Abele kills parking fees for Milwaukee County parks
Public opposition to collecting parking fees this year at Milwaukee County parks and parkways persuaded County Executive Chris Abele on Tuesday to kill the plan and tap a contingency fund to fill the resulting $1.6 million hole in the parks budget for 2018.
The County Board will be asked to cancel the parking fee program and approve the transfer from the county’s “rainy day” fund intended for emergency needs, Abele said Tuesday.
The only immediate options were increasing the county wheel tax by $5 a year, to a total of $35, or imposing $1.6 million worth of widespread cuts in Parks Department programs to make up the deficit, he said.
“I said from the beginning that charging for parking in the parks is not something that I would ever want to do, but
we felt it was preferable to yet more cuts to our already strained parks system,” Abele said in a statement.
“I am pleased that we will be able to avoid charging visitors from paying to park their vehicles this year,” he said. “But we should be very clear that this is a short-term solution to a long-term problem.
The $1.15 billion county budget for 2018 adopted by the County Board on Nov. 6 included $1.6 million in revenue this year from parking fees to be collected at parks.
Abele had included the fee revenue in his recommended 2018 budget to help pay for parks maintenance costs.
A budget amendment approved by the board on a 15-3 vote embraced the $1.6 million in revenue from collecting parking fees and approved Abele’s request to create a work group to review hourly rates and where to collect the fees.
Fees of $1 to $2.50 per hour were to be collected beginning June 1, with one free weekday each week, as part of the work group’s proposed pay-to-park plan.
More than 300 county residents attended a Feb. 6 meeting on the proposed parking fees at the Mitchell Park Domes annex and most of those citizens opposed the plan.
The Feb. 6 outpouring of opposition came two weeks after residents packed a board committee meeting at the courthouse to speak out against the proposed parking fees.
The use of contingency funds to fill the budget hole will provide time for administration officials and the board to consider alternatives for 2019, Abele said.
Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic said Tuesday that Abele is not interested in alternatives to parking fees for 2019 and beyond.
“People shouldn’t be fooled by Abele’s effort to look like he’s listened to the public when he’s in Madison now working with Republicans to gain unilateral powers to implement his paid parking plan,” Dimitrijevic said.
There is draft legislation circulating in the state Capitol that would remove certain County Board powers and give them to the Milwaukee County executive. Among the targeted powers to be taken from the board are approving contracts, setting pay rates for all employees, and leasing county buildings and properties.
Dimitrijevic said a section of the bill regarding “parking areas” would give Abele the authority to impose parking fees. That provision in the bill, however, does not refer to parking fees or collecting such fees. It specifically authorizes the executive to designate areas for parking along with areas where parking would be prohibited, as well as enforcement of any violations of those parking regulations with a fine of up to $50.
Raisa Koltun, Abele’s chief of staff, said the issue of collecting parking fees is a policy decision that should be made by the County Board, as the board did in the 2018 budget.
In addition to revisiting parking fees, an increase in the wheel tax and massive cuts in parks programs when preparing the 2019 county budget, one of the only other options available to the county is increasing other parks user fees, County Administrative Services Director Teig Whaley-Smith said Tuesday in a report to the County Board.
“Our parks make Milwaukee County a truly remarkable community, and it’s essential that we all work together to ensure they are protected for our children and generations to come,” interim parks director Jim Sullivan said. “I plan to work closely with the County Board to find solutions to this intractable problem.”
A revised agenda for a previously scheduled meeting of the County Board on Thursday includes a request by Supervisor John Weishan Jr. to prohibit the Parks Department from collecting parking fees this year. Weishan’s resolution also would earmark up to $1.6 million from the contingency fund to cover any deficit in the Parks Department budget caused by canceling the parking fees.