City of Sedona talks parking & garage – Sedona Red Rock News
Sedona City Council heard an update Jan. 27 on the $26.4 million Uptown Parking Garage, which will add about 270 new public parking spaces. The project is about 70% complete, and anticipated to open in June.
“If we are going to use plate readers on any sort of street parking we need to be very clear on how the steps can be set up so it’s not just picking up anybody who happens to drive by,” Councilman Derek Pfaff said. “I don’t want this in any way, shape or form, to resemble the Flock situation.”
Transit Administrator Amber Wagner said her Transit Department staff is planning to use automatic license plate readers for parking enforcement at “the Uptown Parking Garage and other city managed parking facilities where appropriate,” the draft Parking Data Governance Policy and Standard Operating Procedures for the Sedona Parking Management Program wrote. Additionally “handheld or vehicle-mounted LPRs may be used by parking enforcement staff … for on-street parking and city managed lots,” the document reads.
Parking enforcement will be done by the Sedona Police Department, most likely by non-sworn Community Service officers.
“This is a different situation than having [ALPRs] out on streets where people are just driving through, [because] these are parking lots,” and drivers pay to enter them, Councilman Pete Furman said. “So, I’m OK right now with the direction that” staff has.
“This system is not a law-enforcement tool, does not connect to any police or national ALPR networks, and may not be used for investigative, surveillance or immigration-enforcement purposes,” the draft version of the parking data policy reads.
Residential Parking
Cameras may be used at the Uptown Parking Garage to document vehicles entering and exiting; council had an early discussion on the data governance, with the data currently slated to be saved for 30 days.
“In regards to citations and appeals, it takes about 20 days to have access to the citation data that is issued for appeals with that program,” Wagner said.
Deputy City Manager Andy Dickey said that staff is working to get “the data retention period down as much as we can,” but did not say a lower limit.
Councilwoman Melissa Dunn wanted assurances that facial recognition won’t be done with the garage cameras.
Wagner said she thinks a majority of the RFPs would only capture a vehicles back license plates “so facial recognition would not even be a consideration.”
While the draft states “the vendor is prohibited from releasing data directly to any third party,” Interim Mayor Holli Ploog noted that similar language did not “seem to work with [Flock].”
“At least one of the members on the resident side is somebody who is heavily involved in the [Flock issue] and he is now a member of this work group,” Ploog said — Parking Work Group member and civil rights lawyer Mikkel Jordahl — which Vice Mayor Brian Fultz later confirmed. “So I think we can be assured that concerns about the cameras are going to be addressed and brought up, and that this is not an attempt to repeat the Flock camera fiasco.”
Made up of city officials, staff, residents and business leaders, the Parking Work Group advises on Uptown parking and related programs.
Jordahl “did look at it, and did provide his support, and he did share it with other members of the group that he worked with previously, and we have not received any notification other than from the Parking Work Group member that he does support it,” Wagner said, adding that he shared concerns about third parties accessing license plate data.
The data collected from the cameras in parking lots would also be stored on a cloud server, which could be a point of vulnerability, Wagner said.
“The consistent finding is that the Uptown challenges relate to peak demand, circulation, employee parking and neighborhood spillover, not simply a lack of spaces,” Wagner said, outlining five focus areas for Uptown parking: Parking management and guidance; residential permit parking readiness; balancing parking supply and demand; employee parking; and a parking fee structure.
Wagner plans to pilot some programs in Uptown as early as March, ahead of the garage’s opening, she said.
Since 2023, “several changes have reduced public parking supply,” the council packet reads. “Lot 1 — Jordan Road — was permanently removed from the public inventory following its sale to the Sedona Fire District [resulting in the loss of] 70 spaces; Lot 8 was removed from the leased public parking program due to a pending property sale [resulting in the loss of] 23 spaces; and on-street paid parking was reduced by four spaces. Collectively, these changes have reduced public parking supply by approximately 97 spaces.”
The city calculates the effective available parking supply at approximately 749 spaces when accounting for turnover rates and other real-world factors, down from the total physical inventory of 881 spaces. Effectively, Uptown has a parking deficit of about 110 spaces during its peak demand.
“When operational, the 2026 parking system is projected to include approximately 1,150 public spaces, resulting in an effective supply of approximately 980 spaces, compared to an estimated peak-period demand of approximately 860 spaces, thereby substantially offsetting the current deficit and stabilizing parking conditions during peak periods,” the packet reads.
A $95,800 contract amendment with Quality Testing, LLC, was unanimously approved by council as a consent item, for inspection and quality assurance for the garage. Council previously approved a $182,973.50 contract with Quality Testing on Feb. 25.
“We’ll continue to refine this, because none of this is baked yet. It’s not even in the oven,” Ploog said. “It’s in the pan … and that’s why I’m encouraging anybody who is concerned to contact the members of the group, to come to the meetings and observe the group, contact you and to provide their input, because we are accepting all input.”