City Council Work Session — August 12, 2025

Good evening, Fort Collins. The time is now 6 p.m. and I call the work session to order. Will the city manager please review tonight's work session agenda?

Yes, we have just one item tonight. And maybe let me start by welcome back after a three-week council meeting break.

It's nice to be back.

And tonight we're going to be, again, focusing on just one topic, and that is our downtown parking services and system optimization.

Great. Is there a stop? There is.

Are you ready to dive right in? Got to get back in this meeting rhythm. So we are looking forward to tonight's conversation about the downtown parking system. As we all know, downtown Fort Collins is a part of our community that we love and treasure. And parking is a really important component of that overall downtown ecosystem. I also know that this is something that is of interest and importance to city council. And this isn't the first time we've talked about it. So as we approach tonight's conversation, you're going to hear us taking many things into consideration. The desire to support and preserve that healthy, vibrant downtown and our downtown businesses. The need for safe, accessible, and well-maintained infrastructure. And then also equally important, the need for a fiscally sustainable model. And so we're going to give you some additional insight into the finances. Since we were here in last October of 23, you know, a lot of work has occurred. And I want to just acknowledge that a little bit of this has been go slow to go fast. So we're working in partnership with the DDA on the study and making sure that we really get the scope of that right. Some of it has been a few unexpected bumps or things that slowed us down. So some of the conversations around the Oak Remington lot early on, even identifying the funding for the project. So I just want to acknowledge that it has taken us a bit to get to this point. And now tonight is a really important alignment check with council, I would say, because our intent after this alignment check is that we then would go forward over the next two months for robust outreach with the downtown community around what an implementation plan would be. to start anticipating that in early 2026. And so, again, I just wanted to sort of reemphasize the timeline of how we got here, the importance of tonight's check-in. And I am now going to turn it over to Drew Brooks, who is our Deputy Director in Planning, Development, and Transportation, to kick us off and introduce the rest of the team.

Thank you, Kelly, and thank you, everyone. We're really excited to have this conversation tonight. I feel as Kelly mentioned, it feels like it's been a kind of a long time coming to get us here But we feel like we've got a lot of work that we've done in the front end that will help us Kind of get this process moving as quickly as possible So if you want to go to the next slide

So tonight we're going to talk about kind of our strategic alignment and goals

talk about the fiscal picture and what we call indicators of demand study highlights and recommendations and then we'll talk about those next steps so our

questions for you this evening are what questions do council members have on the

supply and demand and financial analysis of our downtown parking system and then

our second question is what feedback do council members have on next steps to implement paid on-street parking and other proposed changes to the parking

system. As always, we want to highlight our strategic alignment here with transportation mobility number three, transform the parking system to better align supply and demand and incentivize sustainable outcomes in a place-based

manner across the city. Then would also highlight these other two highlighted

options in downtown specifically the existing parking model incentivizes additional vehicle trips as the spaces that are held for longer-term parking garages cost more than the spaces better suited for short stays on street.

This results in a revenue model that is not sustainable for the long-term maintenance of the parking structures, the parking services team, and increases

congestion downtown. And then the second one in 2023, City Council supported advancing a work stream to look at new models for pricing downtown parking.

And so now we're going to hop over to the goals, and I'm going to kick this over to Eric Kesselberg who is our parking services director good evening mayor

mayor portent members of council I really appreciate taking the time to to

talk with us about the parking downtown some of the goals that were informed by

the changing conditions from the 2013 parking study to today is what parking services identified I'll read through those the first one being support a

vibrant and active downtown economy the second being a customer focused system

that provides that customer choice for all parkers and modes and then a parking system that is financially sustainable and aligned with our community goals.

To dive into these just a little bit, the first goal being supportive, vibrant, and active downtown economy. What we really want to do is make it easier for people to reach their destination.

This would improve the public's perception of ease of parking and availability while balancing that parking demand across our system.

And we do call it a system. We don't call it a parking space. We want people to come to the downtown parking system

We know that We want to incentivize the long-term parkers to park in the underutilized parking garages And then we also want to incentivize use to support that parking space turnover which supports the economic vitality of the downtown community

and then longer term we want to Appropriately place some parking garages or some additional inventory around the periphery of the downtown which would really allow us to just reimagine some of that downtown space.

The second goal, the customer-focused system that provides choice for all parkers and modes.

What we do know, people generally value choice, and we want to provide them with a different menu of options.

So we want to ensure that the most convenient spaces are available to those who value them the most.

We want to make sure that we maximize the parking system in its entirety,

And we want to take away that punitive model and leverage as a port of customer option

Solution so we we want the customer to decide how long they stay and where they stay and

Really the goal of reducing ticket writing for people that come downtown

The third goal being a parking system that is financially sustainable and aligned with our community goals and this focuses on Utilizing our revenues to offset our operation, but also for asset management Reduce the trolling or the vehicle searching for the available parking space Which would decrease traffic congestion and then also lower carbon emissions the downtown area and then also support and encourage some different modes and transportation choices and Then the last point being we want to ensure that people who need parking are the ones paying for it We don't want the vehicles or people that don't own vehicles or people that don't come downtown to subsidize our parking system Just to ground us a little bit on the previous plans there was a 2013 parking plan and then a 2017 downtown plan which also had a robust section of parking Embedded in it and then also that plant both those plans talked about that upside down pricing which essentially is the most close and convenient parking spaces are free, whereas the longer away or less convenient parking spaces do have a cost associated with them being the parking structures, which leads to, again, that trolling, those vehicles looking for that prime or the optimal spot. This is coined as parking structure avoidance, again, due to our upside down parking model. Looking on our revenue picture, so the operational revenue expenses of parking services, And I do want to touch base on the revenue the blue bar there This is over the last 10 years 2016 through current, but our revenue is made up right now of citations of Hourly users or the transit using the parking structures and service lot and also permit sales of Long-term use in the parking structures and also our residential park permit zones, which is a little bit outside of downtown so you can see in this graph that our revenue and expenses for parking services is generally tracked pretty closely, and you'll notice the imbalance in 2020 through 24, where that was the impact of the pandemic. And through our recovery, Park and Services did receive some general fund, offsetting funds, a subsidy just to manage our operation. And going forward 2025 and forward, we're not receiving any general fund subsidies in Park and Services.

Looking at past maintenance and capital the green bar is our general fund and you see it's relatively Negligible minus a couple bigger projects. We had the parking center technology in 2018 which we leaned on general fund dollars for and then also you see the offsetting revenue for

The pandemic impact on our operation. So 21 through 24 that was funding

Subsidy for operation and then looking at the American Rescue Plan Act. That's the purple bar that was required

For our parking structure maintenance repairs to get those current after some deferment

Early in 2020 and then also elevator repairs in the Civic Center parking structure and it should be noted Had we not received the federal funding? We would have had to go to a different source for that funding source to get those repairs and the elevators current

So this is our current maintenance and capital. Looking at the blue bar with the green stack, that's our revenue plus the general fund subsidy. You'll see that through recovery, we were still receiving that general fund revenue, which didn't result in the parking surfaces having a pretty healthy reserve balance. Again, going 25 and forward, we're not receiving that general fund subsidy. And to note, we do have a couple pretty large projects, which is going to lean on our general fund dollars to accomplish, one being the Civic Center Parking Structure stairway that's currently underway, and it should be open before the holiday season this year.

And then the other one being the municipal court expansion and parking services having to relocate offices, and that did require us to contribute $450,000 to make that move happen, both of which come from our parking services reserves.

One thing I'll add on this slide is that stairwell replacement of 1.2 million dollars in 2019 we did a condition assessment on the Civic Center parking structure and at that time The estimate for just doing maintenance on that particular stairwell was stairwell was under $50,000 and then we deferred that maintenance during the pandemic and then when we reassessed it that stairwell had Deteriorated such that it needed to be replaced as now a 1.2 million dollar project So this just gives you kind of an example of if we defer maintenance for very long it can add up very very quickly

Thank you. So looking at supply and demand this is of our downtown system Parking services did conduct a series of point in time data collection with our mobile license plate recognition system we scanned for occupancy unique user and also duration of stay on 24 block faces in our downtown area which equates to about 945 parking spaces and For industry standard a block face becomes unhealthy or at that tipping point of perception of parking availability at that 80 to 85 percent

Occupancy so looking at the graph we have three years worth of or three separate points of time collection spring at 23 in the blue spring at 24 in the yellow in the spring of 25 in the green and this does show that additional

occupancy strain is is increasing in our parking inventory I'll highlight midday

of 25 data that's a lunchtime hour that's in that average of threshold of 80 percent occupancy and then the dinner crowd that evening is at that unhealthy

level and then the the creep of the early afternoon and late afternoon of 25 we're starting to unhealthy threshold as well

to showcase a average and this is the spring of 2025

this is the evening or the dinner crowd the average occupancy across the 24 block faces that we did

scan with our mobile lpr system was an 89 occupancy this showcases that 22 of the 24 block faces that we

took data of were at that unhealthy level.

And then also to note that some of them are 100% or close to 100% occupied.

And then also a couple of the block faces that did not meet the 80% threshold are right at that threshold of hitting that unhealthy level.

So a new bit of technology that we're working with is something called Placer AI. And something I failed to mention at the beginning was that this project has been a joint effort with the Downtown Development Authority, the DDA. They have been an invaluable resource in helping us both financially with this project, but also with helping us with our engagement efforts. And they have provided this data because they have contracted with Placer AI, which is a data analysis firm that uses cell phone data. If you have any app on your phone that is collecting location data, it is likely that data is being sold in some way, shape, or form and then analyzed. And Placer AI is one of those companies that looks at that data. The city also contracts with Placer AI through our economic development part of our organization.

But the DDA helped us to kind of analyze what the, I guess you'd say, an indicator of demand for downtown visits. And so we basically geofenced there that map that you're looking at, which is our study area, and looked at what are the visits to that area. And so just for example, in 2024, people who don't live in that study area that visit the downtown is about 2.1 million visitors. But there's also 12.4 unique visits. So those people coming in and out multiple times. What we also saw was that the average daily time spent in the study area on a given day is about 117 minutes. That's pretty telling because that's right at about two hours which means that more than likely our two-hour time limits on street are kind of driving how long somebody spends time downtown. So this is a heat map that is kind of showing you where people are coming from, where they're traveling from to come to our downtown. And I will note that this slide has changed from what was in

your packet originally. Hopefully you saw the update for that. But we wanted to

clarify this just a little bit more. As you can see, you know, you have folks that are coming from all along the Front Range all the way down to Pueblo, all the way up to Laramie and Cheyenne and and parts unknown out from there. So the folks who are visiting our downtown are not just from Fort Collins. I think this

shows this just a little bit better that, you know, you're looking at kind of

where people live based on that cell phone data who visit our downtown and I

think it's about 55% or so of those folks live outside of Fort Collins so

they live outside of the area codes in Fort Collins so talking about the

citations issued in our downtown system so parking services processes lower 40 thousand parking citations per year and just the showcases Drew's point is I'll driving the people to leave within that two hours because 25% of our citations of the last three years were for people staying beyond the two hours so about 10,000 11,000 citations per year were based on people staying longer than they should have now going back to the punitive versus customer choice and so we're effectively forcing people to leave the system this is supported by the dda's to 2023 downtown fort colin's parking and travel habit survey which indicated that 80 of respondents typically spend more than two hours visiting downtown again going back to that customer choice versus the versus the city ie parking services let them know they stayed too long

quickly to talk about oak remington service lot this is a topic of conversation with the 163 parking spaces that the service lot currently has and we did some point in time data collection on occupancy as well the graph on the left is april or daytime hours which shows daytime it was

manageable as far as occupancy but then in the late afternoon early evening that threshold of oxby started becoming at capacity in that red line being the 163 parking spaces in that lot the graph on the right is the May that's more evening hours of occupancy so dinner

crowd through 10 p.m. and we show that the lot is at capacity and of course these are short durations of data collection but it does show that story that that lot is

utilized particularly in the evening hours back to that placer AI data the DDA They also helped us do a similar analysis of the Oak Remington lot using the Placer AI data. So you'll also see we geofenced that particular area and found that in 2024, we had about 107,000 visitors to just that parking lot. And then the visits were more than double that at about 213,000. So we have a pretty heavy usage of folks actually just coming to that lot. I think that's probably it on that. And this just shows a picture of what the data shows. So the upper left photo from the security cameras in the Oak Remington lot at Wednesday evening at 6 p.m. It shows that lot at capacity.

And the lower picture on a Saturday at 9 p.m. It shows that lot at capacity with vehicles actively trolling for space availability.

All right. Great. Thank you. So we didn't put a question slide in here, but we did want to pause because there's a lot of information.

And before we get into the study recommendations, to just create some space if you all had any questions specifically about the supply and the indicators.

Thank you for the presentation. I guess my biggest questions are about slides 13 and 19. So those were the ones that are showing the Oak Remington parking lot usage and then also the street parking capacity. Do we have concurrent data for both of those slides about usage within the garages? Because I know at least with Oak and Remington, there's a parking garage directly, Caddy Corner. Are those full as well? I just feel like there's an ease of a lot that a garage doesn't have, and I do wonder if it's...

We did at the same time we were pulling data for occupancy in the surface lots We did pull some information from the parking structures and we did find on average there about 40 to 50 percent Full the same time we're doing the data collection a full parking structure We would consider about 70 80 percent and when we get a hundred percent occupied structures usually like a evening Weekend evening or maybe like a special event such as you know taste of our columns or focal max But a 70% structure is considered full, but our average is about 40 to 50%.

So we're 20 to 30% below capacity for the parking structures, even when these lots are full. Is that an accurate?

There is capacity, and this parking structure is correct.

Thank you.

I had a question.

It's on one of your first slides, and it might be a little picky, but I was just confused by what you meant,

but I said ensure that each – can we go back to that? Ensure is one of the philosophical slides.

Ensure the highest value for space for the user, something like that. I didn't know what you meant by that.

It's way back at the beginning. I should have paused you then.

There it is.

Ensure the most convenient spaces are available to those who value them the most.

You mean by ability to pay? or I'm thinking disability. I mean, that would be a high value. So what does that mean? Yes, to your second point. So if that space has a dollar associated with it, the people that want to park closer would have to pay for that convenience of that parking because we'd still offer parking availability. You just want to be at that same pricing threshold. So you could go from the on-street paid model to a surface lot, which would have a lesser dollar value, to a parking structure to the periphery which you have to walk a little bit or take alternative modes. So it's a pricing structure. The pricing structure of convenience of the parking space. Okay. And then I

assume that we'd couple that with the handicap spots too. I mean it wouldn't be solely that because it was solely that. I mean I'm getting nitpicky but it just struck me as the highest ability to pay I know what you but we have to I feel more comfortable if I knew we were pairing that with some

Yes, the need for accessible spaces doesn't go away

Correct, and we already have code that allows ADA vehicles to park That's what I thought When I saw that I was like, oh That would not affect that

Just thanks for going back there

I have a question about the kind of study and so i think the next session is that really about paid on street parking is should

i ask it now okay so i think with the remington lot kind of updates i i guess maybe i'm confused or maybe i had a misunderstanding of what was going to be brought forward because i don't think anyone was saying that the lot wasn't used so of course like also it's a highly permitted lot so of course it's going to be full i i guess my assumption may be incorrect was that we are looking at the whole capacity and system of downtown. And so to Melanie's point of like what's happening in the garage and like if Remington Oak parking lot went away, can the system absorb those parking spots? We are talking about another parking garage close to the city

building. So was that part of the study or? No, no, there was not a specific look at, I mean, obviously there were, there is a look at just kind of what our capacity is and what the availability is. I think what we wanted to highlight was that I think there was a perception that that lot was underused and we wanted to make sure that we gave everyone the full picture that there is a very extensive demand for that particular lot. And so if we were to change that lot in some way, shape, or form, we would have to be very intentional about what we do to replace that parking or

displace that parking, I guess I would say. Well, right, but I mean, of course it's used. It's a lot. It's convenient. It's downtown. But the question is, do we have the capacity to absorb those spots if it goes away? So is that something that we aren't looking at? We're not looking at the capacity of downtown parking as a whole?

So I think maybe as we get into the study recommendations, we can talk a little bit more about as you implement some of these changes, how does that impact the overall capacity? And my understanding is that that was part of the issue with the timing, is that we're not going to be able to definitively answer that question until we implement some of these changes. So I believe the desire, it's clear that we know we are asking for that information and want to have a better handle on the system. And some of it's a sequencing of when we're able to answer those questions. Which I know is unsatisfying, but it is the honest answer.

I would also add that if we implement this particular program to go to on-street paid parking, if we are doing it right, we are going to increase demand for our parking structures. And so we want to make sure that the capacity that we have today for removing, say, a lot or something of that, we still have some of that capacity at a later date. So we're we're kind of in that gray area right now where we don't know exactly what we know what we think the impacts of this will be And they could have some pretty significant impacts on our inventory in the in the parking structures

Okay, well, I will wait for the rest of the presentation However, I'm curious when at the work session when we talked about the Remington Elk parking lot Majority of council supported an analysis that that parking lot wasn't there and what it would look like. So what where is that information?

So, well, go ahead. So, again, I think part of the reason that we wanted to come forward now is a full analysis that would have changed the scope of the presentation or the scope of the study is a really significant change. So, as we're moving forward now, we're going to keep building on that. But it really is a completely different scope to look at the whole system until we put some of these things in place.

I think that really should have been clarified when council asked for that to be part of this presentation.

I mean, what I would say is I think the way we're approaching it, Emily, Mayor Protem, is we're, as we're looking at moving forward with the direction that we heard here of getting ready for a September 2026 submittal, we have to figure out alternative for this parking. And so we know that that work needs to occur and that is something that is in progress But it's not that this study is what's going to answer that question. Okay, this is helpful. I think it's just

Getting better at communicating what we're expecting and what so I appreciate it and I'll wait for the rest. Thank you

So, you know I'm seeing your findings a little bit differently because at the work session that we had I kind of got the the impression that the question was, is that parking lot utilized? Thoughts were tossed out that it might sit empty. It's not empty sometimes, but underutilized at times. We thought that there were a lot more parking spaces available than there appears to be in your study. I think upwards of 9,000 or something, many of which are private. And it's far less than that. So two things I've gleaned from your study so far. And that is that we now have a much truer account on the number of spaces that we have. And that secondly, we see that this parking lot is pretty well utilized. The folks who might have said, well, I've gone there and it didn't look like it was very busy. Your numbers are indicating that it is. And for me, that satisfies that question, aside from what Emily was referring to. I think there were those who wondered. There were those within the business community downtown who were saying, it's busy, and those people are shopping with us. And so thank you for that. And that's what I've gleaned so far from your numbers.

Thank you. Melanie. Yeah, just in response to that, I guess I also am really hoping for a more complete picture. I really appreciate the work that's been done so far. But I guess for me, and this is going to seem simplistic, but I think back, you know, when we talked about a moratorium on plastic bags, if we had looked at the percentage of folks who used plastic bags versus cloth bags, and that's what we made the decision on, it wouldn't have been good data because the reality was that the plastic bag was just easier.

And I feel like, yes, the Remington lot is well utilized, but it's because it's easier. I assume a lot of that is because it's easier. So I really do want to see that picture of nearby, especially in parking structures, We are highly invested in people parking their cars. Is there space? Because I just don't think that data in isolation of how full is that lot, the easiest spot to park, is showing the whole picture. So I just look forward to a little more context in future conversations.

Anyone else? Okay. Okay.

Will we have an opportunity to offer ideas about how we feel that we could better utilize our parking structures? Is that part of what our discussion will be?

The question was, will there be an opportunity for ideas about how to better utilize our parking structures? I think, again, what I would just reemphasize to that is the intent of the recommendations that you're going to hear tonight of moving to paid on-street parking, no secret that's what we're recommending that we move to that if it works as expected will inherently start to fill up the garages more right because you're trying to increase turnover bring more people down so some of the capacity that we're seeing right now in our garages we expect to change how much it will change is where it's harder for us to really answer the question at this point but i think that's just like a foundational piece that we're starting from in the same way that we're thinking about convenience we can't necessarily think about the space that's in our garages now as all available capacity because some of what's on street inherently is going to move to those garages as more capacity is available for on street if that makes sense and then i'm about ready to get way out of my depth when it comes to parking so So I'm going to turn it back to the experts if we're ready to talk about the study and the recommendations. MS. Ready? Okay, great. Please go ahead.

I was just going to say one last thing before we move on. I forgot to introduce Allison Redman, who is one of our consultants with Walker Consultants. And then online we also have Drew Wilsey, who is another consultant if we kind of get in the weeds and want to have more questions there.

All right, so the next phase is the study recommendation. Oh, go ahead.

Sorry.

Sorry, I'd just like if, since they're experts and if they're here, I'd just like you to have a green light that when the two of you have something to share that you feel like you can.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. So the study recommendations and strategies and this is how Park and Services reaches our goals This is broken up into the recommended implementation strategies Threefold being short term one to two years or as soon as possible And then also the medium and long term and it's important piece to note that this is not linear It's more fluid, but I'll showcase and talk on just a couple of these points The first one of course expand paid parking to on-street and also the service slots We do consider service slots an extension of on-street parking Implement time limited parking zones around the paid parking area and then align enforcement with the paid and time limited parking so that there's consistent across the system so to be less confusing to our customers and Then the other one I'll touch on is improved Parking wayfinding signage. We want people to know how to get downtown and where to park when they get here and And a lot of supporting stuff such as permit rates rp3 zones and others But we'll talk more about the exploring the governance model This is a partnership with the downtown businesses the downtown development authority about what the right pricing looks like And this is more when we get to the variable graduated paid parking rates, but to keep it simple for the for the initial phase of this will be a Flat rate of parking structures and tend to your point we want to incentivize that parking structure use so the the structure should be priced at a convenience piece so that we want to move that traffic for that long-term parking need. One item I'll point out in

that medium term that we're probably going to move we'll definitely move up is this menu of employee and commuter permit options. We have already heard from downtown businesses and business owners that they really need help with employee parking and so we're going to move that one up into the short term so that we can get that one figured out before we implement the rest of this

these earlier things so the recommended boundary area and the blue is identified here that's at 1328 parking spaces I should also point out the 24 block faces that parking services conducted our data collection also is within this area and it is about that 24 block faces so this is a little bit expanded outside of what we have been doing some some that point time data collection and the consultants that recommend that those block faces are that 75 or higher of occupancy threshold

to make this map bigger the blue area is now that pink boundary area that's the paid parking area and then in conjunction with that we want to make the timed area which is already within the downtown parking map that's that green zone surrounding it and then potentially expanding some residential parking permit program areas and that's the tan and the the goal of that is to minimize that neighborhood impact as we expand our parking management area and then the orange square is a new potentially new RP3 zone which coincidentally that neighborhood has already reached out to

parking services about reviewing and looking at what that feasibility of that that area is can you explain what an rp3 zone is for those that don't know yes you bet so residential

parking permit program area is a zone where we have some impact of some transit commuters so primarily around colorado state university when we have a flux of parkers and that's just to maintain or manage the on-street occupancy in those areas for the people that live there to have options to park so to to this point uh with the paid parking than the time parking we know that there be some some overflow of of people that may potentially park in the neighborhoods and we want people to manage that that impact of those as well so the upfront investment of this system so looking at the all-in cost of multi-space meters um they range between five thousand

eight thousand dollars per meter and that's depending on vendor and also some of the services provided we know that not every meter has to have a bill acceptor and a credit card so how do we

better manage or best manage where the location of those meters are so recommended two per block face

so that equates to 118 meters downtown that's that low end price of 590 000 and the high end being 944,000 and those are Solar-powered battery backups is not a lot of infrastructure needs to put those in there into our downtown area the additional cost of

Implementation would revolve around signage the downtown signage would have to be updated But that's also part of our ongoing maintenance expenditures and then talking about that improved wayfinding to help people navigate the system Those cost we anticipate being about $150,000 and then the parking structure Improved access control that's for our parking structured use low end would be to retain the Gateless system and do a fixed license plate recognition system. That's 195 if we went to a gated system in the three parking structures Which also would include a fixed LPR that's at 500,000 so the implementation cost would be 1 million to 1.6 million dollars

The potential revenue impact the top green bar is our annual revenue and parking services and that suggests that it takes away that General fund dollars only because again, we're not receiving it going forward so that 2.8 billion dollars is our base Revenue for the department and then the next bar being that paid parking the low end Potential income would or revenue would be 2.4 million the high end would be at 4.2 And then the other ancillary pieces that support this is parking structure rates The residential parking permit rates and then citation fine adjustments would mean the low-end potential revenue would be 2.8 million dollar increase high end would be that 5.5 million that's across the system To break down the paid parking revenue if we establish a flat rate of on-street paid parking that that number to be determined that $1.50 to $2 per hour and then also the off street service lot parking to be the dollar dollars per hour and then keeping the parking structures as they are so that's that low end 2.4 million dollar increase to the high end being 4.2 with some criteria you see below so the time limits would be either eliminated or capped at four hours and then also the hours and days of the paid system the time system and then also the parking constructions would be consistent across the timeline of enforcement or management, 8 a.m. or 10 a.m. up to 8 p.m., and that'd be Monday through Saturday, which we've heard from the downtown businesses a desire to have us run our hours of enforcement.

So we also looked at kind of peer communities to compare, And as you can see, we're very out of step, I think, with other communities as we look to communities our size and then others across the country. I think there's 19 on this list, and only three of them don't have a downtown on-street paid model. So it makes it kind of difficult for us to find kind of a comparative city that's maybe done this recently. But we do have two examples of cities in Colorado that have done it recently, knowing that there are smaller communities with kind of different dynamics. But we wanted to give you an example of what we've seen there. So in Idaho Springs, they implemented a paid model on street in 2018. And we wanted to look at what the impacts were to the downtown businesses. And so you see here each year the downtown sales tax revenue. So with the exception of 2020, which had a little dip from 2019, they've seen a pretty steady growth of 41% overall in sales tax revenue, even after implementing on-street pay parking. Another example is Manitou Springs. We've kind of picked a different timeframe to look at. They implemented it in 2013. We didn't go beyond 2019 because they did some changes to their sales tax, and so it wasn't quite as comparable. But this is showing you over a several year period that they saw their sales tax revenue increase 232% over the five or six years after implementing on-street paid parking. And Manitou Springs, you know, some would say it might be was a little aggressive in how they went about their parking model. It's a dynamic pricing type model and They've still seen very significant sales tax revenue growth in their downtown even with that very aggressive model

Yeah, Drew, could you just explain the dynamic parking model? Yeah, so the dynamic

model might be best called like like surge pricing or that type of thing like it's it's really designed around like kind of what the demand is. I don't know Allison if you have any or even drew online if you have any

details around kind of how that might work? Yeah, that's fairly accurate. I think the best explanation would be to think of it like if you're calling a lift and if there's a lot of demand, then the prices go up. I think that that simplifies it.

All right. So the efforts that we put forth so far, we talked to a handful of boards of

committees, the downtown development authority, board of directors, the transportation board,

the LLAC and then tonight with you all and then we do plan a downtown open house to have some

conversations with the business owners downtown and then some door-to-door business outreach

in October and that's leading up to our next meeting with you all in December.

So we'll return back to those questions. What questions do you have around the supply and demand and financial analysis. We may have already gotten those, but feel free to take more of those. And then what feedback do you have on those next steps around implementing paid on-street parking and then the other proposed changes to the parking system?

Okay. That's all right. Yeah, I have a couple. When you were talking about time limits, you were saying four hours for on-street parking. Are you saying that probably four hours would be a max for on street?

That is something yet to be determined, but we, so that would be something that we would, as we go through our engagement process

over the next few months, we'll want to get some feedback from the downtown businesses and kind of get a feel for what, that we could go to an unlimited time, as long as you were paying, or we could go to a four hour time limit.

So it would be, but then of course paid per hour. Correct, correct. Or whatever, I just want to clarify there. How did you arrive at the $2 fee?

Yeah, I can speak to that one. Thanks for the question. We looked at a number of peer communities, both in Colorado and outside of Colorado, and I believe the average for paid on street is at $1.42. So just considering sort of some of the demographic factors in Fort Collins and some of the economic factors. $2 is a really comfortable place to start for on-street pay parking, but we did do some

comparisons with communities that are similar. Okay, that helps to know that there was a lot

of comparison going on. Thank you. More? Okay. Julie? Thank you so much. So I just want to say, just talking about expectations for tonight. I thought we were getting, and imagine my surprise when I opened my Thursday packet, I thought we were talking about parking across the whole city. So I was way off. Um, so I guess we're good everywhere else. Uh, I do have. I have a couple questions that kind of come. One coming from the AIS, we talked about 2003 and 2009 as the last time that monthly, or I'm sorry, that the two changes were fines and the garage. I didn't see anywhere that it said when the last time monthly permit holder rates were changed.

I don't have the year, but we know it's been several years, and we can follow up with you on that one.

Okay. I don't know if the exact year is important. It's more kind of leading to my next question, which is this council has been very conscious when we're raising costs or fines in the last few years to either put mechanisms in place so that they automatically increase or at least some kind of benchmarking.

And I'm curious if, I mean, I know there is not a lot of people in this room that were here back in 2003, but do we know, was there intent to look at these things every decade or do you know of anything or anyone?

So we had this conversation as a staff team as well. Some similar questions and I don't, I think there's not a good answer to that right now. So it's a gap that we have and something

that we are, again, as we're doing new things, putting that in place. But some of these things that have been in place for a while, we have some work to do. Okay. And that's, I mean, it's,

I'm glad you're just having the conversations because I can see a space, especially in parking, where you may be like, well, this maybe isn't something we want to tie to. I don't even know what you would tie it to. But, yeah, inflation or whatever, because it could go all over the place.

Yeah. And I don't like to keep using the answer, but it is an accurate one that we were having some of these conversations pre-COVID and then everything kind of just paused and we haven't gone back to it.

and that doesn't negate the fact that there was a big gap between when it first went in place and

COVID where we still weren't having a good system. Okay, good. Thank you. A question about the peer communities, just so we can kind of maybe temper our expectations. Are we sure that correlation and causation here are tied together, or are there more things that those places did that may have increased their sales tax revenues.

I want to be clear that I don't think we're suggesting that the implementation of paid parking had a direct effect on those sales taxes increasing. But what we were mainly wanting to show you is that they didn't decrease, that it didn't have a harm there. But maybe Allison or Drew, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

Yeah, I'll add just a general observation from our firm is that when we, because that's a common concern when you're going from unpaid to paid parking. Obviously, it's going to be a question. But we have seen in general that communities that are implementing paid parking on street kind of over and over again, we're seeing that increased revenue. So it is not decreasing revenue to the downtown areas that are implementing the paid parking.

Okay, thank you.

Let's see. So this outreach time, is it outreach? Is it informing? Or is it like, what's the purpose here?

So our intent is obviously to inform that we're going to, with your blessing, that we will move to this type of model. But we're also asking for, asking some questions around how to best implement. So there are some real concerns that we have with some of our business community around the timing. specifically around like the big project that's going to happen on college in the next year or two and we don't want to cause undue harm at the same time that that project is happening so we're going to try and figure out how we can work around some of those issues but we also are seeking some input on things like should it be four hours should it be you know unlimited that you can pay maybe a little bit around the pricing model but i don't think we're going out to ask should we or should we not do this.

Okay, thank you. And so then is the intent that it'll cost the same to park in the garages on the street?

No, no. We would actually want it to be less in the garages to incentivize. Less in the garage.

Okay.

Correct.

Okay, that's all I have for now. Thank you.

Go ahead, Molly.

My question, I guess, is about, and I feel ignorant that I don't know this, but what is the current parking situation for employees of downtown businesses? Do they purchase permits? Do their employers? Do they just look for free parking and or pay for parking in the garage? What's typical?

I think it's safe to say there is nothing typical. There are some businesses that buy permits for their employees. There are some that would like to do something different,

but maybe can't afford to pay for it for every employee.

there's you know I mean you can probably come down here on at four o'clock or 430 on any given day and see kind of you know your servers and your your your bar workers you know parking on

street you know because it's at that they know that at that point enforcement is ending so I think it's it's kind of all over the map but we also know that there's there's a need to give some

uniform options there. Okay. And I saw, or you mentioned that you were wanting to accelerate that. I was just curious what the state of affairs was. I would love to be able to take care of our workforce more effectively and not be punitive. I also just wanted to put a note. I really support all the changes that you guys proposed. I did have somebody bring up gig worker availability for the short-term parking is a challenge downtown in some places. So just a heads

up about that. Yeah, thanks for the great work. A couple just little questions. What was the

criteria for choosing the pure cities? That is a great question. So there's not going to be, I just want to make it clear that there won't be an apples to apples comparison for Fort Collins

simply based on geographic demographics, the location of the university. But we kind of tried to look across the spectrum of those factors and look at both university communities,

bustling downtowns, communities in Colorado, so that you had sort of a blend of similar factors in the peer communities. But of course, again, there's not going to be a Fort Collins number two that's going to give you a really really accurate picture but i think that paints a fairly

accurate picture okay thank you and then also i think it must have been in the ais um we were talking about other needs for curbside and um handicapped deliveries short-term um parking like 15 minutes when you're running in to get a takeout order how does that all fit in here what

are we thinking with that so we do want to optimize the curb frontage and so to that point So aside from the ADA plate or plaque, because they have their own parking allowances. But we wanna make sure we use the loading zone with loadings downtown for food parcel delivery. We know that's a challenge. So how do we optimize that curb as part of this education piece? So what is that timeframe of not necessarily a free period, but a grace period to allow for that curb frontage use, or potentially a permitted area for loading and unloading situations, you know, Uber Eats and the like. So that's part of that discussion. I would also add that when we talked about that governance model, that's something that came up quite a bit was what happens when the businesses on a block face change and how can we be more flexible and quick to adjust what the parking looks like. So if we have like some 15-minute spaces for a particular type of business and that business leaves and something else goes in there, How can we quickly adjust and manage the curve better there? So that's something that we're hoping with that governance model that the the DDA and those businesses that are that would hopefully be involved in that would help us to Know when to make those adjustments more quickly

Okay, thank you. That's great to hear you thinking about all that and then my last question is Why do we choose to go with a flat rate over a dynamic pricing?

Yeah, I can speak to that. And I'm sure Eric and Drew can jump in. The dynamic pricing model, as you can imagine, is a lot more complex. There are a lot more factors involved. That is something that we believe the city should explore in the future. And a lot of cities are moving to that model, but just for sort of simplicity and a first step, that flat rate will work really well for the

city. Okay. Um, actually I do have one more question. Um, thinking back, I was in Scandinavia a couple of years ago and they just have one pass that once you sign up, it just reads your license plate. So you're, you don't have to go and, you know, put in the time that you're going to be there or your space or anything is that something that we've thought about as a system to use for our parking it's definitely something we've thought about

especially in the parking structures it is however not a very mature technology in the United States so we're trying to be kind of careful that we don't get kind of out over our skis because we've done that before and and bought some technologies that then didn't quite pan out the way that we wanted so that is definitely on our radar because I think right now Eric you'd have to correct me on this but most of our purchases of parking in our parking structures are done by app the vast majority and we expect the same will be on street and so people are getting really comfortable with that idea and if you think about kind of like the e470 model right you just pay monthly and then you just drive and you don't even think about it that is definitely the model we'd love to get to but But the industry just isn't quite there yet here in the States.

Yeah, and to clarify, thank you. So to clarify, 65% of our sessions that are initiated in the parking structures are app-based.

So we know the trend is that we want to make sure we provide options for every user. And the technology, of course, has to catch up with some of our desires, too.

Okay. Well, just to say I'm supportive of these steps. Thank you.

I have a question. You know, you might drive a few more people to ride bikes downtown. I don't know. For two bucks, I mean, I usually ride my bike, but if I don't, I mean, I don't think that that price level is going to drive a big demand.

But it does bring up a question. I mean, often, you know, we have beautiful bike parking structures, but they're not very practical. They can hold like three bikes. And so, you know, you end up, you don't want to lock it to a pole, but some people do. You know, it's really frustrating for a very bike-friendly city to have that. And I would walk two or three blocks and park my bike in one place, but I'm not confident that there's an actual bike rack that holds a lot of bikes down the block. You know those ones that are shaped like bikes? They can really hold four bikes about. So that's just an anecdote that I had. You know, we might have to consider some of that. that's all in general I'm supportive of the I've always smiled growing up here that there's been upside down for so long and I do think we should go carefully I do think that it's parking is a system and it's a system with our transit it's a system with our business it's pedestrians I point to bikes and I don't think it's like I think I said at the other one It's like a push me pull you, but you can't, you can't just go, you can, but it's going to break things if you go too far at the same time, if you don't, aren't able to backfill with the other surrounding services or things like that, that are supportive of whatever you're, you know, the system, you know.

Kelly?

Thank you. I might have misheard the question, and I might have misheard the answer. It wasn't about, I don't think the question, because it was a good one, if I heard it right, was about the commercial loading and unloading.

It was more, because I was trolling just the other day, true story, for a lunch meeting downtown, running a little late. I started to pull into three different spots, and one was 15 minutes, and one was, I think those are valuable spots. I don't what say ye Madam consultant

Sure, I can jump in first here I think that in general the idea of moving from a non-paid to a paid system Gives the city some control over your curb So right now the city is essentially supplementing single occupant vehicles. They're handing over the curb to those SOVs So moving to a paid system really helps you to make those decisions about where to place those short-term parking places, where to place your freight operations. Currently, there's not a lot of control over what to do with the curb. So moving to this paid system kind of is the first step towards taking some control over how you're managing your curb.

because just speaking for me and no one else sometimes those 15 minutes to pick something up or whatever are valuable spaces and there's quite a bit of churn unless somebody's violating them but

i'll wait for the recommendations from the or others will from the uh the final answer the upside down thing is it's been in the literature for decades actually the upside down pricing so So I thought about this a lot, and I consulted an economist that I know,

and the $150 an hour is pretty low, and it's really upside down unless you make bigger changes than you kind of suggested in here for the parking garages, too. You want a significant difference. So if I was voting on this, I'd want $2 an hour to send a message, and I heard you say something similar to that. And again, if you want to respond to any...

That's what we're here for, and we're going to be fine for time. You're going to wait until I'm done or whatever. The four-hour thing, having been through this now the third time, my name's on the 2013 one, the four-hour thing used to be a problem people had because there were more office people downtown that had businesses that weren't dependent on people finding a parking place in front of their business.

and I'm sorry, some people make enough in this town, I'm not one of them, that the $12 for six hours is nothing. They've been around. The people moving in, I talked to them, neighborhood night out from every city in the country, Atlanta late. I did six neighborhood night outs or whatever. $12 for parking for a day for six hours times two is literally nothing to them. So I'm not saying higher than two. I'm talking about the hours of how many. I wouldn't like it to see, this is just me more than four hours because sometimes you need more than two to do what you're doing a

little business and lunch and friends and I get that but danger danger Will Robinson old reference

going much higher than that just because there are people that they're not dependent on the churn

of people downtown you're dying to say something oh that's good

Do we have any thoughts on if we're going to continue our same model for employee subsidized parking out of general fund and other funds? Is that still something, and especially with budget cuts looming, and do we have a feel for about how many dollars gross that is? Maybe there's some utility people in there, which is different than general fund.

I don't think that we have looked at that too closely. we can tell you roughly how much that is what is a little bit that's about ten thousand dollars per

quarter that we get subsidized for employee parking and the county thousand a quarter correct

so about forty thousand a year i remember numbers in the lower hundred thousand dollars per year so

something must have changed i think it has to do with number of employees that have a civic center

parking structure permit that what was that the number of employees that actually take advantage of that so it's it must have gone down over okay can we just get that definitive whenever it comes

to council sure we can and and um just for the awareness of the public who may not know and employees also pay a portion of that so um just yes it's a share of cost and i wasn't suggesting

any um solutions to it it's just a piece of the of the puzzle not i'm personally not interested in changing the governance model i really it's a long-standing thing i mean the balkanization of government and pretty soon nobody knows right now they call one of the seven of us and they do it and who do they call and somebody that's not elected or something or elected in some tiny little election I think it's a really bad idea and I'm not for it I'm not interested in it that's just just my thoughts and you can respond if you want it's okay to disagree and give that

other viewpoint I think we're just looking for your feedback at this point and we're hoping to hear, you know.

I think it's for people that don't want to have to make the tough, not this crew, but don't want to make tough decisions. And their name's on the line, and I think people need to know who they can call or meet with or email or text or whatever and voice their opposition. And the further you get away from that, I just view it as a balkization of government. And I kind of think it might be good for some people, but I don't think it's good for the local government. just my opinion and um if we're going to get numbers for how much um sales tax numbers went up over a five or six year period i'd appreciate inflation and adjusted or or um that kind of a thing so we have apples to apples of what they went up because there are a couple years of significant inflation in there and so just a nitpick nitpick alert but um if we're going to compare how much things went up. I'd kind of like to see that. And

I'm glad we're not going to be the first in the country to try something again. That would be good. We did that once. It didn't work out so well. Well, temporarily. So thank you. Thank you to everybody. Appreciate it. It's a lot of work. When I saw this, I about choked, but then I realized it was the 2013 plan which is valuable but so thank you

Emily I just have one question about the parking spaces that we have the bike parking in since now our curb or will have value are we going to keep those

or is there plans to remove that I don't think we have any plan to change any of the bike parking at this time I don't know Eric have you I don't think that

was in our discussion no there's no plan to remove it we're looking at some Underutilized parking racks in the parking spaces, but we work with FC moves about how we How we decide where those go based on the business ask or business need of those spaces. Okay, that's what I was hoping to hear. Thank you

Melanie something

Yeah, I just wanted to mention to you something else that you had in the materials was around potential for raising our Our fines for parking violations and in addition to the things Kelly mentioned, I think that's really critical I know anecdotes do not equal data. That being said, I was talking to a city employee the other day who said that he's accrued a few parking tickets over time because the price is so low that it's the cost of doing business. So I think that it's probably time for us to take a look at that, and I appreciate it.

That wasn't me, by the way, that she spoke. It was not you, no.

But it was somebody who, yeah, somebody who was being honest, and I appreciate it.

Yeah, there there definitely is you know kind of a philosophy right that if you can pay the fine that it's not a fine It's just a fee right and so yeah

Kelly and I just like to agree with the mayor on the bike racks I think we can do better on the design a little historical perspective those are incredibly controversial at the time But now that it's a multinational a little freer to speak on it although I spoke up at the time they were paid advertising and It's time to and it was controversial but they went in before council even knew it. And they're not really practical compared to how many bikes. I mean, you go to Stodgy's or something, and the number of bikes there is astonishing because it's kind of, well, I mean, nobody has all the spaces they need, but, you know, there's a lot of bikes there. And that's one business, let alone downtown. So I think I hope you with this council and with this community are examining the bike

Parking or whatever you call it Let's say ye I think that it's something that we we probably are regularly evaluating it with FC moves and other

Departments within the city, but I could we could provide you some feedback or some follow-up feedback if you want to kind of know how we're

evaluating that on a general basis.

I just had one more anecdote since we're telling them we had some visitors from out of the country here. We parked in the parking garage before I was mayor. And we went to pay the fee. The quote from the person from out of the country was,

why bother? So I said, I don't know why we have all this apparatus and everything. And it was like $1.50. We were just laughing. So anyway, the time has come. to fix the upside down model i think we all agree thank you for your work do you need anything else

from council okay susan what kelly when you made reference to 2013 that was the most enjoyable part of this whole packet i loved reading that and i know you were on that council among other illustrious very illustrious people um but some of the things that that that your council um predicted, foresaw. It was very visionary because so much of what was here, and I've got it marked all over the place, we're now dealing with. And I thought, rather interesting that it's here, and some of the things that you suspected might happen have happened. And I really appreciate the effort that you've made on this parking study so far. Excellent.

Great. Let's look around. Do you need more information? Do you want to do a summary?

No, I feel like we got what we needed. I can kind of read you a little bit of the notes that I've taken thus far.

I think I generally heard support for this new model.

I think we're definitely looking for more context on the Oak Remington lot and capacity in the system generally.

Needs for better and different bike parking. I heard that a few times.

I think some interest in maybe looking at the higher on-street model for so the $2 versus the dollar 50

Also some good feedback on the four-hour limit or the unlimited on street

And then also about following up regarding Inflation on sales tax numbers. I think we got What we needed. Yeah

Thank you great any further comments Saying none. Thank you very very much

Um, we go to council announcements. It feels so weird to just have one presentation tonight. Um, but you have an announcement, Kelly.

I do have an announcement I would like to share.

Um, so at approximately 2.30 this afternoon, the city had transferred into its accounts

$21,401,999.93. since. This is the culmination of a couple years of legal battle with Open International

over a utility billing system. I don't know why, it's been a really big deal. And I am so grateful to our city attorney's office, to our outside legal counsel, to our utilities folks, our finance, our IT. This is a great thing for the rate payers. It does not just for all of our employees who may be getting excited. It does not help with our general fund challenges. It is all utilities, but really light and power, water, wastewater, stormwater, and connection. So kudos to that team. It's a big deal. Thank you for that announcement. Kelly. Yeah, and it is a big deal, but I'd like to give a shout out to this council because they had the courage to challenge it. Yes, thank you

for adding that. It is true. The support of this council, when we were facing a decision of do you

just walk away or do you challenge? And again, it was determined to be fraud and it was a fight worth fighting. So thank you for that support.

Great. After that, any other announcements? All right. For our calls, we'll see you next Tuesday night for our regular business meeting.

This meeting is adjourned.