San Angelo City Council Discusses Parking Meters Downtown

Parking meters could be a revisited issue downtown in the near future. What do you think?San Angelo City Council was presented the idea by city staff about the possibilities of bringing parking meters back to the downtown area as a way to off set the budget gap for the city.  This option ranked number 3 on the list of ways to help the budget, second on that list was the removal of the tax reinvestment zone, and first was increasing franchise fees.

The projected revenue to come from the parking meters in the first year was $340,000 after the equipment was paid for and could be as high as $500,000 in subsequent years. These numbers were derived from estimates on charging anywhere from $0.50 - $1 per hour on about 700 of the 900 spaces available in the downtown area.

Judge Gilbert did cite in the meeting that when the parking meters were in place before that the city wrote around 50,000 tickets a year. Currently the court gives out about 3,000 per year and he believes that with the implementation of parking meters we could expect the number to grow to about 20,000 citations a year.