Milton continues debating parking fees

Milton Town Council has tasked its parking and finance committees with taking a deeper dive into a proposal that would create a parking impact fee on events and commercial businesses in the downtown area. 

A joint workshop of the two committees has been proposed but no date has been set. Councilman Larry Savage had been the chair of the finance committee, but he will be replaced after he chose not to run for re-election. Savage’s seat on council will be filled by Councilman-elect Robert Gray, but he will not take that seat until council’s Monday, April 7 meeting. 

The idea of a parking impact fee has been through a few different iterations, with this version intended to help offset the cost of the town operating and maintaining a parking lot on leased land the town has with Milton Historical Society at the corner of Union and Magnolia streets. 

The lease is for 10 years at a cost of $36,000 annually, with payments made by June 10 every year. The lease has an option to renew for five more years. The town will also be responsible for installing a pervious surface at the lot. In the past, the historical society was reluctant to use that land for permanent parking as the lot has had flooding problems. The town will also install signs for the lot. Mayor John Collier has said the town has promises from Rep. Stell Parker Selby, D-Milton, and Sen. Russ Huxtable, D-Lewes, for $120,000 toward the cost of improvements at the lot.

Originally, the parking proposals were given to the finance committee by town council as two resolutions, with the money raised to go toward the town’s future parking needs. 

Under the first resolution, the town would institute a parking impact fee for paid, ticketed events. The resolutions specifically mention events at Milton Theatre, Milton Historical Society’s bus tours and Milton Garden Club’s tours. The resolution specifies an exception for entities that provide parking on their property, such as Dogfish Head and Milton Fire Department. 

The idea is that these organizations would add a fee to the price of tickets as a separate item. So, for example, if the fee is $1 and the theater charges $25 for an event, a ticket would cost $26. The money raised by the fee would go into a separate reserve fund that would be dedicated to upgrading parking.

The second resolution proposed a parking impact fee for all sales via retail merchant and/or hospitality establishments within downtown Milton. The resolution calls for that fee to be one-half of 1% of gross sales. Much like the events fee, this charge would be added onto existing sales and remitted to the town every quarter.

The committee rejected the resolutions in part because the fees were seen as inequitable, as only the Milton Theatre would truly be affected since Dogfish Head would be exempt and nonprofits only hold a few events over the course of a year. The committee also questioned that the resolutions did not contain defined revenue goals, and the fee on businesses in particular would be difficult to enforce. 

The committee recommended looking into paid parking options and a parking fee structure based on business square footage. 

The finance committee gave its recommendation in the form of meeting minutes; council was expecting the committee’s work to be in the form of an advisory report. In February, Vice Mayor Lee Revis-Plank, who spearheaded the original proposal, was tasked with giving a more detailed report on the idea of parking impact fees.

At council’s March 7 meeting, Revis-Plank presented a report that refocused the fees on paying for the operation and maintenance of the new parking lot at the museum. In addition to the two previous parking impact fee proposals, Revis-Plank provided a cost-benefit analysis of two other options: metered parking and an off-street parking fee on businesses.

According to the report, the town’s total cost for leasing and maintaining the museum parking lot would be $45,000 annually. Of that, $36,000 is for leasing the land and then $9,000 in operational costs. 

According to the parking fee analysis report, with a $1 surcharge on tickets sold for shows, events and festivals within town center, the town would make an anticipated $68,000 in revenue, the majority of which would come from Milton Theatre. In addition, the report posits that a retail/hospitality impact fee would affect 12 businesses in the town center, and at a rate of 0.05% of gross annual income, would bring in $1,800 in revenue. At $70,000 annually, the report says this offsets the annual cost of leasing the museum parking lot.

On metered parking, the report assumes 100 metered parking spaces downtown, with a season running from May 1 to Oct. 31, with three hours per use. The report assumes the total cost for personnel, equipment and public education on the meters would be $68,000. With the $44,000 cost for leasing the museum lot included, it would mean the town would need to take in $113,000 in revenue every year to break even. The report shows the three metered parking price options of $2 per hour, $2.50 per hour and $3 per hour. Under all three of those options, the town would not take in enough revenue to offset the costs.

Finally, the report shows an option where every retail and commercial entity would be billed for the deficit number of off-street parking spaces. This option would bill companies $150 for every space under the amount that is required by code. This option was not recommended, as it leaves the town at an $11,000 deficit from what the town is spending on the museum lot.

As they did when this issue was in front of the finance committee last year, Milton Theatre officials opposed the parking fee.

Marketing Director JP Lacap said the fee would make the theater an unofficial middle man for the town to collect revenue. He said implementing the fee would be exceedingly difficult for the theater logistically, as it would have to revise its whole ticketing system, plus the entire year’s worth of events is already booked. 

“This would require us to go back and rebuild every event, every ticket type and every seating option, an effort that demands significant staff hour cost that would be shouldered solely by the theater,” he said.

Revis-Plank said the fees were not intended as a vendetta against the theater but as a way to get those who use the parking facilities in town to bear the brunt of the cost. She said this was also a way to raise revenue for parking without affecting the taxpayers. 

Lisa Falzarano, owner of The Mercantile, said she is sympathetic to the idea of expanding parking in town, but more planning work needs to be done to make the proposals more equitable.   

Among council members, both Mayor John Collier and Councilwoman Randi Meredith raised concerns about the plan, with Collier saying that additional work needs to be done on the analysis.

“Everyone is using the public parking. It’s public parking. And there are many events that are not ticketed where people are using the parking lot, like Concerts in the Park,” Meredith said. 

Councilman Scotty Edler recommended the committees take a further look at the proposals and bring a report back to council. When asked by Councilman Tom Arkinson on what the timetable is, Town Manager Kristy Rogers said ideally council should come to a resolution by May, as the town starts making payments on the museum lot in June and start budget talks in July.