Decision on paid parking in downtown Wichita delayed again. Here’s why, what’s next

Attempts to charge for public parking in downtown Wichita have stalled again.

After four hours of discussion Tuesday night, the Wichita City Council deferred voting on a parking option until Dec. 10.

Council members were in support of two different options: one that would implement paid parking uniformly across downtown, Old Town, and Delano, with up to 15 minutes of free parking. The other option would have implement paid parking downtown and likely created a new tax in the Old Town area to pay for parking. Delano was exempt from that plan until construction is completed on the multimodal center, which includes a parking garage with 400 spaces.

Parking would start at $0.75 an hour, with daily rates at $5 for surface lots and $10 for covered lots under the first option. The other option would start at $3 an hour.

Council members want staff to combine the two options.

Councilmember Dalton Glasscock, who represents parts of Delano, was the lone no vote against deferring the plan.

“I think we should be moving forward on this right now,” Glasscock said. “I think it puts us in jeopardy with Car Park in terms of implementation. And I think the community just wants an answer right now.”

The council voted on both options separately and both failed.

Council members’ main concern with the so-called “Option E,” which carves out Delano from the paid parking plan, was that downtown visitors would be charged $3 an hour for parking.

“It has to be reasonable, and I don’t believe $3 an hour is reasonable,” Mayor Lily Wu said.

Council member Brandon Johnson, whose term expires in 2026, said Option E further delays answers for visitors.

“I won’t be here too much longer,” Johnson said. “Option E is something that you’re going to have to continue to deal with over the next few years. … I think we should have consistency downtown. We should put ourselves in the best financial situation to deal with the deferred maintenance, the management of it and going forward.”

The council previously delayed implementing paid parking after pushback from the community.

Many business owners who spoke at the evening meeting opposed paid parking, saying they feared it would deter people from visiting their businesses.

“Stay out of our way of making money,” Dan Norton, owner of downtown brewery Norton’s Brewing Company, said.

“I understand you have different different plans and different things you need to do, but it sounds like a budget issue.”

Other business owners, and many business groups, support implementing paid parking so the city can to maintain its parking assets.

“The parking management system, we’ve heard it, it doesn’t work. It’s ineffective. It’s not up to today’s standards,” Downtown Wichita President Jeff Fluhr said.

The city pursued paid parking because, it says, it needs more money to maintain existing parking options. City budget documents show the downtown parking fund has been operating at a loss for the last five years.

However, city documents also show that only two of the options – allowing for only 15 minutes of free parking or maintaining the status quo and not implementing paid parking at all – would create some revenue for the city by 2027.

The remaining options would put the parking fund in a more than $1 million hole in the same time frame because the city would address deferred maintenance and buy equipment to enforce paid parking without bringing in enough revenue.

Implementation of paid parking downtown originally was to have begun Jan. 1, according to a contract the city signed with Idaho-based private management company The Car Park. But officials said earlier that won’t happen after the City Council moved to delay purchasing the equipment necessary to implement the plan.