San Marcos City Council Reviews Parking Advisory Board Recommendations For Downtown Parking

Staff Reports

On Tuesday, the San Marcos City Council received a presentation regarding recommendations on how to address parking downtown.

In April 2019, the City Council created the Parking Advisory Board (PAB) to implement the recommendations of the approved Parking Program Plan by Kimley-Horn.

After seven meetings, the Parking Advisory Board developed six specific recommendations.

Part 1. It is recommended that 100% of net parking funds garnered downtown since December 4, 2018, to be placed into the parking and mobility fund rather that the general fund, per Council’s December 4, 2018 motion.

Part 2. It is recommended that parking funds garnered downtown should stay downtown, for the first phase of Parking Benefit District creation and establishment with the understanding that additional districts will be recommended in additional phasing.

Part 3. It is recommended that citation letters be mailed out to all parking violators after the fifteenth day of citation issuance, to assist with enforcement and increasing collection.

Part 4. It is recommended that a Park and Ride system be developed by utilizing the available parking, walkable to downtown, to be serviced by electric cabs to shuttle employees and others to Downtown.

It is recommended that funds to establish this 18-month pilot program be requested through the TIRZ fund utilizing the proposal from Electric Cab North America as it promotes economic vitality in bringing people Downtown; concept to be attached.

Part 5. It is recommended that in addition to hiring a Parking and Mobility Manager, additional parking enforcement staff be added within the next three months, exclusive of paid parking revenue generation to fund these positions; position descriptions to be attached.

Part 6. It is recommended that the City utilize a portion of downtown vitality funds, not to exceed $50,000, for a matching funds program to create an 18-month permitted 24-hour employee and downtown resident surface lot parking program.

This will serve approximately 120 parking spaces to promote downtown vitality, including wayfinding, educational outreach, and marketing for this program.

Council discussed the recommendations and how they would be implemented. The PAB recommendations are broken up into three phases.

Phase One will include the increase in funding for parking enforcement staff, citation letters be mailed out to all parking violators and the creation of an 18-month surface lot parking program using vitality funds.

Phase Two will establish a park and ride system, which utilizes the available parking, walkability to downtown and service by electric cabs.

Phase three will place 100 percent of net parking funds generated a parking and mobility fund and use parking funds generated downtown for the 1^st phase of the parking benefit district.

City Manager, Bert Lumbreras, expressed concerns about several areas of the parking recommendations for downtown.

“This is one of them; that’s a lot of money,” Lumbreras said about the electric cab program. “If the council recalls, we’re having this bigger discussion on what we’re going to do with our overall transit system. So coming as soon as next year, the council is going to be faced with making some pretty big decisions about what our transit is going to look like in the future.”

Lumbreras said the council may want to look at how the downtown parking recommendations, specifically the park and ride service, fit in with the city’s overall transit plan.

“Obviously, anything we do in terms of the overall system is going to cost money,” Lumbreras said.

Mayor Jane Hughson said if there is something the city can work into their new transit system later, she thinks that would be great, but she felt the city needed to do something now to help alleviate downtown’s parking issues.

The council gave a general consensus to have the staff to begin looking into ways the city could potentially implement the PAB’s recommendations and identify funding sources.