Alexandria City Council has a full docket at its upcoming meeting Saturday as final budgetary decisions approach.
City Council will conduct a number of public hearings, including setting the real estate and personal property tax rates for the next fiscal year, additions and deletions to City Manager Jim Parajon’s proposed $977 million Fiscal Year 2027 budget, an increase to the stormwater utility fee, new parking fees and the addition of paid metered parking on Sundays.
A majority of Alexandria’s City Council won’t support City Manager Jim Parajon’s proposal for paid parking on Sundays, but the door to increasing parking meter rates and fines is still open.
City Council had first reading on a number of parking-related ordinances yesterday (Tuesday), which, if approved later this month, would increase parking meter rates and parking ticket fines and add paid parking to metered spots on Sundays.
Alexandria City Manager Jim Parajon is asking City Council to approve paid parking on Sundays and an increase in parking meter rates.
The initiatives are included in Parajon’s proposed $977.3 million Fiscal Year 2027 budget and have gotten mixed reviews. If approved by City Council, the measure would make Alexandria the only locality in the region with parking meter enforcement on Sundays. Additionally, Parajon is proposing to increase parking violation fines from $40 to $50.
A new pilot program to step up parking enforcement in Old Town netted 4,000 citations in its first month.
A staff memo (page 8) to the Traffic and Parking Board said that over half of the 4,000 parking citations issued through the pilot with contractor Reimagine Parking were for parking meter violations.
New parking meters are being installed in Alexandria to ditch the old pay-and-display system.
Earlier this year, the city started moving away from pay and display systems with new pay-by-plate meters installed in the Carlyle and Potomac Yard neighborhoods. But now, those meters are starting to get a citywide expansion to replace the older systems.
It’s been a scorching week in Alexandria, punctuated by two major crime events.
Someone was shot multiple times in an alley several blocks east of the Braddock Metro station last Saturday, followed on Monday afternoon by the city’s fifth homicide this year — the fatal shooting of a 29-year-old man on W. Glebe Road in Arlandria.
Alexandria’s garages aren’t the only parking tool getting an overhaul.
A report for a meeting of the Traffic and Parking Board later today (Monday) said the city is working through a replacement of the city’s parking meters.
Two months after the City Council authorized changes to what Alexandrians pay to park in Old Town, city staff have come back with new price points for parking.
The aim of the change is to make parking in garages more appealing. Currently, many Old Town garages sit empty while drivers circle blocks looking for on-street parking.
(Updated 5 p.m.) Next week, the City Council will review a set of new parking rates (Item 19) for Old Town that aim to push drivers off the street and into the city’s underutilized garages.
The new ordinance would expand the area of Old Town where drivers who don’t have residential or guest permits must pay by phone to park. The current rate in those zones is currently $1.75 per hour, but the new ordinance would allow the Director of Transportation and Environmental Services to set a rate of up to $5 per hour.
After weeks of laissez-faire parking enforcement during the pandemic, Alexandrians may want to start being more careful about where they park later this month.
“The City of Alexandria will resume enforcement of residential parking zones, weekend meters, and other parking regulations beginning Monday, July 20,” the city said in a news release. “Enforcement has been temporarily suspended since March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Alexandria is cutting down its parking enforcement even further as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The city said on its website that the changes in parking enforcement were aimed at helping the disrupted routines caused by working from home and other effects of social distancing.
