At the last location, a PPA lot at Broad and Spruce streets, hourly rates had been reduced. PPA chairman and executive director William Rafsky said the new prices were calculated to fully offset the drop in parking taxes from 20 percent to 17.5 percent.
Along with the PPA, which approved a general price reduction in anticipation of the drop in taxes, only two other companies represented in the survey, the Parkway Corp. and Kinney Systems Inc., appear to have adjusted their rates to pass the tax savings along to consumers.
Although only their maximum daily rates were reduced at the lots surveyed, officials from both companies said reductions were made throughout the systems to balance fully the drop in taxes. They said they could not supply precise revenue or tax information.
Officials from other companies who were contacted all claimed to have offset the tax decrease in other ways, such as price reductions at lots not covered in the survey, reductions in monthly rates, which were not included in the survey, or the postponement of price increases. However, they declined to supply precise revenue and tax estimates to buttress their arguments.
Overall, the survey findings seem to indicate that City Council members and administration officials failed in the stated goal of the tax reduction. That goal was to bring the consumer - the pay-by-the-hour visitor, not the ''captive" daily parker or the monthly customer - into downtown Philadelphia.
Council in 1985 doubled the parking tax from 10 percent to 20 percent as a last-minute budget-balancing tactic. At the time, even supporters of the measure said it was probably a bad idea, but felt pushed to it by a pending budget shortfall.
The tax increase raised about $9 million. But parking lot owners said corresponding price increases, ranging from 50 cents to $1, were driving consumers away from downtown stores, restaurants and theaters.
