OCEAN CITY – A new division under the transportation department will oversee all paid parking activities in town.
In a work session Tuesday, the Ocean City Council voted 6-1 to create a new parking division under the town’s transportation department. The division would fall under the leadership of Transit Manager Rob Shearman and would feature a new full-time parking manager and seven or eight part-time parking enforcement officers.
“To have a revenue source and, frankly, a system that is fairly complex and not have a person be in charge of it, I think is a mistake,” City Manager Terry McGean told the council this week.
Currently, paid parking in Ocean City generates an average of $6 million in revenue each year. However, activities associated with the management of paid parking are dispersed among five different departments and five different parking vendors.
To that end, McGean presented the Mayor and Council on Tuesday with a request to form a parking division within public works’ transportation department. He said the division would be staffed with a full-time parking manager and between seven and eight part-time parking enforcement officers, two of which will be on duty during all paid parking hours.
“What we’d like to do is move virtually everything under that division,” he explained. “So that division would handle overall administration and management. Right now, no one does that.”
McGean said Ramp Up Advisors Principal Duke Hanson recently reviewed parking statistics and operations within Ocean City and found that people were not paying for paid parking. Compared to similar jurisdictions, he said the town reported a much lower paid occupancy rate.
“We would expect occupancy revenue from a space to run about 55%,” he said. “Right now, we’re at 46%.”
McGean added that the number of non-Inlet metered parking tickets had dropped dramatically since one public safety aide (PSA) tasked with parking enforcement had retired in 2021. Since that time, revenue from fines has decreased from $120,000 to $40,000.
“The police, their goal is law enforcement,” he said. “They have a mandate from the council, specifically for Boardwalk patrols. That’s where the PSAs are. Parking enforcement for the PSAs is secondary, quite honestly.”
McGean said he anticipates the creation of a new division to cost $151,000 in one-time fees and $621,000 in recurring costs. He noted, however, that the division would also produce $289,000 in savings and generate an estimated $460,000 in new revenue.
“Ultimately in year one, this would be cost neutral,” he explained. “And in years two through five, we would expect an average net revenue increase of approximately $120,000.”
Councilman John Gehrig said he agreed with the creation of a parking division but questioned if the town needed to hire nine additional employees.
“I’d rather see what we can do with Rob managing it and get someone on board to at least enforce …,” he said. “Hiring nine people right out of the gate, that’s a tough one for me.
Officials, however, argued a parking manager was needed. Public Works Director Hal Adkins said the town had a $6 million revenue source with no one to manage it.
“You’ve got a $6 million revenue source, call it a ship floating out in the ocean, and nobody is steering it …,” he said. “I think there’s a great potential here for growth, control and management.”
Councilman Frank Knight also highlighted the importance of enforcing the town’s paid parking. He said enforcement officers would ensure compliance.
“I’m fine with hiring a couple people to patrol the streets,” Gehrig said. “We don’t need this $150,000 person with a car and everything else.”
Gehrig also questioned if the town’s paid parking occupancy was lower than typical parking standards because there was an abundance of free parking elsewhere. He said paid parking was something the town should start discussing.
“We’re assuming that 20% drop is because people are parking and not paying for it,” he said. “People may not be parking there because we have so much free parking elsewhere that it sits vacant.”
For his part, Hanson said he had personally conducted a survey of paid parking in town and had logged numerous parking violations where no tickets were issued. He said the issue wasn’t paid parking, but a lack of enforcement.
“The level of legal occupancy is low, and the violation rate is even higher than what you would anticipate in a normal parking management program,” he said.
Addressing Gehrig’s comments about paid parking, McGean said a consultant had met with members of a parking task force in recent years and had made three recommendations – to change parking rates, to address the management of the parking system, and to create additional paid parking. While the first two recommendations are being addressed, he said the task force disagreed with the idea of expanding paid parking.
“We need a real conversation about where paid parking needs to be and why, and be honest …,” Gehrig reiterated. “We are not having the other side of the conversation, and I think we need to have it.”
Councilwoman Carol Proctor, however, argued that creating a parking division was the first step in addressing paid parking issues.
“Without a division, I honestly don’t know if we know what we have …,” she said. “I think we’re leaving a lot more on the table then we think we are. I think by putting this division together we’re going to be able to make the sound decisions we need to make as a council. Before we add paid parking throughout town, we really need to know what we have and what we need to do with what we have.”
After further discussion, the council voted 6-1, with Gehrig opposed, to combine all paid parking activities into a parking division under the transportation department and to hire a full-time parking manager and the necessary part-time parking enforcement officers.
The council this week also voted unanimously to award a bid for parking enforcement technology and citation management services to Duncan Solutions at a cost of $330,000. McGean said the company was one of two bids the town received.
“We did get two bids, from Duncan and T2,” he explained. “Our current vendor did not submit a bid. They were unable to do some of the things we were looking to have this new enforcement vendor perform.”
