BANGOR, Maine — A city committee is expected to consider a controversial proposal to expand paid parking in downtown Bangor during a meeting early next month.
During a Thursday afternoon Downtown Parking Advisory Committee meeting, City Councilor Ben Sprague aired his concerns about metered downtown parking, concerns that put the brakes on city discussions earlier this month.
“I did not mean to knock this process off track with my previous thoughts on this,” Sprague told the group.
The city has been considering paid parking as a means of stemming the practice of “car shuffling” — when business employees move cars from one downtown spot to another periodically to avoid getting a ticket, but still take up a streetside spot all day.
In a 3-0 vote, the parking panel chose to hash out a few questions about its proposal and bring a full paid-parking plan to the Business and Economic Development Committee during a meeting Tuesday, May 5. If approved at the committee level, the parking proposal would then pass to the full council for consideration.
Sprague elaborated on his concerns Thursday and proposed some potential fixes of his own — increasing parking ticket penalties, more signs directing people to the Pickering Square Garage and downtown-area parking lots, mixing up parking enforcement routes and promoting discounts available for parking passes at the garage and in downtown lots.
“I would like to see if we can exhaust every option first before we go to paid parking,” Sprague added. “While I think I’ve been the most vocal, I do not think I’m the only councilor with these views.”
He said he’s concerned that the $1-per-hour proposed parking fee would dissuade people from parking downtown to eat or shop for a few minutes, and that those costs would add up over time for people who frequent the downtown.
City Councilor Gibran Graham, a metered-parking proponent, stressed that there is and will continue to be free parking downtown for those who don’t want to pay, including two hours of free parking at the garage.
Graham and Betsy Lundy of Central Street Farmhouse, both of whom have been studying downtown parking options for months as part of the advisory committee, said that most business owners and patrons they’ve talked to “pretty universally” don’t like the idea of paying for parking, but recognize the need for change to open up more spaces for shoppers downtown.
Graham also argued that upping parking ticket prices wouldn’t do anything to resolve the car-shuffling problem, as the employees would just continue to shuffle cars and avoid the tickets as they had before.
Tanya Emery, Bangor’s director of community and economic development, said that there’s little financial risk to installing the meter kiosks, even if the city were to decide in the future that they weren’t working out.
City officials estimate start-up costs for the meter system would be $114,915, which they project the city will make back in six to seven months.
In the first year, they project net revenue of $155,000 followed by an annual net revenue of $270,000 each subsequent year. That compares with a budgeted loss of $77,000 currently.
Sprague expressed concerns that paid parking would make Bangor seem less welcoming.
“You know how people in Maine are, they’re resistant to change,” Sprague said.
BDN writer Evan Belanger contributed to this report. Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.