CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order at 3:30 p.m. in Council Chambers, 1175 East Main St.
Regular members present: Chair Michael Dawkins, Dave Young, Joe Collonge, Lynn Thompson, John Williams, Joe Graf, Pam Hammond, and Marie Donovan
Regular members absent: Lisa Beam, Emile Amarotico, and John Fields
Ex officio (non-voting) members present: Michael Faught, Katharine Cato, Bill Molnar and Sandra Slattery
Ex officio (non-voting) members absent: Mike Gardiner, and Rich Rosenthal
City of Ashland Staff members present: Tami De Mille-Campos
 
ANNOUCEMENTS
None
 
PUBLIC FORUM
None
 
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
Minutes of September 7, 2016
 
Minutes approved.
 
FINAL REVIEW OF THE DOWNTOWN STRATEGIC PARKING MANAGEMENT PLAN
Faught reminded the committee that during the January, 2016 meeting they approved the Downtown Strategic Parking Management Draft Plan before moving onto the multi-modal piece. His perspective with the public input was that we were going to gather any recommended changes. At the public forum meeting held in December there really weren’t any recommended changes, it was more of a question and answer session and based on that he thinks this committee’s work is pretty much done.
 
Williams agreed that was also his understanding.
 
Donovan/Thompson m/s to move the plan forward to the City Council.
Discussion: Donovan said she feels like this has been pretty well vetted and people had an opportunity to get their questions answered and provide feedback during the forum which had a pretty good size crowd present. 
 
Thompson said she was thinking about a couple of things that came up at the forum for things that might alleviate people’s issues with the plan and she was wondering how things will actually get done in the plan as far as marking the parking stalls etc. Faught answered we begin by hiring the new Parking Coordinator and they will be in charge of working with Diamond Parking and City staff.
 
Thompson said she is just concerned that this plan will get held up in a bureaucratic sense. Faught said the difference, as Rick Williams has previously pointed out, is this plan is different from the previous plans because this plan will actually have a staff member tied to it.
 
Hammond said she had something that should have probably been brought up earlier but around the beginning of November the 4 hour signs are removed from the parking lot. As someone who has a lot of people coming into the store those parking lots end up full and retail customers can’t find parking. She is curious why we do that? Faught said he isn’t sure exactly how we got there but he suspects that it is because winter time historically doesn’t see that high of traffic. He does agree at this point, that is something that the future committee should look at when looking at the 85 percentile being exceeded. He agrees the committee and Parking Coordinator should look at that data.
 
 
 
Slattery asked if the plan is to hire the Parking Coordinator first and then appointing the new committee or how is that going to work? Faught said this committee is disbanding but as he has previously hinted that it would be nice to have some of the current committee members join the future committee. If approved by Council then it would go through the budget process and as of July 1, 2017 that position could be filled. In the interim he thinks that would be a good time to begin looking at putting the future committee together. As far as moving along with the multi-modal aspect, Council would like a separate committee to work on the long term downtown visioning which will include multi-modal. He isn’t sure if this has been discussed since the change in City Administrator but he will make sure that gets passed along to the new City Administrator so they can have that discussion with Council.
 
All in favor. Motion approved.
 
Faught congratulated the committee on moving the plan along and having devoted several years of their time to this charge.
 
Williams said he thought the forum turned out really nice and thanked those involved with that.
 
NEXT STEPS
 
 
ADJOURNMENT
Meeting adjourned at 3:55 pm
Respectfully submitted,
Tami De Mille-Campos, Administrative Supervisor