Your presence and thoughtful comments at many city meetings is much appreciated. Thank you (and many other commenters here) for doing the thankless job of poring over data. I do not know enough to know whether your argument is a sound one, but I do know that many of the folks on the DDA board and staff are neither foolish nor resistant to scrutiny. I hope you’ve at least asked for an audience with Susan Pollay to discuss some of your concerns?

If you’re leaving town, please publish your e-mail address here (and on other newspaper websites) so fellow board-watchers may get in touch with you and profit from your insights.

The Parking Fund budget shows that actual expenditures exceeded revenues in 2008/2009 by $1,189,721. The page shows that the revised budget for 2009/2010 had a deficit projected of $4,698,167. However the actual deficit for the first 6 months was $2,420,672, which if doubled would exceed the budgeted deficit. The Parking Maintenance Fund shows a nearly $1 million deficit for the first 6 months of this fiscal year.

These figures seem to support my point, that the Parking Fund cannot be relied upon indefinitely to pay for new parking construction, contrary to Roger Hewitt’s statement.

The full picture however would depend on an assessment of future repair needs for aging structures, the length of time that payment must be made on various bonds, and other projections over time. I know that the DDA’s excellent staff probably have those projections sitting on a computer somewhere right now. (The DDA financial statements have always been a thing of joy to those of us who like clear unambiguous spreadsheets.)

I’d be interested to see a recent full accounting of the parking system finances. The DDA has been paying huge amounts out of this fund to prop up city government and has also committed future revenues to pay for the full cost of the new underground structure on the Library Lot (bond payments). Surely there are limits.

Three statements by the chair of Operations Subcommittee, Roger Hewitt, made me scratch my head. In reference to PILOP, he claimed there was an issue with the board packet, and consequently, the surcharge is only 20%, not the 25% as stated in the packet and this article (at 1:00:00 from CTN video-on-demand). Since no board member demanded clarification on how this would affect DDA parking revenue, I guess they don’t really care. Maybe they don’t understand, or more likely, they’re just satisfied with the free lunch and the conversations they can lead at cocktail parties that their membership provides. Maybe that’s too harsh, but seriously, if they’re not providing oversight, why are they there?

Second, he argued, that parking volume has not decreased. “Overall, there are no signs of slacking of demand. There’s certainly probably leveling of demand right now. There’s nothing we can see that looks like any decline in usage.” (at 1:25:00). From their own reports, total patrons over Mar-May (the last three months reported) have declined by 68,000 or 11% when compared year-over-year. To clarify, “total patrons” are only people who pay hourly at structures or surface lots; it doesn’t include monthly contracts or meter usage. Granted, the largest decline was in March, but the 8% decline in May shouldn’t be ignored. Again, nobody asked for an explanation, so I question their ability to think critically.

Patrons in thousands 2010 2009 y-y M(L)
May 170 185 (15) or (8%)
Apr 206 209 (3) or (1%)
Mar 159 204 (45) or (22%)
Total 535 598 (68) or (11%)

Last, his explanation that May’s volume decline is due to the Library Lot closure is ludicrous (1:24:00). If there is extra parking capacity, the parkers would use other spaces. To use an analogy, if you’re at a grocery store and they shut down a lane, you go to another line; you don’t cease shopping, so if there is extra capacity, volume will remain the same. His analysis only makes sense if these parkers switched to parking meters (DDA can’t count the volume on the old machines), if they used free spaces in the neighborhoods, or more concerning, if they decided not to go downtown because of the construction. The truth is the DDA doesn’t know, and apparently they don’t feel the need to investigate why demand is down 11% over the last three months.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to follow the DDA after August, so somebody needs to follow these fools. For data, I have the last two or three years of parking data on a spreadsheet, and I’ve estimated a few analysis items, such as separating hourly vs contract revenue and price-volume variances. If anyone is interested in continuing this analysis, please respond, and we can exchange emails.

Brad Mikus
Ann Arbor resident and juice enthusiast