DBIA Asks Council to Park Offstreet Parking Rate Rollback
Prince George, B.C. – As Prince George City Council is preparing for the final reading of the amendments to a bylaw that would roll back the off street parking rates, the Downtown Business Improvement Association is asking Council to delay that vote.
In a letter to Council, DBIA Executive Director Carla Johnston says the organization is concerned the roll back will result in a shortfall of funding “At this point, we can only assume that these shortfalls will be passed on to downtown property owners through the (downtown parking) levy.”
She says the DBIA is also concerned about “the basis on which decisions regarding rates have been made.”
She notes the original increases were based on peer municipalities, then changed based on negative feedback “In our opinion decision making based on the actual cost of running these facilities was not discussed to the extent that it should have been.”
The DBIA would like Council to hold off on giving final reading to the rate rollback until “all the factors including true cost of operations and the impact on both users and subsidizers should be better understood before rates and levies are finalized.”
The final reading of the rate rollback bylaw is scheduled for Monday night.
Comments
“original increases were based on peer municipalities”. That’s right. So were increases in the mayor’s and council’s pay increases and so on. Why do we have to be a follower of the crowd?
Why do we have to try to keep up with the Jones, can’t we look at our own situation and make up our own minds?
When we do that, we may find that although we have a similar population, our situation may be very different and we need to act accordingly.
A voice of reason in the crowd. Perhaps the novel idea that Carla Johnston has introduced may actually catch on and PG may see a more reasonable level of service compared to costs. Not likely but one can hope.
I think Carla has a good point. Downtown businesses pay for the off street parking no matter what.
The question is not who is going to pay, but which pocket will they pay from? Should the downtown businesses pay for the off street parking on their property taxes or from user fees when they rent a stall. It’s the right hand or the left hand…
I think it makes a lot more sense to do it on user fees. The whole idea is that the existing parking lots should be self sustaining and the money raised from the off street parking levy should go towards providing new parking.
The city needs to see what the costs are to the city of PG and base the fees on the real numbers for maintenance and other costs not basing our fees upon the fees of Kelowna or Vancouver or Victoria depending on what municipality pays the highest as they seem to be doing.
Sad that the council and mayor have yet to realize how cost and fees relate to each other.
âIn our opinion decision making based on the actual cost of running these facilities was not discussed to the extent that it should have been.â
Why would our city council want to confuse the issue with facts or figures? Just compare ourselves to others, surely they are right.
It is not surprising that the DBIA wants the change stopped prior to final reading but the timing is rather suspicious.
How much did Carla Johnston kick into the mayor’s campaign anyway? BTW, that information used to be available on the city’s website but has mysteriously vanished. Could Ms. Johnston have received a little prompting to bring some political heat on those who went against the mayor’s wishes?
Icicle had it almost right when stating that this is simply an issue of funding from the right pocket or the left except it is actually a question of “whose pockets” the funding will come from.
If downtown property owners don’t want to help cover some of the cost for parking for their staff or their customers then they need to say so. This seems to be what both the mayor and Carla Johnston are saying. They want to offload those costs from the property owners to the users.
What seems to have been lost in this discussion is the fact that downtown property owners are required by law to pay for the capital cost of providing off street parking. Users should cover the cost of operating the off street lots (security, sweeping, etc.) but shouldnât have to cover the major capital to make sure the lots continue to be available for use whether that is new or existing parkades.
Saying higher user fees are needed to cover the capital for such parking facilities runs counter to the way the legislation was set up to manage off street parking. Generally it requires property owners in an area such as downtown that aren’t required to provide on-site parking to instead contribute financially to a reserve fund to pay for the development and provision of parking facilities that serve all the property owners.
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