TRAFFIC METER ORDINANCE LATEST OF CITY'S ABSURD IDEAS

By Juan Montoya

“We are not there to hurt anybody ... meters are not there to make any money. They are there to move traffic around … to keep traffic flowing,” City of Brownsville Traffic Director Robert Esparza

And so, in his stated quest to make nice with the residents and visitors to Brownsville, Traffic director Robert Esparza and City Manager Charlie Cabler are urging the city commission to pass an ordinance that would allow installation of more parking meters and an increase in parking fees.

A compliant commission did just that and passed its first reading at their last meeting with the second reading scheduled in a week.

The ordinance will leave it up to the traffic department director – read Esparza, The Benevolent – and Cabler, The Magnanimous, to install yet more parking meters in the city and to raise fees in the future as they see fit.

As a comparison with Brownsville's 50-cent per hour rates, they pointed out that San Antonio, up nawth, charges 75 cents per half-hour with a maximum fee of $3 per meter.

Under their plan, the fee would be raised to 50 cents per hour, compared with the current 25 cents an hour.

Now, according to Esparza it's not the money, honey, that is motivating the call for the new ordinance. Rather, it's traffic mobility that's the driving force behind this move.

Oh, yes, downtown Brownsville and downtown San Wilmas is just about an even comparison, isn't it?

Granted, the local citizenry just celebrated the Easter Bunny, but that rationale is best left to parents when they explain the Tooth Fairy and other myths of the culture to their gullible offspring. Even then, that rationale might be a hard sell.

With the ordinance well on its way to become law, how will this affect the city's bottom dollar?

According to the Brownsville Finance Department, the city racked in a total of $310,581.49 from parking meters (if all they take is nickels, dimes and quarters how did the 49 cents come about?).

Additionally, another $195,054.87 in revenue came from overparking fines paid to the city. Another $2,253 came in through parking administration fees, $6,025.66 in boot fines mailing penalties and another $625 in boot fines booting fees. When you add up the other parking lot rentals, transfers, etc., the grand total from these parking enterprises at the close of the 2011 fiscal year came to the grand total of $544,399.54.

That amount is significantly reduced (at least by half) after expenses in supervision and labor.

The plan, as it is outlined in the ordinance, will be to make downtown parking (and elsewhere) a moneymaker.

Now, we know that almost all of the city honchos have exclusive parking spaces (as do city commissioners and firefighter supervisors), and these are almost always empty on the weekends. But don't dare park in one of those on a Saturday because there will magically appear a yellow parking envelope with a citation on your windshield.

And yes, perhaps it is time to increase the parking rates here, but there is always a down side to this move.

Have you circled the downtown area vainly looking for a place to park so you can dash into a store or run an errand? In most cases, people just give up and do their shopping or chores somewhere else where there is less congestion and a parking space that doesn't have a meter.

Esparza says that if he increases parking meter rates more people will flock to the downtown area to pay more, a kind of "if you install them they will pay" logic.

So what, pray tell, is the purpose of offering free parking during the Christmas holiday to bring in more shoppers? Is this an aberration that occurs only when shoppers are filled with Christmas bliss?

There are already parking meters at the Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport. With the new ordinance, it would allow the Traffic Department to install them on the north side of town and other areas if needed, Esparza said.

By his own logic, Esparza (and the city administration) would have us believe the higher rates would generate business for downtown merchants, with motorists scurrying to get out of the area because of the higher meter rates. He also said that the majority of the metered parking spaces are used by downtown employees who take up the meters and prevent prospective shoppers from parking to shop.

Why don't they just say that they have hit upon parking space increases as a way to fatten the budget? It would be refreshing if they would just be sincere and be done with it instead of thinking we will swallow these fanciful notions of theirs that the public wants to pay more for anything.