County Council Pays For Rockville Library Parking
Jul 22, 2009 7:55 - 1 Comment
According to a >Montgomery County press release, the County Council approved the $143,500 special appropriation to the City of Rockville to pay for patron parking at the Rockville Library, plus an additional $3,890 for lost revenue due to free parking by employees of the Rockville Library, which amounts to a grand total of $147,430 in parking reimbursements. The 6-2 vote insures 2-hours of free parking in the garages for library visitors in FY 2010.
Those in favor were Council President Phil Andrews, Vice President Roger Berliner and Councilmembers Marc Elrich, Valerie Ervin, Nancy Floreen, and Nancy Navarro. Those against were Councilmembers Mike Knapp and George Leventhal. Councilmember Duchy Trachtenberg was absent.
The County does have a policy to provide free parking for patrons at all County libraries, including up to two hours at libraries in urban locations, such as Rockville Town Center.
From the press release:
In spring, the Council decided it would postpone a decision on funding this portion of the FY10 budget, which went into effect on July 1, so it might revisit its policy at parking at public libraries. The Council has adopted a policy of not charging residents for parking during the first two hours while using any County library located in areas where parking is normally charged. Currently, this applies only to the Rockville and Bethesda libraries, but could apply to future new libraries in Silver Spring and Wheaton. However, no resolutions have been sponsored and introduced that would either repeal or amend the current policy, nor to set a rate for the Bethesda Library
“The Council today showed its support for the policy of providing free parking at all libraries,” said Council President Phil Andrews. “In difficult economic times like we are experiencing right now, library use has increased for a variety of reasons. People are using libraries, in some cases, in their search for jobs. Charging one dollar an hour for parking could discourage people from going to the library. We do not want anything like that to be a financial barrier to using our libraries.”
Here on Rockville Central, a Contributor Opinion by Joe Jordan: County Using Tax Dollars To Subsidize Free Parking has generated quite a few comments. The exchange goes beyond the County paying for library parking to include the more general issue of parking charges in Town Center as well as some handy public transportation advice.
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Although I realize that these are really hard budget times for the County, I’m glad the County Council didn’t single out Rockville to be the only library in the County where its patrons would have had to pay to park. If the Council were going to have its patrons pay to park, to use the library, in the Town Square, the County shouldn’t have built the new library in the Town Square. I hope this issue doesn’t come up every year.