(5/11) The Taneytown Council voted at their May 10 meeting to generate a new parking agreement with Trinity Evangelical Church to provide money for maintenance to the church’s parking lot, in exchange for allowing public to use the lot.
The agreement, to be drafted by town staff, will offer the church $2,565 for maintenance use - in return for a five-year agreement to allow the public to continue using the church’s parking lot, and to include the possibility of erecting "Parking" signs for the public, which do not presently exist.
The church has allowed city visitors and residents to use their parking lot for decades, and an age-old agreement dating back through all those decades has existed, stating that the city agreed to contribute money towards maintenance on the lot as determined by the church, as needed.
The details of such an arrangement were the subject of discussion at the council’s May 5 workshop, during which Mayor Bradley Wantz noted that a letter had been recently received from Trinity requesting that the city contribute towards an anticipated maintenance cost of $5,130 to making repairs to the lot.
Mayor Wantz stated, "In the past, the city has contributed towards the maintenance of the parking lot. We’ve not done anything in quite a number of years," adding, "They are now asking if we would consider contributing to help improve that lot – It’s (the parking lot) become in pretty-poor condition."
City Manager James Wieprecht said that the work Trinity is proposing specifically would entail cleaning the cracks in the paving, filling the cracks with hot-rubberized filler, seal-coating the 27,020-square-foot lot, and painting the stripes on the parking lot.
Although staff could not locate the original agreement between the town and the church regarding the use of the lot, and contributions towards repairs, Wieprecht said he had discussed the issue with a number of former council members, who verified that the city did indeed have an agreement with the church dating back to the 1950s.
Wantz added, "I think historically, there was (also) mention of a 50-percent cost-sharing in the past."
The church permits the use of their parking lot, "especially on the West Baltimore Street side, where there’s really no parking lots available to the public. It is available to people for those businesses over there," the mayor said,
Trinity generally only uses its parking lot twice a week and deems the lot available for other members of the public to use anytime the church does not need it.
