Leavenworth Contemplates Paid On Street Parking

The Leavenworth Parking Advisory Committee presented to city council the idea of implementing paid on street parking to meet the goal of tightening up control with on street parking.

"Most of the other communities around here, whether its Cashmere or the city of Wenatchee, have some type of restricted parking on street. Whereas the city of Leavenworth, other than eight or nine 30 minute stalls, allows parking on street all day long," said Joel Walinksi, city administrator. "The idea is that those on street parking stalls that are in front of all the businesses are best served and the most convenient to either visitors or local residents that want to come downtown."

Walinksi explained the city wanting to move the long term parked cars, such as employers and employees, to parking lots that the city owns or private lots in town to make room for downtown patrons. The committee weighed heavily between timed parking or paid parking before landing on finding more benefits with paid parking.

"Paid on street parking, especially with the smart meters, allows a couple of different advantages. One is it allows information to be gathered on parking so that you can be more active of management of parking and number two is in terms of enforcement or changing people's behavior. Paid parking does that more so than timed parking," said Walinski.

With timed parking, Walinski stated that a concern rose that employees would beat the system by just shuffling the cars around.

The next step for the paid parking idea is for public outreach to gather input and also a series of 'micro-suggestions' before the paid parking really gains traction. The parking committee is also drafting some ideas on employee parking to alleviate that issue.

"Public input is one of the priorities on the list right now and number two is bringing on a consultant or a firm who actually does put in and provides the software and the hardware for parking meters," said Walinski.

The tentative timeline for parking meters and paid parking is currently sometime next spring, roughly around April or May.

The parking advisory board is a relatively new entity, they started meeting in May 2019 once every two weeks.