HomeMy WebLinkAbout11/7/2023 Item 6a, Osborne
Barbara-Jo Osborne <
To:E-mail Council Website
Cc:letters@thetribunenews.com; letters@newtimesslo.com
Subject:Parking
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Hello:
please read this.
The PARKING issue is NOT about Parking.
This is about MONEY.
I wish Big Sky Restaurant was still here.
I wish Marshall’s Jewelry, Beverly’s Fabrics, Betty’s Fabrics, Ross, Mo’s BBQ, Johnson’s Gallery, or Johnsons for Kids, or
….
This is about MONEY and the city staff being fairly irresponsible with competing budgets.
This is about the City Budget.
QUESTION:
Why do Home Depot, Whole Foods, Costco, et al, let us park for FREE?
What do they know that the City of SLO doesn’t seem to understand?
ANSWER:
The longer a person shops, the more they spend.
The more they worry about getting to their car, the less focused on shopping they are and the less they spend.
Home Depot knows charging $4.00/hour is WAY less INCOME than someone spending $50.00 because they finally found
what they were looking for.
Let them shop.
Did anyone at the City do that calculation?
The city should think about the shopper and then THINK about SALES TAX, and Business License Tax.
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These are 2 of your top revenue streams and these taxes are driven by Retail Sales.
Your Retail Sales go DOWN and your sales tax goes down and your business license tax goes down.
A mom gives up and won’t pay $4.00 an hour for parking, and then doesn’t spend $200.00 shopping and eating with her
friends.
The pandemic came. People had to stay home. Retail stores, Restaurants, Movie Theaters, LOST SALES and the City’s
sales tax revenue dropped.
AND AND AND - consumers found another way to get their needs met. ON-LINE.
Amazon.com charges sales tax and includes the City of SLO’s portion, but they are in the minority. Most charge the
State’s sales tax rate, and the City loses.
Doubling the parking rates and charging for weekends and holidays and after 6pm, is just greedy and mean. It
PENALIZES the shoppers we want to attract to downtown.
Why are you doing that? If you need money, do a better job of budgeting. Cut salaries at the top.
Retail sales, restaurants, movie theaters, coffee shops, ARE “DOWNTOWN”. If they’re gone, so is downtown.
They were just coming back to financial health when the City Parking Department declared war on the consumers and
saw them as sitting ducks.
You have numbers that show more people are coming back in and shopping, and you used those numbers to formulate
a plan to squeeze out more MONEY for parking.
SLO Downtown is right on that brink. Consumers are too angry now to want to “support” the downtown. You are taking
too much.
Remember when businesses figured out that they could attract more customers by taking advantage of free parking on
Sundays and holidays? Remember?
SLO businesses decided to open on Sundays and holidays. Suddenly more people were parking and shopping and eating
lunch and going to the movies, unfettered by parking fees.
Remember when the city parking department saw this and suddenly begin charging for parking on Sundays?
Remember when the Churches all had a fit and gathered together and demanded a return to free parking during the
church morning times?
I do. I was working for a downtown business who got socked in the gut by lost sales on Sundays the minute parking was
no longer free.
Ultimately, the City will lose in the parking wars.
As downtown businesses lose revenues as shoppers stop coming downtown because they have had ENOUGH of the
City’s parking greed,
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the City will lose sales tax revenue and business license tax.
And we will all lose because our society craves social interaction, dinner and a movie, a new dress or pair of jeans. The
happiest city isn’t so happy these days.
Costs of the parking structure?
Planning for 20 years and you didn’t set aside anything???
Why do we have to pay for the city’s poor budget planning???
Just because you can raise taxes and increase parking fees doesn’t mean you, in all good conscience, to so.
Tighten your own belt. Do what you are making business owners do.
BTW - for laughs, compare City administrators’ salaries to downtown business owners’ salaries. You’ll be shocked.
Give back Sundays, holidays, and time after 6pm, and then cut the fee increase in half.
Sincerely,
Barbara-Jo Osborne
Business Owner, Atascadero, Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo, Artist and Supporter of SLOREP
336 Main Street
Morro Bay, CA 93442
805-215-4155
bj@bjoart.com
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