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Questions Arise on the “New Walker Report” for Ridgewood Parking Garage

garage new design

February 12,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Some questions from the most recent walker report. May be some of our readers who are more financial savvy can answer them / explain them, as residents are a little confused:

1. The main argument for the biggest garage is that it is needed for CBD’s revival. This week’s Walker Report projects up-to 20% reduction in cars coming in to CDB. So, how exactly will this help?

“We project a 10% reduction in volume from rate increases and a 7.5% – 10% reduction in volume for the extension of meter hours through the dinner hour”..
https://mods.ridgewoodnj.net/pdf/manager/20160203revwalker.pdf

2. OLMC was promised that no rates will increase on Saturday evenings. This report doesn’t reflect that.

3. They mention that this report cannot be used for financing. So, the consultant themselves are not confident about this report?
“As with the previous study, this is considered a preliminary analysis. We have not done the very detailed analysis that is required for a financing document and our projections cannot be used as such.”

4. On Jan 27th, in village council meeting, when this new contract was awarded to Walker Consultants, we were told that they will provide us the new makeup of the parking garage, i.e. how many commuters, how many shoppers and how many CBD employees should park there. That break down is not provided in this report (I think we paid somewhere between 12-20k for this piece of pdf).

5. This report recommends additional enforcement for the extended hours, but it doesn’t consider additional enforcement officer’s compensation in the calculations?