In brief: Royal Melvin Heritage Park won’t be built for another three years. In the interim, city staff have proposed using the northern part of the parcel for paid parking, with meters.
Kisela: This is something the city authorized us to do on the northern portion. If the city gives conceptual approval, staff will report back whether they’d need individual meters, how much improving the property would need, how much the city should charge. “This would give us interim parking for the next three years.”
Weidenhamer: Move the city council authorize staff to do the reporting and research.
Trammell seconds.
Sam Seevers: “I’m a little concerned about the expense of having these meters in, then a year and a half, two years from now, we pull it back out. I’m not convinced this is the way we need to do this.” She’d want to see all the options, not just the parking-meter option, when the city reports back. “If there’s some way you guys can bring some other alternatives—we definitely need parking on the harbor, when I went to the function Thursday night to honor the hero, I could not find parking and I was driving everywhere.” Which is good, because it means the tourist economy has returned.
Kisela: We’d at least like council to endorse the concept before we take staff time to do the research.
Weidenhamer: Will we be doing this in-house?
Kisela: There’s certain basic assumptions from past parking studies about turnover rates and that sort of thing. We can use them to validate what we do.
Jim Bagby: “I’d like to see it broken down .. what’s the fixed costs, the capital costs of providing parking, what’s the cost of providing meters … If the cost is low enough, let’s just put parking there.” He wants that information in.
Dewey Destin: Is this another one I can’t vote on? But he does support the idea, even with a charge, so that the city can afford it.
5-0 with Windes and Destin abstaining. MIller reminds everyone that the abstainers own interest in adjoining parcels, hence they have a conflict of interest and must not vote (which everyone knows, but that puts it on the record).

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.