Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson's "free after 3" parking proposal merits consideration.

If parking problems are discouraging people from shopping, dining or recreating downtown, solutions are clearly needed.

Whether "free after 3," for free parking after 3 p.m. each day, is the magic bullet remains to be seen. The Salt Lake City Council must carefully consider the trade-offs, such as $100,000 in lost parking revenues and whether people who work downtown at night would monopolize the free parking, rendering it unavailable to shoppers or downtown visitors with money to spend.

The churn of available parking spots makes it possible for multiple people to spend time and money downtown. When it comes to business and tax revenue, that's better than having some downtown employee on the swing shift monopolize a parking spot until midnight.

But summer portends many possibilities. People who might not venture out to eat in the winter may enjoy dining outdoors in the warmer months. The Utah Museum of Natural History will sponsor "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition," at the ZCMI Center beginning May 29. The exhibit will be open until 9 p.m. on weekdays and 7 p.m. on Saturdays. The Gallivan Center is usually hopping with activity as well.

More people downtown would presumably mean more money spent on food, recreation and perhaps some spillover to retail, although consumer choices are somewhat limited in the city's core.

Perhaps the City Council's best option would be to consider the free parking initiative on a trial basis. If trends suggest that visitors are using the free spaces rather than workers at downtown businesses, it would be worthwhile to extend the experiment. If sales tax collections and other indicators do not indicate increases, the City Council can pull the plug on the initiative.

Anderson has also proposed a return of the city's free Christmas parking plan. Salt Lake City had a fantastic holiday shopping season, according to the Utah Tax Commission, but "free" parking would likely cost the city another $330,000 in lost parking revenues.

The council must decide if the city can handle the projected revenue loss — some $430,000 between the two proposals. As the City Council considers whether to cut some jobs and increase some fees to fund the new city budget, proposals that would effectively eliminate more than $400,000 in revenue must be carefully scrutinized.