Tragedy of parking meters

How many times must the citizens of the city of Sarasota go through the agony of this?  

Here’s what the Sarasota City Commission should do about parking meters: Get out of the parking business. 

Eliminate the city’s parking department and all of its employees. Tell all of the business and property owners downtown, in Southside Village and on St. Armands Circle: “We’re done. You take care of the parking yourself.”

And then: Put the city’s three downtown parking garages on the market, and either sell them or lease them to a private enterprise.

These steps would bring an end to this nonsense. Better yet, it ultimately would result in a more efficient city government; and more vibrant and better maintained commercial districts; and sensible, ample parking options for shoppers. Let us show you how.

Of course, almost no one wants to pay for parking! As one-time City Commission candidate Martin Hyde told city commissioners Monday, his nonscientific Facebook poll showed overwhelming opposition to parking meters downtown. Duh. And as before, downtown merchants and business owners likewise continue to resist parking meters. They are convinced they will chase customers to UTC Mall. 

But here’s a truth: There is no such thing as free parking. It comes with a price and cost somewhere.

Let’s start with the city’s parking operations. City Manager Tom Barwin told commissioners it has racked up a $1.57 million deficit in the past three years — property-tax dollars siphoned from the general fund that could have been put to better uses elsewhere.

Clearly the whole premise of the parking department is out of whack when the deficit grows from $397,000 in fiscal 2015-16 to a projected $739,000 in fiscal 2017-18. Or just look at the cost of operating the city’s three garages and surface parking lots — $801,076 estimated this year — compared to parking revenue estimated at $235,210, according to the city budget.

What does that tell you? Parking is not free. Sarasota city taxpayers are subsidizing the “free” parking of everyone (tourists, non-city residents, themselves) with their property taxes.

It makes no sense.

BID should manage parking

If the city would cede parking management to the private sector, it could and should go like this:

Downtown business and property owners should form a parking district, or for that matter, use the existing Business Improvement District to manage on-street parking. If they did this, they could do what many other cities have done with positive results.

In fact, we have advocated this before. Most recently, Sarasota Observer columnist Adrian Moore wrote in June 2016: “Economists from Harvard to UCLA have pointed out for years that free parking has many hidden costs and causes congestion and problematic development patterns. The godfather of modern parking management, UCLA professor Donald Shoup, wrote the book ‘The High Cost of Free Parking’ and advises cities all over the world on how to improve parking. His recommendations boil down to:

“First, cities should charge the right price for curb parking, so that about 15% of spaces are vacant. That way, drivers will always be able to find one or two open curb spaces per block, and no one will cruise. We can call this the Goldilocks price. If no curb spaces are vacant, the price is too low, and if many spaces are vacant, the price is too high. If about 15% of the spaces are vacant, the price is just right … 

“Second, cities should return the increased meter revenue to the metered districts. The parking revenue can pay to clean and repair the sidewalks, light the streets, remove graffiti, plant trees, provide security and put utility wires underground in the metered districts. These public improvements will attract even more customers, some of whom will walk from the surrounding neighborhoods.”

Old Pasadena prospered

Consider the story of Old Pasadena, Calif., a prime example Shoup cited in his book. The following excerpts sound like the story of downtown Sarasota:

“Old Pasadena had no parking meters until 1993. All curb parking was free and was restricted only by a two-hour time limit. Because employees parked in the most convenient curb spaces, and moved their cars periodically to avoid citations, customers had difficulty finding places to park. 

“The city’s staff proposed installing meters to regulate curb parking, but the merchants and property owners opposed the idea. They realized that employees occupied many of the most convenient curb spaces, but they feared that meters, rather than freeing up space for customers, would discourage customers from coming to the area at all. Customers and tenants, they assumed, would simply go to shopping centers (such as the nearby Plaza Pasadena) that offered free parking. 

“Meter proponents countered that anyone who left because they couldn’t park free would make room for others who were willing to pay for parking if they could find a space, and who would probably spend more money while they were in Old Pasadena.

“Debates about the meters dragged on for two years before the city compromised with the merchants and property owners. The city offered to spend all the meter revenue to pay for public investments in Old Pasadena. The business and property owners quickly agreed to the proposal because they saw that they would directly benefit from it, and the desire for public improvements soon outweighed the fear of driving customers away. 

“Businesses and property owners began to see the parking meters in a new light — as a source of revenue. They agreed to an unusually high rate of $1 an hour for curb parking, and to the unusual policy of operating the meters in the evenings and on Sunday. 

“The city also liked the arrangement because it wanted to improve Old Pasadena. By generating the $5 million to finance the ambitious plan to invest in Old Pasadena’s streetscape and to convert its alleys into walkways with access to shops and restaurants, the meter revenue would pay for the project … 

“Old Pasadena’s 690 parking meters yielded $1.3 million ($1,826 per meter) in 2001. The Parking Meter Zone earned additional revenue from valet parking services that use meter spaces and from investment earnings on the meter fund balance, so the total revenue was $1.4 million ($2,096 per meter). The total capital and operating expenses for collecting the revenue amounted to $383 per meter (18% of total meter revenue). Old Pasadena therefore received $1.2 million of net parking revenue ($1,712 per meter) to fund additional public services … 

“Unburdened from parking requirements, Old Pasadena has done well compared with the rest of the city. Its sales tax revenue increased rapidly after parking meters were installed in 1993, and is now higher than in other retail districts in the city. 

“In 1994, Old Pasadena’s sales tax revenue surpassed those of Plaza Pasadena, the nearby shopping mall — complete with free parking — that the city had assisted with a $41 million subsidy in the 1970s. With great fanfare, Plaza Pasadena was demolished in 2001 to make way for a new redevelopment with storefronts that resemble Old Pasadena. In 1998, Old Pasadena’s sales-tax revenue also surpassed those of South Lake Avenue, formerly the city’s premier shopping district, which still has no parking meters.”

There must be a price

Now imagine applying the same approach to the city’s parking garages, St. Armands Circle and Southside Village. In the case of the parking garages, the city of Chicago reaped hundreds of millions of dollars when it leased its garages to a private company. That company, with the revenue it generated, invested to bring the garages up to date.

Obviously, parking meters are an emotional reactor on Main Street. But if viewed rationally, on-street, curb parking is a scarce resource in all of Sarasota’s commercial districts. And every scarce resource is subject to the same laws of economics.

When a scarce resource is free, it is abused and overused — the tragedy of the commons. To avoid the abuse and preserve and maximize the value of the resource, there must be a price. 

The resisters should go to Old Pasadena.