CC Minutes - 02/17/10 Work Session

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In response to a question from Ms. Taylor, Mr. Petry stated that the meters had been taken out in 1971 or 1972 and had been restored in 1991. Ms. Taylor recalled how welcome she had felt when she had seen the signs that said "Welcome to Downtown, Park Free." She felt that some people in the downtown area worried that the Fifth Street Market could compete better because it had three -hour free parking. She thought downtown would benefit from having free three -hour parking. Mayor Piercy requested a more complete matrix of the savings and losses associated with a reduction in meters and an increase in free parking. She noted that if the parking was changed to a time limit, there would still be a need for parking enforcement. Ms. Ortiz was not completely convinced that parking was something that needed to change in the downtown area. She had spoken with downtown business owners and they indicated support for looking into parking for a window of time. She remarked that they were talking about a lot of revenue that would be a challenge to replace. She said with all of the building they would hopefully be bringing on -line, she would want parking to turn over. She did not think she could support a broad brush permanent change, but she would consider looking at it for a short period, perhaps two years. She added that she would not want to change the first --hour free /weekends free parking rules for the parking garages. As for increasing the metered parking in the University area, she indicated that she would not want people Who owned their houses to have to pay to park in front of them. Mr. Pryor commented that the best possible outcome would be a revitalized, improved, growing downtown area. He did not think this was the primary way to get there, but he felt it Was a step in the right direction. He said all of the elements of the downtown situation were interrelated. He observed that the consequence for taking paid parking out of the downtown area was budgetary and they would have to determine where to get the money they would lose. He asked what they would do to replace the lost money; would they have been able to pay for additional police patrols in the downtown area and might not be able to now. He wanted to figure out a way to pursue this strategy without having unintended consequences. Mr. Zelenka asked what the results had been of the pilot program for free parking in the downtown area. Mr. Petry responded that the pilot, conducted in the summer, had put more cars on the street. He said he had observed that some employee -owned cars were in the free - parking spaces. Mr. Zelenka commented that it seemed to him to be a free - parking program for employees downtown. He said the situation downtown was complex and parking was just a small part of it. He favored doing the development and safety items first. He averred that paid parking was not the cause of the decline of the downtown area and the free parking program would not have much impact on the downtown area. He referred to the PowerPoint slide How Could We Pay for It, and asked for further explanation of three of the bullet points. Mr. Petry said the campus parking district was defined as Mill Street and east of there. He stated that there were places that meters had not been installed that were within a few blocks of the campus area because they were in front of multi - family housing. He related that they were looking at the possibility of adding more meters on the west side of campus and there were locations on the east side as well, associated with the arena parking district which would come into play on September 1. He added that the revenue in the campus area largely came out of the nine -month school year. Mr. Zelenka did not think it made sense to hurt the campus commercial area to pay for downtown parking. He hoped the council would hear input from the campus businesses on what they thought about this MINUTES Eugene City Council February 17, 2010 Page 3 Work Session