People visiting downtown Paso Robles will soon pay $1 more an hour to park there, and some business owners are not happy about it.
“These proposed changes are going to drive away our everyday customers, [and] lead to competition being built elsewhere—either outside the city, outside downtown, or in other cities, and our customers are going to go there,” Parks Cinema President John Roush said during a Feb. 21 Paso City Council meeting. “Eventually this will lead to the deterioration of our prosperous downtown.”
The Paso Robles City Council voted 3-1 at that meeting to implement a pilot program that will change its existing parking payment structure. Currently, visitors must use parking pay stations to pay $1 per hour to park after the first two hours, which are free.
During the Feb. 21 meeting, council members debated whether to remove the two free hours of parking, or to increase the hourly rate from $1 an hour to $2 an hour.
After hours of deliberation, the City Council approved a motion made by Councilmember Chris Bausch to pilot a 90-day program starting March 1 that sets the hourly rate at $2 after the first two free hours. The council would then reconvene back in 90 days for further discussion regarding the parking program. ∆
During the meeting, Ryan Cornell, director of administrative services, said that based on data from the Dec. 20 revenue projections, maintaining the current rate of $1 per hour would not be sustainable for the city. Council members, however, were divided on whether increasing the hourly parking rate would make the city’s parking program financially sustainable.
“We really don’t know how this is going to change human behavior. And so that’s kind of the biggest factor. That’s kind of the unknown,” Cornell said. “But if we were to assume that the same number of transactions happened last year, is this going to happen again this year and the average session is right around 90 minutes. We think that $2 an hour, the parking revenue will be statistically self-sustaining.”
Bausch and Councilmember Fred Strong initially voted against raising the hourly rate to $2, with Bausch saying that the increase in parking rate would negatively impact citizens.
“We need to pause and we need to stop and think [about] what we’re doing here,” Bausch said. “I think we’re going to alienate a significant part of our population, that’s not going to benefit the council at all.”
Strong reminded the City Council that the original purpose of the downtown parking program, which started in 2019, was to free up parking spaces that were being occupied by downtown employees.
“It seems that now the intent is to make money, which was not [the] original intent, and that concerns me,” Strong said. “Isn’t there one method that isn’t so involved with revenue that still accomplishes the purpose of getting the employees to not carve [up] and take up the customers’ parking spaces?”
Katelyn Smith, who owns the AMSTRDM Coffee House, urged council members to keep the first two hours of parking free.
“If the two hours free is eliminated and the price increases to $2, that would absolutely eliminate any convenience of any customer to come to our business,” Smith said. “Pricing is already at an all-time high for consumers with the cost increase of supplies in every way.”
General Store Paso Robles Manager Bella Yaguda urged council members to approve a new replacement parking app, in the wake of the city discontinuing the use of the WaytoPark app on Feb. 10.
Donna King, the city’s parking coordinator, explained at the Jan. 31 meeting that the city was planning to replace it with Flowbird, an updated version of the WaytoPark app. On Feb. 21, the City Council also approved a contract with Flowbird, which will launch on March 1. The app will feature new details such as a built-in map that shows free and long-term parking options. Δ
This article appears in Weddings 2023.