Parking blues

An e-mail from Times employee Patti Stanley to her co-workers on Wednesday, July 12, 2006:

A while ago, I wrote to the mayor asking about the "rumored" increase in employee parking fees. Finally, today, I received my reply.

His "plan" is described briefly below and he provided a link to review the plan in detail.

Not only are homeowners being gouged (again), but The Seattle Times will be expected to pay $25 for every employee that drives a car to work (I'm wondering if this will be passed on to us????) AND there will be a 10% increase in parking lot fees.

I wrote to the Mayor and advised - though I would love to be able to take public transportation to work, it's not possible because I am required to drive my car every single day in order to conduct my day-to-day business in outside sales. I was virtually ignored.


I fully believe that he should hear feedback about his proposal.

Patti

-----Original Message-----
From: Mayor\'s Office and CSB (imailagent)
[_mailto:CSBandMayor@crm.seattle.gov_]
Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 10:25 AM
To: Patti Stanley
Subject: Parking Tax (Intranet Quorum IMA00346520)


Dear Patricia:

Thank you for your email regarding the proposed commercial parking tax.
On May 22, I recommended a 20-year transportation plan called “Bridging
the Gap.” The purpose of this transportation initiative is to eliminate
the city’s transportation maintenance backlog, pave our city’s streets,
repair our aging bridges, provide better bicycle and pedestrian paths,
and improve transit service. I’ve also included funding to make
improvements to some key facilities to maintain access to downtown
during construction of the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project.

The City of Seattle’s transportation system is failing. Statewide
initiatives, court rulings and the inability of gas tax revenues to keep
pace with inflation have substantially decreased dedicated revenues for
local transportation over the last 10 years. Faced with limited options
to raise transportation funds, I joined mayors across the state to ask
the State Legislature for more local funding tools. Unfortunately, we
have not succeeded in this request. This has meant that there are not
enough funds to maintain our city’s transportation infrastructure.

By increasing maintenance of our roads, sidewalks and bridges now, we
can avoid costly replacements of these facilities later. As an example,
the cost of reconstructing deteriorated roads is five times greater than
the cost of maintaining them. The sooner we can obtain funding for
maintenance, the more tax dollars we will save in the future.

*This comprehensive transportation package will be funded by three
sources: first through a property tax, which will cost the average homeowner $195 in the first year; second through a business transportation tax, which employers will pay $25 per employee, but exempted for those employees in transit programs; lastly, through a 10 percent commercial parking tax.*

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, each day 238,500 workers commute to jobs inside Seattle from residences outside the city limits. More than half of these commuters drive their cars and park in the city. These cars place significant demands on the city’s transportation system. In
order to capture the impact these cars have on our roads, I introduced the parking tax to help. Likewise, cities, such as Bremerton, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Pittsburgh have employed this tool for funding maintenance and improvement of their roads and bridges.

I invite you to review the details of my transportation initiative at:
http://www.seattle.gov/mayor.

Thank you again for taking the time to write and express your opinion.
Should you have additional questions, please call Doug Wentworth at
(206) 684-0814.

Sincerely,

GREG NICKELS

Mayor of Seattle