Downtown Roanoke Inc. made a push Wednesday to get city hall to reconsider ending after-hours free parking in several of the city-owned garages and lots downtown.

As part of this effort, the downtown business advocacy group launched an informal online survey on whether a new $2 parking fee on weeknights and Saturdays would deter visitors from coming downtown, especially for events. The seven-question survey was initially distributed via e-mail to the organization's governing board, its members and those who receive its city market newsletter.

So far, the results have been overwhelmingly in favor of nixing the after-hours parking fee.

"This is such a negative for downtown. We've spent years promoting the free parking," said Kathy Kinsey, Downtown Roanoke Inc.'s marketing and business recruitment manager. "We put it on all our posters and advertised it on our events."

Some city officials, though, say they too have been working for years toward putting a plan in place to make the city's downtown parking structures pay for themselves.

"This is more of a complex issue than just simple fee structures," Mayor Nelson Harris wrote in an e-mail Wednesday. The city will use the revenue from the rate increase toward debt service on the $7.2 million cost of another parking garage it is building on Campbell Avenue near the Roanoke police station.

The fee change was included as an item in the city's 300-page annual budget, which was passed at the city council's May 14 meeting. A public hearing was held at the end of April to discuss the budget. Downtown Roanoke Inc. said it had several representatives attend to voice their opposition.

City Councilman Alfred Dowe said he's been out of town and hasn't followed the debate closely over parking rates, but he had received a number of e-mails.

"I'm a little taken aback by the responses," Dowe said. "I didn't think $2 is too unreasonable. ... Honestly, if I want to eat dinner at Alexander's [an upscale restaurant], $2 isn't going to preclude me from going downtown."

But he added that he's open to alternatives and is "certainly willing to re-evaluate" the decision to raise rates.

Roanoke Vice-Mayor David Trinkle said he, too, had received e-mails about the raised rates. Some were "pretty vocal" about it being a bad idea, he said, while others offered ideas about a compromise between free parking and charging a $2 day rate, such as issuing monthly parking permits.

"I get the feeling this caught the public by surprise," Trinkle said. Still, he noted that he had lunch at Metro on Wednesday and observed a "very bustling downtown.

"I hope downtown is not that fragile, that this would be a make-or-break deal," he said.

Roanoke City Manager Darlene Burcham said she has warned council members for three years that the rate increase would be needed to pay for a parking garage between Campbell and Salem avenues. The garage is needed to serve new living spaces under construction downtown, she said.

That influx of full-time residents, Burcham said, "is key to the long-term success of downtown."

Burcham said she didn't think the rate increase would have a dramatic effect on downtown Roanoke. If you watch people, she said, they tend to look for on-street parking first. Failing that, they'll try a surface lot, many of which are privately owned.

"Look what they're charging," Burcham said. "It's significantly more than this flat rate we're proposing. ... I'm not at all persuaded that people are not going to come downtown and park there because there's a fee involved."

Sherman Lea was the only council member to vote against the rate increase. He cited concerns about the impact a weeknight parking fee might have on cash-strapped students who take classes at the Roanoke Higher Education Center and leave their cars at the nearby Gainsboro Garage.

By 5 p.m. Wednesday, about five hours after Downtown Roanoke Inc. posted the unscientific survey, it had received about 460 responses -- 270 of which had comments attached.

About 93.5 percent of those who responded said they "absolutely opposed" an increase to parking fees in downtown Roanoke. Also, 88 percent said that if the rate changes became effective July 1 as planned by the city, they'd be "less likely to come downtown."

Kinsey said Downtown Roanoke Inc. hopes to take the survey results and present them to the city council to bolster its request to reconsider the fees.

An online petition urging the city council to repeal the fee also began circulating Tuesday morning and has about 20 signatures.