Free Paring - Targeted Rate

Geoff & Val from Rototuna North

Geoff Kreegher shared Angela O'Leary, Hamilton City Councillor's post.
14 hrs ·
7 April at 07:53 ·
Thursday 6 Apr 17 Council voted in the proposal that will see ratepayers paying $14m over the next 10 years to implement a 2 hour free central city parking plan.

The votes - those against the proposal: me, Tooman, Pascoe and Southgate. Those for the proposal: Mayor, Gallagher, Taylor, Bunting, Henry, Casson, Macpherson and Yeung.

It's not quite a done deal yet and will go out for public consultation in the Annual Plan today, I’ll post the link when it’s live so you can have your say.

The plan moves from a user pays system to a ratepayer funded system meaning a rates increase to all ratepayers of an extra $26.57 a year. Just for parking.

The economics are simple - whatever goods and services are provided - they must be paid for by someone. And this plan, that someone is the ratepayer.

Supporters of the plan say they believe this plan will help reinvigorate the central city. We’ve tried all sorts of different variations of parking plans over the years and none of them resulted in any positive impact. Each time the businesses told us it didn’t work. So I have to ask myself why on earth we are doing this yet again.

If you prefer to shop at Chartwell or The Base or anywhere else, being able to park for 2 hours free in town isn’t going to change that. You go where the shops that you want to shop are, right? It doesn’t even seem logical when you look at it from that perspective.

The kicker here with the plan is that you can ONLY park for 2 hours on-street, then you either have to move to a parking building, or leave town.

You can’t decide to shop in one area of town for 2 hours then move to another to do more shopping. As I found out yesterday through my questions you won’t even be able to use your 2 hours free, nip over to say Hamilton East for 15 mins, then come back into town to use another “new” 2 hours free. Unless you’re happy to risk a $12 - $40 parking fine.

The enforcement will happen as you will park over a ‘dome’, and a parking warden takes a photo of your licence plate, that way it will show if you move your car when your 2 hours is up.

The reasons of those who support the proposal are that free parking will help revitalise the CBD.

Lower Hutt tried a similar free parking system over a trial period of 15 months and it didn’t work. They collect retail spend data all the time and their evidence showed that there was no increase in retail spend during the trial of free parking.

In fact, at busy times where there was a general increase over all city areas of retail spending, the free parking area actually decreased in terms of what their market share of the spend SHOULD have been. Proving that there was no benefit achieved from having a CBD with free parking.

Anyway that was the decision. Thoughts?

Parking is always a feisty debate and there is quite a bit of detail to this plan so if you have questions about the plan I'll keep a close eye on this thread and answer them.

Angela :)