Pittsburgh eyes increasing parking fines
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Pittsburgh City Council president Darlene Harris wants to shore up an underfunded pension. Baltimore's mayor needs every last penny to close a $121 million budget gap.
Both have settled on the same partial solution: hiking fines for parking violations.
The idea, which is on council's agenda for a preliminary vote today, is to roughly double parking fine revenue from this year's anticipated $5.6 million by increasing fees for most of the 58 infractions for which the Pittsburgh Parking Authority issues tickets. Those infractions include overtime parking, parking too close to a fire hydrant, double parking and parking in a crosswalk.
"It's time to raise them," Ms. Harris said this week. "If you look at the charges in other cities, it's still a bargain to park in Pittsburgh."
In Pittsburgh and Baltimore, the hoped-for boost would represent only a smidgen of the money needed to solve the financial crises they face. But every little bit helps.
"I think the state of urban finance in America is pretty dire, so I think all cities are looking for new revenue sources," said Christopher P. Briem, a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh. "I think that was true before the recession, but the recession has exacerbated the financial situation of many cities."
Fees for parking violations here have been mostly static since being enacted between 1957 and 2002. They have hardly kept pace with inflation. And in some cases, it can be cheaper parking illegally and playing meter-maid roulette than forking over the money for an all-day stay at a Downtown garage.
The same was true in Cincinnati and Philadelphia, both of which raised their fines in recent years.
Those increases were done less for revenue reasons than to increase turnover at meters in the cities' business districts, where people were parking all day, taking away spaces from shoppers.
"They want those meters turning over," Bob Schroer, parking superintendent of Cincinnati Parking Facilities, said of merchants. "It was cheaper to park on the street and get the fine than park in the garage next door."
A look at how Pittsburgh stacks up to other locales' parking fines shows it to be at the low end of the spectrum, according to a survey of eight other cities by the council budget office.
Pittsburgh's lowest fine is $10, compared with $39 in Seattle and $35 in New York City. Fellow Rust Belt cities Buffalo, Cleveland and Cincinnati come in with minimums of $30, $25 and $35, respectively.
Cincinnati bumped up its fines in February 2009. Cleveland's rates rose in 2006.
First Published May 20, 2010 12:00 am
