City Hall to Downtown Small Businesses: "Time Expired"
I have information from two reliable sources that there is a hidden surprise embedded in KC's plan to raise the cost of parking meters to a dollar an hour.
After the paragraph in the ordinance authorizing the rate increase, there is another paragraph that makes a vague reference to extending enforcement. It goes into no detail, and this paragraph has been ignored by the media and not openly discussed by the city.
Continued...
Currently, all on-street parking in the downtown loop is free on weekends and starting at 6pm weekday evenings. This has been a great tool for drawing visitors downtown to support local businesses. Many places have extended their hours and started opening up on Saturdays.
I now have it on good word that, sometime in May, City Hall is going to extend meter enforcement to 10pm and eliminate free weekends.
To some this might seem like a good idea for raising revenue. But that's looking at the small picture. Let's look at a few scenarios.
- Customer looks for bar or restaurant to go to and decides to patronize a local spot inside the loop. They park on the street and find the have to pay. Then, every hour, they have to stop what they're doing, go back to find their car, and drop in 4 more quarters. How many people are going to find that to be a draw? Small local business loses!
- Customer doesn't care where they are going but when they find they have to feed the meters every hour decide to park in a garage instead. And who has the cheapest garage? Cordish! But there's a catch... you have to get your parking validated.... by spending money in the Power & Light District. And if you have to spend money there anyway, most people may decide to just stay. Small local business loses!
- Customer realizes they can still park for free in the Crossroads and not have to worry about feeding a meter every hour. But if they do that, they may realize they might as well just go to a similar business in the Crossroads. Small local business downtown loses!
These small businesses have put a lot at stake in order to invest in a high risk area. Why would the city want to make things harder for them? Many of these places are already reeling from the effects of the first smoking ban and preparing for the devastating blow of the new smoking ban, could making it inconvenient for their customers to arrive be the knockout blow for many of these places? We're talking about hair salons that have Saturday hours, coffee shops, restaurants, and local bars. If these places go, there also goes the sales and property taxes those spots generated. (Meanwhile Cordish, exempt from property tax, and boasting the cheapest garage downtown, gets richer.)
Another thing to consider is downtown residents. Many of them rely on the free evening and weekend parking in order to make it easier for friends and family to visit. This will become a new factor that people will have to consider when deciding whether to move downtown.
Some people I have discussed this with are of the opinion that it's not a big deal. And I can classify those people into 3 groups. Group 1 is the anti-car zealots. Group 2 is people who enjoy hanging out at the Power & Light District and/or tend to hop from place to place rather than spend a long time at one place so don't understand the annoyance of constantly feeding the meters. And the third group is the people who say "but they can still park in the Crossroads for free"... all of whom so far have been people with strong ties to the Crossroads.
To this third group I offer a counterpropsal to City Hall's plan. Rather than eliminate free evening/weekend parking, let's install meters all throughout thee Crossroads. That's literally thousands of dollars of potential revenue every day not being collected.
NOW, FOR MY CONSPIRACY THEORY:
Why has this portion of the new parking fee code been kept under wraps? Because, I believe, the city plans to time the launch of the new enforcement hours with a major event at the Sprint Center, so they can issue hundreds of parking tickets to unsuspecting guests.
Which would be yet another brilliant PR move by this city.
Come on, City Hall. Scrap this ridiculous plan and find a better way.
At the very least, if you won't bee reasonable, give us 4-hour meters instead of the current 1-hour meters. That way people can at least enjoy their time out on the town without constant interruption.