Pricey Parking Problem Postponed

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 24 July 2019.  An edited version of it (here) was published in 22jul19 edition of The Union.]

You’ve heard Nevada City recently announce that it intends to expand metered parking in its downtown area and make it considerably more expensive.  The town’s left-lurching governance has been comedy central for as long as people can remember – it is always short of money and has very little idea about what makes an economically vibrant community.  Its city council mamas and papas see every financial shortfall as a problem solved with more fees and taxes.  As all of our pro-socialist neighbors, the town’s leadership doesn’t seem to understand that people’s economic activities are affected by the taxing of those activities.  Neither do they understand that you get less of what you tax more.

Nevada City, like most municipalities, generates its internal revenues from property tax, sales tax, and a blizzard of fees charged for everything under the sun.  The town’s major cash importers are its retirees and tourists.  It is these folks who make up the overwhelming share of people who stroll on its downtown sidewalks, shop, and eat there.  And they all get there in some kind of motor vehicle that must be parked, which then needs to be forgotten for the duration as they tarry to enjoy the town’s historical architecture, visit shops, take in some theater, and enjoy a leisurely fare in one of its fine eateries.

In an attempt to cobble together some post-hoc rationale for setting parking fees, city councilwoman Reinette Senum quoted the following criteria from some planning manual.  Fees should be set so that 1) there is at least one parking space available on every block, 2) parking spots are easy to find so as to eliminate excessive cruising, and 3) parking turnover occurs at rates that increase business patronage.  These criteria are fine and good for commercial regions that provide goods and services which are inconvenient to find elsewhere.  Nevada City doesn’t come close to satisfying that requirement; almost everything the town offers can be found elsewhere within minutes of its burdensome parking meters.

What no one appears to have done ahead of time is find out, in a systems sense, how the town is ‘used’.  That requires discovery of its usership (who visits), usage (for what purposes), and usability (ease of achieving such purposes).  Instead, the town’s leadership just focused on the need for more revenue, and then took the well-oiled but simple-minded solution of effectively raising taxes on every commercial activity in town while making doing business there more inconvenient – in short, the town’s usability will now take a hit, and that will impact its usership and inevitably its usage.

After some community pushback, to which an edited version of this commentary contributed in The Union, last night the city council met to hear from the town’s merchants and reconsider a plan forward.  The merchants restated their strong feelings that the announced parking rate increases will drive away customers.  In response and after some deliberation, the council decided to postpone going ahead and will now form a committee to further study the matter, get more input, and then wait until September to again take up parking meter increases.

In the interval they should revisit another realworld concept that’s been a perennial anathema to our progressive planners.  This is the Laffer Curve which informs us that there is an optimum taxing structure (think a rate, say, between 0% and 100%) which will maximize a jurisdiction’s revenues.  When you exceed that tax rate, total revenues will start decreasing and will continue to go down as you pile on more taxes.  Making Nevada City an inviting place to spend time and shop will definitely take a hit with the increased cost and inconvenience of the already limited availability of downtown parking.  So, if the city council ignores its merchants and thinks it has financial problems now, they ain’t seen nothing yet.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.