City council expects to make a final decision next week on the future of the Centre City project’s parking garage.

Mayor Tom Donaldson said at Thursday night’s council meeting that the city will host a special meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday at city hall to review and discuss financing for a parking garage that would be part of the Centre City project, which also includes a Rite Aid pharmacy and a proposed Marriott Springhill Suites hotel.

The meeting will be with council, the parking authority, and the redevelopment authority. Representatives from J.S. Capitol Construction, the developer of the project, also will be there.

“I expect we will make a decision Tuesday night, and that decision will shape the Centre City project,” Donaldson said.

The parking authority Wednesday rescinded a motion it made last month to accept a surface lot proposal for the hotel.

The authority planned to build a surface lot with about 70-spaces instead of a previously proposed 225-space parking garage due to doubts about the garage’s ability to pay for itself.

However, solicitor Robert Stock issued an opinion saying state law would prevent the authority from building a private lot. The law, according to Stock, says that public parking authorities can only maintain primarily public lots and structures.

Authority treasurer Jeff Smith said Wednesday that his calculations show the garage would have a $100,000 per year deficit that the city or the authority would need to make up through a hike in the parking rate or taxes.

Smith said it would likely take a $20 per month citywide hike on monthly parking permits or a 2-mill property tax increase on the city’s debt service to cover the cost of the garage.

The numbers are in stark contrast to those calculated by the redevelopment authority, which were sent out in a letter to city officials by the Butler County Chamber of Commerce.

Those numbers predicted the garage could bring the authority $60,000 per year in profits.

Councilman Richard Schontz Jr. said at Thursday’s meeting that accurate numbers will be presented at the meeting Tuesday.

City auditor Tim Morgus of Maher Duessel Certified Public Accountants will be at the meeting with his calculations and projections for the garage. Morgus, a former city treasurer, is also the auditor for the parking authority.

“He has an impartial look at this,” Schontz said.

Councilman Cheri Readie said in an interview after the meeting that she spoke with both Morgus and Jeff Schmitz, the owner of J.S. Capitol, on Thursday and they all agreed with numbers presented to PNC Bank nearly a year ago.

Readie said the estimated cost of the garage at that time was $4.1 million, which would carry a $5.3 million bond over 25 years. Readie estimated the bond would add an additional $160,000 a year to the parking authority’s existing debt service.

Readie said Schmitz agreed that his company would guarantee 50 spaces per day at a rate of $6 per space, and would cover any additional spaces used by hotel guests on a given night.

“So if 70 people stayed at the hotel, he would pay for 70 spaces,” Readie said.

The guarantee would bring at least $109,500 in revenue from the hotel for parking each year, leaving about $50,000 for the authority to make up per year through the rest of the parking garage.

Readie said Schmitz was unaware of any changes to those calculations. Schmitz did not return calls to the Butler Eagle Thursday.

Readie also said the redevelopment authority last year had issued an average of 50 permits each month on that block. The parking authority also issued 40 space permits, although those lots have since been replaced by the leased Covenant Presbyterian Church lot on Jefferson Street.

Readie said at $60 per month per permit, those combined permits could cover the cost of the excess debt service for a garage.

“And that doesn’t even account for metered parking that would be in the garage,” she said.

The city used those calculations when approving an ordinance authorizing a bond up to $6.5 million for the proposed garage.

“Those were the numbers the developer had, too,” Readie said.

Smith, who was not at council’s meeting Thursday night, used a 50 percent occupancy rate when calculating his projections for both the hotel and the public portion of the garage.

Schontz said the city needs to have better communication with its authorities to prevent confusion.

“We were all caught off guard by the announcement of a surface lot,” Schontz said.

Council will send a letter to each authority requesting a representative report to council at least three times per year.

“We need better back-and-forth communication,” he said.

Donaldson said he met privately with members of the redevelopment authority Thursday to discuss the project.

“We had an interesting discussion,” he said, without elaborating.

The redevelopment authority, which will be a 36 percent owner of the hotel, was asked by the mayor earlier this month at the request of the parking authority to contribute to the garage.

The parking authority said a 2007 city resolution that deeded over a parking authority lot for the project was made on the assumption that the redevelopment authority would replace the 137 spaces lost through a parking garage.

Art Cordwell, executive director of the redevelopment authority, said in an e-mailed reply to the mayor that his authority would be unable to pay its existing debts if it had to use revenues from the hotel for parking.