Ada County staff recommend raising courthouse parking to $3/hour, using revenue for parking maintenance and free employee parking

Ada County operations staff recommended on June 16 that the county raise the courthouse hourly parking rate from $1 (first hour free) to $3 to match downtown garages and fund a dedicated parking maintenance account.

Bob Carney, who led the parking analysis, told commissioners raising rates to $3 an hour would "actually bring in, we're anticipating about $106,000 in revenue" in FY27 and that the fund could grow to roughly $150,000 annually as usage data accumulates. Carney said the extra revenue would be placed in a parking maintenance fund to pay for resurfacing, restriping and equipment replacement and would allow the county to offer free parking to downtown county employees by shifting existing department-paid parking expense into the new fund.

Carney said the courthouse currently charges $1 per hour (first hour free) while downtown garages charge $3 per hour. He recommended matching downtown rates, posting notices July 1, and making the rate change effective Oct. 1 to give the public time to plan. The board discussed removing existing department parking expenses from departmental budgets and moving that expense to the new operations parking fund; staff agreed to perform the budget transfers.

Two of the three commissioners present indicated support for the change; the board asked staff to prepare notices and to transfer existing parking budget lines into the new parking maintenance fund. Carney cautioned he has only six months of data and said the county will refine revenue projections after a full year of operation. The board did not record a formal roll-call motion in the transcript but expressed consensus to pursue the recommendation.