WXOW News 19 La Crosse, WI – News, Weather and Sports |Parking Ramp Fees Coming this Summer

La Crosse, WI (WXOW)-- Parking garages in downtown La Crosse are currently free... but only for a few more months.

"September of last year is when the parking utility board authorized us to start charging in the ramps," Robert Haines of the La Crosse Public Works Department. "So the first thing we had to do was go through the budgeting process to get the money to purchase the equipment, which we've done. And we've just started the process of getting bids to buy the equipment."

The street parking and the first floor of the ramps will still be free, but other levels will cost 50 cents an hour.

"Downtown employees were taking up all the parking that was meant for downtown shoppers," said Haines. "I've had a few complaints not from businesses, but from downtown employees who were used to having free parking that's no longer going to be available to them."

Tim Kabat of Downtown Main Street says businesses understand the need to charge for parking.

"Of course our concern is, we wanna make sure things are done fairly," said Kabat. "We understand and agree with the need to generate revenue to maintain the ramps and spruce them up."

The revenue from the parking ramps will be used to maintain the garages. Haines says that instituting the new fees, seemed like the most logical way to fund the upkeep. 

"It costs money to build and maintain ramps," Haines said. "And the city's only question is who should pay for that? Should it be the people who use the ramps or the people who don't use the ramps? And when you put it that way, it seems pretty obvious what we should do."

The gates will most likely be up and running sometime this summer.