By Alyssa Schnugg
News editor
alyssa.schnugg@hottytoddy.com
Photo by Matt Nichols
The Downtown Parking Advisory Commission voted Friday to charge $20 per vehicle per entrance into the parking garage during the upcoming Double Decker Arts Festival.
Lee Ann Stubbs, Double Decker coordinator with Visit Oxford asked the commission to allow Visit Oxford to manage the parking in the garage by supplying the manpower and security during the event and in return, share the $20 between the city and Visit Oxford.
Stubbs said the funds would go back into the Double Decker account.
Photo by Tate Nations
The parking garage has about 350 spaces and the commission suggested opening the garage on Double Decker Saturday at 8 a.m.
The 25th annual Double Decker Arts Festival be held on April 25-26.
However, the commission did not vote on how/if to split the $20 but instead suggested forming a small committee made up of two parking commissioners and city parking employees to hash out details and make suggestions as needed to the commission on the logistics of controlling the parking in the garage and how to split the $20.
Since it is the first year having the parking garage during the festival, several commissioners said they would like to see how much is actually collected and then review Visit Oxford’s expenses before deciding how the $20 will be split.
Overtime ticket price
Also during the meeting, the commission discussed changing the cost of an overtime parking ticket to $15 for each ticket, regardless of how many tickets someone has, with the possibility of the cost going up to $25 if the ticket goes unpaid for more than a month.
Photo by Alyssa Schnugg
Currently, the first two overtime parking tickets within a year costs $10 each. The third ticket, within a calendar year, is $25. The fourth and consecutive is $50. And the end of the year, it rolls over and starts back at the $10 for the first two parking tickets of the year.
Parking Director Matt Davis said it’s become difficult to manage and a hassle to keep track of the tickets with the current system. He suggested just going to an “across-the-board” charge.
The commission suggested raising it to $15; however, no vote was taken. The commissioners tabled the vote to give Davis time to seek out additional information on whether an ordinance change was required and allow him to run numbers on what collections might be moving forward if tickets were $15 using 2019 data.
The board did vote, however, to remove the three-hour parking limit on home University of Mississippi football game Saturdays.
