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Sarasota, Fla., Parking Director Stresses Need for Paid Meters

The city has had an on-again, off-again relationship with parking meters since 1942, and perennial opponents of the meters still happily recall wearing paper bags over their heads in the successful 2012 push to remove the most recent round of meters.

(TNS) -- SARASOTA — The city of Sarasota must subsidize a quarter of its parking department's $1.2 million budget in the coming year, and that number could be higher in 2019 if the city abandons another attempt to install paid meters downtown, the city's parking director warned Thursday night.

Without any funding from the proposed parking meter pilot program, the department expects to be $300,000 short of its expenses in 2018, Parking Director Mark Lyons told the City Commission during its third and final budget workshop this week.

That's a much smaller subsidy than the $600,000-plus the department received from the city's general fund this year, largely supplied by property taxes, due in large part to increased collection of outstanding fines, Lyons said.

But that help is likely to level off in the coming year, and ratcheting up enforcement to collect more fines would be an unpopular and still likely unsuccessful way of trying to close that gap, he added.

"Heavy enforcement is just not the way to go," Lyons said. "Publicly, that just doesn't work for anyone.

"The key for us is trying to identify additional revenues ... This subsidy could increase by next year if we don't follow through with some of our programs."

Lyons has argued that the only way to eventually balance the budget on the city's parking expenses is another attempt to install paid meters in the heart of downtown.

This time, though, Lyons has proposed a relatively small pilot program that would include the installation of meters on 468 parking spaces on Main Street, Palm Avenue and part of Ringling Boulevard — only a fraction of on-street parking in the area and an even smaller percentage of the thousands of publicly available spaces throughout downtown. The department has not projected how much revenue that could raise but has instead argued it could be used as a case study with rate, usage and revenue data, Lyons has said.

City officials are reviewing requests for proposals about what types of meter system would be used this summer, per the commission's direction. They plan to seek public feedback on potential options and eventually pitch a formal plan with a formal cost estimate to the City Commission for approval this fall, Lyons said.

"Within the next 120 days or so, the evaluation committee will come back with some recommendations, and we'll have a full discussion about how that would operate," he said. "But the concept and approach would be very simplistic: Start small."

The plan is destined for intense controversy, though, no matter the final proposal.

The city has had an on-again, off-again relationship with parking meters since 1942, and perennial opponents of the meters still happily recall wearing paper bags over their heads in the successful 2012 push to remove the most recent round of meters. They and many downtown businesses have pledged to oppose Lyons' new plan, too, which was a frequent sticking point in this spring's City Commission election.

New Commissioner Hagen Brody subtly reiterated his promised opposition to the meters Thursday night.

"Obviously that's a huge issue in the community everyone's aware of, so I look forward to that conversation," he said.

Though one of the most controversial plans for the next year, the parking department is far from the largest budgetary issue facing the commission in the coming months.

The city is projecting at least a $950,000 budget shortfall this year, and the commission must decide early next month whether to endorse a potential property tax increase, cut expenses or spend from its savings to close the gap. The commission will debate the proposed property tax increase — which would add about $11.61 on the tax bill of a $200,000 home, for example — at a special meeting July 10.

©2017 Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Fla. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.