HELENA — The City of Helena is taking public comment on adjusting parking fee rates downtown.
The goal of the new fee structure is to implement uniform parking fees, which would cost $1 per hour to park throughout the entire downtown area. As of now, there are 17 zones with three rate structures.
“The convenience for the customer to have one zone one fee. And then the software is to have it consolidated in basically to one platform so that not only can you pay for parking, but you can also pay for any permits that you want to potentially buy. There’s the online payments, you know, for the permits and there’s for tickets,” says David Knoepke, Transportation Systems Director for the City of Helena.
The city is also looking at removing entry and exit arms at the 6th Avenue and Getchell parking structures while also removing 1st-hour-free parking at several parking lots.
The city worked alongside the Business Improvement District to come up with these changes.
Sara Gowen, a stylist at Emerald Salon, says she spends about $1,200 per year on parking while working downtown.
She says that businesses could benefit from some type of parking validation for customers.
“Another thing that’s tough is, being a business, if one of our clients does end up getting a ticket, we have no way to refund. We have no way to supplement. We have no tokens. We have nothing as incentives to help our clients get in here,” says Gowen.
Chelsia Rice, co-owner of Montana Book Co., says that creating parking distinctly for state workers could open up parking for downtown customers and says the city should not restrict parking in any more ways than has been done.
“Having state employees downtown is both a boon to business but also eliminates a lot of the opportunities for parking for our customers. And so, having a different parking structure where state employees could park elsewhere or also work elsewhere would behoove our downtown businesses and make customers more able to access our businesses,” says Rice.
The city says that the best way to get your public comment across to the city is through the Be Heard Helena site.
