By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff
After more than half a year of presentations, Planning and Zoning meetings, community feedback and other City Hall deliberation, the Sandpoint City Council voted 3-1 at the tail end of a marathon four-hour meeting June 25 to approve a new parking management plan.
Planning and Community Development Director Jason Welker outlined the final proposal, which would institute paid parking in publicly-owned lots at City Beach, Sand Creek, Dock and Bridge streets, the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail, and the city lot at Third Avenue and Church Street.
In addition, metered parking would be instituted on First and Second avenues, and Cedar, Church and Main Streets downtown.
City taxpayers will be eligible to purchase a pass for $15 per year, granting three to six hours of parking at those locations, while Bonner County residents will be given the option to buy passes for $30 per year for two to three hours of parking.
Downtown business owners can pay $40 per month for all-day parking for employees, while downtown residents pay $80 per month for unlimited parking. Those with boat slips at the Windbag Marina can purchase passes for $150 per year for unlimited parking at City Beach and Dock Street.
Hourly fees for non-passholders have yet to be determined — though will be established as further ordinance changes are addressed later in the summer — with a phased rollout of the new policies expected in 2026.
Finally, the plan reintroduces the requirement that downtown residential development provide parking — which was lifted in 2009 — though puts in place an in-lieu fee of $25,000 per parking space per 1,000-square-feet of development with a maximum of 1.5 stalls per unit. According to the plan, that’s intended to incentivize smaller units, and therefore promote the expansion of workforce housing downtown.
“This is just based on best practices around the country,” Welker said. “In the parking management and planning world, there are basically three components to successful parking management plans: market-priced off-street parking; elimination of off-street parking requirements, which we did in 2009, [though] we’re proposing modifying that slightly to bring some requirements back for residential; and then third, reinvesting revenues back in the neighborhoods where they were collected.
“To make these programs successful over years, those who are bearing the cost of paid parking need to see the benefits of paid parking,” he added.
To that end, revenues generated from paid parking will be allocated to maintenance of parking facilities, infrastructure and transportation amenities; the technology needed to operate the system; and enforcement of the policies.
“[I]nvesting in supporting public transport bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure that reduces vehicle dependency is a best practice,” Welker added. “And of course full cost recovery from the parking users themselves, so that parking facilities importantly don’t require general fund or property tax revenues to maintain in the future.”
He concluded his presentation by summarizing the goals of the new plan, including increasing availability of parking where it’s most needed, ensuring visitors and non-city residents contribute to infrastructure upkeep and that downtown residential developers also help pay for needed infrastructure either by providing parking or paying the in-lieu fee.
Sandpoint Mayor Jeremy Grimm commended the “incredible work” that went into crafting the final plan, and told the council that, “I fully support this.”
“I’m a passionate downtown urbanist, and I think what has been laid out here provides us with a number of solutions to the challenges we face,” he added, “whether it’s SPOT [bus] funding, whether it’s infrastructure funding, whether it’s reducing the tax burden on our Sanpoint taxpayers and residents and businesses, enhancing turnover so those retailers and restaurants and stores downtown can can get people conveniently parked by them.”
While Councilors Justin Dick, Pam Duquette and Council President Deb Ruehle all voted to approve the plan, Councilor Kyle Schreiber expressed the most concern, including his opposition to extending the parking exempt zone to Superior Street and east of First Avenue.
“I think that’s a dangerous section of road where cars are coming off of a high-speed freeway that has no obstructions, and I think putting pedestrians and people stepping out of their cars is a bad idea right there,” he said. “I think extending the boundary of the parking exempt zone to that area is also a bad idea, because we’ll be encouraging development that builds to the same standards that we have on First Avenue, where businesses are right up to the the property line and the sidewalk and all of the parking is designed to be on the curb.”
Welker said the 50-year vision is to see the east Superior corridor redeveloped along the same lines as the Commercial A zone downtown, including zero setbacks and narrower rights of way.
“The only reason that’s a high-speed corridor now is because it’s a three-lane corridor when, at which time that gets developed over the next 50 years, that’s likely to become more of a downtown urban street,” he said.
Schreiber argued that downtown-style development would be inappropriate on that stretch of road and, “I will go ahead and say that I’m not going to vote in favor of a plan that shows that extension of the parking exempt zone.”
Both Welker and Grimm told Schreiber that the parking exempt zone extension will be voted on with an ordinance change expected to come before council in August.
“You’re going to have many more bites of the apple on this one,” Grimm said.
Schreiber also took issue with the cap on the in-lieu fee for residential developers at 1.5 spaces per unit, suggesting that a building could be designed with an entire floor described as a single unit, and therefore skirting the parking requirement.
“So a downtown condo that’s 3,000 square feet and it packs several bedrooms in there, they may only have to provide 1.5 parking spaces,” Welker said, paraphrasing Schreiber. “That’s, sure, that’s true.”
Schreiber moved to approve the plan on the condition that the parking exempt zone not be extended and that the cap on 1.5 spaces per unit be reconsidered in the ordinance. That motion died for lack of a second.
Duquette argued, as she has in the past, that city taxpayers shouldn’t be required to pay any fee to park at City Beach.
“It’s the principle, in my opinion,” she said, however, because 348 of the 505 parking stalls in city-owned lots are regulated under federal land-water conservation guidelines, they can’t be free for some users and not for others.
Councilor Dick, who later moved to adopt the plan, said that while “nobody ever elected me and said, ‘Charge me for parking on First Avenue or down at City Beach,’” he supported channeling revenue from parking fees into public transportation as well as pedestrian and bike infrastructure.
However, he asked that when council considers the final hourly fees in a future ordinance, that they be dynamically adjusted with higher fees during the busy summer months and lower fees during the slow seasons.
“I know the businesses are going to have a hard time as soon as Schweitzer shuts down,” he said. “It’s tough to get locals downtown until we get our tourist business as well. I do not want to put parking meters out and give them another reason as to why they don’t come downtown.”
