County council members said Monday they didn’t want to futz around with Silver Spring’s parking rates without a better grip on the issues.
“We need to have a comprehensive conversation about managing the parking lot districts,” council member Valerie Ervin (D-District 5) told colleagues at a transportation committee meeting in Rockville.
The cautious approach comes after Silver Spring residents and business owners complained about new parking-meter hours, which would have hit earlier this month. The game plan was to extend hours from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and to charge drivers for on-street meter parking on Saturdays.
The changes would have affected meters in Fenton Village, South Silver Spring and Montgomery Hills. However, rates at the Ellsworth Drive and Wayne Avenue garages would have stayed the same.
“We stepped into it without thinking it through,” council member George Leventhal (D-At large) admitted. He also called for a study into what the parking district’s expenditures were, and what kind of revenue they were expected to generate.
Alternative revenue sources were bounced around in anticipation of a rollback to meter hours. Council staffers suggested extending weekday hours to 7:00 p.m., and charging fees on Saturdays for on-street meters.
Staffers also recommended increasing rates at the Ellsworth Drive and Wayne Avenue garages. An agreement between the county and garage operators keeps parking there free after hours and on weekends.
However, the agreement doesn’t say anything about a rate increase, Glenn Orlin, top council staffer, said. A rate increase at those garages could net $200,000 a year, he told council members.
But council members didn’t bite, saying they wanted more information on how new revenue would be spent.
Rick Siebert, with the department of public works, explained that money generated in the Silver Spring parking district would be used to pay off part of its $2.5 million debt to the county.
Money raked into Montgomery Hills would actually pad that parking district’s surplus, which could be funneled to pay for streetscaping, Siebert said.
The full council is expected to approve the meter rollback Tuesday.
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Speaking of the Montgomery Hills parking district, we need to start pushing the county to start redeveloping the Montgomery Hills commercial area, bigtime. There are dozens of quality businesses, and some nice architecture, but the streetscaping and the number of powerlines and signals that hang across the street takes away from any other aesthetic qualities. The county could help some businesses improve their facades on the west side of Georgia Avenue, and push the state to reconstruct Georgia Ave from 16th street to the beltway, creating a median in the middle and getting rid of the reversible lane, as well as widening the sidewalks, paving them with brick while at the same time burrying power lines and installing attractive street lighting. It could cost a couple dozen million, but it would definitely be worth it. The houses in the adjacent neighborhoods are of such high quality and the area quite affluent that it’s surprising we’ve held out for so long dealing with the mess that is Montgomery Hills.
And while we’re at it, I think at least half of the gas stations could go! Keep G&G and the car wash and a couple other gas stations to continue the competitiveness, but jeez.
I love the Montgomery Hills area. Its a very quaint business district, I wouldn’t want the County to try to redevelop it into another Silver Spring and tear down the lovely buildings. New streetscaping and development will just make the area even more busy and will drive away mom and pop shops to be replaced with Subway/Chipotle/chain crap. Ever since they built the metro bridge, its so easy to get over to Forest Glen. Beautiful community. Traffic isn’t that bad once you’ve get used to it. Maybe all those Silver Spring people should start taking metro to get downtown instead of driving.
They need to get rid of the reverse lane and just make it 6 lanes with an extra north bound lane to only serve the Beltway Exit and extra south bound lane for the Beltway traffic going towards the 16th street exit.