Monday, April 29, 2019

St. Augustine Beach could join St. Johns County on parking system; decision planned Monday (SAR)

The residents, workers and visitors of the City of St. Augustine Beach have repeated spoken and testified: we DON'T want paid parking, but maladroit City Manager BRUCE MAX ROYLE wants to do it anyway. 

Sick twist.

It's time for him to go -- tiresome tedious unaccountable termagant.



From this morning's St. Augustine Record:

St. Augustine Beach could join St. Johns County on parking system; decision planned Monday
By Sheldon Gardner
Posted Apr 28, 2019 at 9:47 PM

One key question facing St. Augustine Beach commissioners is whether to partner with St. Johns County on a paid parking system.

That decision is on the table at the City Commission meeting on Monday, which will begin at 6 p.m. at City Hall.

The St. Johns County Commission is working with the firm Republic Parking System to create a system to charge for parking at Pier Park, the east end of Pope Road and locations outside of St. Augustine Beach that the county controls.

While the details haven’t been hashed out, the county is considering charging $5 per day for parking and $50 for an annual pass.

In March, St. Augustine Beach commissioners supported charging beach residents no fee to park, charging 50 cents an hour for St. Johns County residents and charging $2 an hour for the regular rate.

But charging different rates based on residency could change the amount of federal funding the area gets for beach renourishment, said Jason Harrah, project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The federal government wants as much beach as possible to be available to everyone, and access to parking is part of the government’s consideration in funding beach projects, he said.

City Manager Max Royle raised the issue in backup materials for Monday’s meeting.

“There is a question whether these differing parking fees, if the City had its own paid parking plan, could lower the federal share of dollars for beach restoration,” he wrote.

St. Johns County has an agreement with the Army Corps that provides renourishments of St. Augustine Beach. Federal funding pays for 80 percent of the multimillion-dollar renourishments. State and local funding pays for 20 percent.


One reason the city is considering partnering with the county is to have a simpler paid parking system in the beach, according to Royle.



“At this point, the Commission’s going to discuss at Monday night’s meeting going with the county, having the same plan, so that people who use Pier Park, if they migrate to one of our parking lots, they don’t have to use a different system,” Royle said.

County officials plan to put the paid parking system in place early in 2020, Royle said.

St. Augustine Beach budgeted about $403,000 in parking revenue for this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, though no system had been put in place.

Chief Financial Officer Melissa Burns plans to see if savings on capital projects or extra revenues in the budget could help cover the gap, according to an email from Burns to The Record on Wednesday. She said in 2018 that the city would draw from reserves in the event of a shortfall.

Royle said he plans to meet with the Burns to prepare a budget report for the Commission. He also said he wants to schedule a special Commission meeting in May to focus on the city’s budget and long-range financial plans.

Other parking items on tap Monday include an ordinance to set up a residential parking permit system, changes to parking items in City Code and discussion on the option of temporarily leasing property between 4th and 5th streets on A1A Beach Boulevard for parking.

In other business

Commissioners plan to discuss options to once again begin streaming and televising its Commission meetings. The Commission temporarily stopped broadcasting meetings because of concerns about compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements for captioning. The city is also working to make its documents ADA compliant. Documents since 2015 are now compliant and are on the city’s website, according to Royle.

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