Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, September 21, 2010,
Item 24
>> is our parking committee here? We're here for item 24. County staff. 24, consider and take appropriate action on recommended pilot initiative to implement zoned parking for county employees at 700 lavaca garage including, a, revisions to current policy, and b, implementation plan for pilot. Good afternoon.
>> good afternoon.
>> daniel bradford, parking county member, bulldog.
>> and we're here to continue our conversation on the pilot parking. Last we talked about the survey results, you asked for information on carpooling. Then we have the two remaining items which are the policy changes we're requesting and the actual approval of the pilot given this implementation plan that we've submitted. Should we address the carpool first?
>> sure. So we went back into committee and discussed the court's suggestion that we look into using the pilot as an opportunity to grant more carpooling spots and to even give them priority potentially. And we also took that question to our parking expert that's been contracted, and the idea is that we can accommodate as many people that have expressed interest in carpooling with existing spots, and if we fill that up, then we can put them into the pilot program, but at this time giving priority to carpoolers for the pilot isn't something that we would want to do right now.
>> we already have dedicate capacity for carpoolers we're having difficulty filling and that was the reason we changed the number, correct.
>> we did the audit and in talking to the consultant he specific asaid the best idea is not overallocate the number of spaces, to reserve a set number of spaces as you have people interested put them into the pilot. We can certainly do that by putting those people in the next mass grouping that goes into a pilot. There's a -- if we run out of spaces, he just didn't advice setting aside a certain number of spaces.
>> there was also the discussion of giving priority so they would be the first people included in the pilot and there's a policy reason for not doing that that it is difficult policing job and then we have issues of how you share cards, what happens when people lose cards, et cetera, because this is --
>>
>> [inaudible].
>> so where are the card pooling slots today?
>> they are spread throughout our system and so depending on where you office, that particular carpool may be in any one of our garages.
>> are they used today?
>> we had 22 people who were designated as being carpool parkers, but as i said, we're doing an audit so i can't say for sure that number is the same. Since we changed the policy, only one group has asked to be added, but again since this has been such a hot topic, it may be increased.
>> so why did we waste our time addressing the -- or modifying the carpooling policy?
>> i don't think we wasted our time. I think as we do this implementation it's going to be more on the minds of our employees so we'll get more interest. I think people are waiting to see what happens before they come forward.
>> good answer.
>> it's never a wasted effort.
>> i guarantee you it was a wasted effort. By me it was. And y'all got my fired up about it. I wasn't even thinking bit. But so be it. If the court doesn't want to do it. It's just that we're saying we're tired of seeing so many of our employees in one vehicle when they arrive at work, let's provide a carrot to carpool, and i didn't even know about those 22 spaces, and if we got them allocated, we certainly out to know whether they are being used today. That should be part of what we're fixing in those policy modifications.
>> that's exactly what we're fixing.
>> but if we come up with more than 100 spaces and we call ourselves prioritizing carpooling, it's beyond me that we don't try to at least advertise carpoolers, here's your opportunity, and if we do that, it won't hurt me if we have zero takers. But if that is true, the time that we spent reducing that number from three to two was wasted because nothing will come up it and i'm done with that carpool.
>> i want to make sure employees that are paying attention to our conversation today know that the carpool is part of the policy, that they always receive preference, that's how the holly turner silver stone is stated as they come forward to the parking administrator, they will be put at the top of the wait list. It's not they are not receiving preference, but in addition to that whether we roll out the pilot, we would like to take the opportunity to encourage people to do carpooling. There will be more attention paid to advertising the policy change and that's what you haven't seen happen yet which may result in more people want to go participate in carpooling.
>> when will we know whether the current 22 carpooling spaces are being used?
>> because we started this audit last week and i would think roger would have an answer probably by the end of this week as long as everyone has responded to him.
>> who is roger?
>> our current parking administrator who works with facilities.
>> is part of the reason for us not having this information the fact that we didn't have dedicated resource for parking administration for some time? I mean our formerly -- i suppose you could have dedicated resource and then lynn retired.
>> you have the same thing with roger.
>> but he was doing an excellent job and he comes to us with really good information, but it's a massive logistics problem that he's -- he's putting into order. Which hasn't existed before.
>> i hear exactly what you are saying. I just don't understand why the recommendation early on was not just to pull carpooling out of the policy.
>> well, i think --
>> i tried to drop the discussion.
>> [laughter] i'm as adamant in my position as you are in yours. But there is a policy that says we will prioritize carpooling, and i'm saying that we ought to walk the talk. And if we don't use some of the 100-plus spaces to do this, we won't be doing that. If we don't know within the next few days whether or not those 22 dedicated spaces are in fact used by carpoolers, we're not being true to our word. And that -- those two things bother me. Those two things which you brought to my attention bother me.
>> but i think we're saying the same thing.
>> no, we're not.
>> okay.
>> i'm saying of this 100-plus spaces we set aside at least 10 for carpooling and give them an opportunity to take them. So if carpoolers don't take them, we give them to somebody else. At the same time within the next few days we find out whether the 22 dedicated spaces are used by carpoolers, because if not, we ought to give them to somebody else. County judge's spaces aren't being used, we ought to give them to somebody else. We should apply that across the board. Next.
>> okay, so dare we talk about hire date then?
>> i move that we change the policy to put people on by hire date.
>> second.
>> so does our policy address that today?
>> so this is that the current policy has it by ledger date, which is the day you've turned in the form. And we're asking that the court change it to hire date because as we discussed in past sessions, some people's forms were not put into the database, some people didn't know about the list. We had a number of reasons, that's why people may not be on the least.
>> have the handful of people who will be adversery impacted be advised of our consideration of this policy change?
>> we posted the -- we had asked -- last time we were here we asked i.t.s. To post a list but i don't know that roger has had the opportunity to direct everyone's attention to that list. As i mentioned, out of the 600 people on the list, it was only 40 people that would be adversery impacted. Adversely impacted.
>> any more discussion on the motion? All in favor? Commissioners davis, eckhardt and huber and yours truly, commissioner gomez abstaining.
>> the big one is the implementation of the pilot. We have laid out the implement plan. That's in the backup. We had confirmation from the garage managers that the 100 spaces would not impact our revenue nor his ability to maintain agreements currently stabbed with current tenants so we're asking to move forward.
>> i move we move forward with the pilot and i will participate in the pilot.
>> now, for those who want to make sure they understand what the policy is, how would you briefly describe it?
>> what we have proposed is we would start with the 700 space in the lavaca garage. That has arms and access cards so the access to that garage would be limited to people who are either current tenants or participating in our pilot. We don't have to worry about the general public getting into that garage and adversely impacting the spaces which is one of the concerns employees had when we did survey. Of those 100 spaces, we talked about allowing some for people already on the list as commissioner eckhardt stated she would participate in, so we have allowed up to 40 spaces and the rest of those spaces would be from people on the wait list. We don't know if 40 people would take those spaces, but any set aside assigned not used would go to people on the wait list. Its all voluntary so they have the option of participating in the pilot or remaining on the wait list. And we would ask them to stay in the pilot until that's completed which should be no longer than nine months or until we move into the building. And the -- every couple weeks it will come back to -- we don't need come back to the court but we will review how the cards are being used and if there's still vacancies in the garage we will add an additional 5% of people on the wait list or give them the opportunity to participate in the pilot.
>> well, how will -- let me ask this question. How will those particular spaces that have been assigned to those particular excess card holders, let's say that the persons that have the access card to occupy their parking slot, let's say they go on leave or, you know, won't be here for the next two or three days or whatever, is it their responsibility to let someone know that this particular slot will not be available for the next two or three days, or is it the monitoring person that looks and canvases and looks at the slots and see if they are empty, how will the next person in line be able to occupy that or is there something -- maybe i'm not catching it. It is something that where this slot could still be used if a person is absent for whatever reason. That's my concern because the person that has the access card is the one that has privy to the spot.
>> correct.
>> so if the slot is not available, how do we determine who occupies that slot at that time?
>> well, that's how zone parking works. So what it does is it basically accommodates for the fact that people's schedules are always changing when as relates to their parking habits. So we have -- are starting out with 100 slots, even though they can accommodate more. We're testing the program. So the way that that works is they will do a daily count and actually multiple times during the day to find out how many permits are being -- have entered into the parking garage during that day and they will see and they will be able to judge on a daily average like we've got 100 permitees, but there's only been, you know, on day 1 there was 92 maximum permitees and day 2 there were 89. It's not like the system we have now where you have one parking space and if you are absent, you are giving up that space. This system, you are -- you are building into the way it works with people's absences. So i mean a person could give their card out so somebody else could park in the garage, but in general it will just be done in the daily count and it will build our system to know the habits of our employees and how they park. And it will give us an idea of how many -- ultimately how many permits we'll be able to give out. I don't know if i explained that exactly well, but it's on more organic way it works in zoned parking.
>> well, you did and you didn't, but i was trying to make sure that if a person is out for a while, that slot would be available to somebody that don't have one. That needed a slot. And so i was trying to work from that end. To see what happens to that slot even if you go and have a daily assessment of how many slots are available and empty for a period of time and stuff like that, whoever does that. And i guess it would be the people who have the contract with as the parking monitor in this particular regard. I was just trying to fill a void that, you know, to make sure that -- this is just a pilot program, i understand, but even in the pilot program there may be opportunities for persons to -- to deal with that as far as park ing is concerned.
>> can we extrapolate from the data on the current parking garage, granger has a 20% vacancy rate even at peak. So it's not the same 20% that is not there every time. It's a different 20%. It's a constantly shifting 20%. So if somebody needs to be out for three days, it's not that they will lose their space or that someonees won't have access to that space, it's that we are recognizing that --
>> on any given day --
>> on any given day, we have about 80% utilization. It's a different 80% on every day, though. I mean --.
>> okay.
>> does that help?
>> oh, yeah, that helps, but i'm just saying --
>> and we will know if a particular card has not been used for a long period of time.
>> commissioner huber.
>> first of all, i will second commissioner eckhardt's motion. This is a pilot program and i think the parking committee has put a lot of work into looking at this and i applaud both the time, the efforts and the details that you've looked at. And so i think it's time to move forward and try the pilot program.
>> any more discussion or questions?
>> so for 90 days?
>> we already get a report back. I'd say 90 days we ought to get a report and know how it's working. And in a few days get a report on the carpooling.
>> yes, sir.
>> thank you. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Next.
>> that's it. We enjoyed visiting with you.
>> thank you all. I had fun too.
>> no more questions.
>> thanks for bringing this item to us five more times.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, September 21, 2010 7:57 PM
