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HomeMy WebLinkAbout11-12-15 BPC Minutes BOZEMAN PARKING COMMISSION November 12, 2015, 7:30 – 9:00 a.m. City Commission Room, City Hall Minutes I. Commitee Member - Pamela Bryan: Absent 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 07:32:26 AM II. Call to order, 7:30 a.m.- Ryan called the meeting to order. 07:32:26 AM III. Disclosures of Ex Parte Communication- Ryan asked for any disclosures of ex-parte communications and there were none. IV. Changes to the Agenda- There were no changes. 07:32:47 AM V. Approval of October 2015 minutes Chris made a motion to approve which was seconded by Ben L. The minutes were approved unanimously. 07:33:27 AM 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. Jean-Pierre Wlady Ggrochowski , 110 S. Rouse, Owner of La Chatelaine. Jean-Pierre is concerned with the parking around his store. There is no 2 hour parking around the store. Employees from downtown are parking all day long so there is virtually no turnover. Therefore none of his customers can park close to the store. Jean-Pierre is asking that the City could put 2 hour parking signs up. Tom gave Jean-Pierre his card and told him to give him a call so they could talk about this more. 07:37:05 AM VI. Transportation Plan Presentation- Jeff Key; (Transportation Engineer,) works for a consulting firm in Helena Montana. Jeff is working with Bozeman and the State on their transportation plan. The consulting firm is only 3 months into a 14 month planning process. Every 4 years the State has to have an updated transportation plan. The First Transportation plan for Bozeman MT was done in 1954. This Transportation has a very large boundary. If the population continues to grow at the current rate, Bozeman could change to a Metropolitan Planning Origination (MPO)(Greater than 50 thousand people) . If you’re an MPO it means that the City will have to staff for transportation, air control testing, and things like this. This will also require Bozeman to upgrade the transportation plan every 4 years. There are about 70 intersections that we are in charge of working with this. There are about 70 intersections that we have to work on. We are collecting data the intersections. Counts are done in the morning and evening. This is done by another outside company. This information will be shared once available. They have a web page www.Bozemantmp.com, or on Facebook (Bozeman TMP.) They will send out updates on a regular basis. Jeff informed everyone that all comments and concerns will go straight to him. There is also a Transportation survey on the web site. The goal is the get the community involved, and gets their view on transportation. All this information will be on the web page December 1st, and it will run for 3 months. We will be having a community meeting Tuesday, December 1st 6:30-8:30 in the Bozeman High School “south” cafeteria. This process started in late August and there is a lot of work to be done. All the parking information that Rick Williams is working on will play into this also. Transportation is important. Parking is important as well, though is not included in the scope at this time because they not going to be working on Bozeman downtown yet. Jeff wants the BPC to keep him informed because at some point they will be moving to the downtown streets. Chuck suggested that Jeff get a hold of Rick Williams and go over the findings that they have so far. Make sure that the City of Bozeman is doing everything correctly when it comes to the parking. Tom asked if it would be possible to get some parking questions on the www.Bozemantmp.com web page? So the parking commission could get some feedback from the public. Jeff can’t really answer that question at this time. We will look into this and let the BPC know. 07:58:09 AM VII. Parking Lot Redesign— Heather stated that she went before the redesign committee on November 4th. It was an informal meeting. She wants to get some engineering comments, but has not received anything at this time. She needs to have the okay to put in some egresses. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem, due to the fact these or on one-way streets. The engineering department wanted some more information on the islands that Rick Williams has been working on. It also has been asked if we can put some handicap zones right by the Hotel in the Armory lot. There is time to figure everything out. We still need to find the funding for this. Heather wanted to let everyone know how an informal meeting works. Every department works together to come up with a plan, so it can then go in to a sketch plan. This is to make sure that everything is in full compliance. A letter will be submitted with the Formal comments. As for the agency exemption, Heather said the City Commission has given direction to staff that every department should be treated the same as any other outside contractor. Heathers suggest that the BPC does not use the agency exemption. Ben L. wanted to know if this was a new thing with the agency exemption and would it apply to the county also? Heather isn’t sure of the answer on this. She just knows that it is to be done for every department in the City. 08:07:19 AM VIII. Comprehensive Plan— Brief report of November 5th Teleconference. On November 5th Tom and Chris had a teleconference with Rick Williams. It was a basic meeting to go over the Information that Rick has gotten so far. Chris told the BPC (Bozeman Parking Commission) that the reports they have so far will amaze everyone. There is a lot of detail in the reports and again Rick Williams just started. Chuck Winn (Assistant City Manager) and Anna Rosenberry (Administrative Service Director) were also there to hear all the information that Rick Williams has come up with so far. Tom will be setting dates and times to have Rick Williams come into town. Tom informed everyone: that the BPC can have a teleconference with Rick at any time. 08:11:50 AM IX. Garage Report— On November 14th we will be crack mapping and taking laser measurement of the 1st floor in the Parking Garage. This requires closure of the 1st floor and basement. The concrete does crack and that is normal. We just want to make sure that it’s only going as far as it should. This Crack Mapping will take a laser and record the width of the cracks and the depth of the floor and make sure everything is where it should be. This should be done 1 to 2 times a year. There is nothing wrong with the parking garage, this is normal maintenance and we just need to start recording it better. This process is an increase from prior years of about $600. But, the laser will give us a much more precise data to work with. We will start as early as we can to get this done quickly to open the garage back up. 08:21:11 AM X. Budget Report. We have only spent 20% of the budget to date. A lot of the bigger dollar items have been repairs to the Parking Garage, such as new arms and more ticket stock. We had to spend about $8,000 to just get the upgrade for the new card readers. We need to get new uniforms for the people we will be hiring. We should be ok and not go over the budget at all this year. We have had low counts on tickets, but that’s just due to having a very low number of officers to write those tickets. Kelly asked if the police help us with finding people that break the arms in the garage. Tom reassured that the police have been very helpful in regards to this. When they are found the City Attorneys have been charging them with the time it takes to fix, repair and replace everything and put on new arms. If anyone drives thru after this happens the person that pushed it up or broke the gate will get charged for every car that drives thru and did not pay. Chuck stated he has some very serious concerns with the budget. We need citation revenue. We need revenues other then tickets to bring in some more money as well. He questioned the feasibility of continuing to write warnings regularly. We need some bold moves to help with this budget. Chris stated that something that came to light was that the warnings were to only be given in the downtown area. The officers should rarely be giving them out in any other area. Tom let everyone know that with the Duncan software you have to write a warning ticket, then the Citation so they can look up the repeat offenders. Chris suggested that they start looking at different ways to build revenues up. The parking Garage is one of those things that could provide a lot more additional revenue. We need to eliminate the free 2 hours in the parking garage. Rick Williams will likely confirm this. The free two hour was just to help with the opening of the parking garage and get people using the garage and we never stipulated an end date and should have. Let us have Tom come up with a staff memo to see if this is a good thing to move forward with. XI. Capital Improvement Process Report. (CIP) Tom reported on the capital improvement plan. He stated they need to get some new parking cars. We want to install parking pay machines in the parking lots. Natalie Meyer has asked to budget for some charging stations in the parking garage. Another item is new radios. This is a very expensive radio that we use with the police department. We can get a hold of the police and they can get a hold of us. The radios that we have now are very old and out-dated. If you have any questions or concerns you can call Tom. Items can be moved around on the CIP as is needed. This just needs to be approved by the City Commission for the next 5 years, so it is important to include everything that could be needed or replaced in the future. 08:52:57 AM XII. Construction Staging and Mitigation—ETHA Hotel construction is pending. No complaints on 5 West constructions at this time. They did ask if we could put cameras on the parking garage that would point to the site for security reasons. As of right now they are going to check with the Baxter to see if they could put them there instead. The Etha has still has not started and Tom has not heard any new information. It is looking more likely that they will start in the spring time. The City gave him a 20 month window. If he doesn’t start in that time frame then the Etha will have to start everything all over again. The city will continue to take care of the lot and plow until construction starts. Ben B is wondering if there is a way to communicate with businesses and let them know what’s going on. Tom hasn’t had any big issues or problems so far at all. He will keep everyone updated every month. 09:00:23 AM XIII. New business No new business at this time. 09:00:27 AM XIV. Adjournment Ryan adjourned the meeting at 9:00am. The next Bozeman Parking Commission meeting will be held December 10, 2015 at 7:30 am 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 our ADA Coordinator, Chuck Winn 582-2307. Parking Manager’s Report November 12, 2015 Employee Report: PEO1: interviews have been conducted, backgrounds are being checked and a position will be offered upon positive information and CJEN Clearance by Bozeman PD. PEO2: The position has been rewritten and is under review by City HR. I expect the position to post soon. Budget Report In an update of our budget incomings and expenditures to date. Please remember that for the latter half of FY2015 and thus far in FY2016 we have not been fully staffed. We have spent 22% of our budget for the year. This includes several large ($3000 or more) expenditures for garage updates and tickets etc. For a complete listing of budget line items please email tthorpe@bozeman.net. FY2015 FY2016 year to date. FY2016 expenditures to date. CIP This is an overview of proposed capital expenditures for the next 5 years. The plan will be finalized in December. For a copy of the individual project information please email tthorpe@bozeman.net.