If crude at $64 a barrel, a free pass in the HOV lane or gas costing $2.50 a gallon isn't enough to encourage you to buy a hybrid or natural gas vehicle, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson wants to offer a little more incentive.

Today Anderson will meet with top advisers from various city departments to examine the possibility of offering free parking at city meters for "clean vehicles" like hybrids and natural gas cars.

It's the least the city can do, Anderson said, to encourage people to burn less pollution-loaded gas in their vehicles.

"We have an HOV lane to encourage clean vehicles," Anderson said. "I think it's important to provide incentive for clean vehicles in the way of free parking as well."

It's another in a long line of initiatives Anderson has taken to encourage "green" practices in Salt Lake City. If Salt Lake City did adopt the measure, it is believed it would become the fifth U.S. city to offer the incentive, following the lead of San Jose, Los Angeles, Albuquerque and New Haven, Conn.

In San Jose, city leaders actually parlayed the free parking into an economic generator for the city's car dealerships as well. There the free parking was only extended to hybrids, which run on electricity and gasoline, purchased at dealerships that were within the city limits.

Those dealerships had applications for special permits that were placed on qualifying cars. The free parking wasn't extended to cars purchased at suburban dealers so that buyers would be encouraged to shop inside the city boarders.

"This proposal wins all the way around," San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales said in announcing the program two years ago. "It helps reduce air pollution, it encourages auto sales in San Jose and it will bring more people to visit our downtown."

While Anderson has recently sought to adopt some of his initiatives through executive order rather than go through the sometimes laborious process of getting an ordinance passed by the City Council, transportation engineer Kevin Young confirmed that his department has prepared an ordinance that would enact the free parking.

Young said he wasn't sure how the free parking might affect the city's bottom line in terms of parking revenue.

This year, Anderson proposed raising the price of city meters from 75 cents per hour to $1 an hour, in an effort to raise more cash for the city's struggling budget. The City Council agreed to the hike, but some were hesitant.

Anderson's administration is conducting a study examining the cost-benefit of making it free for anyone to park at city meters. The idea is that downtown has to compete with suburban shopping alternatives. Many suburbanites have complained about the high cost of parking downtown and note that it's free to park at suburban shopping centers.

Given the complaints and downtown's often lackluster retail climate, Anderson decided to examine if free parking would bring more shoppers downtown. The idea was that increased shopping and the accompanying increased sales-tax revenue could offset what the city lost in parking fees by offering free parking.

In debating the parking meter increase this year, Councilman Eric Jergensen wondered why the city would increase parking fees if it really planned on making parking free later.

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E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com