City Council - workshop

Good evening, it's now 530 and I call this regular meeting of the Victoria or this workshop of the Victoria City Council to order Our workshops are informal. So we're gonna dive right into our agenda We just have one item on the agenda this evening, which is to hear and discuss the findings from the community engagement process and Data collection regarding parking around downtown around our downtown parking Presenting on that item this evening is our city manager Dana Hardy miss Hardy. Welcome. I

Thank you. Mayor members of the council will dive right in, uh, as downtown Victoria has continued to evolve. Parking has been one of the most common topics we hear about, and you all have asked staff to take a comprehensive look at our entire parking system in our central business district. So this evening, we're going to walk through mayor, as you noted, what we learned through our engagement process earlier this year, we're going to compare those perspectives with objective data that we, um, collected through TC two. Excuse me, and Lance Bernard from TC2 is here. He'll be presenting some information to you a little bit later this evening. And then we're going to discuss some potential strategies to improve the parking experience today. And then some things that we can be thinking about in terms of preserving flexibility so we can plan responsibly for tomorrow. So our downtown is growing, and that in itself is a success story. One of the best problems any downtown can have is that more people want to spend time there. Residents come to enjoy our restaurants, our shops. They attend events. They're going to our trails. They're taking care of everyday errands. And as that activity increases, parking has become one of the ways people experience our downtown. For some, we've heard that the issue is finding parking close to their destination. For others, we've heard that it's knowing where public parking exists or how event parking works. Those recurring conversations have prompted us to step back and look at those broader policy questions so we can better understand how to best resolve this challenge. Throughout our engagement process, we kept coming back to four policy questions. First, what problem are we solving? Is this primarily a proximity issue where parking exists but it's not always close or easy to find? Or is it a capacity issue? There just isn't enough supply. Or perhaps it's both. Second, what improvements matter most? Do we manage the existing system better? Do we add parking incrementally over time as opportunities present themselves? Or do we invest in larger capital improvements? Or is it a combination of those things? Is it a timing issue? Third, how should we fund those improvements? And then finally, what is that long-term strategy? We know our downtown is gonna continue to evolve and parking decisions need to be part of that evolution. Before we discuss what we learned, I think it's helpful to just ground our discussion and our parking philosophy. Our downtown is designed to be walkable. Public parking is not intended to serve just one business or one destination. It supports many destinations in our downtown. First, the first principle is shared parking. Public parking is intended to serve businesses, visitors, employees, residents, and community events at different times. Second is that park once philosophy. One of our strengths downtown is that people can park once and comfortably walk to their destinations, their shops, trails, parks, and other community spaces. The third is to build for growth. Parking investments should support our future downtown developments while remaining physically responsible. These principles have a long history in Victoria. They've been developed with business and resident input and feedback, and they have guided our previous decisions as it relates to parking in our downtown. So one of the things we wanted to avoid was relying on a single source of information. We have intentionally built the process in layers. The interactive community workshop that we held earlier this year helped us hear ideas and concerns and priorities directly through dialogue. Our listening session that council provided gave residents and businesses the opportunity to share their experiences and their perspectives directly with you all. The resident and business surveys we conducted helped us understand more broadly these perspectives that were shared. And finally, we engaged TC2 to conduct some data collection for us so we could look at that data to determine whether community perceptions matched how the parking system is functioning. So each of these pieces informs the next, creating a more complete picture than any one method could. The resident survey received 841 responses. 84% of those responses were residents of Victoria. We also received 21 responses from those surveys from downtown businesses. The surveys were not intended to stand alone. They helped validate many of the conversations we have heard during the workshop and the listening sessions through emails and formal and other informal conversations. sessions and interactions you've had with residents and businesses. Together this engagement gives us both qualitative input and broader data to inform our policy making. There were several themes that consistently emerged regardless how we engaged the community. Whether someone attended our interactive workshop or spoke during that listening session or completed the resident survey or responded to the downtown business survey, these ideas continued to surface. First, our downtown is successful. People value our downtown. They want to spend time here. Second parking has become more challenging especially as downtown activity has increased third people support planning ahead rather than waiting until parking becomes a larger problem and Finally, there's strong interest in proving how today's system works before moving into direct capital investment Businesses are experiencing parking differently than most residents because their perspective is operational. They hear customer feedback every day. They're observing those parking patterns. They know when parking is becoming difficult. This is especially during evenings and weekends and during those events. Nearly two-thirds of our businesses identify parking as a significant issue. Businesses also expressed strong interest in having additional parking, including structured parking. And at the same time, business support for directly funding those improvements was much more limited. This tells us that businesses see the need, but the funding strategy matters. Their perspective reflects operational impacts and a strong desire to expand parking availability in our downtown. Residents experience primary parking primarily as visitors to our downtown One of the clearest findings is that people perceive parking as difficult 61% said finding parking is somewhat or very difficult At first glance this may sound like the answer is simply to add more parking But it is a little bit more nuanced than that Most respondents indicated that they are willing to walk one or two blocks. That suggests that the challenge is not necessarily distance. People want the parking to be easy to find, easier to understand, and reasonably close. Event parking also stood out as a larger concern, and this suggests that event parking may need a different solution or different strategies than what we discussed. what we decide to implement for day-to-day parking. Residents generally support improving parking, but they were divided on larger investments and strongly opposed to property tax increases for the parking improvements. One of the most encouraging findings was not where people disagreed, but how much agreement existed. Residents and businesses arrived at many of the same conclusions despite viewing parking through different lenses. Both groups recognize that parking has become more challenging as we've grown or as it's redeveloped. Both groups support planning for future parking needs, but the greatest difference is around the scale and funding. Businesses expressed stronger support for structure and parking. Residents were more mixed. Neither group expressed strong support for paying for major parking investments through property taxes or through direct business assessments. When we consider the engagement process as a whole, several common themes emerged. Residents, again, primarily describing their experiences as visitors to our downtown, businesses being focused on customer access and the day-to-day operations. While they approached the issue from different perspectives, both groups identified many of the same priorities, improving parking management, making parking easier to access and understand, and planning for the future. Community engagement helped us understand how people are experiencing parking. The utilization study, the data collection portion, is going to help us understand how the parking system is functioning or performing. Both perspectives are essential to making informed policy decisions, which brings us to that next question. Do community perceptions align with what the data collection found? So I'm gonna ask Lance to step up to the podium and he will share more about the data collection process that he and his colleagues did and those related findings.

Good evening, Lance. Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the Council.

Would you kindly introduce yourself and your business for our record?

My name is Lance Bernard. I'm Director of Planning with TC2. I've had the opportunity to work on other studies for the City of Victoria for parking studies in the past. It's great to continue to have these conversations because that's really... A testament to how well downtown is doing that you are having these challenges and these conversations that need to happen and part of that is always Revisiting and trying to better understand how we can improve the customer experience business needs and so forth So there's a lot of cities that would love to be in this position that would love to have this sort of challenge to be Recognizing that you've got a lot of economic opportunities economic development happening in the downtown, a lot of customers, a lot of good things happening to be proud of. So that always then just comes with some tougher challenges around parking. We were asked by staff at the direction of the council to kind of get a little bit deeper into the data so we can really understand how people are using parking, understand the amount of parking that's being utilized, how often is it being turned over. So this is really an opportunity for us to sink our teeth into a little bit more of that data We're actually will be back in front of the council here at a future meeting the near term where we can really sink our teeth into a lot of that data because we're still analyzing a lot of it. So tonight we're really just kind of providing the bigger picture of some of the key takeaways things that we're starting to see with our analysis process. So with that said I think I just want to maybe Point out the map that you have on the screen here is really where the focus of our data collection efforts have been over the last month. This really mirrors the same data collection that has happened as part of past studies. With the last study, pretty much similar effort here in where we were collecting data, but certainly there's some new uses that have come online since the last study. You've added some more parking, about 85 more stalls with some of that future development as well. Right things have changed there has been some push and pull and how people are utilizing parking in the downtown So what we have then really been charged with is to collect all of this new data. This was a recommendation from past studies. You have to continue to monitor, understand those travel behaviors. And certainly a lot has changed within the last five years after COVID. And again, a lot of new development and new ways people are interacting with the downtown as well. So our goal is really to focus on a couple key days. We always look at Thursdays and Saturdays as your typical peak periods of the week that experience a lot more parking demand in a downtown. What we were collecting was traditionally utilization counts for all of the green lots on the map. So that's where we were looking at counting how many cars are parked in that specific lot during the morning. lunch hour, afternoon, and evening. That gives us just a general picture then of what's the capacity threshold? How many cars are there? How much excess supply or negative supply do you have in those lots? But what's unique about this effort now is we dug a lot deeper where we actually put up some cameras. We were counting then the turnover. How often are cars circling in and out of these lots so we have a better picture of the amount of time that they are spending within these lots? Same for a number of the on-street parking stalls as well. So we were really focused on the core of on-street parking, Steger, Victoria, to then see are people truly adhering to those two-hour parking limits or are they staying longer? What is that sort of turnover? So there's a lot more data that we're still analyzing and really trying to understand those behaviors. But what we are also looking more closely at then is what we have for you tonight is really more of that district-wide parking approach. As Dana mentioned, we really are looking at this from a district-wide. We really, from a parking planning, parking management standpoint in these type of environments, you're really trying to manage what you have to serve a number of uses. That we want to understand then that district wide level. And so we always then start off by just trying to understand the amount of parking that you have in your downtown, regardless of ownership, regardless of on street or public or private. We want to then kind of aggregate things up at that high level to then point us to maybe better ways to manage that parking over time. So sorry, I'm kind of rambling here. So the way we look at parking utilization from a district wide is through kind of various thresholds. And as you start to reach 85% utilization of your entire study areas, when you start to see healthy utilization, you've got a lot of people in downtown, but you may be approaching capacity in certain areas. There may be some certain choke points as well that may be experiencing heavy utilization. But from a district wide standpoint, It's important that then, sorry, at a district-wide level, that's what we're trying to focus in on with these graphs here. Once you start to approach over 93%, that's when you really are experiencing heavy utilization. There's some choke points, and you may need to be considering how you add more parking to your supply in the downtown area. So if we look at this from a district-wide perspective and just consider all the parking that's available, things are around that 80% throughout the evening hour. That's the top point of when downtown's really experiencing the highest amount of utilization as a whole. And so when you look then backwards, you know, in the morning hours, that's when things are less utilized. Businesses are just starting to open. Employees are just starting to come downtown. and then throughout the day things kind of amp up to that higher parking demand in the evening hour. Similar trend, so this is a snapshot of what we saw for the weekday, similar kind of trend on the weekend as well from a district-wide level. Things start off a little slow in the morning, but things ramp up throughout the day where you start to see much more utilization, more people parking in downtown. So even though that we're seeing this from a district-wide level at that kind of 80%, 85% where you're at or approaching capacity, that's not to say that there aren't some lots that are experiencing higher utilization. People are really attracted to the core, you know, the lots like the borough. That's the first lot that people tend to gravitate towards. That's the easiest one they see, highest visibility off of Highway 5. So there's some kind of travel behaviors of what people know and what they see. So there are some lots that we're seeing much more heavy utilization choke points, but then as you go further outside the core, that's when things kind of taper off and you see a lot more excess parking that's available. That really just right away tells us that there's a better way to manage it. That if the expectation is that we're going to operate our parking from a district-wide level, there's a number of strategies we could apply to really make sure people are aware of how to use parking throughout the downtown and adhere to that district-wide approach that the expectation may be to walk two blocks, maybe a little further to find that parking stall because we can't just always try to provide front door parking. You'll never win that battle if you're always trying to provide front door parking in a downtown environment. So there has to be some trade-offs. There's some challenges to get there as well. So as I said before, we're going to dig much more deeper into the data that we collected to really start to better provide some management operations and management strategies for you guys to consider as well. Some of the other kind of takeaways that we've started to look at that data much more closely is that People are parking on street for a longer period of time than what you're signed for part of that may be Enforcement because there really isn't any act of enforcement right now But we were seeing a smattering of cars that are parked on street in front of businesses of access to four to eight hours so to us that suggests that they are possibly employees, staff that are spending longer periods of downtown, or they may be patrons as well that are spending a fair amount of time. Mary, did you have a question? No. Okay. So there's some things like that we're starting to kind of glean from the data. We still want to verify that. We want to really dig deeper into what that means. But there are certainly a lot more heavy attraction to the parking stalls within the core and that being kind of the front of businesses along the main drag and within some of those core lots as well. So that's just our preliminary findings that we're just kind of giving you a precursor to because we'll really get more in depth with some of the data and findings the next time we're in front of you to share that information. Yeah, so I think this is, was this your slide, Dana? This is one I was like, wow, that's a new one to me. So I think we're really here to just kind of keep the conversation going because we're going to have to have some other conversations around some of the parking management strategies that we were starting to explore with staff behind the scenes.

Yeah, I think one of the things that I'm really curious about from a strategic perspective Direction, you know, we talked about having employees park further away park elsewhere But we consider how many employees every business has when we you know calculate the parking that's going to be needed for that business What are some strategies right off the bat that we can? Implement around employee parking. I mean not every employee is mobile for instance and and I We want them to know that they have a place downtown as well.

Mayor, council members, this is a strategy that came out of the last study, that there needed to be more time and energy spent around what employee parking looks like. And that really needs to get business support as well, because there definitely needs to be a collective collaboration around that particular strategy. Identifying spaces, areas throughout the downtown that says this is really meant for employee parking, but it really does take a commitment from the city and others to really make that happen. So we have worked through similar strategies like that in downtown Stillwater where we really are trying to dedicate space that really pushes employees there. The other thing that I want to be transparent about with those conversations then too is There's safety and mobility, like you said, that's always part of that. So a lot of employees that might be getting off work late after the bar's closing, making sure they feel safe getting back to their car as well if they're being expected to park further away. So there's a lot to unpack with that strategy, but it is definitely a viable one to work towards.

Yeah, and I think some of the things that we've talked about is it's not hard to walk two blocks on a beautiful summer day. It's a lot harder when it's 20 below zero and you're parked two blocks away from where you want to be. But I think some of the things that the city has a responsibility to do is to make sure our streets and sidewalks are clean, that it's well lit and everybody feels safe walking around. I mean, I think those are all, that the walk is pleasant. I think those are some of the things that we we bear responsibility too.

How about just in general, because you've made the point, and this is kind of to add on what the mayor has talked about, front door parking and kind of setting that expectation. Um, you know, I've been to other cities where four or five blocks is pretty normal, three, four or five blocks. And I know it's weather it's age. There's a number of things, but recommendations around setting that expectation with the residents, the businesses, et cetera. Yeah. I think that's important.

Yep. Yep. I think you're, you're spot on council member. There is just that expectation and really adhering to that district wide parking approach, knowing that. There are some trade-offs and some challenges of managing the parking from that level because, I'll say it again, you're just not gonna win that battle if you're constantly trying to provide front door parking for every person. So then a lot of those conversations really focus around how you manage your curb. What's your curb on street parking looks like and really, Best practices standpoint, that's where you want to see the highest turnover. You want to limit your hours and length of stay there. Certainly the increase in food delivery services and drop-off services, car share programs, we're starting to look more closely at how do you manage them. a bulk of those spaces for quicker turnover for drop-off zones as well. And then as you start to look at your surface lots, that's where we really want people to have the ability to stay longer, you know, two, three, four hours to give them that flexibility. The challenge with managing then time limits is enforcement and really what the city's position is on being more active enforcers in those time restrictions. Because at some point in time, people just know what they can get away with when there really is an act of enforcement. So that's always the biggest challenging strategy to take on as a city, and many communities have to deal with that as well.

I just have two quick questions. Council Member Evert. Just because time seems like it goes by too quick and I can't keep track, Blue Agave was open when we did this. Yes. Okay. That's what I thought, but I just want to make sure I'm saying. And then how do you take into account seasonal changes, right? So, like, one of the things that I noticed, right, like, you would expect the weekend would be busier, but according to the graph, it was not, right? I think it was at 69%, and the other one was 7%. Yeah, weekend with 69 and the other one I think was closer to 80, right? So like I mean and I have some friends that. waitress down here, right? And they talk about how people go to their cabins on the weekend. The weather's nice, so you're grilling out, so maybe it's less busy. So how do you take into account, okay, in the summer, maybe people are not around as much because they're at their cabins, but then in the winter, sure, people travel, but I feel like we're then probably much more busy down here because people are around. They want to go out and enjoy a meal when they're freezing cold, right? So I guess how do you...

Yeah, it's a great comment, Council Member Roberts, because what we have is a snapshot in time, right? So there will always be questions behind, is that the right snapshot in time? We typically always try to capture these counts during the summer, because that's when we think You aren't battling with the cold winter and people are out and about. But as we start to look more closely at this data, we can certainly provide some seasonal factors into it to kind of bump up the numbers, play with the numbers to see if we really have that accurate picture. So there are some percentages we can kind of play with to maybe dial it in a little bit closer. I just will make the one point of clarification as you look at those two high-level graphs that we have in there is the orange, my eyesight's going, Street is yeah, you're on street and then your blue is your off street lots as well. So as you kind of aggregate that all together, you're still somewhere kind of at that. Middle middle thresholds of where we were seeing those counts in that point in time. but not to belabor it too much, but I think as we start to break down these numbers is to recognize some of those are public and private, right? So what is really the utilization of your public lots? And that will be probably another telling story compared to say the borough lot that is private. So we'll do that balancing because we wanna see and understand what the city's responsible for, what the businesses are providing as well. Now, again, I'll end by saying at the end of the day, if somebody pulls into downtown, they don't necessarily care who owns that lot. They're just going to grab that parking stall right away. So that's another part of this kind of operations and management plan is how do we really perceive public and private lots. And that's conversations we'll continue to have.

All right, any other questions for Lance before we let him sit down again? All right, thanks, Lance. Stay close, we probably have some more questions for you. All right, Ms. Hardy, back to you.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. So as you're starting to probably pick up on, no single source is providing a complete picture. So the community engagement helps us understand how people are experiencing parking. The businesses are helping us understand how people parking affects their day-to-day operations, and then the data collection or the utilization data is helping us understand how that parking system is performing. If we relied only on the utilization study, we would understand the parking system and how it functions, but we would not See how people are experiencing that if we really lied only on the community engagement We would understand people's experiences But we wouldn't know if those experiences were aligning with the data that we were collecting So together these perspectives give us a much more complete understanding of those opportunities and the challenges that we're experiencing as it relates to parking in our district WHEN WE COMPARE THE ENGAGEMENT WITH THE UTILIZATION STUDY, SEVERAL OBSERVATIONS BEGAN TO EMERGE, AND I THINK THE CONVERSATION THAT YOU ALL WERE JUST HAVING AND THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU WERE ASKING ARE HITTING ON SOME OF THE THINGS THAT YOU'RE GOING TO SEE IN THESE SUBSEQUENT SLIDES. Let's talk about our current situation. Downtown parking signs have been installed in different locations for different purposes, and they are fairly inconsistent. So we do have an inconsistent system today, which can be difficult to quickly understand. Signs use different designs and colors, even terminology. The enforcement hours vary. Overnight restrictions are not consistently communicated. Some of the signs are only using that letter P. Other signs use the word parking. Does not clearly distinguish public parking from private or customer. Only parking and sign placement and visibility vary through downtown. So there is an opportunity here. The current signage does not provide clear or consistent visual system for directing visitors to our downtown to the public parking places or explaining any applicable restrictions. So a coordinated sign family could make public parking easier to identify, could simplify those regulations and create more predictable downtown parking experience for people. IN TERMS OF PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE, COUNCIL, YOU'VE ALREADY TAKEN AN IMPORTANT POLICY STEP BY RECENTLY EXPANDING TIF DISTRICT 19, WHICH IS THE ROARS DISTRICT DOWNTOWN. THIS ACTION PRESERVES FLEXIBILITY FOR YOU ALL TO EVALUATE FUTURE PARKING OPPORTUNITIES AS DOWNTOWN CONTINUES TO EVOLVE. Importantly, the action does not approve a specific project or commit the city to any future investment at this time. It does, however, preserve options while redevelopment opportunities continue to evolve. The projected tax increment assumptions for the expanded district that we used when you all created that expanded district were based on discussions with private property owners regarding potential redevelopment opportunities through the April 2029 timeframe. That timeframe, again, driven by state statute. The policy value of this action is flexibility. It preserves flexibility so future decisions can be made using the best information available at the time they are considered. Recommendations that the recommendations that follow will build on the same philosophy taking practical steps today to improve the parking experience while also making sure that you have flexibility to make decisions about parking in the future. So the question becomes, how do we improve today's parking experience while planning responsibly for tomorrow? And these are some of the things that you were questioning and asking Lance about. So hopefully some of these will resonate. But the engagement process and the parking utilization study made it clear that there isn't a single recommendation that will address every parking challenge that we have. Instead, they'll point towards a series of practical or incremental improvements that can enhance the current system and how that's functioning while we continue to figure out a longer-term solution. One of the clearest themes throughout the engagement process was that many people are simply unaware of where public parking is located. It does not necessarily mean that parking is unavailable. In many cases, public parking in the district exists, but it may not always be obvious or intuitive to find, and it may not be in that ideal location. Improved signage, directional wayfinding, or updated parking maps, maybe even website enhancements or a plan your visit campaign or resource can help our visitors to our downtown understand where parking is available before they even arrive. Our 2027 proposed budget, you may recall, includes funding for downtown wayfinding and signage. And that proposal reflects some of the current discussions that you've had or more recent discussions that you've had related to wayfinding and downtown parking. Convenient parking works best when it turns over regularly, and you heard Lance speak to that as it relates to that kind of front door parking, the parking in those key areas. Throughout the engagement process, community members told us they value parking close to their destination. Businesses also emphasize that convenient customer parking is important to their success. The parking utilization identified opportunities to improve the availability of convenient customer parking through operational strategies that encourage regular turnover. And as Lance and his team dive deeper into that analysis, we'll have some additional specific options or things for you all to consider for future discussions. But just to be thinking about perhaps some of those strategies, they could include a quick stop parking near high demand businesses or clear time limit signage or educational enforcement that encourages appropriate use of short term parking. The intent is to improve customer access by helping convenient parking remain available for the people who need it most. These solutions can be implemented relatively efficiently and for a low cost. So making better use of existing parking is directly in alignment with our long-standing parking philosophy, that shared parking, the park wants, and planning for growth that we talked about earlier this evening. Strategies include making better use of underutilized public parking, evaluating restriping opportunities where feasible, and identifying additional on-street parking opportunities where appropriate. We could also explore additional shared parking partnerships and evaluate different operational strategies to improve customer access. So these can be all things that we could be looking at. to implement. Enhancing our downtown experience, and Mayor, this gets to some of the things that you were speaking about, safe sidewalks, attractive walking routes, lighting, making sure that we have clear and safe connections that are intentional and thoughtful, making it easier for people to park once and enjoy multiple town destinations safely. This reinforces that parking is not simply about where vehicles are stored, but how people yet can meaningfully enhance people's experience parking downtown. Communication and awareness is one of the themes that rose to the top during all of our engagement initiatives. Better communication before events may be one of the simplest and most cost-effective opportunities that we have to improve the parking experience. We also heard that many people are just simply unaware of where public parking is located and which parking areas are available during events. So updated parking maps, website enhancements, parking guidance for events, business toolkits, all of these things could be explored to help visitors better understand the parking options before they even arrive to our downtown. The engagement process also challenged us to think beyond today's parking needs. Victoria will continue to evolve over the next decade and beyond. And as redevelopment occurs downtown, where people live, where they work, where they shop, where they gather will continue to change. So that means our parking system should continue to evolve alongside our downtown. Future parking decisions should be informed through community input, objective data, and redevelopment opportunities, all things that council you have have a long-standing practice and history of doing. This is reflecting a balanced approach where we're planning for future needs while continuing to improve the experience today. Our engagement initiatives also highlighted that funding future parking improvements is an important policy consideration. Both businesses and residents believe additional parking is needed, but support for using property taxes or direct business assessments is limited. The good news is that we have access to a variety of tools that could be utilized to help support future parking investments. Those tools include the public private partnerships, shared parking agreements, redevelopment partnerships, or use of parking funds, or tax increment financing where eligible and you've already taken that important step in expanding TIF 19, the ROARS TIF district to provide that opportunity. Also, Council, you could consider making modifications to our existing parking ordinance as it relates to parking requirements or how parking requirements are calculated. Of course, long-term, that capital investment, if there are other redevelopment opportunities or some of the other TIF opportunities or some of those public financing tools available to us, those are policy considerations that could help fund a larger capital investment. Ultimately the engagement and the data collection we did not identify any specific parking project or funding strategy that but we hope this evening would just provide you a better perspective on what we were hearing what we're learning and Help provide the start of a framework that will allow for future decision making so on that note I Just want to open it up to hear your thoughts. We've put two questions out there just as a prompt, but we're happy to take any questions or invite council discussion.

Thank you. A couple of questions for you. I know that this has not been something that council has been supportive of in the past, but in your public engagement, did we talk about paid parking for users like parking meters, that kind of stuff. Did we ask the question? How do people feel about that?

Mayor, members of the council, off the top of my head, I don't believe we did ask that specific question. I think we kept it more broad for this latest survey. However, back in, I believe, 2019, if memory serves, we did do a workshop that specifically looked at and some engagement around that question. And at that time, there was not support from the community for paid parking in Victoria, but that does not mean that we... could not revisit that if that's something that you all wanted to revisit.

Okay, thank you. And then another question that I had is around shared parking agreements. You know, I think we do have a couple of private properties and private businesses that have shared parking agreements. Does the city have a role in that?

Mayor, members of the council, we can have a role. It depends on, I would say it's a case by case basis. It really depends on the project, how approvals were put in place. So if an initial approval had a CUP, if the CUP needed to be modified, it would have to go through that conditional use permit. modification process to do that. However, if the parking was provided through just straight code and there was a private agreement and that private agreement was demonstrated, was able to be demonstrated and we had that documented somewhere, which could have happened at the staff level informally, those things are put with the project files so we have record that that's there and they're meeting the requirements and this is how they're meeting those requirements. We've done that too. So there can be a role just making sure that there is adequate parking, especially as uses change. But it really, how formal or informal that role is depends on how the parking was approved in the first place.

So any downtown business, and I feel like there's something like this in place that I've heard about too, where I'm making a deal with the bank who's not open during the evening hours, our employees can park in their lot. That's not something that we would facilitate or negotiate, but it's something that private property owners could do. They could do. Okay. And then you mentioned the 2019 study. And maybe, Lance, this is a question for you. Do we have comparisons from the 2019 study to the current day study about how different those utilization patterns are? Or has so much changed in that study seven years, are we seven years past 2019, that it's no longer useful data for us?

Yeah, mayor and council members, we were just starting to kind of sniff around what the data was telling us in 2019, and back at a high level utilization rate from a district perspective, then things still seem about the same, but there are still the similar trends that we're seeing with choke points in some of the lots as well, but Back to the outskirts as you get a block or two away. That's where we see less utilization as well, but we'll look more closely at that But things have changed so much in the last, you know, six seven years where you have brought on new development new tenants added more parking manage things a little bit differently, so It's just always the ongoing Conversation and that's why we always recommend to continue to update your data to see what's happening. I

From a best practices, stay with us here for a second Lance, from a best practices standpoint, what is a great indicator that it's time to add parking? If you are at 85% capacity for more than X amount of hours, more than X amount of days a week, you better be thinking about adding parking. What is that from a best practice standpoint?

Yeah, from our perspective, if you really start to see the bulk of your whole district and all of these lots and on-street parking, above that 90, 93% is when we really start to challenge ourselves of how do we add more parking or how do we do something significantly different to alleviate those choke points. We use that 93% threshold as kind of a cap where you still wanna have 7% of your system available for turnover internal traffic circulation so you're not you know causing these choke points from our field observations and folks that experience downtown with colleagues as well have have not seen or seeing those traffic circulation issues where you're at gridlock and people can't get in and out of the lots, that you really can't find a spot. I think from our field observations, and again, dialogue we've had with folks that experience Victoria, said, well, yeah, it may be challenging at times, but I do find a space. But I did have to kind of figure out where to go. It was a block or two away. And then there may have been some questions about can I park here, back to some of the wayfinding strategies that I think can go a long way to help alleviate some of those things as well. So long-winded response to your question.

Yeah, but I mean, I think all of that is very helpful. I know one of the things that I always, when I ask people about parking, I mean, I'm out and about quite a bit in the evening time when things are busy down here. And I tend to ask people, where did you park? And was it difficult to find a place to park? And I think there, you know, certainly I hear yes, depending on what, you know, Yes, it was difficult to park. Yes, I found a place, but I feel like people almost always find a place. Well, of course, they must have found a place if I'm talking to them. If they drove away, they wouldn't be talking to me, I guess. But, you know, that's the kind of thing that I would really want to get my arms around is one of the things I hear about is we don't know where to park, and I think the signage could go such a long way Somebody had mentioned to me all the where you park is up here and my eyesight is here And if I'm new to this town, I'm looking where I'm going.

I'm not looking up here for parking signage So I think that's you know another thing that we can improve on Yeah, and I will add real quick part of our effort was to do a sign inventory as well So we have a digital file where all the parking signs are located and we will come back with a hierarchy of signage and some strategies and how to actually move forward to a sign plan Great.

So with that, thank you, Lance. With that, I'm going to be quiet and ask Council if they have questions and comments. Of course. Council Member Patterson.

And I'm not sure, and this might be a question for Lance, but would it be helpful for us to have that data for spotlight events like classic car night, concerts in the park, other events that are happening? Because that's where... people are coming down here, they're driving in, they can't find anywhere to park, now they're not going to return. So my goal is to essentially improve the customer experience and how do we do that? Are those spotlight events? Is it important to have the data then or are we just going to be looking at, you know, kind of average days? Those would be my thoughts on anything else we could possibly do with it. know just brainstorming again this is nothing serious but restriping you know helps adds a few different spots consistent parking signs additional partnerships not sure how you would work that but how full is Rose private parking and is that something where we could possibly create a partnership for people who are working in the downtown to park in let's say a public parking spot in the row facility or we try to get them to park down Steiger Lake Lane more often than the convenient spots for customers. Those are just some of my brainstorming ideas that I've been jotting down as we go through here.

I want to talk a little bit about uh... event parking so classic car night things so fun and really well attended and people don't have any problem parking all the way down county road eleven for classic car night because i see it all the time but what about utilization of a shuttle did you get when you talk to folks about parking did we ask the question would you utilize a shuttle would it be for special events or would you do it more often and what would that shuttle circulation need to look like in order for it to make you want to take it? I mean, if you come down for dinner and your dinner is finished and you're standing outside for 15 minutes waiting for a shuttle, that's probably not OK. But if you know another one's coming along in five minutes, that's probably great. And that would give us some opportunity. So did we ask that question?

Mayor members of the council, we did not get that far in asking that question. So that was something that earlier this year, um, I'll say early spring, late winter when we had, um, kind of an initial conversation around this this year around parking. That was one of the potential options that we could have a shuttle service. It could be kind of a circular service. It could be destiny. There were a couple options that we didn't. We got some high level costs. We looked at what the circulation potential could be. It could go all the way down to the rec center lions and then have a couple drop off spots downtown. That's about as far as we got with that, but we're happy to revive that if that's something you, and do some additional engagement around that to see if there's interest in that, if that would be the desire of council.

I actually had that note as well, just because with parking, it's always that catch 22, right? Because you want to have enough parking, but you don't want to have so much parking that when those special events don't happen, that now you have a bunch of empty lots, right? And so I think this is where you talk about public-private partnership, right? Can we come to an agreement with someone where we, yeah, we split costs on a shuttle for the, I don't know how many, it's what, every other week? How many do we have in a summer? I mean, it's not... a ton, right? So, I mean, we're not talking about every week out of the year. We're talking about a limited amount in the summer, which, you know, if it's raining a lot, a lot of times they get canceled. So people I would think would be more willing to sit outside for five, 10 minutes in nice weather to take a shuttle then. So that's one of those things where I definitely had that on my notes.

Yeah, I think a pilot project on shuttle service.

Or what are the options at least?

I think a good pilot would be the spotlight events to try it. And then that almost leads into the evolution of Victoria with Downtown West and some of these other things because is that center of downtown evolving, maybe even moving, maybe even multiple centers?

Do we see enough parking issues for even light up Victoria, right? Like you said, those spotlight events. Yep.

So that could be. And the other thing is I think wait time came up. I took an Uber recently, and I had to wait 15 minutes for an Uber. You're going to have to wait.

Would you rather wait or would you rather walk?

Even at an airport, you have to wait for an Uber. So it's just life.

All right, very good.

I think that fundamentally, we have a couple questions before us that staff needs. We should address those questions so that we're not bogged down in solutioning before we really have an accurate assessment of the problem. So that said, I would say your first question that you have here Madam City Manager, I feel as though the answer to that question is yes. The study does accurately reflect what the problems are facing downtown. I think that that's brought out by some of the high-level results that there are various layers of solutioning, and we should have an exploration of those layers. So that sort of then brings down to your second question, is what would we believe is helpful? And I think that codifying what those... what I'm going to say, like a rank ordering. So what is the simplest that comes all the way down to the most difficult? And that can be phased in two ways, one on the basis of effort and one on the basis of cost. And then certainly within that, the cost aspect is, what kind of solutions would there be available to address those? We have added tools recently to address the costs, but those tools should not be utilized until we can have enough accurate information to make a sound, reasonable decision that's data-driven. The loudest voices are not necessarily the voices that are most correct, and that I think has to be our guiding principle here. These problems were not created overnight. They're not gonna get solved overnight, There are serious resources that are gonna be needed to do it, and it's the taxpayers of Victoria that are gonna be part of that solution. They've given us their opinion as to how they want that solved, and they've spoke. Anybody who's read the survey results hears it loud and clear. uh... i don't think there's any ambiguity of what we're being told there so i would like to see us be able to have reason solutions before we then start to reach into those toolkits and figure out how we're going to utilize those toolkits you know and then you know just another comments that we should take into consideration There are other things that we need to see the fullness of time unfold a little bit before we start jumping into solutions. We still have Downtown West that we have invested heavily of our taxpayers' resources into that. We need to see success there and see how those impacts spill over. it would not do the citizens of Victoria very well to make a decision that then gets impacted by something that was unforeseen in that space. And then we can't discount the fact that additional development is a place that can be utilized to solve some of these problems that are here. And there are other areas of the city that are right for redevelopment, and that's where we should be looking to use those toolkits and partnering with that to maximize what the citizens of Victoria's well-spent tax dollars go to.

I would just say, I mean, I think, right, there's long term and there's short term, and I think, right, like, whether it's us building a structure ourselves or it's something built because of redevelopment. I mean, those are obviously long-term, like it's not happening overnight, right? Like that is something that's gonna take some time to do. But there are lots of little things. I mean, you know, We, you know, yes, Blue Agave just opened and I'm sure traffic is much heavier there now than it probably will be, right? With any new restaurant, new things, people want to go, right? So it's busier. That's going to affect parking. But we also have another restaurant that's going to be opening, right? So I do have concerns about where we're at right now. And if we can do smaller things that will help. It might be putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, or lipstick on a pig, whichever metaphor you wanna use. But if there are things we can do to help in the interim before we get, before we decide, before we get all the data on whether it's redevelopment to build something, whether it's us building at the taxpayer's expense, there are things we can do. And one of the things, that I think I would propose doing is so I tried looking back, I wanted to look back at the row project because it's been three years and it's like I can't remember what our thinking was, right? And obviously even the city has changed in those three years when we approved it. But I was looking and, right, so part of our ordinance is, right, we have the amount of parking that they need to have per square footage. But as part of this CBD, right, we can reduce that by 50%, right, because it's shared parking. So we are, you know, people should be able to share parking. They don't need exactly, you know, what our ordinance says. You know, we reduced the apartments from what, two per unit to one and a half. I was perfectly fine with that because I think that's enough parking for an apartment complex. Reducing like the orthodontist from 10 spaces to five, again, 50%, I think that's fine because my kids have gone, there's never 10 people at an orthodontist, right? Like you're not gonna have 10 cars at an orthodontist, it's fine. Where I think the issue is and where I would like to see the potential change or at least talk about more is with those businesses where their primary hours affect the evening, right? An orthodontist, regular businesses are, if they're seven to five or nine to five or whatever, they're not affecting, right? Like we've seen, like the parking is fine there, so reducing those 50% doesn't really necessarily affect our downtown parking because there's plenty of shared parking during the day based off of what we've seen. It's... Right, what's driving the parking issues are our restaurants because they're so popular, because people wanna be down here and do them. And so I look back and I'm like, I don't think we should be reducing, or at least we should be having a larger conversation. And what I couldn't tell from back then was from the packet, I did not have time to re-watch the meeting. In the packet, it wasn't super clear, and I'm sure we talked about it, but it wasn't super clear to me that we were reducing it 50%. where, like again, we could have talked about it in the presentation, I just didn't watch it, but in the packet, it wasn't clear. So just making sure, like for future restaurant, right, like that we're not reducing that, and then that tells us, right, like if we don't reduce it, and we're like, well, there's not enough available parking to get to that number, or maybe it's not 50%, maybe it's only 25% we do, right? But if we can't get that number then we know we have a bigger problem right and then we do have to do something more so that's one of those things where I for those night businesses where it's the nighttime driving our like that drive the like I think we need to take a Bigger look at that and not just automatically reduce it by 50% All right, let's let me take a shot at kind of wrapping this all up in a bow.

So I think I You know, to council member Robert's point, as new businesses come online, we should really have a great, robust conversation about parking. And even though we've applied that standard in the past, we want to take a look at anything that we have coming on in the future. The things that we can do now, and you had a good list of those, enforce the time limits. Make the signage consistent. uh... business toolkits great idea plan your visit another great idea anything that we can do that helps the customer find their parking spot here we should utilize and uh... i know we've done a really great job providing toolkits to businesses from our you know from the resources here at city hall to say you know link your website to our website so you can see where the parking is all of those kinds of things I think all of those are great initial first steps that we can take. Did I forget anything? Oh, and maybe let's think about doing a pilot program with the shuttle.

Mayor, I think we need a dual path in this.

Certainly.

And we talked about rank ordering, and without mentioning it, Council Member Roberts laid that out by a form rather than fashion. But one path is core training. parking issues that we're talking about here. The other path is the event. process where these are exigent circumstances, they create consternation, and where we can then employ some of these pilots and creative solutions to that. We are gonna also, we should, I didn't hear, but educational campaigns to citizens, getting things out in newsletters, say something like, hey, Victoria is a walkable city, and point out some of the things that we've done as council in trying to make Victoria more walkable over the years. And it's gonna get even better. We still have Highway 5 that needs to be done. And before we start committing large dollars, we need to see the impact of how that change is gonna happen. We're gonna get, tunnels that go under Highway 5 to make pedestrian access better. We're gonna get an overpass that's gonna make access better. And to be able to bring a campaign to say, hey, sometimes the best parking spot is no parking spot, let's use our feet. um i think we all have seen that i have been a huge proponent over the years of trying to you know either walk to city council meetings walk home from city council meetings not take up parking spaces so that we just reduce the demand sometimes it's about consciousness and education to bring that message to solve those problems every car that we can pull out of downtown is one more car that is a potential of another car, that's not gonna say that there's a problem. And then lastly, we've talked about this before, there are people who are using the trail as a recreational service and they're taking the prime spots from downtown businesses, and we should figure out a way that we can educate people, put up signage at a chance point, that trail parking, we can make accommodations for that. And like we've said, not everybody is gonna listen to that, but awareness is a huge part of our toolkit.

Very good.

Can I ask a quick question? I know we're running low on time. Do we know how many spots Because I don't feel like we have a lot that actually have two-hour parking signs right now. I feel like right out here, there's a few kind of by Winchester and Rye. But even those, I feel like, isn't it only during the day, and it's not after 5 p.m., or am I reversing that? I feel like only, it's like nine to five or something like that, two-hour parking.

I think one of your pictures had it on there, eight to five, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., I think.

Well, Mayor, members of the council, Council Member Roberts, this goes back to the inconsistency, so I don't want to misspeak here, but yes to all of that.

I just was curious, like, yeah, like, is it only a few? Like, do we want more? I mean, I hate to also, like, limit people, right? You come down here and you want to watch the Vikings game at Vicks or something, right? Like, football's three hours. So, like, you don't want to limit people's. But, you know, maybe it's not every parking spot, but we add a few more. Or is it... at night instead of just nine to five. But again, like then it's who's out there watching to make sure they move. I don't know. My only one last other comment is to, I think Greg was talking about handouts and stuff like that, but like, you know, are our businesses willing to put handouts in, you know, like in their vestibule if they have one or whatever, right? For Here's a map to show you the parking so that the next time you come, you know, right? Like again, just trying to think of simple ways that, educate people that don't cost a lot of dollars.

Thank you. Ms. Hardy, yes. Thank you, Mayor and members of the council. Council Member Roberts, just real quickly to kind of build on what you were talking about. One of the things staff will be doing is meeting with Lance and his team as we drill into that data. Yes, we have some of those signage to promote circulation and turnover, but do we have enough? Are they correct? Do we have 15 minutes and two hours are pretty typical downtown. Do we have enough? Are they in the right locations? Those are things that we're exploring and we'll continue to explore as part of this process. So as we do the deeper dive into that analysis and we'll be coming back with very specific recommendations and as I'm hearing consensus around maybe that rank order, Councilmember Evanski, that you hadn't talked about that there's maybe different from simple to most complex in terms of cost and effectiveness or efficiency to implement. as it relates to the day-to-day parking solutions or strategies, as well as event and then trail. So maybe we have three buckets. So I feel like I was seeing consensus and head nods on that. If we can incorporate that into our follow-up discussion. Great.

Just one last comment, sorry. Yes. So, oh yeah, the other thing is we have a wide range of people. So we have a lot of seniors that like to get, and we talk about this in every walk of life, making sure we get things out that are all over social media, but find a way to get it to our seniors. So the handout type thing would help people who maybe aren't online and that stuff. But another option for our younger crowd may be, are there apps out there? You think of our GPS apps, like Waze and things like that, you're driving and it's like, oh, someone spotted a cop up ahead two miles, right? So is there apps out there for parking that people can put in? Like I saw a parking, right? There's a parking spot here, right? So that help, you know, obviously, you know, you can't, you know, we can't afford things like the airport has where it tells you, you know, like there's mechanisms that tell you, yeah, there's 40 spots left or whatever. And it gives you a green light or whatever, but maybe there's people, things that, With public help, we can.

Technology is a great resource. I know we looked into it a number of years back, but technology comes down in price. Last thoughts before we wrap this up.

I know we're stealing your bundle here, but the only thing you didn't mention was additional partnerships. I think that's an easy couple phone calls. If Rowe has 30 spots being taken up, is there a way that they can have the people that are leasing out the other offices blue agave the orthodontics whatever else is in there to see if they can park their employees in those spots again additional partnerships i think is something that we should take a look at and if it's there great if not we tried yeah well it is certainly top of mind for this council and the city staff and we work on it continuously we talk about it a lot so

and we will forge ahead and continue to tackle the problem. So with that, there's no more other items on our workshop agenda this evening, so I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

We have a motion. Can I get a second?

Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries. We stand adjourned.