County
It Is About Time–Buying Or Selling
November 5, 2007 
Pay taxes, file a divorce, testify in a trial or just stop by and chat up the Commishes and you can park for an hour FREE!
Courthouse visitors will now receive one free hour of parking as they access county services on the Courthouse Complex located at 200 W. Front Street in Boise. The Ada Commishes expanded the free parking program from the existing 10-free minutes to 60-free minutes to help make courthouse services more accessible to Ada County residents–great move and it isn’t even an election year.
“Many citizens have asked us to consider adopting the same first-hour free parking program offered at all the other downtown Capital City Development Corporation (CCDC) parking garages,” said Ada County Commission Chairman Fred Tilman. “While expanding the free parking program at the courthouse doesn’t come cheap, we believe it’s the right thing to do.”
The annual cost associated with the Courthouse’s first-hour free parking program is $214,000. The Board of Ada County Commissioners budgeted funds to cover this added expense in the 2007-2008 budget.
We need a GUARDIAN reader to do the math and figure if it is really worh a quarter million a year. Gotta remember that 5 minutes longer than an hour and CCDC will collect a lot of cash. The big trick is to get them “into the tent.” Sorta like extra minutes on your cell phone. We applaud the deal, but the Commishes need to renegotiate in a year.
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Comments & Discussion
Comments are closed for this post.
Nov 6, 2007, 10:03 am
No such thing as free parking, someone pays. Charging the user is the appropriatte model as it allows people to make decisions with the full knowledge of the financial impact.
Nov 6, 2007, 10:53 am
No doubt that CCDC will wind up with a net plus.
More importantly, where in the @#$% is the audit called for last April? It is idiotic to expect an agency to go without complying with a request from Tibbs (and agreed to by the mayor)to make their finances available to inspect. After no response for almost 7 months this has started to look like a “cover up”.
Nov 6, 2007, 11:00 am
I thought you’d have a different take on this. It strikes me as odd that we have to use tax money to pay the urban renewal agency for that hour. Try as I might I still don’t have the big picture on CCDC.
EDITOR NOTE–Sis, I just want to make the place a little more “user friendly.” As you know the who finance scheme sucks. CCDC owns courthouse, city owns CCDC, County pays, Boise residents pay twice. There is no clean answer.
Nov 6, 2007, 1:44 pm
It only took how many years to do this? I’ve always thought it was tacky if not inappropriate to charge taxpayers to access their own government services. The 10-minutes-free was a joke as anyone who’s gone to the courthouse knows you can barely find a parking spot, get through security, turn around and then get back past to the check-out in 10 minutes. God forbid you need to wait for your number to get called in the clerk’s or assessor’s office.
I’ve snarled at the people park on the side street across from the courthouse and then dash across Front Street traffic, but you can hardly blame them.
This is long overdue, and it still isn’t fair to someone who has to go to a trial or a long commission meeting.
Nov 6, 2007, 1:44 pm
It only took how many years to do this? I’ve always thought it was tacky if not inappropriate to charge taxpayers to access their own government services. The 10-minutes-free was a joke as anyone who’s gone to the courthouse knows you can barely find a parking spot, get through security, turn around and then get back past to the check-out in 10 minutes. God forbid you need to wait for your number to get called in the clerk’s or assessor’s office.
I’ve snarled at the people park on the side street across from the courthouse and then dash across Front Street traffic, but you can hardly blame them.
This is long overdue, and it still isn’t fair to someone who has to go to a trial or a long commission meeting.
Nov 6, 2007, 1:52 pm
According to the press release (http://www.adaweb.net/news.asp#223), “Each day, a little more than 3000 visitors walk thru the Courthouse doors.” Round down to 3000 per day, and assume he means 261 weekdays, not 365 days… 783000 visitors per year is one figure you probably need.
Certainly, some of these people are using metered spots on the street, but I don’t know how many.
I would also assume every person (or the court, in the case of jurors) pays $1.50 today… I’ve never managed to escape in under 10 minutes, even for the simplest transaction.
Under the new plan, if you stay for 1 hour 5 minutes, is the charge $1.50, or $3.00? I do not know and I have not read anything stating what kind of “free” this is. I’m sure someone could ask the parking attendant.
Nov 6, 2007, 6:52 pm
(EDITOR NOTE–Sis, I just want to make the place a little more “user friendly.” As you know the who finance scheme sucks. CCDC owns courthouse, city owns CCDC, County pays, Boise residents pay twice. There is no clean answer.)
I ran into this problem a few years back while trying to sell the CCDC garages a cash register system that would provide more accountability in their day to day operations and increase their profits by providing more controls and accountability over their subcontractors. The bookkeeper had her eyes wide open as I documented what we could do to to increase their profitability but our proposal was rejected by the powers above that would let the contracts and they chose to do so with little transparency or accountability. Are there kickbacks involved? I don’t know, and I don’t want to accuse anyone, but I do believe there is a bad smell about the CCDC and the way it goes about the people’s business, with the peoples monies, that is not going to go away easily.
Nov 6, 2007, 10:44 pm
For a bit of foreign perspective in England earlier this year we had to pay for parking in lots at grocery stores and hospitals.
Nov 10, 2007, 3:59 pm
After having to send an e-mail to the BOCC TWICE before receiving a response (none from Tilman) there is hope that the Commissioners are finally waking up to the fact that it is the people who fund the government not some ephemeral Tax person.
When they open the new facility on the West Bench, they are looking at moving more services to that building so that (1) people can get there more easily and quickly and (2) free parking.
Dave, we’re counting on you to make sure they really do make the new place user friendly.