Downtown parking plan passes speed bump

A proposal to revamp downtown parking in Macon gained speed Tuesday despite efforts to curb the proposal.

A resolution that would give the Urban Development Authority control of overseeing downtown parking moved ahead 6-3 during Tuesday’s Macon-Bibb County Commission committee meetings. That vote came after more than an hour of discussion, including suggested alternatives to giving the Development Authority full control.

Commissioner Elaine Lucas pushed to instead have the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office beef up enforcement and have the Development Authority market off-street parking as avenues to improve the situation. Lucas, along with Commissioners Scotty Shepherd and Bert Bivins, opposed having the Urban Development Authority oversee parking.

Officials would be making a mistake by turning over the management without seeing if another method would resolve issues, Lucas said.

The authority receives some funding from the county, and its board is appointed by commissioners, but is considered a separate entity.

“I am not sure that we need to take a sledgehammer to kill this gnat,” Lucas said.

Bivins said his concern is having another group besides Macon-Bibb officials supervise parking.

“No matter what goes on downtown, we as (commissioners) will be held responsible,” he said. “I appreciate helping find solutions, but when that happens those solutions should be presented to this body.”

But several other commissioners who voted in favor of the authority’s taking control said the entity could better manage what’s become a problem in a growing downtown: vehicles parking on streets for too long and causing businesses to lose out on customers.

The parking proposal would have to be passed by the full commission before it would go into effect. The UDA would develop a comprehensive plan and contract with an outside company to help manage parking services.

“I think we have to do something,” Commissioner Mallory Jones said. “The downtown merchants have spent too much money, invested too much and people are staying there too long.”

An attempt Tuesday to give the Sheriff’s Office six months to see if it could get a better handle on parking enforcement failed. Sheriff David Davis said in the last couple weeks his employees wrote about 200 tickets around downtown, but sustaining that would require more resources.

“I’m not opposed to a comprehensive plan, but it’s like the carrot and the stick. The enforcement side we have the stick but we don’t have the resources or expertise to bring the carrot into play,” Davis said.

Parking meters would likely be installed on some of downtown’s busiest streets as part of the plan. Advocates for a change in downtown parking management, which includes a group of business owners and the downtown agency NewTown Macon, say the meters would create necessary “turnover” of vehicles parking on streets. The Development Authority would work with owners of parking decks and garages to encourage their use by downtown employees and businesses.

Commissioner Virgil Watkins, whose district covers a section of downtown, said parking meters can be an effective measure in having people move their cars.

“We need to focus on getting people to think about our lots, think about our off-street parking,” he said.

There are 1,260 on-street parking spaces and 4,600 off-street parking spaces downtown.

“The issue is creating enough turnover of on-street parking to support business storefronts,” said Alex Morrison, executive director of the Development Authority. “The revenue is not anything we primarily are concerned about. We need revenue to pay whoever we get to implement the system.”

This story was originally published November 8, 2016 at 1:33 PM with the headline "Downtown parking plan passes speed bump."