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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-08-15 BPC Minutes BOZEMAN PARKING COMMISSION October 8, 2015, 7:30 – 9:00 a.m. City Commission Room, City Hall Minutes Commitee Member - Pamela Bryan: Present Commitee Member - Kelly Wiseman : Present Commitee Member - Ryan Olson: Present Commitee Member - Dennis Bechtold: Present Commitee Member - Ben Lloyd: Present Commitee Member - Chris Naumann: Present Staff - Thomas Thorpe : Present Staff - Chuck Winn: Present Staff - Kristen Pitcher: Present Staff - Laurae Clark: Present 07:32:44 AM I. Call to order, 7:30 a.m. 07:32:56 AM II. Disclosures of Ex Parte Communication 07:33:13 AM III. Changes to the Agenda Andy withdrew the appeal regarding the lease rates. 07:33:18 AM IV. Approval of September 2015 minutes Kelly made a motion to approve the September 2015 minutes and it was seconded by Dennis. The minutes were unanimously approved. Public Comment – Members of the audience or their agent may be invited to present testimony or evidence. To be recognized, each person desiring to give testimony or evidence shall step forward and, after being recognized, give their name and address for the record. The presiding officer may establish a time frame for each public comment but in no case shall such timeframe be less than three (3) minutes per speaker. The presiding officer may lengthen or shorten the time allotted for public testimony. I. Appeal from 5-West regarding lease rates on the North Willson Lot: Removed from Agenda 07:34:30 AM V. Parking Lot Redesign—Draft DRC application, narrative, vicinity map, etc. have been written and are ready to submit for October 21 Tom said that we have been moving forward with this application. If you watch the video that got sent out, you can see a truck dumping water on the pavers and it just goes away. This would help us with the storm water. It will be a large cost. Tom has paperwork almost ready to give to Heather in Planning. See if we could get some Exceptions on the islands within the lots. That will go in on Wednesday. Ryan wants to know if the Pavers in front of the Western Café the pavers that were thinking about doing? Chris the Western Café is. They worked with public works for this. Was thinking of trying this on a larger level in the alley behind City Hall. Cyndy do we have a cost comparison with this? What is the up keep of this product? Tom doesn’t have a cost comparison yet. I do know that we will have to have a truck come in and vacuum every year. We already have to do this with the storm drains; we have the equipment, so there will be no added price. I have done resource on this from Minnesota and they don’t have a problem with this product in the snow. Heather, let everyone know that the report is just an informal one. Planning will not have a final till we review the informal one first. The informal report is an extra step but it’s very important. When It comes to storm water we want to have a plan B. Ben can you please make sure that they understand that we need to be treated the same as the privet section. 07:42:02 AM VI. Comprehensive Plan— Data is being collected on our lot usage and will be sent to Rick Williams Consulting. Rick has suggested that we revisit and use our existing way-finding proposal, possibly renaming the garage and lots to better depict their location on the street. Tom met with Rick Williams. They want us to start using the way system again. This will allow customers to find things better. They want more information from us. He has the Parking Officers out counting lot spaces. Heather and the GIS zoning will be working with us. They will have most of this information on line. Chris and Ben designed this back in 2008. There are feudal guide lines that we have to follow when it comes to signing. We can try and put an appeal in to see if we can change some of these things. Let’s put this topic on the next agenda. When is Rick Williams going to be back in town? Tom said that we can call Rick Williams at any time. 07:49:56 AM VII. Construction Staging and Mitigation—Tom has received no complaints from the public about the loss of the North Willson lot. Closure of the Armory lot is intended for November. Tom stated the only issue that has been brought up is the closing of part of the street to get trucks in and out of the lot. Tom did go and talk to them about this. They have changed some things around so this will not happen anymore. The building is gone. They are moving very quickly. Ryan thinks that it is a good idea that we talk to the businesses. Keeping them informed is going to make everyone more understanding. Kelly asked for an update regarding the armory building. Tom said that to the best of his knowledge the construction should start in November. Chuck stated that Corey has started the license agreement process. He said that we will plan to do snow removal till the lot is closed. 07:53:33 AM VIII. Garage Report Tom has the garage working well again. We are just suffering from old equipment. He was worried about it when the Element opened. The Element was given validation coupons that are good for a whole day. He has only had a few people come to him with problems. The Element has asked about updating the parking garage software to better enable them to serve their customer needs. That will not be happening right away, but we will investigate options in the future. Currently, while using the vouchers staff will make sure that if they go over there allotted amount of 60 spaces per day that they will be charged for the overage. Tom would like to move the automated payment machine (APM) from Black inside the garage as a more central location and for protection from the elements. This would take some funds to rewire but he feels that the machine would last longer and more accessible to all customers. Another option to consider is to just strictly go to credit cards only in the future. Cyndy asked if the Tracy APM can be signed out of order. Tom responded that the sign keeps disappearing and will get that taken care of right away. Chuck suggested removing the Tracy APM right away so there is no more confusions. He will look into getting it moved this week. The gates have been a problem. They have been broken and pushed up manually. All the cameras are working correctly. The Bozeman Police Department (BPD) has been helpful at finding these people and ticketing them. This is helping to cover the costs associated with the barrier breakage. Chris asked if it was necessary to keep the APM’s as it appeared most people were paying with cards. Cyndy wants to know a time frame for moving the APM. Tom would like to have this all done by January at the latest. He also suggested that we need to start investigating alternative hardware and software to upgrade the technology in the Garage. However, that will come with a large price tag. Chuck stated that Montana State University (MSU) is building a Parking Garage. Tom will be going to talk to MSU to see what system they will be using. Chris reminded them that it needs to be a program that can help the whole city not just be useful to the hotels going in. We need to start working on a budget. Ben Lloyd asked if there are any grants or federal loan funds that we could get to help with the upgrades to the parking garage. Chuck stated there will be a small connection fee to get a higher bandwidth put into the garage. There are a number of large costs coming up for parking. We need look at everything and figure out what we need first. Kelly stated the Tax Increment Finance District (TIF) s putting up half a million into downtown. We just finished the design. There will be an area loop that will run down both alleys parallel with Main Street, then a loop that runs out the Mendenhall and Babcock corridors. This should be in place by this time next year. This will help the delivery drivers to make their deliveries on time and not take up any parking. Cyndy reminded the Parking Commission that parking is high on the City Commissions list of priorities. She doesn’t want these needs to be forgotten or not planned for—they are important. Tom summed up the conversation to say that the issues with the Garage are manageable. They are able to keep everything working at this time. However, it is important to look into upgrading the systems and budgeting for those needs in the near future as they will not last indefinitely. 08:20:51 AM IX. Citation/Lease Rates Richard McLane requested a few months ago if the Parking Commission would consider reducing the fine for 2am-7am restricted zone on Main St. They feel that that $50 is too steep for that violation. They want people to change their behaviors, but also don’t want people driving home drunk because they don’t want to get a $50 ticket. He realizes this is ultimately up to the City Commission, but would like to get approval from the Parking Commission first. He sees this violation as similar to street maintenance and that is a $20 fine. Chris asked if there has been an increase or decrease with parking since the price went up. Rich stated he did not have definitive data. Numbers are down, but there are a lot of factors. He is short officers on shifts at times and is training a number of new officers. So it could just be not enough attention being put on Main Street at night. They are also writing manual tickets which is time consuming and that does not help. A discussion ensued about this violation. Chuck stated we need to make sure that we are working with MSU and making sure drivers know where they can park at night to avoid violations if they do leave their car. This violation is about safety. Main Street is a State Highway and the reason for the violation is so they can safely and easily clean the streets and plow snow. Rich agree with this and said that they will continue to write these tickets regardless. The city could approximately $3,000 annually if we lower the price. Tom suggested lowering the price of the 2am-7am ticket, but allowing a larger fine for a repeat offender. Chuck isn’t sure of the process but someone needs to come up with the resolution up for City Commission. As a first step, the Parking Commission should vote on this in November. On a similar note, Cyndy asked if going from $20 to $60 in the MSU district made a difference. It was stated that it does not appear to have changed the behavior much— there is still a similar number of tickets being written in the district. Chuck asked the BPC to carefully consider this request. You’re asking for the City Commission to lower something that you recently asked them to raise. He thinks the BPC needs to get some solid data on this, and get MSU involved to see about the way the students act/think when they do drink downtown. Chris made a motion that the Parking Commission asks that the Bozeman Police Department write a request stating the reasons why they feel the change in price of the 2am-7am restricted zone violation on Main Street should be changed. This would be presented at the November meeting and could be voted on by the Parking Commission. If approved a resolution could then be presented to the City Commission. Kelly seconded the motion. The motion was approved unanimously. Tom suggested that the rates for the lots and garage stay the same this year. With the parking consultants report not yet done, it makes sense to wait and get good information to base those decisions on. Annual rates will renew at the current rate this year. Monthly rates could potentially be changed at a later date in the coming year once the consultant has presented their report. 08:58:27 AM X. New business Chris let wanted to let BPC know that he got the report about the LED lights in the garage. The electricity has dropped by 56% since the LED lights were installed. This decrease is even better than the projections. Tom was asked to rewrite the PEO job description and that will soon be completed. The Bozeman Police Department has given parking a new car. It is being repainted and set up with parking P to brand it. He gave a big thank you to the BPD. XI. Adjournment Ryan called meeting to close at 9:01 The next Bozeman Parking Commission meeting will be held November 12, 2015 at 7:30am at City Hall. Bozeman Parking Commission meetings are open to all members of the public. If you have a disability that requires assistance, please contact Thomas Thorpe at 406-582-2903 Parking Manager’s Report October 8, 2015 City of Bozeman Human Resources has asked me to re-write the PEO2 position to better reflect the actual job functions. When that is done we will re-post for the PEO2 position. We will be re-posting for the current open PEO1 position as soon as we can. Bozeman PD has gifted the parking department an excess patrol car. We are in the process of having it painted. When it is finished we will retire our worst vehicle and keep our fleet at 3 vehicles. In the future we should consider leasing four wheel drive vehicles to better patrol in the winter.