2024 storm season flooding and related issues blamed for predicted shortfalls
Faced with a Parking Division revenue shortfall this fiscal year of more than $270,000 — which has been linked to the 2024 hurricane season — along with the need for millions of dollars of capital expenses in the coming fiscal years, the City of Sarasota’s Parking Division General Manager Broxton Harvey proposed various scenarios to the City Commission this week to rectify the financial situation.
Ultimately, the board members voted unanimously to increase the hours when paid parking is in effect and to raise citation fees by $5 across the board.
As Harvey explained early on during his presentation as part of the commission’s March 23 regular meeting, the Parking Division operates as “an enterprise business fund.” That means it “is supposed to have the capability to actually fund itself,” without having to take money out of the city’s General Fund.
The General Fund is the repository of the city’s annual property tax revenue and other sources of income, such as state revenue sharing. The General Fund pays for the operations of departments that do not generate sufficient revenue on their own to cover their expenses — or, in some cases, no revenue at all.
“We’re trying to get ourselves out of the hole and also [stay] out of the hole,” Harvey told the commissioners.
With the flooding that the 2024 storm season produced on St. Armands Circle, he pointed out, no parking meter fees were collected in that area for more than three months. Moreover, he said, “We did not collect for one month downtown.”
Additionally, Harvey reported, no citations were written on St. Armands for three months, and none was written in downtown Sarasota for about two months.
Moreover, he pointed out, his division had to pay for repairs to elevators, though those repairs “are just not working.” Just replacing the elevators in the State Street parking garage will cost about $750,000, Harvey added.
Parking equipment and parking garage gates were damaged by the flooding, as well, and the division had to replace meters that were damaged or destroyed, he said. More than half of the city’s meters were affected by the flooding, Harvey noted.
The division also will have to update its meters by the end of 2027, he explained, “to be compliant with credit card companies. And that’s going to be about $85,000,” he pointed out.
Further, the division needs four new vehicles, which will entail an expense of $100,000, Harvey continued.
The total capital costs for the 2027 fiscal year add up to “a little bit over a million dollars,” he said.
For the 2028 fiscal year, Harvey continued, he and his staff are proposing the replacement of the elevators inside the Palm Avenue parking garage at an expense of $750,000, “and the meters will have been on the street almost 10 years at that point. … So around this time is when it’s called for replacement, because they are fading and not working properly.”
The latter expense, he said, will be in the range of $1.4 million to $1.5 million.
“We also still have increased vendor fees,” he told the commissioners.
Given all those looming expenses, Harvey explained, plus the fact that the city’s parking garages are under-utilized, the city is obligated to pay off the bonds it issued for the construction of the St. Armands parking garage, and it is providing “almost a million dollars annually” to keep the free Bay Runner trolley on a circuit between downtown Sarasota and St. Armands and Lido keys, his division needs more revenue to keep its finances in the black.
A slide he showed the commissioners, which was in their March 23 agenda packets, put the Parking Division shortfall at $270,000 this fiscal year, which will end on Sept. 30.
The same slide said the deficit is expected to be $2,326,606 in the 2027 fiscal year before climbing to $2,826,000 in the 2028 fiscal year, unless the commissioners were agreeable to implementing changes related to the parking program.
The options
To raise extra revenue, so the division can cover its expenses, Harvey first suggested raising the fee schedule for citations issued to persons who park illegally.
About 50,000 citations are issued each year, Harvey noted. Staff is proposing a $5 increase across the board, he said. The current fees are $25, $30 and $35.
The increase change, he added, would bring in an extra, estimated $280,750. Instead of the approximately $1.7 million in citation payments each year, he noted, the anticipated total would be $2,005,750.
He did provide details about the citation fees in Bradenton and communities in the Tampa Bay region for comparison purposes.
Next, Harvey recommended an increase of $2 per parking permit. “The employee rate at the St. Armands garage and the [St. Armands surface] lots [is] $10 a month,” he noted. “That is 33 cents a day.”
For employees in downtown Sarasota who use the parking garages and lots, the permit costs $20 a year. That averages “66 cents a day,” he added.
Harvey suggested that all employee parking permits be raised to $30 per year. That would generate an extra $317,280 annually for his division, he noted.
The number of employee permits for downtown Sarasota is about 1,400, Harvey said; for St. Armands, the figure is 618.
Turning to what he called the “transient rates” — a reference to the metered and garage parking — Harvey pointed out that the on-street hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., at a fee of $1.50 per hour. The surface lot hours also are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., he continued.
His recommendation, Harvey said, was to raise the rates and keep the current hours of operation. He suggested a fee of $2.25 an hour on the streets. For the garages, it would rise from $1 per hour to $1.50 an hour, though the first hour would remain free.
The rate for the surface lots, he proposed, would climb from $1 an hour to $1.50, as well.
That scenario, he pointed out, would generate $7.2 million a year — an increase of almost $2.5 million.
However, Harvey offered a variation on the transient parking fee option: The rates would remain the same, but the hours when people would have to pay to park would be extended. The new hours would be 8 a.m. to midnight on the streets, while users of the garages and surface lots would pay to park 24 hours a day. That would generate about $7.4 million a year, he noted.
The discussion
Following Harvey’s presentation, Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch was the first to propose the increase in citation fees and an extension of the paid-parking hours.
Vice Mayor Kathy Kelley Ohlrich agreed with her.
However, Ohlrich did ask Harvey, “What happens if you increase fees for garages but not increase fees for on-street parking?”
“Opposite of what we want to happen,” Mayor Debbie Trice interjected.
“You don’t have your turnover on the street, which is what you want,” Harvey told Ohlrich. “You want to actually promote the garages” by keeping the cost lower than the expense for on-street parking, he added. That encourages people to stay longer downtown or on St. Armands, he pointed out.
Ohlrich did note, “The complaints we hear frequently [are] that ‘We want free on-street parking.’ ”
“Everybody wants everything free,” Trice pointed out.
“We can’t go back there,” Ohlrich added.
“That’s correct,” Harvey agreed. When the parking on the streets was free, he said, the Parking Division still had to cover its expenses.
Commissioner Ahearn-Koch noted that, in years past — before metered parking was implemented again — the Parking Division had an annual deficit of about $650,000.
The city’s planning director, Steve Cover — who appeared before the commission with Harvey — noted that the metered parking has increased turnover in spaces, “which has been beneficial to the retailers and restaurants.”
“That’s what people say,” Ohlrich responded.
Without the meters, Cover said, “You could park there all day.”
“And the employees would park there all day, as well,” Harvey pointed out.
Commissioner Liz Alpert said she, too, was in favor of increasing the paid-parking hours and keeping the rates the same.
Ahearn-Koch also pointed out that almost all of the money that comes in to the Economic Development Department, from business tax payments, goes toward the expense of operating the Bay Runner. With Harvey’s funding scenario, she continued, “We can have an Economic Development Department again, which is huge. … We used to do storefront renovations and all those kind of things.”
Aheran-Koch ended up making the motion to approve the increase in the citation fees and the extension of the paid-parking hours, along with directing staff to research the potential of implementing even higher fees for citations linked to public safety issues.
Commissioner Battie seconded it, and it passed 5-0.