City staff proposing two hours of free parking in garage for summer test

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Jenn Rowell

Updated 10:30 a.m. April 23 with revised garage occupancy

The city is planning a test program to offer free two-hour parking in the north garage from June 1 through Aug. 31.

The city’s Parking Advisory Commission met April 18 for the first time since October 2022 with four new members.

During that meeting, they voted to recommend approval of staff’s summer trial at one of the city’s two garages.

Under the proposal, the city will offer free parking for two-hours in the north garage at 17 4th St. N.

The city’s parking contractor said they’ll monitor who enters the garage when and if a person parks for more than two hours, they’ll be charged for that additional time.

Tena Grigsby, manages the garages for SP+, the city’s parking contractor, and said that the north garage is gated with two parking attendants so they’ll track the two-hour parking manually.

City staff said the north garage is currently underutilized and they wanted to monitor parking behavior and whether diverting people to the garage will reduce strain for on-street metered parking.

Asked how they intend to track the people parking for two hours in the garage, collect and analyze data, Andrew Finch, city transportation planner, said they were still working on their methodology for tracking; and Brock Cherry, city planning director, said that at future meetings, they’d be able to provide more details on how to track and observe the effects.

Cherry said they intend to take the proposal to the City Commission in early May.

Staff said they plan to survey downtown businesses and the community about the test and also ramp up public awareness about the city’s garages.

The north garage has 496 parking stalls, including 15 handicapped accessible spaces.

The rate in the north garage is 50 cents per hour, capped at $5 per day and monthly permits are available for $51.

The on-street metered rate is $1 per hour and isn’t capped through the day.

Downtown parking is free on weekends and after 5 p.m. on weekdays.

Jayson Olthoff, a new member of the PAC who has been critical of the city’s parking program and downtown, said he didn’t know the garage parking rate was lower than the on-street parking.

Inge Buchholz, a downtown business owner who’s also critical of downtown parking and was recently appointed to the PAC, said that older people wouldn’t want to walk from the garage to their downtown destination.

She said the city had one too many garages and that she’d never used them.

Buchholz said that people want to pay for parking, they just don’t like how the current system works, largely the kiosks, which were installed in March 2021 on Central Avenue. They take payment via smartphone app, credit card, cash and coin. Their purchase was approved by commissioners in November 2020.

The old meters remain on the side streets in the downtown district that take coins and can also be paid via the smartphone app.

Cherry said the north garage is currently performing to the expected level, but it’s still being underutilized with 43.75 percent occupancy.

He said that’s for a number of reasons to include dated technology and people not knowing the public garages are available.

Katie Hanning, PAC member, said the proposal was a good start.

Kellie Pierce, PAC member as the director of the downtown business improvement district, said the intent was to alleviate strain for on-street parking.

Pierce said that the promotion of the test in the north garage needed to be done by the city and her office would help disseminate that information, but she didn’t want people to think her office managed the city parking program.

Cherry said for the test to work, they have to promote it and get information to the public. He said it was unfortunate people don’t know the garages are publicly available.

Nathan Laidlaw, another new appointee to the PAC, said the test was a good opportunity to advertise as he didn’t know the city garages existed.

Staff said they plan to hang a temporary banner on the north garage about the free parking test.

The city contracts with SP+ for parking management, but that contract expired, so the city is now paying the contractor monthly. Cherry said the contract lapsed because City Commissioners weren’t ready to make major changes to the parking program yet.

At the start of the meeting, Cherry said the meeting’s purpose was to get the group started again and he asked each member to introduce themselves.

Olthoff said he was one of the complainers so he wanted to get involved.

Cherry said that parking isn’t something to be solved, but to be managed, as it has competing interests among downtown businesses, residents, customers and visitors.

Cherry said he was excited to work on parking and had people go around the room reading sections from the city code on the parking program.

He walked the PAC members through current budget information and said they’d be using data for conversations on parking policy.

Cherry said they get complaints daily about parking, but the revenues were increasing so “obviously it’s working” but there’s room for improvement.

Pierce said it was important to note that the parking program stands on its own and is funded by fees and fines, not taxpayer support through the general fund.

Cherry said that in future meetings, the PAC would do a SWOT analysis, meaning reviewing the program’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

The City Commission voted in 2017 to spend up to $20,000 on a contract with SP+ to analyze the parking program and develop a strategic plan, which included a SWOT analysis.

That strategic planning process grew into a proposal to increase parking meter rates and adjust the fine structure, which were later approved.

The city parking fund is funded through meter revenues, permit fees and fines. The fund doesn’t receive general fund, or tax revenue support, with the exception of of the 2018 TIF funds and the fund received some COVID relief dollars to replenish it after the COVID shutdown depleted the fund and it’s reserves.

The City Commission passed an ordinance in September 1947 to install meters in downtown Great Falls.

Then during a public vote during the 1949 general election, the majority of voters supported keeping parking meters after a 18-month test run.

The ordinance also established two-hour parking time limits and set parking rates at 1 cent for 12 minutes; 2 cents for 24 minutes; 3 cents for 36 minutes; 4 cents for 48 minutes and 5 cents for an hour. Meters were enforced between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. except Sundays and legal holidays.

In 2008, the meter rates were increased from 25 cents per hour to the current rate of 50 cents per hour. In 1947 the rate was 5 cents per hour, which if adjusted for inflation to today’s dollars is equivalent to 55 cents, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s inflation calculator.

In 2014, some parking rate adjustments were proposed, but commissioners took no action.

In 2017, commissioners spent $20,000 on an additional contract with SP+, the city’s parking contractor, to analyze the parking program and develop a strategic plan. That budget item grew out of a conversation between Craig Raymond, city planning director at the time, and Greg Doyon, city manager.

Commission approves parking fee increase; training requirement for elected, appointed officials

Early in the 2017 budget process, Raymond told Doyon that he wanted to hire a full-time parking director since he didn’t have the time to devote full attention to the parking program. Raymond and his then deputy Tom Micuda oversaw the department tasked with managing large and small developments, permits, administration of the safety inspections, code enforcement, zoning, sign code, land use, Community Development Block Grant program, historic preservation, Civic Center facility management and more.

Some of those programs have since been moved to other departments.

Since at least 2013, City Commissioners and the city manager have been adamant that no general fund support be used for parking and the program is funded by meters, parking permits, tickets and fines. Parking fines previously went into the general fund since the program was managed by the police department when it was established in 1947. In 2012, the city moved the fine monies to the parking fund, since the program is now managed by the planning department.

In 2019, commissioners approved new meter rates and fine structure for the downtown parking district from a proposal developed by the Parking Advisory Commission through a roughly two year effort to develop a strategic plan. The PAC at the time was comprised of downtown business owners and representatives from downtown groups.

Downtown parking enforcement was suspended from March to June 2020 due the COVID pandemic and remained free until 2021.

Members of the PAC and city staff said in 2021 that they had fielded complaints from business owners about construction workers, downtown employees and residents parking in front of their shops or restaurants all day, taking up spaces for their customers, as the downtown was reopening from COVID.

Billings, Bozeman, Helena and Missoula also have paid parking in their downtown areas.

Bozeman is often mentioned in Great Falls when it comes to parking.

Parking in downtown Bozeman is free for two hours on the street and garages, but it’s $1 thereafter for the garages.

The city is looking at building a new garage because “many downtown business owners had expressed an interest in a new parking garage to add capacity to the system and attract new development such as a hotel to downtown,” Takami Clark, Bozeman’s communications manager, told The Electric.

Parking is largely free and the first parking garage cost about $12 million, of which $8 million was funded through the TIF, which is tax revenue, and the other $4 million was funded through a Federal Transit Administration grant. Current parking operations are funded through permits and enforcement fines, Clark said.

Bozeman actively patrols downtown with license plate reader technology and their “enforcement schedule will vary to try to catch illegal parkers at different times of the day, “Clark said.

An overtime parking ticket is $20 in downtown Bozeman.

Meter fees in downtown Great Falls are $1 per hour and the fine structure is: one time courtesy ticket, $5 for the second violation, $10 for the third violation and $20 for the fourth and each subsequent violation in any given calendar year.

Bozeman has been talking about parking quite a bit in recent years and conducted an occupancy study in 2021 and another count in 2023, for which the consultant is finishing up their report.

The Electric asked whether Bozeman had discussed suspending enforcement and Clark said that they have “but when it happened during COVID it was pretty messy downtown.”

Bozeman suspended parking enforcement for about eight weeks from mid-March to mid-May, but resumed for the summer season, she said, and moved to more mailed citations rather than placing all of them on the vehicle.

Bozeman installed parking meters in the late 1940s, like Great Falls, Livingston and Billings.

The original rate was five cents, Clark said.

In the early 1980s, business owners downtown requested the meters be removed to compete with the mall and other new development in the city, Clark said.

Bozeman restarted the conversation of instituting paid parking in 2022, but paused that proposal in 2023, though parking has been the topic of recent meetings.

For more background on downtown parking discussions:

City considering appointments to parking board

Downtown parking free for holidays

Library, safety group hosting session on large, abandoned vehicle parking enforcement

City approves fines for RV parking; using COVID dollars to replenish some city funds

City addressing parking complaints from meal delivery drivers

City approves 3-year downtown parking contract [2021]

City considering free parking for ADA spots downtown [2021]

Parking program resumes generating revenue, begins COVID recovery [2021]

City adjusting for Passport Parking wallet function [2021]

Paid parking resumes downtown April 2, new pay stations will be installed mid-March [2021]

How to: A guide to the new pay stations in downtown [2021]