Approval of a bond issue to pay for the city’s proposed 225-lot parking garage downtown will have to wait.

City council members Tuesday night opted to delay a vote on the bond issue until they get more information on the financing.

“We have to get together and crunch the numbers,” said Councilman Kathy Kline. “We want this to happen, but we just have to make sure it adds up.”

Last week, Mayor Maggie Stock told the city redevelopment authority at its meeting that council would likely vote on the bond issue Thursday.

However, council members do not feel sufficiently comfortable with the information they have to vote now.

“I need to see tangible figures in my hands,” said Councilman Cheri Scott. “I want hard, concrete figures before we move forward.”

Art Cordwell, redevelopment authority director, estimated the price of the garage to be about $15,000 to $18,000 per space, with a roughly $4.5 million maximum price.

Cordwell told council the authority can’t offer an exact figure until bids are opened, which cannot be done until the authority gets support from the city.

The garage is part of the Centre City project, which also is to bring a new Marriott Springhill Suites hotel and Rite Aid pharmacy downtown.

Construction of the hotel and pharmacy are expected to begin in January.

The city is looking to pay for the garage through a bond issue from PNC Bank.

Council has been working with PNC for several months to secure a credit rating to get the bond issue.

While the credit rating was given, in which the city received an “A” rating, PNC has yet to supply the city with interest rate details of the bond.

PNC representatives, who were not at the Tuesday meeting, were apparently waiting to receive information from the developer on how much money the developer would contribute to pay for the parking garage.

Jeff Schmitz, owner of JS Capitol Development, the Michigan-based project developer, told council Tuesday he would be able to offer two options for funding.

The first would be a flat rate in which the developer would pay a percentage of guaranteed parking, since the hotel would use spaces in the garage.

Schmitz estimated the hotel would use 22 percent of the spaces on a daily basis, so he offered to pay for that percentage what he said would be a $286,000 debt service the city would need to pay for the structure. That would be about $63,000 per year.

That is less of the $90,000 the city was expecting to get from the developer.

But Schmitz also offered the option of a bed tax, in which each guest at the hotel would pay an additional $5 fee per night.

Schmitz said that tax would raise about $93,000 per year, assuming the hotel maintained about 63 percent occupancy, the average rate for hotels in the area over the past five years.

Schmitz urged council to proceed with the project through one of those options.

“I can’t move forward until you move forward,” he told council.

Kline said she would not feel comfortable supporting the bond until she had a better understanding of how much money would be paid per year.

Estimates in September had the city taking on an additional $160,000 in debt per year from the garage, but Schmitz has different figures.

He told council that city auditor Tim Morgus told him the city would be $73,000 short. There was confusion on council if that number represented the figure after the developer’s contribution or not.

Morgus was not at the meeting.

Kline said for everyone to get on the same page, the city needs to hold a meeting soon at which all key parties are present to iron out the details.

Stock said that likely won’t happen until after Thanksgiving because the city will need to advertise the meeting.