The actions currently before the City Council for consideration are necessary to implement the Comprehensive Parking Management Plan, comply with state law, and set parking fines and fees.  While Title 9 is being revised for these purposes, certain administrative and clerical matters are also being addressed.  The proposed revisions to Title 9 would also clarify that funds from fines associated with parking violations are not a part of the Comprehensive Parking Management Program Special Revenue Fund. 

Adoption of this ordinance and resolution are not expected to have financial impacts not already anticipated by prior City Council actions.  The current City Budget includes these anticipated revenues and expenses.  The current actions further codify, clarify, and implement the Comprehensive Parking Management Plan adopted by the City Council in January of 2016.

Adoption of this ordinance and resolution are not expected to have policy impacts not already anticipated by prior City Council actions.  The City Council established the policies associated with ParkFlag by adoption of the Comprehensive Parking Management Plan in January of 2016.  The current actions further codify, clarify, and implement the Comprehensive Parking Management Plan.

COUNCIL GOALS:

3) Provide sustainable and equitable public facilities, services, and infrastructure systems in an efficient and effective manner to serve all population areas and demographics.

In January / February 2016, the City Council established the Comprehensive Parking Management Program Special Revenue Fund (a part of Title 9) which stated that "There shall be a separate accounting for all funds collected pursuant to the comprehensive parking management program."  Prior documents and presentations specifically noted that the fines/assessments collected from parking violations would continue to be deposited in the General Fund.  However, the actual language of the adopted code does not distinguish between the monies collected from parking violations within the parking management area and other monies collected as a part of the Comprehensive Parking Management Program Special Revenue Fund.  The change proposed herein clarifies/codifies the original intent that monies associated with parking violations are not a part of the Comprehensive Parking Management Program Special Revenue Fund.

First read of the related ordinance and reading of the resolutions occurred at the January 17, 2017, Council Meeting.

Though anticipated as future City Council actions, the remainder of the proposed changes have not been specifically considered by the City Council previously.  Related decisions have included the adoption of the Comprehensive Parking Management Plan by resolution in January 2016 and the adoption by ordinance of certain other changes to Title 9 in January / February 2016.

The option presented is to adopt the ordinance and resolutions.  Alternatively, the City Council could consider:
1.  Modify any aspect of the ordinance or resolutions as presented. 
2.  Do not adopt the ordinance and resolutions and discontinue implementation of the Comprehensive Parking Management Plan.
3.  Provide staff with other options or direction not stated here.

Currently, Flagstaff has limited amounts of public parking, limited management of the spaces we do have, and limited enforcement of the spaces that are regulated. 
 
The impacts of these circumstances were first manifested in North Downtown some time before 1980 with customers not being able to find convenient parking.  As North Downtown was revitalized in the early 1990’s, spill-over of Downtown parkers into the North End neighborhood began to surface as an issue.  Most recently, spill-over parking in the Southside has not only made it hard for residents to find spaces, but parking habits have been chaotic – with parkers parking on private property and other undesirable behaviors like blocking driveways, fire hydrants, and streets.  The Southside spill-over issue now extends northward consuming the Phoenix Avenue parking lot, the City Hall parking lots, and neighborhoods north of the tracks and west of Milton Road.
 
To address the issues of Downtown parking, and to a lesser extent Southside parking, five parking studies have been commissioned since 1980 and the conclusions have universally been that we need more parking and that the parking we do have needs to be managed.  Buying or building parking, creating more parking, is simple enough though frightfully expensive.  And, in the course of several attempts to address this, the community has been unable to arrive at an equitable and agreeable answer as to who pays for it.  On tackling the issue of management of the limited parking we do have, it becomes clear that the issues and solutions are not only interconnected, but individual neighborhood issues are likely, if not certainly, exacerbated by management of parking in an adjacent district or neighborhood. 
 
Because of these studies, since 2008 at least the parking issues have been well understood and agreed upon.  And, the community has been able to agree that the solution needed to be comprehensive with accord between, and buy-in from, all of the stakeholders.  Thus the current Comprehensive Parking Management Plan is a holistic solution to the known and anticipated parking problems that has support from eleven identified stakeholder groups including the City, the County, Northern Arizona University, and all of the surrounding neighborhoods.  To be clear, while there may still be individuals that have concerns, the plan has been designed as an eleven-way compromise – fairly balancing competing goals and needs, resources, and impacts.
 
Comprehensive Parking Management is fully documented by the Comprehensive Parking Management Plan and the Administrative Guidelines – both of which can be accessed via the “Learn More” button at www.Facebook.com/ParkFlag.  “ParkFlag” is simply a convenient moniker, the branding, for the comprehensive parking management program in Flagstaff.  The following is a brief overview of the parking system that is currently being implemented.
 
The cornerstone of the plan recognizes that parking is not "free" and uses the concept of “pay-to-park” to provide a revenue source for the acquisition of additional parking (long-term solution), but also to change parking behaviors – to manage our currently limited parking supply (short-term solution).  The management of parking is accomplished by several programs, the most notable being Pay-to-park, Employee Permit Parking, Resident Permit Parking, Enforcement, and Demand Reduction.
 
For the most convenient parking spaces in north and south downtown (streets and public parking lots), over one-hundred parking kiosks (multi-space parking meters) are being installed.  Users can also purchase parking rights via a mobile app that will text or email parkers when more time needs to be purchased.  The current two-hour limitation will be removed, allowing the cost of parking to cause judicious use of these convenient parking spaces.  It is anticipated that this parking management strategy will cause there to be more spaces for customers.  The estimated revenue of $1M per year will subsidize the remainder of the parking program and provide the funding for buying or building additional parking in the future.
 
The inevitable result will be that employees and business owners will generally choose not to park in pay-to-park spaces.  So, the plan creates places where employees are allowed to park, located on the fringes of the convenient customer parking but short of the neighborhoods.  It is important to note that there will still be a shortage of parking spaces; there will not be enough parking for all employees; and that employee parking in the neighborhoods will continue.  The final plan includes more than three hundred of these “new” employee parking spaces, notably more than the originally anticipated one-hundred spaces, and arrangements are still being made to acquire yet more spaces.  The management of the City and County facilities by ParkFlag makes even more parking spaces available to employees (and the public) after normal business hours.
 
To manage the existing Southside spill-over parking and the expected spill-over into neighborhoods surrounding the pay-to-park areas, a resident permit parking program is introduced.  Recognizing that on-street parking is a public resource, and necessary for the overall parking system, this program allows for the reservation of one-half of the available parking spaces for property owners.  For fairness and for administrative purposes, these permits will be issued at one per water meter, regardless of whether or not the property is a “residential” use, and regardless of the number of units, number of tenants, and so forth.  Notably, the property owners must get together and by petition ask for the installation of these parking restrictions.
 
The least desirable action by ParkFlag is parking enforcement.  It is hoped that the comprehensive design of our parking, and options offered, will be enough to cause folks to park where desired.  However, it is necessary to backup such hope with stepped up enforcement activities, not only due to the expanded service area, but also to increase the level of service to an effective level.  The plan contemplates an ideal of one enforcement staff for every three hundred managed parking spaces and establishes efficiencies in data management and communication that would have enforcement staff on the street for more hours per day.  In this light and in the interest of customer service, the first “ticket” in any one year will actually be a warning.
 
ParkFlag will immediately invest in NAIPTA ecoPasses that allows small business employees to receive this free bus pass in lieu of their parking permit.  ParkFlag is committed to building bicycle parking facilities as they build parking.  And, one park-n-ride is under consideration presently and ParkFlag and NAIPTA continue discussions of additional park-n-ride opportunities.  These and other parking demand reduction strategies are incorporated into the plan now and as items of further development as ParkFlag moves forward.
 
It is also constructive to understand the Comprehensive Parking Management Program Special Revenue Fund.  In January / February of 2016, when the City Council adopted the first set of changes to Title 9, a special revenue fund was created for ParkFlag establishing it as an enterprise fund.  This means that the revenues and expenses for parking are generally a closed system with the monies reserved for parking related expenses.  As part of this closed system, there is a repayment of the start-up funds over the first few years of operations.  In addition, the ordinance specifies that at least twenty percent of the gross receipts is further restricted for use in buying or building additional parking supply.

In November of 2016, the City Council approved several purchase contracts for the kiosks and software.  The kiosks, multi-space parking meters, will be provided by Parkeon, Inc., an company with world-wide experience in pay-to-park solutions.  The enforcement software will be provided by NuPark, Inc., another firm with extensive parking management experience and a common partner of Parkeon, Inc.  At the same time, KCS, Inc. was authorized to move forward with the purchase of the signs (approximately 1,000 signs in 500 locations) and installation of the signs and kiosks.  Over the next few months, KCS, Inc. crews will be working all around the downtown area getting ready for the March 1, 2017 soft-start date.  The system is intended to be fully operational on May 1, 2017.

Currently Title 9 indicates that parking violations have a fine assessment of not less than ten dollars (Court fees are additional).  Thus the actual fine amounts currently are established by the Courts.  This code change establishes minimum fines to be assessed by the Courts.  For the most part, and except as discussed next, the schedule of fines currently used by the Courts has been utilized.

Pursuant to the adopted plan, the fines for meter violations are proposed to escalate each time a person gets the same ticket within a one year period.  The "first ticket" warning will be incorporated into ParkFlag operations as ticketing policy, and as a warning and not a citation with a fine, it has been excluded from the citation fine schedule.  The first citation fine amount is the same as the current fine amount so that when combined with the warning, a person can have two violations and only pay what they currently pay for just one.  However, the third violation doubles such that the total cost of three violations per year is the same as getting three violations currently.  The fourth ticket costs even more.  This escalating fine amount has been proposed to apply for both meter violations and overtime parking violations.

The Parking Fee Schedule addresses the cost of various permits, meter rates, and transaction or convenience fees. 

Currently Title 9 indicates that fines/assessments for parking violations are collected by the Municipal Courts.  In the past the City in fact used an administrative collection procedure (within Management Services) when citations were not being contested.  Moving forward, it is anticipated that an administrative procedure will again be used for uncontested violations.  Certain changes have been incorporated to accommodate such a procedure.  These changes have been constructed so that there is flexibility as to which City office would be the collection point - as determined by the City Manager.

The changes to Title 9 in January / February 2016 created the Office of the Parking Manager and included a process for appeals.  Such appeals would be for matters other than parking violations (which are handled by the Municipal Courts).  Some language changes clarify this distinction.  The process as written was an appeal to the City Manager and a further process for appeal of the City Manager's decision to the City Council.  As proposed herein, the process for appeal to the City Council is eliminated.

In January / February 2016, the City Council established the Comprehensive Parking Management Program Special Revenue Fund (a part of Title 9) which stated that "There shall be a separate accounting for all funds collected pursuant to the comprehensive parking management program."  Prior documents and presentations specifically noted that the fines collected from parking violations would continue to be deposited in the General Fund.  However, the actual language of the adopted code does not distinguish between fines collected from parking violations within the parking management area and other monies collected as a part of the Comprehensive Parking Management Program Special Revenue Fund.  The change proposed herein clarifies/codifies the original intent that fines associated with parking violations are not a part of the Comprehensive Parking Management Program Special Revenue Fund.
 

Addressing the parking issues enhances the economic vitality of the north Downtown and for the commercial portions of Southside.  It will also enhance the property values in the surrounding residential districts.  Currently, unmanaged parking is negatively impacting these properties and having an active plan and effort that leads to constructing parking will further alleviate the negative impacts.

Managing our existing parking supply will allow us to use our resources more efficiently, ultimately reducing expenditures for constructing parking.  Notably, an over-supply of parking is also harmful to the economic vitality of a community.  The highest benefit is achieved through parking management.

Traditionally, the cost of public parking has been borne by the general tax payers of the City.  Thus what appears to be "free parking" is more accurately known as "subsidized parking".  If adopted, this program would establish that users will pay for the use of public parking spaces in high parking demand areas.

The community involvement in the development of the Comprehensive Parking Management Plan was extensive.  This included a Steering Committee comprised of representatives of the City, the County, NAIPTA, Flagstaff Downtown Business Improvement and Revitalization District, and Northern Arizona University.  City staff participation included representatives of the Economic Vitality Division, Police Division, Courts Division, Traffic Program, Streets Section, Legal Department, and the Planning and Development Services Section.  Neighborhood groups such as the Southside Community Association and the Good Neighbor Coalition, the North End Neighborhood, the La Plaza Vieja Neighborhood, and the Townsite Neighborhood were an integral part of the process.  Outreach efforts included presentations and discussions with organized groups, and open houses (with mailed notices) for each neighborhood and for all together, and one-on-one meetings with residents, business patrons, visitors, employees, business and property owners, and students as customers of our parking system.
 
The continued development of the system, in the form of the Administrative Guidelines, included the same eleven identified stakeholder groups and the continuation of the outreach techniques previously used.  Before finalizing the document, a series of open houses (with mailed notices) were conducted to share the final outcome.  The outreach in this phase has been supplemented with the development of a public website (www.ParkFlag.org - under construction), a Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/ParkFlag), City Hall lobby television materials, radio spots, print articles and advertising, and a print flyer.  For the last two months, the Interim Parking Manager has met one-on-one with five to eight residents, businesses, employees, and property owners per week.  The next issue of Cityscape will include an article about the parking system.  The Flagstaff Downtown Business Alliance has been engaged for an extensive marketing campaign as the system is implemented.
 
The items currently before the City Council are a part of the Administrative Guidelines and thus extensive community outreach was accomplished in that light.