As the summer approaches, plans for a new paid parking system in Saratoga Springs are coming together.
The plan to implement paid parking in all city-owned lots and garages is expected to generate upwards of $250,000 in revenue.
A registration portal opened to residents this month. Public Works Commissioner Jason Golub says more than 1,000 residents have already registered.
“Individuals can go online, on the city’s website, to register themselves, and all they need is proof of residency and a drivers license. And there is no physical certification or sticker or anything that you’re going to have to put into your window, it’s all done electronically,” said Golub.
Confirmation of registration will be sent through email. License plates will be scanned upon entering and exiting a lot, forgoing a physical pass or window sticker.
In order to register, residents must not have outstanding parking tickets.
Golub says installation is going smoothly.
“You know for us, it’s always, ‘I want it to go faster and faster,’ because you want as much time to test everything before you go live. And so that’s been a little stressful. But we’ll get there. And as I’ve always said, the start date, which has—we’re going to start after the Belmont not during the Belmont. And a part of that is we want to get this right as opposed to get it done fast. We will be up and running when we’re up and running. And my guess is that will be for the entirety of the track season. But, again, this is something that we want to do long-term and to the benefit of the city, not something we want to just rollout and have a bunch of issues come up,” said Golub.
The plan was initially pitched to go into effect on Memorial Day and run through Labor Day. Last week, the Department of Public Works announced it won’t start until the week of June 10th— just days after the Belmont Stakes is run at Saratoga Race Course as its regular downstate home undergoes renovations.
Golub says pushing the start date back is a reflection of his office listening to the concerns of locals and business owners.
“From the beginning that’s been our approach—is to take as much feedback as we can and iterate on it. And once this is up and running that’s still going to be our process. At the end of the summer, we’re going to look back at the data, we’re going to look back at our constituents. We're going to talk to the [Downtown Business Association]. And we’re going to see what went well and what needs to be iterated on and improved on. We have a group of DBA members, we’re going to have a working group that will work with us on assessment after the summer. And so, we will make sure we are getting honest feedback and objective feedback so that we can make the program as successful as possible,” said Golub.
A separate registration portal is open for business owners, who can register their employees’ cars.
Heidi Owen West, who ran for mayor in 2021, owns three downtown businesses. She says the program’s rollout has its pros and cons.
“So, I do appreciate the big rollout and the effort that it takes, but this to me is still a crunched time frame as a business owner. We are planning way down the line. I mean I’m already moving into the track for Belmont so to kind of add this onto what we need to do internally is a bit of a big lift,” said Owen West.
At a city council meeting earlier this month, several changes were made to the management and accessibility of the city’s public library parking lot. Among them, the lot was changed to be a free three-hour lot to residents of the Saratoga Springs City School District who are library card holders between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Saratoga Springs Public Library Board of Trustees president Katie Capelli says the changes were more than 30 years overdue and necessary with the incoming paid parking plan which, for now, is only open to city residents.
“This 50,000 plus people who live in the district can now have a way to park downtown. That’s a very different—the parking system in all of that is really to address tourists versus city residents. But we had another issue of, but these are people who live in Wilton, they live in Greenfield, they live in Gansevoort. They are Public Library patrons, but they are not in the city district,” said Capelli.
Unregistered parkers will pay $2 per-hour to park in city lots and garages. Street parking will remain free.
