October 28,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood
Ridgewood NJ according to Village Chief Finance Officer Bob Rooney the Walker Report will suggest Ridgewood needs an increase in parking fees and extend parking hours to cover the cost of a down payment for a parking garage on Hudson Street .
The Ridgewood parking utility , if you are a real old timer you may remember the meters were originally installed to provide funding for a garage back in the late 1960’s .
At Wednesdays Village Council meeting the council heard Village Chief Finance Officer Bob Rooney offer some cold hard facts regarding alternative revenue sources to offset the expected $11 million bond, including a $550,000 down payment, needed to cover garage construction costs.
Increased parking rates come as no surprise for most residents , because since 2007 the Village has conceded that in order to build a garage. The Village last raise rates in 2015 at the urging of the defunct FAC or Financial Advisory Committee . The previous administration led by Mayor Aronsohn had parking rate increases as one of the cardinal feature of building their, “Garagezilla”.
According to Rooney ,the parking utility will only break even this year do to the excessive use of the parkmobile app with takes a 30 percent transaction fee on all transactions , fortunately the contract is up early next year in February and the Village will be bidding out looking for a far more satisfactory deal. The current deal was negotiated by the previous Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld . Since May 2015 the village has paid parkmobile $143,000 in fees.
Assuming a cost of 11,000,000 for the garage ,the Village would need $550,000 as a down payment .
Rooney also suggested that a financial feasibility study being done by Walker Parking Consultants is expected to advise higher meter rates and longer hours. Without that, Rooney warned, an increase in the utility budget ie a tax increase would be needed to finance the garage downpayment.
The new new Walker study is expected to advise meter rates of $1 per hour between Broad and Walnut streets downtown, and 75 cents elsewhere. Parking is now free after 6 p.m., but the study is expected to suggests pushing that 8 or 9 p.m.
Rooney also added that a new parking Kiosk will be in operation shortly before thanksgiving witch can except credit cards and while there are trans action fees they are far less than parkmobile .
The law of diminishing returns suggest that the Village maybe quickly nearing a tipping point with parking fees , where higher parking fees will cut into demand for parking in the Central Business District . The Village maybe betting that increased space for commuters and spill over parking from the four new high density projects in the Village will fill the parking spaces , but that once again leaves the merchants with no net gain .
We don’t need a parking garage at Hudson St and for all the same reasons we don’t a parking garage or parking lot at the Town Garage site. Mayor and Council stop wasting out tax dollars.
The mayor and council are going to do whatever they want they don’t care about us the taxpayers please stop. That’s their agenda. Can you say dirty I can
We voted against the garage and they keep on ignoring us. Now let’s raise rates and possibly increases taxes.
Politicians in this town all SUCK. It doesn’t matter if it’s Roberta and the three amigos or this spineless bunch. Focus on repaving the streets and making the village nice again instead of this continuous garage fiasco.
We are repeating history. Having the meters in service later into the evening did not work before and would not work now. As has been pointed out over and over, restaurant owners themselves–and whom else are we supposedly doing all this for?–said that customers were complaining. The end time of the meters once again dropped to 6 PM, where it should stay. (This applies also to the Short Line lot on Route 17, where parking to go into the city for the day costs enough already, and a 12-hour meter limit might not even be long enough to cover someone going for the day and evening.) Raising parking meter fees and increasing hours would just make people go elsewhere. Thus the claimed parking shortage might be mitigated by having nobody wish to go downtown. If that’s the goal, we seem to be heading for it. NO GARAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why is it that this garage issue is still with us? Why can’t there be honest and open communication between the public and the Council about what we are already legally committed to, and if we are not legally committed to anything, then why is it still going ahead despite the public saying no? Is this a democracy or Government along the lines of North Korea.
This is a nightmare. We are begging you susan, drop the garage and end this already. Look at the evidence against this..,, no lack of spaces, declining revenue, unknowns on the actual cost. Please, wake up.
If parking would have been profitable, Ken Smith and Son would have build have done so on his site next to the commuter station. There is a reason it was not done.
No garage!!!
Many of us store owners suggest that there should be free parking from Thanksgiving to January 1 the new year . that just may help the village store owners the landlords the local residents. The village needs to get some kind of incentive for the locals to shop what it will just go to the mall’s or buy online and that will hurt the local businesses eventually they will shut down in the village CBD will look like a ghost town like a dead 10 years ago remember I do .
Thank you
I would start with repaying all the lots first.
If the rates go up, no one will come. Since I can’t park near a business I want to go to, I’m sure not going to pay $1.00 an hour extra for a cup of coffee. The Daily Treat will be among the first ones to suffer. That free parking for customers lot will soon be out lawed. Since the VC seems to be surprised by how much they have to pay so that Ridgewood customers can pay extra to park, what boondoggles will they not be prepared for next? Since they seem to expect that all the new housing will make a profit for the town, maybe that is all we should turn to for raising money? (of course that assumes that water will suddenly leap out of the ground, people will only want to walk so no traffic lights or changes, etc. etc.) Has anyone actually asked any business owner if they would be willing to pay an extra $5.00 per table to earn money at their site? The village just assumes they will be eager to provide free parking so more people will come. Their budgets are squeezed as tightly as they can be, and that’s a big chunk of ever reducing profits. maybe a crystal ball would be more accurate!
Most council members past and present cannot get it into their heads that sometimes the CBD will be crowded for parking. Most of the time it is not. Putting in a parking garage and raising meter rates will keep me from shopping in the CBD. If they do raise parking time limits it will have to be until 9 p.m. so Park & Ride will have a limit. But if they raise the cost and raise the hours for paid parking, I will never shop in CBD.
I would never put my car in a parking garage there anyway. A garage will attract outlaws, drug addicts, robbers.
Then the law is an Ass Figure it out VC
moving trucks ahead…VC you flounder like a bunch of amateurs rushing from one poor decision to another..
keep digging…China must be down there somewhere….
when is Election Day??
Buses to the Port Authority that run along the main avenues will be quite full since the VOR hijacked any reasonable alternatives to use the trains both cost and logistic wise.
Next shoe to drop 900 dollar general stadium parking ..VIP Train side likely 1200 .
ps 12 hour max on Parkmobile commuter users incl NJT PARK and Ride hassles ahead,
town is at war with its residents .for what NJT COMMUTER VILLAGE COMMITMENTS .?
:You can purchase overnight parking at park and ride from Airbrook without having to go to airport.
. Did ya ever notice how arrogant and uncaring coucil members ,ALL OF THEM become once their sitting on dais. On they are elected. Even the former newspaper reporter.
I guess you do not go to council meetings
Free parking to help retail. LOL
Try helping yourself by having owners and CBD employees STOP using parking spaces that your CUSTOMERS could use.
I guess you can’t fix stupid.
1:53 sums it up…VC claims its all for the merchants..but wait here is a merchants request
Many of us store owners suggest that there should be free parking from Thanksgiving to January 1 the new year . that just may help the village store owners the landlords the local residents
bottom line
it’s the cash folks..from the taxpayers and the merchants to THEIR Towns coffers..They are going to build that slum maker on Hudson…THEY know better…we are in parking detention and plan to pay through the nose..
time will proove this out..ps VOR pave a street…towns a disgrace…
election days not soon enough…
James, if you are addressing me. The former reporter is the council member who said he remembered a plan for the garage to fit the existing Hudson St. lot. He said that at a council meeting last spring. He said it in a cutesy way,
He said with a smile, that he thinks too much about Ridgewood’s parking problem when he is home at home and he remembered a plan that fit the Hudson st. lot , designed by the previous architects, and then rejected for the larger designs.
But when I spoke to him previously , he said he agreed with me that Ridgewood would do well with just a single or double layer bare bones,parking deck at most in one or two spots.
Words spoken in private to me by members of council are not consistent with positions on dais, that is what I call arrogant.
I was shocked when they adopted the idea of a parking garage , on Hudson st. even one that fits the existing footprint. It’s ugly, it’s not needed, and its over the top expensive, residents will suffer by high meter rates and high taxes, parking garages have to be maintained, just like any other structure. The mayor when she heard Sedon say he had remembered a plan for a garage that fit the footprint, she was very pleased.
. The truth of the matter is all commercial areas in NJ are over crowded at various times , even the Westbrook Mall.
Most of the time even on weekend nights parking can be found in town,,,, as for walking a few blocks,it is often not as far as parking far away at Westbrook Mall.
Is there something in the water or air in the rooms the Council uses? They ran as intelligent, thinking people and seem to have turned into the “Council from the Village Pasts.”
Also, as many other residents have claimed, including a letter printed in the Record last week by a Ridgewood resident, the Hudson st. area is already too congested, putting a parking garage their is dangerous as far as causing accidents.