Austin's Central Library is located at 71 W. Cesar Chavez St.

Parking validation at Austin’s Central Library will increase from 30 minutes to one hour following a City Council decision on March 22.Since the Central Library opened in fall 2017 at 710 W. Cesar Chavez St., people have raised concerns about the inconvenience of its parking garage. The 30-minute validation seemed short to many for a public building, especially in comparison to the City Hall garage’s two-hour parking validation offered by 2Street businesses.This, paired with capacity issues and complaints about non-library patrons taking up most of the spaces for several hours per day, pushed city leaders to rethink the parking strategy at the city’s newest, and one of its most popular, spaces.On March 22, City Council agreed to increase the validation offered at library’s parking lot to one hour. Mayor Pro Tem Kathie Tovo, who championed the resolution, said the situation remains tricky and more work needs to be done. Tovo said ideally, the library would offer two-hour validation.“Baby steps first,” Tovo said.The lengthened validation period will cut into the library’s parking revenue, which helps to fund the building’s maintenance and operation. Council members also said the validation increase does little to ensure the parking lot is reserved for mostly library patrons.Some work has been done to reserve the lot for more library patrons, said Dana McBee, assistant director of the Library Department. The library opens at 10 a.m. but before March 12, the library’s parking lot opened at 7 a.m.Because of the library lot’s cheap rates, many employees of downtown businesses would park in the lot early in the morning and remain parked through the work day, effectively eliminating spaces for library patrons.McBee said the lot now opens at 9:30 a.m. and the move has decreased all-day use by non-library patrons by 85 percent. City Council said room for improvement remained.City Council directed City Manager Spencer Cronk to develop a strategy to make up for the revenue lost by the increased validation and a system for mitigating the capacity issues. Those recommendations are due back to council by May 25.