Parking puzzle: Town hall shows meter increases unpopular, other options limited

Jan. 25—After enjoying lunch with a couple of friends at a downtown Meadville restaurant on Wednesday, Brenda Waid made her way across Chestnut Street to where she had parked: in the city-owned parking lot adjacent to the Academy Theatre.

The privilege of parking her sport utility vehicle approximately 220 feet from her dining destination for nearly an hour came with a cost — 25 cents. The meter for her spot still had a few minutes left when she arrived. If it hadn't, the fear of a parking ticket might have spurred her to add an additional quarter just to be safe.

Standing next to her car in the half-full lot, Waid said she didn't mind finding a quarter to park downtown. In fact, she added, she wouldn't have a problem paying twice that.

"I wasn't happy they did the postage stamps, and I still pay it," she said, laughing as she recalled the latest increase in the cost of postage stamps from 66 to 68 cents that went into effect earlier this week. "I mean, you've got to do what you've got to do, I guess. It's the same with gas and everything else.

"Everything's going up," Waid added.

Metered parking in downtown Meadville could soon be joining the trend as Meadville City Council considers how to address years of losses for the city's Parking Fund. At the top of the list of options to address the shortfall is doubling the rate for metered parking throughout the shopping district to 50 cents per hour.

Other options are available, however, according to city officials. In an effort to outline both the history behind the current parking predicament and to solicit alternative ideas from residents and business owners on the front lines of everyday parking skirmishes, City Council held a town hall event Tuesday evening at the Meadville Public Library.

Nearly 40 people, split about evenly between business owners and residents, attended the meeting — enough that late arrivals had to park a short walk down the street near Diamond Park.

'Will we survive?'

Questions from business owners in the crowded library meeting room quickly made it clear that, in their experience, Waid's attitude is atypical. Most customers do care about paying for parking, and doubling the cost could spell "the potential destruction of our downtown economy," in the words of Michael Reed, owner of two businesses that would be affected.

Sue Wycoff, owner of the Woolen Mill clothing store, said she rents four city-owned spots to provide parking for employees and has found herself on numerous occasions paying parking tickets for people affected by current policies that limit visitors to just two hours of metered parking.

Wycoff acknowledged that she didn't have "any magic answers," but stressed that any steps take should be geared toward luring customers downtown, especially with the imminent prospect of TJ Maxx and other stores soon joining Walmart in Vernon Township.

"There's going to be free parking," Wycoff said. "There's going to be easy access. We're not offering that right now to our customers."

The message from business owners was clear: customers want convenience, especially when it comes to parking. So when they want to park directly in front of a business entrance, asking them to walk a block or two can be a deal breaker.

"I can hold up to 20 people in my shop," said Cheree Frizzell of The Chalk Shop, which is easily accessible to limited curbside metered parking at the intersection of Chestnut Street and Park Avenue. "Where do I ask 20 people to park?"

If the metered spots immediately outside her store or those just across either of the two streets that travel past it were occupied, one possibility would be the spots about 220 yards east at the Diamond, which are frequently available and allow continuous parking for up to five hours rather than the two hours allowed for Chestnut Street spots. But Frizzell said that distance can be a challenge for parents trying to wrangle multiple children while hauling the artworks they've just created.

"We're trying to stay afloat," Frizzell said, describing expenses associated with winter maintenance needed to keep the sidewalks clear and meters accessible as she left the town hall. "We do everything in our power to make it work, but will we survive?"

Who pays — and how?

Anticipating a negative response, city officials laid out several other options to generate about the same $72,000 in additional revenue expected from the rate increase.

Instead of raising rates for those who park downtown, the city could raise real estate taxes for all property owners by 0.5 mills, which would generate about the same amount of revenue. With 1 mill generating $1 for every $1,000 in assessed value, the owners of a property assessed at $25,000, the approximate average assessed value of residential properties in the city, would see their annual tax bill increase from $623 to $635.50.

Rather than shift the burden from those using the parking spots to all city property owners, city officials also outlined a scenario in which just the owners of properties served directly by metered parking spots pay more.

With support from those owners, the city could create a business improvement district. Properties within the district would be assessed an additional fee. Depending on how much they were willing to pay, the additional revenue could be used to subsidize parking or even to support winter sidewalk maintenance and other services. Under this scenario, a specific portion of property owners essentially agree to higher taxes — taxes that almost certainly would be passed on to any businesses that rent spaces from those property owners.

In other words, if business owners don't want their customers to face higher parking costs, they could take on the burden of those costs themselves. Of course, if property owners are likely to pass on fee increases to tenants, then those same tenants could very well pass on the higher expenses to the same customers using the parking spots.

Councilman Jim Roha offered a takeaway for the crowded but civil audience.

"There is no such thing as free parking," he said. "Somebody is going to pay. The question is, who's paying and how they're paying."

50 cents and much more

For more than two decades, the city's parking fund has been doing much of that paying. While parking-related revenues are supposed to make the fund self-sustaining, City Planner Peter Grella told the town hall audience, the balance has gradually dwindled from nearly $1.5 million in 2000 to about $114,000 today. The losses are due in large part to debt service costs resulting from construction of the Market Square parking garage in 2003, demolition costs incurred when the Mill Run garage was leveled due to safety concerns in 2015, and short-term repairs to the poorly designed Market Square garage. Selling a city-owned lot on Park Avenue to ERIEBANK helped stem the losses for a time, but only temporarily.

Now, the city faces additional steep expenses as it awaits a conditions assessment on the Market Square garage. If the garage proves too costly to repair, demolition and replacement with a surface lot could cost more than $1 million, according to Grella, but repair estimates from several years ago suggest that a rehabilitation project could be $5 million or more.

Increasing the meter rate to 50 cents would help ensure that the parking fund breaks even, but would not address the anticipated costs associated with the Market Square garage. As a result, while city officials were anxious for input on parking improvement ideas, the options available to them are limited, Grella said. At the same time, it's clear that the status quo isn't working.

"The current assemblage of parking rates and parking services that we have right now has not given us what we need to prepare for the next 10 years, especially when there are looming costs that we know will be coming down the horizon," Grella said.

Asking the town hall participants for "new, creative ideas," Grella summed up the situation sardonically: "We're in a predicament."

It's a predicament that may not matter much to downtown visitors like Allegheny College student Pablo Lee.

As Waid pulled out of the Academy Theatre lot Wednesday afternoon, Lee was pulling into a nearby spot just off Chestnut Street — a spot that still had about 90 minutes on the meter from a previous visitor, more than enough for him to pick up a treat at the bakery just across the street and perhaps visit other stores.

Lee might pay 50 cents for meters if he had to, but he would prefer to avoid it, he said.

"It should remain the way that it is because there's not that many people parking down here as it is," he said with a glance at the available spots nearby. "The little parking that we do have should not be upcharged."

Mike Crowley can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.