Sonoma Planning Commission revs up, stalls out on parking solutions, asks for joint meeting

Parking is like the weather: everybody complains about it, but we all need a place to park.

Parking in the downtown area – within two blocks on either side of the Plaza – is in short supply during peak hours on weekdays, and all but fully occupied during event weekends, according to a parking study completed 18 months ago and finally presented to the Planning Commission last Thursday, April 28.

But most of us don’t need a report to tell us it’s hard to find parking in Sonoma.

“We’re kind of getting choked by our own popularity,” said city Prosecutor Robert Smith of the Plaza’s persistent parking problems.

His iPhone is full of photos of parking scofflaws – delivery trucks parking in a red zone and overlapping into a driveway; tourist buses double-parked to unload passengers; and parking or unloading to block crosswalks.

Red-zone parking in particular gets his goat.

“It’s a huge problem,” said Smith. “Most of the red zones are red for reasons of public safety.”

Smith said the city issues about 2,300 parking citations each year.

Behind the parking problems is the scarcity of parking spaces in the downtown area, not only for visitors but employees of the downtown businesses. That’s one reason the Planning Commission looked at that Draft Downtown Parking Study from Planning Director David Goodison. It had been sitting on a shelf since its completion in October 2016, awaiting a resolution to a cornerstone of Sonoma’s parking inventory – the Casa Grande parking lot.

For years Sonoma residents, businesses and visitors have parked for free in the 142-space lot behind the Sonoma State Parks’ Barracks and Servants Quarters – and, as it happens, behind the Cheese Factory building as well as the Marioni Building (Mary’s Pizza Shack) and the Swiss Hotel.

Perhaps chastened by the appeal to the City Council of their most recent decision to approve an ambitious Cheese Factory remodel – the appellants are the owners of the Marioni Building and the Swiss Hotel – the planning commissioners raised a fuss about how much they could do – right now – to solve a years-old problem.

Goodison needed to remind the commissioners – more than once – that there was only so much they could do, for reasons of budget, staff time and governmental procedure, to productively address the issue. Not only is the long-planned General Plan update only six months away, but the “key element” of the downtown parking plan, the Casa Grande lot, remains in flux.

That lot is owned by California State Parks, so the City of Sonoma’s use of it is conditional on a lease, though there has been none in effect since 2009. To complicate things, this time there’s another option for the lot – to operate it as a paid parking lot.

“State Parks, like many other agencies, is looking for different revenue sources, in part to maintain their parking lot,” said Goodison, with some irony. Should the state decide to go with paid parking, Goodison said, it “would be a particularly bad outcome” in terms of downtown parking opportunities and planning.

The terms on the table with State Parks were not disclosed. But the possibility that the Casa Grande lot would become a pay-for-parking location throws the city’s downtown parking planning into uncertainty.

The Casa Grande lot is the largest single off-street parking area in the downtown area – though there is one other city parking lot, between East Napa and East Spain streets, of 37 slots, for a total of 179 off-street spaces, according to the 2016 parking study.

It’s on-street parking that accounts for the bulk of available parking in the downtown, but on-street parking frequently causes headaches for businesses and residents whose driveways are parked over and who can’t find parking in their own neighborhoods.

One suggestion in the parking study was to explore potential “public-private partnerships,” leasing or otherwise making available private lots – such as the Bank of America, West America Bank, the Sonoma Community Center, Arnold Field and the U.S. Post Office – for public parking during off-business hours. That idea met with considerable enthusiasm from the commissioners; it could potentially add some 326 parking spaces to city inventory during many weekend and evening hours.

During the commission’s two-hour discussion – interrupted only by a single public comment on the topic from the sparse audience – questions were raised about the report’s reliance on a 2014 parking study, and why it couldn’t be updated. Other questions came up about how the current traffic estimates in the Circulation Element’s guidelines might have “led staff to approve a project on the Plaza that is going to make the parking problem much worse,” said commission alternate Lynda Corrado, who was seated that evening in Commissioner James Bohar’s absence.

Commissioner Kelso Barnett’s put it more bluntly: “Whatever we have, it’s not working.”

Other commissioners griped about the apparent lack of parking and traffic controls for special events, wondered why the city just doesn’t build a two-story parking lot, and even questioned the presumption that the city needs to provide free convenient parking for all.

“Everything we’re talking about comes from a premise that parking will be plentiful and free,” said Commissioner James Cribb. “And I just think that’s unrealistic – and it’s not where the rest of the state of going.”

It all led to Commissioner Corrado proposing an “ad hoc committee” to undertake an up-to-date traffic study of eight days, and come up with a new parking study worked out with members of the community and city council.

“I think we are leaders of the community, that’s why we’re here,” she said. “We need to drive forward, looking out the front windshield instead of looking in the rearview mirror.”

But as Goodison labored to point out, the Planning Commission on its own can only do so much, requiring a budget and sign-off at the City Council level. For instance, an eight-day parking study would cost many tens of thousands of dollars, and take months to schedule, complete and review. “I don’t believe that there’s a short cut to that process,” said Goodison.

Commissioner Barnett, “to alleviate some of David’s stress,” as he put it, ceded to Goodison’s suggestion to call instead for a joint City Council-Planning Commission meeting instead of an ad hoc committee.

At the end of the two-hour discussion, the Planning Commission voted 6-1, with Carol Jansen dissenting, to put on the agenda a request for a joint City Council-Planning Commission meeting.

Still, even after the vote, the commission members talked about different approaches to solve the problem, such as appropriating some revenue from the Tourism Impact District fees to deal with parking, or increasing in-lieu fees for developments that can’t provide onsite parking.

Finally, Commission Chair Bob Felder said, “I think we’re reaching the point of diminishing returns on this topic, so I’d like to move on.” The gavel came down, and a three-minute recess was called.

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.