Whitewater City Council agreed Jan. 17 to construct a new fee system for on-street parking on North Prairie and North Prince streets.

The council and UW-Whitewater formed a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, which calls for an agreement on construction costs and administration costs for parking meters on campus and throughout the city.

City Manager Kevin Brunner said an on-street parking system will help facilitate the high demand of spaces.

According to the MOU, UW-Whitewater is contributing a one-time payment of approximately $76,000 toward the reconstruction of North Prince Street. The dollar figure is an estimated one-half of the cost needed for asphalt to resurface the street.

“We need a mechanism to help pay for future street improvements in the city,” Brunner said.

UW-Whitewater will facilitate the parking system on behalf of the city by collecting all parking fees for the city. The university will get to keep 10 percent of administration fees for collecting the parking violations with the rest going to the city, Brunner said.

The city and UW-Whitewater are currently in the process of finding a street parking system that is compatible with how the university system already handles parking fees and other violations.

Brunner said upon completion of the reconstruction, 72 on-street parking stalls will line North Prince Street and about 25 parking spots will fill North Prairie Street.

No final plans on how the system will operate have been decided, Brunner said, but it is likely the system will be similar to what the university uses in its current parking lots, with either parking meter installment or permit-parking.