Advisory board: Higher parking rates can help fix county’s fiscal woes

By Jennifer Deseo | Jan 12, 2010

Montgomery County’s operating budget is in a deep, tar-filled pit, but Silver Spring’s citizens advisory board has an idea or two about how to fix that.

Photo: Members of the citizens advisory board at Monday nights meeting in Long Branch. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

Photo: Members of the citizens advisory board at Monday night's meeting in Long Branch. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

At its monthly meeting Monday night in Long Branch, board members proposed higher parking fees and a greater reliance on free labor to cover some of the projected $608 million shortfall in the fiscal year 2011 operating budget.

Board member Constance Wynn, of South Four Corners, said she’d be willing to pay $1.50 per hour to park in downtown Silver Spring’s public garages. That rate represents a 100 percent increase from the current $0.75 short-term hourly rate. Debbie Linn, a board member from the Sligo-Branville area, said she didn’t want to pay that much but was willing to take a $1 hourly rate.

Either way, it’s a problem, board member “Southside” Evan Glass, of South Silver Spring, and economic-development guru Mel Tull argued. According to them, the Town Square and Wayne Avenue public garages next to the Downtown Silver Spring shopping center have a 20-year agreement with the county to waive parking fees after 6:00 p.m. weekdays and all day on weekends. (more…)

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South Silver Spring project shrinks its garage

By Jennifer Deseo | Dec 14, 2009
Image: The Galaxy project site (red) and its neighbor, The Aurora condos. Courtesy of MNCPPC.

Image: The Galaxy project site (red) and its neighbor, The Aurora condos. Courtesy of MNCPPC.

UPDATE — A development project planned for Eastern Avenue will offer less parking to future South Silver Spring residents, the county’s planning board decided. What’s unclear is how the decision will affect current South Silver Spring residents.

In a unanimous Dec 3 vote, the planning board agreed to shrink residential parking at the proposed Galaxy development project from a previously approved 257 spaces to 191 spaces, or 66 fewer parking slots. Chalk up the change to “current market conditions,” planning board documents stated.

The two buildings that comprise the project will plant a combined 241 units onto Eastern Avenue at 13th Street, planning department documents read. Do a little math, and that means 50 units must go without the matching personal parking spots.

But developer RST also offered parking at The Galaxy to residents of the adjacent Aurora building, which it rehabbed from vacant office space to 145 condominium units in 2005. (more…)

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