Ashia Richardson, owner of Hair at the Square salon in downtown Harrisburg, has started keeping a “notation system” in a notebook to keep track of when her clients need to feed the meter.
The hardship on low-income residents and the fear that visitors will be driven away by higher rates were among the concerns expressed at the first meeting of Harrisburg’s parking advisory committee, which took place Thursday morning at the Crowne Plaza hotel downtown.
While committee members sat around tables in the second-floor ballroom, supplied with microphones, pitchers of ice water and bowls of mints, a total of 16 members of the public stepped forward to voice their concerns about what the parking changes would do to the city. Among their number were a pastor, a deacon, a City Council member, a salon owner, a hardware store owner, the director of a theater group, numerous residents, property owners and landlords, and a disabled man.
Their comments struck a universal theme: that the expansion of meter hours and the increased meter prices and fines will hurt an already fragile economy and prevent people from shopping or locating in Harrisburg.
But each speaker added his or her own variation. Church representatives, for example, were particularly concerned about parking for funerals and weddings on Saturdays, and about the possibility that reduced parishioner contributions would impede their ability to provide services for the needy. Walter David Prediger, a deacon at Salem United Church of Christ, on the corner of Chestnut and S. 3rd Street, worried about the volunteers who drive in to help with a Saturday clothing giveaway, and park from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. “That’d be $15 for one car,” Prediger said.
Business owners feared that the prices would simply drive customers away. Ashia Richardson, who opened her salon, Hair at the Square, across from Strawberry Square last year, said her clientele was “really taking a hit” since the introduction of the new rates. “The cost of service now includes $15 to park,” she said. “Our clients aren’t coming because they simply can’t afford parking.”
Residents expressed a variety of concerns, from how the rates would affect their own ability to park to what an exodus of frustrated drivers might mean for their city. John Mank, who lives in the Grayco apartment building downtown, said he found charging Saturday visitors “inexcusable.” “These people make this city live,” he said. “You’re doing more harm than good.” Mank, who had started with a quip that got a big laugh—“I’m gonna make this short, I’m at the meter right now”—concluded on the same note. “I gotta go and feed the meter so I’ll see you all later.”
The parking advisory committee was formed as part of the long-term lease of the city’s parking assets, a deal that closed on Dec. 24 and was a major component of the state-appointed receiver’s recovery plan for Harrisburg. Though it has no power to adjust rates or hours, the nine-member committee can approve recommendations to management, and its meetings provide a public forum for updates on the system’s operations.
The advisory committee includes representatives from just about every entity involved in the ongoing management of the lease—including the asset manager, PK Harris Advisors, Inc., an affiliate of Trimont Real Estate; the new operator, Standard Parking; the Dauphin County commissioners and Assured Guaranty Municipal, who both provided security for the $294 million bond issue associated with the lease; and the Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority, or PEDFA, which issued the tax-exempt bonds.
The committee also includes a representative from the mayor’s office and a representative from council, though, for now, it includes no direct representative for downtown residents or for downtown businesses. Bruce Weber, the city’s budget and finance director and the mayor’s representative on the committee, tried to change that Thursday morning with a motion to add two seats to the table. But no one seconded the motion, and the proposal did not come to a vote.
During public comment, committee members listened without responding. “Public comment is not a question-and-answer session,” John Gass, the representative for PK Harris Advisors, had reminded members before he opened the floor. Instead, he said, the committee would take note of public concerns and address them later.
Before concluding the meeting, however, Gass did offer a few remarks about the “perspective from the working end.” “I don’t know one issue brought up today that hasn’t been discussed by our working group,” he said. He explained that the 60 days since the parking transaction closed had seen a “tremendous amount of activity” on a “very challenging project.” “We’d appreciate if you could give us the ability to try to work on your comments,” he concluded. “We’re dealing with many issues.”
Among those issues is the parking system’s tight budget this year, with projected revenues only just covering the many obligations under the parking lease, including debt payments, operating expenses and payments to the city. (To see TheBurg’s visual breakdown of the system’s financial obligations in 2014, click here.) That budget includes combined revenues from on-street meters and enforcement of around $5.5 million—a much smaller figure than the $16.6 million expected from garages, but an amount still critical to the system’s bottom line.
In the meantime, business owners like Richardson are feeling the pinch. Clients who once came to her salon every other week, she later explained, have reduced their appointments to once a month. Others have started coming after 7 p.m., when on-street parking is free, forcing her to work late into the evening.
“I had to walk one client to her car at 11:30 at night,” she said. To help customers avoid getting tickets, Richardson has even started a parking “notation system” in her salon, to keep track of when clients need to feed the meter. Nonetheless, three have already been ticketed, including Richardson herself.
“When I went to the office to pay the ticket, it was so dysfunctional,” she said. “They didn’t have receipt paper or cash for change. I had to wait 25 minutes in line while this woman wrote on a piece of scratch paper.”
For the parking system’s 2014 operating budget, or to see a visual breakdown of the sytem’s financial obligations this year, please click on the links below.
Park Harrisburg 2014 Operating Budget
Park Harrisburg 2014: Where the Money Goes
