Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/175080
Sarasota News Leader September 20, 2013 OPINION equipment to read license plates of parked cars (which, in case you are wondering, is why it is illegal downtown to park "backed in"). Page 91 but not charging for street parking will simply clog up prime parking spots on the streets and make the Palm Avenue garage the "Maytag repairman" it was a year ago. The reality is that the decision to end paid parking should have been accompanied by an immediate reduction in the Parking Enforcement Division to ensure taxpayers did not continue to subsidize that cost. If any parking charge were to make sense, it would be charging for street parking and keeping garage parking free. But then merchants and their employees would not be able to park in front of their establishments, and Instead, the city commissioners have been the same angry crowds would be back in front wringing their hands at the prospect of losing of the City Commission demanding the board almost half a million dollars again this year remove the meters. — a loss that must be supported by a subsidy from the general fund (i.e., taxpayers). The The city either should charge for all parking commissioners' grand solution? Start charging or make all parking free. And if parking is to for parking in the Palm Avenue garage to trim be free — and we believe it should be — the an estimated $285,000 from the taxpayers' scope of parking enforcement must be scaled subsidy of parking enforcement. back commensurately. The city taxpayers simply cannot be expected to pay more than a Never mind that the Palm Avenue garage was mostly underutilized until the opening in April million dollars a year for parking "executive" of Louies Modern, a new restaurant on the positions and expensive unnecessary equipfirst floor of the garage complex. Somehow we ment. are supposed to believe that this time things Take some or all of that $485,000 budget will be different. "shortfall" out of the Parking Enforcement But even the most casual observer would pru- Division budget. How much simpler could dently conclude that charging for the garage it be? % The Sarasota News Leader No-Nonsense Reporting