City requesting TIF funds for parking operations; recommending fine increases
The Downtown Development Partnership voted during their Aug. 27 meeting to recommend the reallocation of existing $183,785 in tax increment financing funds for city parking facilities improvements and another $150,000 for operational funding.
The Parking Advisory Commission voted to support those requests during their June 19 meeting.
The parking board is also recommending increases to parking fines and certain fees in the hopes of generating enough revenue to close a budget shortfall.
A common refrain in Great Falls is that downtown parking meters have killed downtown or prevent people from supporting downtown businesses.
For historical context, the City Commission passed an ordinance in September 1947 to install meters in downtown Great Falls.
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During the 1949 general election, the majority of voters supported keeping parking meters after a 18-month test run and the meters remained ever since.
The 1947 ordinance also established two-hour parking time limits and set parking rates at 1 cent for 12 minutes; 2 cents for 24 minutes; 3 cents for 36 minutes; 4 cents for 48 minutes and 5 cents for an hour. Meters were enforced between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. except Sundays and legal holidays.
Since being installed in the 1940s to address what was then considered a parking management and turnover issue, the city’s parking program has struggled for decades to balance revenues with increasing expenses and maintenance needs.
In 2019, the commission approved $470,000 in downtown tax increment financing funds for lighting, pay systems, repairs and maintenance, and architectural and engineering fees toward deferred maintenance in the city’s two public parking garages.
Downtown parking use increased this summer, per city data [2024]
Since then, the city completed the LED lighting retrofit for $264,891 and installed new pay stations for $21,323, leaving $183,785.
City staff are now asking to reallocated those remaining TIF funds toward garage and surface lots improvements such as resurfacing, structural repairs, roof rehabilitation and upgrades to gate controls, as well as landscape maintenance, tree trimming and removal, kioski installation and upkeep, restriping, chain and wall repairs, and fire standpipe restoration, signage and wayfinding.
In April, commissioners approved up to $50,000 in TIF funds for signage at the north parking garage.
The signage package, as presented by city staff, includes an entrance sign, directional signage to the 1st Avenue North
entrance, two large-scale wall signs that will be visible from Central Avenue and 1st Avenue North, a flag mounted sign directing traffic from 4th Street, and permanent signage for the stairwells.
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In June, commissioners awarded a $28,805 contract to All State Signs to “manufacture and install single face sign
cabinets illuminated with LED lights, non-illuminated directional signs, and installation of “no loitering” vinyl door
signs,” for the north garage, to be completed by Dec. 31.
City staff has determined there’s adequate funding in the downtown TIF to fulfill the request and without the funding, the city doesn’t have available funding for parking needs.
“Simply put, improvements will not happen without TIF support. The broken electronic gate alone results in ongoing, unrecoverable revenue loss, as the north garage remains open and unmonitored after normal business hours, allowing free use of the facility,” according to the city staff report.
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“Without immediate action to identify alternative funding, the city may be forced to suspend the parking program altogether. In the short term, staff would need to halt or significantly scale back planned garage maintenance and capital improvements. Over time, this would likely lead to worsening facility conditions and more costly emergency repairs, deferred maintenance, and public safety concern, ultimately jeopardizing the long-term viability of the city’s downtown parking infrastructure,” staff wrote.
During the June parking board meeting, Brock Cherry, city planning director, told the group that “our cash balance is officially depleted. We knew that this was something that was coming. It’s a bad thing because we don’t like where the numbers are, it’s a good thing because it makes parking a very relevant discussion for our city commissioners.”
Cherry said it’s not that parking has been neglected, but sometimes no one notices a hole in the boat until it’s in the water.
Parking has been discussed at great length over the years at the commission and community level, particularly when rate increases have been proposed.
Staff is now proposing to increase fines for time violations and other fees.
In June, Cherry said the parking fund needed about $135,000 for operations in the fiscal year that began July 1 and staff was rounding up to $150,000, “because we know things happen.”
According to the city budget that was adopted by commissioners in August, the parking fund has been operating at an increasing deficit since the fiscal year that ended in June 2024 and has been eating more reserves each year.
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The parking fund was projected to close the last fiscal year with a $19,905 fund balance.
Staff’s proposed budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 shows $784,250 in revenue and $756,685 in expenditures, for a projected ending balance of $47,470 without using reserves.
In October, city staff said they were restarting the practice of booting vehicles with five or more unpaid parking tickets, a practice that had paused in 2022.
The city said the fall pause was due to a license plate recognition error within the city’s third party parking vendor’s enforcement software system, Passport, but according to former and current city staff, there were also internal challenges between the planning and police departments over access to a database that included vehicle ownership information.
Since the city stopped sending violation letters regarding unpaid parking tickets from October 2022 to October 2024, when the city issued a press release saying it was resuming booting, it said there had been $79,680 in unpaid parking tickets.
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The Electric has asked city staff what remains in unpaid parking tickets and has not yet received the number.
The Electric requested the list of unpaid parking tickets for the last few years in October 2024. It’s a practice this reporter started while working at the Tribune, publishing the list, by name, of unpaid tickets more than $50.
The Electric has yet to receive the list by name as the city says it’s having difficulty getting its third party vendor to generate the list.
Lonnie Hill, deputy planning director, told The Electric that Passport has said it’s having trouble accessing the state DMV database to get vehicle registration information.
They’ve been able to generate a list with names, he said, but don’t have confidence in the list since Passport has assigned unpaid parking tickets to incorrect individuals so when city staff looks to send a mail notification in the current city booting process, they have to individually confirm vehicle registration information, which is time consuming.
Since the booting process is for vehicles with five or more unpaid tickets that are more than 30 days overdue in the last 12 months, Hill said they’re also having an issue with unpaid tickets more than a year old expiring from that booting timeline and he’s looking into whether the city can adjust that rule to have a stronger enforcement mechanism for unpaid parking tickets.
The city did provide a list of unpaid parking tickets by license plate for 2023 and 2024.
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According to that list, one downtown business employee had nine unpaid tickets totalling $155 from January through Oct. 7, 2024 and another had 13 totalling $215 from January through Oct. 15, 2024.
Since the city resumed booting in the spring, Lonnie Hill, deputy planning director, said during the DDP meeting that the city had booted about 10 vehicles.
Cherry said during the Aug. 27 DDP meeting that “you all know people downtown who are taking advantage of the system.”
During their Aug. 21 meeting, the Parking Advisory Commission voted to recommend fine and fee increases to the City Commission.
The group discussed the possibility of eliminating the courtesy ticket.
The courtesy ticket previously reset annually, but several years ago that policy was changed to one courtesy ticket for the life of the license plate.
The PAC decided to keep the courtesy ticket as a customer service and visitor friendly option.
City staff said that based on the last three years, the city issues about 5,700 courtesy tickets annually, totalling a $20,000 revenue loss.
Kellie Pierce, director of the downtown improvement district and association, said that increasing the second and subsequent offenses was appropriate, while maintaining the courtesy ticket.
Hill, deputy planning director, said that staff developed anticipated revenue increases from the proposed fine and fee increases, but they can’t predict how many people will pay their tickets.
The second offense ticket is currently $5 and staff is proposing to increase that to $10 for a revenue impact of about $9,000.
The third offense ticket is currently $15 and staff is recommending to increase that to $30, which Hill said would generate about $5,000 in revenue.
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The fourth and subsequent tickets are currently $20, which staff is recommending to increase to $40, which would generate about $13,000 in additional revenue.
Staff are also recommending increasing the improper parking ticket, which can include stradling a meter, from $20 to $30.
Hill said the city issues an average of 1,500 annually, which would add about $9,000 in revenue.
The parking program “needs more revenue to stay solvent,” Hill said during the August PAC meeting.
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City staff is also recommending a code change to remove the mail notification portion of the process to boot vehicles that have five or more unpaid tickets within the last 12 months that are more than 30 days overdue.
“We’re having nightmares in our system,” Hill said.
The third party vendor has struggled to send the mail notification to the correct registered owners of vehicles with those violations and has, in some cases, sent the notifications to people with no violations.
The mail notification required in city code is a “piece of the process that’s a bit broken,” Hill said.
In Billings, he said, parking officials put a sticker on a vehicle that has a certain number of unpaid violations, the “gross offenders.”
It’s been years since the city has done it normally, Hill said, and the city needs “get our ducks in a row so we can go after these offenders.”
Staff is also recommending to increase the meter bagging fee from $5 per day, per space to $10 per space per day.
They’re also recommending increasing the courtesy parking program, in which a business owner pays for a spot in front of their business to offer free parking for up to two hours.
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The fee is currently $400 on Central Avenue and $300 on other streets in the downtown district.
Staff is recommending to increase the fee to $1,000 annually.
There aren’t many courtesy parking spots downtown currently and some business owners complain to the city that people other than their customers are using the space, but there are no restrictions on who can use the space on a public street.
The PAC also discussed the fee for pedlets, which are currently charged $400 per space for the season, which runs from May through October depending on the weather. Most pedlets take up more than one parking space.
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Hill said that for about six months, the actual cost of lost revenue to the city is $960, so the city would need to charge $1,000 to recover that revenue.
Pierce said she’d propose a flat $1,000 fee, or the $960, since the pedlets add to downtown and she doesn’t want to see them go away.
Hill said it’s an interesting discussion point since the PAC hadn’t wanted to subsidize anything until they got to pedlets.
“Is this a case that perhaps this body feels is appropriate to subsidize,” Hill asked the group.
The PAC recommended increasing the pedlet fee to $500 per space per year.
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During the Aug. 27 DDP meeting, city staff said that the parking fund had been on a steady decline other than the COVID money it received.
Staff said during the meeting that ARPA funds were used toward parking, but it was CARES Act funds that commissioners approved using the replenish the fund for lost revenues during the pandemic shutdown.
City staff said that they and the PAC thought it better to increase the fines rather than the rates to close the funding gap and the $150,000 of TIF funds would cover about a year of operating expenses as they implement the proposed fine/fee changes.
“We know with certainty, what we’re doing isn’t working,” Cherry said of parking during the Aug. 27 DDP meeting.
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Cherry said that the city has been on a month to month contract with the city’s parking enforcement contractor, SP+, which was acquired by Metropolis in 2024.
He said city staff was exploring whether to issue a request for proposals for a parking contractor or bring those duties inhouse, echoing what he told the parking board in February.
Unpaid parking tickets list [2017]
Ed Brown, Great Falls Area Chamber of Commerce director, said that people are already not paying their parking tickets so what would encourage motorists to pay those higher fines.
Hill said that a majority of people pay their tickets and they’re trying to increase the compliance rate.
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