Town Center Parking Garage Fines Back Up To $40

Last night the Mayor and Council unanimously agreed to increase the fines for expired parking meters/stalls in City-owned parking garages in the Town Center. This ordinance will take effect on July 1, 2010.The City expects the new fee of $40.00 for to increase the estimated annual revenue by $110,000 in FY11. The fee >had been lowered to $12 but originally was $40.

Trapper Martin, president of the Town Center Action Team, expressed his opinion about the damage the higher tickets could have on Town Center businesses. As we know from the comments on this post, the fine was already $40 for expired parking meters on the streets of Rockville.

If you are enjoying yourself in Rockville Town Square and inadvertently forget your time has run out in the parking garage, you will pay a hefty punishment. Many people believe the risk of parking at Town Center is not worth the possibility of $40 tacked onto your receipt for whatever purchase you make in Town Center.

Other fines to be aware of:

$100.00 for violations of parking restriction signs designating handicapped parking only
$100.00 for violations of parking restriction signs and/or lane markings designating a fire lane.
$100.00 for violations of snow emergency parking restrictions.

Mayor and Council Meeting Recap June 21, 2010

Mayor and Council meetings are long and can last into the wee hours of the morning. We can’t cover every decision and discussion but we’d like to provide enough information so readers know what’s happening in our City. We could use your help.After each meeting we will report on appointments and the City Manager’s report. When we can, we’ll describe topics from Citizen’s Forum and report on any votes taken. However, we invite the community to let us know when we leave something out. We also invite anyone speaking during Citizens Forum to send their remarks to us for consideration as >Contributor Opinions. If we miss a vote or leave out a bit of information you think is important, we’d like to know in comments.

As a whole, residents don’t have a public way to respond to Mayor and Council meetings together, so we hope the Recap will give residents a place to express their views about the meetings, actions, and decisions of our Mayor and Council on a regular basis. We’ll see how it goes.

As always, we welcome your feedback.

Here’s a first try for the June 21, 2010 Meeting.

Appointments

Unanimously approved Bernie Lubran to Rockville Scholarship Foundation Board of Directors until June 1, 2013 and Bryan Maust to Rockville Recreation and Parks Foundation, Inc.until June 1, 2013.

City Manager’s Report

Two items from Scott Ullery:

The Metropolitan Council of Governments and Board of Trade are seeking ideas about Metro’s governance. They want to know what we would recommend, especially any innovative models from other systems. A Public Meeting will be held on July 1, 2010 from 9AM – 11AM at the Council of Governments (777 N. Capital Street). There will be opportunities for input online and at the forum. Councilmember John Britton is going to check if the Governance Review Task Force meetings would be open to the public. WMATA might not adopt these recommendations.

A Press Release from the Governor’s Office named Twinbrook Metro a Transit Oriented Development. 14 rail stations were honored including Shady Grove. City Staff don’t know what the honor entails as far as financing opportunities, prioritization of funding, feasibility analysis, and priority consideration for State offices and labs. Staff will learn more about the opportunities and look into the criteria since the Rockville station was not named.

Citizen’s Forum

Since the RedGate Business Plan Financial Update was on the Agenda, this was the main topic for Citizens Forum.

• Joe Jordan, chair of the Redgate Advisory, was the only person to sign up in advance. He admitted the financial picture at the golf course has not improved. The number of rounds used for calculations is grossly overestimated because it includes free and complimentary rounds. Revenue only includes carts and fees when other courses include shop sales and food in revenue. He requested the work session on the golf course to be moved from July to September or October so the new Point of Sale system can be rolled out. This would allow new marketing and sales to be included in the plan for Redgate.
• Martha Klasing spoke about the demand for golf being stable and that Redgate had “good bones on which to build” so it could be a successful operation with the correct business plan to improve performance.
• Art Stigile didn’t understand how spending for essential services must be contained and $600,000 in funding for the golf course only benefits the golfers. He added it would be a “shell game” to move Redgate from an Enterprise Fund to the General Fund because the courses cost would not be transparent.

Other topics:

• Bill Commoners (sp?) who represents the Tower Companies wanted to tell the Mayor and Council they were doing something good by approving the Zoning Text Amendment to extend the timeframe for development projects. Property owners who invested in these properties can remain “ready to go” and the change will save on costs, especially his legal fees, involved with getting extensions.
• A resident of Princeton Place spoke without identifying herself and requested that when the Memorandum of Understanding is negotiated for the opening of the fence between Princeton Place and Montgomery College for the fireworks, the Mayor and Council continue to work on a resolution to keep the fence open.

Agenda Items

RedGate Business Plan Financial Update was extensive. In the end the Mayor and Council decided to hear the report from the Redgate Advisory Committee on July 19, 2010 and hold a work session in September. The discussion as to when to have the work session revolved around whether preliminary results from the new point of sale system should be included in the discussion since it would take years to see any real change.

The Communications Task Force Report was handed to the Mayor and Council just before the meeting started. The three subcommittees made their presentations. The Report should be available to the public online today. The report contained about a page of recommendations from the Citizen Outreach Subcommittee and the Mechanisms Subcommitte, and five pages of recommendations from the Development Review Subcommitte including changes to the Zoning Ordanance.

Votes

Unanimously approved the increase in parking fines for expired parking meters/stalls located in City-owned parking garages in the Town Center from $12 per ticket to $40 per ticket.

Unanimously approved the Zoning Text Amendment (TXT2010-00227) to extend the implementation period for would extend the timeframe for certain approved development projects until June 30 , 2012 for site plans, use permits, project plans, detailed applications and special exceptions that have been approved as of June 30, 2010.