City opts for parking advisory committee

The city will forgo the downtown parking authority proposed earlier this year in favor of a committee that will make recommendations to the Hot Springs Board of Directors.

The city said the formation of the parking advisory committee the board authorized Tuesday night could happen as early as November. Registered voters living inside the city are eligible to serve, but the city said the committee should be representative of constituencies most profoundly affected by downtown parking issues.

The board will appoint candidates to the five-person panel after soliciting applications. Committee members will serve staggered five-year terms.

“I would like to see people appointed to this committee that have a vested interest in the area in the boundary,” Interim City Manager Bill Burrough told the board.

“My hope is they will come back with a plan for funding and how we can make some accommodations and changes.”

The area identified by the city includes Central Avenue from Olive Street to the intersection of Park and Whittington avenues, Convention Boulevard, Broadway Street, upper Malvern Avenue, Ouachita Avenue and Fountain, Hazel and Woodbine streets.

Assistant City Manager/ City Clerk Lance Spicer said the area comprises more than 1,000 parking spaces, including on and off street parking, more than 15 private lots and about seven public lots.

“The committee would bring you back a recommendation of what needs to be done to raise revenue to increase those assets or enhance them,” Spicer told the board.

Burrough said an advisory committee may be the prologue to a parking authority that can issue debt to finance parking improvements. An authority was one of the recommendations included in the Downtown Hot Springs Parking, Pedestrian, and Bicycle Enhancement Plan developed by Thomas P. Miller & Associates.

The parking plan was part of the Downtown Development and Redevelopment Action Plan contracted out to the Indiana-based consulting firm for $250,000. The board adopted the plan in July 2016. It was funded by a $200,000 U.S. Department of Commerce grant and $25,000 contributions from the city and Hot Springs Metro Partnership, the public-private nonprofit corporation the city contracts for economic development services.

“It may be that the committee comes back with a plan of developing a parking authority, which has bonding opportunities,” Burrough told the board. “Where do we need additional parking? How can we get additional parking, and how can we fund that additional parking? That could include developing a full parking authority.”

The Exchange Street Parking Plaza was central to the parking authority proposal the board heard in January. Converting its 245 free spaces into metered spaces was seen as the most immediate funding source available to an authority that would set parking rates and policies and have the power to acquire parking facilities. Its revenue, operating expenses and debt service would be separate from the city.

Former City Manager David Frasher told the board the parking deck has the potential to generate $500,000 of annual revenue, money that could add a level to the structure or purchase smart-parking technology that directs drivers to open spaces via a cellphone app that takes electronic payments.

Those proceeds could fund grants to help private lot owners adopt the technology, Frasher said.

According to recent city budgets, the parking fund realizes about $85,000 a year from the roughly 300 metered spaces downtown.

The parking plan called for eliminating 78 of the 132 on-street parking spaces on Central Avenue from the Park-Whittington intersection to Market Street, a reduction in inventory the plan said would be more than offset by 319 potential side and off-street spaces.

The city said forming an advisory committee instead of a parking authority allows the full inventory of downtown parking assets to be considered, whereas an authority only has control of off-street parking.