Collected Revenue Of Parking Tickets In San Marcos

The city of San Marcos collected around $125,000 of revenue in parking tickets for this year, while Texas State brought in $1.1 million for the fiscal year of 2016.

The city’s collected revenue goes to the general fund, said Kevin Burke, economic and development projects coordinator for San Marcos.

“We spend $110,000 a year on staff and associated equipment and etcetera for parking enforcement, so almost all of the revenue that we generate goes right back into parking enforcement,” Burke said.

Most parking tickets acquired by the city are collected downtown. The city is responsible for enforcement in most of the areas on public streets.

“The largest number of citations by area is on North and South LBJ, which makes sense,” Burke said.

San Marcos is currently engaged in a parking management program to develop organization.

“It doesn’t just mean paid parking. What we are trying to do is look really holistically at how we manage parking overall,” Burke said.

Along with managing downtown parking, the city is also determining ways to handle parking for areas adjacent to downtown, in the neighborhoods, adjacent to the university and near the river.

“Enforcement is one of the things we are going to take a look at to see if we can optimize enforcement,” Burke said. “Adding off-street parking spaces is one of the things we are going to look at, both in the short-term and in the long-term. All of these things right now are just getting started and we will be working on in the next six months.”

The city, the university and the county are all separate entities from one another and each have their own parking divisions and enforcement.

With the county courthouse sitting in the middle of the Square, all of the parking along the inside is enforced by the county.

Stephen Prentice, associate director of Parking Services at Texas State, said the revenue collected at the university differs each year.

Texas State’s Parking Services is a self-supporting service, so any money collected from tickets goes to bond payments, repairs of maintenance, resurfacing lots, buying gas for the trucks and salaries.

Texas State University has 11 parking garages for faculty, staff and students. There are nine garages that require a permit and two garages that are paid parking.

“Everybody who parks a vehicle on this campus absolutely positively has to have paid in some fashion to park here,” Prentice said. “It doesn’t matter who it is.”

A standard parking ticket at the university is $40. If a student wants to drive to school, then buying a permit would be cheaper in the long-run, Prentice said.

Buying a commuter parking permit is $115 for a year, which divides to about $3.50 a week for parking. 

This article originally published by the University Star.