Mayor Eric Papenfuse, holding scissors, at a ribbon-cutting for Pango mobile parking app last year. (File photo.)
Last January, as Harrisburg made its final budget tallies for 2014, Mayor Eric Papenfuse pointed proudly to a major achievement of his first year—a budget so tightly managed that the city, so recently on the brink of bankruptcy, had paid nearly all its bills and still had $5 million in the bank to spare.
He achieved the surplus by spending millions less than authorized in the budget, a feat he is on track to repeat this year, with the latest projections showing the city is on target to spend $57.5 million out of a budgeted $59.5 million.
The same projections, however, show that a balanced budget may elude him. The reason, as reported in a court filing this week by the state coordinator of the city’s recovery, can be summed up in one word: parking.
Revenue from parking is down by an estimated $1.4 million, wrote Fred Reddig, the city’s coordinator under the state program for distressed municipalities, in a July 1 report to the Commonwealth Court judge overseeing the recovery process.
In particular, revenue from tickets is down due to a backlog in the courts. As of early May, there were around 20,000 unpaid tickets outstanding, Reddig wrote. Each month produces about 1,400 new delinquent tickets, but in the same period the sole district justice appointed to process them can only move through 250.
The result has been a steep departure from projected revenues that has in turn cut off the flow of money to the city, which is entitled to receive certain payments from the parking system under a 40-year lease signed in late 2013.
Over the year, the city is supposed to receive $2.5 million in these so-called “waterfall” payments, but it has so far only received a few hundred thousand dollars. In short, the parking revenues are “way, way, way off,” Papenfuse said.
And the consequence for city finances is that Harrisburg is now poised to end the year with a deficit of around $1 million, despite the continued penny-pinching.
“The budget is over-performing in all other areas, in terms of controlling expenses,” Papenfuse said. “The deficit is entirely due to shortfalls in parking.”
A remaining question is the cause of the ticket backlog, a point over which the mayor’s office and the state coordinator sharply diverge.
Reddig, in his report, pins the slowdown partly on the city’s own failure to pass a required parking ordinance in 2014, the year to which three-fourths of the backlogged tickets can be attributed.
Papenfuse dismisses this explanation, however, saying the ordinances have nothing to do with this year’s projected revenues. Instead, he points to the inadequate court processing and says he would like more help from the state.
“The city is doing everything in its power,” he said.
Nonetheless, both the mayor and the coordinator agree that the city is still on the track towards recovery. The city is current on its debt payments, Reddig wrote, and “would be able to weather an operating deficit of $1 million this year.”
Aside from the decline in parking revenues, “we’re feeling pretty good,” Papenfuse said. And the city should eventually get the money it’s owed. The question is when.
