IF Downtown Development Corporation (IFDDC)

Idaho Falls Downtown Development Corp. January 7, 2020 board meeting was held in the Syringa Networks Board Room (460 Park Ave) at 8:30am Attendance: Antonio Meza, Jake Durtschi, Shanon Taylor, Jim Francis, Brandi Newton, Greg Crockett, Jill Hansen, Cindy Napier, Lisa Farris; Staff: Catherine Smith, Juan Hernandez, Mala Lyon; visitors: Jim Pletscher, Emily Fitzpatrick and Anne Rector Emily Fitzpatrick introduced. She is the new Editor of the Idaho Falls Magazine. Jake made a motion that she be nominated to be on the board of directors; Greg seconded and the board approved. Minutes for December 10, 2019 were reviewed – Cindy motioned they be approved; Greg seconded, and board approved Financials: We have received the insurance money for the damaged A Lot booth and will be getting bids to replace it. We hope there will be enough money to replace the signage too. Question on what the $3,500 was – Catherine will find and send a report. Parking income has been $5,700 from October thru December. Snow removal expenses and Christmas bonus show on this report. Shanon motioned the report be approved; Greg seconded and board approved Catherine showed the board a year-end review that was emailed out to the community highlighting the accomplishments of 2019. We have a new logo that we will use for things like this but continue with our regular logo for most things. Goals for 2020:  Re-stripe intersections – safety is a prime concern; Jim Pletscher added large nice reflective flags at the ‘hawk’ cross walk at B Street and Yellowstone; city did Broadway and Park last year and will do more intersections next summer  Street parking stall re-striping where new curb was installed  Murals in crosswalks and working with INL for a building mural – Greg asked about location? Looking at the south side of the Treasure’s building or the back of the Colonial. They want a large noticeable space  Lighting in the alleys – SnakeBite wants to expand and have seating in the alley just west of his building  Underground powerlines – finding a way to help with the cost to the property owners  Improve lighting in the parking lots  New sign 3 sided kiosk on the River Walk – we received an $11,000 grant to pay for that  ‘Welcome to Downtown’ arch sign over Broadway; we are estimating the cost to be $50,000; a sign company offered to do an engineering study for $1,500 but we declined until we have finding for the actual sign. Brandi asked if we could also do one on Yellowstone? Yes if we can find the money.  6 new trash receptacles will be placed so the main intersections will each have 2  Continue to increase our social media presence – we have 6,500 followers on the IFDDC facebook; Downtown Park IF and Instagram is growing. The board was asked to take pictures as they are about downtown and send them to Catherine  Main Street America – looking into joining this organization. We were part of it years ago and it might be time to reconnect.  We are putting together a matrix to track events and how they went and what changes need to be made  Tourism – continue to keep the brochures updated and out in the surrounding communities; we appreciate the money from the Travel Council that pays for the cost of printing them and MCS Advertising does an wonderful job with the graphics  Continue to market parking solutions with the guide maps, social media and other ways of letting people know where they can easily park. There rumor is out there that you can park for 2 hours then have to leave downtown. We are working hard to stop that and to over communicate with employees where they can park. We want to create a “good parking neighbor” and have positive peer culture between the merchants. Have an online sign up page for businesses to agree to be good parking neighbors. The open available parking spaces has improved since we started the new enforcement. Brandi said all we need is for people to come downtown once or twice and have a good experience parking to convince them things have improved. Antonio asked when the BID assessment payment are received? $85,000 it sent to IFDDC in 3 installments January, June and October. The money that is collected above the $85,000 is held at the city and we can make special requests to use it. A portion of that money was used to help pay for the new sidewalk and curb on Broadway last summer. How much do we have left? Catherine will get a report from the city. Jake said 2020 needs to be a stabilizing year and fix some things from last year like some of the pavers have settled and need to be adjusted, a few trees died and will have to be replaced, things like that need to be addresses. Parking Committee - Jake – complaints are all being funneled thru the online portal and it is working very well. The contested tickets are reviewed. Validation was a technology gap that the IPS company had to create for us since we our situation is unique. The options for validation are: 1. As IPS designed it the customer goes to the meter and pays for their parking; they then have 15 minutes to go to a merchant that validates and get it validated. The merchant will have to login to a portal either on a computer or on a phone and look up their license plate number and void the credit card transaction that the customer did at the meter. The credit card charge can not be held for more than 15 minutes by law. We pay a .07 cent transaction fee for each transaction. 2. Keep it as we have done in the past where the customer picks up a ticket with and envelope and display the envelope in their vehicle. They take the ticket with them into the merchant and get it validated. They return the validated ticket inside the envelope and place them in the drop box. Or they pay for their own parking at the meter and do not get validation. 3. A customer will pay for parking at the meter, then take the ticket to a merchant who will place stickers on – one for each hour that is validated. The ticket is returned and we would go in and refund the charge on their credit card. Merchants would be required to purchase the stickers at $100 for 100 stickers. 4. Cancel the validation program and just have the parking lots be pay to park. There is plenty of on-street free parking options, so if a customer doesn’t want to pay to park in the lot they can park on the street. Catherine spent a lot of time with IPS working on what could be done to make this work for how our parking lots are run. This is the best they can do for us. It was agreed that the merchants should have a say or vote on how the program is run. Brandi said we need to figure out what we are doing ASAP and make the responsibility for where and how they park fall on the customer. Train them to go to the meter every time they park. That is how it works. Cindy asked how smooth the  transaction is on the computer to validate? Do we need a separate computer? Will people be standing in line waiting for validation? The customer will need to know their license plate number or have the ticket from the meter with them. It is at least a 1 minute transaction per ticket. We only have 18-20 merchants that currently validate. It was proposed that a meeting be called and all merchants be invited to demonstrate how it works and let them have their say of what they think will work best. Then the board will have the final say. Juan suggested another option of having the merchant offer a parking refund when a purchase is made. Easily done at the cash register when the sell is made. No officially run validation program just each merchant can offer the refund if they want. One meeting will be held and all merchants will be invited. We will collect their feedback and the board will make the final decision on how we will do validation for parking in the parking lots. If someone says they can’t make it to the meeting they should send someone to represent them. Lisa – We have $60,000 available for façade grants. We can define the guidelines to include lighting in alleys. What about the powerlines being put underground? We can look into that. Meeting was adjourned at 9:57am Our next board meeting will be held February 4, 2020 at 8:30am