By Anne Terhune | Editor SDUN

The meter is running, but a decade after its formation the Uptown Partnership is still parked at the curb, despite a deadline imposed by the San Diego City Council, which recently renewed the partnership’s funding for a mere three months, instead of its usual one -year cycle.

The parking agency has been in disarray since reports showed that the nonprofit was sitting on more than $4 million in reserve funds. Meanwhile, it has posted operating expenses of $3.2 million and only spent a small portion of the almost $1 million that the agency receives annually from parking meter revenues on projects and services in Park West, Bankers Hill, Hillcrest, Mission Hills and Five Points.

Dave Gatzke, the youthful, energetic vice-president of the Uptown Partnership board, doesn’t want to hear about the past, though—he said he’s focused on how to fix the problems, beginning with meetings that will take a pulse from the Uptown communities.

“What I’m really hoping that the board can do over the next three months is engage with a clean slate, talk about where our vision for the community is and talk about what are the needs that we have and what is the optimal structure for supporting those needs,” said Gatzke, who has a master’s degree in urban planning. “I don’t know that we’ve ever had that open of a slate before.”

The plan is for the partnership to hold community meetings in each of the five neighborhoods. The date and details of those meetings will be decided during the Nov. 4 board meeting.

“It’s going to be our job to set the framework for the conversation, what is the optimal structure for keeping those revenues local, rather than having them taken by the city and going into a black hole, but (instead) to support community stakeholders,” Gatzke said. “I’ve served on the board less than a year…so I’m not really able to delve into the past. I’m not here to justify it and I don’t want to do that. I think that there are probably lots of misunderstandings in these figures being bandied about.”

The frustration on the part of the five Uptown neighborhoods has several causes, including the small number of new parking spaces—fewer than 50—created since the partnership was incorporated in 1999, a perceived lack of equal representation on the board among the communities, and some areas seeming to receive more benefits than others.

“It’s very valid, and the board is again taking the position that we’re working not only to allocate funds in proportionality to the revenues generated, but to correct some past inequities; … some neighborhoods have benefitted disproportionately,” Gatzke said. “It’s going to ebb and flow—what’s happened in the past, certain projects had proponents and those projects got built.”

When Uptown Partnership was formed, the top priority was to build a parking garage in central Hillcrest.

“But people on the board before (me) said we may be chasing our tail—we’ll never be able to generate enough revenue (from the parking structure) to keep up with escalating construction costs, escalating land costs, and we understand that a parking garage in central Hillcrest doesn’t serve the needs of Bankers Hill, or Five Points or other areas,” he said.

Although some of the Uptown communities have threatened to secede from the partnership and manage their own parking revenues, Gatzke said several small parking groups would cost more to oversee.

“When I look at what’s involved to administrate these programs, with annual audits and all that, it would be very expensive to have five or six different parking districts, each having to hire a CPA to do the audit,” Gatzke said.

He also said he thinks the Uptown communities are more alike than different, all “suffering from deterioration of infrastructure and lack of resources at the city level to meet local neighborhood needs.”

But just what a neighborhood needs depends on whom you ask. Often, the priorities of businesses and visitors are quite different from those of residents.

“We’re looking at employee parking and trying to find a way to get employees out of their cars, out of the core, so they’re not affecting the residents and the businesses and those spaces are left open for residents and guests.”

Gatzke said he heard from past board members and some residents that the partnership board has paid too much attention to businesses and visitors and not enough to residents, “so I look forward to hearing from them what they want,” he said.

Gatzke said he also hopes that the upcoming community meetings will engage some of the younger community members “who are going to be living with these decisions and choices that we make for a long period of time.”

Taking the pressure off existing parking spaces can be done through several methods, including mass transit, bicycling and other alternate modes of transportation. Gatzke said he was impressed by the bicycle system he saw in Washington, D.C., which uses membership cards, magnetic locks on the bikes and the ability to borrow a bike in one spot and return it in another.

Asked about the possibility of installing metered bike racks, Gatzke said, “I don’t know that that was ever proposed. I know the Hillcrest Business Association parking board is very interested in creating bike corrals, which are larger bike parking areas … but there’s government conversation about charging for those places, as far as I know, and I would be opposed to that. So, more bike parking yes, charging for it, no.”

Gatzke said the partnership board supports flexible rates for vehicle parking meters, but only in relation to lowering rates to encourage the use of some under-utilized spaces.

In addition to the community meetings, the Partnership’s top concerns include a universal parking validation system that would reduce the number of cars parking on Hillcrest streets, and lining up the $100,000 it will cost for a study on a central Hillcrest streetcar. Construction of a parking garage or creating more parking spaces are on the back burner for now.

“I think we need to do a better job first managing the spaces that we already have,” Gatzke said.

If the City Council declines to approve funding Uptown Partnership after its three months are up, Gatzke said the board would be dissolved.

“That’s it … so I hope at the end of three months the council votes affirmatively for something,” he said. “I have no preconceived notion of what that looks like.”

For information, visit www.uptownpartnership.org.