Evanston’s Parking Committee will wait on a decision to raise monthly fees for parking garages until it can review a Finance Department report detailing debts on the city’s three parking garages.
The upcoming finance report will give a timeline for debt payments. Evanston owes $38 million on the Sherman Plaza parking garage, which opened in 2006, and $1.5 million on the Church Street structure.
The current $85 monthly rate for Evanston’s three garages is divided into two funds. The parking fund, which pays maintenance costs, contracts and debts for the city’s parking facilities, receives 71 percent of the revenue generated by monthly parking fees. The rest of the cost comes from a parking tax, which generates $1.8 million for the city’s general fund each year.
However, parking fees alone are inadequate. Local Tax Increment Financing funds, which incorporate gains in property tax revenue, are expected to contribute $3.4 million to the parking fund, which Assistant Finance Director Steve Drazner said is supposed to be self-sustaining.
“It’s really just a cash flow issue,” he said. “If you take away the transfer, the parking fund would be in a deficit. It should just be like a business and should be stand-alone.”
The Parking Committee will discuss incorporating a parking rate increase plan approved by the City Council in 2005 that gave the green light to raising the monthly parking fee to $90 this March.
However, Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jonathan Perman said the committee should halt the plan to raise fees and take the economic climate into consideration. Instead of a fixed fee increase, Perman suggested placing an adjustable rate pay system in the express lane to maximize revenue.
“There’s an assumption by some people that to generate more revenue you have to raise rates,” he said. “I don’t buy that. When demand is low you should lower prices and when demand is high you should raise prices, but we don’t do that in Evanston.”
Perman said the privately owned InterPark garage at 1603 Orrington Ave. competes with city-operated garages by varying daily rates.
A $5 per-month fee increase may seem like a risky lane change to Perman, but Helen Fisz, an employee of the Evanston Public Library who parks her car at the nearby Church Street parking garage, said she disagreed about the dangers of a fee hike.
“It’s not that bad,” she said of the proposed $90 monthly parking rate, adding that the library compensates her parking payments. “Parking is worse in Chicago; downtown it’s crazy.”
Although the four-year-old plan to increase monthly fees by $5 per month is only a recommendation, Parking Enforcement Supervisor Rick Voss said previous reports are part of the parking budget process.
“If we just sat there and did it, it’s not fair to everyone,” he said. “Even the committee has to consider economic climate and so forth, we just don’t know the direction right now.”
The Parking Committee will review the Finance Department’s debt report at its next meeting on Nov. 18. Voss said a discussion on changes to the monthly rate will follow, and he hopes to have a plan for the city budget at the end of the fiscal year.
“It’s an ongoing discussion and process,” he said.
