Days are numbered for Minot's only parking meters.
Although the Minot City Council voted Tuesday to remove the 16 meters along the roadway in front of the airport terminal, airport director Andy Solsvig said it could be a few weeks before they are gone. In the meantime, they will be bagged and inoperable.
ARM Parking, the company that operates airport parking, owns the meters and may be responsible for removing them. Solsvig said the airport will work with the company in finding the best way to remove the meters. They will be replaced with no-parking signs.
The federal Transportation Security Administration, which handles airline passenger security, asked for removal of the metered parking along the roadway. ARM Parking consented and brought the request to the council for its approval.
Mark Westereng, manager of ARM Parking, said the main reason for removing the meters is to address the TSA's concern about a potential security threat with vehicles parked close to the terminal. Opening the street also will improve the ability to remove snow in the winter, he said.
As part of meter removal, ARM Parking instituted a new policy that provides that the first 15 minutes of parking in the lot are free.
Eliminating meters isn't expected to affect overall parking revenue, Westereng said.
The meters have generated little revenue since airport visitors have grown used to the lack of enforcement. Minot Police do not have authority to ticket the privately-owned meters. That responsibility falls to ARM Parking, which doesn't have a policing component so it has overlooked violations.
Solsvig told the council Tuesday that employees of terminal tenants commonly park in the spaces despite discouragement from the airport. Solsvig said police will be able to enforce the new no-parking zone. He said a no-parking policy won't prevent people from using the loading and unloading zone in front of the terminal.
The removal of the parking meters from the Minot airport leaves few meters left in the state. The last remaining devices may be those on the campus of the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. North Dakota State University in Fargo replaced its meters with pay stations that take cash, debit or credit cards and provide receipts that serve as parking permits.
Parking meters in Minot and North Dakota have had an interesting and sometimes misunderstood history.
Fun Facts on the North Dakota Tourism Web site states that the parking meter was invented in North Dakota. The bit of trivia has spread across the Web, even though the North Dakota Historical Association reports that it has no information to support the claim.
Most authorities recognize Carl Magee of Oklahoma City as the inventor of the parking meter. He received a patent on May 24, 1935, and the first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City the following July.
In 1948, a farmer and businessman from Westhope became angry over a parking ticket received in Minot and spearheaded an initiated measure to outlaw parking meters in North Dakota. Howard Henry is reported to have received 12 tickets over the years and was fed up. According to an article in The Minot Daily News, Henry said in his speech in court, "I'm one farmer who isn't going to pay to park in a state with as much space as North Dakota." Still, he ended up paying the $5 ticket.
When the Legislature in 1951 overturned the ban on parking meters, Henry led a successful effort to reverse its action.
It is not true that all parking meters are illegal in North Dakota. State law says that it is illegal for the state or any political subdivision to erect parking meters on streets and highways. A 1982 opinion issued by then Attorney General Robert Wefald said the law doesn't apply to publicly owned parking lots or to roadways or driveways owned by colleges or other institutions.
Because of the state law, the parking meters at Minot International Airport have raised eyebrows since they were installed in November 1993. At the time, the city had the support of the county state's attorney's office in claiming the roadway in front of the terminal was not a public street but part of airport property.
However, that argument didn't always sit well with the meter-paying public, and not everyone subscribes to it, including Alderman Ron Boen.
"The meters were never legal," he said at Tuesday's council meeting. "That's a city street, and they can't be there by law."
How the parking meters ever got there in the first place is hazy 17 years later. Present officials with the parking management company say it was the city's idea. City officials recall the installation came at the request of the company.
Soon after installation, a citizen complaint came to the attention of the Federal Aviation Administration, which largely paid for the roadway construction. FAA rules ban the use of a federally-funded improvement as a revenue generator. The city had to pay back FAA about $2,900 for the cost of building the parking spaces. The city used meter revenue to make the payment once ARM Parking recouped its $4,660 for buying the meters and the city recovered $480 in installation costs.
Since then, the city has received 50 percent of gross receipts from meters and lot parking. The remaining 50 percent has gone to ARM Parking to cover expenses and provide income for the Dakota Territory Air Museum and Railroad Museum of Minot.
ARM Parking is governed by a board consisting of two representatives of each of the museums. Rich Larcombe, air museum representative and chairman of the board, said parking fees have generated as much as $15,000 a year for each of the museums. For the air museum and even more so for the railroad museum, parking revenue has helped keep the operations going.
"For years it helped us dramatically," he said of the air museum. "It costs us quite a few thousands of dollars to keep that place open. The $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 annually that comes in is a big help."
This year, the city took in more than $105,000 through July as its share of parking revenue. That puts the city on track to exceed the $140,000 in budgeted income from parking this year. The 2011 preliminary budget includes $165,000 in parking income.
Westereng said ARM Parking also makes a contribution in the community by providing employment, including employment of people with disabilities.
He noted that ARM Parking holds the contract for paid parking at the airport through competitive bidding. During its last renewal, it came up against a close bid from an outside group that would have taken profits out of the community, he said.
"The nice thing is we are able to keep those dollars local," he said.
