DATE: Tuesday, September 30, 1997           TAG: 9709300014

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   43 lines

PARKING: THE DOWNTOWN DILEMMA NORFOLK CONSIDERS PRIVATIZING COLLECTIONS. A FINE IDEA?

Norfolk City Council will discuss today a proposal to privatize parking meter collections. It's not a small change issue.

The city netted about $1.4 million last year in parking fines. About $1.5 million is presently owed in delinquent fines. The collection rate is an uninspiring 63 percent.

Private companies argue that their more efficient operations would be able to collect a higher percentage of fines than the city and thus would be able to make a profit and provide the same level of revenue to the city without boosting fines or instituting quotas.

More than money is at stake since the downtown seeks a customer friendly image and parking tickets are a downer.

Even charging for parking puts downtown at a disadvantage compared to suburban malls where the parking is free. Yet downtown merchants, ironically, often find themselves favoring aggressive ticketing because they rely on turnover of scarce parking spaces.

If customers can't find a convenient place to park, they are less likely to stop. If downtown employees and other nonshoppers tie up spaces for hours, it's worse for business than the annoyance caused by feeding a meter or the risk of a ticket.

If a private firm can really do a better job than the city of collecting, the idea may have merit. But those who worry that private companies would have an incentive to maximize collections by ticketing so aggressively it would alienate shoppers have a point.

A computerized system that would permit a check of license plates is intriguing since it would permit meter readers to let first-time offenders off with a warning and impose escalating fines for recidivists.

Such a system is well worth exploring. It might offer the best available compromise - no pain for first-time offenders, maximum fines for scofflaws and an incentive to keep spaces turning over to the benefit of shoppers and merchants.

Of course, plentiful free parking would be the ideal, but the physical design of downtown and the desire for the revenues that parking fines provide make that alterative unrealistic.

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