He's still tall.

Good evening.

I'm calling the regular meeting of the Transportation Committee to order on Wednesday, July the 8th, 2026 at 4 p.m.

Next on agenda is the roll call.

Alderman Savage.

Present.

Alderman's Shandemiter.

And myself, Alderman also Johnson.

Next on the agenda is approval of the agenda.

Do I have a motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you, all the persons.

We'll make the emotion.

Next on the agenda is business and miscellaneous approval of the minutes.

So moved.

Okay.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Next on agenda is general discussion.

Next on the agenda is ID 149-26 parking action plan.

The city manager's office, and by the city manager, Lewis.

Good afternoon, everyone.

For the record, I'm Marcus Moore, Director of Transportation and Parking.

And with me today, I have Londa Lewis City Manager.

So we'd like to do is uh share with you uh what we're doing here with our parking program um parking reform work group.

Um one of your committee members, uh Alderman Shandemar got a chance to meet with us on our first kickoff meeting back in June, June 24th.

Alderman Shandemar, would you like to share from comments of that time with us?

Yeah, it was a very well put together meeting.

I'm looking forward to us finding solutions.

The goal is to try to streamline our parking process, move away from a model that constituents are seeing as overly complex and occasionally predatory and get to a point that benefits residents and businesses and folks outside of downtown, and that can be as simplified as possible for everybody.

Uh I did have to jump off a little bit early for a meeting for my day job, but I'm looking forward to a lot of the solutions that this group can come up with.

Uh good afternoon.

Once again, for the record, Yolanda Lewis City Manager.

Thank you, Chairwoman, for allowing us to come and present today into the committee members.

So we're gonna talk a little bit about uh kind of how we got here, and and I think the the best starting point is to just kind of talk about parking in general.

So as you know, parking uh in itself is an important component of municipal infrastructure and our services.

It makes our city open, accessible, and user-friendly to all.

Uh, it connects residents and visitors to our attractions.

Uh it helps with our business and economic infrastructure, and it makes our city work.

It fuels our economic infrastructure and allows visitors to just participate in this beautiful city.

And when parking doesn't work well, it has ripples of ripple effects across our entire community.

And so before we start to talk a little bit about Annapolis specifically, I want to give context that this is not just an Annapolis problem.

Uh, according to major national, a major national study by NRIX, a leading transportation data and analytics firm.

Um, American drivers spent about 17 hours per year just searching for parking.

Uh, sixty-three percent of those drivers who were surveyed said they avoided businesses, restaurants, and destinations because of parking challenges, and 34% of those who were surveyed just abandoned their trip entirely, and we're hearing similar uh context here in our city to offer you some perspective of how we uh manage some of these uh complaints and also concerns uh of the 303 constituent cases handled by our constituent services officers or uh umbudswoman between March 12th and June 30th, uh 38 percent were parking related.

That makes parking the single largest category of constituent concern by a significant margin.

Um, and the issue, of course, affects our entire city, but uh most we see the most acute feedback coming from ward one and two, which carries the vast majority of our burdens.

Despite our parking efforts, which in the excellent work of our transportation team and professionals, including our transit options, our select free parking passes, our golden passes and other programs, we continue to hear that there are concerns around technology interfaces and interface, our confusing practices in many instances, inconsistency around citation and enforcement, and the need for better customer service.

So just as we move into kind of this work, I want to just level set to be honest, that this work group, nor the action plan that we're developing will solve all of the parking problems in Annapolis.

It is our starting point.

It is not a comprehensive redesign, but it is our effort to acknowledge that the challenges exist and also put uh effort collectively across the city to help design a response.

And so, with that, what you will hear today is very much centered on ward one and two, with the idea that we will produce a plan that will allow us to start working while we start to also develop a larger framework to address some of the parking concerns across the city.

So with that, we'll turn to our presentation.

I'll turn to the to director Moore to start the conversation.

Thank you, Miss Lewis.

As Ms.