By Tommy Acosta
Sedona AZ – Jan.15, 2016. Acting upon a pair of 11-year-old and four-year-old traffic studies, the Sedona City Council at it’s Jan. 12 meeting unanimously directed city
staff to move forward with plans to install parking meters in Uptown Sedona.
Despite the impassioned pleas of Uptown business owners, who came to the meeting hoping the council would consider their concerns that the meters would destroy their businesses, the council went ahead with the plan to install meters for 101 spaces in the embattled Uptown Sedona corridor, directing staff to seek proposals from venders for the installation.
Over the years Uptown Sedona businesses have suffered one blow after another with construction, road repairs and other disruptions to their businesses including the ticketing of tour buses that rarely stop in Uptown anymore due to the ticketing.
After waiting for more than four hours to be heard, Uptown business owners testified during the public comment section of the meeting that putting in the meters would not only give competitors an unfair advantage but would drive away tourists to other locations in Sedona that have free parking.
The new meters only accept credit cards and can be accessed via smart phones. The merchants said that will create confusion for the average 50-year old or older visitor, who is not technologically savvy.
The merchants said visitors will go somewhere else once they see the meters and would never come back to Sedona should they be given a $40 fine if their time expires.
“Many people visiting will pull up, see the meters and back out,” said long-time Uptown business owner Al Spector at the meeting. “Think of the risk reward a $40 fine would create. It’s not appropriate.”
He said the money the city would get from the collection of fines and the meters would be offset by the loss in sales tax revenues the city would incur if the meters were installed.
“It’s not worth it,” he said. “Almost all of us are opposed. “The meters will put us at a competitive disadvantage.”
Council members argued that putting in the meters and creating more free parking off of S.R. 89A would greatly alleviate the traffic flow problems that have worsened in Uptown since the city installed additional traffic lights.
“We are hoping to better serve merchants by better serving peoples’ needs,” Councilmember Mark DiNunzio said. ‘The purpose is to free up spaces for passing traffic.”
With the majority of Uptown Sedona business owners solidly against the meters, the decision to move forward seems ludicrous and anti-business.
Many of those opposed to the meters fear the meters would damage the city’s “small town” atmosphere and that their installation would lead to an “economic disaster” for them.
Uptown business owner Tom Gilomen (click HERE for video) made clear the sentiments of the business owners.
“The staff’s job is to sell the meters, plain and simple,” Gilomen said. “People are unanimously against them… the presentations have been
full of holes… I don’t know how many areas in this country where you have four blocks generating between four and one half and $5 million in business taxes. Are we going to disregard this?”
Other speakers said the assumption meters are working in other tourist towns will not work for the Uptown corridor because those destinations are basically dead ends, where in Sedona people can just keep on passing through.
Uptown business owner Vikki Schlee said customers and visitors she spoke to about the city’s plan to put in the meters were aghast.
“Every person I’ve spoken to said ‘Are you people crazy,’” she said. “When you hear that over and over it scares the hell out of me.”
According to the staff report on the meters an estimated $280,000 in revenue from citations can be expected annually with and average of 20 tickets per day issued to visitors at $40 each.
After expenses the city estimates a profit of $135,764 the first year from the fines.
Business owners estimate a ten-percent drop in sales and sales tax generation should the meters go in which means a potential $500,000 loss in annual sales tax collection for the city.
Estimates for the construction costs are between $16,000 and $18,000 per metered space with “soft” costs between a 25 percent and 40 percent mark up.
Estimated costs for operation and maintenance of the metered spaces are between $450 and $1,000 per space annually.
The city will also have to spend approximately $ 1 million for improvement projects to existing free parking areas.
According to staff, the projects will require long-term financing and there will be additional annual ongoing costs to pay off the debt.
These debt obligation costs have not yet been estimated.
For some business owners the actions of the council almost seemed like a pre-nuptial agreement between the city and those behind the movement to install the meters; a waste of time for the business owners that came to the meeting to be heard.
“The issue regarding the installation of the paid parking meters in Uptown Sedona was resolved before the city council meeting was called,” said business owner Erin Loeffler. “To force citizens to sit through four hours of bureaucratic drivel only to have their voices completely ignored, borders on socialism.”
Council member Jessica Williamson ended the discussion with a colorful quote.
“I’m unwilling to say all these people are wrong,” she said. “If we want traffic to be the same then let’s not do anything.”
“Political will is a bitch,” she concluded.
One uptown merchant commented on Williamson’s statement, after the meeting.
“Well, when the city starts losing more than $500,000 annually in sales tax revenue after blowing more than a million bucks on the meters, they had better not come back bitching to us because of their stupid mistake.”
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8 Comments
VOTE THEM OUT AND THEN PULL THEM OUT! STUPID STUPID STUPID! Seems like a really small amount of reward, for a huge amount of damage. Seems to me the residents of uptown are going to find their driveways, front lawns, and streets impassable shortly thereafter- wherever parking is free. Hey Sedona, I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you to cut staff and salaries, has it? If your salaries are anything like Cottonwood’s, you only have to axe one bureaucrat to save the 135K you’ll be making.
I know people in government have brains- I just want to know why they never use them…….
The High Cost of Free Parking
THE “COMMONS” PROBLEM
Free curb parking presents a classic “commons” problem. Land that belongs to the community, and is freely available to everyone without charge, is called a commons. City life requires common ownership of much land (such as streets, sidewalks, and parks), but the neglect and mismanagement of common property can create serious problems. Aristotle observed:
Free curb parking is an asphalt commons: just as cattle compete in their search for scarce grass, drivers compete in their search for scarce curb parking spaces. Drivers waste time and fuel, congest traffic, and pollute the air while cruising for curb parking, and after finding a space they have no incentive to economize on how long they park.
Where many people want to use a scarce public resource, self-restraint does not produce any individual reward. Free curb parking thus presents the perfect commons problem—no one owns it, and everyone can use it. In his famous essay on the “tragedy of the commons,” Garrett Hardin used curb parking to illustrate the problem he was describing:
The up town merchants will have more customers with more turns of the parking spaces
More turns= more customers=more sales. It is that simple.
http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/Chapter1.pdf
ss
Help, I’m confused. I have a few rambling questions.
Has, once again, City staff and council placed the cart in front of the horse creating yet another preconceived solution to a problem beyond their control?
Did I read that the City has recently approved an expenditure for yet another traffic study? Why implement solutions before the plan is created or do we not need another traffic study?
Did the City grant a million or so dollars to the Chamber to generate more tourist traffic? Is that inconsistent with improving traffic?
Has anyone provided a rational explanation of how increased parking turns and the attendant backing into traffic reduce congestion on our
Highway? Sorry Steve, but your cut and paste piece from a UCLA text does not justify this solution to our problem. If tourists are so beneficial to commerce, why do we not see metered parking on privately owned lots?
Are there merchants on 89A or Uptown residents who want yet another degradation to our small town feel? I have no dog in this squabble as I only drive through Uptown, not to Uptown, and would gladly utilize a bypass.
Did I read that there was a concern with Jeep tourists parking on the street early in the day? If so perhaps a single franchised jeep tour company located at the sewerage treatment plant is a better solution.
Please Councilors do not raise the straw man argument of “do nothing” and then argue against it.
Ron,
I bought the book ” The High Cost of Free Parking” (harding read but good) it show the free parking hurts the merchants, study after study shows meters help.
With the income from the meters we can expand parking or better yet look at some kind to transit system perhaps starting at the city historical park and travel all the way down to Hill Side and back as a start,
The goal is to have visitors just leave there cars at there hotels.
The history walk the new Art walk are just a start.
The large traffic study the city will be doing is mostly about numbers and flow not just about parking in up town.
Ron,
I come to work every day early and I see the same cars parked in the A.M , and see the same cars later in the afternoon.
Employees from local hotels are parking in the city owned and rented parking spaces on Jorden rd.
And there is one large adventure company up town that picks up and drops off in the loading zones, and where do you think there customers park? and for how long?
Ron, the parking problem will never be fixed but we need to at least manage it.
More turns will = more sale for the up town merchants.
Regarding the chamber all the advertising is in the low months, January, February and summer.
You have valid points, I am for meters because I know it will help the up town merchants and stop the 3 hr+ parking.
Ron, come over for coffee , lets talk about the “Commons”
steve
As an Uptown resident, I’ve been driving State Highway 89A through Uptown Sedona several times a week for the past 15 years. In my opinion, City Hall has failed to divulge the Uptown Enhancement Project as the main reason traffic flow problems worsened over the last eight years.
Unbelievably, the City went with a narrower road design having new, wider sidewalks that negatively impacted the normal flow of traffic on both SR 89A and Jordan Road.
As Cyndi Hardy wrote in her COUNCIL FRETS OVER ‘SAME OLD, SAME OLD’ TRAFFIC WOES IN UPTOWN SEDONA article of March 15, 2008 (Sedona.biz):
“Before the enhancement project, incoming drivers could pull out of traffic to wait and parked drivers had room to back up without being in the roadway. …Now waiting drivers impede traffic behind them and the vehicle pulling out of the space has to back into the path of the cars trying to maneuver around the one waiting….
Before the enhancement project, southbound drivers looking to turn right onto Jordan Road [‘onto’ should read ‘from’] had a little space to get out of the [89A] traffic lane. Now that space is a part of the new sidewalk.” (Yes, a sidewalk with umbrella-covered tables and chairs now occupies the former merge lane that drivers traveling southbound on Jordan Road and turning right onto Hwy 89A used for many years.)
Cyndi Hardy’s article quotes Harvey Stearn, a sitting City Councilman at the time and former President of the Mission Viejo Company: “Someone pulls up to wait for a car to back out of a space and the backer has to back right into traffic.”
Naturally, none of the preceding was the case under ADOT ownership of Uptown 89A. Whether the City’s four-year-old-traffic study looked at the traffic flow problems created by the Uptown Enhancement Project is questionable.
So what about the increase in traffic during the last two years? This year the City gifted the Chamber of Commerce with $1.5 Million ($1.1 Million last year). The City is overrun with day-trippers and travelers headed elsewhere. Thanks to the Uptown Enhancement Project’s failure in terms of traffic flow and the Chamber luring so many day-trippers and passers through, Sedonans now have to sit in gridlock backed up to Slide Rock State Park to the north and past Bell Rock to the south during the busy tourist season.
By the way, ADOT paid the City $1.7 Million for the take over of Uptown 89A, and the City spent $3.6 Million on the Enhancement Project, which it claimed was needed to bring the state highway into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Just tell everyone that a paid meter stay will get a buy one get one free coupon for tickets to see Tom Tayback and the Daddy-O’s. People will line up to use them.
Well here is another example of our local government going their own way without regard to those it impacts. Carmel, CA recently tried the same thing on their busy shopping street, Ocean Ave. The merchants were against it but their City Council didn’t listen either. It was a disaster and the ripped them out. If we do the same (rip them out later) we will have only lost $225,000.
I agree with Ron Maassen regarding sending $1.5 M to the Chamber to get more and more tourists into this town which means cars and more congestion. If this Council really wants to help the traffic situation there is a simple answer, stop trying to get more tourists. While on the one hand tourists provide income for the city government, they are also making Sedona non-attractive to repeat visits from those very same tourists. Tourists and residents alike don’t like traffic jams. It is simple physics. There are too many cars for our infrastructure. I have yet to find anyone in government or business in this town who will admit that there is in fact an upper level on how many tourists this town’s infrastructure can handle. To be realistic, there is a limit. Charging for parking is NOT going to fix our traffic problem
Tyler ~ You are 100% correct. Carmel lost tourists by the droves when they installed meters. My friend owns a business there and complained mightily . . . But just like Sedona . . . To no avail. I cannot believe how backward thinking the folk on the council are.