St. Armands, hospital could see meters

Not only did the majority of the City Commission Monday vote to keep parking meters in operation downtown, they also agreed city staff should hold discussions with St. Armands Circle merchants and Sarasota Memorial Hospital staff about the possibility of erecting parking meters in those areas, to bring in more revenue.

“If St. Armands Circle is serious about building a parking garage … this is a way to help fund it,” Commissioner Shannon Snyder said.

Nonetheless, the commission approved a motion Monday to hold off until 2013, at least, on plans for another downtown parking garage — this one on State Street. The commission agreed to wait on issuing a request for proposals for companies interested in bidding on the construction of that garage until 2013, even though it is obligated to have the facility in place by 2015.

The affirmation vote for the downtown parking meters came after more than 50 protestors had to be reprimanded repeatedly for clapping, booing and rustling paper bags to drown out speakers Monday night.

The vote also followed Parking Manager Mark Lyons’ presentation of new data showing the metered spaces in the downtown core are more than 75% full during the lunch and dinner periods.

Moreover, the figures revealed that more than 150,000 paid transactions have occurred since the program was implemented in October.

“That’s a lot of footprints downtown since October,” said Lyons, who plans to start a marketing effort with merchants designed to assist motorists in using the meters.

“Clearly, people continue to come downtown and park,” Lyons said.

Vice Mayor Terry Turner made the motion to terminate the parking-meter program, but he won support only from Commissioner Paul Caragiulo.

Turner and Caragiulo tried to persuade their fellow commissioners to shut down the $24 million program in light of data the city had released earlier: The program hasn’t achieved the 85% user rate city officials had hoped for when the meters went back into operation in October.

In fact, only three districts where the meters are operating have achieved an average user rate of more than 80%.

Meanwhile, the parking meters in the judicial center aren’t collecting much money, either, and the user rate in the Palm Avenue parking garage is hovering around 14%, according to the data.

The City Commission last year had approved moving the meters from the 1300 and 1500 blocks of First Street, Cocoanut Avenue and Gulfstream Avenue to the Judicial District. At the time, city staff voiced the expectation that people in and out of court would be more likely to drop their coins — or slide their credit cards — through the meter slots.

“We would be hard-pressed to come up with a more poorly implemented idea than we did here,” Caragiulo said of the program. “The commission made a good-faith effort to wander into a bar fight we didn’t start, but this has gone as far as it can go and this thing has run its course.”

Turner agreed. “I have always felt the meters were a bad idea and we implemented them badly,” Turner said.

Lyons’ comments and new data also did nothing to persuade the merchants who had marched, many with bags on their heads, from Mattison’s City Grille to City Hall.

James Derheim, owner of European Focus on Main Street and the leader of the “Bag the Meters” protest, admitted to having begun work with Lyons in December on the new customer-service campaign to facilitate meter usage.

“But the worse business got, the more I realized I should be running my business and not your defective program,” Derheim said to city officials.

When City Auditor and Clerk Pamela Nadalini reminded Derheim he had only a minute left to speak, he yanked a quarter out of his pocket and plunked it down on the dais.

“I got a quarter and I want to buy some more time,” said Derheim, whose remark drew chuckles from the crowd and the commissioners.

“Don’t sit here and tell us you need more time to play with the numbers,” Derheim added. “I don’t have any more time, because I need to pay my rent.”

In voting against Turner’s motion, Mayor Suzanne Atwell, Snyder and Commissioner Willie Shaw said the program needed more time to prove itself.

“More than 80% of all parking downtown is free,” Snyder said. “To throw this out now, without a plan for how we will manage two-hour parking when we don’t have the resources to manage it, won’t work.”

Shaw said the commission must hold a future workshop to gather more public comments and discuss changes to the meters’ time-and-price schedule.

Atwell agreed. “To remove these now would be a huge mistake,” she said. “We need some more cycles and some more time.”

After those comments, most of the bag-wearing protestors began leaving the Commission Chambers.

“It’s absolutely devastating,” said Derheim, adding he couldn’t believe the commission refused to bag the meters during roundabout construction on Ringling Boulevard.

“They need more time, and we told them we’re out of time and can’t survive.”