A SLUMLORD OWNS THESE
Let’s concentrate on Garage No. 7 and Garage No. 9. What’s wrong with them?
We probably won’t know in detail until the Jan. 14 workshop.
But Rudd said one of the decks of No. 9 recently needed some substantial “shoring up.” Estabrooke said the protective barrier on No. 9’s top deck (maybe 20 or 25 feet above street level) consists of cables that have gone brittle over the decades.
Estabrooke said the consultants have identified nearly $1 million of prioritized (high, medium, low) repairs for No. 9. Ideally, Estabrooke, these would be tackled over a 10-year period to soften the financial blow.
Things are much worse at No. 7 (the spiral garage). Total recommended repairs over a decade would hit nearly $2.8 million. Estabrooke said rehabbing the concrete floors is a high priority.
Then there are the other three garages, the 17 surface lots and all those meters. Rudd said he wants the consultants to give him a comprehensive plan for modernizing everything and ideas how to pay for it all.
At the center of that plan almost certainly will be the “cost per stall” concept, especially as it applies to the garages.
There are two reasons for this.
First, Rudd for the last couple of years (as the Great Recession faded) has pushed hard for “facility assessment studies.” For example, what’s the true cost of operating the Convention Center? Rudd’s shorthand for this complex analysis is “what’s it cost to turn on the lights?”
The thinking: If City Hall knows the true cost of conducting the people’s business at a particular site, then the city with good conscience can set various prices appropriate to recouping those costs.
I’ll cut to the chase: Rudd strongly suspects the city in many instances is almost giving away parking in the garages. He told me the city’s monthly operational cost per stall might be in the $70 range. He said the city sometimes is getting only $30 or so per stall per month.
Which brings us to the second reason that the “cost per stall” concept will soon be on council members’ lips.
A lot of the city’s parking spaces are sold to bulk buyers through contracts. Estabrooke said these include the Fresno County Office of Education and Fresno County.
You know what that means – let’s make a deal. And deal making, by its nature, limits how much leverage one side can use on the other. This is especially true for businesses that generate a lot of taxes and government agencies that have to get along with each other.
In short, City Hall can’t be a parking dictator.
