(105th in a series of posts on parking)

Judy Parr is a lifelong resident of Bethlehem.

Gadfly:

I remember the controversy over the pedestrian bridge. As someone who would be working in the New St building, I was taken aback by comments that the workers there would never walk around the Southside. It was nonsensical to me at the time, and I can assure you we are all out and about, going to restaurants and stores, taking long walks on the Greenway, and participating in the life of our neighborhood.

Judy

(104th in a series of posts on parking)

So, frankly, it looks like we are to have a new Polk Street Garage.

The BPA construction juggernaut is in high gear.

Sign papers August . . . begin construction December . . . open next December.

But — as Gadfly whined on July 11 in post #88 reviewing a white paper with examples of excitingly designed garages contributed by Councilman Callahan  — “If we are to have new parking garages, deargod, let them be built with the most modern ideas.”

What kind of garage will it be?

Pretty much the only conversation Gadfly has overheard has to do with the number of spaces.

But there is more to a garage than that.

(Can you tell Gadfly has been not only reading Speck but has been influenced by him? A little knowledge outside one’s field is dangerous!)

If construction is to begin in December, odds are there are plans already.

Who’s doing the design? What is the design?

Are we looking at a ho-hum cookie-cutter design?

As far as I can tell, no design has been shared with the BPA Board nor open to public view.

Gadfly hopes the design will be open to conversation before it is set in stone (damned cliche again).

Influenced by Speck, Gadfly is wondering, for instance, how the garage fits in with any related City goals — like walkability or Climate Action or whatever.

Not just the technical aspects of City codes.

Speck has suggestions about how the garages relate to streetlife and walkability, for instance.

What about beauty? Aesthetics?

How “independent” is the BPA? Are designs coordinated with the City? Does the public get a chance to weigh in?

Gadfly was yet to be Gadfly with the run-up to the New Street Garage, but he remembers some controversy, for instance, over the connecting pedestrian bridge. He will go back and look for details, but what he remembers in detail, for instance, is the criticism that the bridge would not put “feet on the street” — a goal for supporting local business.

In fact, after reading guru Speck, Gadfly’s of the opinion that he would have recommended the garage for the 3rd and New building be on the Polk site, a 4-minute walk past a variety of neat shops.

And wasn’t there concern about the bridge running over the Greenway?

Gadfly is way out of his league here (and he is cliche-bitten), but would you agree that standard parking garages add nothing and, in fact, are detrimental to streetscape?

Are we making sure that we are getting something inventive, exciting, distinctive, state-of-the art for our $16.8m?

Gadfly thinks he has heard that the New Street Garage won awards. Or was it the building? Either way, Gadfly is not sure he understands.

“If we are to have new parking garages, deargod, let them be built with the most modern ideas.”

(103rd in a series of posts on parking)

Gadfly,

How about rolling back the meter increase to $1.00/hour and increasing the fines? Some on Council felt that was the right way to increase revenue in the first place. Where is that analysis? If fine increases aren’t necessary, why not reward Bethlehem residents with a meter rate rollback and penalize violators with increased fines? This is plain backward thinking by penalizing law-abiding meter users and now not needing the increased fines. Does anyone realize how stupid this sounds?

Dana Grubb

Council, are you listening? Gadfly will get his pencil, pencil-sharpener, and green-eyeshade, and try to run some figures. But somebody has to be better at doing that. For instance, focus on fines proposed to move from $10 to $15. If the meter rate is rolled back from the current $1.50/hr. to the old $1/hr., what would the fines need to be to raise the same amount of revenue? Gadfly will handle placement of the Oxford commas, if someone else will deal with the decimal points.

(102nd in a series of posts on parking)

On the chance that the Bethlehem Parking Authority will return to Council tonight (remember, 5:30PM start time tonight) with the final version of its proposal regarding financing of a Polk Street Garage, Gadfly will start to wrap up this thread that started way back at post #79.

If the BPA is not at Council tonight, they will be August 20.

In regard to construction of a Polk Street Garage, the BPA holds all the cards (damn cliches . . . like a disease). As Gadfly wrote in post #90, objections and questions (like those of Councilwoman Van Wirt’s recorded in past posts) are like blowin’ in the wind.

For if the BPA progresses to construct the Polk Street Garage with a private loan as planned, City Council apparently has no say, has no oversight. BPA does not need City Council approval for a private loan.

At least that’s the way it looks to Gadfly.

But there are some basic questions that potentially undermine the validity and legitimacy of the project that ought to answered (a whittled-down version of the Gadfly questions posed in post #89):

1) Are there options to the Polk Street Garage?

Remember that we are talking about $16.8m that — one way or another — “we” will pay for.

That’s big money.

Walkability guru Jeff Speck — who did a study for Bethlehem in 2009 and whose books Gadfly has been reading — says, “Locate large parking structures strategically as downtown anchors. And don’t build them unless no other option exists” (2018).

“Don’t build them unless no other option exists.”

As far as Gadfly knows, there has been no credible definitive statement about the unavailability of the “Ruins lots” as options.

2) Is building a garage “legal” at that location?

At the very moment I am writing this (9:08AM), Peter Crownfield posted, “I’m still waiting to hear what gives BPA the right to exceed their mandate [to provide parking in commercial district zones] and construct a garage at Polk Street to benefit private developers. (Or is that now the norm in Bethlehem?).”

Yes, that question has been asked a half-dozen times in public meetings and has never been publicly answered.

It just hangs in the air, casting — for Gadfly anyway — a shadow over the project.

It’s a question that seems easy enough to publicly answer yes or no.

3) Can the BPA carry the debt?

Gadfly doesn’t think he could get a mortgage if his payment would exceed 30% of his income.

In 2024 — when the Walnut Street Garage is in the mix — the BPA draft pro forma shows projected total debt service as $3,472, 933 (page 5) with projected total revenue  of $8,549,242 (page 4).

Debt service is projected to be 41% of revenue.

If Gadfly is reading the figures right, is that fiscally responsible?

Gadfly isn’t sure. Just askin’.

(101st in a series of posts on parking)

We’ve all heard the saying, “the buck stops here.”

Let’s turn that around.

The buck starts here.

Here being with City Council.

And the buck we’re talking about is the City’s income.

City Council controls the City money matters.

Except that in 1988-1989 Council delegated the power to establish revenue rates for parking meters to the Mayor.

This is no mean power. Meters brought in $1,976,547 in 2018.

Let’s call it $2m.

In delegating that power to the Mayor, no mention was made of the fine structure, so that revenue power from fines remained with City Council.

Weird.

Not including the fine structure or even mentioning it in those 1988-1989 Council deliberations seems like a complete oversight.

There was nothing calculated about it.

Nobody designed a system of checks and balances as some people believe is the reason for this two-headed system.

The two-headed system was not designed to mirror our executive/legislature form of government.

The two-headed system was not designed to solve some sort of problem.

It just happened.

As a matter of fact, critics of the proposed change at the time worried that it would create unnecessary trouble.

What we have now — Mayor responsible for meters, Council for fines — is the result of an oversight.

Gadfly has documented the history of the origin of this two-headed revenue system here:

The strange separation (75)

The timeline of the strange separation (76)

Gadfly has several times pussyfooted around saying what he believes about this two-headed system.

No more.

Gadfly thinks Council should take back power over the meter rates.

When it comes to raising money from our residents, the buck starts with Council.

Council needs to exercise control over the BPA finances in the way originally conceived.

What Council has wrought, Council can unwrought.

Ok — now let’s get back to the main issue, the Polk Street Garage itself.

(100th in a series of posts on parking)

100!

Wow!

Gadfly was on a pretty good roll there for a while examining the draft document about the proposed $16.8m Polk Street Garage that the Bethlehem Parking Authority presented to City Council at the July 2 meeting.

The BPA plans to sign formal documents for construction of the garage at their August 28 Board meeting.

The BPA plans to return to Council with the final presentation of their document either tonight or at the August 20 meeting — that is, before the document signing.

When BPA returns to Council, the issue of the parking fine rate structure will also have to be settled.

Let’s think about that piece of the action now.

Reminder of the back story:

• There is a division of revenue responsibility: the Mayor controls parking meter rates, City Council the fines.
• Originally, Council controlled both revenue streams, but Council voluntarily delegated the meter stream to the Mayor in the late 1980s.
• The two rate structures should exist in a logical relation, so that the threat of fines compels adherence to paying at the meters.
• When meter rates go up, logically the fine rates should go up in tandem, in proper proportion.
• Because of a conflict between Council and the BPA last fall, the meter rates went up 50% on January 1 but the fines did not increase at all.
• Currently, then, there is no real punishment for not feeding the meter, no real incentive for “turnover” of spaces that is important for business customer flow.

The BPA plans to again ask Council to raise the fines. For instance, a $10 fine would become $15.

Some more back story:

• The BPA is an independent entity that manages parking in the City.
• The BPA must live on/within the revenue it raises.
• BPA revenue comes from curbside meters, fines, and the garages.
• To finance the building of garages, BPA must have sufficient revenue for debt service.
• It makes fiscal sense for the BPA to put money aside for new capital projects and capital repairs.

Are you with the Gadfly so far? Faithful followers in the know will jump in if he does not have things right.

Now here’s the interesting situation.

• In that draft document presented July 2, the BPA says it doesn’t need the increase in fines to finance the PSG. It has enough revenue just with the meter increase.
• And the BPA proposes to finance the PSG with a private loan, not a bond that the City (taxpayers) would have to back.

Yet the BPA is going to ask for the fines increase anyway.

Now is that ok?

If you were City Council, would you approve?

The BPA will probably argue, perhaps among other things, that

• The current situation defeats the objective of fostering necessary “turnover” in spaces for business purposes.
• The rates proposed are perfectly and properly in line with our comparison cities, which is one reason why the meter rates were raised in the first place.
• Another garage expenditure — the repair or replacement of the Walnut Street Garage — is in our very near future at a similar $16m figure, and surplus revenue realized will be applied there.
• The current situation is simply absurd, which, they will remind, several members of Council recognized when the fine rate increase was voted down late last year. Council will be a laughing-stock if they don’t approve the fine increases.
• Repealing the meter increase and returning to the 2018 system is also absurd: the loss of a projected increase of 2019 meter revenue over 2018 of $292,378 would mean that the BPA will need a taxpayer-backed bond instead of floating a private loan.

Strong case for raising the fines.

As much as Gadfly would like to see a rollback and residents saving at the meters if the fine revenue is not immediately necessary, it doesn’t look possible.

Agreed?

Gadfly missing anything?

Chew on this, and let Gadfly know if you see this differently.

And now we can get back to the main issue — the Polk Street Garage itself.