Meter revenue down as people not embracing parking rate hike: City manager
By Timothy Schafer
Denied their say on a doubling of parking meter rates in the downtown, the people of Nelson have spoken — with their reluctant and careful use of the meters.
Parking meter revenue is way behind what the City projected when they opted to raise the meter price of one hour on a downtown parking stall in April from 50 cents to one dollar.
City manager Kevin Cormack told City council Monday afternoon in a special council meeting that reduced parking meter revenue is a “problem,” and was lower than expected.
“I don't know if it is people being more careful than expected,” he said, “ or if they are only paying for half an hour,” instead of for the full hour like they did before.
But if the trend continues for the year, revenue from parking meters will be short $100,000 to $110,000, said Cormack, coming in at a total of around $200,000. Initially, when council raised the rates, parking meter revenue was projected to generate around $300,000 for 2011.
Around $100,000 was to go towards the transit operating shortfall and the other $200,000 to the capital reserve.
City council decided to forego vetting the parking meter hike through a public meeting on the budget back in February.
The lure of greater revenue convinced a majority of council to pass the motion at the time to raise meter rates, instead of gathering public input on it through the venue of a public meeting.
Mayor John Dooley had asked council if they would have considered holding off adopting the rate hike for one week until they had time to hear from people at a public meeting on the budget Feb. 22.
But Coun. Kim Charlesworth urged council to push ahead with the rate hike without the public meeting.
“This won’t be popular with the residents and I expect that is what we will hear,” she said at the time. “I don’t think we need to wait on this one. Operationally, it will be easier if we go ahead.”
She said people had to understand one reason council chose to raise parking meter rates was to spread the burden of collecting the revenue from taxpayers to those who utilize the roads — including people from out of town.
Transit fare increase
Even though the transit fare increase did not happen until May 1, the City is on target with those numbers, said Cormack.
From January to March revenues decreased, he said, but since then revenues from transit are “on track” and should fulfill City projections.
“If we stay on that same pathway we should realize our transit fare revenue,” he said.
“Does that mean we won’t be running a deficit?” asked Coun. Deb Kozak.
No, said Cormack. In order to manage their transit shortfall they had to project higher revenues to increase fees for transit, an increase that would contribute $28,000 to offset part of the shortfall.
“It’s early and we don't know the impact for the rest of the year,” he said.
The City had $120,000 in operating losses with their six transit buses last year.
People weren’t riding the buses in non-peak times, and the new buses the City received in 2010 cost more to service than was anticipated. Transit costs were up 47 per cent.
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