Cost of Metered Parking Expected to Rise - FOX 42: Omaha News, Sports and Weather; kptm.com |

Cost of Metered Parking Expected to Rise

Clark Young

KPTM (Omaha) - The Omaha Public Works department is asking Omaha City Council to extend an ordinance that would prevent people from getting parking tickets on the weekend at Mid-town crossing.

Back when the Mid-town are was being built, developers thought it would be a good idea to charge people to park at the meters on the weekend.  They thought this would help generate more customer turn-over for the businesses.

"they started asking us why did we get a ticket here at mid-town crossing and didn't get a ticket downtown," says Molly Skold, the Marketing Manager of Mid-Town Crossing.

Because the rest of Omaha only enforces meter parking Monday - Friday, Skold says the decided last year to ask City Council to amend an the ordinance so parking would be free on the weekends in Mid-Town as well.

Now they're asking City Council to extend that amendment because it's going to expire July 1st.

Skold says that she feels confident that City Council will extend the amendment, simply so that it stays consistent throughout the city.

But if City Council extends the amendment, a new ordinance is set to appear before the council on Tuesday May 15th.

The new ordinance will recommend that the entire city start enforcing the parking meters on Saturday's and longer hours during the work week.

City planning department says this idea comes from a study the city did not to long ago looking at the parking situation in Omaha.

"Whether it be implementation of hours of enforcement or days, the theory there is to actually provide parking, on street parking convenient on street parking to patrons of all the businesses and we can achieve that by either doing more enforcement or extending the enforcement hours," says Murthy Koti, the City Traffic Engineer.

Koti says that the ultimate goal is to create more turn-over when it comes to customers and drive more people to park in the parking garages.