HomeMy WebLinkAbout11/7/2023 Item 6a, Russo
Chris Russo <
To:E-mail Council Website; Rice, Jennifer; Johnson, Lee
Subject:In support of San Luis Obispo
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Thank you for your time last night in hearing out the suggestions regarding parking for the downtown. The city is at a
tough point as you want to ensure the decisions you make lead to good habits of downtown being top of mind. The city is
at a tipping point where you want to prevent customers from avoiding downtown and creating bad habits that will be hard
to change in the future.
In my 2 minutes I hope my suggestions resonated with you. In regards to goals and metrics to achieve those goals, my
concerns was it seemed the focus was on fees to pay for the debt balancing short term vs long term impact. My
suggestion for the goals is instead to increase sales tax revenues and reduce vacancy rates. Working backwards from
those goals will help the city council make good decisions. For example, if sales tax revenues are going down and
vacancies are going up, then the wrong decisions are being made and the city council should re-evaluate those decisions.
As far as the debt, you should be able to take sales tax revenue gains and use them to pay down the debt. I understand
the parking structures need to be self-sufficient, but they are their to support the goals - not unto themselves. Increasing
sales tax revenues (without raising taxes) will bring in revenue that can offset the parking structure costs. Keeping those
costs low will enable more customers downtown further increasing revenue. This is a great closed loop system that could
be referred to as the flywheel of economics.
Lastly I think the city could benefit from some sort of advisory council to give guidance on how to achieve those
goals. Seeking select citizens, landlords, business and tech partners to give feedback on how the city can achieve the
goals I believe is critical.
I'm about to retire from Amazon and would be happy to volunteer my time towards working with the city to meet these
goals either as the citizen or tech role. I'm seeking no compensation; just a way to give back freely to the city.
Thank you!
Chris Russo
191 Earthwood Lane
508-328-1892
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