A car pulls into the city’s parking garage behind Cornerstone Grill and Loft, which has been floundering since it opened.

Run to your meters — the cost of College Park parking tickets may soon increase.

Looking to plug a deficit left from the city’s fledging downtown parking garage, the city council has proposed raising parking fines by $2.50 next fiscal year. The increase would bring the fee to $20.

With university parking violations frequently costing up to $75, District 1 Councilman Patrick Wojahn said he doesn’t expect the proposed increase to inspire much dissent.

“We’ve generally kept our parking fines in line with inflation,” Wojahn said. “I don’t think that it will create a lot of controversy.”

Still, Wojahn added, “It seems like whenever I say something won’t be controversial, I turn out to be wrong.”

And when it comes to parking in College Park, emotions are rarely calm. The city hands down about 25,000 parking tickets annually, netting $380,000 last year.

A $2.50 increase would bring in an additional $80,000 annually, city officials predict. And after a lackluster start for the city’s $9.3 million, nine-month-old parking garage, District 2 Councilman Bob Catlin said the added revenue will help pay off the garage’s bond.

City officials hoped the garage would pull in $175,000 in its first year. With three months left, the garage remains about $80,000 shy of this goal.

Catlin said raising the price of tickets is “urgently needed.”

“The garage is improving, but there are a lot of pieces to this puzzle, and some of the pieces still need to improve,” Catlin said.

When the garage first opened, it was consistently empty. During its first month, it would bring in 20 cars on a good night.

Now, Catlin said it regularly fills 75 of its 288 spaces every day.

But the lack of retail has still hurt. City officials planned on Ledo Restaurant opening on the garage’s first level last fall, bringing in customers and a steady monthly rent check.

So far, none of that has materialized.

Ledo won’t open until June. And even as the garage steadily picks up steam, Catlin said raising parking fines slightly to cover its costs is justified.

Scott Osborn, the city’s parking enforcement supervisor, agreed. The city hasn’t raised the cost of its tickets in 10 years, he pointed out. And in the last 20 years, the city has only raised ticket costs twice.

“We’re not here to make a profit; we’re here to provide a service,” Osborn said. “We’re not looking to gauge away at anyone. This is just a way of staying contemporary with the times.”

But as far as sophomore economics major Nathan Suberi is considered, any increase in the cost of parking tickets would be too much.

“Parking should be free because they should want people to come here,” Suberi said. “When you’re hampering people from coming to your city, you’re just taking away from your own revenue.”

The city will hold a public hearing on the ticket increase today, and the council will vote on the matter in two weeks.

slivnick at umdbk dot com