Napa paid parking plan gets another frosty reception at community forum

It's been about three months since the city of Napa announced it was planning to roll out a new paid parking program in downtown and the Oxbow District later this year. That was followed by a packed community meeting, where most people present said they didn't like the idea.

In theory, the paid parking program would free up oft-filled downtown street spaces to make parking in the area easier, by encouraging drivers to use city lots and garages for long-term parking needs, according to city parking staff and the consultants working with them.

But as far as the community's perception of such a program goes, not much appears to have changed since the city first declared its intent to pursue a pay-to-park program. On Wednesday, about 50 Napans showed up at the Senior Activity Center for the city's second community meeting on the plan, and most speakers — a mix of those who'd attended the first meeting and those who hadn't — spoke out against the idea.

This time around, that opposition was visible. Many attendees wore yellow buttons with crossed-out coin-operated parking meters, carried yellow signs emblazoned with those same meters and the words "Keep parking free in Napa," and wore yellow shirts with parking meters on them, with the word "free" above the meters.

Julie Dixon, city parking consultant and founder of Dixon Resources Unlimited, said she wanted to start the latest discussion by "making sure that everybody knows that no decisions have been made." She also said that, even if a decision is reached, "the parking conversation honestly never ends."

Dixon noted that any paid parking program or other management program that didn't involve paid parking would need City Council approval. So, she said, the meeting was being held both to continue to collect feedback, and to "talk about why this is a conversation that is being had."

Dixon went on to make a case that something needs to change with Napa's parking management, due to high occupancy rates of street-side spots in the city center.

"The reason why we're having this conversation today is because the data is driving this conversation," Dixon said. "We are basically in a position now where there's really no more on-street capacity."

Dixon added that parking management is about accessibility, and that she wanted to make sure that parking is available to residents and visitors alike.

In other cities where Dixon's company has "effectively managed parking," she said, they've been able to provide more access to parking places, and residents have "highlighted and reinforced the fact they can more easily visit the shops and restaurants and stores that they actually want to go to."

Much of that lies in making sure on-street parking is treated as premium, and that it turns over quickly, Dixon said. People parking for longer should leave their cars in the city's parking lots and garages, she said, which are currently underused compared to the downtown street spaces.

"Basically when you're coming into town, and you need to make a quick pit stop to run into the shop, on-street parking is supposed to be the premium parking so it has a quick turnover in those spaces," Dixon said. "But when you're coming downtown to dwell, to walk the sidewalks, work your way in and out of the shops, maybe grab lunch, that's when we want you to park in the parking garages and parking lots."

The problem, Dixon said, is that people are occupying the time-limited on-street spaces for longer than intended. Many people stay longer than the limit technically allows, or shift around to different spaces before running out of time.

"It is very likely based on the data that we're gathering that those are employees or business owners who are doing what I call a parking roulette," Dixon said. "They're just jockeying the on-street spaces and staying for much longer than they should be because those are intended spaces for our customers. And you all are customers of our downtown."

Ultimately, Dixon said, the city is trying to seek consistent compliance with parking rules, which would then provide "parking access and availability."

Dixon went on to respond to several previously expressed concerns about a paid parking program. Napa is exploring the possibility of service worker parking permits, she said, so that such workers could afford a permit to park in a city garage or lot, and not on downtown streets.

As for revenue generated by such a program, a FAQ list handed out at the meeting noted that much of it would go to the "self-sustaining" parking program, and additional revenue would "help finance parking facility maintenance, security, repairs, improvements, infrastructure, and other community needs currently not being met by the general fund."

Dixon presented several other ideas about how the program could work. But most audience members who spoke said they don't want any form of paid parking, and many said they didn't think there was a problem with parking downtown.

Carol Barge, who spoke against paid parking at the previous meeting, said that it was mentioned that the city would pursue paid parking at that previous meeting, and she thought that was what got the community members up in arms. But her opinion that there isn't actually a problem with downtown parking hasn't changed.

"I still think as others have stated that we don't actually have a problem," Barge said. "I think we're looking for a problem, and, if anything, it's the employees that are taking up spaces, and we need to find a place for them."

Sharon Macklin noted that she sat through a city presentation about the parking plan with the Napa Downtown Business Association last week, and that the city merchants are opposed to paid parking. She said that if the city's parking enforcement officers did a better job enforcing the existing time-limit rules, that would encourage people to park farther away from downtown streets.

"If you're working in a store downtown and making $15 or $20 an hour, if you get a couple of tickets, you're gonna walk another couple of blocks," Macklin said. "So before we have any kind of parking meter charges, we need to do a better job for enforcement."

Some speakers did express support for a paid parking program, however. Patrick Band said he'd been hearing a lot about problems with Napa's existing parking garages, including that they weren't safe, and he had similar feelings about the city's sidewalks — many of which he said were cracked, and made it easy to trip and fall.

But fixing those problems requires money, he said, and a paid parking program could help fund "those kinds of improvements that we know we all need as a community, that are really hard to get funding for."

"What I'm hoping is that this can be kind of an ongoing process to talk about how can we phase something in that can clean up our garages, that can fix sidewalks that are broken, that can make crosswalks safer so people aren't getting hit by cars," Band said.