JACKSON, Mich — Parking meters? Parking assessments? Who should pay for parking in Downtown Jackson?
"We wanted to take a look at it and really dig into it and see — is this a binary choice?" says Ryan Tarrant, President and CEO of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce.
We've been covering the ongoing debate about how the City of Jackson should raise funds to maintain public parking here Downtown. Now, the Chamber of Commerce has put forward a proposal it says might square the circle.
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR DETAILS:
"Over the last couple of months we've done a lot of research, a lot of data analysis on what revenue the City is bringing in and maybe where some areas are that we could do some things that don't involve parking meters, that don't involve tripling the assessments on Downtown businesses," says Tarrant.
City Council backed off its initial decision to install parking meters here in Downtown Jackson earlier this year. Meters were supposed to raise funds instead of the current system of assessing property owners.
The Chamber's proposal is a combination of an additional one-time flat fee of $700 per property owner on top of the current assessment, raising parking permit fees by 25%, with some flexible options for low-income and part-time workers, and raising parking fines to $28.
"The goal is to sort of try and drive people into those parking permits, raising more revenue there, raising more revenue from those parking fines," says Tarrant.
Revenue City Manager Jonathan Greene says the City needs to maintain parking infrastructure. His reaction?
"This is a part of the conversation — I would call probably the middle part of the conversation," says Green. "I think it's a really good example of how a private-public partnership can work in a situation like this."
Greene told me he's grateful the business community is showing a willingness to chip in, and his team will be working with the Chamber on these ideas.
"Their proposal gives something for staff to chew on, and we can start to figure out what parts we think are going to work really well, and keep that conversation going to make some tweaks to some of the other parts," says Greene.
