With village trustees still wrestling to balance the 2008 budget, you wouldn't think that figuring out a new formula for charging developers for parking spaces in the downtown business district would be so important. After all, it's not like there are any developers actually knocking on the door at this time.

But, if nothing else, it's an issue that's symbolic, one that tells taxpayers that the village is not only trying to court development but wants a fair deal for the village as well.

The issue is this: Under the current zoning law, if a developer builds a new commercial building, he needs to provide a certain number of onsite parking spaces based on the square footage of the commercial space. If he can't do it, then the developer can opt to pay a per-space fee in lieu of those spaces. Right now, that fee is $5,000 per space.

While that may seem at first glance to be a handsome sum to pay for a parking space, it's actually a bargain. The thinking is that by making the buyout so attractive, developers will have an incentive to build in downtown Riverside.

But if that incentive is ever as successful as some would like it to be, then the downtown area is at some point going to be woefully short of parking for all those new businesses.

Part of the code regarding the parking buyout is that any money received from developers through the buyout plan must be used to create parking in the district. The code does not say when that parking must be developed only what the money can be used for.

Well, since the village doesn't own much land downtown, the only way to build that parking is to buy land and then improve it. And that costs a lot of money-a heck of a lot more than $5,000 per space. Try $20,000-plus per space.

As a result, a new proposal by the Plan Commission to create a tiered system that would have developers pay $5,000 for the first five spaces and $8,000 for six or more, still seems like a bad deal for Riverside.

While the village should be looking to provide some sort of incentive to developers to bring commercial activity to Riverside, it would seem that even at $10,000 per space, there's plenty of incentive. Building onsite parking in downtown Riverside would likely entail building underground lots (as was done at the Village Center project) or at least covered parking (which was proposed for the Arcade Building at one time).

When talking about that kind of construction, then a parking buyout at $15,000 per space may even seem attractive. Surely, asking developers to pay the whole cost, say $22,000 per space for every space they are short, is not much of an incentive. But Riverside can surely ask developers to better help subsidize any future parking needs in downtown Riverside, especially when Riverside officials are pinching every penny and suggesting service cuts to taxpayers because of financial woes.