Lewes’s ongoing parking crunch pops up during a hearing on the city’s budget last week.
The city faces a deficit of some $300,000 in next year’s budget, driven in part by decreases in revenue for things like parking fines and building permits. At the same time, spending increased in this year’s budget to the tune of around $677,000.
However, Councilman Joseph Elder, who is heading up a committee examining possible changes to the city’s parking laws, advocated for an additional budget item - a vehicle-mounted license plate reader for the Lewes Police Department to aid them in issuing fines for parking violations. While a hand held reader is far less expensive, Elder said it wouldn’t be up to the job.
"Any parking enforcement, any three-hour limit that we would try to enforce would be difficult,” he said. “They'd have to go around and use this handheld thing.”
The vehicle-mounted unit is projected to cost between $68,000 and $72,000.
Police Chief Thomas Spell, in response to a question from Councilmember Trina Brown-Hicks, noted that the cost included training, but he warned that more expenses could still be on the way.
“It's a full-service package,” he said. “Not to further cause concern, but also based on the scope of [where] we may eventually be with the parking, there's going to be lots of additional staffing costs.”
Councilman Tim Ritzert indicated that he wasn’t so sure about the need for the vehicle-mounted unit as the city faces a period of financial belt-tightening. Part of the city’s possible budget deficit comes from parking violation revenue, which came in about $100,000 under its projection for this year.
That could be an indicator of the need for more scrupulous enforcement, but it could also mean that parking violations are decreasing over time.
“I have sensitivity and awareness of the parking needs,” he said. “What I am more sensitive about is us making a financial commitment when we really don't have a handle on what the scope of the proposal is.”
Mayor Amy Marasco also seemed to have questions and concerns.
“Parking, everybody knows that it’s a problem,” she noted. “I mean, no one needs to come and tell us that. It's just, what is this equipment and what does it do?”
Like Ritzert, Marasco appeared to be unconvinced about the need for the technology to be included in next year’s budget, which would take effect April 1. She suggested that, with more information, the measure could come up not in next year’s budget, but in a budget amendment, a fairly standard procedure.
“I think the work of the parking committee is fantastic, but until you run through with detail - this option, paid by this - that's why I like an amendment on a budget. It's just like when we design ordinances on the fly and we never like how that ends up.”
Council members also heard from Kerry Tripp, a resident who serves on both the parking committee and the city’s financial stewardship committee. She was not as quick as Elder to rule out the handheld scanners as an option.
“Those handhelds are only about $4,000, so that's a pretty attractive alternative,” she said. “And maybe we get people on bikes instead of cars, and that's an attractive alternative, too.”
Tripp also noted that the city’s financial stewardship committee is recommending a $0.50 increase in parking rates this year.
“The goal is that we are making it so that we're not taking from the budget, but we're actually going to have tourist people that use the town fund the things we need to resolve the parking issues,” she said.
Elder echoed that sentiment in tying the need for the vehicle-mounted unit back to the parking committee he heads.
"The funds that would come in from enforcement would probably pay for this piece of equipment very rapidly,” he explained. “And the way we're looking at it is not to get that kind of revenue or those tickets from locals here, but to make sure that we keep the traffic moving through the business district and to make sure that we don't have a lot of long-term parking in neighborhoods.”
Marasco stressed that enforcement, however it is ultimately done, would be applied equally, not applied just to out-of-towners.
