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Date: 10/4/2022
NORTHAMPTON – During a meeting on Sept. 27, the Transportation and Parking Commission voted on a neutral recommendation to the City Council regarding proposed parking meter changes throughout the city. With the recommendation, the city will look at future utility, revenue and equipment impacts to the proposed changes.
Background
According to Carolyn Misch, the director of the city’s Office of Planning & Sustainability, the city hired Stantec to re-evaluate the parking fee structure in downtown Northampton based on comments from businesses and other users downtown who are trying to figure out ways that parking turnover could be addressed, particularly within the segment of Main Street between West Street and Market Street.
After several months of conversations and collaboration with Stantec, a draft document was created with recommended changes to the parking changes throughout these areas.
“The ordinance does a few things all at once,” said Misch. “It takes different sections of parking and updates the language to address the fact that we have different parking collection systems.”
In June, the City Council referred the ordinance to the Transportation and Parking Commission with Misch emphasizing the five main changes under review including, shifting management and enforcement of parking meters by two hours from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. to 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; eliminating two-hour maximums on Main Street and other zones to utilize different methods of accomplishing turnover and evaluating occupancy; adjusting rates to achieve 85 percent occupancy; increasing rates on Main Street while decreasing rates on side streets to create an incentive for long-term occupants to park around the corner as opposed to on Main Street itself; and authorizing the mayor to adjust rates based on the metric of maintaining 85 percent occupancy to allow changes on an administrative level rather than by ordinance.
As part of the final point, the mayor would submit semi-annual reports of occupancy rates on Main Street to the Transportation and Parking Commission in the summer and winter.
Under the current language, Main Street parking between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. would cost $1.50 per hour, and $2 per hour during the 5 to 8 p.m. range. Side street parking, meanwhile, would cost $.50 per hour between 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and $1 per hour between 5 and 8 p.m.
Despite the fact that the time limit would be eliminated, people will not be allowed to park on these streets for more than 72 hours unless they park in the garage.
The Sept. 27 meeting
“It’s more of a performance kind of ordinance then just strictly set in stone,” said Misch. “It gives it more flexibility in that regard, to sort of evaluate what’s happening with parking and with the businesses along Main Street.”
Additionally, there were a couple of areas throughout Northampton that were not quite regulated, or changed over time, like the Roundhouse parking lot, which has had a lot of modifications over the last few years.
According to Nanci Forrestall, the parking enforcement administrator for Northampton, changes to the Roundhouse parking lot include the addition of compact car parking spaces that need to be codified.
Forrestall added that the city will need to think beyond just changing the metered parking, as staffing will also be a point of consideration if the hours were to change.
“If you start parking meters at 10 a.m., that doesn’t mean that the officers would run from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m … you still need them in the morning to cover other ordinance violations,” said Forrestall. “So, we need to think beyond just the metered parking.”
Donna LaScaleia, the director of Public Works and chair of the commission, said that part of the commission’s recommendation would ask the council to evaluate the staffing of the parking department, as well as the impact on revenue and utilities.
“I also think we would have to take into account the logistics of being able to change hours,” said Forrestall. “If you’re going to change the fee structure, depending on the hour of the day, logistically on the side streets, you have standalone meters that don’t change with the hours-so we would have to look at what our equipment can do.”