Letter from the mayor: The end of Paso Robles parking management
– My position since being asked by the Mainstreet Assoc. to supply more parking, and/or parking structure back in 2016, was to do some research and make findings on why we don’t have enough available parking. What I found was that the majority of the 467 spaces in this parking area around the downtown and city park, had a vast majority of the spaces parked out all day by the same vehicles day after day. It was no wonder why there was no available parking, but it was also very legal to do so.
Regulating publicly owned parking would have to be done, but without a legal plan, we could not keep the downtown businesses or anyone else from parking all day in front of a store. It’s been this way for many years, as an example, during the 2003 San Simeon earthquake, nearly all of the cars that parked near a collapsed building were crushed. Most were owned by merchants or employees.
Paso Robles Mayor John Hamon
Still today, many of the all-day vehicles are owned by employees, business owners, patrons, or others that do business in the downtown core and will park for very extended times if not all day. These spaces are public property and the citizens of Paso Robles who own and maintain them with their tax dollars, should have a reasonable expectation to be able to find an open space when they visit downtown.
Council, in an effort to provide solutions, directed staff to do an analysis of what a parking structure would cost to build at either the City Hall parking lot, or another parking lot that is at 12th and Railroad St., both of which are city properties and owned by the taxpayers.
The price tag indicated the city could build one in the range of $25-30M in 2018 dollars and would nearly double the number of downtown parking which would be a great goal and set up the downtown for many years to come with adequate parking. To pay for it, the city could bond for the project, however, some sort of guaranteed revenue source to pay the debt service would have to be in place first. Paid parking on the street would have to be started. Additionally, few visitors would ever pay to use a parking structure unless paid street parking was already in place so the first step would be installing a street plan.
The solution the council decided to use was a management plan that would charge for street parking after two hours of free parking from 9 am to 8 pm. It designated five discounted employee-paid permit parking areas, provided discounted annual senior parking permits for Roblans over 65, handicapped folks could park anywhere without paying a fee, and also provided free 30-minute spaces at the end of every block for quick pickups. The parking program was designed to have an 85% occupancy making available 15% of the spaces most of the time.
Good business sense and practices dictate that you should try to get as many patrons through the storefront as possible during the day. Parking space turnover is critical. If there is nowhere to park, people generally will not walk too far to get to the store they wish to trade with. The major goal in any parking system is to use the space as many times during the day as possible. Another comment from a savvy business owner who supported the program said, “if they can’t afford a $1 per hour to park, they probably can’t afford anything in my store”. Another attribute was that the parking district was small. Within two blocks of the park, there were over 1000 free spaces available if someone did not wish to pay to be closer.
Originally, when the plan was first put in place, we began seeing plenty of open parking spaces during the day but the plan was not paying for itself through the generated revenue. The main issue was there was not enough political will (three votes) on the Council to do the right thing and charge the minimum to make the program at a minimum, revenue neutral.
Changes to the program toward the end of 2023 of one dollar per hour from minute one would have produced more than enough revenue to cover the annual $500,000 cost to run the program, plus pay off the $650,000 general fund debt in a little over a year and would also put excess revenue back into the downtown to promote the district’s businesses. However, about this time, a legal program issue was found by city staff. An error in the legal recordation of the actual parking district boundaries had been made in the beginning of the management program. Council therefore directed that anyone wishing a refund for fees paid or parking citations issued for the past twelve months would be entitled to make a claim.
Although the parking plan was supported by the Chamber of Commerce, Travel Paso, the Wine Growers Assoc. and other business groups, The Main Street Assoc. and many of the downtown businesses and local citizens clearly did not want any kind of paid parking program complaining they were already losing business revenue with less patrons coming in. This was before the new rate would have been instituted – the two free hours were still in effect. They “claimed” they wanted some sort of program but did not offer any detailed alternatives when asked to do so.
Seeing that council had three votes to change the plan from operating in the red to putting it into the black financially, a small group of citizens was formed to begin a referendum campaign which asked to have the parking issue put on the ballot (at a substantial cost to the taxpayers) or to have the council repeal the parking management plan all together. Out of nearly 18K registered voters in Paso Robles, the referendum generated over 2K unverified signatures for the petition (about 12%). With this consideration, council decided to repeal the ordinance rather than spend more money to put the question on the ballot in November. The invested tax dollars in program equipment will more than likely be unrecoverable.
For me, I am back to where we started back in 2016 and have put the management issue back in the hands of the downtown merchants themselves. It’s back to telling the downtown visitors it’s “first come, first served” and it’s “too bad so sad there is no available parking.” That’s the business model they wanted, and they will get it. I was disappointed by the many who supported the plan and had said they really liked finding a parking space but when it came to making a difference during public hearings, their silence was deafening. I have already heard of a wife guarding an open space with her body until the husband came back around with the car to park – really? It appears this is how a small group of Roblans with little business sense wants to manage downtown public parking for their own gain or in reality, loss.
I am sorry, but for me, I am absolutely done with parking.
John Hamon
Mayor of Paso Robles
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