A Senate bill that would have allowed Concord to raise money for its parking facilities through motor vehicle registration fees is essentially dead.
Senate Bill 587 would have lowered the population threshold of municipalities allowed to tack a fee onto motor vehicle registrations to pay for the maintenance, operation and construction of parking facilities from 50,000 to 40,000 under RSA 261:154. Manchester and Nashua are the only municipalities with a high enough population to make use of it; currently only Manchester has fees.
But after the Ways and Means Committee voted, 3-1, last week that the bill was “inexpedient to legislate,” the measure is unlikely to go anywhere this legislative session.
The bill garnered some controversy in the Capital City, especially after the local Concord Republican Committee distributed flyers stating the bill would allow Concord to charge residents an additional $150 on their motor vehicle registrations if adopted.
That’s not quite the case – passage of the bill would have allowed the Concord City Council to decide whether to adopt RSA 261:154, and that process would have included a public hearing and a vote.
The council would have decided how to set the fee rate, which at the maximum would have been $5 per $1,000 of a vehicle’s brand-new value. For a vehicle worth $30,000 that would equate to a $150 fee, but that fee would go down as the vehicle aged until it reached $1 per $1,000 of assessed value.
But other funding formulas can be used. Manchester, for example, charges a flat fee of $2 per vehicle regardless of age.
The vote fell along party lines, with Republican Sens. Andy Sanborn, Bob Giuda and Gary Daniels voting it inexpedient to legislate and Democrat Sen. Dan Feltes, the bill’s prime sponsor, voting in favor of it proceeding. Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, who also supported the bill, was absent during the vote.
The Concord City Council voted in December 2016 to have the city’s administration work with Feltes to create the bill that would have amended RSA 261:154’s population threshold to zero, but that bill was also short-lived.
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)