A motion to pay for a study relating to parking monetization was voted down 4-1 at Thursday’s Butler City Council meeting at the city building.

HJA Strategies, which presented information on parking monetization to council at Tuesday’s forum meeting, offered to do a study on the city’s parking assets to come up with a leasing agreement plan for the city’s parking.

The study would have cost $5,000 per month during a six-month period, with a possible six-month extension at another $5,000 per month. That meant the city would have paid at least $30,000 and as much as $60,000 for the study.

Mayor Tom Donaldson, who had been in talks for months with members of HJA Strategies over ways the city could monetize its parking assets, voted for the agreement.

Councilmen Kenny Bonus, Michael Walter and Corey Roche and councilwoman Kathy Kline voted against it.

Donaldson said he put the motion up because HJA Strategies had asked him to find out where council stood as a whole on the issue.

“It was an option that we could have started to work on,” he said. “It’s not something that you could rush. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight.”

If the motion had passed, the study would have been to gather information with the goal of leasing the city’s parking. In the event the city’s parking would be leased, the city could receive an up-front fee from a vendor, as well as an annual stipend.

Bonus said he’s not opposed to working with HJA Strategies, but that since he had only heard about the offer on Tuesday, it was too soon to make a decision.

He also was concerned about the fee for the study.

“It didn’t appear that anybody had already considered the financial implications of this particular thing, and it didn’t seem like it had been budgeted for either,” he said. “It puts us at risk of spending $60,000 total without having any sort of guarantee for a financial return.”

Kline also felt it was too soon for an agreement.

“It’s just too early,” she said. “I know there’s some that have had conversations in the last several months, but this is the first conversations that I’ve had detailed information being shared.”

Walter shared her sentiment.

“It’s a big decision,” he said. “You don’t want to rush anything like that. There are other companies that do this. You don’t rush and buy the first thing you see when you buy pants. You look around for the best deal, and that’s what we haven’t done.”

Like Bonus, Roche felt that the fee was steep.

“That’s a big chunk of payment,” he said. “Especially when we want to hire another (police) officer. I think that money is better spent for public safety.”

Roche was referring to a motion that was passed unanimously Thursday to raise the cap on the number of officers in the Butler Police Department from 23 to 24.