HomeMy WebLinkAbout11/7/2023 Item 6a, Papac
Magnolia Papac <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:parking downtown
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Dear Council Members,
Last month my husband and I attended an evening event at the SLOMA. We walked to town from my husband's office
outside of the downtown core. After the event we decided to go to dinner since it was late to be cooking at home and we
wanted to invite our teenage son to join us - in considering where to go, we opted not to dine downtown as it seemed
ridiculous for our 16 year old to have to pay upwards of $6 just to meet up with us for dinner. Instead decided to meet at
Milestone - giving him time to drive there and us time to walk to our car and get there where we all could park for free.
Also this fall, my mother has been visiting from out of the country. She lived and worked in downtown SLO for much of
her adult life... the homes we lived in during my youth were on Dana Street and at Mission Gardens at Peach and
Nipomo. Downtown SLO is part of her heart home. She had lots of free time in the 2 months that she was staying with
me because I am always at work. I expected that she would go to Linnea's and visit the Mission and the shops downtown
and meet up with friends. She wanted to but was so daunted by the parking that she never once visited downtown during
her 2 month stay here. She has a limited income, doesn't have a cell phone that works in this country, and isn't as able
bodied as she once was... for her, the parking is shockingly expensive (more than she would spend on a cup of coffee if
she were to go downtown) and worse is figuring out how to use the mostly app based parking and very confusing systems
in the structures. It was all to intimidating to be worth the effort and she opted instead to go to Los Osos and Morro Bay
for her excursions.
For my last specific example of the parking hardships my family has encountered, my college aged son works in a
downtown restaurant at night. He parks in the parking garage on Palm and Chorro because he gets off of work too late to
feel safe walking to the places near downtown where street parking is free. It used to be that when he got off of work, the
gate was up at the structure and parking would be free from that garage. It now costs $12 (or $15 if you get off past
midnight) - that is nearly an HOUR of his wages. Downtown businesses are already struggling to find enough employees
who are willing to work for the prevailing wages in these jobs before our city council starts stealing an hour off the top of
every hardworking downtown employee.
It makes me sad. I want to support downtown. I literally grew up downtown from the ages of 5-22. I've worked service and
retail at 8 different businesses downtown over the course of my life and been a regular at countless more. Every member
of my family has worked at a downtown business and yet we frequent it less and less. It feels like Disneyland. It has
become a commitment to go downtown... the challenges are different for each of us depending on where we are at in life.
For people like my parents, $4/hour is simply too much for their fixed incomes and they aren't in physical condition to walk
downtown or even walk from my house to the bus stop. For my children working in the service industry the cost is also an
undue burden, especially at night. The night time rates also deter me from going downtown for dinner or a movie as much
as I used to. It costs almost as much to park as it does to go to a movie at the Palm. This is too much of a surcharge on
the activities downtown. My personal biggest complaint however is the new system in the Palm Street garage. It makes
NO sense. It defeats the purpose of parking in a garage... which is to be able to conveniently park your car, run off and
enjoy your time freely downtown, come back to your car WHENEVER you are done and pay for the time that you USE. I
personally would probably pay almost any rate for that convenience. I quit parking on the street years ago because this
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was such a convenient feature - free for the first hour and pay for what you use after. Now, having to guess and pre-pay
(by the HOUR) and figure out how to incorporate the free hour that I registered my car for but which makes absolutely no
sense any which way you cut it makes it so that I will NEVER park in the garage for more than an hour. You have to
employ twice as many people to explain the system than did to have someone work the ticket booth and even after these
two people try to explain over and over again, we all just come to the conclusion that the system doesn't make
sense. The response that I most often hear is to just pay for an hour and know you have two and if you are there longer,
likely nothing will happen because I doubt that the system even works. All of this to raise revenue to pay for another
garage that I will never park in.... the sweet little lot that was there before only ever filled up when Mission had a football
game. It was my last good, simple, old school parking spot downtown. RIP.
Magnolia
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