Without any funding from the proposed parking meter pilot program the city of Sarasota’s parking department expects to be $300,000 short of its expenses in 2018.


According to the Herald Tribune, The city of Sarasota must subsidize a quarter of its parking department’s $1.2 million budget in the coming year, and that number could be higher in 2019 if the city abandons another attempt to install paid meters downtown.


Parking Director Mark Lyons has proposed a relatively small pilot program that would include the installation of meters on 468 parking spaces on Main Street, Palm Avenue and part of Ringling Boulevard – only a fraction of on-street parking in the area and an even smaller percentage of the thousands of publicly available spaces throughout downtown.


City officials are reviewing requests for proposals about what types of meter system would be used this summer, per the commission’s direction.