City Mulls More Paid Parking

>The Gazette reports in a front-page piece today that the Mayor and Council took up the question of whether to extend the hours people will need to pay for parking in Town Square:

City staff on Monday recommended that paid parking be extended to weeknights and Saturdays.

Patrons currently pay between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. weekdays.

City Manager Scott Ullery said the added revenue is needed to repay money borrowed to construct the garages. That money is currently coming out of the tax-generated general fund.

Evidently, this amounts to a transfer from the general fund to the parking fund of $950,000 this fiscal year.

The proposal on the table is to require payment from 7:00 am until 10:00 pm Monday through Saturday.

City officials estimate that this extension would generate $818,887 per year. This does not completely cover what the city needs to repay for the financing of the parking structures — this fiscal year, the city is transferring $950,000 from the general fund to the parking fund to cover this. But it does make a dent.

Town Square businesses are understandably concerned that this will put a damper on customers:

Alan Gozhansky, owner of Town Square Jewelers on Gibbs Street, said he and another business owner counted the number of people who visited their stores and saw a 30 percent to 40 percent drop the week the city started charging for parking.

“If you continue and increase the hours and start charging for parking on weekends, it’s just going to get worse,” Gozhansky told council members Monday.

Council member John Britton was absent from this meeting, so the full Mayor and Council will take it up again at a future date.

Stay tuned.

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