With Poll: Ann Arbor City Council considering parking fine hike

A motorist parks at a metered spot along South University. City officials are proposing increasing parking fines to raise revenues to help the city's struggling budget.

Ryan J. Stanton | AnnArbor.com

Overall, the total projected annual revenue from parking fines would increase to $3.4 million under the new structure.

The proposal comes at a time when Ann Arbor leaders are faced with a potentially multimillion-dollar budget deficit for this year and next year. They're considering laying off firefighters, closing down a senior center and cutting into other public service areas to balance the budget.

Joining Horning at the podium to make a pitch for raising parking fines was City Administrator Roger Fraser. He said raising parking fines isn't an effort to try to reduce the deficit for next year's budget.

"It's part of an overall effort that we have ongoing in trying to make sure that our rates are up to par. As you can tell, this hasn't been done in five years, and it's somewhat overdue," Fraser said. "I won't deny that it has the potential to help us out, but that isn't the reason that staff began this."

Fraser called the increased fines "reasonable" and said he hopes to bring a proposal back to the City Council after another workshop in December. He said he'd like to have the fine structure updated before getting too far into 2010.

In addition to expired meter fine increases, the presentation included other parking fee hikes.

Hazard fines - such as parking in front of a fire hydrant, double parking, or parking in a fire lane - would be standardized at $50 (currently, they range from $25 to $50). And nuisance fines - such as parking in a handicapped spot - would increase from $100 to $125.

The city completed a benchmark study that compared Ann Arbor's parking fines to those in nine other cities: Milwaukee, New Haven, Seattle, Austin, Boulder, Madison, Lansing, East Lansing and Grand Rapids.

Council members had concerns some of those cities were quite a bit larger than Ann Arbor. Horning said the cities were chosen based on comparable population density, similar distribution of parking options and technology, and the fact that all are college towns.

Still, council members said they'd like to see comparisons to other Michigan cities such as Kalamazoo, Traverse City and Royal Oak. Horning said he would try to gather those figures and report back.

According to statistics presented tonight, the proposed increase of expired-meter fines would make Ann Arbor tied for third highest with four other cities, trailing only behind Austin and Seattle. The proposed fines for vehicles parked over the legal limit would make Ann Arbor stand alone as the fourth highest, trailing Austin, Madison and Seattle.

Horning said the new proposal calls for increased penalties for late payment of fines. For example, if a $20 ticket is not paid after 30 days, it increases to $70.

Mayor John Hieftje said he thought the quick acceleration of fines was "a little bit troubling." He said the schedule could put an unfair burden on someone who truly doesn't have the means to pay the ticket on time.

Horning pointed out nearly 75 percent of people pay their fines to Ann Arbor within the first 14 days. He said the proposed schedule also would offer an early payment discount, which few other cities offer. For example, a $20 ticket could go down to $10 if paid in the same day.

About 65 percent of tickets written in Ann Arbor are for expired meters, statistics show. The second and third leading causes of tickets include parking over the legal limit and parking in places where no parking is allowed.

In addition to increasing fines, Council Member Sandi Smith, D-1st Ward, said there have been talks of expanding the hours of parking enforcement. She said she wants to make sure there's an open dialogue about ways to maintain a "friendly downtown" and "ease people's tensions" as the city considers these types of revenue-enhancing initiatives.

Hieftje, who sits on the board of the Downtown Development Authority, said there's an easy way for the public to avoid parking fines: Park in a DDA parking structure.

Ryan J. Stanton covers government for AnnArbor.com. Reach him at ryanstanton@annarbor.com or 734-623-2529.