Residents who took advantage of free two-hour parking in downtown Paso Robles can enjoy it for a little longer, thanks to concerns over the legality of recent parking fee changes delaying the rollout.
“The city of Paso Robles has admitted that it is ‘reviewing’ its contentious and unpopular downtown parking program,” KVEC Radio host and resident Clive Pinder told New Times via email.
Pinder said that some city residents claimed that changes made to the city’s downtown parking costs in November 2023 didn’t abide by the California State Vehicle Code, which requires formal ordinances to be written and voted on.
“This is a potentially embarrassing position for city councilors to find themselves in,” Pinder wrote.
After lengthy public discourse and internal city committee studies showed that the previous system lacked both ease of use and overall revenue generation, the Paso City Council voted in November to change the hourly parking rate downtown from free for the first two hours and $2 for every hour afterward to a flat rate of $1 an hour without any free hours. The city expected to implement it in January 2024.
In addition, the council directed staff to begin redoing signs to display the changing rates and find new ways to enforce the rates in a way that citizens—primarily seniors—could understand.
Paso Robles City Manager Ty Lewis said he understands there are concerns regarding whether the council was within its legal rights to make those changes and told New Times that the city was reviewing the policy.
“I’ve asked our city attorney to do a review of policy changes to ensure we comply with state law,” he said. “We want to make sure that we can implement what the council voted into action.”
Because the process is still under review, Lewis said the parking costs downtown will remain as they were until the city announces otherwise.
“The original message staff gave to the council back in November was that it was going to take some time to implement all of these changes,” he said. “We want to provide the community with the chance to get used to the changes if we continue forward after the review. … It’s somewhat of an educational period rather than a straight change into a new way of charging people.”
Lewis said he encourages residents to continue speaking up. The more they inform public officials about what they take issue with, the easier it will be to transition into whatever changes are coming.
“Getting this going is unfortunately going to take a bit longer to implement, and we understand that there will still be frustrations regardless of what we do,” he said. “But if our goal is to be as transparent about the process as we possibly can be, then it might have to inch along slowly to get done.” Δ
In the original version of this story, New Times incorrectly attributed Clive Pinder’s statement about why Paso Robles downtown parking program was under review. Pinder said that residents claimed the city’s new parking program potentially didn’t abide by state vehicle codes. We regret this error.
This article appears in Feb 1-11, 2024.