The city is moving forward with changes to the city's downtown parking scheme.
During Monday night's meeting, city council unanimously approved a suite of recommendations from the bylaw department it hopes will expand the availability of on-street parking in the central business district.
Firstly, free parking will be extended by an hour to allow for three consecutive hours. Off-street hourly and daily spaces will be made free between 6 p.m. and 8 a.m. instead of the current $2 overnight fee.
The area patrolled by parking control officers would expand to include the entire area bordered by First Avenue, Winnipeg Street, 12th Avenue/Patricia Boulevard and Scotia Street and enforcement staff will begin their work at 7 a.m. instead of 8 a.m.
The three-hour time limit would not apply to Victoria Street between First and Seventh Avenues, which would be changed to a 30-minute parking zone, nor would it apply to areas that are already signed as limits of less than two hours (such as 15- or 30-minute zones).
Monday night's decision also approved initiating the purchase of a licence-plate recognition system.
A budget of $450,000 was set aside to purchase and implement a system in 2014 and would include up to four cameras per enforcement vehicle, monitoring both sides of the street it was patrolling, said bylaw services manager Fred Crittenden.
Overall, there's a 22 per cent vacancy rate in the city's off-street parking lots, said Crittenden, which is heavily carried by vacancies or more than 33 per cent in the Second Avenue and Westel parkades.
Mayor Lyn Hall said he still has concerns about those particular properties, which are due for further increases to the permit rates next year.
"I guess I look at it from this perspective: if we've got a third of our parkade empty, but yet we're going to tack on another 15 per cent, chances are we're not going to decrease the one-third vacancy. That's my concern," said Hall.
Hall said he would like to see something to entice downtown employees and employers to move into those lots and get the vacancy rate down.
Other parking-related changes could be felt next year by downtown property owners.
On Monday afternoon, council's finance and audit committee approved moving ahead with an increase to the off-street parking levy. The levy is paid into by property owners in the C-1 zone, comprising of the central business district. The fund currently brings in $720,000 annually to make up the shortfall not covered by parking user fees to operate and maintain the city's long- and short-term lots.
Finance director Kris Dalio presented the committee with a $30,000 increase to bridge a growing gap between the repair costs and the money in the coffers.
"Historically, the user fees and levy have been sufficient to maintain the operating expenses," said Dalio's report to the committee.
"However, the Off-Street Parking Service has not been recovering enough revenue to address the infrastructure reinvestment needs."
An estimated $860,000 per year is required to reinvest in the upkeep of the aging concrete facilities.
The combination of the three years of increases to parking permit rates approved last year and bumping the levy collected to $750,000 should be enough for the next 10 years, which is when the city no longer has to pay a lease on the Westel parkade.
