Reports say Morro Bay is planning to replace free parking with paid parking.
Install paid parking along the Embarcadero and at Morro Rock? What a rotten idea! Even at the busiest time of day, some free parking is still available now, according to a 2020 study’s numbers.
To change things so that residents and tourists now able to park free down by the water would have to pay for the privilege is to change Morro Bay into one of those other larger California beach towns that don’t let you park near the ocean without coughing up some cash.
I hope the voting residents of Morro Bay let the City Council members know in no uncertain terms that any one of them, hungry for money to spend, who votes to impose paid parking after all these happy decades and decades of free parking here in Morro Bay will be voted out of office in the next election.
Don’t change the character of Morro Bay. Don’t change us into something else. Leave well enough alone.
Bill Cahill
Morro Bay
This article appears in Health & Wellness 2022.
Cities are strapped for cash.
So, they put in parkign meters . . .
Maybe it is time for residents to get behind local sales taxes to save their city.
A half cent added to the current sales tax
lets every shopper contribute to the financial health of their city.
Libertarians call taxes ‘theft’ I am one.
However, a local time limited small sales tax increase may
stop your city from ‘seeking other funding’ in the form of state or federal grants that
come with state and federal rules.
Novel idea. Especially for a Libertarian.
Or, maybe Morro Bay could control their spending. Trying to keep government out of the pocket of the public is like trying to keep drugs away from an addict.
It is a crazy idea when SLO is offering special free parking days to get people downtown. Merchants don’t want to deal with making change and not everyone has a bank card. If you have to pay for parking, tourists can just as easily go to Pismo Beach. It hurts locals the most, who get to enjoy the local delights in the off season. It’s enough we have to pay “tourist rates” in the restaurants without being “nickel and dimed” on parking. The Morro Bay area has been my home for fifteen years. I don’t like seeing it turned into a “money machine”. I can still remember when it was a relatively quiet town, all those years ago when the power plant sound kept away the faint of heart.