The following article appeared in the February 8 edition of the Guleph Mercury:
Guelph officials are proposing a 146 per cent increase in the fee for event parking in downtown Guelph, effectively taking the rate from its current $2 to $5, including taxes.
Ward 2 Coun. Ian Findlay said the increase doesn’t strike him as excessive.
Allister McIlveen, Guelph’s manager of traffic and parking, said the increase is a way of bringing event parking fees more in line with fees charged by privately-owned lots. Those private lots charge from $5 to $15 for event parking, McIlveen said, so an increase from $2 to $5 for city-owned lots and parkades seems reasonable.
Other cities, he added, charge much more for special event parking than Guelph does. In 2010, he added, the city generated $68,000 from event parking and paid out $30,000 for staffing costs related to event parking. Those costs will increase in 2011 and the fee increase is seen as a way to keep pace.
McIlveen said any positive variance as a result of the increase would either go into a parking reserve fund or have an impact on the general tax rate.
Findlay said creating more parking downtown is a key component of residential and business development in the heart of the city. There have been proposals on the books for some time to construct two new parkades downtown, but the money hasn’t been in the budget to do so.
The event parking hike is part of ongoing budgetary deliberations and will be part of discussions between councillors and city staff next week. The public will have an opportunity to weigh in on the issue.
“We do have a number of issues with regards to parking,” said Findlay. “Certainly inventory capacity is a big issue. We have a couple of proposals to build parkades – one on Baker Street and one on Wilson Street. They haven’t moved forward, not because the need isn’t there, but because the money wasn’t there.”
Findlay said it is his understanding that city staff is looking at ways of “adding more revenue to fund more parking inventory.” He wants to hear what staff intends to do with additional event parking revenue.
“It seems fairly reasonable to me, $5 for event parking,” said Findlay, adding that while it may seem like a significant increase, relative to the amount paid for events, an increase from $2 to $5 is “inconsequential.”
Parking used to be user-pay service, Findlay explained, but the city no longer generates revenue from parking meters. Still, money has to be raised through parking in order to create new parking infrastructure. Parking, like other forms of infrastructure, “supports development in the downtown.”
“We are trying to get more parking inventory, because we want to see more condominiums, we want to see more businesses located downtown,” Findlay added. “There are a lot of examples of failed attempts to bring business downtown because we can’t provide the parking inventory for them.”
If the city is unable to fund such new parking capacity, it may fall on the private sector to do so, he suggested. But that will only happen if the venture is profitable. Increasing the fee for event parking may send a signal to the private sector that there is money to be made in parking.
Ward 4 Coun. Cam Guthrie said he wants answers to several questions related to the event parking increase, including why there “is such a drastic increase,” what and how many special events are affected, whether an increase has been attempted in the past, and if the increased charge could be detrimental to event attendance.
“My gut reaction is yes,” Guthrie said, when asked if an increase might deter some from attending events. Guthrie agrees that there is a need for more parking capacity in the downtown, but the question to consider is whether that capacity should be funded through fee increases.
“Maybe not,” he said. “One could argue that instead of going from $2 to $5 on special events, that maybe we should reinstate parking meters all around the downtown.”
Guthrie favours a conditional return to parking meters — his condition being that out-of-town visitors would receive a free-parking token from downtown merchants. With that condition in place, he favours the elimination of the two-hour free parking provision.
Findlay expects the issue of a return to metered parking will be raised during budget discussions. He is a supporter of the two-hours of free parking currently in place in the downtown, and also with it’s enforcement.
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