FAYETTEVILLE -- The city will no longer require a minimum number of parking spaces at new restaurants and stores and will raise its property taxes by about a third next year after City Council votes Tuesday.
The votes will make the city safer and more modern and business-friendly, advocates said, overriding concerns from some city officials.
Fayetteville Fire Pension
The City Council on Tuesday continued discussing handing over administration of the local firemen’s pension fund to the Arkansas Local Police and Fire Retirement System to help the fund survive, but no vote was taken. The proposal is set to come up again at the Council’s next meeting:
• When: 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20
• Where: Room 219, City Administration Building, 113 W. Mountain St.
First, the council voted 5-2 to do away with nonresidential parking standards, which until then were based on a business's type and floor space. Adella Gray of Ward 1 and Alan Long of Ward 4 were opposed, while Martin Schoppmeyer of Ward 3 wasn't present.
The Planning Commission in July recommended deleting the parking standards to make it easier to start businesses, fill in unneeded parking across the city and encourage people to walk or bike rather than drive. The change is "a leap of faith," Alderman Matthew Petty of Ward 2 said, but the old standards were hurting the city.
"Right now we have about three parking spaces in the city for every car," he said, adding the standards' calculations are based on "debunked" and outdated studies. The decades-long trends of increasing car use and urban sprawl are reversing, Petty said, but oversized parking lots and other results of those trends are left behind.
"If we want to fix that, we have to adopt policies like this proposal," Petty said.
Three other Council members joined Petty in voting against the standards despite the city attorney's warnings doing so could have unintended side effects and send traffic spilling over into neighborhoods near businesses with little or no parking. Kit Williams, the attorney, invoked the concept of the "tragedy of the commons," in which individuals act in their own self interest but make the whole group suffer.
Williams also said in his opinion state law would prevent the city from reinstating the standards if it changes its mind later. To address his concerns, city planners last month presented a compromise allowing planners to look at and possibly reduce parking minimums case by case.
"This (compromise) gives us the opportunity to try something and see how it works in Fayetteville," said Long, calling for an incremental approach. The council rejected the compromise 4-3.
The aldermen then cleared a request from Mayor Lioneld Jordan's administration to start levying an additional 1 mill to pay for 23 new or unfilled positions, taking the city levy to 4.1 mills and raising about $1.4 million in revenue. Alderman John La Tour of Ward 4 was the sole vote against, saying the proposal would hurt first-time homebuyers and could be accomplished with budget cuts elsewhere.
Nineteen of the positions would serve the Police and Fire departments. One employee each would be added in the prosecutor's office, Budget and Information Management Division, Parks and Recreation Department and Building Safety Division as well.
The new mill adds $30 to the $123 city property tax bill for the owner of a $150,000 house, which doesn't include the tax bills from the county and school district.
"There's few politicians that run on, 'I'm going to raise your taxes,' but there comes a time when there's a need," Jordan said.
Police Chief Greg Tabor and Fire Chief David Dayringer have said their departments have had roughly the same head count as they did in 2006 -- despite a more than 13 percent increase to the city's population and jumps in calls for service and response times. Other departments have left positions unfilled since 2009.
Under the mayor's proposal, a new six-officer "beat" would be added along with a dispatcher and motorcycle officer to handle traffic stops and wrecks. The Fire Department is set to add a 10-firefighter company at Fire Station No. 1, 303 W. Center St., moving additional firefighters to Station No. 6.
NW News on 10/07/2015