 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. Good evening and welcome back to Byline. This is a public affairs show here at Amherst Media. And with the great help and involvement of our Amherst League of Women Voters, we plan programs that we hope will help you understand what's going on in our town government. And today, parking, parking, parking. It's everywhere except exactly where you need it. And one of our guests today, Christine Gray-Mullen, has been involved with parking and transportation issues for years. And our vice president of the town council, Mandy Jo Hanicky, is with us as well. And she's been doing some work in this area. So let's just dive right in and talk about the very stimulating and exciting issue of parking. But before we do that, why don't you just take a minute and remind our listeners, because your name should be familiar to a lot of people, because you've been on a lot of committees in town. I have. The ones that I've been on that are related to parking would be, I was on the public works committee for like six years, I shared that for some years. There was the transportation task force and that was the group that worked to get the transportation plan that came out in 2015. And then we have the downtown parking working group, which worked with a couple of reports. The latest one came out last fall, the parking implementation strategy. And I'm also chair of the planning board right now. Great. So you've had a lot of experience in town. Yes. And a lot of it is revolved around planning and parking and transportation. So you've kind of developed a bit of a specialty in that area. And Mandy, Joe, you've been on the town council now for a whole 14 months. Something like that. Yes. Actually, you were sworn in December. December. So to make you about 15 months already. And so it's going okay. It is. And you're serving as the vice president of the council. I am. And are you at large? I'm at large. At large. And I'm currently the chair of the community resources committee, which is up until next week or so is dealing with parking. Very good. So, so let's just dive in a little bit here. Tell us about where this latest effort to study and understand what's going on with parking. Where did that come from? Well, I'll just back up quickly to around 2015 when the transportation plan came out. And that gave recommendations of things to do. Parking was an issue. And there was a parking study done by Nelson. I guard and that came out in like 2016. And, you know, with that, you have a report full of good stuff to do and someone has to do it and committees do help, you know, with facilitate with the public and keeping things going. So downtown parking working group was formed in 2016. It was supposed to be for a year. That's why it was a working group to sort of unpack all the good stuff in that 2016 parking report and feed recommendations to the select board. So that they, because they're the keeper of the roads. So it ended up going on until last fall with the completion of another report. The parking, like I said, implementation strategy that was also done by Nelson, I guard. And that also has a, well, they broke it down into eight goals and there's lots of good stuff under each one. So that's where we're at right now. And when you say downtown parking. Yeah. So parking is everywhere in town. But the downtown parking working group to help it focus was focused on downtown did touch some other good townwide issues. Like the winter parking ban was removed. And one of our other big wins was like Park Mobile, which does work wherever there's meters around town. Because people need to remember there are meters in other places. Like we have Mon Olympia Drive. And as our villages grow, you know, we want them to grow. We want stores to be successful when people living there. Parking needs will change and they'll have to be more parking. So downtown just focused on that. And the reports mostly focused on downtown. Okay. So as a technologically challenged individual, you said something that caught my attention for a second. Mobile. Oh, Park Mobile. That's the. Park Mobile. Have you used it? Tell me about this. Okay. It's. I think I have it on my phone, but I'm not sure. Well, you know, technology is changing everything very quickly. And some people might curse it, right? But overall, it does make it easier. There are a lot of benefits to it. Park Mobile is an app you can download on your phone. And right now you could put coins in the meter. You could go to the kiosk, which is also coin or credit card or those green stickers on there that give you a number. And if you have the app, you put in the number where you are and you've already set yourself up. It's pretty easy to have a credit card and then you just pay that way. And the biggest bonuses that I love about it is so you pull into your space, you can pay without standing in the rain or the snow or the cold. And you can set yourself up. My second favorite thing about it is you're having a great, you know, bit of crack and enjoying everyone and talking. And you're like, oh, I got to get going because I'm going to get a ticket. You can up it right there from the coffee shop or the restaurant or whatever. So you can extend your time. Yes. So those are two huge, so I highly recommend it. And we were dubious of how much it would be used, but it's exploding people. It's really even, you know, all ages. Everyone's really liking it. So hopefully we'll get some better signage. But, you know, bigger signs so people can more better identify where they're at to use the app. Great. And so the recommendations made in this most recent study, they went to town council. The whole report went to town council and there's a lot to unpack. It's a big report. It's ambitious, but it's great stuff. But just to tag on one more thing, the downtown parking working group, to try to help them, summarized in a memo the top three, sort of like where to start, like, yeah, there's all this. But this is where we think, do these three things first and then work on the report. Okay. Well, let's talk about those three things. What did the council read? So we read the whole report. Okay. And what? We're overwhelmed. But then we also read the memo with the three and the council forwarded both of those. The whole report and that memo with those three priorities to the community resources committee, which I chaired. And we talked about those priorities. We brought Christine into our meetings. We brought our former economic development director, Jeff Kravitz, in. We talked about them. And those three were to hire a parking czar, as someone might say, a parking person that is focused on. Does it come with a special hat and cape? No, unfortunately. Maybe special parking. Oh, no, wait a minute. There we go. Someone who would focus, because as Christine said, there's like eight large goals and many strategies under those goals. And the working group said, we need someone that can just focus on that. Somebody going to poncho the whole thing. Yeah. And so that came to us. And then the fees, we were just talking about paying for parking. There is a enterprise fund, a fund where all those fees go. And their recommendation was to dedicate a portion of those fees to the downtown area, since pretty much everything in that fund is generated in downtown. And then the third one was to improve signage and just website and communication and everything. So it's easier to know where parking is. So the first one's pretty obvious. You've got to find some money and higher as are, but maybe from that fund of fees. Potentially, yes. If there was one higher, that is probably where the funding would come from. And if there was enough, you could also do the hat and the cape. Maybe. Yeah. Okay. Yes. And the magic wand. So maybe we can get our parking guru in place, but explain a little bit more about the second one. The fund? The fund. When you pay for parking, the town gets the money, but what does the town do with that money? It puts it in a fund similar to, we have a water fund, we have a sewer fund when you pay for your water. So how much is in that fund right now? It generates, what was it, about a million a year? And so does that go into the operating budget at this point? No, it's a separate budget. It's a separate budget. It's called the transportation fund right now. And it pays for improvements to the parking areas. So it paid for the improvements to the lot next to Amherst Cinema. Yeah. It pays for our fees for the PVTA that we get assessed from the PVTA. It pays for we have the bike share program. It pays for those fees. And percentages of town employees that work with parking or transportation. So there's not a big pile of money. A ton of money in there. It's getting used. It's getting used. But there's still some room in the fund. Maybe. That you might be shifting and analyzing. You'd have to shift and analyze. Prioritizing. So we felt that hiring a parking system manager would be the first best thing to pay for from like that fund. And then from there, you start determining, you know, what its priorities. And so like anything, isn't that, you know, every fund that the town has, they have. And signage? What's that all about? So driving into downtown, if you don't know where a parking lot is, you can't find that parking lot. You know, there's public parking up by the old Bertucci's. There's lots in that triangle street area that people don't even realize is public parking. If you can't find the parking, you can't utilize the parking. We locals know. Right. But visitors do not. So the signage was to make it easier for visitors to find parking, but also consistent. Our signage is not necessarily consistent with how many hours you can park there. They don't look the same. So it can be confusing to know, how long can I stay? Or is this for permits only? Or when the permit time ends, is it allowed to park there if I don't have a permit? When permits end at five, can someone without a permit come in and just park there? And to try and better utilize all the parking that we do have. It's true. Because people have the assumption that there's no parking. Because they only, you know, if you're only looking at the core, the lots you can see, right, by the cinema or in front of town hall, and they appear full, people are like, there's no parking. But we've done two parking studies, and there's always parking available in the system. You just don't know where they are. OK. And you have to be willing to walk a little bit because it's not that we have this huge downtown. No, we don't. But if people are so used to finding a parking space right in front of where you're going, you get spoiled. If you go to places that are much bigger, you know that typically you're going to walk a little ways. Right. And we do break our habits in this town because the students, when they leave, say in May, all of a sudden, for three months. There's a lot of parking. There's a lot. We really have no problem parking then. And you can park in front of the restaurant. You can park right in the core, and it's really easy and it's always almost available. And then the students come back, and all of a sudden you're like, I can't park in the usual place. I've been parking for months. We did try to change the parking, the cost and the fees to entice people to go to the edges. So that's why some lots are 50 cents and some are a dollar. It's a dollar and the core right in the most visible places. So it's not only a little long, it's a little money. And all the places I go, it's a dollar. Because you go right to the core. Well, can't you help me out a little bit here occasionally? Well, if you can walk a block or two, it depends on where you're going downtown too. If you're going to Town Hall, you know, right in the core, then yes, that is going to, but the edge is really, you know, Spring Street lot. That is a 50 cent lot and usually has more availability. And like Mandy was saying, if you go to the north end, there's usually always parking. Yeah. I'm only kidding because it's always about the bad weather. That's the thing. It's like, oh, come on. It's raining. It's snowing. The parking management person wouldn't be able to control that. No. It's still New England. Yeah. All right. And so you said there's plenty of parking. Then why is all this conversation about a parking garage, another parking garage? We have the world's most expensive per space parking garage in the history of humankind. Yeah. That was our parking. So we do have a parking garage. It's more like a parking whole kind of, but it is a parking garage. But like, so it's a huge investment to build a parking garage. You know, it could be 10, 15 million dollars. It's a lot of money. And you really have to need it. So we did not one, but two parking studies. And they're a pinch point. So we know at lunchtime, like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and evenings, like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, are full. And some lots are maxed out. But the system is not maxed out. So that's not enough of a reason to validate the town. And like we don't have enough capital projects and buildings we need right now would just be another one in the queue. And the system it's not needed now. But if you read the report that came out in just last fall, the consultant does address that if our building continues and we get a few more of these buildings that we've gotten downtown and the town becomes more vibrant economically and people living there, then yes, we will need more parking. And then a parking garage. And the developers are realizing this. So we downtown have no parking required for developers. There's like an overlay. So they aren't required, but they still know as good businessmen that they have to have a cost benefit and they want their buildings to be successful, not empty. So that puts it a little bit more on them also that they have to solve their problem. And I think there are discussions going on right now about the private sector. Thank you. I've heard some. We had our new bid director on not long ago. And that's very high on her list of priorities. And she said she's been to town council and presented their top, I think, five priorities. And that was one of them. Yeah, they did. What was the town council's reaction? So we didn't get a lot of talking about it at the time because we got a presentation about the holistic downtown and a lot of projects. One of which was a private development parking garage. So where the money does not come from the town and the town is not building a, quote, publicly owned parking garage. It would be considered if private developers build it, it would be public parking like any parking in Boston or something has a garage that is not Boston owned but is for public parking. And so we are getting a plan to have another presentation a little more in-depth later this spring on that when they are ready and have some more information about it, it's looking like the developers that are investigating this would be looking at putting it or proposing to put it on town owned land right now where we commonly refer to it as the CVS lot, but that large lot has two different owners actually. One, the CVS, the owners that own the CVS building own a portion of the lot, but the town owns a portion of that lot, and they would be looking for council help in order to be able to develop a private parking garage, a privately owned parking garage. So would that be in the nature of a long-term lease? It would probably be a long-term lease that the town council would have to authorize the manager to sign and to agree to. That was what was presented to us a couple weeks ago in terms of most likely a long-term lease, not a sale of the land, but a long-term lease. And perhaps at a lower cost because of the public benefit of adding the additional parking, but that's a detail to be worked out. A policy matter between the council, the town manager and the property developers, whoever they are that are going to do this. So the council hasn't taken any votes on that at all at this point, and you probably haven't even had any real active big discussion. No real discussions. Maybe offline stuff. The discussions or the comments that were made at the meeting where it was presented were generally favorable of, hey, if a private developer is willing to build a parking garage, that sounds good to help economic development. Most of the comments made were very positive in that direction recognizing as Christine was saying that right now given the rest of the facilities that we need to take care of in our town, the town money is not really there to build something like this, given a study that said there are pinch points, but those pinch points for the foreseeable future are manageable if people are willing to walk a little farther, or we restripe lines to create slightly more spaces and things like that. And so let's go back to the fact that the CRC, Community Resources Committee, has received this report, has reviewed it and the next step is So we took those priority recommendations and made our own recommendation on them which said yes, we agree with those priority recommendations and we took that back to the council and the council then, most of those recommendations if you know a legislative body can't do anything with. We can't hire a parking manager. We can't fully direct how you spend the funds in the transportation fund. We said, we're going to put it in the town manager's goals and in our financial goals for the year to look into these. And that's already been done. And that's been adopted, yes, those goals. Now did you mention there's a public hearing coming up? There is on a slightly different parking issue. Okay. On Lincoln Avenue coming up this Monday so the 9th of March at 6.30 is the public hearing and a number of residents came to the town manager and said we're not happy with what's going on on our street parking wise. That's a safety issue. The town manager looked at it with his staff and has brought a proposal to the town council to modify the parking restrictions on Lincoln Avenue all the way from Route 9 Northampton Road all the way up to Massachusetts Avenue or Fearing Street. The whole length of Lincoln. The whole length of Lincoln and the proposal is to eliminate parking on the west side on the side closest to Hadley 24-7. No parking on that side. And then on the side closest to town the east side to limit parking and eliminate it and prohibit it from 8-5 Monday through Friday so that parking on weekends and evenings would be allowed on the street but parkings during the sort of work hours would not on that side of the street. And so we have a hearing coming up. And so if you're living in the particular area there's no parking anymore at all if this is adopted. Can you get a special permit if you're having a big party or a wedding in your backyard? Can you go to Town Hall and get a permit? So we don't have any mechanism at Town Hall for that purpose right now. There is there have been times where people doing that have notified the police department and the police department has used discretion not to ticket individuals with that. One particular example, at least on fearing I think it was a wake essentially or a memorial service for someone at their house essentially or the house they had lived in and the police department chose not to ticket the cars that were parking on the street that didn't technically have parking on it for those instances but there is no mechanism to say if you have no parking 8 to 5 on the street and no parking on the other side for the landscaper to park there for 2 hours there is no mechanism to say that person couldn't get a ticket. So this is going to be a public hearing on Monday the 9th at 6.30 and then the council does what after that hearing? It has many options it can continue the hearing if it thinks it should continue and we don't have enough information it can close it and then it could vote on the proposal to adopt that night and technically vote that night it would have to do a couple things but it could vote on the proposal on a modified proposal it could vote down the proposal to not change anything more likely it will likely refer that proposal if it closes the hearing refer the proposal to one of our committees which would not in theory be the community resources anymore because we just changed structures it might go to the town services and outreach committee it's referred to that committee and then they would review it and come back to the council with a recommendation based on the public input that they had received public input maybe going back to you could do a lot of things once it's in referral you could get more public input you could go back to town staff and say a lot of these issues were brought up what's your recommendation on that maybe a new proposal or a modified proposal if in the future the town council votes to accept it approximately how long after that's voted is this a number of months because you got to get signs and install them you have to educate the community how long would it take I mean it would be the council's discretion to set a date for when that would start so I would guess that it would not be immediately because you have to have signage so the council would probably pick a start date for these so it might coincide with the new school year for example or may or June 1 or something when summer comes or something like that because it takes time to get the signs installed okay very good and so no more parking and transportation committees for you to sit on how's life going to be now I know you're chairing the planning board and I know there's some connection there but I mean are you going to be going through withdrawal here or something but we do need a new parking committee it wasn't on our list but that we feel we felt our work was really needed and there's a lot that we couldn't even get to and like I said it's a lot of this reaches to the town so our hope was that by hiring a parking system manager that then they would sort of be that staff liaison who would facilitate the committee and there would be a parking committee who would continue the work because even this Lincoln thing you know it would not be you all wouldn't be spending so much time on it if there was just a system already set up how to handle the neighborhoods that abut the universities and downtown you know I'm another abutting neighborhood and we have some that are signs no parking Monday through Friday 8 to 5 and then further down the neighborhood it's no parking 24-7 and again like what do you do if you need to have parking there's no system so I think rules are good with parking because then expectations are set and we can't have that until there's a manager or czar or whatever who can sort of set these up and then it'll be clear for everyone and that's part of parking if you know the rules you can deal with it better but if it's vague or confusing or there's bad weather it's hard very good and if there were another committee that would not necessarily be a committee of the council that could be a multi multi-member so I think what Christine is advocating is a general town committee a multiple member body in town you know the council could create it the town manager could create it it would likely not have counselors on it if it's a town committee so is that actually seriously been proposed at this point and it's under consideration but we haven't gotten there yet yeah no we need the manager okay very good well thank you very very much I never knew there was so much to think about with regard to parking but so thank you very much for your good work and Andy Joe for your leadership on the council and thank you for watching and join us again very soon thank you