Tags:
car parking
,
fee rise
By ANTHONY RADFORD
THE Bendigo Traders Association has called for the reintroduction of the City of Greater Bendigo council’s car parking account, after the news CBD parking fees are on the rise.
The council this week voted to increase on-street parking fees to $1.10 an hour, up 10 cents, from June 1.
The council also decided to increase the off-street hourly rate by the same amount, and increase the all-day rate from $3.50 to $4.
The casual rate at the multi-storey car park will rise by the same amount, however the all-day rate will stay at $6.
The increase will add a further $225,000 a year to the council coffers.
The council also voted to increase parking fees 10 per cent every three years.
BTA president Neil Athorn questioned the council’s reason for the move.
“Why are they doing this now when they are in between budget processes,” he asked.
“They don’t consider the new budget until April or May, yet they want to decide on this now.
“If they can give us a good reason why, we are happy to have a look at it, but without a good reason, why?”
Mr Athorn said CBD traders were against the move and wanted all the money collected from parking to go back into a special account to pay for more parking.
The former Bendigo City Council operated this way.
“At the moment it goes into general revenue,” he said.
“Why should CBD parking pay for everyday things? They make about $1.6million, now $1.8million, profit a year from parking.
“If they had been putting it all into a car parking reserve we would have been able to write a cheque for the new multi-storey carpark, instead of go ing into debt to pay for it.”
Council acting chief executive officer Prue Mansfield said the council believed the increases were justified.
“The fees haven’t gone up for quite some time. They last went up in 2005,” she said.
“We recommended they go up so they can keep pace with the cost of things.
“We want all-day parking in the multi-storey car park to stay the same because we want to encourage people to park there.”
Ms Mansfield said the current council had no plans to establish a car-park-only account for the fees to go into.
She said without such funding going into general revenue, projects and services that did not make money would not be funded.
Mayor Rod Campbell said most people expect such prices to go up over time.
