WESTFIELD – The Planning Board voted last night following a public hearing to send a positive recommendation to the City Council to change the parking ordinance for the Commerial, Office, Retail, Enterprise (CORE) district that will allow the Off-street Parking Commission to use special revenue for routine maintenance.
The ordinance provides relief for property owners wishing to create additional residential apartments but who do not have sufficient parking to support that conversion. The CORE residential parking requirement is one space per unit. That requirement can be waived through a one-time payment of $2,500 fee per space.
The ordinance was originally adopted with the intent to accrue money to construct additional downtown parking in the future, but some residents and members of the parking commission argued that those funds would better serve resident by increasing maintenance of the existing lots.
The board unanimously voted to amend the ordinance to allow funds, generated by property owners seeking a waiver for the CORE parking requirement of one space per residential unit for a free of $2,500 per space, to be used for maintenance up to a $25,000 cap.
The existing ordinance restricts how the funds collected can be used. The current ordinance, Article III, Section 3-100, reads:
c.Fees paid to the City, in lieu of providing some or all of the required parking spaces shall be deposited into the municipal fund and shall be used solely for expenses related to adding parking spaces, improving the utilization of existing parking spaces or reducing parking demands, but not for maintenance costs. Any requests to appropriate funds from this account shall be filed with the City Council and shall then be referred to the Off Street Parking Commission, which shall have 45 days to forward their comments and recommendations to City Council before a vote of the appropriation may be taken. (12/6/2012)
The City Council has slated a public hearing on the proposed amendment to the zoning ordinance at their Sept. 19 session.
Ward 1 Councilor Christopher Keefe, who spoke at the Planning Board hearing in his capacity as chairman of the Legislative & Ordinance Committee, said the “original intent of the ordinance was to build up the fund, but I wonder how many years would have to pass to build up the fund before the city could buy land for (additional) parking?”
“I was approached by the Off-street Committee, the parking clerk and citizens to allow those (wavier) funds to go into the parking revolving account for use in maintaining the lot,” Keefe said. “This amendment allows the council to authorize the diversion of the (wavier) funds into the revolving account.”
