No Garage Financing = No Project

The City cannot execute its plan to finance the garage through 30-year revenue bonds unless the Downtown Parking District can demonstrate annual revenue to pay the bond debt. It is not possible to predict when and if this will ever happen.

In Fiscal Year 2022, the Downtown Parking District deficit was $4 million, which is huge relative to the size of its expenditures of slightly over $8 million. The City projects a deficit in 2023 of $2.9 million. There is no estimate for when the Parking District will make ends meet, let alone generate the surplus needed to make bond payments. Any recovery to solvency will be delayed by the need for the Parking District to pay back loans to the General Fund.

The City Council already doubled parking rates beginning in 2019. So there is no quick fix to bring profitability to the Parking District.

Without the millstone of financing a parking garage, the City’s process of developing housing on 2.47 acres of Downtown lots specified in Measure O will be much more straightforward.

Opponents of the Our Downtown initiative adopt the false premise that we can’t have affordable housing AND make a permanent home for our beloved Farmers Market on an improved community commons on Cedar St.  Happily, we can do both.

Parking competes with affordable housing for space and money

Space Devoted to Car Storage    According to JR Parking Associates who made a presentation to the City recommending alternatives to building a parking structure, each parking space requires approximately 325 square feet, including ramps. Hence eliminating two parking spaces would allow space for a one-bedroom apartment.

Money Devoted to Car Storage   If and when the Downtown Parking District shows a suplus of revenue over expenses, the City wants to spend that on a garage. Measure O prioritizes that surplus for affordable housing.

Parking Revenue for Affordable Housing

City Attorney Anthony Condotti affirms that parking revenue can be used for other purposes:

“To the extent that a parking district generates revenue in excess of what’s required in order to provide and maintain parking facilities that are in existence, and to the extent the City Council makes a policy determination that those revenues are not needed to improve or increase parking facilities with the use of the revenues, then under the Parking District law of the State of California, you are able to put those funds into the General Fund.”