Butler parking asset sale proposal includes benefits, higher fines
The company intending to buy the tier garage as well as the parking lot adjacent to the City Building in Butler wants to repair the 48-year-old garage, purchase and install solar-powered kiosk parking meters with touchless payment options for all on- and off-street parking spaces in the city, and give the city mobile electronic ticketing devices for enforcement.
In addition to the revenue from the 412 parking spaces in the garage and 66 in the lot, Transportation Services Consultants of Milford, Mass., the company whose $3.75 million proposal to buy the facilities was accepted by City Council on Jan. 7, wants to receive revenue from parking citations, and wants the city to increase parking fines to $35 with possible reductions for prompt payment.
“The city gets the parking meter revenue and we get the citation revenue,” said Mike Lenza, Transportation Services Consultants principal. “Citation prices will have to increase.”
Current fines are $10 for overtime parking at a meter and $20 for parking more than two hours on Main Street.
The parking rates the new owner would charge are not included in the proposal. The current cost of monthly parking permits for the garage and lot is $65.
Council accepted the proposal, but the sales agreement and contract for parking enforcement are being negotiated. Lenza said it will take until late February or early March for the contracts to be worked out.
“We just agreed to move forward with the proposal and negotiate a final officer,” Mayor Ben Smith said. “Council has to vote again at least once. Nothing has been finalized. Some things are being negotiated.”
The proposal from the company, which works with government agencies on parking and highway tolling operations, according to its website, includes its intentions to rent the office on the first floor of the garage, which currently is the Butler Redevelopment Authority office, or convert it into a shared commercial kitchen for entrepreneurs and existing restaurants to rent, and install solar panels on the top floor to provide free charging for electric vehicles.
With 6,000 to 7,000 square feet on the first floor, “you've got the space there to do it,” Lenza said about the shared kitchen.
“In the restaurant industry, there's a movement toward delivery service. Those changes have been accelerated by COVID. It allows entrepreneurs to rent kitchen space and do delivery with very little overhead,” he said. Existing restaurants that need more space could also use the kitchen, he added.
Lenza said it is his understanding that the authority will have moved out of the office before the sale is finalized.
Authority Chairman Fred Reese said he wasn't surprised the potential buyer has plans for the space, and the authority hasn't heard from the city or buyer.
“We're in the dark. We haven't heard anything about it yet. They probably have other plans,” he said, about the company. “I guess we have to start looking.”
The authority and council discussed relocating the authority offices to the City Building years ago, but there isn't enough room in the building for the offices, Reese said.
The purchase proposal includes an offer to take $5 from each citation issued by police and deposit it into an equipment fund for the department.
The solar kiosk parking meters in the tier garage and City Building lot that the company would own would accept payment via the app or credit cards.The meters at the parking spaces the city will retain would be able to accept credit cards, mobile app payments and coins. The company wants the city to remove the existing parking meters to make room for new kiosks.The parking app notifies parkers before time expires, so they can add time, and allows merchants to provide parking coupons to customers.Streetscape improvements around some parking areas are also included in the proposal.Smith said selling the garage and lot will provide the city with an infusion of money and remove the burden of repairing the garage, but those aren't the main reasons he supports the sale.“I don't think the city needs to be in the parking business. I don't think it's the government's job to run parking,” Smith said.That is especially true if the city can generate revenue from parking without operating the parking system, he said.He said he was “very in favor” of selling all of the city's parking assets in 2019, but council voted 3-2 against the sale. That offer of $12 million and a 12% share of gross parking revenue was also made by Transportation Services Consultants.Councilman Mike Walter, who voted against the sale in 2019 and against the pending sale, said he won't support the final agreements.He said he believes the company will raise parking rates at the garage and lot to $1.50 an hour. The rate at meters now is 25 cents for a half-hour and 50 cents per hour.Raising fines to $35 could hurt businesses because people might not want to risk that large of a fine to make quick stop at a store or restaurant, Walter said.He said he doesn't like the idea of the city performing parking enforcement at property not owned by the city.“It's not a good deal. I voted against it because it's just not a good deal,” Walter said.A motion that he supported, but was voted down 3-2 at the same council meeting in which Transportation Services Consultants proposal was accepted, would have been a better deal, he said.That proposal from Butts Ticket was to install 17 kiosks at various locations for $104,975.Walter said he wanted to set the parking rates at the kiosk spaces to 25 cents for 15 minutes, and use the money to repair the tier garage.“We could have raised the money for those repairs. The repairs aren't needed immediately. At the end of the day, we would still have control over parking,” he said.Revenue from all of the city's parking garages and lots is vital to the city's finances. Walter said $425,000 is taken from parking revenue every year to pay debt from bond issues and $274,000 used for expenses.Parking revenue totaled $914,617 in 2019 and decreased to $835,977 last year due to COVID-19 restrictions, city officials said.
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