Should Yale University and Yale New-Haven Hospital give all their employees free off-street parking, so neighbors can reclaim street spots?
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison raised that suggestion — and a Yale official critiqued it — during the latest public debate over whether New Haven should rewrite its zoning rules.
The suggestion was made during a joint meeting Monday night of the Board of Alders Community Development and Legislation committees at City Hall, where alders considered a controversial proposal to exert more oversight over the parking plans of planned developments with 100 parking spaces or more. Proponents say the change would inject more democracy into development decisions by giving the alders more oversight on major building plans. Opponents call the proposal a poorly-crafted power grab that injects an unnecessary new level of review of matters already handled by the City Plan Commission and the zoning board.
The committee did not vote on the proposal Monday night, continuing the hearing on it until Dec. 10.
Underlying the debate, at least in public, has been the question of how to free up more street spaces for neighbors, spaces that Yale and hospital workers now occupy.
Alders said their constituents complain of doing daily battle with university and hospital employees for the parking places in front of their houses. They also must deal with construction workers building projects connected to both employers taking up the spaces and forcing them to double-park their cars to get groceries into the house. The constituents sometimes walk many blocks sometimes in the dark or through desolate areas just to get home.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Marchand, Walker and Colon made their case.
Hill Alder Dolores Colon, West River Alder and BOA President Tyisha Walker and Westville Alder Adam Marchand are pushing the proposal, which takes the form an amendment to the city zoning ordinance that already governs overall parking plans for “land owned or used by religious, educational, or hospital institutions” — namely Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Marchand said the amendment seeks not only to “make sure these parking plans are up to date, and rigorous and sufficient for parking and transportation issues,” but also “to say, ‘OK, there is all this good thought and work going on, but let’s bring it before the Board of Alders so we can make sure that that work is thoroughly examined and subjected to a public hearing and voted on by us.”
Colon said she moved to her block of the Hill 13 years ago, and has found parking a persistent problem.
“People that get up early in the morning and go to work, and find that they cannot park in front of their homes because workers from the area or commuters that take the train are taking their parking spaces near their homes, and they have to park either a block or two away or in some cases four blocks away in areas that are desolate,” she said. “They fear for their safety, so that’s why I am here and that’s why I sponsored this legislation and that’s why we need to look at a solution to deal with the parking problems in our neighborhood.”
Walker said she has a similar problem in her neighborhood. She called the amendment as an opportunity to address what has become a crisis level problem.
“We’re all pro-development, but it can’t be at the expense of the people who have to live here with the development,” she said. “I think that this a good dialogue that we started last week, and we committed to work with the city on the concerns that were raised in the City Plan report and we’re doing that.” (Click here for a story about how the City Plan Commission advanced the proposal to the alders, but with a detailed critique.)
Vincent Petrini (pictured), senior vice president for public affairs for Yale-New Haven Hospital, said he doesn’t believe the alders’ intent to be anti-development. But he said he amendment, as written, would cause an unintended chilling effect on future economic development in the city and “create a new regulatory hurdle for economic expansion.”
“We provide parking for 10,000 employees on a monthly basis,” Petrini reminded alders. “We do so in large measure by leasing spaces from city-owned parking garages and lots at a cost of about $7 million a year. That’s money that flows from the hospital to the city of New Haven.”
Currently 1,200 employees participate in “transportation demand management programs” that provide alternatives to driving including a free shuttle service with commuter lot drop-off points, dry bicycle storage and special carpoolers parking, monthly CT transit passes and telecommuting, according to Petrini.
Lauren Zucker, Yale’s associate vice president for New Haven affairs and university properties, said the university offers similar alternatives for its employees, including access to Zipcar memberships and showers for those who bike to work. She said the university in fact has a surplus of parking in its parking plan because not all spaces are in use at any given time.
Dixwell Alder Morrison (pictured in the photo at left) pushed back against the idea that the plan is working well. She said Yale employees are parking in neighborhoods like hers because paying to park is a disincentive to use those services.
“I hear this list, and that’s nice,” Morrison said of the alternatives. “I understand the efforts, but all your efforts cost your workers. So if I worked for you, believe me, I would be looking for a free parking space. Most people don’t want to pay to go to work. I want to thank you for the efforts, but the issue is really the cost.”
Morrison said creating new neighborhood parking zones — under which residents gets stickers entitling them to street spaces — would be cost prohibitive to some of her constituents. She suggested instead that the university give all employees free monthly passes to park in university lots.
Zucker said free parking would create more problems than it would solve.
“It would be very hard to provide free parking for every single person at the university,” she said. “It’s not sustainable, and it’s not good for the environment. It’s not a practical solution that we could implement.
“But there are ideas that could work that have been circulated out there. We understand that the issue is that people are parking on public streets and unless they become not public streets, people will continue to park on those streets.”
Zucker said the university is committed to working with the city to find a solution, but the amendment, as it exists, isn’t that solution.
“One idea we’ve heard circulated is to charge people to park on public streets during the day,” Zucker said. “The city could charge public employees and at night they would become residential zones only and you wouldn’t have to charge the residents for that. That is an idea that needs to be fully explored, we’re ready to talk about strategies that might help this initiative.”