The state auditor says the Seattle Center hasn't done a good job of making sure people pay at three city-owned parking garages.
The three garages took in almost $5 million in revenue last year that went into the Seattle Center budget. State auditor Troy Kelley says he doesn’t have an estimate of how much money the Center may have lost out on, but he says his team found a lot of problems with record-keeping at the garages – one on Fifth Avenue North, one on Mercer Street and one on First Avenue North.
Kelley says at the Mercer Street garage, there was no record of payment for more than half of the tickets issued when they did the audit last November.
"It looks like they got out without paying a fee and we don’t know why," Kelley said. "So that’s number one, we just need some accountability there."
He says Seattle Center needs to do a better job of matching each ticket with the revenue collected. He says they also need to limit the number of parking attendants who can manually override the system to raise the gate. A Seattle Center spokeswoman says they’re working to improve their record-keeping.
