January 19,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ , Maser Study Says Downtown Lots Half Full at Peak Times
-Delivered to village on or about October 16, 2015
-Vote on garage bond was November 3, 2015
-Study was first posted on old village website on 12/30/2015, 75 days after it was received.
-Councilwoman Knudsen and Councilman Sedon have stated in village council meetings they never saw the study before it was posted on 12/30/2015
-The 3 remaining council members have not answered, after much questioning by the public, when they saw the study.
Study says of the current Ridgewood parking load:
Page 11: This factor was deemed to be conservative for the purposes of our analysis as the surrounding surface lots were observed to be at approximately 50% of their capacity during peak hours and none of the surface lots appeared to approach their maximum capacity simultaneously. Thus, we justified that the site would operate at 50% capacity during both the AM and PM peak hours, or that a minimum of 206 of the proposed 412 parking spaces would be occupied during these times.
Why wasn’t this study shared with the public before the election, or before the first vote on the one and only design the village offered?
Why does Ridgewood need a garage?
Why does it need to be higher the neighboring Mt. Carmel Church?
Now, the village is pushing to have the county finance this garage. Who is it for if the surface lots are 50% full at peak?
Why wasn’t it shared?
Because it didn’t fit the agenda of “Vote Yes”.
Don’t do any thing and save millions.
Who is it for? We all know who it is for. A few friends of the 3 Amigos.
Wow .. just wow. How low will these guys go to achieve their ambitions?
The Town is at an Ethical Crossroads.Either the Honest Citizens stand up and take a position to halt the UnNeeded Hudson Street Mega Sized Non Conforming Garage or we let the Town go to Seed ,like so many other NJ towns ALL IN ALL THE NAME Of Targetted Commerce and goal of business growth that never even comes ;outside of more non resident commuter Parking Congestion..what part of train to Car to Highway ramp can’t one imagine through this thru traffic generating Garage resulting in neighborhood blight amidst Historic Mount St Carmel and the Cafe District there.let them park where they can or valet and or walk to dine picking up wine on the way. Sook Pastries or deserts on the way home..now that’s commerce
James,
“Refutes” is far too strong of a headline. Refute means “disprove”. By the same logic, the Walker report “proves” the need for a parking garage since that report has data that indicates the parking lots ARE full. Moreover, the Maser study is not nearly as rigorous in measuring lot utilization as the Walker study is. The Maser study simply reports as an anecdote that the surrounding lots are 50% full, so they are going to assume that the garage will be 50% full. This is bad logic and a pretty lame way to do a projection. I agree that lots are sometimes not “full” even at peak demand. But how often are they full vs. not full? I don’t know. My guess is more often full than not full, but that’s just a guess as well.
The traffic studies should be using the same utilization assumptions as the Walker study on the financials. If that means projecting 80% utilization, and accordingly much more traffic and more gridlock, then so be it.
John V. – Are the financing numbers / interest rate used by walker study correct for a 30 year bond? Does that report consider recession times to calculate demand of the parking and how it will be paid back?
John V, you are probably one of very few readers here who can read these reports in details (i.e. analyze). Do the numbers hold up for 300 parking garage with this new walker report? – https://mods.ridgewoodnj.net/pdf/manager/2016walker300.pdf
1. 300 car garage
2. Free parking after 6PM (village asked for this study – so I am assuming this is where they want to go. They have never really answered the question if these hours will be extended – (in council meetings they have always avoided answering the increasing of hours / rates question), and the mayor did promise Mt Carmel that the hours will not be increased on Saturday evening for sure, which is the busy restaurant time. So, lets assume the majority in the council wants to limit the paid meter time to 6pm, which makes sense.
3. Recession times – and it’s affect on parking demands.
4. True 30 year interest rate as the bond is probably a 30 year bond, not a 10 year bond.
So with these 4 assumptions – and with this new report from walker – https://mods.ridgewoodnj.net/pdf/manager/2016walker300.pdf – will the parking utility still be in net profit?
We all know this lot is for the new apartments, both the second cars that there will be no room for and the commuter parking displaced by brogan and Ken smith.
10:28am-
Here’s the Walker report: https://mods.ridgewoodnj.net/pdf/manager/2015walkerFinal.pdf
You can see on p. 29 that they run the numbers with both 2.5% and 3.0% interest rates. Someone who knows municipal bonds and ridgewood’s finances would have to comment on whether that’s a good assumption for ridgewood and for a 30-yr bond.
The report is fairly “static” in it’s projections. Definitely no attempt to run worst case (such as in a recession) or best case (such as in a boom) scenarios. It’s really a single projection, not a range. Modeling experts would probably say you should provide a forecast range to get a better sense of the uncertainty. That doesn’t seem typical unfortunately for these municipal consultants.
John v – I appreciate your reading all the reports. Walter clearly says garage will not be self funding and talks of other revenue areas. The council told the church they will not charge on Sunday’s or Saturday night bc of 5:30 mass. So you are taking away Saturday, the largest revenue opportunity. Furthermore in the past the chamber of commerce begged council to reduce meter hours, saying longer hours hurt their businesses yet now everyone is so confident in longer hours being a benefit to commerce?
11:22am-
Yup, garage not self-funding. Would need to raise rates and hours throughout town to cover the cost.
I had read some comments elsewhere of no fees on Saturday night due to mass. Anyone have a link to that “on the record”? Agree that it would be odd to have paid parking on a weekday night but not on a Saturday night when demand is greatest.
My suggestion to council and VM (written to them in several emails) was to raise the rates and hours now as soon as possible, measure the “reaction” and the revenue raised, and only then proceed with the project. I agree that Chamber of Commerce won’t particularly care about parking system being “self-funding” and will want hours and rates to be as low as possible. The backup if not enough revenue generated is the taxpayer, not the businesses unfortunately.
The clear trend nationally is away from retail shopping, even at malls and big box outlets. Shopping is unlikely to return to the model that prevailed in the 1960-80s in the CBD. I look at all the businesses that have disappeared in the last 30 years—hardware stores, boutiques, etc, The CBD is now about restaurants and banks (with some nail salons sprinkled in)–and even some of those are struggling. I am very skeptical that more parking will reverse this trend.
John V. 11:22 – An expert spoke at the village council meeting last week – who specializes in municipal bonds and provided his feedback on why walker report does not look correct. He mentioned that the interest rate assumptions are not correct among one of the reasons. Our Village’s CFO and the financial advisory committee are endorsing the garage funding based on “walker report”. None of them have tried to question the walker report for these inconstancies (for assuming wrong interest rate and for not accounting for variations in the demand).
And we need to make a big deal out of the fact that a million dollars and change comes from parking revenues and goes to pay salaries, including that of Ms. Roberta. If they use that million +++ to fund the garage debt instead, then that money will have to come from elsewhere to pay those salaries – – – – hello property tax increase! Boyd Loving brought this up, Roberta hotly denied it, Mike Sedon presented the numbers, and subsequent data collected from the parking authority proves MIke and Boyd to be correct, and Roberta to be lying.
12:39pm-
Very interesting! Do you know which meeting exactly and roughly what time comment was made? Here is the village YouTube account which seems to have most recent meetings uploaded: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC8BZwzy4YPgi_NgvSZ2q9wQ
John V – 1:09pm. They haven’t uploaded video of Jan 13th meeting yet. Some editing is going on I guess. In the meanwhile – this one comment is worth listening for you for the variance / ethics of doing what’s not allowed to a private developers and the financials – the speaker is a member of the planning board – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neb4TSJ4QsY&feature=youtu.be&t=29m15s , so knows a little (his comment starts at 29m15s). I think the municipal bond guy also spoke on the same day – let me find that for you
There are other points in the meeting where this is referenced as well. In that clip you don’t attorney Rogers admit it, but he does later, that any builder seeking to encroach 10-12 feet into the right of way would need permission/variance etc. HE just speaks there about being the use and proximity to the church, not encroachment into the roadway which is a huge issue.
11:14am-
I missed your note earlier, sorry. I hadn’t seen that update from Walker before. Did it just get posted on the council website? Just like with the Maser traffic study, they should really be doing a better job at distributing these documents…
RE: financial assumptions with a 300-car garage with no paid parking after 6pm. The parking utility currently generates a surplus of around $300k. So we would look for any future revenue model to generate around the same surplus, plus or minus a little bit. If less surplus is generated, then there is some net revenue “lost” from the project, and it would need to be made up elsewhere in some fashion, e.g. taxes.
The 300-space garage with no paid parking after 6pm (Table 2) would generate about $100k per year of surplus in the first few years. This the difference between the Net Operating Income and Debt Service terms. Thus, I’d argue that it may not be “necessary” to extend paid parking past 6pm (with the big assumption that demand levels are as Walker projected), but such a model might generate ~$200k less “profit” than the current system, which would have to be made up elsewhere in the town’s overall budget, like through general taxes.
John V – Here is another intelligent comment to listen to / watch – https://youtu.be/neb4TSJ4QsY?t=2h48m39s 2 hrs 48 minute.
I am still searching for the comments by the municipal bond expert, who refuted the walker study – meanwhile here is a good one for how many spaces are needed – https://youtu.be/neb4TSJ4QsY?t=2h2m35s (2 hours 2 minute – 35 Second)
John V – here is the statement from am muni-bond expert. As usual his questions were not answered by the council and village manager. They just told him to connect with CFO and I can guarantee the CFO will delay answering these until the BCIA vote is done on 27th. That has been standard way to operate for this council and village administration – to defer and not answer the questions –
https://youtu.be/gSg_GwCofk4?t=36m49s
9:06pm-
Thanks for all the video links! I listened to the comment and then looked a few things up. 2.5% or 3.0% is a reasonable assumption for an interest rate: https://www.fmsbonds.com/market-yields/
I couldn’t find anything that indicated over how many years the bond for the garage would need to be paid back.
But based on the projection of a $775k per month debt payment on a ~$13M loan (Walker Report: https://mods.ridgewoodnj.net/pdf/manager/2015walkerFinal.pdf), it looks like the loan term would have to be between 20 and 30 years. This is based on very simply plugging in the $13M and 3.0% interest rate into a mortgage calculator online. I imagine that municipal bond payments/coupons/etc. are calculated somewhat differently than residential mortgages, but close enough. So the bond would very likely take more than 10 years to pay back, something in the range of 20-30 years.
I can’t comment on the specific concerns he had in the operating cost model in the Walker Report (such as scale factors and inflation rates). I guess we can hope that Walker didn’t make any *major* screwups with the cost model since they’ve done so many of these in the past?
@9:06 It would be funny if it weren’t true…the date the CFO came back with was Janurary 28 or 29. Mind you one of the fellows actually finances garages for a living. I have the emails to prove it.
My comment not approved?
The Walker report’s assumption on traffic patterns are based on too small a sample size, and therefore flawed. They should have sampled on different days, weekends and peak traffic holidays. They only observed parking on over one day, therefore all of the assumptions are flawed.
6:24pm-
I believe you mean the Maser traffic study, which was a very small study, just one day. The Walker report studied parking demand and also ran financial projections for a garage. The Walker report collected data on 3 separate days, at 3 times during those days, including at night and on weekends.
9:06pm-
Thanks for all the video links! I listened to the comment and then looked a few things up. 2.5% or 3.0% is a reasonable assumption for an interest rate: https://www.fmsbonds.com/market-yields/
I couldn’t find anything that indicated over how many years the bond for the garage would need to be paid back.
But based on the projection of a $775k per month debt payment on a ~$13M loan (Walker Report: https://mods.ridgewoodnj.net/pdf/manager/2015walkerFinal.pdf), it looks like the loan term would have to be between 20 and 30 years. This is based on very simply plugging in the $13M and 3.0% interest rate into a mortgage calculator online. I imagine that municipal bond payments/coupons/etc. are calculated somewhat differently than residential mortgages, but close enough. So the bond would very likely take more than 10 years to pay back, something in the range of 20-30 years.
I can’t comment on the specific concerns he had in the operating cost model in the Walker Report (such as scale factors and inflation rates). I guess we can hope that Walker didn’t make any *major* screwups with the cost model since they’ve done so many of these in the past?
My comments not being approved?
John V – can you repost your comment? We would like to hear what your position is to refute these three videos which we posted. You do good job at analysis. Please repost.
Walker was two day, one in August one September but yes three times each day…
9:02am-
Looks like all got posted now. Didn’t respond directly to all the videos, but they were definitely reasonable comments. Mostly based in differences of opinion on the best process to follow and how much data and analysis to complete before pushing forward with a project. Nothing to “refute” really. People have different values on what’s important to them.
2:22pm-
Actually yes you’re right about two days, I mis-spoke. They “collected” data from three days, but I believe swapped the initial weekday data from August for the data in September. So the “report” is indeed based on two days of data, one a weekday and one a weekend.
Thanks John V 9:58 pm. I can’t say if their assumptions on cost are reasonable just based on their cost of capital improvements every year @ 10K and not accounting for any new parking enforcement officers. Nothing costs 10K in my home improvement projects which only costed me 500K. not sure how are they assuming 10K a year for next 10 years towards capital improvement. They will have quite a few expenses specially during the first few years for improving things which were not included int he initial plan. Then to increase street parking rates to 9pm, they will have to hire more parking enforcement officer.
Yes, they are experts but I their is probably some fine print somewhere which states ‘produced as per the data / info provided by the town’, as most of these reports are rubber stamps on what the requesting party wants them to state. The guy questioning these financials is also an expert, so he deserves some credit too.
3:50pm-
Agreed all around. I definitely think the operating expenses could have been modeled more “conservatively” if you will be Walker. But like you note, that might have swung the numbers out of the black and into the red, thus requiring more revenue assumptions. If project goes through, only hope is that costs stay low and revenue goes high. I understand why many of you don’t have much faith in that outcome…
Maser study is correct. We don’t need parking at Hudson Street. BCIA/Transit Funds paid for some initial studies. Now the Mayor wants to go to BCIA for funding, instead of compromising on size and get the 4 votes within Ridgewood.
1. New proposal is for a 300 car garage, a net gain of about 200.
2. Initial Studies money for Hudson Street Lot came from BCIA.
3. Garage will be owned by BCIA.
4. You can’t restrict it for Ridgewood residents / commuters from Ridgewood. Out of town commuters will have to get the same price for commuting as it will be county property.
So – Net gain for Ridgewood residents – by giving up a few feet of road, hassle for Mt Carmel, devaluation for property owners on a narrower street, and increased taxes, and increase meter rates will all gain only a few spots for local Ridgewood residents. Out of town commuters will only increase traffic on the streets.
End result – An election point for someone that may be contesting at the county level and increased taxes for Ridgewood residents without solving the parking problem. This is wrong location for Ridgewood resident’s interests.
Here is the link – https://www.northjersey.com/news/county-to-study-feasibility-of-garage-1.1118852
2 studies, three days of data, lots empty more then full across those days. This isn’t complicated. A new, massive, rush hour is headed our way at intersections new studies show are at and beyond capacity. This is a project to serve the train station and a few restaurants, nothing else. John V. you do a great job explaining the numbers, but this is simple, doesn’t pay for itself, village leaders failed to deliver what they said they should as best stated in the June 2015 meetings seen here: https://www.ustream.tv/recorded/67001548#to02:54:10
“I think the public before they vote needs to know what they are voting for, what is going to look like, how much is going to cost, how are we going to pay for it, and that’s all part of the package. Otherwise again we’re in this conundrum: ‘are you in favor of a garage?’, ‘yeah, I guess, that sounds like a good idea’. But I think it is better if you know are you in favor of this garage, that looks like this, that costs “x million dollars”, the debt service on which is will be reduced over a period of “x years” based on the parking use projections and so on. That’s the way the public would have a meaningful vote.”
Now the same council member says, too bad you should have known more and it is your own fault you didn’t.
No real design, no disclosure of all the parking data, no disclosure of the Hudson St. encroachment.