Public Hearing on Park Atlanta at Inman on Dec 10
by Jack White
On Thursday, December 10 at 6:30 PM, there will be a public hearing on the Park Atlanta Contract renewal in the Inman Auditorium.
Origins of the contract
In 2008 the real estate crash brought the wave of burgeoning property tax revenues that (then) Mayor Shirley Franklin had enjoyed throughout her tenure to an abrupt end, and mild budgetary panic set in downtown. Franklin had significantly sidestepped the looming challenge of a badly-underfunded city pension fund and chosen to build extraordinarily expensive, huge underground storage tunnels as a solution to the sewer crisis that she herself had inherited. (The cost of the tunnels – which continue to be functionally problematic and expensive to maintain – was reflected in Atlantans’ paying the highest water bills in the country, a distinction with no end in sight.)
Citing a need to save money, Franklin (in mid-summer of 2008) suddenly dismissed all the city’s parking enforcement staff, and a year of significantly free parking on streets commenced. Then Public Works Commissioner Joe Basista grudgingly acknowledged that the parking revenues forfeited as a result meant this was a net overall loss to the city, but cutting employees was a political salute to the pension worries and provided a guaranteed (if lower) income figure for budgeting. In any case, Basista and the mayor had a plan and they implemented it in 2009, the summer before her time in office ended.
In September of that year Franklin signed a seven-year, multi-million dollar contract that provided the city with an annual lump-sum payment in return for giving control of all city-controlled, fee-based parking to Park Atlanta, a subsidiary of Milwaukee-based Duncan Solutions. Next to the coming decades of high water and sewage bills, it has been her most enduring legacy to citizens.
What has happened since the contract signing
Park Atlanta’s ticketing spree started almost immediately and has continued ever since, interrupted only briefly in 2010 when our own newly elected council member, Alex Wan (joined by Kwanza Hall, representing downtown), pushed for a moratorium in response to a huge volume of citizens’ complaints. The contract was modified to reduce some hours of enforcement and allow better reporting, but cancellation wasn’t a practical option; the penalties for doing so were enormous. Citizens have been gritting their teeth ever since, waiting for the contract’s expiration.
Which comes, at last, next summer.
Mayor Kasim Reed has been a public critic of the contract; a few years ago he said ending it might be his “last gift” to the city. Of course, renewing a contract is far easier administratively than creating an alternative, and Reed has not been eager to increase the number of employees, so nothing is certain. In our strong-mayor form of government, influencing his opinion is paramount.
With that in mind, City Council’s Transportation Committee is holding public hearings on the topic, including one (thanks to Councilmember Wan) at the Inman Middle School Auditorium at 6:30 PM on Thursday, December 10th.
What the issues are now
The problems with privatized enforcement (at least as approached in this contract) are numerous. Many citizens resent the avaricious ticketing, which (supported by modern technology) leaves very little room for user error. That the payment machines are balky, have hard-to-read displays, and don’t accept all credit cards doesn’t help, either. The merchants along North Highland have been supremely frustrated with their own customers’ complaints and threats not to return.
We all understand that parking has a cost and needs monitoring; that is not the issue. However, the goals of parking regulation should be based on meeting the planning needs of a given neighborhood and not be driven by the revenue enhancement of a private vendor, which is the premise of the current arrangement. (In a city as car-prone as ours, competition for space and its related negative impacts are common, but – absent them – municipalities shouldn’t be ticketing purely for revenue, either.)
There is an inherent contradiction between private profit and the public good in the city’s relationship with Park Atlanta, perhaps most clearly seen in noting that the vendor gets reimbursed if the city removes parking spaces from its own inventory for any reason – wider sidewalks or bike racks or other public amenities. Last decade’s redesign of the corner of Virginia and North Highland would not have been possible had this contract existed; aspirations to make similar changes along the Atkins Park stretch of North Highland face similar obstacles. Nor can hours or costs be easily adjusted to reflect evolving usages.
Our local businesses and vendors also assert that VaHi has a more intense level of enforcement and more metered spaces than some nearby neighborhoods. We suspect that they are correct, and we observe that the solution is not to inflict our misery on others but to end it everywhere.
The VHCA Board Recommendation
Given these issues and the level of public anger and lack of trust in this vendor, the VHCA Board supports not renewing this contract. We would prefer that the city return to enforcing its own parking laws, even if it produces less total revenue. The city can be flexible in responding to citizens’ complaints and the recommendations of its own planners in ways that are simply not possible with this type of private contract.
That’s our opinion; we hope you will come share yours at Inman on the 10th.
(Below are links to two newspaper articles on the topic, one from the AJC and one from the Atlanta Daily World.)
http://commuting.blog.ajc.com/2015/12/01/parkatlanta-contract-may-not-be-renewed/
http://atlantadailyworld.com/2015/12/01/atlanta-city-council-invites-public-to-meeting-about-about-parkatlanta-meters/ It opens with “money-grubbing parasite that vacuums away people’s hard earned money at the parking meters…”
Image courtesy of Creative Loafing via Google Images
Jack White is President of VHCA