Staff recommends the City Council award a contract for upgrading the parking and revenue access control equipment for Park 1, Park 2 and Park 3 in an amount not to exceed $500,000 to Flash Parking.

Currently, the City owned parking garages, Park 1, Park 2 and Park 3, operate on Federal APD gate control equipment.  In 2014, 3M, who purchased Federal APD, announced that they would be closing their parking manufacturing operation and would no longer support the Federal APD equipment.  During this time, the Parking Division was committed to completing the three year phase, just under a million dollar, parking garage restoration project for Park 1, 2 and 3.  The restoration project took precedence over any other capital project, so the gate control replacement had to be put on hold for the time being.   In order to maintain parking operations, the Parking Division stockpiled various equipment parts purchased through EBay and other municipalities in the event that the equipment would fail or be damaged.   The Parking Division has been operating this way since 2014, however, the number of equipment replacement parts are deteriorating and locating them has become more difficult.  The parking gate control equipment must be replaced as soon as possible to ensure the garages are operating safely and efficiently.
 Last year, with City Council approval, the Parking Division hired, Walker Consultants, a Parking Access and Revenue Control System (PARCS) consultant to assist them with the process of selecting new gate control equipment.  The RFP was advertised for a month before the proposal due date of November 14, 2019.  Four RFP’s were submitted by the following vendors:  Parking Revenue Solutions (Denver, CO), Mountain Parking Equipment (Denver, CO), FlashParking (Austin, TX) and Entrance Controls (Tukwila, WA).   A nine member Selection Committee was formed comprising of staff from the Parking, Finance and IT Departments as well as a representative from the Billings Parking Board.  The committee recommendation has been reviewed and approved by the Billings Parking Board.  The equipment was to be financed through the sale of parking property, however the purchase of the property fell through resulting in the project being tabled.  The selected vendor was recontacted when funds became available.

City Council may:

• Approve the recommendation to award Flash Parking the contract in an amount not to exceed $500,000, or;
• Disapprove the recommendation.  If the project is not awarded, the project will need to find another source of funding.

The project was not originally budgeted in FY20.  Approval of this contract will require a budget amendment.  If approved, a budget amendment wil be included as part of the next quarterly budget amendments.  The project will use Tax Increment Bonds included with the Two-Way Conversion Project for North 29th and North 30th.