City Hall
Council: Raise Maximum Meter Rates to $4, Do Citywide Parking Study
The city council, making its final budget deliberations today, decided to raise the maximum parking-meter rate to $4.00, rather than the $5.00 maximum Mayor Mike McGinn had requested, and to create a new minimum meter rate of 75 cents per hour. The council will also fund an annual citywide study of parking occupancy rates throughout the city to find out what the best rate is for each neighborhood (the rate that keeps occupancy at about 85 percent). That could prompt the council to raise the ceiling in the future, if it turns out that $4.00 an hour isn't enough to keep spaces free downtown, council transportation chair Tom Rasmussen said.
"For the first time in Seattle, we will have a parking management policy that is based on data," not guesswork, council member Tim Burgess said. "This shifts us from a revenue orientation to a management orientation and actually helps businesses" by ensuring that some spaces are open.
The council also opted not to raise the city's commercial parking tax from 12.5 percent to 17.5 percent, as the mayor proposed. Because the council will offset some of those revenues by implementing a $20 vehicle license fee in 2010, rather than waiting until 2011, the hit to SDOT's 2011 budget is only about $6.6 million. The license-fee revenues would pay to help implement the bike and pedestrian master plans, street maintenance, bridge painting, and neighborhood mobility projects.
As we reported this morning, SDOT's budget is being reduced by less than almost any other city department---a number council transportation committee chair Tom Rasmussen compared to the hits being taken by the human services department (6.4 percent), the department of neighborhoods (18.2 percent), the housing office (10.5 percent) and the department of planning and development (17 percent). "The Department of Transportation is taking one of the [smallest] reductions in the city," Rasmussen said.
However, both Mike O'Brien and Nick Licata disputed the notion that the city is spending enough on transportation. "I still think we're woefully underinvesting in some of the infrastructure that we need to be [building] and I think the tradeoff between increasing the commercial parking tax today and having the funds available to make some of those investments is a tradeoff that I would like to make."
The council will officially vote on the budget on November 22.
"For the first time in Seattle, we will have a parking management policy that is based on data," not guesswork, council member Tim Burgess said. "This shifts us from a revenue orientation to a management orientation and actually helps businesses" by ensuring that some spaces are open.
The council also opted not to raise the city's commercial parking tax from 12.5 percent to 17.5 percent, as the mayor proposed. Because the council will offset some of those revenues by implementing a $20 vehicle license fee in 2010, rather than waiting until 2011, the hit to SDOT's 2011 budget is only about $6.6 million. The license-fee revenues would pay to help implement the bike and pedestrian master plans, street maintenance, bridge painting, and neighborhood mobility projects.
As we reported this morning, SDOT's budget is being reduced by less than almost any other city department---a number council transportation committee chair Tom Rasmussen compared to the hits being taken by the human services department (6.4 percent), the department of neighborhoods (18.2 percent), the housing office (10.5 percent) and the department of planning and development (17 percent). "The Department of Transportation is taking one of the [smallest] reductions in the city," Rasmussen said.
However, both Mike O'Brien and Nick Licata disputed the notion that the city is spending enough on transportation. "I still think we're woefully underinvesting in some of the infrastructure that we need to be [building] and I think the tradeoff between increasing the commercial parking tax today and having the funds available to make some of those investments is a tradeoff that I would like to make."
The council will officially vote on the budget on November 22.
