IF Downtown Development Corporation (IFDDC)

Idaho Falls Downtown Development Corp. July 13, 2021 board meeting was held at the Jacob Grant conference room – 490 Park Ave at 8:30am Attendance: Jake Durtschi, Tasha Taylor, Shanon Taylor, Steve Fischbach, Antonio Meza, Kevin Josephson, Chip Langerak, Shane Dial, Greg Crockett, Councilman Jim Francis, and Anas Almassrahy. Staff: Catherine Smith, Gibby Smede and Mala Lyon Minutes for June 8, 2021 were reviewed - Shanon motioned to accept the minutes. Tasha seconded and board approved Financial Report – Catherine: Idaho Escape Rooms ($100) and a person with a parking permit ($10) have paid in advance so it shows as a negative. We have applied for the forgiveness of the PPP loan. Notices for delinquent parking citations has gone out – about 500 notification letters – and so we have seen an increase in payments. We had about 80 letters returned with bad addresses, or they had moved. People are paying old citations with the late fees. This is a one time increase in money coming in. Greg asked if the lots are full with waiting lists still? Yes. We are having to pay a fee per letter and found address for the notification letters. We did participate in the 4th of July Parade and had some expenses for banners, feather flags and the parade fee to the Chamber. Greg motioned to accept the financial report. Shanon seconded and board approved. Catherine – The scooters are downtown. We originally thought they would stop at Capital, but they are allowed to go anywhere. Catherine tried one out and explained the process to use one. She rode for 8 minutes, and it cost $4.62. The sidewalks at each intersection are marked that they are to dismount. Greg asked if the number of scooter vendors was limited by the city? Boise has e-bikes, scooters, and Segway’s that you can rent. Councilman Francis said there is not a limit. Greg said not everyone loves them and Boise has had some bad accidents and one fatality. Catherine said they do not feel safe to ride on the sidewalk. Tasha said it is wild sometimes on the greenbelt paths to have a small family and dogs on leashes and the scooter come zipping by at 15 mph. Steve asked if the greenbelt paths were considered sidewalks? No, it’s open space. Councilman Francis asked if we felt there needs to be some adjustments? Catherine said we are not seeing real problem yet. Gibby said a plus is people can park and then ride a scooter, so we have fewer moving cars downtown. Vandalism has been increasing. We had several flowerpots that had the flowers stolen or damaged and graffiti. Jim Pletscher has been cleaning the graffiti where he finds it in hopes to discourage them by quickly removing it. There are some dumpsters in the east/west alley behind the Roger’s building that we are looking at the idea of painting with art. We will have to work with the city sanitation so that these dumpsters we have artists paint stay in that alley. Tony expressed concern that when someone sees painting on a space like a dumpster, they see it as an ‘invitation’ to do more and it can create a bigger problem. Gibby said that they have been noticing that when there is art like a mural others tend to leave it alone, plus the goal to quickly cover any tagging or undesirable “art” will be the plan. Collections of unpaid citations – We have several people that have multiple citations and the notification letters have been returned. We are looking at the next step of turning them over to a collection agency. Each person will get 2 notification letters letting them know they have an unpaid citation. After that we need to have the next step in place. Jake said that collection rate of people we will get money from is only about 3-4%. Greg said the charge is about 50% that a collection agency will charge. We can add that fee onto whatever is owed currently. Chip said we need to have this so there is some teeth behind our enforcement. Kevin agreed that if we do nothing to collect that will be a bigger problem in the future. Catherine agreed to do some research on local collection agencies and costs involved. Parking meeting with IPS to gather info about parking meters on-street and what the options might be – Jake said we need to do the best practices for our parking – the next step will be a parking committee meeting. If we do not have the support of the city council and the businesses, we need to stop looking into this. One council member has said they will never support meters. Councilman Francis feels there is a lack of understanding on how the modern meters work with card payments and apps. The council will have problems being in favor if the businesses are split on their support. Greg asked if anyone here is against meters? Chip and Antonio said they were maybes. If the meters have a 20 or 30 minute free window they would be more behind it. Every person that parks will have to go to the meter either to just register they have parked and plan to be only 20 minutes or to pay to park. Had a meeting with Centre Theatre and it was suggested that a card that would be displayed in their vehicle giving them permission to park longer than the two-hour limit while in a movie. If we did this it would give us data as to how many people are parking on the street in the two-hour zones and going to the movies and would have gotten a ticket. These would be dated so they could not be re-used. Kent Lott, owner of the Center Theater claimed there are bad reviews on FaceBook complaining about the parking, but we could not find them. Kent Lott, owner of the Centre Theatre wants the meters installed now and Richard Napier at Idaho Mountain Trading in not in favor of them. Kevin said gathering the data of how many people would use the movie display cards would be important info to have so we know if it just a small minority that are loudly complaining. Jake said we need to determine if this is important enough to make it a priority for the DDC to do all the leg work of talking to each business and explaining how it could work if we moved forward. Greg said this is a long-term goal, but where are we at on the block face ordinance? The City Council will meet on the 29th about that. It will state that after 2 hours you will have to move your vehicle 500 feet (1 ½ blocks) before you are allowed to re-park. Is there an option to just put meters on Park and B Street? Park City in Utah has some metered streets and some two-hour free streets. Catherine will confirm the time and place of the parking committee meeting. Catherine presented the annual report to the city about the BID and will email this out to the board. Taste of Downtown was canceled due to only 2 restaurants saying they could participate. We are talking to Idaho Falls Magazine to see if they want to take on this event in connection with their Dining Awards, they do each year. The Merchant Association is doing a Downtown Block Party on July 24th. This is being spearheaded by Marilynne (MarCellars), Hannah (Handmade Idaho), Bill (Pickle Deli) and Sheba (Cardamom). B Street will be closed with vendors in the street. Oktoberfest will be Sept 25th and Fallbrew will be Nov. 6th. The new person at the city is Renee and is being much stricter on what is and is not allowed city wide. Hoping to follow Boise in their guidelines. Had a problem at Alive After 5 where a woman passed out and the ambulance had to come down Park, go around to Shoup then back up B Street because B Street was totally blocked out. This is a problem and having an open access for emergency vehicles will be required. From Lisa – grants for Pie Hole Pizza, Spruce home and Page Insurance are in the works. IFDDC finished their solar light project in the parking lots. Idaho Mountain Trading got a new sign. We have applied for $65,000 for the next set of grants. Dana – we are halfway thru the planning of the master plan for the BCTC – hoping to have that open in 2022. The rodeo is happening the first weekend in Aug. Meeting was adjourned at 9:40am Our next board meeting is scheduled to be held August 3, 2021. Respectfully submitted by Jill Hansen, Secretary and Mala Lyon