Naperville businesses might pay fee for parking

No citywide sales tax increase will be used to help pay for downtown Naperville parking decks.

That was made abundantly clear by a unanimous vote of the city council late Tuesday.

Council members also made it clear they like the idea of financing a number of parking deck proposals with some sort of fee on downtown commercial property owners. But not as clear is how big a part that fee will play in covering the projects' costs.

Councilmen say such a fee would create equality in a financing system that appears to favor businesses that generate more traffic, in this case, restaurants and bars.

Currently, all downtown property owners pay an additional property tax to fund the construction and upkeep of the parking decks.

Their fees are based on size of their buildings; the new fee would be based on size and their use.

"In my opinion the special service area financing method is outmoded," Councilman James Boyajian said. "You don't want to give any business in downtown a free ride because they all have the responsibility to provide parking, and rather than have them all pay the same amount, we should link a cause-and-effect generator."

Downtown Naperville Alliance officials said the group's management council opposes such a fee because it creates a disparity between business types.

"What is fair and equitable to retailers and what is fair and equitable to office users?" asked Patti Roberts, DNA's executive director. "There's so much work to be done on those types of fees."

Doug Krieger, the city's finance director, said he expects to have a report to the council by its Sept. 18 meeting detailing how the fees would be assessed to the various business types.

He said the impact fee likely would be used in conjunction with a planned 1 percentage point increase to the food and beverage tax at downtown restaurants only. There is concern that reliance solely on an impact fee might impact development decisions downtown.

"The impact fee is not a tool that should be used to dictate balances between business types," Krieger said. "It should be a tool that simply and fairly allocates payment of parking with users of parking."