There is more than enough reason for City Council members to take the next step toward a proposed long-term lease of city-owned parking to help pay for a new downtown Sacramento arena.

Agreeing Tuesday to issue a "request for qualifications" would be like you putting your house on the market. It lets everyone know you're interested in selling for the right price, but you're not committing to anything.

Still, the vote is essential to find out whether a parking deal can provide most of the city's share of the $387 million-plus arena – and whether this complicated, risky transaction makes sense for the city.

It also sends an important signal to the NBA, Kings and private partners – it's time for them to say how much they're willing to put up.

The key decision would come in mid-February, when after seeing how much real interest there is from private parking companies, the council will debate whether to issue a "request for proposals" that sets the terms for actual bids.

By then, council members should have the central pieces of information to decide whether to proceed.

They're supposed to know how much a private arena operator might contribute. The city is talking to AEG, which it hopes invests something like the $53 million it put into the Sprint Center in Kansas City.

The city expects to know how much would come from the NBA and Kings. Based on the working numbers, around $85 million would be needed.

And council members should have a much better idea of how the city would replace the cash that parking generates for the general fund, which pays for police, fire and other basic services. That amount was $9.4 million in 2009-10 and nearly $9 million in 2010-11. Officials are looking at revenue from operations at a new arena, such as a ticket surcharge and digital sign rentals.

That February vote would come just before the March 1 deadline set by the NBA for Sacramento to have an arena financing plan – or risk the NBA owners allowing the Kings to leave town. While a plan won't be done by then, city officials are comfortable that they can show enough progress to satisfy the league.

The city's plan hinges on the parking lease. It could raise between $170 million and $245 million in upfront cash, according to preliminary estimates by city consultants. That amount, however, would be reduced to repay $52 million the city owes on three parking garages.

Arena boosters, including the mayor's office and his Think Big Sacramento task force, believe those estimates are conservative and that bids would come in substantially higher.

But bids could also come in lower if some key assumptions are changed. The estimates are based on rates for about 7,200 parking spaces in garages going up by 50 cents in 2013 and again in 2015 ($5 for monthly parking), and increase by 3 percent a year after the first five years. Rates for about 5,500 on-street metered spaces, now $1.25 an hour, would increase by 25 cents a year starting in 2013 until they reach $2 an hour, and would go up by 3 percent a year after that.

The city would continue its level of parking enforcement, which now generates more than 200,000 tickets and $7 million a year.

The agreement would be for 50 years. That's an extraordinarily long time to tie up a public asset, but it's what officials say is the industry standard – since private companies make most of their money during the back end of a contract.

All those provisions are a trade-off. The upfront windfall would drop if the contract were shorter, or if parking rate hikes were limited.

The less that comes from the parking contract, the more the city would have to tap other sources to fill out the public contribution. Those could include a portion of the city's hotel room tax and the sale of city-owned land near the proposed arena site in the downtown railyard.

City officials are up front in cautioning that it's a long shot to make the arena deal work. But to have any shot at all, council members have to make this next move.

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