Traffic and Transportation Committee

TRAFFIC AND TRANSPORTATION February 26, 2018 A meeting of the Committee on Traffic and Transportation was held this date beginning at 2:04 p.m., at the Dock Street Theatre, 135 Church Street, Third Floor Conference Room. Notice of this meeting was sent to all local news media. PRESENT Councilmember Seekings, Chair; Councilmember Moody, Councilmember Wagner, Councilwoman Jackson, and Mayor Tecklenburg Staff: Keith Benjamin, Robert Somerville, Janie Borden, and Bethany Whitaker, Council Secretary The meeting was opened with a moment of silence provided by Chairman Seekings. APPROVAL OF MINUTES On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Mayor Tecklenburg, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the minutes of the February 13, 2018 meeting. Application for Original Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity:  Yuan Ping Li, DBA Nandu Cab & Limo (Limo) On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Councilwoman Jackson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the above Application for Original Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. Traffic Calming Speed Hump for Approval:  Fairway Drive – Country Club II Neighborhood  Bermuda Stone Road – Carolina Bay Mr. Somerville stated that they met the requirements per the traffic calming packet. Councilmember Moody said he knew that there was one speed hump for Country Club II and he assumed they met the qualifications for the 200 cars. He asked if it was a cut-through. Mr. Somerville said it was and with school traffic, they had been concerned for a while about cut through during the day. Councilwoman Jackson asked what the standard was and Mr. Somerville said it was 350 cars. Councilmember Wagner asked if they had talked to the Fire Department about the Carolina Bay one. Mr. Somerville said they knew of the request, and they would be told the exact locations later and asked if they had any concerns. Councilmember Wagner said this would be a cut-through for everyone trying to get to West Ashley High School. Mr. Somerville said the highest volume of traffic was cutting around the park to Carolina Bay Drive. Chairman Seekings asked how they were on the budget and Mr. Somerville said they were fine. They had a few applications currently pending. Councilwoman Jackson asked how long it took to process. Mr. Benjamin said they were flipping it. Previously, they would get a request in, would go out and do the counts and then go to the community to get the buy-in. Now, he has asked for the community buy-in (the petition) first, so they knew that box was checked before they sent people out. Mr. Somerville said Fairway Drive was a State maintained road, so once the Committee approved it, they would have to take it before DOT to get the final approval. On the motion of Councilmember Moody, seconded by Councilwoman Jackson, the Committee voted unanimously to approve the above Traffic Calming Speed Humps. Residential Parking Permit Appeal – 61 Vanderhorst Street Ms. Borden, Attorney for the City of Charleston, stated that she believed they were there today at the request of Mr. Boone, on behalf of his client, who was appealing the enactment or decision of Section 19-270 which limited the number of residential parking permits that may be given to a TMS number to 6. She believed it would be best to allow Mr. Boone to present his side of the appeal as to why he believed that provision needed to be repealed, rewritten, or another action. Mr. Boone, McNair Law Firm, stated that he represented Vanderhorst Realty, LLC. Hilton Smith, Jr was the President. The property had 33 apartments, and they had 33 regular parking spaces on site and 2 handicapped spaces. Right next door to them there was a condominium that had 10 units, and they could get 20 decals, two per condominium, because they had separate TMS numbers, whether they needed it or not. They had 33 apartments, and were limited to 6 parking decals, which was woefully inadequate to a substantial tax payer in the district. Residential parking districts were for parking in the neighborhood for people utilizing the adjacent commercial, industrial or institutional uses. The only way they got a residential parking district was they showed there were other people using it other than the residents of the neighborhood. They couldn’t treat the tenants different with regards to a parking decal. They thought that limiting it to 6 decals had unintended consequences when they limited it without knowing how many apartments there were, not knowing how many spaces were needed. He thought the Ordinance should be amended, if they wanted to go to one or two spaces. Mr. Boone passed out a document. Mr. Boone said they would like to go back to the two spaces, and would like for them to do a more thorough study to consider the whole neighborhood and look at who had parking and who didn’t have any parking, and make a more reasonable and just allocation of parking. Chairman Seekings said that the way they styled their appeal was the appeal of the decision of Mr. Somerville. He asked if they had a copy of the application that Mr. Somerville considered and denied. Mr. Boone said he did not. Mayor Tecklenburg said if this became effective January 1st, and the tenants had been looking for spaces that they weren’t able to provide, had they looked at places like the MUSC about the garage down the street which was pretty empty at night. There may have been other alternatives nearby that could be made available. Mr. Boone said that in the past they were able to get two parking decals per apartment. It was up to them to go get it, and they came back into town, the law had been changed, and they couldn’t get a parking decal. Mayor Tecklenburg asked what their need was. They had 33 spaces and 2 handicapped, so there were 35 spaces for 33 units. He assumed they were meeting current zoning, and he asked how many they needed to satisfy their demand. Mr. Boone said they were entitled to 66, but would go down to 33. 33 would work. Mr. Borden stated that it appeared that they were trying to be held to making a distinction between a renter and a property owner. In drafting the Ordinance, they were careful not to do that. Under the Ordinance, there was a cap of 6 permits per TMS number. It didn’t matter if they were the adult children of the property owner, renters, or in-laws. It didn’t matter what the relationship was as to who was on the property. They had to have a driver’s license with the address there, taxes had to be paid there, or other proof that they were residing there. If they had side-dwellings and more than 6 individuals needing residential parking permits, only the first 6 that came into the T&T office would be granted a permit. After that, it was cut off. The City and Staff did not make any distinction as to who got a permit over somebody else. It was all done by the property owner, or was on a first come-first serve basis. If they believed it was discrimination for property owners over renters, she believed that in a court of law it would be upheld, because it was rationally related to a legitimate government purpose. So, because it didn’t involve a suspect class, they only had to meet that rational relation test, and she thought they did that. According to the 2000 parking study, there were 367 on-street parking spots for this neighborhood. Last half of 2017, they issued 694 parking permits. There wasn’t enough parking for every resident in this neighborhood, so in an attempt to try to reduce the number of permits that were being given out, not discriminate between who couldn’t or could get them, but they capped the number of what could be given per TMS number to try to accommodate the on-street parking gap they had in the neighborhood. She also thought that they would not be able to grant, that day, additional parking permits to 61 Vanderhorst Street because it would require an Ordinance amendment, and she didn’t think the Committee had the power to direct another staff member to break a law or permit that contravenes the law that said there would only be 6 permits issued. If they wanted to grant additional permits, it would require an ordinance amendment, to either repeal the cap for everybody across the City, or to provide some mechanism to accomplish what was being requested. It was also important to note that the City was not required by any law she was able to find to supplement parking for property owners use. That was what they were being asked to do. They were being asked to provide on-street parking to off-set a parking need for a property owner. There was no law that required them to do that; they could choose to provide or allow parking on the public right-of-way, which was what they had done there, but they were also mindful of the fact that they didn’t have enough to give everybody one, so they had to limit it in some form or fashion. This was the way they had chosen to do that, and it was rational. By implementing the new process, it really did benefit the community in the sense that, before when they did not have it based on TMS, but on a property address, it became very time consuming for staff to validate addresses. Units would come and go as the use of the unit was changed to a more permanent use, so it became difficult and the process and length of time to get the permit was extensive. By doing it with a TMS number, anybody in the City could look that up instantly and know how many permits that property was entitled to, and they could count the permits. It helped the general public know if they qualified, let the public know who the permits were being given to, and for that reason she believed it was a rational process for implementing the City’s stated purpose of the Ordinance. She would also say that she wasn’t aware that Vanderhorst Realty, LLC ever applied for a Residential Parking Permit and was denied. She couldn’t find any record of that, so with that being said, she wasn’t sure if they were the property party there to appeal the Ordinance, because she couldn’t find the record where they had applied for a permit and were denied. Councilwoman Jackson stated that she had a question on how they issued permits and asked if it was up to the permit holder. If a student graduated or someone moved away, was it up to them to say they didn’t need the decal anymore. Ms. Borden said yes and what happened in that case was that a new renter would come in and apply and explain the situation. They would have to get the old permit back and they would be issued a new permit to the new tenant. Councilwoman Jackson said they had created a familiarity among individuals that they were responsible for the issuance of decals. Ms. Borden said yes. Councilmember Moody asked for the numbers again for number of permits allowed and number issued in that district. Ms. Borden said that according to the 2000 parking study that was completed, there were 367 on-street parking spaces and 694 permits were issued between July and December 2017. Councilmember Moody said they already had about twice as many needs. Chairman Seekings said the demand far outweighed the supply. Since the 2000 Study, there were fewer parking spaces in that district. Councilmember Moody asked what the history for this property was because it seemed that a few years previous there was a change in this property. It had an adjustment allowing more people or the apartments were divided. There were 33 units and 33 spaces, so it seemed like the units were changed in some way. Ms. Borden said that was correct. The units had been increased from studio and one bedroom apartments to one bedroom up to three bedroom apartments. Councilmember Moody asked what the previous number of units was before the 33. They had one parking spot for each unit. He heard that they weren’t required to give parking, which was a zoning issue as they went through the adjustment. He thought that was a question when they were going to re-do this. He understood that they had responded that they didn’t need as many parking spaces, it would be for students, and they wouldn’t have cars. Now, they were back, and they had a problem now with the parking. He wasn’t sure if that was true, and wanted to know if it was. Ms. Borden said based on her conversation with Lee Batchelder in Zoning, they did undertake a renovation from 53 units down to 33 units, and the number of bedrooms in each unit was increased from one to two or three and then some studios went to one bedroom. Chairman Seekings said that 61 Vanderhorst was an existing non-conforming use and during its existing non-conforming use they reconfigured it, but did not change the footprint of the building. In the reconfiguration, they took the population, if fully leased out, from around 53 to around 100. Councilmember Moody said that was his recollection, that the number of people occupying went doubled. So, when it went back to parking spaces, to get that doubling, there had to be some kind of consideration made for parking. It was either that they didn’t need it, or something else. He asked if that parking permit was then, that would allow them to have the parking they would need. Ms. Borden said there was no ratio before it was changed; this was newly enacted at the end of the previous year as part of the parking issue. Councilmember Moody said they could still park there, they could double the number of units, and people could park anywhere. Chairman Seekings asked Mr. Boone to address the question about the change in residency and density, and to who the actual applicant was there today for purposes of the statutory review of whether it was an appropriate appeal. It seemed to him that they were being asked to address the Ordinance, whether than an application. Mr. Boone said that the building had 53 apartments, it was a valid non-conforming use, and they were able to go through the process to convert to 33 residential units. The parking, as it was before was 2 spaces per residential unit. That was what it was, so that would be 99 spaces, and they weren’t asking for that. He didn’t have an appeal or a denial of an appeal. To say that this building, because it had one TMS number, only got 6 spaces was irrational. He could convert it to 33 condominiums, and would get 66 spaces, but he didn’t want to do that and then have them decide that the TMS number wasn’t right to determine the permits. This was for residential people that lived there. Mayor Tecklenburg asked how many bedrooms there were before and how many there were now. Mr. Boone said there were 101 bedrooms now, and before it was unstructured. There would be a room before that they could put 10 people in, and they turned it into bedrooms, so they could control the number of occupants and units. Chairman Seekings asked what the pleasure of the Committee was, recognizing this was an appeal from Mr. Somerville’s decision to deny a residential permit that was not in their packet. Councilmember Moody asked if they had something to vote on. It seemed like the question was they weren’t sure what the appeal was. Ms. Borden said that she didn’t believe they had standing to bring the challenge forward, because they never applied for or were denied a permit to begin with. It was a hypothetical that they were going on. Councilmember Moody said he saw two problems. The first one was that this change that went into effect increased the number of beds, and so he wasn’t sure what was said at BZA or what was promised/not promised. He did feel like Mr. Boone had an issue when they were hung up on a technicality of having a TMS right next door that had many more permits. The parking issue downtown caused trouble where they had a house that was allowed two spaces, and they had 4-6 spaces in the back or the side, and don’t even need two permits. He suspected that everyone went and got their two, whether they park there or not. It was based on an arbitrary fact pattern when the reality of it may be different. He wasn’t sure if they could do anything else about this, and he thought they had done a great job. The problem is that they had to treat everyone the same, and then they always would have outliers that they couldn’t accommodate. He drove around the place the day before, and there were a lot of vacant spaces in the parking lot around the building. They couldn’t throw 90 cars into the street there. Mayor Tecklenburg said they had some technicalities at play. He was sure they could produce a tenant that was denied to formalize the appeal. They couldn’t take action there today to give them relief without City Council taking up the matter to actually go back and change the Ordinance. He would submit that they did have the opportunity to do that, particularly on the heels of the parking study that was going to be completed that year. That would be the appropriate time for them to make any additional changes to the Ordinance. There were other changes to the Ordinance that they had intended to make, but decided to wait until the study was done. This may be an unintended consequence, and the real intent of the provision was to think about single family residences that had up to 5-7 bedrooms with 2-3 students in each one, and they may have a demand of 20 permits. Given the number of spaces on the street, and the demand, it was wise for the City to set limits on how many permits were available. They chose to do it on the TMS number, and maybe that wasn’t the best way, but it was what they came up with at the time, and there may be a better way. He was sure that a parking study would reveal, if they went down to how many properties were like theirs. He thought Council should address it as they did the study and reviewed the Ordinance later in the year. It didn’t help them in the meantime, other than he would offer to assist them in talking to MUSC or the Funeral Home or Ashley Hall School to see if, in the evenings, that they could use spaces. Councilmember Moody asked if they could do anything that day if they wanted to. Chairman Seekings said they had to act on the appeal, or it would be an open matter on the agenda. They had an appeal in front of them that was an appeal of the denial of the issuance of a parking permit. Whether it had occurred or not, it hadn’t come to them in the best way, because they didn’t have it in front of them. They couldn’t take up the challenge of the Ordinance, because it wasn’t put on the agenda or publically noticed. They still had the parking study, which was directly in place to address issues like this. They needed to address this appeal. Councilwoman Jackson asked if he would like a motion to deny the appeal based on the fact that they didn’t have proof of the application. Chairman Seekings said he would accept any motion the Committee made. Councilmember Moody asked if Mr. Boone could now get 6 people to apply and they would go through this again. Councilwoman Jackson said she thought the Mayor had done positive action by saying he would help trying to get a temporary solution. Chairman Seekings said that they would reconsider the Ordinance before or after the parking study was done. After the parking study would make the most sense. They went through a long process to get to where they were, and the Ordinance they were looking at today was scaled way back. They were limited to what they could do based off of what was presented. On the motion of Councilwoman Jackson, seconded by Mayor Tecklenburg, the Committee voted unanimously to deny the residential parking permit appeal. Having no further business, the Committee adjourned at 2:43 p.m. Bethany Whitaker Council Secretary