Hello and welcome to my very last Parks and Belt Environment Council Committee meeting of December 10th, 2025.

I am Councilmember Vogley, and my co chair is Councilmember Ryan.

And also on this committee is Councilmember Ben Zarlingo.

We have a couple things on our agenda this evening.

First of which is the downtown parking update from staff.

And although I know the staff, I will let him introduce himself.

You are as Corey gets started.

And then Lori will be here for your regular meeting.

Corey is ready.

So go for it.

Thank you very much.

Great.

Thank you, Councilmember Vogley, Councilmember Ryan, Councilmember Zerlingo.

Tonight I'm here to talk about.

Whoops.

Sorry about that.

Tonight I'm here to talk about downtown parking.

And we're going to talk a little bit about the current challenges we have in downtown right now with parking.

We're going to uh discuss the 2019 uh study that was done and presented to council.

Uh some recommendations from 2019, um, some recent stakeholder input from the summer, and then an opportunity for some questions when we get done.

So parking in downtown is a balance of all kinds of parking facilities.

It includes uh on street parking, off-street parking lots, uh, parking garages, including the Ever Park Garage, some bike and scooter parking in the furniture zone, really all types of parking you can imagine, some special uses as well.

Uh parking problems in the downtown are really a measure of success and in many ways.

And on street parking needs to be managed to provide a high quality and convenient product.

In 2018 and 2019, uh PublicWorks completed a parking utilization study and financial analysis and presented a compelling case uh before the council in February 2020 that it was time to move to paid on street parking.

Two months later, we were in full COVID lockdown, and parking downtown was easy to find.

We shifted to uh setting up short-term stalls for Uber Eats and other delivery services in front of businesses to manage the influx of short-term parking and uh help those struggling businesses.

Uh parking occupancy at that time was a shadow of its former self.

So fast forward five years, and here we are, and downtown seems to be heavily parked in the afternoon and evening again.

And demand for parking downtown seems to have returned to pre-COVID levels.

So, what's our current strategy downtown uh for on-street parking?

Um, it's really about customers and patrons that parking turnover is a key to a healthy parking product and a healthy business climate.

Uh the time limits downtown are mostly nine minutes, uh excuse me, 90 minutes, uh, 8 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

with some 30-minute stalls, some special uses like loading zones, passenger loading zones, and disabled parking stalls.

The city has a re uh repark ordinance, which means you can't repark your vehicle um and stay another 90 minutes.

Um there's uh public and private off-street facilities for intended for longer stays and uh for often monthly people who pay monthly.

Uh, there's enforcement to maintain a healthy uh parking situation downtown.

Outside downtown, we have a residential neighborhood permit program uh north of 41st Street where um where residents can apply uh for a residential parking permit and a park in excess of the 90 minute limits on those blocks.

Um, the residents need to live on that block.

There is no residential parking uh permit downtown, which is the point of that.

Um we're also encouraging other modes, uh public transit, bicycles, pedestrians.

Some concerns I hear on a regular basis from the public.

Um parking's hard to find.

Um while it only takes me about five minutes to get my hair cut, uh a cut and color at a typical uh salon can take in excess of two, maybe three hours.

So for some people, 90 minutes is too short for many patrons.

There's many other businesses that have a uh a greater need than 90 minutes.

Um, that there are events that are adding to the parking pressure downtown, both evening events and weekend events.

Um there's concern about employee and resident uh reparking and that that they're that that's part of the issue downtown with finding available parking.

Uh while nobody wants to pay for parking, um, I do hear that you know often that the current strategy could be improved upon.

And um people were hearing some concern about impacts from the proposed outdoor events center.

The 2019 study, I won't go through this whole slide, but it was really uh to update a 2015 study and expand the study area uh to include the new Metro Everett boundaries and to work to build a community understanding and consensus around uh parking solutions.

This slide is meant to uh uh meant to uh demonstrate that um what might happen if we had unrestricted parking downtown.

If you look at the number of downtown parking stalls back in 2019, it was about 2,000 on-street stalls and 7300 uh off-street stalls, where the off-street stalls are not as heavily occupied.

You can imagine what would happen if there was an open source of free parking downtown without any limits.

Um we've been very successful about attracting events here in Everett.

There's uh over 12 major venues, and uh most don't have designated parking.

Um we do attract about 1.75 million in annual attendance for for downtown.

And uh there is the future outdoor events center that will add uh uh predicted uh 100 events every uh year.

So um you can see that there's a lot of events downtown.