Due to Governor Kate Brown’s stay-home order, there have been less people parking downtown and getting parking tickets. But that means a loss in city and community revenue.
Jeff Petry is the Eugene Parking Services Manager. He said the department was estimated to make about $7.7 million during this fiscal year ending on June 30th.
To break that down, Petry said they estimate about $6 million for user fees and parking permits—such as commuter and downtown parking garage permits, about $1 million in parking tickets, and about $600,000 from commercial leases and tenants in parking garages.
Petry said the city oversees six parking garages with 3,000 parking spaces and roughly about 3,000 on-street parking meters, which generated about $300,000 in January and February. Now, that section of their monthly revenue is one-sixth the amount.
“We've generated $50,000,” said Petry. “So our revenues decreased in our daily parking revenue both on street and off street from $300,000.”
Before the outbreak, Petry also said they had a waitlist for parking permits. But now, some people have rescinded their parking permit requests.
“We don't really know how this event will play out and whether people will continue to buy their monthly parking pass with us,” said Petry. “We haven't seen a dramatic decline yet in parking permits, so I'm just assuming we're kind of steady there.”
But the number of issued parking tickets has also declined.
“That generates about $75,000 per month,” said Petry. “And in the last 30 days we issued about $5,000 of parking tickets. And those are really focused on bad parking behavior and supporting our grab-and-go program from downtown to campus for our restaurants. People parking in the dedicated reserve spaces for the customer pickup locations.”
Petry said that revenue from parking meters, garages, and issuing tickets supports the maintenance to operate the city’s parking system.
“We had about a $10 million deferred maintenance program for the parking garages,” said Petry. “So we've invested in security cameras, led lights, deck coatings, implementing the downtown wayfinding plan, staff costs.”
The department also works to provide support to neighborhoods, downtown businesses grab-and-go parking spots, as well as the Downtown Ambassadors program.
“We also have a transfer to the general funds to help support public safety and police services in downtown, which is $838,000 a year,” said Petry. “And then we also have numerous smaller grants and, sponsorships that parking does to support arts in the community.”
Petry said they also use a little under $100,000 to support community events. He hopes to see an increase in revenue once the city begins discussing community recovery from the outbreak.
