A parking ticket tucked into the windshield of a car parked on 18th Street South in Birmingham. Photo by Cody Owens.
On Tuesday, the Birmingham City Council voted unanimously to amend the parking meter prices that were passed earlier this year, which more than doubled the fees throughout the city.
Birmingham City Councilor Kim Rafferty said the skyrocketed price for parking was a mistake, but the fee ordinance that was passed this summer was meant to double the fees, which is a scheduled increase that takes place every four years, Rafferty said.
“The council’s role was to consider the recommendation to double the fees. The discussion began in committee and proceeded to the council for approval,” Rafferty said.
However, in places like UAB and Five Points South, the prices for the meters were increased more than what was planned.
“Unfortunately the increments on different meters varied, with 15 minutes for a quarter being the highest. We wanted to streamline increments and unfortunately when the ordinance was finalized, the call — not from the council — was on the wrong increments. My office double checked because we thought 25 cents per 15 minute increments was what it should be, but the Traffic and Engineering Department stated it was to be $2 per hour,” Rafferty said.
Birmingham Traffic Engineer Gregory Dawkins said at Tuesday’s meeting that the new fees were not implemented in all locations immediately, which led to “quirky” meters that were charging more than they should have.
“The three-hour meters are the ones that charge a higher rate for the first hour. The next two hours the rates go down, and that is just how the meter mechanisms are set up,” Dawkins said.
Joe Babin, general manager at Orbit Salon in Five Points South, said the increase has negatively impacted businesses throughout the area. “No one is going to want to come down here if they are paying that much to park. It’s just ridiculous,” Babin said.
He said that a month ago he noticed that a quarter was only buying eight minutes in the meters. Each additional quarter added seven minutes.
“No one can walk around Five Points if they have to keep going back to feed the meters. You have to have a specific destination instead of just wanting to walk around and check out the places around here,” Babin said.
Customers coming to the salon usually can’t continually feed their parking meters. “A standard cut and highlight can take several hours,” he explained. “We used to go out and feed the meters for customers but now it just costs too much to do that for everyone,” Babin said.
Mayor William Bell said that it’s important that parking spots in certain areas have a “short turnover” rate for customers. “It’s about parking enforcement and revenue generation,” Bell said. “There are meters where you don’t want people parking there all day.”
Abbott cited the mistake in the previous ordinance that charged $1 for the first hour to park, and then 25 cents for each additional hour. “I would like to move that we make those corrections to the meters where they are 50 cents an hour instead of a dollar for the first hour,” Abbott said.
Tuesday’s amendment will make the 10-hour meters throughout the city 50 cents an hour.
It is unclear when the changes will be made to meters that are charging more than they should. However, Rafferty said that a major problem still remains with the parking situation around UAB.
“The largest issue here is with UAB. They have seriously decreased student permit parking, forcing them onto the street. There are no one-hour meters, so I am assuming these are two- and three-hour meters, and as stated before, you can only feed them once or twice before violating city ordinance,” Rafferty said. “UAB needs to rectify this situation. Street side parking was never designed for long-term student parking.”
UAB Director of Media Relations Jim Bakken, who is authorized to comment on the parking situation at the university, was out of the office and could not be reached for comment before press time.
