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For the week of June 28 through July 4, 2000

In-lieu parking dried up


By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

In 1979, Ketchum began a progressive parking experiment, but it lost momentum in the mid-1990s.

The city’s in-lieu parking fund was created to give developers an alternative to providing parking on-site at new developments as ordinances dictate, Ketchum city administrator Jim Jaquet said Friday.

Developers simply pay the city, and the money is put in a pot to fund parking-related projects elsewhere in Ketchum.

Ketchum residents have recently raised questions about the in-lieu fund’s status and about what happened to the moneys collected.

Here’s what the Mountain Express learned:

Until 1981, developers paid the city $2,000 per parking space they didn’t provide on site. However, the city recently bumped the cost per space up to $20,000, which, Jaquet said, more closely resembles the land costs in downtown Ketchum.

The last time a developer contributed to the fund was in September 1993, and the capital dried up in August 1996 when the city paid $27,000 to widen three blocks along Second Avenue to accommodate parking spaces, according to an in-lieu fund revenue and expenditure list compiled by the city.

The current cost, Jaquet said, is probably the reason developers aren’t choosing to contribute to the fund anymore.

"Now that it’s realistic. I’m not surprised that we’re not seeing any in lieu, " he said. "It was used when the price was cheap, and it was not used when the price was realistic."

From 1979 through 1993 the in-lieu parking program garnered $125,083. From 1979 through 1996, $130,750 was spent on parking and parking-related projects from the fund. The additional $5,667 in expenditures came from the city’s general fund, Jaquet said.

"We certainly used the money as we could for providing parking areas and widening streets," Jaquet said.

The most substantial downtown parking expansions have been financed by the general fund, Jaquet pointed out.

From 1989 through 1996, the city purchased two lots and improved a third to accommodate 60 additional parking spaces at a cost of $519,000, which also came from the city’s general fund.

In considering the draft Ketchum Comprehensive Plan, the Ketchum City Council has asked the city’s planning and zoning commission to review the future of parking in the growing downtown.

At a meeting last week, the council decided to carry out a study on the downtown area, its parking, vehicle traffic, and pedestrian and bicycle activity.

Language in the comprehensive plan will be vague enough to allow future decisions to be made based on the study, council members decided.

In previous meetings, the city council has endorsed the idea of installing parking meters in the downtown to better manage the parking spaces the city has, rather than expand parking further.

 

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