City Shocked - Parking Garage Repairs $3 Million

As reported in Monday’s Concord Monitor, once again city officials are shocked to discover that maintenance is required to keep city facilities in good repair. After 30 years it was discovered that the Durgin Block garage not only needs repairs, but that those repairs will cost you $3 million. And since we will need all the parking we can get our hands on during the Main Street reconstruction fiasco, the garage will remain open (assuming it remains safe) and repairs to the garage will be postponed for at least 2 years. Guaranteeing that it will cost even more when the city finally gets around to making those repairs.

Now it really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the city missed such an obvious issue. Like inspecting a parking garage say once every decade. After all we pay a parking manger (according to a May 17, Patch report) $78,457 a year. Why would we expect that it would be his responsibility to actually assess and maintain the facilities that they charge us to use.

Well there is some good news here. The parking manager’s position is being eliminated and Matt Walsh the city manager’s assistant for special projects will be responsible for all city related maintenance issues for the downtown. 

So here’s an easy one. Which do you think occurred first. The reorganization or discovering the garage is in similar condition to the Sewalls Falls bridge. Again some potentially good news, we probably won’t need to do a historic review and inventory  of the garage. Although if past history is any indicator of future performance, by the time the city actually gets around to repairing the garage, it may have become a historic structure.

So over the years the city isn’t willing to find funding to replace Eagle Square Z-brick at a couple of bucks each. The city didn’t set aside funding to paint and maintain the sculpture at Eagle Square, now estimated at $65,000 to paint. But we are supposed to trust this city administration with being capable of maintaining a $10 million Main Street beautification project.

So assuming the city takes out a 20 year bond to pay for the Durgin Block garage repairs, that should have the impact of raising you taxes by about 1%. Wait you say, shouldn’t parking meter funds and fines be enough to cover these repairs (and future parking related maintenance costs)? 

Well not really. The parking meter fund is only in the black because of a deal Steve Duprey cut with the city to infuse much needed funding into the city’s parking meter fund, which has been running in the red since the Capital Commons garage opened. That deal for cash up front meant the city received about $1.5 million less then the market value of those spaces. And it appears (even with Duprey’s infusion of funds) that there still won’t be enough money going forward, to keep the parking meter fund solvent.

Each year since the economy tanked we have given up tax funded services and seen an increase in taxes of over 2%. This year we will see an increase in taxes of over 3%. And going forward the city wants to move the library, complete the 3rd phase of the Langley parkway and continue to expand tif districts that don’t contribute funding for city services, while approving tax abatements for developers on their preferred list. Guess who’s going to get stuck with the bill.