire part-time people to collect the data instead of relying on technology? Ravenschlag: That is what we are currently doing. We are using hourly employees to collect the information. This is information that we want ongoing and the more we can get the better. This is crucial information to make management decisions on how to manage on-street parking and garage parking. The labor that goes into the collection isn’t sustainable particularly if there is a technological solution looking at ongoing and cost effective. We feel it makes more sense, because this is information that we need on an on-going basis to invest in technology. The upside it could also be public facing and people can see where available parking is. Kirkpatrick: I think it is a good investment. Hill: Do we have a metric to know if it is or isn’t working and haven’t we already done this? Lorson: They did it one time in 2012. The Parking Plan had some recommendations. One was waiting until the situation becomes untenable before we do an on-street paid parking system. The general recommendation is to try to get employees to use parking garages. Hewitt: The guideline was to do something when it became 85% occupancy. That has been the metric. Regular Meeting Minutes Page 4 February 8, 2016 Lorson: The metric is 15% availability or at least one open parking space per block face at any given time. Short: Is the City engaging any parking profession to help guide us since technology changes quickly? Lorson: We have hired Kimly-Horn as part of the Downtown team, Vanessa Solesbee is the consultant. Do you support a monitoring system and if you do, does it need to sync with a future on street paid system, app friendly? Newman: Will there be signage to find parking spaces, like at the airport? That kind of information would make people want to come downtown. Napoleon: If it could be intergraded that would more cost effective in the long run. Lorson: What I am hearing from this group is before we decided to have people pay for parking; we should do whatever we can to force them into other places to park, with enforcement, knowledge of where parking spaces are. We are hoping to bring City Council a recommendation in May. We are setting ourselves up with the metrics that we need and a systematic data driven approach. Wright: Would love the pilot program be in the first round of recommendations. People sometimes want to stay for more than two hours and not necessarily use the parking garage. Two hours is inconvenient and not long enough. It would be nice to give people a choice. Lorson: If we pilot on street paid parking it would create the flexibility and people might choose that on purpose because they could stay longer. Kirkpatrick: That was the theory to see if there would be a high demand to stay longer. Criswell: How does charging for on street parking beat charging the same for garage parking? How does the ability to stay longer increase turnover in parking? Wright: The time and demand is now for that pilot program. Kirkpatrick: Does this board support adding the on-street paid parking pilot now instead of waiting? All but one in favor. Napoleon: If the plan is as propose what is the timeframe for trying each option before we do the pilot? Will it build on each other or try each one individually? What is the timeframe before going to the pilot? Lorson: First we would have to implement the monitoring system, which would require a budget offer or an appropriation from City Council. That would take a few months. The recommendation is 6 to 12 months of monitoring. We would want the pilot to be central and will want to ask our consultants. Ravenschlag: I would prefer to have a period of time with data. I would like to have the data prior to the pilot. What is the goal of on-street paid parking? Is it to facilitate turn over or is it to have longer parking? Wright: I think it is flexibility, longer you stay the more you pay to fix the upside model of fees and giving options to stay longer without getting a ticket. Short: The general public is not as up to speed as we are. I recommend doing it in stages. Some cities are taking private parking lots and deploying them during non-peak times for that business. Is that being explored? Ravenschlag: We are doing that now, because all of our shared lot parking along MAX is providing capacity downtown. Lorson: 2. Adjust enforcement: a. Explore weekends and evenings b. Limit-2 hour parking to an entire zone. Regular Meeting Minutes Page 5 February 8, 2016 Newman: I would be afraid to up the enforcement unless people know what the alternative is. 3. Create a Transportation Demand Management Program: It is a program that would help businesses to lower the demand for individual driven automobile downtown. Help people get transit passes, park n ride education, help with bicycle needs. Employers get parking passes for employees. a. What exactly will the program do? b. Will a staff person need to be hired? c. Should it be a City program? 4. Pilot on street paid parking, if we are not meeting our availability and turnover goals. a. What should be our availability and turnover goals? b. How long should we monitor new changes? Criswell: What would be our goal for availability? Lorson: Industry standard is on every block face there is 15% available. There is always at least one open parking space per block face. Napoleon: Feels data collection and assessing what needs to happen needs to be more aggressive. Ravenschlag: This will be brought to City Council in May and after that point an appropriation could occur. Things could start moving quickly in terms of putting technology in place to collect data. Hewitt: What is your sense of business downtown wanting paid parking? Lorson: It is close to 50/50 and people are warming up to the idea of it. The people see the value in it. This could invest back into our downtown. Newman: How did the focus groups come together? Lorson: The first session was downtown business owners, the second an invitation was extended to public. We hear from everyone that there is a problem. B. Residential Parking Permit: Old Fort Collins High School Update, Kurt Ravenschlag Ravenschlag: They did met their threshold for the vote, 47 votes casts 72% voted yes and 28% voted no. Permit sales will began March 14, issuing warning will start March 28 – April 1 and enforcement will begin April 4. University North enforcement begins February 29. There are some folks who are frustrated with it. They might be new to the neighborhood. It will be some education for them. We have had complements from residents that they are already seeing effects with the signage that went up. The residents are happy. The frustration might be from those who only park there. Wright: You can see the immediate effects on Canyon. Ravenschlag: When we implement an RP3 for only the areas identified because it hard to convenience a street that they are going to have a problem. There is available parking on campus. The university is about 1800 permits below what they had last year. Short: Is there a number of people in a given neighborhood that need to vote? Ravenschlag: We want 50% of the owners participating in the vote. Out of the 50% we need 50% plus 1 saying yes. Short: How did that translate to the Old Fort Collins Neighborhood? Ravenschlag: 84 residents we had 14 ballots returned 70 eligible voters 47 votes, of that we had 34 people voting yes and 13 voting no. Regular Meeting Minutes Page 6 February 8, 2016 E. BOARD REPORTS - Kirkpatrick Kirkpatrick: A downtown business owner is concerned about the inappropriate use of handicapped parking. It is directed at the residents of the Northern Hotel that have placards and they are not required by City Code to move their cars. Ravenschlag: The current City Traffic Code does not provide a time limit for individuals with a valid disabled placard. They can park without time limits in disabled or regular parking stalls. Right now there are a number of individuals with valid placards that visit downtown and they do park beyond two hours and do leave. There are three individuals, residents of the Northern that keep their vehicles parked for 24 hours. We recommended working with the individuals to find another option for storage, possibly in the garage. Versus making a code change that would affect all individuals with disabilities. City Council could enact a code change to the traffic code to put time limits on disabled person parking. Our responsibility from an American with Disability Act is to provide reasonable accessibility. Short: We started off as autonomous advisory board; it was just a committee that was advising Council. It was lobbied to get this board so there would be an authority that would be looking at and guiding this process. What has happened, we have now been assimilated into the Downtown Plan. Our responsibility is to prove a level of expertise that doesn’t exist in City Council or Planning about parking. We are quickly coming to a May meeting which we are going to be marginalized as a board. We are not being leaders. I would have Vanessa and Dennis Burns at the meetings; we need to have a professional advising us. We are here to learn about parking to help the City make good decisions about a critical subject. I feel that these meeting are being reflective of all that is involved what we need to figure out to make recommendations to Council. I am personally uncomfortable and will be reflective in my votes. Hewitt: Gerry Horak alluded to If you show your expertise and then can go independent similar to the DBA looking forward I do not see that. F. STAFF LIAISON REPORT None 10. OTHER BUSINESS March Agenda: Adding paid on-street parking pilot to the initial phase 11. ADJOURN Criswell motioned to adjourn, Newman seconded. The meeting was concluded at 7:26 pm Respectfully submitted, Melissa Brooks ___________________________ Melissa Brooks Administrative Aide Regular Meeting Minutes Page 7 February 8, 2016 Transfort