Decatur city leaders are considering a proposal designed to improve parking downtown. City Manager Ryan McCrady says the goals are to make parking easier and collect unpaid fines.
City Council members will review a wide-ranging proposal at their meeting Tuesday. A city memo details the suggested changes, which include the following:
-stabilizing garage and surface parking rates
-starting 15 dollar monthly on-street parking for downtown workers, but not in the core retail area
-changing trolley routes to encourage parking in garages
-increasing parking ticket fines for late payments
-booting and towing vehicles of owners who owe 100 dollars or more
-reducing parking enforcement hours to make it 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. to allow enforcement efforts focused on prime hours
-increase meter bag rates to 10 dollars a day from two dollars, which the potential of waiving the fees for big redevelopment projects
McCrady says proposal comes after businesses expressed concerns and city leaders looked into how much fine money is owed.
"Designing a parking system is not purely a financial decision," McCrady said. "We've got to find a system that works well for all the users of the system. So you have both long term parkers that are working in office buildings and you have retailers who want short term parking so they get turnover in the parking spaces."
Council members will only discuss the issue Tuesday and make suggestions. Then, the city will make the proposal available to the public and take comments before reaching a final decision. McCrady hopes to have changes in place in the next 60 to 90 days.
You can read the proposed changes in full under the agenda section on the city's website: www.ci.decatur.il.us.
