{"id":6719,"date":"2011-04-29T09:32:27","date_gmt":"2011-04-29T13:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/?p=6719"},"modified":"2011-04-29T16:09:03","modified_gmt":"2011-04-29T20:09:03","slug":"city-grappling-with-1-4-million-parking-shortfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/news\/city-council\/2011\/04\/29\/city-grappling-with-1-4-million-parking-shortfall\/","title":{"rendered":"City Grappling with $1.4 Million Parking Shortfall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raleigh officials blame the poor economy for a possible $1.4 million parking shortfall next year. If the city can\u2019t come up with a plan to increase revenue, future years could look just as bleak with a $13 million shortfall predicted for 2015.<\/p>\n

Some of the main factors for the shortfall are less-than-anticipated on-street revenue of about $1.4 million, deck parking projections of $183,000 and a $1 million increase in debt service charges.<\/p>\n

City Manager Russell Allen explained that the city\u2019s parking program is considered an enterprise fund, meaning it is set up like a business.<\/p>\n

City councilors will have to come up with a solution to the shortfall as they create a balanced budget before July.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully it operates as a business that has revenue that offsets its expenses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to state law, money generated by the program stays within the program, much like the water and sewer fund.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe economy has had a definite impact from about the fall of 2009 until now,\u201d said Gordon Dash, the city\u2019s parking administrator. \u201cThe biggest loss has been in the number of monthly accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the past two years, the city lost 489 monthly deck-parking accounts, which at $100 a month per account amounts to about $1.2 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor all of the new accounts that we\u2019ve lost, we\u2019ve seen virtually no new accounts that could be attributed to folks who used to park on the street, now going into the decks,\u201d Dash said.<\/p>\n

Last summer, the city implemented an on-street parking program that included the use of metered spaces to encourage turnover for the downtown businesses. Prior to the use of meters, Dash said that people working downtown would park on the street all day.<\/p>\n

Dash said the city anticipated that these parkers would make use of the parking decks, even with the $100 per month price tag of a space rental.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, what our field agents have found is that the license plates that they used to see park downtown are the same plates they now see parking outside the periphery of the metered zones,\u201d Dash said. \u201cNow they\u2019re occupying residential streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Fayetteville District is the most desired on-street parking zone in the downtown area. <\/p><\/div>\n

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In other words, rather than paying to park on the decks, downtown employees are parking where there are no meters and walking. Dash said that this resulted in parts of downtown where metered parking isn\u2019t utilized at all.<\/p>\n

Progress Energy\u2019s recent downsizing and impending merger with Duke Energy could result in another 1,000 spaces lost.<\/p>\n

Because the parking decks are under-utilized, they aren\u2019t generating the revenue needed to pay off the $100 million plus interest it cost to build the new decks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe built a couple of major facilities that we had planned to have development associated with it,\u201d said Allen. \u201cAnd subsequent parkers that would take leases and provide revenues for those decks, but with this economy they have not been able to come out of the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to the city taking the parking program in house, it was managed by a private firm, which kept no data as to which cars were owned by employees and which were owned by visitors. Projections of 52 percent occupancy were based on the proposal made by the parking consultant during the parking overhaul in 2008.<\/p>\n

Now with the meters in place, officials were able to determine that the average occupancy rate for off-street parking is 40 percent. While Fayetteville, Moore Square and Hillsborough areas have an 85 percent occupancy rate, the other zones \u2014 Capitol, Glenwood South and Warehouse \u2014 are practically empty at 15 to 20 percent. \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Allen and Dash proposed a series of revenue options to the Budget and Economic Development Committee on April 12.<\/p>\n

The first \u2014 and highly unpopular \u2013 suggestion was to begin charging a flat rate for parking on nights and weekends.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s too soon in the downtown renaissance,\u201d said David Diaz of the Downtown Raleigh Alliance. \u201cOther downtowns do charge, but I think they\u2019re further along in their evolution than we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The committee decided against the proposal.<\/p>\n

The city council approved a proposal to change the city\u2019s booting ordinance so that parking enforcement officers could boot a car that was parked legally. Previously, officers could not boot a car with excessive tickets unless it was in violation of a parking law. The city estimates about $62,000 in lost revenue due to missed booting opportunities.<\/p>\n

To help recover a portion of the $2.5 million the city is owed in overdue parking fines, the council gave its approval for the department to work with the state to implement a tax intercept program and holds through the department of motor vehicles.<\/p>\n

The tax intercept program would deduct fines from state tax refunds and anyone with excessive fines would be forced to pay up when registering their car or renewing their license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raleigh officials blame the poor economy for a possible $1.4 million parking shortfall next year. If the city can\u2019t come up with a plan to increase revenue, future years could look just as bleak with a $13 million shortfall predicted for 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24029,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15],"tags":[77,43,13,201],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24029"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}