New state tax jacks up parking fees
A quarter at a Stamford parking meter will earn you 11 minutes rather than 12
STAMFORD — In the spring, city officials debated at multiple meetings whether to hike the parkingmeter fee by 25 cents.
After reaching a compromise with downtown merchants worried that an increase would scare off customers, the administration and elected representatives raised the fee from $1 an hour to $1.25.
It’s about to go up again, but this time it’s not the city’s doing.
The state legislature this year passed a law that taxes parking revenue, and it kicks in Jan. 1. Now meters will be subject to the same 6.35 percent sales tax charged on other goods and services in Connecticut.
It means that the $1.25 hourly meter rate is about to go to $1.33.
Not a good thing, said Greg Fries, who Monday used his phone to access the ParkMobile app and pay a meter on West Park Place, where he was headed to a restaurant for lunch.
“Of course it’s not a good idea,” Fries said. “It’s expensive enough as it is.”
He likes the app because when you pay with your phone you can add time on the meter from the restaurant, should you need it.
“It helps you avoid getting a ticket,” Fries said. “But there’s a charge for using the app.”
It’s a 35cent transaction fee, which Monday brought Fries’
parking cost up from $1.25 to $1.60. Come New Year’s Day, it will be 6.35 percent more, or $1.70.
Fries shrugged. “What can you do?” he said.
Now a quarter gets you 12 minutes of parking. Soon it will get you 11 minutes, said Jim Travers, chief of Stamford’s Transportation Bureau.
He and his staff are figuring out how to charge and collect the tax, then separate it from the city’s revenue stream and send it to the state, Travers said.
“It’s the first time we’re charging a tax on meters,” Travers said. “We’re working with the Finance Department and the Cashiering and Permitting Office so it’s allocated appropriately.”
Downtown has about 250 older meters, which his staff will have to reprogram one by one, he said. The 400 or so new meters can be reset from the Transportation Bureau office.
Parking in city garages, now $1 an hour, will increase to $1.06. The tax also will be imposed on those who purchase monthly passes to park in state and municipal lots and garages.
The tax comes just after Travers’ office received approvals from elected boards to add parking meters on lower Washington Boulevard, Pacific Street, Division Street and Clinton Avenue.
Matt Inzitari, a Stamford man paying a meter on Main Street at lunchtime Monday, said he doesn’t mind a tax if it’s put to good use.
“It makes sense if the money goes toward the infrastructure — our highways need work. And I’m a fan of putting money toward education,” Inzitari said. “As long as the money is spent logically, as long as it’s used responsibly, I would be on board.”
Connecticut’s infrastructure needs amount to billions of dollars. The revenue expected to be generated by the parking tax will fall far short.
Chris McClure, a spokesman for Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget office, said the parking tax is expected to raise $1.8 million for the state’s general fund in the remainder of this fiscal year, and $3.7 million in a full fiscal year.
It will be a small part of the total of Connecticut’s “sales and use” taxes, which Lamont and the state legislature expanded this year.
On July 1, for example, the tax on a Lyft or Uber ride increased from 25 cents to 30 cents.
Residents were paying a 1 percent tax on digital goods and services before Oct. 1. After that, it increased to the full 6.35 percent sales tax.
Oct. 1 also launched an increase in the tax on restaurant and takeout meals and supermarket catering, from 6.35 percent to 7.35 percent. That day, the tax on alcoholic beverages, except beer, jumped 10 percent.
The parking tax won’t be the only one to start Jan. 1.
The 6.35 percent sales tax will be charged for drycleaning and laundry, except laundromats; interior design services; and sales of safety apparel and protection equipment.
From the pool of revenue generated by all the “sales and use” taxes, a fraction, .5 percent, will be diverted to the Special Transportation Fund, to Inzitari’s point. It will amount to $362.9 million in fiscal year 2020, McClure said, and about the same amount the year after that.
“That diversion was set up in Fiscal 2017 to keep the Special Transportation Fund solvent,” McClure said. “It was meant to be a shortterm aid to the fund.”
Lamont and state Democrats have said they expanded the “sales and use” taxes to help close the state’s $3.7 billion deficit.
Now Travers and his staff are working to see the state gets the money it will be owed, but the increasing number of motorists who don’t use coins may not notice the new tax.
Travers said about 42 percent of those who park downtown pay with a credit card and 27 percent use the app.
“Together that comes to almost 70 percent,” he said. “More and more people are using alternatives to the quarter.”