The Sarasota City Commission responded to public comments and rolled back its paid parking plan Monday, Aug. 3, on a unanimous vote.
That means parking is free again in downtown Sarasota and on St. Armands Circle before 10 a.m., after 8 p.m. and on Sundays.
Timed space enforcement ends at 8 p.m., which means theatergoers who find a spot on the street can rest easy throughout the performance.
Vice Mayor Kathy Kelly Ohlrich said the commissioners talked among themselves on the dais while deciding to change the parking fees and hours last spring, rather than talk with stakeholders, downtown businesses and residents.
“We had the best of intentions, and we thought extending the hours and keeping the rates low would be the solution,” she said.
That initial
vote came May 4,when the commissioners opted for the extended hours rather than keep the same 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. enforcement schedule and increase the rates.
City Commissioner Kyle Battie, the only one of five board members who voted against the changes in May, said, “The people have spoken; we’ve heard them; we’ve listened to them.”
He later noted that Ohlrich made a pertinent point about not speaking to the stakeholders, then added, “We have to seriously understand that we are in competition with UTC.”
What does the Sarasota parking vote mean?
While parking hours and costs were rolled back, an increase in parking fines was not.
The city is hosting an Aug. 24 open house to gather more public input and possibly discuss its next solution.
The city commission will discuss changes to the paid parking funding structure and at an Aug. 31 workshop.
The new parking rules went into effect June 29, so the city will have slightly more than five weeks of data to gauge the level of revenue generated by the changes for that workshop.
Sarasota City Manager Karie Friling said the city only issued warnings and not citations for the first week.
She said that for the first three weeks, the city has collected $62,078 from extended hours parking plus $23,064 for Sunday parking and $20,270 from citation fees.
Friling, who has been on the job for about two months, told the commission there will likely be some sort of hybrid solution to fund the needs of the parking division.
“I do believe there's a solution we can get to,” Friling said.
She added that she has walked downtown Sarasota streets at night and visited University Town Center — the main destination that shop and restaurant owners say their customers may patronize — to gauge how season is impacting business traffic there.
“They’re down in business, as well,” she added.
Why did Sarasota change parking rates?
The changes were designed to put the city’s parking fund in the black, while paying for several capital projects and subsidizing the Bayrunner trolley that operates between downtown and Ted Sperling Park on Lido Key, with stops downtown, on St. Armands Circle.
The fund — which does not currently subsidize the Bayrunner — is projected to lose $270,784 this fiscal year, which ends in September.
That’s based on projected revenues of $6.29 million versus $6.56 million in expenditures.
In May, when the commission opted for the change, the increase in paid parking hours was projected to generate about $2.72 million in new money annually.
Based on an average of 50,000 citations issued annually, the fine increases were projected to generate $280,750 a year.
The addition of paid parking on Sunday was projected to generate about $1 million.
Based on city projections, that increase would allow the enterprise fund to pay for significant capital improvements over the next five years, such as replacement of elevators, installation of license plate readers, and new vehicles.
In the 2027 fiscal year, the anticipated combined parking revenues under the changes are almost $9.8 million compared with expenditures of $8.8 million.
Those projections were altered after the commission’s May 18 vote to roll back morning parking hours after an outcry from area churches and will be altered still, following the Aug. 3 vote.
What did the public say?
James Reese, proprietor of Salon Forty One, presented a petition from 124 business owners asking for the city to remove parking meters and go back to the old hours.
“I’ve lost half of my business, I know what it’s like from the parking meters,” Reese said. “I lost three clients last week.
“People are fed up,” he added. “We have competition out east.”
All other business owners echoed those sentiments.
Downtown resident David Lough said the city should look at downtown parking issues as a whole, noting that the complete streets proposal, which would replace angle-in parking with parallel parking, would reduce available downtown street parking too.
“There’s a better way to look at this,” he said.
Eileen Hampshire, owner of Art to Walk On, noted that “In the past parking was all about turnover, now it’s all about revenue for the city.
“Parking should be a public service for the citizens, not a cash cow for the city,” she added.
Richard Russell, the general and artistic director for Sarasota Opera, weighed in on how extended timed parking in otherwise free spaces had impacted patrons who used to use non-metered spaces.
“That two-hour limitation makes it impossible to use it at a typical performance,” said Russell, who added that the restrictions don’t increase revenue, they do restrict access.
He later suggested that maybe the city could consider valet parking, to make the garages more useful for people who can’t walk that far, either because of age or wearing high heels.
Katherine Hermes, owner of SRQ Med Spa at 1473 Main Street, questioned why the parking enterprise fund should subsidize the Bayrunner.
Hermes said her business is down 25% since July and she laid off an employee.
She added that her customers would love to just pay for a permit to put on their car.
“My people don’t care about paying for the parking, they get really annoyed by $50 tickets,” she added.
Rachel Burns, executive director of the St. Armands Circle Association, said 90% of St. Armands businesses call parking a problem.
“The recent expansion of paid parking and time limits harm business,” she said.
She then noted that since 2018 St. Armands merchants pay $275,000 annually for parking — funds that go toward paying the bond for the St. Armands Key parking garage.
She later suggested that each parking zone should become its own self-maintained district.
What’s next?
First up, the city of Sarasota will have its Aug. 24 open house and Aug. 31 city commission workshop.
The commission can’t vote at that workshop, the soonest it could vote on the future of parking fees is its next meeting in September which, because of Labor Day, would fall on Tuesday, Sept. 8.
Earle Kimel primarily covers local governments in Sarasota County as well as land development and environmental issues for the Herald-Tribune. Follow him on Facebook, and X. He can be reached by email at earle.kimel@heraldtribune.com. Support local journalism by subscribing.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota rolls back controversial paid parking plan
