CINCINNATI — The time left for people cheating Cincinnati’s parking meters may be expiring.
In next year’s budget proposal, the city has plans to hire four new full–time parking enforcement officers. It will also hire one administrative hearings officer in the Parking Violations Bureau.
“This is a real commitment to parking enforcement,” Mayor Aftab Pureval said at a press conference on Friday.
City manager Sheryl Long said the administration found that the city was behind on staffing compared with other cities: “It did tell us that it was time to make sure we put an investment there.”
The recommendation is inline with the Cincinnati Futures Commission report. Written by top Tri-State business leaders, the report recommends selling city assets and collecting more fees.
The parking meter fund generates just over $3.6 million per year, according to the April report. The commission recommended increasing enforcement, and the mayor said this allocation for more staffing in next year’s budget is aligned with that recommendation.
“We are way too beholden on the earnings tax for city operating [budget],” Pureval said. “We've got to get creative around different streams of revenue.”
Pureval said while the city is on “strong financial footing” in the upcoming budget, “it is abundantly clear that our fundamental long term fiscal challenges remain.”
“Projected expenses are still outpacing projected revenues,” he said.
The administration is still vetting the full recommendations of the committee.
Following the pandemic’s decimation of in-person shopping at urban core businesses, Pureval said the “less aggressive parking enforcement strategy” was a “policy decision” to remove any perceived deterrence for economic growth.
“That was not by accident,” he said. “That was somewhat by design in order to support that growth.”
Austin Lay has worked downtown for two years. In that time, he’s received six tickets.
“There might be some people that get the luck, but not myself,” he said.
From his workplace on 4th street, he pointed out a broken parking kiosk. It’s an example of the some of the parking system upgrades the city will need to fix if it wants to maximize revenue.
“Once [parking enforcement] realized that the meter was shut off,” Lay said. “They stopped coming on this block.”
The budget will be reviewed by city council and the public beginning next week. City manager Long said the city will monitor the impacts of parking enforcement for unintended consequences.
