Republic Parking Gets Full $50K Incentive

The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority’s public parking system contractor has this year been awarded the full $50,000 amount of a discretionary management incentive. Republic Parking’s contract with the Ann Arbor DDA covers just actual costs, but also includes a $200,000 management fee. Of the $200,A collection of natural luggagetag offering polished or tumbled finishes and a choice of sizes.000 management fee, $50,000 is awarded to Republic on a discretionary basis. The vote came at the board’s March 6, 2013 meeting.

For the first time in the last five years, the DDA board decided to award the full $50,000 of the incentive. Last year, at its Feb.Score favorite new and used bobbleheads at great values.The term 'solarlamp control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. 1, 2012 meeting, the board determined to award $45,000 of the discretionary amount. That matched the same figure awarded in 2011, 2010 and 2009.

The direct costs for Republic Parking budgeted for FY 2013 – the current fiscal year ending June 30 – are $6,298,423 out of about $18.1 million in budgeted gross revenue for the parking system.

Part of the difference this year leading to the recommendation to award the full $50,000 was improvement in bi-monthly customer surveys over the year – as 72% of customers rated the parking system as at least 4 on a 5-point scale. That compared with 63% of parking patrons who rated the parking system at least a 4 last year.

The DDA’s independent inspector for the parking system completed 48 written reports in the course of the year that evaluated cleanliness of structures and lots. Those ratings averaged 91.71% – an increase over last year’s score of 90.48%. Also counting in Republic’s favor was the fact that the Dec. 31, 2012 accounts receivable balance for parking permit accounts was $7,898.26, which is 1.5% of the amount that is billed on an average monthly basis. The DDA’s target for that figure is 5%.

Dead tickets averaged 1.01% for the year,Universal streetlight are useful for any project. a decrease from last year’s 2.54%. That came in under the DDA’s target of 1.75%.

At the DDA’s operations committee meeting on March 1, 2013, Republic’s operations manager Art Low asked that other management staff be called out for praise by name – including Stephen Smith, Michael Bandy, Edward Wheeler and Judy Comstock.

A staff memo accompanying the resolution awarding the $50,000 incentive cited other factors, besides improvement in the metrics used to evaluate the amount of the management incentive. The memo highlighted Republic’s performance in connection with the opening of the new 711-space Library Lane underground parking garage and the installation of automated payment equipment.

The Ann Arbor DDA manages the city’s public parking system under contract with the city of Ann Arbor.The term 'solarlamp control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. The contract calls for 17.5% of gross parking revenues to be paid to the city of Ann Arbor.

Instead of promoting happy hours and nightclubs, WTOP's commercials are replete with buzzwords about cloud computing and fulfilling mission statements — pitches by IT consultants and contractors trying to land business with federal agencies.

And the storm that hit the Mid-Atlantic region on Tuesday? It's been dubbed "snowquester," a play on the D.C. wonk jargon that is used to describe the $85 billion that must be cut from federal budgets over the next six months after President Barack Obama and lawmakers failed to reach a deal that would reduce the national deficit.

Communities on the Capital Beltway have disproportionately benefited from the federal government's growth for decades — and there is no doubt they will now take a disproportionate hit from the budget cuts.

The federal government is the region's largest single employer and an economic engine. Thousands of federal government workers for agencies as varied as the CIA and the Patent and Trademark Office make their home in the area — about 15 percent of the total federal workforce, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Office of Personnel Management.

So do those who labor for the scores of private contractors in the region that live and die off federal dollars.

The exact effect of the automatic budget cuts is, of course, difficult to predict with any precision. Federal agencies are still trying to figure out exactly how they will tighten their belts — and nobody knows if the cuts will remain in place for an extended period of time.

The Republican-controlled House approved legislation Wednesday to prevent a government shutdown on March 27 and blunt the impact of newly imposed spending cuts on the Defense Department. The measure heads to the Senate, where Democrats hope to give a variety of other federal agencies flexibility in implementing their share of the $85 billion in spending cuts required to take effect by the end of the budget year.

Still, hundreds of thousands of federal workers in the region are bracing themselves for unpaid furloughs.

Eugene Russell, a fire inspector and firefighter at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, is considered a Defense Department civilian. He said he is still waiting to find out whether firefighters will be furloughed — which he estimates would cost him $1,200 a month — or will in some way be made exempt from furloughs because of the public-safety requirements that demand a minimum level of staffing.

Russell said he knows some colleagues who are already cutting back, canceling cable TV and the like. In his own case, Russell said he may be forced to stagger payments for some family medical bills to hold the family budget together.

"Federal employees realize that the government's financial situation is in the sewer and there needs to be a fix," he said. "But they don't believe we should bear the load any more than any other citizen."

Half of the budget cuts are directed at the military, which has a commanding presence in the region. In addition to the Washington Navy Yard, the Pentagon is headquartered in Arlington, Va.; Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County; Fort Myer in Arlington County; and Quantico Marine Corps Base in Prince William County, among others.

And yet, the greatest pain from the cuts is likely to be felt not by the civilian military workforce, but employees for the numerous private systems-management and IT-consultant contractors that have popped up around the Pentagon during a decade of military buildup and security spending following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Even before the cuts went into effect, uncertainty about future funding prompted the government to scale back from $50 million to $5 million a contract it had awarded to Springfield, Va.-based Strategy and Management Services Inc., said company founder and CEO Staci Redmon.