Houston Politicizes Parking

Its an interesting approach — Houston has moved parking from the Municipal Court department to the Convention and Entertainment Department and formed a commission with a group of folks only one of whom has ever done anything more with parking than give their car to a valet but I digress.

It seems that the moving of parking to the Entertainment dept was a way to get some of the parking revenue used for something other than the general fund. I guess I can see the wisdom in that. My spies in Houston sent in this summary:

The Commission will
direct Parking Management in the resolution of parking issues and serve as a
public forum. The Commission is charged with:

• Addressing parking
  issues,
• Directing future
  planning
• Proposing regulations deemed
  necessary to ensure adequate supply and turnover
  

Any proposals from the
Commission must be approved by City Council.

 

The Parking Commission
will also help establish a sound public policy. Parking has gone through many
changes in the past year. We were moved from the Municipal Court Dept. to the
Convention & Entertainment Facilities dept to:

1. Put us in a more customer-service
   friendly department
2. Convention Dept. is an enterprise
   fund – Muni Courts sends all revenue to the general fund. In Convention, we will
   retain some of our revenues to re-invest in parking.
3. Convention Dept. has the off-street
   parking division – now on-street and off-street parking are within the same
   dept. and work more closely together.

We’ll follow up and report

J