5.2. SR 09-17-2007 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I El-..-t. lover Downtown Parking Study Parking Organization Communities the size of Elk River rarely have complicated parking management structures. As parking revenues are not collected on a daily basis, and there are no parking service employees, a distinct parking department is not currently necessary. However, parking service related responsibilities do exist. For example, some person or department must be responsible for issues like parking system maintenance, selling permits, planning for future developments, special event planning, handling parking related complaints/concerns, communicating parking issues to the public, etc. While a parking specific department is not currently recommended, the city should designated one department as responsible for parking related issues. This department would coordinate parking maintenance, participate in planning for future parking needs, provide assistance with planning for special event parking, deal with parking complaints/concerns, etc. This department need not directly provide all of these services, as these responsibilities could be distributed horizontally throughout the existing city department structure. For example, parking maintenance could be provided by public works and parking communications could be developed by community services. However, the community should have a single city contact for all of their parking related concerns. In most municipalities, the parking system is managed by the public works department, a separate parking department or by a downtown redevelopment agency (or similar agency). As the downtown grows in the future, the need for a parking specific department could arise. Downtown parking services tend to evolve over time. At first, parking is largely unregulated. During this stage most off-street parking is privately owned, and the largest supply of public parking exist on-street. The initial formation of parking system management typically begins as a small component of an existing city department, such as public works or the city police department. As downtown becomes more densely developed, off-street parking tends to combine into larger facilities or parking structures. At this point, paid parking is established to pay for the growing parking infrastructure and parking enforcement is instituted. As parking structures tend to be publicly owned, the need arises for an organization to operate and manage the parking supply. There are typically three approaches commonly used to address the need for parking system operations and management. First, an internal city parking services department could be created. This department could stand alone, or be asub-department of another department. The operation of the system could be completely in-house, or the department could receive services from another September 2007 Carl Walker, Inc. 39