Town jacks up fines in order to finance a new parking plan
Time limits around high school may be shortened
Sunday restrictions lifted
By Gloria I. Wang
If things go as planned in the next few months, Los Gatos parking violators will face fines of $35--a $10 increase from the current cost--before the end of the year.
That's just one of the many things that the Los Gatos Town Council said yes to at a recent council meeting following an in-depth presentation by downtown parking consultant Pat Gibson. Gibson, of the firm Kaku Associates, discussed the various strategies and alternatives that had emerged out of his six-month study of the parking situation in downtown Los Gatos.
The downtown area is defined in Gibson's study as bordered by Los Gatos-Saratoga Road on the north, Massol Avenue on the west, E. Main Street on the south and, on the east, E. Main Street and Alpine Avenue.
Along with an increase in parking citation costs, some of the other things the town council agreed to Aug. 4 were to change the parking restrictions in the residential area west of N. Santa Cruz Avenue, approve spending $98,600 on this year's holiday parking program and consider changing the parking restrictions in the vicinity of Los Gatos High School.
Having $35 parking tickets, Gibson said, would make up for the money that the town will lose in its plan to hire more parking enforcement officers.
"It's a cost-recovery plan," added Assistant Town Manager Jim Piper. Most of Los Gatos' neighboring cities, Piper said, have fines "quite a bit higher than that."
Included in the increase is the $100 fine for abusing permits in residential areas through "permit counterfeiting."
The town also loses money through its free valet service to shoppers every holiday season. The $98,600 town-approved allocation includes a contract with a valet firm, which will not charge customers individually. "It is a service that the town provides and they spend about $1,000 a day on parking" Gibson said later. The holiday parking program, set to run from Nov. 19 to Dec. 24, will not include the employee shuttle, which was not a success in 2000. Since valet service starts weeks after last year's beginning date of Nov. 1, the cost has decreased significantly from last year's $125,000.
In addition, council members agreed to changing the parking ordinances in specific parts of town. While the spaces in the residential Almond Grove area--west of N. Santa Cruz--have two-hour time limits and permit parking only between 6:30 p.m. and 2 a.m. every day, the same does not apply across the street. The Edelen Avenue area, which is east of N. Santa Cruz, has permit parking only, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Making Edelen uniform with Almond Grove, Gibson said, would keep longterm employees from parking on the streets. This plan would require residents to ask for the change themselves through petitioning.
Julie Gilbert, Bachman Avenue resident, agreed that changing the regulation in Almond Grove actually freed up space in the neighborhood, and allowed for friends to visit more easily. Gilbert, however, disagreed with Gibson's idea to raise residential parking permit fees from $10 per vehicle to $50. Gilbert said that it was an especially unfair penalty for those without a garage such as herself.
Another area with new parking restrictions is E. Main Street, near the high school. Gibson suggested changing the current three-hour spaces to 90-minute and "90-minute except with permit" so that the students could not park their cars and move them around to circumvent the time limit.
East Main Street business owner Jim Pellegrin said that Gibson's plan was "excellent." "Every space every day is taken up by high school kids," Pellegrin said. "They're clever, they're smart ... they rotate their cars."
Although council members liked the idea, they agreed that a Sept. 10 meeting between town staff and Los Gatos High School officials would be the deciding factor. If the high school representatives had other ideas, town staff could re-evaluate those options and bring them back to the council.
The council's other decisions were to:
* Direct town staff to look into changing an ordinance so that private landowners can lease their parking spaces to the town to use for employee and customer parking. Audience member Sallie Robbins-Druian expressed a fear that in doing so, landowners would rent out spaces that should belong to tenants and employees. "Don't put hundreds of businesses and apartment residents at risk," Robbins-Druian said. Councilman Randy Attaway affirmed the feeling: "We don't want to see us open up a sort of Pandora's box for this thing";
* Consolidate the bus depot/post office/Verizon lot of S. Santa Cruz and re-align parking lot 6, on W. Main Street, between N. Santa Cruz and Lyndon avenues. Combining the private lots through leasing some of the land from Verizon, Gibson said, would gain 44 spaces for the town. Fourteen new spaces would be gained from restriping the spaces in lot 6;
* Eliminate parking restrictions on Sunday, although Gibson argued against it. Neighbors, Gibson said, "deserve just as much protection on Thursday and on Sunday." Council members, however, observed that many businesses are open on Saturday but closed on Sunday, freeing up many parking spaces;
* Increase the parking patrol officers in town in order to keep up with the new restrictions in the Edelen area and Los Gatos High School. Currently, the police department employs four full-time parking control officers, but the plan calls for seven more;
* Set aside 225 parking spaces in the middle of downtown as employee permit parking only, and sell the permits for $25 per month. Council members had concerns about 225 being too high a number; "I'm in favor of the idea conceptually, but I'm skeptical to the idea of how it's going to work out," Councilman Steven Glickman said. Gibson said that 225 was an estimate, but it would take several months to find out the appropriate number. "I think it's going to be an evolutionary process," Gibson said.
The general feeling among the audience and town council, however, was that Gibson's ideas were valuable and that the parking study had been worthwhile, unlike those of past consultants.
"It fits everybody. Everybody is getting something from it," said Tom Castro.
Margaret Smith, a board member of the Town of Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce, congratulated Gibson and Kaku Associates on the work that they had done. Smith commented that the study was a good blend of serving the private and public sector.
"What's important is, they're looking at the long view," said Bill Bacchi. "We need to leave the door open for whatever is necessary for the future."
"This town's been looking for something like this for a very long time," Councilwoman Sandy Decker said.
Town council's formal action was simply to adopt the approved aspects of the plan. No actual changes will be made until after the Sept. 17 town council meeting, at which Gibson and town staff will return to the council with the relevant ordinances and an action plan.
Some of the items will most likely be put in place within the next month or two, Gibson said. For example, the high school restriction is "not a proposal that you want to wait very long on," Gibson said, since school has already started.
While the approved measures are going on, Gibson is also developing a plan to construct a new underground parking garage in town as a necessary Phase 2 of the parking management project. "I wanted to give [the town] an immediate action plan that would allow us to do something while we're working on a more permanent plan," Gibson said.
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
