Sedona City Council met Tuesday, Jan. 27, and received an update from Transit Administrator Amber Wagner and new Parking Administrator David Velasco on the upcoming Uptown Residential Parking Program, which will affect Uptown residential streets including Smith, Wilson, Van Deren and Price streets between Schnebly Hill Road and Forest Road.
The program authorized under Sedona City Code Chapter 10.20 will provide free residential parking permits to Uptown residents for on-street parking near their homes. Once implemented, all non-resident street parking in the affected area will be prohibited, requiring visitors and non-residents to use the Uptown parking garage or private parking lots instead.
Staff last updated council Sept. 23 about the $126,000 RPP as part of the quarterly update on the Sedona in Motion transportation projects. Since then, the city held two open houses on Dec. 11 that were attended by seven businesses and a dozen residents, and has convened its Parking Work Group.
While the program’s start date has yet to be determined because it is tied to the opening of the Uptown Parking Garage, which is slated for June, Wagner said staff is “not proposing an automatic implementation” when the garage opens. Staff instead wants to establish how the program will operate before putting it into operation.
The council stressed that permits should be free for residents, which is reflected in the staff’s proposal that describes a virtual, license-plate-based system for identifying resident vehicles on surface streets, while requiring visitors to park at private paid lots or the Uptown Parking Garage.
“There was never a time when the council was interested in charging for permits, should [RPP] be implemented ever,” Interim Mayor Holli Ploog said. “I think that’s important for us to say, because members of the community have made assumptions that it is going to be paid … we do not intend to charge.”
However, the program may still have physical permits for vehicles to display for easy distribution to short-term rental guests or other short-term visitors. Deputy City Manager Andy Dickey stressed that he would like to see a replacement fee of approximately $15 if someone misplaces their permit — the same cost used in the program’s local precedent, the Rim Shadows Neighborhood parking program
that launched in February 2017 and is administered by the homeowners association.
Many of the program’s details will be hammered out by the recently formed Parking Work Group made up of Vice Mayor Brian Fultz, Councilwoman Melissa Dunn, city staff, a consultant from Athena Partners, business representatives and residents Debra Beck, Tony Hauserman, Mik Jordahl, Silas Silva and Mark TenBroek.
The group had its first meeting on Jan. 21 and met on Wednesday, Jan. 28, after press time, to discuss the Residential Parking Program and look for solutions for employee parking in Uptown. It will discuss parking fees on Wednesday, Feb. 18.
The specifics of the program will be discussed by the working group such as how many permits an Uptown household can receive the anticipated range is two to four vehicles per household.
“Special events — e.g., family gatherings, celebrations — will be accommodated through a defined notification or temporary authorization process,” the council packet reads.
Staff proposed a web page to add and remove vehicles from the RPP and to also give notification of special events.
The RPP requires final approval by Council. Staff will write the rules and framework determining who qualifies, how permits work and guest handling procedures, then draft and prepare the legal tools including ordinances, resolutions and forms. They will also design the physical changes such as signage, striping and zone layouts, working through the parking work group.
“In order to be ready to implement [RPP] as soon as council feels like it’s time to implement those, we need to make sure that our code is where it needs to be to support implementation as well as get draft forms ready [for] a resolution and ordinance that establishes this permit area,” Dickey said. “These are things that we did when we created the Rim Shadows [program]. So we’ve been through this. We know what it looks like. In addition to those forms, we also need to be able to [answer], what does the signing look like? What does the striping look like? Any physical changes that are needed within that zone, we’ll have plans put together that detail out what that looks like.”
“The [RPP] includes the design and possible construction to convert Smith Road, Wilson Road and Van Deren Road to one-way streets between Forest Road and Schnebly Road in order to improve parking supply and safety,” the city website reads.
Councilwoman Charlotte Housseni asked for an update on the possible directional changes.
Making those streets one-way “is still on our radar,” Dickey said, but added he thinks it would be better to consider making those potential changes at a later date.
