City staff are recommending more than $1 million be used from the municipal pot for debt reduction to fund the re-introduction of paid parking downtown.
On Monday evening, city council will receive a report recommending a contract worth $1.06 million, before tax, be awarded to Aparc Systems for the supply and installation of pay parking and licence plate recognition equipment.
The Vancouver-based company was one of six that submitted proposals to the city.
The request for proposals also included delivery, supply, installation, commissioning and maintenance and other services such as licensing costs, implementation and software integration.
Other costs including the supply and installation of new signage, site preparation, modifications to Plaza Parkade to accommodate the licence-plate recognition system brings the total to reinstall pay parking to $1.24 million.
As part of the city's five-year capital expenditure program, this project was to be funded through debt, but as corporate services director Kathleen Soltis noted in her report to council, "it is not the preferred source."
Staff is suggesting the city separate out the on-street portion of the project (worth $1.066 million) and use the debt reduction reserve instead, which recently was injected with a surplus payout from an old Municipal Finance Authority debt issue.
The remaining $174,000 would come from the reserve fund dedicated to off-street parking.
Administration expects that the pay-back period on the capital project will be five years, according to the report. The life cycle of the new assets is assumed to be approximately 10 years.
"Future net revenues received from on-street parking will be used to reduce the overall burden on the general operating fund rather than to replace the $1.066 [million] appropriated from the debt reduction reserve," Soltis said in the report.
As part of the core review process, council has approved a $1 per hour rate for parking downtown.
In a March 2012 report to council, public consultation on the two-year free-parking pilot that ran from 2009 to 2011 suggested 70 per cent of respondents felt the city should provide free on-street parking. Approximately 47 per cent of those who responded to a city survey - of which there were 35 respondents - were willing to pay for convenient and easy-to-find on-street parking.
