The Seattle City Council’s Transportation Committee held a public hearing Wednesday at City Hall to take testimony on amendments made to the proposed Restricted Parking Zone (RPZ) legislation and comments ranged from praise to requests for additional changes.

The council’s amendments include limiting permit sales to four per household, providing RPZ permits for businesses around the seven Central Link Light Rail Stations, changing the threshold for establishing an RPZ to 35 percent non-resident vehicles, and requiring a public hearing be held prior to decisions on RPZ’s being made.

There is currently only one RPZ in West Seattle. This zone is located near the ferry dock in Fauntleroy.

Eastlake resident Roxanna Davila expressed concern toward the amendment allowing businesses to have RPZ permits.

“I think that there does need to be a good balance between businesses and residents,” she said. “But as I was reading through the changes being proposed it seemed as though the emphasis was switching over to businesses and away from protecting that balance.”

Committee chair, Jan Drago, said the new legislation allowing businesses along the light-rail route to apply for permits is a pilot program. She added that the council would review this program in four years.

This program would not apply to businesses in existing RPZ’s or expand to other new RPZ’s. She assured Davila that Eastlake would not become an RPZ for businesses.

Another concern residents had was toward the amendment reducing the permit per household allowance from eight to four permits. Chuck Aanenson, representing the docks along Fairview, said that four permits are still too many.

“You can imagine how many houseboats have four different people living on them; they don’t,” he said. “Is four a legitimate number for a household?”

Committee member Richard J. McIver explained that the council chose four as the number for allowed permits thinking a reasonable family size would be two children plus two adults.

Aanenson recommended a survey be taken along Fairview to see how many residents would request parking permits.

Committee member Sally Clark said the policy could also change in the future.

“It may be that as we see how this takes effect, we also look at whether there should be differences among different neighborhoods in terms of what the on-street capacity is and if four permits are too much for that area,” Clark said.

Joseph Visenschmidt, member of the Columbia City Community Council, also questioned the proposed permit allowance. He used a 27-unit apartment building as an example and asked if this building would be allowed 108 parking permits.

Norm Schwab, council central staff, said that the number of permits is based on the number of vehicles registered at a single unit. However, in theory, a 27-unit apartment building could have up to four RPZ permits per unit.

The Transportation Committee is planning to vote on all amendments at Tuesday's meeting, June 2. The amendments can be viewed at http://www.seattle.gov/council/Drago/rpzpermits.htm.