EVERETT — City staff are conducting a survey of businesses and residents about how they use parking downtown.

The survey will lead up to a comprehensive study of downtown parking usage this fall.

The timing between the survey and the recent dustup with Snohomish County over the new courthouse is purely coincidental.

A tentative agreement between the city and county over parking at a new courthouse is now in tatters after the Everett City Council postponed taking action recently. The agreement would have committed the county to leasing 300 parking spaces in a new parking garage if one were to be built in the next 15 years.

Meanwhile, the county council is considering scrapping the new courthouse project entirely.

Whether or not the city or another party will ever build a new parking garage is unknown. Everett had already been moving forward on its downtown parking study when the courthouse parking issue blew up.

The controversy is not likely to affect the city’s parking study, city engineer Ryan Sass said.

But is clear is that, as the economy has picked up, parking has become tighter downtown.

The city is closely following the model used in 2008, starting with interviews with downtown business owners and people who took part in the previous study, Sass said.

The online survey is targeted at a broader audience.

The survey was posted this week at surveymonkey.com/s/parkingevere. It asks residents, business owners and visitors where and how long they park, their perceptions of congestion, how the current rules are working and what other suggestions or comments they have.

The results of the survey and the initial interviews will be presented at a special forum on parking Aug. 18 from 5:30-7 p.m. in the Weyerhaeuser Room of Everett Station.

In the fall, the city will monitor every on-street parking space every hour all day on a single representative day. That will provide data about how parking is being used.

Some of the measures enacted after the 2008 study were the standardizing of the street parking limit of 90 minutes and imposing higher fines for those who “re-park”: moving their car around downtown to different spots to stay ahead of the 90-minute time limit.

Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.