Facing an overflow crowd and an 85-page printout of often scorching emails, the City Council on Tuesday backed away from even discussing steep increases in parking permit fees for residents.
Councilman Kit Bobko didn’t wait for the fee proposal to come up in the course of the council’s meeting agenda. Instead he pounced during the council’s opening announcements, moving to kill any discussion of an increase in the fees.
It was Bobko – typically not a fee raiser – who had brought the matter before the council in the first place. In September 2010 Bobko, Mayor Peter Tucker and Councilman Michael DiVirgilio voted to discuss raising residents’ parking permits from $40 to $100 a year, with a third permit at the same home going up to $200 and a fourth permit to $300, along with an annual increase from $40 to $300 for guest parking permits.
Councilmen Jeff Duclos and Howard Fishman had voted against discussing any fee increases.
By Tuesday, Bobko was more than persuaded that the discussion should not occur.
“I’d like to dispense with that right away, Mr. Mayor,” Bobko said.
Turning to the large and sometimes boisterous audience – which squeezed into the council chambers, filled the adjoining lobby and backed up into the outdoors – Bobko said the droves of critical email had put the matter to rest.
“We heard you,” he said.
“I don’t think there’s a person out here who wants to see these fees increased,” Tucker chimed in.
The council voted unanimously to kill the fee increase discussion.
“We didn’t get this right,” said DiVirgilio to applause from the audience.
“And while we had the best of intentions at trying to get it right, we didn’t communicate this, and that was disrespectful to the community,” he said.
“The only thing we should do tonight is stop it,” DiVirgilio said.
“These folks have turned out here for a reason,” Duclos said of the audience.
“I appreciate that we are going to dispense with that. Their presence speaks volumes about what was missing in this process, which is the input of the community,” he said.
Duclos and Fishman suggested continued study of ideas to improve the parking permit system, which were peppered throughout residents’ emails. They stressed that they would not consider residential fee increases.
“I personally didn’t agree with the fees from the beginning, and I wouldn’t have supported [any increases] tonight,” Fishman said.
With victory already in hand, few of the fee increase critics addressed the council, but one resident asked pointedly who had brought the proposal before the council in the first place.
“I am the guilty party who proposed it,” said a chastened Bobko.
“Did anybody vote against it?” the resident asked.
Bobko answered that Fishman and Duclos had opposed the discussion.
“You’ve got our votes,” the resident said to Fishman and Duclos.
“As you can see, when the people speak we do listen,” Tucker said as the large audience receded from the chambers.
The resident permits are available for occupants of homes in some seaward areas of town where parking is especially problematic.
In emails to the council, residents used words like “appalling,” “unfair,” and “utterly ridiculous,” and asked questions like “Are you crazy?” in strong opposition to steep fee increases.
“When is the price of anything ever raised 650 percent?” one resident asked.
In other matters, a lengthy struggle by Hermosan Jeff Parker to open a beer microbrewery, in the light manufacturing zone north of South Park, came to an official end with formal approval by the City Council.
The council voted 3-2 to okay the facility, with Mayor Peter Tucker and Councilman Jeff Duclos dissenting.
“I think this is going to be an intrusive operation down there. He’s going to be bottling beer, and that’s noisy,” Tucker said.
The light industrial zone includes surfboard manufacture and auto shops, and it borders on some homes. ER
