CALDWELL, Idaho — This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
The city of Caldwell settled on a new downtown parking fee schedule at its meeting Tuesday night.
Not that the decision has come without some deliberation and debate.
When the meters are installed, paid parking would cost $1 per hour, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays and holidays will be free. It will take weeks to install the meters, and the entire system will be in place no earlier than Jan. 15, Mayor Jarom Wagoner said.
The council decided at a November meeting to resume the public parking fee schedule hearing on Tuesday night, as previously reported. Tuesday night, the council first voted on whether to push the public hearing on the matter to January, resulting in an evenly split vote, with Diana Register, Chuck Stadick and Geoff Williams voting in favor, and Brad Doty, Chris Allgood and John McGee voting against. Wagoner broke the tie by voting against, allowing the hearing to proceed.
Following presentations from city staff, two public testimonies and council discussion, the council voted on adopting the fee schedule, once again splitting the vote. This time, those who voted to push the hearing to January — Register, Stadick and Williams — voted against adopting the fee schedule, while those in favor of having the hearing on Tuesday — Doty, Allgood and McGee — voted in favor. Wagoner broke the tie, voting to adopt the fee schedule.
It could take 10 weeks or more for the parking company, The Car Park, to install the meters and needed signage, said Steven Jenkins, the city’s economic development director, and council members expressed a desire to wait to implement the system until the conclusion of the city’s Winter Wonderland lights display, which ends on Jan. 8.
The vote comes following months of city council workshops, studies, community input at two open houses, and the council voting to accept a proposal from The Car Park — a Boise-based parking company — to implement and run the new downtown Caldwell parking system.
FEE SCHEDULE PASSES WITH MINIMAL CHANGES
The main change to the proposed fee schedule from previous discussions is that parking will be $1 per hour on all paid parking days, rather the previously proposed $0.50 per hour for Saturdays. Though the idea of a reduced Saturday fee had come from public input at open houses, analysis showed that it would result in a revenue decrease of about $20,000 per year and make parking enforcement on Saturdays cost prohibitive, Jenkins said.
The new parking system establishes one paid parking area of downtown, as well as three parking lots located by the train tracks between Fifth and 10th avenues, according to information about downtown parking on the city’s website. The yellow lot is permit-only for downtown employees and residents of a new apartment building; the green lot is free, three-hour parking; and the blue lot is free parking with no time limit.
‘THIS IS NOT A DICTATORSHIP’
At the November meeting, the council voted to continue the public hearing on the fee schedule until December, citing a desire to have more business owners provide testimony. On Tuesday, Councilwoman Diana Register asked the council to push the public hearing on the fee schedule to January, saying that while she believes meters are necessary, she had spoken to business owners that said they would not be able to give input on Tuesday.
“Our community deserves to be heard, and it is absolutely our job to shape our vote (based) on what information our constituents give us,” Register said, reading from a prepared statement. “This is not a dictatorship and what happens in the city should not solely be based on the preferences of the mayor and council.”
Register moved to delay the public hearing, resulting in a split vote, with Wagoner’s tie-breaking “no” vote allowing it to proceed.
Two downtown business owners and one person representing a business owner were signed up to speak.
Christina Rock, owner of SpectaGals Optical and Gift Boutique, signed up to provide neutral testimony. Rock said she was not opposed to metered parking, having moved from a larger city 12 years ago. But she wondered if the city would even be discussing paid parking if it actually enforced its three-hour parking limit.
“My goodness, guys, we have people that are parked there all day long, and we’ve done nothing about it,” Rock said. “If we had done something about that in the beginning, I don’t even think we’d be here right now because it’s that big of a deal.”
Jenkins said that the parking study on downtown indeed showed that 50% of cars parked downtown were parked there for more than three hours. However, such a system only allows the city to earn revenue from fines, “a politically unpopular revenue source with high collection costs,” Jenkins said. It also does not deter people from simply moving their car every so often to a different spot, he said.
During the council’s discussion, Allgood said that the city is facing a parking challenge because leaders a decade ago came together to solve the city’s challenge at the time: convincing people to visit the city’s downtown.
“We’ve got a new challenge on our hands because we were successful,” Allgood said. “I grew up here. I don’t like the idea of stopping at the store and having to put some money in the parking meter, but that’s life. We’re not the same place we were 20, 30 years ago.”
Williams and Register said that they liked they idea of metered parking but were concerned about discrepancies between Jenkins’s presentations, and would prefer to vote on a plan where certain details were smoothed out. For example, one of Jenkins’s slides still listed the $0.50 cent per hour Saturday rate, instead of the revised $1 per hour rate.
“I agree with Councilor Williams and I really wished that we would have allowed the extra month to have that conversation and solidify the plan,” Register said, adding, “it didn’t seem like a big ask.”
Ahead of voting to adopt the fee schedule, and breaking the council’s tie, Wagoner said, “I do believe we have had quite a bit of discussion, as was mentioned, and I think we’re going to have people in favor, people against regardless of how long it goes on. I think it’s time to make a decision and move forward in that regard.”
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.
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