CC Minutes - 02/17/10 Work Session

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Mayor Piercy noted that Mr. Poling and Mr. Zelenka were not present, but could be joining the meeting by telephone. Downtown Projects — Parking Director of the Planning and Development Department (PDD) Susan Muir thanked Mr. Clark, Ms. Ortiz, Ms. Taylor, and Mr. Pryor for serving on a subcommittee to work on the parking issue. She acknowl- edged that the council had heard a lot about the downtown strategies and what they were trying to do to foster a vibrant downtown and to boost the local economy. She listed the four strategies: attraction amenities, parking, safety, and job redevelopment. She said this was the opportunity to gain feedback on parking. She asked Parking Services Manager Jeff Petry to speak about the item. Mr. Zelenka joined the meeting by telephone. Mr. Petry reviewed the issue of parking with PowerPoint, hard copies of which were provided to everyone present. He discussed the four free - parking options and the costs associated with them. He highlighted ways that free parking could be paid for. He noted that providing a credit card payment option for parking meters made them more convenient and people tended to stay in the metered parking longer. He said the City of Boulder, Colorado, had a pay by cell phone feature. Regarding the rebranding of parking, he stated that Portland had done so with success, having created a Smart Park logo that gave a clear indication of where to park conveniently. He thought Eugene could do a similar rebranding and provided a suggested example, called Epark. He related that another concept was to just spread the word about the existing parking program. He said many people did not know about it. Mr. Clark appreciated all of the work that had gone into this. He felt they had a lot of good decision points on the table. He had been working on this issue for a while. He thought that to be able to say that they had some meter -free parking downtown would be an integral part of revitalizing the downtown core. He declared that this would indicate to people that the downtown area was open for business. He had originally proposed the idea of having just the downtown safety zone as a free - parking area, which was the second of the four free - parking options. He said he would be amenable to doing only this or even a smaller area; he just wanted to try this for a year or two to determine what kind of effect it would have. He was generally not in support of first hour and weekend free - parking options for the downtown parking garages as a way to fund free parking. He felt free parking in the garages was an integral part of some of the success they had experienced, especially with the Saturday Market and the Farmers' Market. He would absolutely be willing to look at either limiting the area or increasing the number of meters around the University. His reason for the latter was that the meters were always full in the campus area. He also would be in favor of lessening the amount that was transferred from the parking fund to the General Fund, because he thought the investment was worth it to make downtown more inviting. Ms. Taylor considered free parking to be the best investment. She said business people she had talked to thought the City should try it. She asked what savings the City would net from the removal of meters. Mr. Petry responded that if they eliminated the meters it would not create a large positive impact, because there would still be many meters in the University area. He explained that the meter maintenance program was one person, , the program cost $100,000 annually and the meter collection was through a contract that cost $36,000. He surmised that approximately half would no longer be used if the meters were eliminated completely from the downtown area. He said the parking enforcement program cost $740,000 for enforcement and $410,000 for adjudication, but he would estimate that 75 percent of the tickets were written on campus. MINUTES Eugene City Council February 17, 2010 Page 2 Work Session