Committee recommends moving City Hall staff slots, sets 1‑hour limit for nearby visitor spaces

The Downtown Parking Advisory Committee of Bangor City voted to recommend moving about half of the staff parking spaces adjacent to City Hall to the upper portion of Center Street and to change nearby visitor parking from 90 minutes to one hour during business hours.

Courtney O'Donnell, assistant city manager (interim), presented the proposal, saying the change is intended to improve accessibility when staff and the public return to the renovated City Hall later this summer. "What I have put together was just a proposal for consideration around, parking at City Hall," O'Donnell said, explaining the plan to relocate roughly half of the dozen staff-assigned spots and to evaluate five nearby blue spaces for a new, shorter time limit.

The committee discussed enforcement and practical effects. Park Llements of PCI Municipal Services, who oversees parking enforcement downtown, cautioned that enforcement cannot restrict spaces to "City Hall only." "...we can't enforce city hall only. There's I mean, there's no way to do that," Llements said, noting enforcement works by time-zone routing and that changing a space's time limit is enforceable whereas reserving a space strictly for City Hall users is not.

Kelsey Hobbs (professor, EMA) recommended a one‑hour limit for the blue stalls, reflecting past practice and committee experience: "I personally like it as an hour, and I think it used to be an hour." Several committee members expressed concern that 30 minutes would be too short for many City Hall visits and downtown errands.

A committee motion to accept the staff recommendation carried on a roll-call vote: Anne Krieg (director of community and economic development) — yes; Kelsey Hobbs — yes; Sarah Luciano (remote participant) — yes; Vincent (voting member) — yes. The mover and seconder were not specified on the record. The motion outcome was recorded as approved.

The committee discussed running a pilot or follow-up review (for example a six‑month pilot) and requested additional usage data before finalizing long-term policy. Staff noted time-of-day and seasonal effects are not fully captured in the recently completed parking study and recommended monitoring the change if implemented.

The committee did not make a final binding change to on‑street signage at the meeting; the approved recommendation will proceed through staff channels per the city's advisory-committee process for forwarding recommendations to the appropriate council committee or the full council.