AGENDA #1c
BUDGET WORKING PAPER
TO: W. Calvin Horton, Town Manager
FROM: Kay Johnson, Finance Director
SUBJECT: Parking Token Utilization at Town Meters and Free Weekend Meter Parking
DATE: April 5, 2006
The purpose of this working paper is to present information on use of parking tokens and the possible provision of free weekend meter parking.
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
The Town of Chapel Hill currently sells and accepts parking tokens as a method of payment only at the Wallace Parking Deck and Lots 2 and 5. When the Town originally established the parking token system as a method of payment for parking, we used mechanical meters which could not use tokens. The electronic meters we currently have in service are equipped to accept certain types of parking tokens. We are in the process of having our tokens tested to determine if they could be accepted by the meters, but anticipate that the tokens would conflict with the meters’ coin discrimination mechanisms. The meter manufacturer does provide an alternate token. These tokens are high security, dual-content tokens and are produced by the U.S. Mint. The tokens we currently use cost twelve cents per token, whereas the tokens that are confirmed to work in the meters cost forty cents per token. If our current tokens do not meet the testing requirements, we would like to investigate the possibility of finding another vendor that could provide tokens for less than 40 cents per token. Regardless of which token we would use, we would incur a small charge for reprogramming our parking meters.
We recommend proceeding with testing the Town tokens. If our tokens will not work in the meters, we would recommend searching for a vendor who could provide tokens at less than 40 cents per token.
Currently, metered parking is enforced from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and is free all day Sunday. If free metered parking is offered on Saturdays, we estimate lost meter revenues of $60,000. We would continue to ticket if a vehicle remained in a parking space more than the maximum time limit, generally two hours. However, because of the additional time required to mark tires, we anticipate that there would be some loss of parking ticket revenue in addition to the loss of the meter revenue. The cost of the lost revenues to the Town could be made up by an increase of four cents in the Downtown Service District tax rate.