- November 17, 2024
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A special April 30 Flagler Beach City Commission meeting about parking in the city did not lead to a vote to implement a paid parking plan. Instead, in an inconclusive end to two years of study by the city’s parking committee, the commission asked city staff to further review the committee’s proposals.
The parking committee — which recommended the city transform 662 spots into paid spots 36 weeks each year — was scheduled to sunset after it presented its findings to the commission, and will not meet again.
Mayor Linda Provencher, who served as one of the committee's six voting members, suggested the city consider seeking outside opinions rather than laying such a review exclusively on the city’s staff, but warned that the parking committee wouldn’t be available to provide further input.
“We’re finished," she said. “Do whatever you want; we’re never meeting again."
Most of the commissioners were willing to add some paid parking in the city. But they were wary of the wide-reaching plan favored by the parking committee, which drew opposition from residents and business owners who feared it would hurt the city's reputation and local businesses' revenue.
"I really think that we need to have more businesspeople or more residents sit in on this committee,” Commission Chairman Marshall Shupe said. The six-member parking committee included two local business people alongside Mayor Linda Provencher and three city staff members, but neither of the businesspeople — as a speaker pointed out during public comment — depend on tourism dollars.
Commissioner Steve Settle suggested an approach that would involve limited paid parking, but thought the issue required more detailed study. "There’s as many unanswered questions in the report that was done for us as there are answers," he said.
Commissioner Joy McGrew said the visitors who flock to the city's beach should help pay the cost of maintaining it. "I'm tired of having my taxes as a taxpayer continue to go up because a family comes in from Ocala," she said. "So I truly believe that the cost needs to be shared. It does not need to fall solely on Flagler Beach taxpayers."
She said people in the northeast pay $20 to spend a day at the beach — the parking committee's favored proposal would involve a $5-$7 per day rate in the city's lots, or $1 per hour at metered spots along the streets — and scoffed at complaints that visitors would avoid Flagler Beach and go elsewhere to avoid paid parking.
"Well, where are you going to go?" she said. If people drive to other beaches to avoid paying, she said, "Now you’ve spend money and time to travel and get there."
But McGrew opposed charging visitors to park at downtown businesses, favoring a more limited paid parking plan that would target beachgoers. "If you had a method of collection at each walkover, then that is where you’re going to get the revenue from the people we need the revenue to come from," she said.
Commissioner Jane Mealy said she didn’t trust the committee’s calculations on the revenue that would be brought in by a paid parking plan. “See, I don’t believe these numbers," she said. "I just can’t see where a town this size is going to bring in the kinds of numbers that were shown.
But Commissioner Kim Carney warned that if the city doesn't want to create a parking plan that would force visitors to pay for beach maintenance, then its residents will have to pay for it. And if they continue to oppose paid parking, she said, "I will not sit here today and say that I will not vote for a tax increase in July or August."
About 50 members of the public attended the meeting, and about 20 addressed the commission during the meeting’s public comment period.
Almost all of the speakers opposed the paid parking plan favored by the city’s parking committee, asking the commission to either leave the city’s parking as it is or adopt a milder option. Each comment against a paid parking scheme prompted audience applause.
“I’m what I consider to be a South Florida refugee,” said Flagler Beach attorney Dennis Bayer. “I came here from South Florida because I didn’t want to pay for parking. … I think a lot of people, when they talk about the charm of the area, it’s because you don’t have to pay for parking.” Bayer said he worried that paid parking would hurt local businesses and what he called “a very precarious recovery.”
The Flagler County Chamber’s Rebecca DeLorenzo and Gretchen Smith also opposed paid parking. “What we’ve heard from our members and Flagler Beach businesses is that paid parking, as it’s presented in Option 4" — the option favored by the parking committee — "is not desirable,” DeLorenzo said.
Smith said that an informal Chamber survey of members showed that most Flagler Beach residents and businesses opposed that plan.
County Commissioner Barbara Revels, a Flagler Beach resident and owner of Coquina Real Estate and Construction, said paid parking would push more beach-goers to try to park in front of local businesses. “I’m going to be out like the parking czar saying, ‘Please don’t park here while you go to the beach for eight hours,’” she said.
Revels had to do that once before, she said, when a car full of young surfers pulled up in front of her business, and the surfers got out and began waxing their boards in one of her parking spaces. She asked them to leave, she said, but "it was very uncomfortable to have to do that, because they were just there to have fun."
Ocean Art Gallery owner Frank Gromling said he’s been frustrated by beachgoers who park in front of his gallery on Oceashore Boulevard for hours. “But, in the overall big picture, I worship those cars, because they’re here,” he said. “They’re doing things.”
The city’s parking committee — consisting of Shelley Warner, Scott Spradley, City Manager Bruce Campbell, Public Works Director Robert Smith, Mayor Linda Provencher, Planning and Architectural Review Board member Roseanne Stocker and one nonvoting member, City Finance Director Kathleen Doyle — had presented the city with four options for parking, and endorsed the fourth and most drastic one: paid parking in all current city lots and in some streets, including Oceanshore Boulevard, in the downtown corridor for 36 weeks per year. Parking passes would be offered to city residents for about $30, which would cover administrative costs.
Option 4 got three votes, from Campbell, Smith and Stocker. None of the committee members voted for Option 1, which would leave the city’s parking situation as it is. Option 2, which would not add paid parking, but would involve enforcing time limits in spots along Oceanshore Boulevard and pushing beach visitors into proposed lots on South Flagler Avenue, got just one vote: Provencher’s. Option 3, a plan to add paid parking in all city lots but keep on-street parking free, got Spradley’s and Warner’s vote.
The presentation to the City Commission on Thursday evening followed 26 public meetings and two public workshops held since the parking committee’s creation in early 2013, and the committee’s formation itself was the result of a goal in the city’s 2012 Strategic Priorities Plan which listed “Parking Fees” under the goal titled, “Generate Additional Revenue.”
Under Option 4, a total of 662 spots would become paid, with on-street parking costing $1 per hour and lots costing $5 per day on weekdays and $7 per day on weekends. Paid parking would be enforced 36 weeks per year — the free period would be between October 15 and February 15 — and Flagler Beach residents would be eligible for a roughly $30 pass that would let them park for free.
Implementing Option 4 would require borrowing $867,369 from the city’s general fund for startup costs like lot improvements and the installation of 61 payment kiosks, and paying $74,790 annually for fees, support and maintenance of the kiosks.
The parking committee’s analysis predicted a return of $173,474 per year during the first five years of operation under Option 4. To repay the city’s total capital outlay of $1,241,319 by 2021, each of the city’s 662 paid spots would need to bring in $375 per year. The plan also assumes a total of between $60,875 and $95,600 in fines in forfeitures in 2016-2017, with income from fines increasing each year.
The third option explored by the committee, which would add paid parking 36 weeks per year in city lots but keep on-street parking free, would require six kiosks and $107,800 in startup costs that would be borrowed from the general fund.
About $15,000 of that money would be for the demolition of the Public Works Building on Fourth Street to create an additional lot. The committee estimated that the paid parking for Option 3 would bring in about $26,950 per year for the first four years of operation.
The kiosks for Option 3 would cost about $6,120 per year in fees, support and maintenance.
Each of the 170 paid parking spots created under Option 3 would need to generate $204 per year in order for the city to repay its expected capital outlay of $138,400 by 2020. Option 3 would not include beach parking passes for local residents.
To view the committee's analysis, CLICK HERE.
