2008/06/17 Council Agenda Packet

2208=jlilzer Fina ist- Breaking rews .v; fdahoStatesman.com - IDAHO'S #1 WEBSITE FOR NEWS AND INFORMATION Phillip Kushlan : Raising Downtown parking rates is a good thing - really READER'S VIEW: DOWNTOWN PARKING BY PHILLIP KUSHLAN - Idaho Statesman 4, At a time of increasing highway congestion and rising fuel costs, most drivers in Boise will not greet the suggestion of raising some public parking rates as good news. Yet that is really the message behind the recommendations of the Downtown Public Parking Reinvestment Program. The recommendations are the result of hard work by the Parking Advisory Committee (PAC), made up of many members of the Downtown community: business professionals, property owners, shopkeepers and others. The PAC originally met in 2003 and made several recommendations to CCDC, Boise's redevelopment agency, which owns and operates the garages. Among them were the "First Hour Free" program and a policy to evaluate fees on a four-year cycle. The PAC reconvened in 2008 and re-evaluated the system, resulting in the Parking Reinvestment Program and its recommendations. The proposed program and all supporting documents can be reviewed at: www.ccdcboise.com/PAC. Parking fees in the public garages do not cover the full cost of parking. (If they did, the private sector would build more of them.) In Boise, the 3,000 spaces in the public garages were built by CCDC using bonds backed by expected property tax income. Parking fees only cover operation and basic maintenance. This makes sense - the public subsidizes the building of garages to get cars off the street and create the urban vitality we all enjoy, while the user pays for the cost of operating the system. The parking garages in Downtown Boise have been a huge success. In Downtown, you can park once and walk to many shopping, working and living destinations without navigating a sea of parking lots. This makes Downtown a desirable destination and a good place for business: annual Downtown sales have nearly doubled since 2003. Parking rates have not kept up, however, and deferred maintenance needs to be addressed. Raising some of the rates means the automobile user - not the public - underwrites the operating cost of garage parking.