SALT LAKE CITY – Salt Lake City leaders say an expected decrease in parking citation revenue is the largest factor in a projected $1.5 million shortfall in the city’s budget.
“Any time there’s a budget shortfall, we, as a council, need to figure out [..] what we’re going to do to make up for that,” said Salt Lake City Council Chairman Charlie Luke.
Luke said the expected decrease in parking citations will cost the city about $900,000 and this is the second year in a row that parking citation projections have been down.
According to Art Raymond, Deputy Director of Communications for Mayor Ralph Becker, the parking citation revenue decrease is tied to an expected decrease in the number of parking citations issued.
“If numbers continue to trend as they are right now, we’ll expect we’ll write about 3,000 fewer tickets than we expected when we assembled our budget last year,” Raymond said. “It’s really important, we think, for us to stipulate that that revenue shortfall is not associated with the money people put in meters or the money we collect for parking.”
City Council members will need to find ways to make up for the shortfall, and Luke said they’ll probably have to make cuts elsewhere.
