25 Will Get You 30

It could soon cost folks more in money to do business at City Hall.

The city is looking to amend parking regulations in Municipal parking lots. In addition, it is recommending that the parking lot beside City Hall become paid parking for the purposes of improving parking availability to City Hall visitors by charging for a parking space where the visitor in the building is longer than 15 minutes by way of "Pay and Display" machine, excluding accessible parking spaces which will remain 2 hour free parking.

The possibility of paid parking at City Hall was raised during the 2011 budget deliberations.

At present, visitors to City Hall can park for free for 1 hour but will ticket after this amount of time. It has been determined that this is a "heavy handed" to encourage City Hall visitor parking availability. By providing free parking 15 minutes and then charging 25 cents for every additional 15 minutes, it will encourage quicker visits, thereby improving parking space availability.

The cost of installation of the "Pay and Display" machine will cost approximately 20k. This amount includes base construction, power and signage. The revenue to be realized from the lot should be approximately 7-10k. This estimate is based on the number of days per year that City Hall is open, multiplied by the number of spaces made available per hour. However the amount of revenue will be determined by the type of customer usage. If there is a big uptake in the 15 minutes of free parking, this will reduce revenue. Therefore, this would result in a 2-3 year payback period.

Two accessible parking spaces will remain 2 hour free parking. This is consistent with other accessible parking spaces at municipal parking lots and streets.

Councillor Sean Lawlor says that the parking increase may be implemented as an effort to recoup costs associated with delivering parking services at City Hall.

In addition, with the introduction of the P.O.A Court Services that are now operating within the building, a new parking amendment may be in order to create a better parking turnover.