The city council made a unanimous decision to raise some of the parking rates in Bloomington, including extended hours, fewer free garage hours, and higher prices for tickets at expired meters. The vote took place Wednesday evening, September 19th, when the council passed eight amendments related to parking.

The city’s parking rates have been stagnant for decades, but the council says the growth in Bloomington’s population merits increased revenue.

The city is extending parking meter hours from 8a.m.-9p.m., as well as increasing the fees for a metered ticket from $20 to $30. They are also reducing the free parking time in city garages from three hours to only one hour. By 2021, there will be no free parking in city garages.

Resident Tara Darcy objects, saying  the city council should cut the budget in other areas because it hits students especially hard.

“I think they’ll get a lot more push-back to these price raises than they did putting them in in the first place, so I think they should think twice about it.”

The city will be eliminating the number of neighborhood parking permits available to campus fraternities and sororities. And the price for those permits will quadruple. They are also raising the price of purchasing the ticket from $25 to $103 .

Kappa Alpha Theta member, Kierston Snyder, says this hits the Greek system where it hurts. “We have 106 girls in our house and our parking lot only provides 24 spaces so I felt like the girls in our house deserve a place to park on the street.”

City clerk Nicole Bolden says the city is working to allow one parking permit for every two residents. They want to change the parking system to better align the city to the university’s parking system.

Most changes will go into affect January 1, 2019 but the neighborhood parking zone changes won’t begin until August 15, 2019. For a detailed description of the city’s parking changes visit the City of Bloomington’s website.