Downtown parking overhaul enters new phase

Finding a parking spot in downtown Los Gatos can be challenging, and town staffers are working to finish a long-awaited parking overhaul.

Staff updated the Los Gatos Town Council on the Downtown Parking Program, a road map of sustainable ways to improve parking, at its meeting Tuesday night, citing changes to the newly launched employee parking program and updates to new parking signs.

Council first approved the plan in 2019, but limited resources and staffing pushed the town to cherrypick individual strategies to implement rather than working through the program as designed.

Parking program manager Jim Renelle said wayfinding signs could be installed as soon as summer 2023. The town is also set to hire a company to install mobile payment stations in parking lots sometime early next year.

The town launched its employee parking program, which converted more than 400 spots into “employee only” zones, in July. So far, more than 1,500 employees are registered for the program.

Twenty-seven of the spots will be converted back into regular parking spots after Renelle spotted a surplus of employee parking spots and a shortage of regular ones.

“The need to convert these certain spaces back to public parking is most apparent just before peak parking. Public areas are full, while some of the employee parking spots are unused,” Renelle said. “Visitors are circling looking for parking, while the employee spaces are empty.”

There are still more than 1,000 off-street parking spots, and the Northside and Miles Avenue lots continue to offer free allday parking.

Some councilmembers spoke up about the program's implementation timeline compared to the original 2019 plan.

Vice Mayor Maria Ristow said improved signage and the “park once” plan, which allows visitors to pay to stay in their parking spot instead of driving to a different spot in the lot, should be the priority.

“If you're from out of town, you have no idea where the parking lots are. We did a great job of hiding them,” Ristow said. “No one wants to look at a parking lot, but you sure as heck want to find one.”

Randi Chen from the Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce said the employee parking program worked well and there's less traffic in the lots, but the second phase of the program, which includes the mobile payment stations, might not be necessary.

“We may find that after implementing phase one completely, we may not need phase two,” Chen said.

Staff also said the upcoming improvements would require hiring another staff member. Los Gatos faces a looming budget deficit, making funds tight.

“Outside of this agenda item, we've been working hard on our budget deficit shortfall and talking about whether we should be reducing (full-time employees) in the town, trying to find other ways to fill the budget shortfalls,” Rennie said. “When we're talking about adding three quarters of an (employee), it feels like we're going in the wrong direction.”

Town Manager Laurel Prevetti said that the parking pay stations would not generate enough funds to pay for the new position, and any revenue should go back into the parking program for future parking projects.