posted Jun 18, 2008 - 12:10:18pm
What the City of DeLand should do about Downtown parking is perhaps the hardest thing for a government to do: nothing.
Splitting the $100,000 cost with Volusia County, DeLand is paying about $50,000 for a consultant to study Downtown DeLand’s parking. So far, the study has revealed there are about 1,000 more parking spaces than will be needed for the next several years.
So, there’s no urgent need to take action. Yet, commissioners told the consultant to formulate a plan to bring back parking meters and install kiosks where motorists could buy parking credits.
This new equipment would cost quite a few tax dollars. Now is definitely not the time to spend tax money if it can be avoided — and it can! The nation’s economy is possibly already in a recession, local taxpayers and businesses are hurting, and the City of DeLand, like most governments across the state, is complaining about necessary cutbacks.
This is a bad time to waste tax dollars on avoidable spending. And it’s a terrible time to spend money on changes that might actually worsen the Downtown DeLand economy, even while improving city government’s income.
Yes, city commissioners may say, but we’ve spent $50,000 on a study; do we want to put it on a shelf? That kind of thinking leads governments, as well as businesses and individuals, into throwing good money after bad: “We’ve already spent blank dollars; we have to spend blank blank dollars more, to keep the first expenditure from having been a waste.”
If commissioners insist on looking at things that way, let them conclude the consultant’s study was not in vain. We learned from it. We learned, at least, we have 1,000 more parking spaces than we currently need.
And, there’s nothing to prevent more of the study from being used in the future — at a time when the Downtown DeLand economy is stronger, and the need to make changes is more critical.
One might reasonably inquire what got concern about parking going in the first place, this time. Was it a groundswell of demand from shoppers, merchants and government employees? No. There has been some grumbling about how hard it is to find a parking place, but that’s nothing new. There’s hardly a crisis.
No, what is probably the biggest worry on the part of DeLand officials is the need to reduce or eliminate a deficit in the parking-enforcement budget!
The city spends about $124,000 a year on parking enforcement, including $113,170 for two workers: the guy who goes around putting chalk marks on parkers’ tires (and gives them tickets if they overstay the time limits), and the bureaucrat whose job includes, among other duties, supervising that one car-tire marker.
However, the city only takes in about $90,000 a year in parking-ticket fines. Which means there’s an annual deficit in the parking-enforcement budget. That’s probably the biggest reason city officials are feverishly trying to come up with a solution to the “parking problem.” That’s why they’ve spent $50,000 on a consultant, and why they’re tempted to spend hundreds of thousands more to turn Downtown DeLand parking back into a revenue source.
Better to scrutinize that budget than to waste even more tax dollars on schemes that are not only unnecessary, but may deliver another blow to already-struggling merchants.
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Intec
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~mireille/
The biggest traffic money makers for any city are "red light runners" and "speeders" go after those people. They are already breaking the law.
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