No paid parking in Downtown DeLand, at least for a year

Economic woes drive City Commission decision

By Barb Shepherd
BEACON STAFF WRITER

posted Sep 9, 2008 - 5:11:24pm

There will be no paid parking in Downtown DeLand, at least not for the next year.

Despite the recommendation of a consultant hired to study parking in the central business district, the DeLand City Commission declined to move forward with a paid-parking plan, largely because of a local economic slowdown.

At a special meeting Sept. 8, the consultant repeated his recommendation that the city use a mixture of metered parking, free parking and paid permits to raise money — which he predicted could total as much as $412,000 in 2009.

Downtown DeLand has plenty of parking, the consultant said, to satisfy the demand through 2015. However, the shopping district has two problems: First, the city is spending more to enforce parking rules than it reaps in fines; and, second, people are parking in the wrong places, depriving shoppers of the choice convenient spots.

Paid parking would solve both problems, Walker Parking Consultants said.

But city commissioners said the time isn't right.

The handful of Downtown business owners who attended the meeting, including City Commissioner Phil Martin, who owns Mainstreet Grill restaurant, said business is definitely down.

"If you go down that road with paid parking ... I think you guys are going to be presiding over a ghost town. Wal-Mart's just down the road," said George Wright, owner of Roseborough Travel. "The Downtown section is really being hit hard. ... I don't know how they make ends meet."

All five commissioners agreed adding paid parking to the current economic maelstrom isn't a good idea.

"Probably in the short term, from a paid-parking perspective, status quo or something close to status quo is probably a good thing," Mayor Bob Apgar said.

The City of DeLand and Volusia County government split the $100,000 cost of the consultant's study, partly because of the perception that county workers were among the long-term parkers who use short-term spaces and deprive shoppers of convenient parking. However, once the consultant determined there is an oversupply of parking currently, the county backed away from its involvement in the process.

City officials have been unable to schedule a joint meeting with the County Council to discuss the consultant's final report, or to interest the county in discussions about how county employees' parking could be regulated.

What remains to be seen is how the paid-parking recommendations will be viewed when the economy rebounds.

Apgar and Commissioner Willie Bright both indicated they think paid parking in some form is inevitable in the future, especially since the special tax fund that supports Downtown DeLand expires in 2025.

Commissioner Martin said he might, someday, be persuaded to support a paid-parking system, but only if the revenue was devoted to building a parking garage for the Downtown area.

Martin also said two recommendations from the consultant should be implemented as soon as possible: lengthening the time allowed for free parking on Woodland Boulevard and other main streets, and improving the signs in parking lots.

The city already made a major change in parking enforcement this summer, upon the retirement of the parking supervisor. Instead of hiring a replacement, the remaining employee in the two-person division, parking-enforcement officer Mike Ackerman, was transferred to the Police Department.

Because he's now handling paperwork formerly handled by the supervisor, city officials said, Ackerman is issuing only about two-thirds of the parking tickets he used to give, further reducing the city's income from parking fines.

But, Commissioner Martin quipped, reflecting the pain many merchants are feeling: "Maybe the reason they're writing 30 percent less tickets is there's 30 percent less people in Downtown."

— info@beacononlinenews.com

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