As per Councillor Burcher’s request for infomation regarding parking, I am attaching the Downtown Parking Report that I referenced at council last night when I said:
“A 2011 report from your own parking department showed an excess of revenue over expenditure in the operation of about $175,000.
But wait, there is more: City employees occupy 306 of approximately 1200 permit spaces. The other 900 spaces are bringing in almost $800,000 in revenue (almost $900 a year each), but the city only pays $94,000 or about $300 for each of its spaces. And then, if that weren’t bad enough, you tax back over $300,000. Amazingly, even with all this, parking makes a surplus.
And on top of that, parking fines do not go back to make improvements on this asset: they pay for Bylaw enforcement officers of all kinds, saving the city even more money.
You need to hear this very loudly and very clearly: Taxpayers are not the subsidizing parking in the downtown. It’s the other way around.
Parking contributes to the budget.
If the city paid what these spaces were worth (approximately an additional $186,000) and didn’t take $300,000 from this enterprise it would have made about $660,000 in 2011.” MW