There is further evidence that parking enforcement is no doubt the most unpopular “service” that is provided by the city of Keene. Another petition, this time with 27 signatures, has been sent from downtown business owners to the city council. In the petition (pg 10-12), the business owners oppose the proposed parking rate and time changes proposed by parking director Gary Lamoureux. Mr. Lamoureux proposed that the meter rates be increased, the violations be increased, and parking hours be extended (9AM – 7PM) to try to resolve the problem of exploding costs (26% increase over the last six years) and slow-growing revenues (3.5% increase over the same last six years) in the parking department.
You may recall that there was an earlier petition by downtown business owners that was sent to the city council. In that petition (pg 9-10), 30 downtown business owners also opposed the rate increases and suggested the city instead seek ways to cut costs instead. I also collected 643 petition signatures, see pg 79-80 (Note: not all the signed pages were in the committee’s packet since I had over 38 pages). I had no problem getting downtown workers and shoppers to oppose the rate increases with the help of a few downtown businesses and some other volunteers. I submitted these signatures to the Finance, Organization, and Personnel Committee last week.
It’s clear to me that the business owners, shoppers, and workers of the Keene downtown don’t want to have pay more for tickets and meters. Instead, I agree with the business owners that a cost reduction plan should be implemented in the parking department to address the projected cost increases for the next six years that are currently estimated to grow by 16% by Mr. Lamoureux. It’ll be interesting to see if the city councilors ignore the business owners, workers, and shoppers and raise the rates anyway.
I will break down the parking budget in a future post and suggest some ways to cut costs in the parking department so rates wouldn’t have to increase.
