Independent consultant will be hired to coordinate parking concerns

By Anne Terhune | SDUN Editor
& Pat Sherman | SDUN Assistant Editor

They were tired of all the in-fighting and backbiting. That’s one explanation Uptown Partnership gave for releasing a surprise press release Nov. 4, stating that the board had voted to end its contract with the City of San Diego effective Dec. 29. On that same date, the Partnership will stop being the advisory board for Uptown Community Parking District.

“The board wasn’t interested in having to be the referee for different community groups,” said Dave Gatzke, former vice president of the Uptown Partnership board, who was officially named president at the group’s Nov. 4 meeting.

For more than 10 years, the Partnership has administered parking meter revenue collected in Park West, Bankers Hill, Hillcrest, Mission Hills and the Five Points area, with a stated goal of improving parking and mobility. But residents and business owners have questioned not only the Partnership’s lack of substantial achievements but also its high operating expenses and the composition of the board, which critics say does not fairly represent the five neighborhoods.

The turmoil, and a grand jury report which found the Partnership spending three times as much on operations as on parking projects, caused the City Council to approve only three months of funding for the nonprofit group in late September, rather than a full year. However, the council hoped to see the Partnership make some significant changes in that time, rather than dump the entire operation in the city’s lap.

“Our preference was to see Uptown Partnership embrace the call for change from the community and make needed reforms,” said Councilman Todd Gloria, who represents the Uptown areas in District 3. “Their decision to permanently end their contractual relationship with the city is regrettable. But I know that it comes after significant consideration by its board of directors.”

When Gatzke spoke to Uptown News last month, he said the Partnership was full of plans for community meetings that would gauge Uptown’s wants and needs and then modify the parking board accordingly. Now it appears that an independent consultant will take on that challenge.

This is exactly what representatives of Uptown community groups—such as the Hillcrest Business Association, the Mission Hills and Hillcrest town councils, the Mission Hills Business Improvement District and residents and business owners in Bankers Hill—had decided during a meeting that took place Nov. 3, one day before the Partnership met.

“The community groups, they’re not looking to beat anybody up—they want the rancor and division to stop,” said Ben Nicholls, executive director of the Hillcrest Business Improvement Association, who attended the Nov. 3 meeting.

The community groups expressed a vote of no confidence in the Uptown Partnership board and wanted a neutral consultant to help the communities refine their parking needs, Nicholls said.

The consultant—which may be one person or a company—will be selected and managed by the city, and will contract directly with the city, Gatzke said.

 “This isn’t a clean slate but it’s certainly a reboot,” Nicholls said.

Gloria pledged to “work with city staff to guard and preserve the Uptown community’s share of its parking meter revenue until a public process concludes and a new approach to managing the parking district for the five neighborhoods is developed.”

However, he does not think the end of the contract was a ploy by the Partnership to force the city’s hand.

“No, because in order to extend their contract the council had to take some action before Dec. 29 and that’s probably not going to be possible now,” Gloria said. “The council’s direction was to make some changes. We would need to act to extend their contract and there’s not a way to do that I can see.”

Meanwhile, the Partnership voted to continue working on several projects that are already in the works, such as the parking validation proposals, the streetcar study and bicycle corrals, through the end of the year. The Partnership is also investigating the use of the parking lot at the old IBEW building at 215 W. Washington Street, site of the proposed new Mission Hills Library.

“These are essentially items the board felt could be accomplished in the remaining time,” Gatzke said.

However, he wasn’t sure what would happen to the Partnership board after Dec. 29, since it is classified as a 501c organization for tax purposes and their CPA will have to unravel that financial tangle.

Nicholls is optimistic that an independent consultant will jump-start the Uptown parking board.

“The key is the consultant will be independent of previous (Partnership) leadership,” he said.

Nicholls sees community feedback as the most valuable ingredient going forward, calling the merging of Uptown interests a “giant jamboree of community input.”

Gloria hopes that the Uptown communities will find a way to work together for the greater good.

“It remains my strong opinion that it’s in the best interest of all the neighborhoods of Uptown to continue to pool their respective parking meter proceeds to the benefit of the community as a whole,” he said. “I think a model that mirrors that, but perhaps has different bylaws, has perhaps a different approach to accepting public input and an aggressive attitude to deploying projects, addressing parking and mobility needs, is ultimately what will come from that process.”

Gloria said the City Council has also learned some valuable lessons from the Uptown Partnership’s problems, such as moving to cap administrative overhead for the city’s parking districts. The Uptown Partnership spent less than $1 million on Uptown parking projects and services while posting expenses of $3.2 million in 10 years.

In fact, in less than two years Gloria’s office has been more successful in finding new parking spaces than the Partnership has since its inception, securing use of the former Pernicano’s restaurant lot in Hillcrest, as well as the DMV and post office parking lots at night and on weekends.

“That had always been a concern of mine—that we are looking under every nook and cranny for any parking space at all,” Gloria said. “I think the business community particularly in those five neighborhoods has said, we need parking spaces. We need to be competitive with other communities that don’t have meters.”

So while the details have yet to be worked out, the overall parking and transportation future looks brighter for the Uptown communities, Nicholls said.

Gloria also assured Uptown residents and business owners that he would not let parking problems languish.

“We will not lose momentum on finding new parking opportunities, particularly in Hillcrest,” he said. “I will continue to use my office to press folks to open existing parking lots, like at AT&T, like the future library site. We will not lose momentum on that, even if Uptown Partnership has exited the picture for the interim period. We will continue to work hard on this.”