MISSOULA — The Missoula Parking Commission voted on Tuesday to increase lease rate fees as well as fines for parking violations.
“What we're tasked with is ensuring that there are spaces, that there's a turnover of cars and spaces. So if you're coming downtown to visit a business, there's not someone parking there all day and blocking your access,” said Missoula Parking Commission director Jodi Pilgrim.
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The board of the Missoula Parking Commission voted to increase the lease rates for all but four lots by 10% as well as increase the maximum fine for improper parking violations to $100 for a fifth offense.
“We have different problems that we're trying to solve. And we have very few tools to solve those problems. So one issue we have in our lease parking areas is that we have low utilization in areas that we're showing as 100% or more sold," Pilgrim said. "And then we have wait lists in those areas. We have people who are unable to use the parking that we manage. And we have other people who are holding onto those spaces and not using them."
The Missoula Parking Commission also says that they face the problem of having repeat offenders for meter violations (staying after the time has expired) and safety hazard parking (parking in a loading zone or in an area that is marked off yellow).
The commission states that the current maximum fine of $20 is not enough of a penalty to change the behavior of repeat offenders. That's something that one former business owner agrees with after 50 years of working downtown.
“The majority of Missoulians do not get a lot of parking tickets in our downtown. Only a few are consistent abusers. And one of my concerns under people's concerns was that [the] majority would pay for the false of a minority. An analysis of the parking tickets in 2014 showed that over 90% of Missoulians who got a parking ticket only received one or two parking tickets a year. And that the real abusers of parking spaces tend to be business owners, business managers and employees,” said the former owner of Hide and Sole.
The Missoula City Council will now decide whether to adopt the increases in the coming weeks.
