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HomeMy WebLinkAbout11/7/2023 Item 6a, Otto Garrett Otto < To:E-mail Council Website Subject:Item 6a - Parking Rates and Alternatives This message is from an External Source. Use caution when deciding to open attachments, click links, or respond. Dear City Council, It is understandable that businesses are looking for ways the city can continue to help keep their businesses going strong. First off I find it odd why an authorised issue a RFP also has an action item regarding the very thing the study is supposed to help you make a decision about. I have seen the many letters from business owners and community members you have received, so there is a feeling of urgency to make a change. Staff seems ready to make major financial decisions on the City Council's behalf without knowing whether or not there is a correlation of parking and downtown revenues, just anecdotes. There are so many questions and alternatives are not explored or answered in the staff report. This may have to be the costly change proposed based on very limited data. It is completely unfair that staff have put you in this situation to give away free parking, or seem unfriendly to downtown businesses. Staff really should have provided more alternatives, attempted to answer some basic questions, and provided data to help you make an educated decision. -Is there a difference in downtown business revenues versus city wide revenues? How does that compare to other cities in the area? -Are their other economic factors that have been at play affecting retail and restaurant businesses? (e.g. shortage of workers, higher pays for workers, inflation, cost of goods) -Has use of paid parking increased or decreased? -Are there better ways to support businesses or provide easier access without single occupant vehicle centric subsidies that would be more in line with our City's major goals and guiding documents such as sustainable economic development, downtown concept, climate action, sustainable and active transportation, leading by example? None of these questions are explored or answered in the staff report, so how are you supposed to make a decision that affects hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and is counter productive to so many of our other city goals? What does it say about our city if we decide to prioritize vehicle trips over transit or safe walking or biking infrastructure? What does it say about our ability to commit to the necessary changes for a healthy planet and community? Will we always cave to vehicle convenience because that's all we know after a century of car centric policy and infrastructure? Parking is always an easy target and no matter what you do in areas with a high density of people it will never be enough. It doesn't matter if you kept fees the same and didn't build the parking structure, people would still be upset at the lack of parking despite evidence otherwise. If we attempted to make parking and access to downtown so easy to drive, what does that do to the feeling of the downtown? Take a look around the world at some of the best urban cores. You will find that most of them are popular because of the lack of vehicles. They have made efforts to make the areas primarily for people walking, strolling, and riding because who wants to sit out for a coffee while a diesel truck idles at 1 the stop light next to you? By inviting cheap and convenient car access into the urban core you would effectively be doing the opposite of helping these businesses. I have experience as a business owner (also located downtown), as an engineer, as a frequent visitor to downtown businesses, and as a community advocate. As a business owner I am empathetic to the struggles to find/afford employees, rent, or deal with economics affecting work/clients/customers. As an engineer I work within my area of expertise. I might have some ideas about some stuff outside my expertise, but I don't make critical design decisions on those other matters. My point is that a lot of these business owners probably know a lot about their industry and how to run their business, but maybe some of these city planning questions are not their expertise. We look to the experts (staff or consultants) to help understand these issues around parking, transportation, city planning, global/national/state/local economics. And we look to our elected officials to take a critical look at the data, think about the future, and try to make the best decision for the community at large. I can't engineer a solution without data, just like you can't make the best decision for our city without some data. As a local visitor to downtown and other areas around town I can also tell you that the locations I go to visit have very little to do with parking. Some of it has to do with the ability to safely get to/from by bike as that is my prefered mode of travel for a plethora of reasons/benefits. But a lot of the decisions on where I spend my money for eateries or meetups has more to do with how family friendly it is. I like establishments that have a safe and fun atmosphere where I don't have to keep my 4 year old contained to the table. So few places downtown check that box, so maybe as the SLO family populations keep growing, the downtown needs to adapt to attract families like mine to come downtown to spend our money there. As a community advocate I can say that the city has done a good job focusing on smart development such that residential units will have safe access and close access to amenities such as groceries, restaurants, and retail so that people can quickly walk and bike there. All of these big developments are on the outskirts of town and it's reasonable to assume that as people have more choices close to their homes they are likely to frequent those locations, which may take away some business from downtown businesses. Though people may not choose to come downtown, it's not necessarily a bad thing that people support their neighborhood amenities, especially if it reduces VMT in addition to also supporting local business. One of my favorite places to visit is Lincoln Deli since it's somewhere I can safely let my son bike or scooter too, they have a nice patio, they have games that he can play, and a place where we can hang out with neighbors. I get the desire for many of these businesses to capitalize on the holiday season. People spend a lot of money on gifts and eating out this time of year. There may be parking woes, but that's an ever present complaint. People will come downtown when it's welcoming to walk around and there are festivities happening. The city spends tons to transform downtown into a winter wonderland to make a visit downtown one of the many holiday experiences worth the effort and $6 parking fee. It seems to me that the City is constantly spending to support downtown. A $53M parking structure and free parking are pretty big asks. And sometimes businesses need to close down. Long time business owners may need to finally retire, or maybe there just aren't enough people eating frozen yogurt to support six fro-yo shops in a stone's throw from each other. What is trendy one year, may not be trending the next. We can't look at each closure as some failure of the city to accommodate. As we are seeing new places are also opening up which ultimately breathes new life into a space that may have not been fulfilling a need. In doing so it may attract more people (not vehicles) to come visit, and in the process they may see something along their stroll and see something they want at an existing establishment. As a city, 2 you cannot ensure all business will stay open, nor is it a good thing to preserve businesses, downtown, or the City as a snapshot of a specific time. It's also not fair to hyper focus the desires of downtown businesses over the longer term goals of the community. Many of us in the community are looking to you as city leaders to make the decisions best for future of our city and downtown. I am confident that we will all adapt. We just need to give things more than a couple months. Some thoughts on near term alternatives parking revenues could be used for instead of subsidizing parking to help downtown businesses: -Create car free Sundays along Higuera and Marsh (short term over the holiday season, or maybe well into the future). The city does it every Thursday, why not gain the benefits on another day. Retailers can expand into the sidewalks and streets for higher visibility. Restaurants can set up some small tables outside. -Provide a micro-transit service similar to Truckee's TART Connect. This could be replicated for destinations to/from the downtown area while being paid for through the parking fund at the same time helping meet some of our unmet transit needs. -Increase trolley frequently and/or add other hop-on/hop off shuttle van routes as spoked in/out of downtown. Again helping meet unmet transit needs and reducing single occupant vehicle trips. -Allow SLO county residents to have a prepaid parking account for a reduced hourly rate (on top of the existing local hour of free parking) -Allow business to purchase parking validation vouchers at a reduced rate to hand out to customers. -Adjust the buy local program to include prepaid parking vouchers as part of the rewards program. -Make downtown feel safer for biking and walking by taking a bigger step in making DT car-lite, adding more pedestrian malls, and banning right-on-red turns. Monterey still feels pretty car centric, so I think we can do better. At the very least please don't make any long term decision regarding parking rates. Though I don't think it is warranted and will skew any data you could have gathered regarding correlation between parking fees and downtown revenues, put a limit on any handouts to expire at end of the year so you have time to really explore this issue in better detail. Garrett Otto San Luis Obispo resident and business owner 3