SLO Reporter

City of San Luis Obispo issued the following announcement on June 8. 

On Tuesday, June 7, 2022, the San Luis Obispo City Council appropriated $179 million for the City’s FY 2022-23 budget, which begins on July 1, 2022.  

This includes funding for 74 established public service programs and investments in Council-adopted strategic initiatives related to four major city goals:  

Economic Recovery, Resiliency and Fiscal Sustainability

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Housing and Homelessness

Climate Action, Open Space and Sustainable Transportation  

“We are reinvesting in our core services and strategic initiatives that will help us achieve the community’s goals,” said San Luis Obispo City Manager Derek Johnson. “We are all experiencing the volatility and uncertainty of emerging from the pandemic and confronting new global challenges, but the City has taken prudent financial steps to ensure that we can deliver on our promises.”  

During the Tuesday meeting, Council held a public hearing on the FY 2022-23 Supplemental Budget, which focused on changes in financial position and needed adjustments to the second year of the City’s two-year financial plan. The 2022-23 Financial Plan Supplement Budget appropriates the budget required for the City government to deliver projects and services to the community. The budget is balanced between revenues and expenditures and retains its operating reserve levels as set by policy.  

Future Changes to Parking Rates, Continuation of Free Parking for Next Year

Based on feedback from the community, the Council voted to allocate $700,000 of American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) funds to the Parking Fund in order to continue providing the first hour of free parking in the public parking structures through June 30, 2023. The Council also approved future public parking rate increases in order to build a fourth parking structure and directed staff to return next spring with a strategic parking plan known as the Downtown Parking and Access Plan that will include options for future parking programs and a comprehensive rate analysis for all parking services. This will be presented to Council before new parking rates take effect in July 2023.  

Additionally, some parking fines will increase this summer to deter parking after a session has expired, parking within an intersection, and parking on the roadside of a vehicle parked at a curb. Programs for people who work downtown will continue unchanged (e.g., 10-hour meter permits and free bus passes).  

Consistent with adopted policy, the City does not use the General Fund (including taxes) to fund parking services. Instead, when patrons pay for parking downtown, that money goes to the City’s self-supporting Parking Fund, which is used to pay for daily operations, maintenance, and repairs for parking infrastructure projects.  

This includes improvements like the new Cultural Arts District Parking Structure, formerly known as the Palm-Nipomo Parking Structure, which will create the infrastructure needed to bring the community's long-term vision for downtown San Luis Obispo to life, including space for the future SLO Rep Theatre. Construction on the parking structure is expected to begin construction in 2023.  

The adopted public parking rate increases are attributed to unprecedented cost increases in the construction industry, increased costs for borrowing money, lost revenues during the pandemic to support downtown business and vitality, and the need to demonstrate to funding entities the City’s plans for maintenance and preservation of existing assets.  

For years, the City has been collecting parking fees in the Parking Fund, saving up $13.9 million for this project, and expected to save even more until the pandemic hit. With the March 2020 shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Parking Fund did not collect an expected $4 million because the City supported urgent and immediate needs for downtown businesses. This included offering free parking, creating a parklet program, and deferring parking rate increases, all of which resulted in less funding for the long-planned parking structure and ongoing repairs to existing parking infrastructure.  

For more information on parking rates and increases, visit www.slocity.org/parking. For more information on the budget and financial plan, visit www.slocity.org/budget.  

To receive updates from the City, please register for City News e-notifications on the City’s website at www.slocity.org/subscribe or follow the City of San Luis Obispo on social media.

Original source can be found here.