Richmond officials say they are committed to helping a downtown parking authority with a deal to develop new parking decks needed by the state and by a new performing-arts center.

Richmond Chief Financial Officer Harry E. Black said yesterday that he also is willing to help the parking authority -- Broad Street Community Development Authority -- deal with its cash-flow problems and to include the authority in a study to address the rising demand for parking downtown.

Black said it is too soon to say whether the city would help pay for building a new parking deck and renovating an incomplete one near the new Richmond CenterStage performing-arts center, as state officials discussed with the authority this week.

The promise of cooperation was welcome to authority Chairman James R. Johnson, who met with Black yesterday after a testy exchange of e-mails that raised new concerns about the city's willingness to help the authority work with the state.

Johnson said he wanted city officials to commit to full participation in discussions with the state "and they did so unequivocally." Johnson became chairman of the authority's board early last year after Mayor L. Douglas Wilder threatened to abolish the body.

Johnson said the authority also made progress yesterday in private talks with representatives of CenterStage Foundation, which is overseeing parking arrangements for the performing-arts center, scheduled to open next year on the site of the former Thalhimer's building, and for the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts.

Martin J. Rust, a banker who heads the CenterStage Foundation's parking committee, said those discussions focused on a short-term solution to the need for parking near the arts center until another deck is built to solve the problem for the long term.

"I think we understand what their limitations are and they understand what our needs and priorities are," Rust said.

The authority's limitations are financial. Created in 2003 to oversee a $67.5 million bond issue to pay for redeveloping the former downtown retail district, the authority does not have the money or debt capacity to build the decks it once promised.

The city is obligated to pay up to $3 million a year if the authority is unable to repay the bonds. Black, in an e-mail to Johnson on Wednesday, warned that "whatever deals you all might structure, they cannot further exacerbate the city's moral obligation supporting the Authority's existing debt, thereby further subjecting the city to greater financial exposure."

Johnson, managing director of Morgan Keegan investment bank, responded in an indignant e-mail that the authority needs the city's help to solve problems that its volunteer board members had no part in creating.

"I am willing to continue to commit my time and energy to helping find solutions to these issues, but if the city is not a fully fledged partner in this commitment, I do not see how we can be successful," he wrote.

Contact Michael Martz at (804) 649-6964 or mmartz@timesdispatch.com.