Why don't you just outlaw cars in the city centre, like the City of London does?

Be done with them straight up.

Taxing parking spaces, eh. Next you'll be suggesting taxing petrol and some such nonsense.

Duin's article was fascinating by way of revealing the object behind the idea of taxing parking spaces; not so much to reduce space wasted to park cars, but to make Greg Goodman's parking lot empire less productive, so he might be more inclined to sell off some of his lots on 2nd Av for development.

Taxing parking spaces sounds o.k.. Above groud parking structures should't be given a break though. They're really more wasteful than surface lots. Underground parking is where a break from parking space taxes, if they came to be, might encourage developers to build more underground.

Bridgeport Village...what an expendable novelty. Not a village at all. You can't live there. It's addicted to cars. Forget the parking space tax. Limit their maximum parking capacity. Encourage them to underwrite mass transit development and in the interim, shuttle patrons from various points in their neighborhoods to eliminate car trips.

actually, they both make good points.

the height restrictions (75', i believe, along the willamette) probably ought to be relaxed a bit. at the cost of land downtown, i have trouble seeing new construction at that scale being economically feasible.

a parking space tax is probably not politically viable, especially when you start complicating things by making exceptions for underground, and above ground spaces. what your goal really is here is to make underdeveloped lots more rare. empty lots in urban downtowns are almost always used for parking spaces, because it's a great way to pay your property tax while speculating on rising land values (especially when property tax increases are limited by law). a better approach would be to levy a site value tax on the unimproved land value of a piece of real estate. better yet would be to offset that tax by reducing rates on the capital portion of the property (revenue neutral, of course).

basically, this would be a dual rate property tax, with a higher percentage on the land than the building. that might require some tweaking of state law, though.

Good Lord, what won't the Socialists in Salem think of to tax next?

Why not try living within the means of an efficient, conservative state budget?

Here we go again. Portland has a problem, so let's solve it for the entire State.

Taxing parking spaces? Put that to a Statewide vote, and you do not have a snowballs chance -

However, if it is a valid solution to the problems you have in Portland - anything that limits traffic and your horrible pollution problem that results from auto traffic has to be considered a good thing - then do it. But do it in Portland. Leave the rest of us alone until you propose to solve a problem we have.

Cody, we don't have a Wal-mart in this 3,000 square mile County (thank the powers above), and we don't have "major transportation lines". We are over 100 miles from the nearest Interstate freeway, we don't have light rail, and that little mini-bus that comes through Prineville twice daily hardly counts as a bus line.

While your idea has merit - in Portland - please think before you write a little more.

I think we need to get Nigel from London onto Prineville's transit and parking problems, as he obviously has pertinent experience, but let's warn him not to use terms like "petrol" with the folks in eastern Oregon :-)

"Why don't you just outlaw cars in the city centre, like the City of London does?"

Just to be correct: I used to fly to London all the time. Cars are not outlawed in the city centre. They pay a fee to drive in the city centre. I do not know how successful this has been.

Cars are, however, not permitted in the center of Amsterdam. Vehicles park outside the city center and either walk, bicycle or take public transit into the center of the city.

I am neutral to the idea of taxing parking. Personally, I think that parking downtown is already stressful enough and I haven't owned a car in 15 years. I think that taxing parking would not discourage those with big SUVs from parking downtown whatsoever and would harm those with smarter, smaller, more eco friendly cars who should be more welcome.

I think that there should be incentives given to those that choose to use mass transit (like the fareless zone), as well as a tax credit for those that buy fuel efficent cars. While the FEDs have a one time tax credit for buying a hybrid car, this is just that.... ONE TIME.

Just my take.

"Bridgeport Village...what an expendable novelty."

Feh. A novelty built without subsidy, employs many and is wildly successful. It's pretty sad you find find fault in pragmatic retail development and personal freedom, ws.

Oooh, those evil capitalists just burn you up, I bet.

Start with making legislators pay for their own parking, from their own pockets and not from their daily legislative expense stipend. Then tax bicycle racks, bicycle lockers and bicycle parking too, along with a hefty priced bicycle license, registration and tax so bicyclists pay their fair share for bicycle infrastructure instead of the costs being pilfered from and relying on drivers to pay the bicyclists way. Next increase mass transit fares so the ridership pays for the full costs of the highly taxpayer subsidized service.

Adding a new tax on parking spaces is nothing more than a socially engineered anti-business proposal. How many legislators have the expertise of a CEO and understand the needs individual and unique businesses? Landowners already pay property taxes on their property. The tax code should NOT be used for social engineering purposes. People vote with their choice of mobility. This proposal will only raise the costs of goods and services for everybody and congest neighborhood streets with more parked cars. When I registered as a Democrat, it was the party of the working people. The leftist wing of today has become the party of socialist dictatorship, full of trolls that want to appropriate freedoms and exercise control over lifestyle choices of the people.

Additionally, I just wonder how many of the wealthy trolls that attended Governor K’s $100.00 per plate/pay for access inaugural ball actually arrived by transit or bike. It is as if the party well-to-do simply want lower income people and the declining middle class off the roads to give themselves more room for their luxury motoring pleasures.(Like Ted's state owned big Lincoln)

"a progressive tax on parking spaces"

Uh, where is there free parking downtown. I think every space is metered already.

You realize when all of the bus mall and rail tracks get laid down downtown will be impassable for cars anyways. Then we can abaondon downtown to the homeless and goverment employees.

What's the present official reason supporting the 75' height limit? Maybe it's there for a good reason. I can just imagine people turning their noses up at Goodman when he started buying up all those surface parking lots way back when, except he's been looking pretty smart for quite a while now, and some people are bitter. He's got a good, smart business thing going. Is it fair for him to be coerced by a parking space tax to offer up his lots for development, mostly because a few irked neighboring property owners dont't feel like they're making as much money from their property as they believe they would be if spiffy new buildings were their neighbors instead of parking lots?

Underground parking spaces shouldn't be taxed at all. In terms of parking, nothing except the complete absence of space devoted to parking frees up land for development more. Surface parking lots might be seen by some as mostly a low-buck way to position for land speculation, but from the practical standpoint of transitional use, they make far more sense than an above ground structure. Nothing to knock down once you decide to put up a quality building.

Why didn't Bridgeport build underground parking instead of surface and a parking structure? Because both of the latter cost less. Now if there were a pretty strong tax on parking structure parking spaces, that might have been an incentive to drum up the capital to build underground. Sure below grade is more expensive, but how much? In the long run, it would easily have paid off if the village is as popular as some probably have found it to be. (note; bridgeport might not have been able to build underground parking because of the brownfield situation, but otherwise...)

There is already a tax on parking spaces. It is called "property tax".I won't list all the other subsidary taxes and fees paid for each parking space.

Kari: Where in your quote has Tualatin paid for the road improvements for Bridgeport? If my memory is correct, a major portion of road costs were paid by the developer. Where is your indignant outrage that SoWhat transportation projects are not even funded? Where is your outrage that most of the hopefully future funding for the SoWhat transportation projects are from taxpayer's pockets, and hardly any from the developers? At least Bridgeport was mostly a private project without scamming the taxpayers.

Kari, Niether your quote or Kremer's shows that Bridgeport was subsidized. All you have done is show the improvements were made.;Which is obvious. Pretty lazy effort. Or were you deliberate in claiming there was a subsidy when you don't know or even know there was not?

“Are parking lots paying their "fair share" of property taxes?”

Consider the parking lots and other properties the Portland Development Commission (PDC) takes over using public dollars. Some fat cat developer comes along and PDC gives away the property at below market value. Then after this developer has jumped through all the social engineering hoops, the Portland City Council grants a property tax waiver for ten years or more called a tax abatement. While the original parking lot owner was paying for city services like police and fire, and supporting the schools, the new owner of the property (that with development probably requires more city services than a parking lot) is NOT financially supporting any city services or the schools. Therefore other property taxpayers like home owners and parking lot owners must make up the difference with higher taxes because a fat cat developer is allowed to milk other taxpayers.

It also should be noted the parking lot owner is also paying a business license tax and income taxes on the net profits. The parking lot owner is likely an entrepreneur that started as a small business owner providing a service in the right place at the right time that grew into a larger business. This is the American way, work hard and reap the rewards. On the other hand, the fat cat developer milking the taxpayers for his rewards is a product of the socialist tax abatement policies contrived in the state legislature. Therefore, the answer to the question: Are parking lots paying their "fair share" of property taxes? Absolutely YES. It is the fat cat developer that is not.

Kari, are you trying to be deceitful, or is it an innate element of your psyche?

That intersection needed to be upgraded regardless of whether Bridgeport was developed. It was a terrible bottleneck before Bridgeport ever went in. I know, I drive through it every day.

I realize you need to grasp at straws when belittling private investment and non-smart growth development, but please, at least try to produce actual facts when doing so.

Kari, A simple search find this link

http://www.ci.tualatin.or.us/business/engi/transportation.htm

Scroll down to "Developer Funds" and bingo! $7-8 million for street and intersection realignment for Bridgeport Village.

Kari; I did some inquiries. Your bogus, unresearched claim that the taxpayers paid for the Bridgeport interchange improvements is a far stretch. Who's leg are you trying to pull now?

Frank; your information on one particular parking lot is factual, and your further analysis seems logical. I think you would agree that the "real market value" and "assessed market value" discrepancy applies to all taxed properties somewhat equally throughout the state. The percentage difference you cite in your example probably is very similar to your own home tax difference. All the property tax payers in the state are getting a "tax break" because of several measures we've passed. Those who may own a parking lot, or even has one parking space to rent should get the same tax break that you are I receive.

As you have so well documented in other posts, there are numerous commercial properties throughout our city that are taxed very little (Zidell's property in SoWhat), even though the market value sometimes is more than ten times the tax assessed value.

Frank, I was mostly agreeing with you. What I was trying to say is that the disparity between "real market value" and the property taxes assessed is a "boondoggle" and worse. This applies to all properties in the state. The variations in the amount of disparity needs to be more uniform throughout a city, a county, and the state. I am not advocating more total property tax revenue, but a more balanced taxation. Your Moyer example, and Zidells are few of the many disparities just in Portland.

I think taxing parking in downtown Portland might make sense. For the rest of the city, I'd have qualms. As much progress as Portland has made to have great public transportation, it still can be difficult (as in, take hours) to actually pick up the kids and the groceries and get home using public transit. This would hit the working poor hardest, who often live farther out toward the edges of the city and depend on their rattletrap cars to get them around in a timely way.

<h2>It's tricky to build in all the supports for a non-automobile-dependent society at once, but we do need to be thinking that holistically. And any tax we impose should be truly progressive and not hit those at the bottom of the ladder the hardest.</h2>