City addresses residents parking concerns

Christie Voos, communications analyst for the City of Leavenworth, addressed concerns that residents have about parking and the future of the Front Street closure.

On Facebook, many Leavenworth residents have expressed displeasure at both the parking issues downtown. When it comes to parking funds, many are wondering how the funds are being used. There are very specific ways that the parking funds can be used, said Voos.

Voos said that funds received from parking, both from kiosks at parking lots and from the parking meter, are classified as enterprise funds. Enterprise funds are funds in which there is a separate accounting and financial reporting mechanism in which revenues and expenditures are segregated into a fund with financial statements separate from all other governmental activities.

In other words, enterprise funds are used for services that must be self-sustaining and the finances of that service are carefully tracked. For example, water and sewage are enterprise funded activities, Voos said. The fees paid by residents for water and sewage must be enough for the services to cover their expenses.

According to enterprise fund rules, parking funds in Leavenworth could be used for parking-related things like parking enforcement, improvements to parking lots and better meters, Voos said. The state, not the city, determines that parking funds are classified as enterprise funds.

There have been rumors spreading that the meters are privately owned.  This simply isn’t true, Voos said. The funds from the meters go to the City and are used for parking improvements. The meters were paid for with the parking fund.

Many are wondering why there are parking meters on Front Street when that street is closed to non-delivery vehicles. However, the future of Front Street being closed is undetermined and will be decided by a vote of the city council, Voos said.  The street is only set to be closed through the end of the year. The city council will take public input on the issue, take that input into account, and decide whether or not to keep Front Street closed.

Mayor Carl Florea said that he has heard mostly positive feedback from residents regarding the closure of Front Street.

“ I have heard mostly just that they love it the way it is right now,” Florea said. “They love it closed. All the locals and visitors, I think, are overwhelmingly in favor of it. I also hear a few negative [opinions].”

 However, some residents still have concerns over the parking issues or difficulties to those with disabilities that the closure causes. Peshastin resident Spring Miklosh does not think it was a good idea to close Front Street. She said that it is harder for older folks and the handicapped to access Front Street with parking and traffic closed.

“Horrible idea to close Front Street, we don’t have enough parking in town as is. We have many angry tourists coming into the store where I work complaining about how bad it is,” Miklosh said. “The city should absolutely open the streets back up.”

Miklsoh said that there are not enough handicapped parking spaces available, especially with Front Street being closed. She said that her husband cannot shop on Front Street because it is too far for him to walk. She has also heard older people and handicapped people complain about the closure as the pay parking lots are too far away for them.

While the Link bus is a good idea, the city needs more parking, Miklosh said. She said it is hard to say whether employees should get free parking near the downtown area as what really needs to be done is build a multi-level parking garage for cars. Workers don’t make enough money to pay for parking, she said.

“The city has not handled the parking issues at all. They just made things worse,” she said. “Open the town back up and start using the parking meters that the city spent so much money on.”

Voos said that building a parking garage could be expensive. While she does not currently know the exact amount a parking garage could cost, she said that it is costly.

“[A parking garage] is a good idea and we have talked about it. Now that we have revenues for parking meters the city could potentially bond against that [for a loan],” she said. “What we don’t want to do is put in the wrong place where it messes up traffic or it's not the right place for people to get where they are going. So that is why we want to be very careful before we build a ten, twenty, thirty-million-dollar parking lot.”

A Leavenworth resident, “Hailee Stanfield”, an employee at a hotel downtown who wished to be anonymous, said that finding parking for her job is a real issue. She said that she was hired on the condition of having a reliable car to drive to work and is expected to drive that car to work, although she lives in town.

Stanfield said that she doesn’t understand why she has to drive her car to work and would be willing to take the bus downtown, but only if her employer didn’t find out.

“I would use it, personally. If it were an option and my work wouldn’t find out, then I would use it,” she said.

With the current bus schedule, the bus downtown does not help Stanfield with her work commute, even if her employer were supportive of public transit. Bus routes may be expanded But she said when she was interviewed, a condition of her employment was “reliable transportation.”

If her employer found out about her using the bus, Stanfield said there would be repercussions

and that her work “definitely would be mad.” Stanfield said there needs to be more employee parking. She said that guests at her hotel are sent to park in the free parking rows behind the library, limiting parking even more.

Stanfield said there are so many signs at the Osborn parking lot that she would be too worried to park there.  She also doesn’t want to park at the DOT parking lot as she said they mark tires and after a certain amount of time cars will be towed if they are parked there for too long.  She doesn’t know how long cars can park there but said she wouldn’t feel safe leaving her car parked there all day while she was at work.

Voos said that the DOT parking lot is now owned by the city. While the school district owns the parking lot adjacent to the district office, the City of Leavenworth owns the property where the old school and playground is.

The dirt parking lot by Barn Beach is full by the time she goes to work, Stanfield said. She thinks that the city should open Front Street back up because it would allow for a lot more parking to open up around businesses. If Front Street were open, she said there would be a lot less issues with traffic flow and parking in general.

Hans Mulders, owner of Obertal Inn, said that he supports Front Street being closed even though parking is “definitely problematic” for his employees. He said the idea that parking should be completely free doesn’t make sense as parking is a highly sought commodity in Leavenworth and charging for parking forces turnover.

“I think employees either need to park a little farther away where it doesn’t cost anything or take the bus in, which is not very hard from Wenatchee. If you want to drive, you are taking a spot away from someone who was going to spend money in the town. So where do you draw that line?,” Mulders said.

While Mulders does not think employees should be able to park in the downtown center for free, he has tried to mitigate the hardships his employees face with transportation and other issues through increased pay.

“[Parking] is a hard question, right? We dealt with it and gave all our employees raises, so our minimum wage is now $17.25 an hour,” he said. “And we pay bonuses, so they earn in the neighborhood of twenty bucks an hour at this time of year, plus a significant number of other benefits that they receive. And that was to mitigate the cost of parking a little bit, mitigate the cost of gas. On January 1st we are going to go up to $18.25 an hour.”

Many Front Street employees face a transportation dilemma, especially with limited transit times and parking. Local resident Beth Walker said that she used to offer parking for free for downtown workers or charge for others to park on her property but said the city no longer allows that.

Walker said that when the parking meters were put in place her parking operations were shut down and the city said that they were going to fine her $250 if she continued the parking.  She complied. She said she can’t even have people park for free because only two cars can be parked in her driveway.

Walker said that she has two driveways but still is only allowed two cars because the other driveway does not have a building permit on file with the city.  She said that she has epilepsy and was doing the parking part time to make extra money and will not continue parking if it is not allowed. Walker said that she originally called the city to get permission for the parking five years ago.

The municipal code determines how parking regulations are laid out, which determines how parking is enforced, regardless of if the parking is at a parking lot or residence, Voos said.

But with ever-present tourists in Leavenworth, parking will continue to be a major issue, whether or not employees are allowed to park at local residences. With Leavenworth being a top tourist destination, the question remains: Where can I park?