Bleeding downtown’s mojo, one parking ticket at a time

Seriously, Las Vegas? Parking tickets on First Friday? What's next, shoeless patrons shuffling along a line of blue-gloved agents patting you down for contraband?

At least 11 people who attended this month's arts-and-culture celebration found themselves with tickets, either for parking at an expired meter or for having an expired registration, victims of folks I've called the hardest-working public employees in the entire state.

According to the city, it's all a big misunderstanding: There's been a longtime suspension of the city's usually merciless parking enforcement policy on First Fridays. But according to Brandy Stanley, the city's parking services manager, the dimensions of the area considered to be "First Friday" were never actually defined. The officer who handed out the tickets thought he was outside the free-parking zone, she said. (For the record, First Friday is now strictly defined as Bonneville Avenue on the north, Las Vegas Boulevard on the east and Main Street on the west. But tickets will still be issued for safety violations such as parking across a crosswalk or in front of a fire hydrant.)

"The policy is stay away from First Friday," Stanley said.

It makes you wish every day was First Friday downtown, where parking can be scarce and expensive. Fail to drop enough quarters into a meter, and you're looking at a $20 fine at least. (In other zones, fines can rise even higher.)

It's one of the worst things about downtown, and one of the key barriers to the area's success. (Full disclosure: My wife works for Faiss, Foley Warren, a public relations and advertising firm that represents several enterprises in the downtown area. She also recently got a ticket downtown.)

On the Strip or in the suburbs, parking is easy, convenient and - best of all - free. But downtown, it's a different story. You get charged even for parking in some casino garages (unless you get validated). Most curbsides have meters. And enforcement is ubiquitous. Although the city employs only nine parking enforcement officers (to patrol the entire city, 24 hours a day, seven days a week), you won't have to wait very long to see the familiar blue-and-white golf carts humming along city streets, looking for the tell-tale flashing red on the parking meter that says you're screwed.

Stanley says the parking situation is different downtown, where businesses, casinos and restaurants are clustered together in a dense area, which makes curbside spaces all the more valuable as a result. Downtown business owners, especially, appreciate limited-term parking to keep cars circulating and customers able to find convenient spaces. But Stanley admits that getting a parking ticket discourages people from coming downtown, where city leaders have been promoting new bars, restaurants and attractions for years.

"It's always a balancing act," she said. "On-street parking is very valuable."

There are other problems with the city's parking scheme, however. The ticket revenue that the parking enforcement officers generate by handing out tickets goes to pay for their salaries. (Stanley says fines generated about $3.9 million of the department's overall $6.4 million in revenue in fiscal year 2011, or 61 percent.) Excess cash goes toward the bonds the city has sold to build several parking garages downtown, including city garages and others under private businesses.

That gives enforcers a perverse incentive to hand out as many tickets as possible. (Almost 70,000 tickets were issued last year, and nearly 26,000 of those were for an expired meter.)

Stanley acknowledges that, in an ideal world, the system would generate more money from meter-paying customers than it would from violations, which is not the case now. "That's not the way it needs to be," she says.

The city is busy installing electronic meters that monitor multiple spaces, which allow users to pay with credit or debit cards and avoid the hassle of searching for coins to buy time. Early versions of the technology were too complicated, she said, and newer meters will be more user friendly. Some will even alert you by text message that your meter is about to expire, and allow you to put more money on it using your smartphone.

"It should be one of our top priorities to make it as easy as possible," she said.

It should. But no matter how easy it is, one thing will remain true downtown: You must pay for parking, and if you don't, or if you misjudge the time left on your meter, you'll become a victim of the man in the golf cart. And the business owners and city boosters hoping for a developing downtown will just have to deal with that particular disincentive.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.