Without even a wispy dandelion of resistance, the City Council last night breezily set aside loudly heralded, muscularly resisted just-born Downtown parking meter regulations for between six weeks and three months.
Two key components have been temporarily whacked.
Effective immediately, the electronically controlled newly installed meters will be turned back from an 11 p.m. shutoff time to the familiar old 6 o’clock line. Sunday metered parking is retreating into repose after a failed four-week try.
Call it a signal triumph for the impressively marshalled pushback strength of the Downtown Business Assn. Restaurateurs who complained publicly for the first time when the regulations were two weeks old, can take a bow over the swift response by the Council. So can Councilman Andy Weissman. He authoritatively took charge of creating the respite.
Once he urged his three colleagues last week to join him in putting a hold on the unpopular regulations, the momentum immediately became unstoppable.
It almost was as if Council members had been hunkered down and were waiting for the regulations to bomb. DBA leaders protested to the six contenders in the City Council race on Thursday, March 22, and the following Monday pitched the Council itself.
The new rules, drawn from a dusty, much criticized, possibly outmoded parking study, died, or at least went into a happily induced coma before they were a month old.
Although the Council voted 4 to 0 to suspend them until July 10, Mr. Weissman described that schedule as “an outside date.”
Likelier, he told the newspaper, the subject will be reactivated in mid-May when the Council takes up the oft-delayed matter of tightening rules for the three city-owned Downtown parking structures.
Speculation is that metered Sunday parking Downtown will remain in the grave while a compromise evening hour of 8 o’clock may be suggested.
At the end, the Council, in silent harmony, sang Auld Lange Syne at their final meeting together. First-termer Christopher Armenta enters a job-influenced early retirement. Mr. Weissman and Mayor Mehaul O’Leary anxiously await the results of next Tuesday’s election, leaving only Jeff Cooper without a cause for stress.
