Contributor Opinion by Trapper Martin: Town Square Parking Changes
May 24, 2010 9:45 - 14 Comments
>An open letter from Town Center Action Team (TCAT) president Trapper Martin:
Madam Mayor and Council Members,
Last week, it was brought to my attention that changes were made to the fees and hours for parking in Town Center. Specifically, I understand that the Mayor and Council implemented a charge of $1 for unlimitted parking in the garages on Saturday and increased the fine for all parking violation to $40. It appears that these changes were done as part of the budgeting process without any public input.
As you are well aware the merchants and last Mayor/Council spent a considerable amount of time discussing and coming up with a plan that we all felt would increase revenue for the City without putting undue burden on or hampering the still fragile businesses in Town Center. We have seen parking usage continually rise since these changes were implemented.
The changes to the parking policy were discussed at the TCAT meeting held on May 18. While the members of TCAT did not object to implementation of $1 parking fee and would in fact support such a nominal fee, we believe the Mayor and Council must stop changing the parking fees so that visitors to town center can get used whatever fee is being charged. Otherwise visitors will start to become frustrated and avoid Town Center.
The members of TCAT did object the $40 penalty for parking violations. People who have received $40 tickets have sworn that they would not return to Town Center. There have been multiple stories this year about other jurisdictions raising parking ticket prices yet seeing a decline in actual revenue from this as people increasingly contest or just don’t pay their parking tickets. Therefore, TCAT voted last week to urge the Mayor and Council to reduce the parking fees throughout the City to $25.
Please continue to know that all the support that the City can provide to this area while it is still in its infancy is greatly appreciated.
Trapper Martin, TCAT President
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I agree. A $40 fine is too much for a fine. $20 or $25 would be a fair fine.
Earlier this spring, after coaching my son’s RBBA baseball game, my wife an I took our kids for pizza in the RTC at around 6:00 P.M on a Saturday (we drove separate cars). We parked on the main street as we have for the past 10+ years., when spots are available. After leaving the restaurant, we both noticed the parking tickets on our windshield. Puzzled, we looked and yes, each ticket was for $40. We were shocked. Our $25 dinner, became $105, We were both outraged and send the Mayor an email complaining about this ridiculous new law.Rockville, was it worth it? Since then, we took our baseball team pizza party to a different restaurant NOT in the RTC. We used to have two basketball parties and a baseball party each year at the RTC. However, we will never again take our business to the RTC.We are done with RTC. Maybe they should learn from Bethesda, were customers are welcomed and not ripped off.Good luck Rockville, after 20+ years of living in the city limits, we are officially done with the RTC. I feel sorry for all the merchants.Re,Bob and Suzanne Bagheri
Joe Jordan forwarded Mr. Bagheri’s comment to City personnel and asked if anything was done in response to his email.Here is the response he received from the City: Citizen Service Request Coordinator responded by email with the following information. Thank you for contacting the City of Rockville regarding the parking tickets you received for meter parking on Saturday night. I am responding on behalf of the Mayor and Council, each of whom have received a copy of your email. I am so sorry to hear that you received two parking tickets while enjoying a night out with your family on Saturday night. I understand how it would ruin your evening. I have spoken with the Chief of Police and we both want you to come back and enjoy the Town Center area of Rockville. We would be happy to split the difference on this as a show of good faith. If you pay for one parking violation, and send in the second ticket with the payment, it will be voided.The Mayor and Council made changes to the parking times for both the Town Square garages and parking meters in October of 2009. I am attaching a link below so you have current information. As of Friday Oct. 16, 2009 parking in the Town Square garages was set at $1 per hour 7 a.m.-6 p.m. and $1 per entry between 6 and 10 p.m. Parking in the garages is free weekdays after 10 p.m., Saturdays, Sundays and City holidays. Parking at the on-street meters is free evenings after 10 p.m., Sundays and City holidays. Payment of $1 per hour is required 7 a.m.-10 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The parking meters are designed to accommodate short-term parking, and quick turnover. The garages are geared to longer term parking. http://www.rockvillemd.gov/towncenter/parking Each meter has the times posted for payment. The fines in Rockville are comparable to other jurisdictions. In Rockville the fines are $40 for an expired meter and for parking where prohibited. Fines for parking in a handicap space or a fire lane in Rockville are $100.00. In Montgomery County the fine for an expired meter is $35, parking where prohibited is $50, and handicap and fire lanes are $250. In Gaithersburg, the fee for an expired meter is $50, parking where prohibited is $50, handicap is $250, and fire lane is $100. The City and Federal Realty Investment Trust (FRIT) offer many free activities for families during the spring and summer months. The City’s Hometown Holiday celebration is scheduled for May 29 to 31 this year. We hope you will attend, and take advantage of the free parking in the Town Square garages over the weekend! Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns with the City of Rockville. Individual thanked the City for the quick and helpful response and for splitting the difference in the ticket fees.Joe also sent along an update about the information in the City’s response:”There was one error on the city email, and it relates to fees for expired meters in Montgomery County. Chief Treschuk did some research on this yesterday, and confirmed that the actual fine for expired meters in Montgomery County is $40, which is the same as the City of Rockville. The fine for overtime parking at a meter (which we understand means putting in more money than allowed for a limited time meter, in an attempt to extend the hours you can park), is $45. This response says its $35, which is incorrect. “Thanks Joe for following up.
This is the reason that despite out love of good food, my family and I don’t go to Bethesda any more. This is the reason we frankly don’t do a lot of business downtown either: I do park at a street meter when I can to go to the library and take the kids to a shop or two afterward if there’s time – OR I let them frolic on the rocks in the square. But as a family, we don’t go to the restaurants downtown. When the kids are all old enough to bike there and back regardless of the hour we return home that may be a different story.I might risk a $25 ticket, but no way a $40 one; easier and less expensive to stay home and fire up the grill. I’d be happier to not have to worry about it after maybe 7PM on weekdays, and maybe not at all on Saturdays; $1 parking for both weekend days, though, might lure us downtown as a family. Money’s tight enough, and it doesn’t take much to give us a reason to stay home and save ours rather than spend it, even in Rockville.So yeah, put me down as hoping to go back to $25. We need customers to support RTC, not abandon it – but if it’s too expensive to go there, people won’t bother.
A proposal to charge $1 per hour after 6pm on weekdays was defeated (instead of the $1 per entry). I and others felt the combination of $1/hour and the $40 ticket on weekday evenings was particularly lethal. The amount of City subsidy to Town Square is very large when you add the VisArts low rent and the General Fund contribution to the parking garage bonds. This does not count all the programming the City does there to attract customers. The City has also devoted much staff time, for example, to help get the SuperFresh space filled.Mayor and Council passed a Cost Allocation Plan this year whereby all enterprise funds are expected to fully pay for their admiistrative costs. All funds are expected to phase in immediately except for the Town Center which gets a 3-year phase-in to soften the blow .We have a tight budget, many compromises were made, the additional parking charges in Town Center are modest and part of an overall effort to balance the budget. In the evening or on Saturday, your exposure is $1, that’s it. Pay it and there is no $40 ticket. Or come on Sunday when its free.Mark PierzchalaCouncilmember
Coming on Sundays when everything is free isn’t always the answer for customers; some businesses (not to mention the library come summer) are closed on Sundays anyway, or open significantly later; it basically leaves a half-day out of a whole weekend for people to come downtown for free.In the evening while businesses are still open and families are awake, the “exposure” is not “modest;” it’s full-price till 10PM, at which point even the grownups in the family don’t often venture out before early mornings the next day.If customers don’t come to town center, businesses pay the city, county, and state less in taxes, assuming they don’t close up entirely from lack of business.The $40 penalties might be better for the coffers in the short term, but Rockville will also need its businesses’ tax revenues next year, and 5 years and 10 years from now, not just now when budgets are tight. Alienating customers might well come back to bite Rockville in the posterior down the road, if not sooner.
Parking in the Town Square garages costs $1 per hour from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. Then it’s just $1 for the entire evening between 6 and 10 p.m. So if you go to Town Center on a weekday evening after 6 p.m. it costs you only $1 for the whole night.Parking at the on-street meters is free evenings after 10 p.m., Sundays and City holidays. Payment of $1 per hour is required 7 a.m.-10 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The meters are different from the garages which is what is causing so much confusion for people. Every time I go to Town Center I have to think about what I have to pay to park. I’ve even been getting confused lately and now there are more changes to come.
The constant parking fee changes are confusing to people who don’t read all these comments or are new to Town Center. When people are confused they stay away. I can hardly keep up with the changes.The $750,000 parking system in the garage frustrated me today when I tried to park for the Hometown Holiday event. The parking garage sign indicated there were 25 parking spaces available. I drove into the garage as did many others. As we drove in other cars were driving out. Getting to the top of the garage, we saw the reason for all the cars driving out. There were no spaces available. What a nightmare the backup wait was!It would have been better for a parking attendance to keep the cars from going into the garage to keep the chaos from happening. The intent of the expensive system was to keep you from going into the garage when the lot is full. That system failed me tonight and I still find the system not worth our city tax dollars. Once a garage is full a stand stating so works very well in other garages. Rockville’s expensive decisions are not always the best. This is one that will continue to cost us many years of bond debt.
Cindy, thanks for the correction. As often as not we’re downtown short-term anyway so we usually park at the meters – $1 either way, so why not park closer to my destination? – so I had lost track of what the going rate was in the garages.
I’m confused. Why is it a problem when you fail to feed the meter and get a ticket? What is unique about Rockville or this situation that requires Police Dept. or city government intervention? I am also not seeing anything that says the $40 fee is new or was increased.I got such a ticket 18 months ago and I think it was $40.
Deb, when I have tried to park short-term at the Town Center parking meters during the day, I have not had luck finding a space. Glad it works for you. A better time to go to TC is weekends when spaces have been available in the garages most of the time. Let’s all hope the $1.00 parking fee in the garages for the weekend doesn’t change for a while.It will take more time to accept paying parking in TC when we have so many other options in Rockville to shop and eat without paying a parking fee. It’s the hassle with the machines that most of us don’t like. We also can’t forget what the City is Rockville is paying for the three parking garages built with a long-term bond. The justification was that the future parking fees would fund the cost. I doubt if it covers the maintenance. I want to know how much revenue the City has collected on parking tickets.
What I find annoying now is that if you arrive at 5:45 pm to dine or shop, you are still, according to the pay stations, expected to pay $1 per hour until you expect to leave. I tried putting a $2 toll into the machine and it would not grant me more time than 2 hours, even though if I wanted to be there longer….so I left earlier than I expected and gave up my usual rounds at Waygoose and Giffords…
Regarding Comment #12, I want to point out the signs at each paystation say:Mon-Fri – 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. – $1 per hourMon-Fri – 6-10 p.m. – $1 flat fee after 6 p.m.In addition there is a note on the bottom of each paystation receipt (printed at all hours of the day) that says: “If you paid until 7 p.m. parking is valid all evening.”In the 5:00 p.m. hour, if you arrive at a paystation at 5:45 or before it gives you the option to pay for either 1 or 2 hours at $1 per hour. If you arrive at 5:46 or later, the only option offered is to pay the $1 flat rate that covers your parking for the remainder of the evening. This transition is set up at 5:46 p.m. to give customers a break from having to pay $1 for less than 1/4 of an hour.Hope this clarifies how the evening parking fees work. I am the Recreation and Parks Director for the City and responsible for management of all City facilities, including the Town Square garages.
Thanks Mr. Hall! I did not see the message on the receipt, and appreciate your clearing that up for me–obviously I was confused…. I guess I can arrive in that time frame now and not worry about whether I’m getting a ticket! Thanks.