e pilot areas where the this was implemented compared to the rest of the the pilot uh the control areas so you had 35 increase in sales tax revenue in the pilot areas where this was in place versus less than 20 in the controls so it's not just about you know managing trips it's also about getting better economic vitality and then in residential areas like this this might apply especially to projects outside of downtown it's really important to protect residents from spillover parking so you can in some areas one option is you charge non-residents the right prices for curb parking if there's any excess after residents demand is met use the revenue to benefit that neighborhood you know in Laguna Beach near the near the beach if you're a non-resident you might be paying three dollars an hour whether resident pays 40 dollars a year one really important thing though is don't issue more resident permits than there are available spaces and this is especially important if you're adding apartments to an area that currently is only small houses the the city of Tucson what they do is they say if you have two legal parking spaces in front of your property then you can only have two parking permits for the street for that property no matter how many new units you build on your property so that's one way to do it but but don't do what Boston did in Beacon Hill they gave out 5,000 resident permits for an area and then years later they went and counted and discovered they had less than a thousand on-street parking spaces right so it's really important to to limit it this way so that's managing curb parking city operated lots and garages well the first I want to say the the projections that I've done using the model that I I built and I built many of these over the years for different downtowns and campuses the forecasting the plan development as as proposed by the city including the the loss of parking spaces due to various projects and then taking into account the effect of the planned parking price increases that have already been approved by city council last summer what we see is that those price increases will reduce demand enough so that even with new development and the loss of some existing parking spaces within downtown you'll still have a surplus so the this is something that you should certainly look at my calculations review them check them but it's really important to remember that when the prices go up at a rate higher than inflation demand goes down all else being equal that's a significant effect and we've seen in many communities before that they raise prices to build a new garage and discovered that demand fell so much that the new garage was no longer needed and I think that is likely to happen here but still it's important to keep working on all the things you could do to solve current needs and future needs so focus on reducing demand in the peak hours this kind of time of day pricing that sf park did on the street they also did off street so the garage is there the performing arts garage their peak hour like Santa Cruz is noon to three so they charge four dollars an hour right after that demand drops right way off and so they drop the price down to a dollar an hour I think a strategy like that could work really well for for downtown another thing is to consider switching from charging discounted rates for monthly permits to charging for employee picering just by the day administratively it can be more difficult but especially with the modern technology that that you have in a lot of the garages and the technologies that are available to do this in lots and and even on street it can be a really good way because basically the problem with a monthly permit is that once you bought it it's like an all-you-can-eat buffet right you drive every day and it doesn't cost you anything more um when you switch to charging by the day you can see results like the gates foundation had they went and they switched and they started charging 12 dollars a day capped at 120 a month well when they put that in people could basically save money every every day they didn't drive and their drive alone rate went from 42 percent driving alone to 34 right that's like a 20 25 percent drop in the total number of vehicles parked the um two things that come up with that though is of course some of the people who purchase monthly permits are maybe low income right they're there and then some are very high income some of them are programmers with six-figure incomes so one option right is is to um get rid of the monthly permits which would end those subsidies for the people who can't afford to pay and then provide transportation help to low income people just like PG&E has lifeline rates for electricity service a second um that that may be politically more feasible is that you phase out your below cost parking rates over time where you could just let all the existing permit holders who have those 45 to 11 month permits renew at existing rates but then you charge full cost prices to the new buyers um and so what that would do is be it'd be kind of similar to the the pension system which has lower benefits for for new hires and with that way through attrition you gradually phase out the below cost rates so that's city lots and garages regulating private developments right minimum parking requirements are really a critical topic and one where I think uh Santa Cruz could make a lot of progress um at least progress toward goals like making housing more affordable and really these these requirements they're government regulations right that tell every land use developer and every owner of her property how many parking spaces they have to build at a minimum so this is Dana Point California this is what four parking spaces per thousand square feet of built space looks like um it's a lot of asphalt the the the requirement for downtown for all commercial uses is here in Santa Cruz I believe is 2.5 spaces per thousand square feet so downtown is better but even even so it's a lot of square footage for every square foot of of land it's basically four spaces per thousand works out to 1.3 square feet of asphalt for every one square foot of actual building space now restaurants are often 10 or 20 parking spaces per thousand square feet required so what's their purpose we we we rarely have anything required by a zone and code zone and codes are mostly about limiting things right limiting height so my hometown at the purpose of these parking requirements is to alleviate traffic congestion opetus similarly Napa similarly San Diego to reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality so they had higher ambitions for theirs well generally what these requirements really are good for in a practical sense is to avoid spillover problems right so that if the parking in front of somebody else's business fills up they don't fill up all the parking in front of your house on on the street where you live but why did they think that minimum parking requirements were good for reducing traffic congestion I mean after all we've had these things for about half a century and most of California and clearly congestion is worse so really it was an economically illiterate theory the regulations were set to ensure that virtually all spaces all destinations had access spaces even when parking was given a way for free downtown Santa Cruz of course is exception but I think the rest of the city this is how the requirements were set they prohibited or they discouraged parking fees and actually it's really hard to charge anybody for parking when everybody is required to build more than is needed when it's free because there's no nobody else who wants to buy your parking because they've got too much of their own but then it made it really easy for traffic engineers to prohibit parking on street right so like this happens to be Las Vegas parking's prohibited and that way they could add more traffic lanes so when you're on the sidewalk you can have an 18-wheeler at your elbow as you walked on the street and they got more traffic lanes which they hoped would solve the congestion but there were a lot of unintended consequences right like one of the things is that in this environment if you try to cross the street to shop you'll die and you got a landscape that looks kind of like this this happens to be Milpitas typical minimum parking requirements I don't think Santa Cruz's are all that different outside of downtown well the unintended consequences cost of parking got hidden in the cost of all the other goods and services we buy so that results in higher parking demand more driving more congestion more pollution and we all end up having to pay more because we have to build more parking in bigger roads right and we wound up getting higher rents higher taxes basically we're paying for parking in all of our roles except our role as a motorist and how did this affect housing affordability well Oakland two economists studied what happened when they put in their first regulation in 1961 only one space per unit required for apartments so construction cost went up 18 percent units per per acre went down by 30 percent land value went down by a third imagine if you're an economic development director and you came to your council and said I got a regulation that's going to do these three things they probably wouldn't have passed but that was higher cost get passed along to tenants in the form of higher rents so Seattle they found that the parking subsidies increased monthly rents by about $250 per month for every apartment and parking is vastly oversupplied um and it's very very clear from the research now these costs get passed through and result in higher higher costs uh here in san francisco where i live now uh two uc berkeley professor studied it it increased home sale prices homes with parking sell for a lot more than homes without 24 percent more households could afford housing if they didn't include parking and 20 20 percent more could qualify it for loans on condominiums so allowing people the choice of whether or not to buy parking when they when they rent or buy a place is a really good way to increase affordability that's not to say that you shouldn't allow people to buy one but if it's optional rather than mandated then a lot of people can either have an apartment instead of being homeless or they can buy their first place and one of the things we see now is san francisco is completely eliminated to all minimum parking regulations throughout the city and so we're seeing things like this apartment just down the street from me um that construction you see is the conversion of the bottom floor garages um into two new apartments um and they are simultaneously seismically reinforcing the building a lot of communities around the country now have removed minimum parking regulations either in some neighborhoods like downtowns and near transit or citywide so sacramento san diego san francisco fremont hayward buffalo has gotten rid of them citywide um so especially as housing costs rise people are really focusing on this and um you do have to manage the curb parking though right otherwise you'll have spillover parking problems and a lot of complaints so to give you an example the gaya building in berkeley uh this is a a new new project berkeley now by ordinance um requires the separation of the cost of parking from the cost of actually renting an apartment so this building has a fee of 150 a month they also require that car share spaces be provided to car share providers at no cost in any new apartment building downtown or condo um they also require free transit passes like the the discount transit pass program you just created for downtown for new residents and so the gaya building 91 apartments 42 parking spaces built they wound up with 237 adult residents with 20 cars and this is mostly a market rate building it's a mix of students and downtown workers l view requires the unbundling of parking costs from uh office spaces from all commercial space um so you can do it there too and that helped them reduce their drive-alone rate from 81 percent to 57 percent as they built a lot of new offices in what used to be a bedroom suburb other thing you could do is to require a parking cash out benefit for employees which means that if an employer subsidizes parking for the employees then they're required to also provide that cash to any employee who doesn't drive so for example if somebody wants to live downtown walk to work then they have to be given the cash value of the parking space now one option is to do what san amonica does and simply enforce the existing california state parking cash outlaw um in san amonica when you renew your business license you have to certify you're complying with the state law and the state law basically says if you have more than 50 employees and you pay for any part of your employees parking then you have to offer that subsidy that parking subsidy in the form of cash to anybody um at your your firm who doesn't drive um another way you could do it is to require that whenever um a company pays for uh a city parking permit that they have to certify that they are complying with state parking cash outlaw so i don't know i don't know which businesses 41 percent of the people on the wait list said that their employer paid for their parking um so there may be some of those companies should be complying with this law which is not well known about and rarely enforced and then another thing you could do is actually go beyond state law for example you could say anybody who subsidizes parking for their employees and buys a city parking permit has to offer the cash value to the ones who don't drive and it has a really strong impact so for example if the employees are offered 165 dollars a month in cash there's about a 30 percent decrease in uh parking demand and and driving um that's from an academic study by professor don't shoot at UCLA we put that into effect with Genentech in south san francisco they're out in the office park east of 101 and over six years combined with some other measures we got their their um drive alone rate down from 77 percent to 55 percent so there are strategies for regulating private developments and that's close to the end of course you're already working on providing the deep discount transit pass for all downtown employees which i think is a really powerful way to do it um actually providing the the the free transit pass as to every employee in a group um that kind of universal access has proven in several studies to be the most cost effective way to go so i think you made a good decision there um and then review and expand your local transit networks as you can either contribute funding or add your own shuttles um consider a self-driving shuttle pilot program right like here's one that an arbor has just started up of course you can keep improving your your um bicycle programs you've obviously done a lot um and especially these kind of protected bike lanes have a much greater effect than the older um unprotected bike lanes that are seen around town and i know you're working on that and of course in in the short term it may just be paint but in the long term you can build really beautiful streets like this one in in the Netherlands where you're really comfortably separated and you're you're closer to sidewalk level so just to to sum it up i think the challenges that that we have is to manage parking and transportation for the next few years and then as self-driving shuttles and taxis really take off that effect on parking demand will be profound and so the challenge is to manage the next few years and get through that um and then with time a lot of the garages will empty out one thing of course is that um parking lots and garages always tend in a system always tend to empty out from the least convenient spaces to the most so it's important to keep an eye on what's going on with your least convenient spaces and and um the the make sure that you're making good use of those so pricing like the curb parking pricing i talked about is an important way to get to that so there's a long list of strategies i'll of course leave these these slides with you and with that thank you for your time thank you so now is the time for either questions or we can move right along to our second part of the presentation my question yeah my questions are going to be relevant for both okay we'll we'll go ahead and move along and um we'll ask our second presenter to please come forward i have to you have to bring up all right okay i can start while it's coming up so thank you mayor thank you council members um it's uh it's a real pleasure to to to have this invitation to speak before you this evening um as the as the vice mayor mentioned i'm an associate professor at uc santa cruise i teach about environmental economics and urban planning and i wanted to keep this this really short and i'll be happy to go into more detail in the questions and a lot of what i'll do is just to reinforce some of the ideas we've um we've we've heard earlier so there's two there's three things that i'd like to to focus on um but this evening the first is to give a little um um there's a reinforcement in the economics of parking and both on how prices can be a tool to to to manage demand parking is really the number one it's by far the most effective tool in this transportation to management um toolkit and then secondly talk about how the the economics of supply and then really really quickly on some of the the future which reinforces a previous presentation so prices cost and the future so let's start with with prices now parking we might think that parking is kind of special but it's really like any other good like we don't run out of orange juice like when you get a Trader Joe's we don't run out of strawberries even in the in the winter rather that the price is a tool that keeps that supply um that demand in line with supply there's never there's never a shortage people don't come and say like i went down to Santa Cruz and i could never find any any orange juice but this is a tool that we typically use for other goods um even with like my um where i grew up in in britain we're facing this political crisis of brexit well some of those impacts are going to be ameliorated by prices like the prices are going to rise as a maybe there's a crisis um will affect the company of the country but there will be fewer things that go um um that that are in short supply this my point here is that parking is not something special parking is not immune from these like principles of economics um and we see this pretty much everywhere that whether you look whether in in large cities like seattle um portland um smaller towns like aspen um these there's a typical range for the 10 percent increase in parking charges reduces demand um by one and three and three percent and that's really on the the conservative end as a senator is i think this really dramatic increase in prices has just gone into effect so i think it'll be really um interesting to look a year out and two years out how this does actually um translate into a reduction in demand so um this is uh very much of this was mentioned by patrick seigman there's uh there's a range in elasticity and these studies these comprehensive studies that are tried to take examples from lots of different cities they come over broad range but minus point three so a 10 percent increase in price reduces demand by three percent is the most common value there's also ways that a city can get the policies that a city can take to try and make demand more responsive so try and make people um look to alternative look to jump bikes look to transit look to walking um instead of driving what is that so certainly better better substitutes so the programs that the city is already doing so that the jump bikes it's an amazing success the ecopaths will help others as well um enforcing the state cash out law but also removing these deep discounts for the monthly permits that we just heard about if you don't if it doesn't cost you any less to drive one less day a week why would you do that um so these this monthly um permits and also the deep discounts that are given to these monthly permits one of the factors is pretty good will be um constraining the price response and we we heard about this sf park um experiment uh i want to highlight some of the research that i did on this um we're with colleagues and we found that even one quarter changes increasing prices by a quarter had an impact on demand but it took a while like people need time to kind of figure out where the proper the parking costs are where the alternatives and so it's really these cumulative changes um over a couple of years um that made the program um the six the have a successful impact that that we heard about so now i want to say a few words about costs of parking so what about what's the supply side in terms of the cost to build a parking space so we heard um from Patrick Seatman some of these um these estimates of what this actually means and um for for say a new garage and the the farmers market lot but i want to walk you through some of the the reasoning how we get to this really dramatic configure so capital cost versus in the mid-range of the the the staff estimates it may have gone up since then but 35 million dollars 640 spaces but you don't actually get to keep not all of those are new there's more than a 100 spaces right there in the lot so we're actually only getting 514 net new spaces and so if you divide this 35 million um by 514 you get a capital cost per space of 68 000 those are pretty generous assumptions on financing and i think the the bond um forecasts um the the the the staff prepared were were would have been much higher than this so what does this mean if we're amortizing this over 30 years um of four percent that's um that's three that's nearly four thousand dollars a year per new space 15 dollars a day you add in so many to actually operate these these spaces so you get about 18 dollars um so this is going to be independent of Patrick Seatman's assumptions but this is um really much in the same ballpark but even after that five-year rate increase that you that you approved taking a monthly permit up to 75 it's only three four um dollars and 40 cents there's this daily subsidy at the margin and that's really the important thing for each new space you're building that's a subsidy of 14 dollars and 60 cents so where does this extra money come from well of course it's for meter revenue it's the um from on-street parking which is essentially free to provide the streets are paid for but that is revenue which is incredibly flexible this is something that the city can use the pretty the the council can decide for any other budget priority they use whether it's um investing more in the TDM programs which the city is already doing this could be money that goes to affordable housing it could go to any other budget priority it could go straight to the general fund it could go to policing it could go to anything and so the principle here is if you want more parking that's great but you should subsidize what you want more of so if you want more housing then use that money to subsidize housing and so these these four approaches which is um the city's typically used from requiring on-site parking through minimum parking requirements now with the downtown approach right now is well to require parking but allow the developers to build off-site but then subsidize it through public parking garages the third approach is to well just tell the developers build how much parking makes sense for you this is not the public policy priority the public policy priority could be to get more housing and so use that subsidy directly for the housing instead or to increase um inclusionary housing requirements or then the the most um kind of like um I mean from a traffic reduction perspective and just cap the parking have a maximum and then subsidize the housing and as you go down from these four we're going for towards a downtown with less parking but also with cheaper housing because the construction costs are less and also because the rents are going to be less it's important to remember that even though I own a car a lot of people we speak to own cars this is a large minority in Santa Cruz that do not own cars like 14 percent of renters a smaller percentage of owners this is citywide in downtown this is a much greater percentage these maps are prepared by um so some some students of the project last year this is census data the yellow area is downtown and this is areas were up to a third of rent of people sorry not not just renters do not have a car right now um and the the students also did some surveys that these are outside of downtown but a lot of the parking that is being built right now is going to waste they were ended overnight counts these developments like Cyprus Point Pacific shores Chestnut Townhomes and they found that in most of these cases just over half maybe up to two-thirds of the parking is occupied on the weeknights that they did there but they they did their counts and so this is another indication that a lot of the parking that we're spending a lot of money building or forcing developers to build when they could be providing more inclusionary housing is going to waste so really quickly the the future the autonomous vehicles it's a subject close to my heart I do a lot of research in this area this is hype cycle like autonomous vehicles have been in the news right they've been like autonomous vehicles are going to take over now the last year where they're not going to take over and this is what we see for a lot of products like um but they kind of go up in this um wave and um deep learning is now at the top um um but autonomous vehicles are kind of on the on the way down in this hype but in so this it's not necessarily two years away but it's certainly like in the longer term this is going to become a reality in in cities and this is a big problem for cities this is a governing magazine detailed study but look to the impact to cities general fund and parking budgets from the um from the reduction in parking demand and we're seeing this today with uber and Lyft and in the future we may see even more with autonomous vehicles so some the quote I like that if you have money to invest and you should short parking garages it's time for a big short in parking airports are seeing this many cities are seeing this already but the parking revenue is on its way it's on its way down I did want to highlight the the the data needs um certainly I think we have much less data on the overnight parking occupancy how much spec capacity there is in the system this kind of one or two year impact of the price increases that you just approved or you approved in in september it'd be useful to study these but also what is the real estate economics like if you require less parking how much more inclusionary housing can you require um what's that there's a trade-off between these these two and I wanted to finally leave you the message that um I'm glad to see there's some some commissioners commissioners in the room um my students um presented some great designs for protected bike lanes last night to the transportation and public works commission um we've been working closely with the chair of that commission and I'm certainly at your disposal but there's also some really interesting student projects I know but staff are a stretch very thin and we'd be happy to um to help in any way on this type of analysis um so thank you very much for your attention and I'd be happy to take any questions ever now um or in the future thank you thank you all right thank you for your presentation so that concludes the uh staff and guest presenters portion of the agenda is there any um questions from council members at this time the council go ahead okay council member brown I guess I so thank you for the presentations and um really appreciate your flexibility on starting late um and I'm sorry that I had to wait for for our previous agenda item to finish um so I guess one of the I'm I'm really interested in the this so two things that kind of themes one around um kind of perception of parking shortage and then the potential for use of parking subsidies for other purposes and um so I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more either of you about um it's right now the you know the way it's framed for us is that you know we we have these parking requirements the parking fund is self-supporting and we don't really hear a lot about what other you know how we might re-envision our parking subsidy you know what our parking fund as a source of revenue for alternatives so if you could just and so housing was on the list but I mean if just examples from the studies that you have looked at other communities where that's happened how it's been effective if at all um would be interesting to hear a little more about let me give it a try and maybe adam can add um it's really a policy choice to decide how to use public streets right they're they're finite spaces um one of the first questions is how much of a particular street do you want to use for storing private automobiles and then there's the question of well what should you charge and and um where should that money go um it's worth noting that um in most cities and I don't think Santa Cruz is an exception streets are often paid for local streets that is are often paid for in large part by sources like general funds um some street projects are also paid for by things like um impact fees on on new developments um and so different cities will say very different things about how to use curb parking revenues san francisco dedicates all of their parking revenue by law to the transit agency to support muni service um and that means that the city's uh parking fund there the the lots and the garages have to pay for themselves just using the fees from the people who park in those lots and garages um there's there's no use of curb parking revenue to support the and subsidized monthly permits for example um berkeley uses um parking revenues in part to make streets cleaner and and safer as do many other cities pasadena ventura um but also they use it to help fund homeless services um so there's lots of choices there um the um and another thing on on getting you know just getting rid of the perception of parking it's really important to just look at all the parking you've got that's underused including a lot of the parking that you kind of lose track of because it doesn't have automatic counting on it um and see all right how can we get better use out of that one thing that um cities like sacramento and san clemente and dana point do is they have worked really hard to to offer strong incentives to private parking lot owners to open up their lots to um public parking at sometimes just during the day um but they they offer incentives like agreeing to take over liability insurance enforcement and maintenance um and um to allow the private owner to still keep the fees and that can be a great way to find underused parking that's private and put it into use um and the other thing of course is in any city that gets rid of minimum parking regulations a really healthy private market market for parking springs up so in san francisco if you had one third of your apartment spaces parking spaces empty at night you'd be renting them out like crazy right so that could happen here in sanacruz i had a question for professor millard ball um you it seemed like the revenue from a parking fund can be used virtually anything is what you suggested is that how is that um so so certainly that the the meter revenue is at least to to my knowledge um but there are no legal constraints and how that meter revenue can it can be used many cities they put it in the general fund um some cities um use public benefits but i'd be corrected by by by staff if there's specific legislation that applies to to santa cruz um but that's actually very um but there's there's cities that use it for street cleaning there's other cities that use it for the policing um the cities that use it for um for other to go to the general fund or to senior services and um and maybe maybe there's a some something specific applies to to santa cruz but i'm not aware of it thank you i'd like this maybe the city turning away and on that and find it are the restrictions on our parking fund for what we can and can't use it for my understanding as a parking fund was created as a as part of a parking district that initially uh at least was used to establish some of the parking structures that have um been constructed in the downtown area and also to pay debt service toward repayment of those funds actually i was i was on my way um out the door in the back of the room and part of the conversation caught my ear on this on the monitor back there and that's why i came back into the meeting for this very purpose um but it's not to have a discussion about um alternative uses of the revenue to the extent that a parking district generates revenue in excess of what's required in order to provide and maintain um parking facilities that are in existence and to the extent the city council makes a policy determination that those revenues are not needed to improve or increase parking facilities with the use of the revenues then um under the parking district law of the state of california you are able to um place those funds into the general fund so so that's an option to the extent the the council makes a determination that there's excess revenue um for that purpose so beyond that however it seems to me that um the universe of potential uses for your general fund is really not um within the scope of a discussion on transportation demand management i certainly think it's worth um pointing out that there may be excess revenue and that it may be available for other uses but i don't think this is an appropriate form for the council to discuss um what you might uh appropriate that general fund revenue for okay council member um matthews and then by yeah um as i understood the presentations they were based on historic measurements downtown um i think there's actually two parts to my question um and i think probably both of you are well aware that we anticipate losing in the relatively short term 225 plus or minus parking lots that are privately owned leased by the city will disappear to private development um both losing spaces and creating we hope a good deal more um density which will have some parking need associated with it um it's impressive how the um parking demand has been relatively stable as uses have increased but also as i think you probably both know um we have relatively recently updated our downtown plan to to allow for in the um predictable future 500 or so new housing units and um obviously not everyone has a car etc and a lot of that reduced demand has been built in but um i wonder how you would um see the future of that kind of shrinking of existing supply and i think a pretty increased density um downtown um so that's one question i'll pile on all my questions um the other um i really am interested in urban design and it seems to me a great big surface lot in the middle of downtown is by no one's imagination the best use of that land and that um the uh idea of some kind of um mixed use activated streetscape shared use in a parking district uh is more forward-looking so i would just like your comments on that but that's really an interesting question i'm glad to have the chance to expand on it and i think the the key point is that the economics of like how much it costs to add a new space and how much of that is covered by parking revenue doesn't change whether you take out three quarters of your parking supply or you like don't change your parking supply at all that replacement parking um or additional parking um or both is still costing $68,000 a space and that is not funded by by parking revenue and so there's a and so there's a choice there like so um do you do you want to continue to subsidize parking or do you just want to say hey we want to mixed use development on this parking lot or do you want to um to improve the urban design and do it without subsidizing the the parking um so that was the first way that would be the first um where i'd respond and the second way is that that's what prices can also be very useful for the the price mechanism as a way to make sure that something doesn't run out and so that increasing the the pricing is kind of a signal that the something is becoming scarce so maybe when it gets to that point but say private actors or the city can actually start making money off um of parking and not subsidizing it then that would be a great time to say yes this is the time for to to increase the supply and whether that's as part of new developments or but hopefully as part of a shared supply um in in downtown so the price tool can be very powerful um powerful here does that answer the kind of um and maybe i'll ask our public works director to my my understanding of the way your presentation was that the price per space would would be figured for amortization on the revenue generated on that facility but in a parking district you're saying no anyway i'll ask actually um yeah you had to have that one garage pay for the price of that that space it would be very expensive but because we have several garages and several facilities we spread that increase over all of those so actually the turnover in all the spaces but that price increase actually pays that down fairly quickly so it's not 63 dollars and dollars that you or 68 thousand dollars that you need for that one garage it's spread over all of our parking facilities because we've just raised we didn't just raise it at that one garage we've raised it over all of them the other thing about price sensitivity i would just say um supply and demand that obviously works but if there's a very constricted supply increasing that price you won't see a change in demand until you get to a tipping point and um we saw that at the at the center street garage the two story garage that was free and we used to have three hour parking and it was full all the time a lot of employees would use it and and move their cars every three hours we went to paid parking and it's full it's still full and we raised the prices on that from 50 cents an hour to a dollar an hour it's still full so there's just a shortage that's a very central garage it's very active and so your theory said that should have dropped off by you raise it 10 percent you should have seen a drop in in usage but in this time until we reach a threshold where there's extra supply that sense of price sensitivity we haven't reached that yet i would say and then the other risk we have is if we get our prices too high then our our customers will go somewhere else i mean there's capitola where or or those are the things that we have to keep in mind we we don't want to chase all our customers away and then not have demand either so further for the restaurants and the businesses downtown all right we still will have a little of some public comment and but before we do i saw a hand here councilmember glever and then councilmember grumb great thanks um just wanted to get some clarity on the um statement by director deadl uh and kind of cross-reference that with what we heard with regards to the presentations so i know that we just heard about the center street garage and how it was free and then it went to 50 cents and it went to a dollar but there was no change but i think if i understood the presentations from our guests correctly there needed to be kind of a dual action of encouraging or putting employees or people that live downtown into the less used lots as the data suggested and then leaving those other spaces filled for people that are coming downtown for business or pleasure or whatever that might be is would you say that the non change in the uh use of that center street garage was because of the uh non moving of the other usages or do you think it's because as director deadl suggested it's because of the lack of supply i think what we've seen in in the data is that as in many areas it's it's the least convenient parking in a system that tends to empty out first right when when there are excess spaces the the spaces you find going empty are either in a less convenient location or else they're they're higher priced so for example in the data i've seen the river front garage that tends to be underused whereas the the locus garage right in the heart of things is super full right and the the the monthly prices for both of those garages are the same in terms of you know the 45 monthly rate so there's no incentive to choose the less used garage compared to the more used and i think as well with um meter parking when i when i look at the peak time parking surveys it's always the kind of hidden away meters at the at the edge of downtown so for example down by the warriors arena behind civic auditorium that go underutilized and it's just what we'd expect to see that it's it's those those less convenient spots harder to find that empty out first and so i think if if you ask well where did those 400 cars go the 400 viewers since 2008 a lot of that's happening around the fringes and the edges um and that we've had that experience elsewhere so i think that the strategy of charging the lowest rate that gets you one or two spaces available on each block is a really good way to balance those things out you'll wind up with much higher prices on pacific avenue in the core right and maybe 25 cents an hour at the fringes it's the same thing with the garages and especially with those garages in the heart of downtown where more than half the spaces are being occupied by employees with 45 monthly permits getting some of those employees out of there so that customers can park and you don't need to you don't need to raise the those daily customer rates um to let a lot more customers park happily and raise more money for the system um you could say that the next time a luxury condominium project is built we're not going to let the owners of those condominiums buy 45 a month permits to put their cars in city garages you could say they're going to pay the real marginal cost so there are a lot of ways um to both better manage what you have um and also get more revenue to fund any any needed garages without putting any more cost on customers thank you and then just one thing i saw some head shaking over here so i want to give you a chance of you disagree whether whether it be uh director deddle or claire i don't know i would just say it's it's we have a pretty unique parking system because and i typically agree that the further away typically you would have a lower cost parking option you see that in san francisco but uh the riverfront garage is a classic example it's it's further away used to be free to free two hours on the bottom and we used to sell 16 dollar believe it or not 16 dollar a month permits and we couldn't sell them in the riverfront garage and they were 35 in all the other garages and when we went to a higher rate we made all the garage pricing the same um just because we had businesses come down we had more demand and we're sold out on on permits in the riverfront garage in fact we have a waiting list there as well as the other areas now can we do a better job on on night you know and overnight for residential i think yeah i think there's an opportunity there um our demand curve drops off about six or seven o'clock at night and we have capacity so there is a way to tap some of that excess capacity in the evening but during the peak monday through friday between 10 a.m and 6 p.m we're pretty solid it's pretty busy downtown it's hard to find sometimes it's hard to find a place to park so um we're putting in new equipment in the garage and riverfront and we're going to be putting that throughout the system we'll have a lot more flexibility looking at different types of permitting options do we get a per uh per use type option we'll look at that um we did uh take our permit rates we know they're low we took them to the downtown commission several years ago and and they want it didn't want us to raise them so much so there's this a little tension there and trying to say what's the right price but i think uh i think we're moving in the right direction is what i would say thank you helsberg do you foresee a day when we will have flexible pricing like by the warriors arena that whole i think it's lot 17 or by the civic where people can park for 25 cents or 50 cents or whatever an hour when they're not you know in in order to get the cars out from the pre you know the spaces and specific avenue sure sure you know it's it's interesting because we used to price all of our parking differently our on-street parking was even different we had different color poles i don't know if you remember we used to have the blue poles which were the longer periods which were 25 cents an hour and then we had the orange poles that were 50 cents and and then the council used to get a lot of concerns because people would visitors would come down they didn't know how much the parking was and so we were directed to look at more standardizing our parking rates so we could we've kind of gone back to make it more convenient um and what we have is is the first two hour try to get turnover we do it by rates as opposed to um ticket so we try to we have one price and then it goes up after the second after the first two hours of the same price and then the after that it's it's double so it turns over encourages turnover on the street but you can look at variety of parking methods and pricing and when you have an event it's much more expensive you just have to sign it really well so people aren't confused and they know what they're paying that's we're trying to keep you know we want a pleasurable experience for our customers that they they know what they're going to pay for parking so there's all the funds go into the um parking fund no the all the tickets go to the general fund all of the all of the um parking revenue in the district go to the parking fund but all of the citations throughout the city go to the general fund you have a ballpark estimate of how much uh revenue comes from tickets and how much comes from uh parking you know i can get that for you i don't have that i don't have that in my in my hand right now so if there aren't any more questions one more one more question um there were just um stats about our usage and stuff so i'm just gonna ask jim and claire if you have anything to add or not kind of updates because it was interesting that apparently our occupancy is cooler now than it was even just a few years ago i guess that's where i'm going with this question right um i did see when i separated out the private for private use um i did see a slight trend upwards our downtown has intensified um say the old sentinel newspaper building next space um you know our each square foot downtown is getting more intensive and it could be that um people are becoming more reliant on the public supply um 10 10 pacific didn't build quite enough parking and so we have that residential piece uh and so even with the price increases over the years we haven't seen any any elasticity anywhere near the point three that's a national average so we didn't use that in our calculations when we brought you the rate strategy um back in september we used a slightly lower lower number we had uh all of those calculations um run by a third party uh economics parking firm and um we feel pretty good about those um and just to follow up on mr. dettles observation on the lot three we don't sell any permits there so that's entirely a customer reaction where we saw it was basically zero elasticity with the price raising that helps just a kind of a good question go ahead i'm gonna actually go ahead and ask councilmember meyers and then i'll go back to you okay so i think i think i had a similar question although my brain is fading um so what i've noticed in our downtown is i mean there's a big shift in the amount i believe of employees that we now have downtown so we now are attracting companies that people often would actually drive over the hill to access for employment so um so is that i mean so we're our parking is there is a consistent demand and we'll and it will continue to grow uh as we add more housing and as we add probably more employment opportunities and office space is that not correct in my very primitive understanding of how we we move about the world those are the estimates we use we we didn't look at any growth for residential because often residential will build their own parking but we looked at the pipeline projects again i didn't come prepared to talk entirely about the model i'm mostly tdm tonight but um we did look at the pipeline projects for um anticipated sort of solid projects we think might happen over the next uh five to seven years and um and we did estimate um based on existing uses now if self-driving cars take over tomorrow those numbers will be wrong uh we don't have a crystal ball so we we used what we had uh and so we estimated based on the actual use of the public facilities from what's from the built environment today and and use those same ratios as we move forward so that's how we estimated our future so you're really working towards our future exactly we so today has been planned already right so i mean we're what we're living with today was planned you know whatever 20 years ago and that's why we have what we have and economic goals were that hopefully less people start stop driving the hill and and we have a an economic sector here that actually can attract that type of business here so that is the kind of downtown that we've built um at least over the last 20 years in the recovery absolutely and and we did uh as we talked in february we did talk about those those office workers also being our best opportunity group and we will we're hoping to make some inroads uh with the with the carrot side as well as the stick okay so um city manager i just wanted to add one comment with respect to the it was pointed out that uh you know parking is used and parking phones are used for sort of broader uh policies to support the downtown to support the city and the city has historically done that as well and has been the goal uh like for example uh with respect to some of the maintenance that we do around downtown the bathrooms facilities that are provided the street cleaning the trash collection uh all those are supported by the parking district and in addition it's been a long-term goal of the city to maximize our facilities to provide for mixed use development to have higher and better uses at our facilities uh and to have fewer facilities since the consolidated parking so that we don't have as many surface lots as we have now in order to put those properties to higher and better uses and then when we do uh redevelop those facilities to maximize the use for those facilities like housing and of course the libraries that the obvious one too were uh the goal that was to try to to build a modern state of the library and to maximize a partnership in order to be able to accomplish that at a site that worked um and then we have some additional further goals with respect to the affordable housing project over at pacific station and trying to meet the needs for building and maximizing the the amount of affordable housing there with respect to the parking as well okay councilmember crone and then we'll go ahead and open it up to the public the downtown streets team do they are they out of the parking fund at all i think yeah i think we pay some from the doubt yes portion of it yes and that's 325 000 is that or i believe that's the correct number i don't have it with me tonight and another question i think that's a total but i think we split it amongst several several funds refuse parking jim i have another question for you um how do we explain that if this is correct this is uh i think mr. longinati uh gave us this downtown parking occupancy fell from 84 percent in 2008 to 71 percent in uh 2018 what i'm missing something what what accounts for that i'm not sure what you're looking at i'm looking at the thing parking demand that he um handed out as part of our packet tonight um is that the long term is that the peak time study overall parking surplus now exists with some hot spots of high demand in many underutilized lots and garages downtown parking occupancy fell from 84 percent in 2008 to 71 percent in 2018 you know i would need to look at the data that that that that statement is built on and i can't respond to it without having that in front of me okay thanks it doesn't actually sound accurate no i'll ask him when he comes back up um mr sigmond i was wondering about perception of of no parking you know i've lived here since 1983 i've never had a problem parking downtown never and and i just think it's a mind i don't know i just have never had a problem park finding a parking space in our downtown um can you talk a little bit about people's perception and how can we change that yeah yeah well i think it you know often if you know the system if you if you know where you're going and you know where where you can often find spots then then oftentimes you know you you can do well and also if you're if you're just a patient person that that helps too um but if you are for example um on a waiting list to to get a monthly permit and you'll say there's a shortage of parking because you can't get that 45 permit right now even though you may be parking every day right or you may be saying well i really wanted to park right in front of my favorite store or very close and and so that person drives around looking on the street a lot of times people prefer to park on the street it's it's easier to get to it's more visible it's perceived as safer um and so oftentimes um garages can be perceived as as you know lonely and and especially late at night right um and so those two things the wait list and just wanting to park close can lead to that perception of a shortage and also it's really important that when you look at the system you look system-wide not just at the spaces that you can count with with automatic garage counters but at your whole system including the edges because oftentimes um when demand for the overall downtown shrinks which is what your peak time parking surveys show that that shrinkage in demand it's happening at the fringes right and and i think it is also happening in the riverfront garage when you when you have really good data collection for all your parking um then then you can really see the the patterns even better one one thing to really consider is to get a license plate recognition technology on your parking enforcement vehicles that comes with the option of automatic data collection included and that can be used to automatically collect data for streets and lots and so on as part of the routine parking rounds Berkeley and Davis are both working on that and that will really give you the information and another thing is to look at well do we have situations where people are buying a monthly permit in the public lots and garages because it's just cheaper than the the parking they can get privately um you know what's for example there's a lot of people from st. George's residences on the wait list i don't know what the fee is in their own garage but i do know there's one there's one apartment project in lower pacific that i believe has $200 a month parking fee um there may be some of those people would rather pay 45 to be in the city lot um so you know one of the ways that we often get much better use out of those underutilized private lots right is is to um stop being the best deal in town at the city lots and the city crashes thank you i'd like to take a moment now to um allow for the public comment we're not taking any action tonight um but if there's any members of the community that are interested in speaking to the uh to the council on this item i'll um ask if those who are interested in briefly addressing the council please step forward first and you'll give be given one minute and then we will um allow for the requested additional time from um a organization to go and then return to other community members who are interested in speaking for longer than one minute so is there any member of the community wants to address the council on this topic at this time and you'll be given one minute if you could please line up to my left could i get a point of clarification if if you wait you can get two minutes but if you don't if you go now you get one minute yes okay i would just encourage the council to look at um the data um that the presenters have gone to the trouble to present to us i really think that what we're looking at is and what's been even though there's a lot i don't understand it's abundantly clear that this is about managing and creating what we want to see and i really think that there's no question with climate change coming on that we need to shift um and what we need to do is get people into those outlying fringe areas um and so forth i just also want to say my friend has two cars and i walk everywhere and take the bus so i never get in his cars but he is forever moving his cars and he has absolutely no problem ever getting a space and i could tell you where but i kind of want to keep him a little under the radar i'm a little paranoid but it's in the downtown area he we never have a problem thank you matt ferrell i um just wanted to say that uh i appreciate the presentations this evening i think that a lot of these policies these gentlemen present are uh well founded on research i think the examples presented though tended to be larger metropolitan cities berkeley and arbor and that i think what we need to be really careful about is we need to test these theories in our own communities because i really i know for instance in the city of redwood city i think they had a peak parking pricing strategy for on street and the city abandoned it or stabilized on street parking prices because of customers reaction to that volatility in the parking right so not saying that we can't look at these things but we need to be careful about our expectations because i'm not sure they all have the same impact everywhere thank you my name's kurt simons i uh i have a business downtown i've paid for parking for all of my employees for over 20 years and it's it's been dirt cheap it has been a benefit i can offer my employees but we're part of the problem we allow our employees to come downtown and park and take up the parking spaces for the customers and that's what i want to try to change is allow parking for our customers and have incentives and i i'd love the presentation tonight it was very informative about options and the city is already doing a lot to improve the demand management and i just want to encourage that hi i'm susan kevaleri um i found the presentations to be really very interesting especially about the future of santa cruz um i just want to point out that the city passed at a climate emergency resolution that last friday over 2 000 students protested in 125 countries that's 1.4 million young people it was the biggest day of climate action according to 350.org yesterday the co2 level was 414.79 parts per million we are in trouble and cars are not our future thank you thank you are there any other additional members of the public who would like to address the council for one minute okay we'll go ahead and ask now to have um mr launch naughty come forward and you'll be given four minutes for your requested additional time not a problem um hello council members i'll give you a brief won't be four minutes because you're weary um i just a couple points uh the excess parking revenue uh that could go into the general fund that was an exciting point for me to hear that tonight um i often see you folks struggle to just find 30 000 to add to some worthy worthy program well the revenue that's going to come in on account of the price increases that that this council passed last year would pay for according to the city staff would pay for 2.9 million per year just in debt service on the garage so if you don't build a garage there's some money that could be used for housing for homeless programs for what have you um i want to say too that i think that uh i don't think it'll be controversial to propose that developers need to offer their tenants the option of paying for parking spaces separately from their apartment or condo isn't that just basic american choice um adopting the practice of unbundling parking from the from the cost of the unit i think that's the hidden uh affordability benefit that that we really need to pay attention to and will also lower vehicle ownership and you know i i as far as i'm as far as the presentations tonight i'm they were wonderful i was i'm kind of a nerd and so i loved it but it really comes down to this do we build new parking spaces that cost us over 400 a month in debt service and then sell those spaces for what 45 a month or 70 a month i mean no business per and i'm kind of socialistically inclined i would say but a business person would never do that why would you build more capacity that you know you're going to lose money on it's it it seems absurd to me i think it comes down to that so we need to find these other options and we know that they're there and that that's what we had we learned about tonight so i hope we can agree on that i hope to see uh there's this council agendize in in the future and end to this idea of building a garage i hope you will ask the staff to negotiate with the calvary church who really wants to build affordable housing on their lot but doesn't know how to find a way but i hope you will ask staff to explore uh conversation with the church to partner to build uh parking on the ground level and affordable housing above that on their lot and uh i think that we're at i think that we're at a point you know it's 2019 and we have climate change why are we subsidizing autotrips can we make that just a principle we're not going to subsidize autotrips anymore thank you question for mr longinati could you and the question i had for um the parking people downtown parking i can see fell 84 percent to 71 percent how do we account for that where'd you get that stat from um so that was uh that's the way i read the uh the data from 2008 to 2018 from the that census the christmas time census okay thank you okay so now we'll reopen the um public comment to any member of the public who uh didn't address the council and would like to take two minutes to address the council please if you can't line to my left okay good evening i'm scott graham um you know i think you should look very seriously at doing something other than building a parking garage um given the numbers that these guys presented and the fact that car usage is going down the there's all sorts of empirical information that younger people are not buying cars they're either using rideshare cars when they go on long trips or they're using uber and lyft and things like that bicycles uh public transportation so why would we want to spend a bunch of money that would have to be paid off over 30 years on a some a project that 10 years from now will be just a giant uh albatross and it doesn't make sense to do something like that and if you can take that kind of money and put it into something meaningful like housing we have a housing crisis here we don't have a parking crisis at the moment but we definitely have a housing crisis so it would be the best use of any money that you have instead of it going towards a parking garage you'd be going towards housing and going towards programs and get people out of their cars you know i mean that that's money well spent getting the bus service back to what it used to be in the 70s we had an incredible bus service here in this county and now it's just a shadow of itself so i'd like to see that come back also thank you good evening i'm brett garrett and i really appreciate the two presentations one of the things they've told us is how to do free tdm parking a cost for parking is we've been told the most effective effective version of transportation demand management so if we are if we're paying for tdm and we're also paying to build more parking lots that's kind of working at at cross purposes so it would be more consistent just to focus on tdm and as we raise parking rates that it's tdm that makes money actually that's it's great i love the concept of having better monitoring so that we can have an app for santa cruz like i think they have had at some point in san francisco where people can look on their app and they say here's where the spaces are available oh here it's two dollars an hour and here it's 75 cents an hour i'm gonna go park where it's 75 cents and there's a spot right there and i know it's there because my app says so i i love the idea of having more monitoring where people can see what's available and what the prices are i want to say if we're observing zero elasticity i believe that just means the price is too low raise the price higher and you'll start seeing the elasticity i don't buy the argument that that that the higher price means everyone goes to capitol instead because if if you're parking if you're part charging five dollars an hour and the garage is still full that means empirically that people are still coming to santa cruz and those are people that are willing to pay money for parking they're probably willing to pay money in the stores too businesses will love it thank you thank you good evening i'm thrilled to see that downtown employees are now able to get their hands on deeply discounted bus passes but the funds shouldn't stop there commuter benefits mandated for large employers should be the ultimate goal incentivize all transit use today we've been talking about transportation demand management but it sounds more like parking demand management to me like where's the transit where's talks about getting people moving in terms of tdm we as a county have closed down soquel park and ride highway 17 direct bus service and we wonder why we have an aptos strangler in our county you know the part where in mid county traffic gets to be the worst our one and only local express bus 91x tries to have it both ways 91x by being a local and express by skipping straight to cabrillo when leaving santa cruz but then stuck moseying at dominican on soquel and throughout moracy and on 41st it's an express bus it can't be both um one time i got frustrated with metro and they're bunched up scheduling at cabrillo how basically three buses come within a time span of 15 minutes and then there's nothing else after that that i decided to patronize mst with their express bus it and gave 350 when my free cabrillo pass could have been used i gotta say that was a nice experience they've got wi-fi usb ports for your for your experience while you're aboard their commuter bus and it's just it's a pleasant experience now basically what i'm trying to get at is you can't market transportation if it's not appealing so it needs to be worked on lastly jump is great but it is starting to get middle with by uber for example if you go outside a service area it's cuts at speed and half thank you good evening my name is bald morgan i'll probably take less than two minutes tonight thank you very much for allowing us allowing this presentation it was a breath of fresh air it was creative it was dynamic i enjoyed it um it's very different from what i've heard before in this council when we've talked about parking um and i think it's needed so thank you for allowing these two wonderful presentations i also want to thank you for initiating the eco pass concept i think that's a terrific concept i think it's the future and i want to say congratulations for making that decision i have a son who's going to be 18 years old he goes to santa cruz high he's never talked about owning a car nor have i mentioned anything about a car i take him to school every morning he takes a bus home every day he sometimes takes a bus to soccer practice on the weekends it comes back on the weekends when he does soccer practice with a club we're at depot park where i sometimes get him depot park parking lot 24 in the one south of depot park is rarely full that's one of the fringe parking areas that's being referred to i park there often don't tell folks i often don't pay it's five dollars a day i park there sometimes and have a nice pleasant two-block walk into the city my other son who's going to be at santa cruz high next here has talked about an electric bike we live in live oak so we do need to commute downtown he's talked about an electric bike he's also learning how to take the bus with his brother he is at a theater production company a private production company called all about theater on washington i park on washington street also just south of of laurel i've never had a problem parking i don't have a problem parking downtown either mr crone you mentioned that so i don't think there's a parking issue downtown thank you very much and our next speaker hi debbie bolger um i would like to see the city stop subsidizing parking i'm very concerned about climate change and i think the price of things affects behavior uh i was also quite excited to see the autonomous vehicle shuttles uh tonight and i'd like to see one go up and down mission street and come downtown and maybe it could learn that route nicely and whenever i'm not able to walk downtown anymore perhaps i can take that shuttle so thank you so seeing um no other members of the public interested in speaking to us we'll go ahead and return it to council if there's any further questions and i'll just thank those who were able to stay and um in recognition that we started a lot later than anticipated so i appreciate your patience with that vice mayor comings and i think i just wanted to add or thank all the presenters for coming tonight and for your time i had one question for staff which was um i thought i had heard you mentioned in the beginning of your presentation that you're now tracking or have the ability to track in real time the movement of cars and the parking that's occurring and i'm just curious where that technology is now in place so we um we uh did a purchase order with a company called smarking and they uh it's a third party vendor and they collect and then um they collect from multiple like we have the luke machines and the surface slots we have different equipment we have gmg and we have different equipment all over the place um and they are able to collect the data from that and then um we have access to it through a through a portal so it's um and it's it's real time it's it's every day and it'll it'll help us make much better decisions here in the future uh the second piece of that is we do have the meters on pacific avenue they were installed um uh in early january and so we're just exploring what the what's sort of the back end of that information looks like so this both of those technologies just came on line this year or is it just smarking we've had in for a couple of years we're still working the bugs out of it um uh and the data is not it it's it's not that friendly yet but um definitely we can get it download it convert it and and mess with it in that point but we're uh we've had it for a couple of years at least yeah thanks brown well it's a question that i don't think can be answered here tonight but i i do just want to acknowledge that what i'm hearing is uh some um i don't know that i'd say disagreement but we're hearing different statistics about that that lead us to different conclusions about the need for more parking than the need to replace parking spaces um the goal and some of that's about goals for the future but i'm just having a hard time like like how do i decide whether or not we actually have uh you know need for more parking right because some of the some of the numbers i'm hearing say yes we do and some suggest maybe not and absent any clear data i'm going to go with the the end of one my my small survey sample of me my experience most resonates with the idea that no in fact we don't if we look at the periphery and we look at least less convenient um or maybe out of the way site so i guess i'm just trying to figure out how we where we can get our hands around or minds around data to help us make a decision that is going to have an impact uh with cost and otherwise um um so clear maybe you can yeah that's that's a that's a multiplied answer in a lot of ways um one if you want in-depth data on parking and parking supply and parking occupancy that's a great question to ask tonight what we presented to you was on transportation demand management and that's what we came prepared for so if that's the question that's a great question to ask and we're happy to do that it'll take a while because there's a lot of spaces a lot of data and we want to pull it together in a way that's understandable so that you can make those decisions that's part one part two parking is a huge policy choice uh similar to on pacific avenue where we installed the new meters and we set policy guidance for occupancy standards that we were going to look at parking pricing as it related to falling within a established 65 to 85 occupancy goal if you would like to set an occupancy goal for downtown and accept the corresponding parking pricing changes that go along with that that's a direction that you could take um likewise you could take many different directions on that but parking supply demand pricing occupancy those are all policy goals that you have the ability to direct on what we have been operating under right now and the guidance that we've had in the past is be sensitive with parking pricing to the many many many small businesses that we have downtown that are incredibly sensitive to parking pricing changes and you've probably heard from many of them when we do propose parking price changes we've also heard loud and clear from this council and previous councils to be sensitive to low income workers and the balance between having the users pay the true cost of parking and also recognizing that 50 percent of our downtown workforce works in retail and restaurant and that's a very price sensitive employment group um the idea of subsidizing parking for one group and saying that driving for that group is good but for you know tech jobs that are now not driving over the hill parking is bad that I think that sends a mixed message on where we stand on our approach to transportation and parking policy although it is a policy choice that you can make um it's a really long way of saying that there are a bunch of different parking policy choices that you can make and probably the easiest way would be to start by directing us to bring you information specific to parking if that is the question that you're seeking to ask thank you and council member i'm going to go back to your comment early on I think it was you Claire I don't know maybe it was someone else that no one comes downtown to visit our great parking garages they come down for all the uses and it may be you know go to ma on a weekend afternoon and hang out and have a great time it may be you're living downtown maybe you got a nine to five job I mean all these um maybe you're visiting from or said I don't know all sorts of things um what I would really like to see and I think it stems from my experience of being on vision Santa Cruz after the earthquake and thinking what do we really want long term for our downtown to be it's not that it's a parking lot here uh you know second story offices here trees along the sidewalk etc so personally I would be much more interested in and I actually had written this out um looking for some mechanism for the council with our staff and maybe some consultants to step back and look at the kind of future we we think about parking and other infrastructure with a series of study sessions and really engaging all the stakeholders because I don't think we're hearing from our downtown businesses here and retail is changing it is sensitive as we know that the office needs the property owners work hard to fill those second story offices and so I would personally like to see some mechanism to look at what are the trends for downtowns generally and our downtown particularly we know we're going to be adding hundreds of units of housing and to my mind that's just an enormous opportunity I think there's a big demand for that we hope we keep our ground floor commercial vibrant we know they're struggling for a bunch of reasons um we want to keep some of the great civic spaces vibrant I count the museum and that but I count the farmers market and the library and the civic auditorium and the river I mean all of these are parts of our downtown looking back in time with planning there a million documents and policy statements say we need to connect our downtown to the river we need to connect our downtown to the beach area because it's not a big area really and I would like to look at what's the economic situation what's the revenue we get from downtown in our taxes what are the jobs that exist downtown what do we need to do to preserve those what what is the potential for housing what sensitive we I I think we probably all agree we want to maximize the affordable housing how do our policies related to parking fit into that I I think probably most of us would agree we're looking at at some kind of a mix of market rate and affordable subsidized housing we have so many different activities even in the commercial sector going on not to go into them in great detail but everything about our commercial sectors and our transportation and our housing needs has just gone through so much flux and I I think we can't deny we're going to see a lot more evolution quickly in the future so my my personal interest rather than looking at TDM or parking is looking at the big picture what do we want it to be we are not Boulder or San Francisco or Santa Fe or picket pick city you know we have some certain givens here and let's really envision for the future and I think some of these transportation needs will the answers will become more clear when we when we think about what's the the city the downtown core that we want and connecting it broader out to the community so that's just my view of where I'd like to step back and take a bigger look and I'll just say that we'll be having a series of study sessions and we can take your input and you're welcome to send that to myself or city staff when considering there we go our hand at this time done and there is an ongoing conversation around constant study sessions learning and visioning as we move forward and so we'll take this input into consideration councilmember crumb maybe Claire or Jim Mr. Longinati said excess parking revenue that can go into the general fund 2.9 million dollars in debt service in the garage is that sounds realistic that statistic that we pay 2.9 million on on that service for a new garage we do not pay 2.9 million we we pay currently about just over between four and five hundred thousand on debt service on the soquel front structure that will be paid off in 2027 the 2.9 is the was the in the parking rate strategy for the next parking structure okay thank you and Patrick you said 200 dollars somebody's paying 200 charging 200 dollars for a parking space downtown at Pacific Avenue who's that is that a new is that a new structure I would have to know that is a existing apartment building it's that it's the south end of Pacific Avenue the the my sorts of information for that was an email message from Martin Bernal and and let's see is it 10 it's not are you talking about 555 Pacific they said this this was built I think 2003 I think it's considered a couple blocks south of Laurel the the I'm sorry I'll just have to look at it no worries the the the the pointy made which was a good one about that was that on that project what happened is the residents were allowed to purchase residential parking permits and by whatever your standard policy is in in order to park on on the street and so they said well why would I want to pay 200 a month to park in my own garage which is close to the the real cost when I come park on the street for a couple dollars a month and that created the spillover parking problem so it's really important that if you do the separation of parking costs from housing costs that you don't allow those residents to then have unlimited permits in the residential district or to buy 45 a month permits in a city garage thank you last question Adam miller ball I know you you studied the uber lift thing and you just had a article that went viral on the self-driving cars and how it's going to create a problem in the future do we have an uber lift problem right now in Santa Cruz that's a great question I think it really depends on what you mean by a problem certainly it's providing a mobility service for some people who found it hard to get around to people who don't have a car people who might be unable to drive for for any reason is it also like increasing traffic I mean we haven't had the detailed studies that San Francisco has done but I'd be surprised if it hadn't increased traffic is is that a problem well that's that's hard to answer because it's all giving people a great benefit but it's also having the great benefit of reducing parking demand one of your students did the uber lift on on campus just going across campus do you remember what those statistics were by any chance I can't remember off the top of my head so like several thousand cars were being called just to go from like oaks over to Stevenson or something I can't remember the numbers but certainly yes a student did an analysis of uber demand and UCLA we can see this in extreme is 11 000 trips a week by uber and lift from one part of campus to to another and that's partly I'm reflecting the very the high cost of parking that people find alternatives is cheaper to and to to get an uber or lift and or a scooter for that matter or hopefully people could take a jump bike then to then to pay for parking in so people adapt thank you very I um I know we're not making motions but I'd like to calendarize something for the April 23rd meeting I'd like to revisit the September 11th 2018 library garage decision of the Santa Cruz City Council number two I'd like to bring back for discussion the monthly parking permit program to avoid subsidizing driving and number three I'd like to explore pioneering with excuse me partnering with Calvary church on the construction of a ground level parking with affordable housing above at the Calvary lot for April 23rd I don't have okay well we have a motion by council member Graham I would in light of the content from tonight and the opportunities that it's presented I would second that motion okay I don't have the calendar ahead and I would not prefer to agendize things this way and go a different direction so I personally won't be supporting the motion council member brown and then council member Matthews I would like to see all of those items discussed on an upcoming agenda I understand that it may be difficult to get them all agendized for April 23rd that is a pretty quick turnaround time but I do I'm not so I do want to support the intent of the motion and ensure that these are not items that get lost although I understand that April 23rd might not be realistic to put them all together as a package in light of other things we're doing and the information that might be needed so I'm just trying to figure out how to support this in concept and say and fatally that I would like to see those discussions and deliberations move forward at the council soon what about just revisiting this September 11th 2018 and pause you and interrupt you because I had already acknowledged council member Matthews go ahead I thought she was asking me a question I'm sorry I'm very much opposed to this I think this is another example of trying to make a rapid drive on a narrow agenda without engaging all the stakeholders without bringing in the deep body of knowledge and and studies that have been put in I mean we're talking about the library now and I think it's really a disservice to the work that's gone into that project we have not talked about how the how housing might be integrated into a mixed-use project at that site particularly the other issues that you brought up I think again it's just a rush to judgment on on narrow issues without giving adequate time for our staff to prepare good information and present it in a holistic manner I I think there's just a wrong way to approach this I think knowledge did the city attorney really quickly did you have anything to add to this conversation before we continue I was going to suggest if it's not direction by council to place an item on a specific agenda then it could be based on the preparation of and submittal of a staff report and discussed in the context of our normal agenda review process as an alternative to council direction unless the council direction also specifies you know who is going to be responsible for preparing the staff report what the entire scope of the discussion will be that sort of thing and the council can also work on that with the staff or as that's right individual council members can present on their agenda materials and ask that they be added to a future agenda as well okay council member and then council members council member brown would do you accept 60 days to bring those back I guess my preference would be that we work on these with with staff to ensure that they come back at a time when we can they we actually get the information that we need to make those kinds of decisions so putting a 60 day timeline on it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to get what we want in order to be able to make those decisions what is it that we want so I guess I'm just if we can you know can can I can I would before we do if you could go through me that would be I would prefer that as protocol thank you because I mean you know it's hard to really answer the question because this is the first time I've heard of the what you're recommending I don't really have a good sense of how long it'll take I mean it would be really nice to be able to have some time to understand what you're proposing what it means and what it's going to take and then we can come back and give you a sense of that but at this point like I said this is the first time I've heard of it and so I have no idea and we have no idea what it would take you know and how long it would take to to gather information and bring it back to you so I would appreciate having an opportunity to look at it and understand it and and then to come back to you okay okay councilor math I'm sorry vice mayor coming then next okay she's been waiting yeah sorry is there a second the motion was there a motion there was it okay well then I'm going to propose a substitute motion which is this I move we direct the mayor to appoint a time limited task force of council members to work with staff in proposing a program of study sessions and public outreach for a holistic review of the issues and trends affecting our downtown to inform the community and council about actions affecting the future of downtown this discussion should include current information trends and major opportunities it may include but not be limited to subjects such as housing both market rate and affordable commercial activity such as retail office tech food and beverage entertainment and services revenue and jobs directly related to the downtown core connection of downtown to the san lorenzo river and main beach area civic and community functions including farmers market library civic auditorium museum and transportation allow time for outreach to stakeholders and community groups to identify key issues and opportunities for city action to strengthen our downtown over the long timeline so that's my motion okay so we have a motion by council second second by council member mires so we'll go ahead and vote to accept the substitute motion at this time all all for clarification in order to vote on this one I would like to understand I understand the intent and I am fully supportive of the idea the concept I'm wondering about what we mean by a short by short term task force when might we see when when are you envisioning these study sessions being rolled out are we talking about the next you know the four budget hearings for the fall I mean it would just be helpful for me to know before I vote either way okay you know how's my math may I answer yeah um and invites me this is a huge deal and I think we haven't really taken a big view of our downtown in a long long time um you know when the great recession hit it was everything that we could do to just scrabble together and recover from that and um you know that's largely been achieved we can say but we we face so much change so I see this mayor appointing a task force of three to work with staff you know they are they are putting so much effort now into the housing and homeless issues I think we have to be realistic about the demands but I'd like to get some good thought from planning and I'm gonna go ahead and pause for just a second I'm looking at the city attorney um I was just gonna say that for for the sake of consistency yeah um I've previously advised that the council can't take action tonight um but it can agendize the topic for a future discussion I think council member Matthews um motion could be framed uh to bring back an agenda item um at an upcoming meeting to establish a subcommittee for um along the lines that was proposed okay okay okay so we'll go ahead I'll make that my substitute motion and just an answer to your question it's a big issue it will take some time but I can see a task force meeting with staff um coming up with a program for study sessions and outreach and I see this is something that would occupy the better part of the year frankly but my god it's the future of downtown it's like we took a year for the housing project you don't do this in a couple of quick meetings and get good results out so that's what I would see it's a major effort for the bulk of the year and there's and there's a lot um for us to do right and so I um we'll now acknowledge vice mayor I just want to make a comment on both items that have been proposed and I I shared the similar sentiments of council member brown that I'm interested in both of these issues um I have been hearing um oftentimes at these meetings that there are a lot of things on our agenda that we need to we need to put forward and prioritize and that there's a calendar which we need to um start we need to set forward and prioritize what we want to do over the next course of the year and I think that a number of us on the council have been waiting for that opportunity to occur so that we could actually begin to see where these different items falling out so we can plan for those and as a result of not seeing that calendar um these types of actions I've been taking have been occurring where we've been um having numerous long meetings on particular items and not really seeing the scope of you know what are all the issues that we need to deal with and what priority do they need to come in and so my preference would be to not support either of these two motions that have been made and instead um would like to hopefully see us have this planning session because it's now almost the end of March and if we want to be able to put these plans in play before the summer hits I think that um it'd be good to have a session where we could prioritize um what we want to get done. Okay well there's um just in response to that I'll just briefly say is that it's been um my job to do the best I can to manage the agendas given the turnaround and council direction and what we've found is very frequent requests for immediate turnaround which makes it difficult to allow that time and so given that we've had the 13 hour meetings we really haven't had that opportunity to have that strategic planning and I'm very interested in doing that I think this really is encompassing that this conversation is and so I too would be supportive of moving in that direction I think um there will be a series of study sessions coming up and there'll be a series of presentations coming up um in an effort to uh better understand the complexities of the issues impacting our city as well as to help us come together as a council to look for a movement going forward so I think we can at that time have a process that's going to allow for um the council to weigh in and direction in time and then in timeline expectations so I um I'm supportive of um the concept and I would also like to prefer that we move forward in a more holistic approach in um at this time. I know that you were intending a while back to have a longer strategy what retreat workshop whatever is that on our it's on the radar we have a meeting set to plan that a date or not a date for everybody but a meeting for us to plan that at this time to establish a date and forward with the sooner rather than later sooner very much sooner than rather than later yes um I just want to make a couple of comments too um yeah I mean I think this is um I guess I'm starting to find myself to be a little bit frustrated um number one at the late hour that we have these substantive comments and discussions um I'm seeing a sort of pretty obvious playbook of sort of rollbacks and um I uh so I'm just going to put that out there um and um we talk a lot about building housing for people I keep hearing the word housing every time I'm in this room I hear housing and I think this is the most important place this downtown and this vision that we can build and to say we can you know work with an entity which is a private entity that we don't know what their plans are um and call that done as our housing for downtown is just a missed opportunity because frankly there there is many opportunities downtown but if we are laser focused on trying to avoid something in one site to do something in another I think we're missing an opportunity and we're not going to end up with the housing we need to provide for a lot of the people with that we're here this evening earlier talking to us about various issues so um I have a great interest in looking at what council member Matthew's outlined um this the downtown decisions we make in the next two to three years are going to be what impacts this community for the next 10 to 20 years and uh it's I understand we need to have our priorities set as a council but we also have to stop rolling back we have to stop rolling back everything that's been done um in the last year year and I'm feeling like that's kind of what underlies a lot of this uh pressure is that you know there's a certain list and that list has got to get done before we talk about anything else and I'm just going to put that out there and I hope that we can come together and try to to facilitate a conversation with our community bring in experts and actually have um a process around discussing our downtown and the future for it thanks okay so before we go too off we'll go ahead and check in I'm sorry I just see you over there and I'm slightly concerned I think it's getting a little bit late for me too um my understanding is that there is a substitute motion and a second right the council will have to vote on whether to accept the substitute motion after which if it is accepted then you can vote on the substitute motion if not you go back to the main motion okay council member clever and then we'll go ahead and move on the motion yeah it was just on some of the things that council member Myers just said um uh I'm confused because the timeline that the reason why I was supporting this motion that was really put forward by council member crone is because it sets a time specific thing where we can begin talking about them I don't know if there's any action that pertain to any of them I think it was to discuss the issues so there's no action associated with it it could be another opportunity for us to talk about them secondly the motions in themselves include conversations about affordable housing so I'm a little confused as there being a seeming a complaint that we're not talking about affordable housing but one of the motions is to look at partnering to for the development of affordable housing in the downtown area and I'm also concerned by the statement or the assertion that there is some conspiracy to roll back all of the things that were done previously because these are we're getting new information from new sources that weren't presented before and it makes it so that we can have a conversation about the things and as count the vice mayor Cummings mentioned we have not seen any form of any kind of schedule regarding anything that we can expect to see on any upcoming agendas it's a total blank canvas that we have to guess on every week when it comes out on a Friday so if we want to transition into a place of co-working into a place of a feeling of mutual trust and belief that the things that we put forward will actually get onto an agenda then I think that we need to a prioritize that meeting which is good to know that you're having a meeting to schedule when that meeting will happen but I feel that that even that process has been very a very muddy transparency to be under understand what's going on and I think that we should move as expeditiously as possible in figuring out ways that we can reallocate money that is proposed for something if we can turn that into affordable housing and transition it away from parking then we should be moving on that conversation as quickly as possible just as we're moving quickly on addressing the issue of homelessness because they're all connected anyway thank you. Okay I'll go ahead and just add that I would welcome as mayor who sets the agenda any conversation with the council members or review of the process in terms of agenda setting at a future time because there is a process that we have in our handbook in terms of how that flows. So at this point we'll go ahead and vote on the substitute motion and then return to the original motion if folks are still in favor of that. Okay so all those in favor of the substitute motion please say aye. Aye. Oops. Okay. All those in favor of the substitute motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay and those opposed say no. No. No. So that fails with council member Brown, vice mayor Cummings. I'm sorry. Okay yeah council member Crone and council member Glover and myself voting against and council member, council member Myers and council member Matthews voting in favor. Okay and so we'll now return to the original motion council member Crone. Yeah the hour is late it's true and I don't feel like I'm totally on my game but I don't think Martin Bernal there has been a month that has gone by when I did not discuss the library the separation or the fact that we don't need a garage and we wanted to separate the library from the garage and you and I have gone back and forth back and forth for over the last two years and five months so and I would ask other council members what exact information do we need to have something on the agenda that has to do with the library garage and do we want to revisit the September 11th 2018 motion that was made by a previous council and we know that the past election was about this issue how can we what information do we need to go okay let's separate those two and have discussions about each one separately. I'm assuming that this is not the time to have that discussion. I assume that council member Crone was framing the motion that he had made previously. This is a response to my comment about needing more information but what information just so we know it's what's out there I don't know that I that's something that we probably can't discuss is that correct I don't know I mean I can I can start making a list. You can't have a substantive discussion about an item this evening so that it doesn't seem to feel so you could you could however direct that it be agendized for a subsequent meeting. My understanding of council member Brown's comment was that she didn't believe setting a hard date on the on the hearing that there was enough information to to support that aspect of the motion so was looking for more flexibility with regard to the scheduling. That was my understanding of the tenor of council member Brown's comment. Okay so there's a motion by council member Crone a second by council member Glover to return at a specific date. Would 90 days be acceptable on bringing these back within the next 90 days? Honestly my preference would be that we have this conversation in the context of our goal setting meeting that we have yet to have that and I'm not sure why that is the case but I'm not at I'm not asking that question I'm just not sure why just put it out there. Don't no need for explanation about it but I'd really like to have that conversation in the context of our priority setting and I wish that could happen like yesterday but here we are. So that would be okay thank you I'm gonna go ahead and ask that you please stop. Can we get an idea when the goal I'm sorry and I'll just I'll just say that the the read that you can you're playing politics with our lies you could go ahead and leave now I am leaving okay have a good evening they are just trying to do the city's business Martin and Cynthia we could go ahead we could have somebody ask her I don't know where our sergeant of arms is but okay you can go ahead and leave now I'm not sure where our sergeant of arms is. Okay we'll go ahead and pause the meeting until. Go ahead okay we're gonna go ahead and pause the meeting then and we don't have our sergeant of arms here I guess to escort this person out. Okay so so at this point I'll just briefly say one of the things that has been difficult for me as mayor is having the time to actually plan that out and because I can speak I think from what I've heard from our staff that majority of the time has been spent bringing us to this place in terms of the work we've been doing on homelessness so the capacity just really hasn't been there and not for lack of interest I'd say so given that that would be my my preference clearly to move forward in this direction of a thoughtful planning process where I think we as a council can hopefully find our highest common denominator as we decide to move forward with a number of different issues but that's not the motion on the floor the motion of the floor is something else. I think I'll withdraw it but can we get any indication of when our goal setting session might be but what month as soon as soon as we can get that schedule right so typically you know typically whenever we have well we have a work plan that we do every two years and actually it expires so we're actually due for and we review it every year we're due for a review of strategic planning in a new work plan and priority setting and typically with the new council too we we do in the team building sessions and we do strategic planning sessions and this time around as the mayor stated we just have not had the opportunity to do it because it's all been other issues that we've been consumed as typically the people in my office who do the work we started some of that work we had some initial discussions with the mayor and vice mayor with some options on how to do it look we reviewed some consultants some various approaches we've had some discussions but have had to essentially abandon that because we've had other priorities and I I've heard that from council members we know we've done a lot of preliminary work with respect to the schedule with respect to items but we need to sit down and and typically it's with the mayor and vice mayor to plan out those sessions so we've been talking about scheduling the time to do that so I think that the process would be to schedule a meeting with the mayor and vice mayor who could then work to plan out a process that can then be brought forward to the council and the council can then you know bless the approach and then move forward from that so I think we're trying to schedule a meeting here soon and we can try to bring something back in terms of process certainly in the next few meetings right and we've yeah okay okay is it with the motion has been withdrawn okay all right we'll then go ahead and adjourn the meeting at this time good job everyone