February 14th, 2020 – 12:30 PM
Ethan Garrett – WRGA Digital News Editor and Video Reporter
The Rome City Commission held a meeting on Thursday where many topics were discussed; among them in particular was an update on the status of parking in downtown Rome (by The City of Rome Downtown Development Authority).
The City of Rome Downtown Development Authority is “working to develop parking strategies to better enhance visitor experience in the downtown district.”
A parking Committee (which was established in 2010) is striving for the following goals:
- Managing the limited parking resources that are available.
- Providing on-street parking turnover through consistent enforcement.
- Providing low-cost off street parking.
The parking committee recommended a parking plan on May 22nd 2018 that was approved by the city commission. On October 31st, a License Plate Visibility Ordinance & an increase in Fees resolution was approved as well.
On June 11th 2019, The Rome City Commission changed the parking time limit downtown was also changed from 2 hour to 3 hour parking.
Based on Community input, the parking committee has done the following things to help improve the downtown parking situation:
- Increased the ADA spaces.
- Installed new directional signage.
- Pressure washed 4th avenue deck.
- Installed all new LED Lights in all 3 parking decks.
- Created a 7-day-a-week public bathroom cleaning schedule.
- Increased parking deck security and monitoring.
- Replaced signage.
- Installed 3 new parking kiosks at the 3rd avenue parking deck and 6th avenue parking deck.
- Expanded the Parkmobile Pay App.
- Purchased LPR Technology to help track and enforce parking while obtaining analytics for future changes and development.
The City of Rome Downtown Development Authority ran a Hiccup recently when it was decided that there would be a change of the vendor service that handled the Parking Permit Enforcement, Permit Invoicing and Payments, and customer service.
Thankfully, all data was saved and analytics on this information will be available in the coming months.