This past week I read a story in The Times Leader about Luzerne County losing money on their Water Street Parkade. Are you kidding me? My brain almost exploded when I read the headline! I immediately thought of Peter Griffin of Family Guy when he said, "My head would explode if I began to know what I was talking about". How the hell can you lose money on a Parkade? Well, our fiscal wizards in the county have found a way. In 2002, they claim it cost them $72,000 to operate the Parkade with revenues being only $12,000. My old time math tells me that they lost $60,000. Are you f*#king kidding me?
First off, motorists who don't work for the county pay a flat $0.50 to park. I assume that county employees park for free. Not surprising. When you park in one of Wilkes-Barre's many city parkades it feels like $0.50 a minute when you get to the toll both. Of course, that is a Gripe for another day. The counties reasoning for charging only $0.50 is that they have no way to track how long people have parked there. The ticketing machine was damaged in 2004, yes 6 years ago and parts are no longer available. I guess Fred Flintstone must have sold them the ticket machine. This year, the county has budgeted to take in $8,800 and has only collected $1,350 so far. Even the dimmest bulb in the box can see that this is behind budget.
Secondly, the security person stationed at the toll booth makes $21,000 a year to sit there and collect the money. Oh by the way, if you want to get out of there without paying your $0.50, just leave at lunch time because no one is stationed at the booth to collect money. I would suspect that they need traffic management there every day around lunch time. Again I have to say, Are you kidding me?
And finally, with no toll booth comes no tickets and no accountability. Yes, the dreaded accountability word. As far as I can see, the County has none. How do we know that the toll collector is not slipping every other quarter in his or her pocket. Shit, they could add another $10,000 a year to their salary and no one would know. The way I see it there are 463 total parking spaces in the Water Street Parkade. If one half or 231 of them are filled by people paying $0.50 per day to park there that would mean the county is taking in $115.00 per day or $577.00 per week in parking fees. If you multiply that out by 52 weeks that means they should bring in about $30,004 per year in parking fees. Why are they only bringing in $12,000? As I stated, one quarter to the county, one quarter to somebody's beer fund.
So, what is the solution? I always say if you are going to Gripe about something, come up with a solution to fix it. It appears very simple. A new ticketing and tracking system would cost up to $100,000 to purchase and install according to the county. In these tough economic times a ticket system for a Parkade should be very low on the list. In order to break even, the county would have to charge a flat $6.00 to park there based on one half of the people paying to park. That's just too much! Simply charge a $3.00 flat fee for non county employees and make county employees pay a monthly fee of $30.00 to park there. This $30.00 can be taken through payroll deduction. Believe me, $30.00 is cheap compared to the $50.00 and $60.00 monthly rates charged by the city. Also, here is a novel idea, apply for a state or federal grant or a casino grant to pay for the purchase of a new toll system. I guess doing something like that would make the brains of the county fiscal wizards explode or maybe they already have.
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