City council repeals paid parking ordinance
Paid parking will no longer go into effect downtown
– The Paso Robles City Council met Tuesday night for its regular meeting. During the meeting, the council repealed the hotly contested paid downtown parking ordinance in a unanimous vote.
The meeting began with presentations. There was a report by Recreation Services Manager Lynda Plescia of the California Parks and Recreation Society Rising Professional Award to aquatics coordinator Victoria Teeter. Mayor John Hamon then gave a proclamation for National Foster Care Month.
President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association John Coupal gave a presentation on the Taxpayer Protection Act, an act that aims to provide more accountability and transparency for taxpayers. It was later requested by Councilmember Chris Bausch to add support for the act to a future agenda.
Capital Projects Engineer Ditas Esperanza gave a capital projects report, and Community Development Director Warren Frace gave a briefing on the Airport Road – Highway 46E left turn permanent closure.
The council approved their consent agenda items unanimously and then moved items five and six on the agenda up to the front of the discussion items, which were both regarding the downtown paid parking ordinance.
The council voted to bring item six up for discussion and vote on it before item five. Item six was for an ordinance repealing the current paid parking ordinance. City Attorney Elizabeth Hull gave the presentations on both items. She said that the referendum petition that was presented to the city was legally insufficient and would likely be rejected by the city clerk.
The council ultimately voted to support this repeal ordinance, making item five null, which was a further discussion of the “flawed” referendum petition. The petition gathered over 2400 signatures. Despite the city pointing to legal flaws in the petition, the large-scale support of it helped to send a message to the council that many citizens did not want paid parking in the downtown core.
“This is how the process is supposed to work,” said Bausch, “If you enjoy this process, think about political office… stay involved.”
Mayor Hamon said that the paid parking ordinance was originally in response to requests from business owners to limit how long people were staying in the parking spots, specifically employees at the downtown businesses. He said, “That’s where we are going to be again… (if) that’s what you want, that’s fine for me, just don’t ask for any more parking, ever.”
He said that paid parking worked to control how long people stayed in the spots, and said that people called him and thanked him that they could now find places to park downtown. “Don’t ask for it anymore, it’s your problem at this point,” he said.
Councilmember Fred Stong said that years ago, he was initially in favor of parking limits to help address the issue brought before them by the downtown business owners, but that the parking problem was “not for the council to solve.” He said that putting the issue on a ballot would cost additional money and time for taxpayers so he supported repealing the current ordinance instead.
Councilmember Sharon Rhoden said that the ordinance was never meant to hurt anybody’s business, and she made the motion to repeal the ordinance. Councilmember Steve Gregory seconded the motion, and the motion was passed unanimously.
Paid parking will no longer go into effect and the repeal ordinance will come back for an official second reading and adoption at the next council meeting.
The council then heard presentations from the Paso Robles Downtown Main Street Association and the Hispanic Business Association on how both organizations help support the citizens of Paso Robles and help businesses in Paso Robles succeed. Both organizations were asked to return to the next meeting to discuss their budget and specific funding requests from the city because the May 21 meeting would include a discussion of the city’s budget and the council would therefore be more informed and ready to approve or deny those funding requests.
The council voted to implement a system to allow paperless e-filing of campaign finance forms.
At 10:30 p.m., the council decided to table the “Preliminary Budget Overview for Fiscal Years 2024-25 and 2025-26” item to the next meeting.
The city will host a special meeting on Wednesday at 5 p.m. to interview advisory board candidates for the Supplemental Sales Tax Committee. The public is welcome to attend. Click here for more information on that meeting.
Watch the full May 7 meeting below:
