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SLO parking, one hour is not enough

November 9, 2023

OPINION by PETE EVANS

The San Luis Obispo City Council decided to provide immediate relief from the new parking rates. Starting Nov. 23, parking downtown will be free of charge in the following ways:

  • For one hour every day in the public parking structures
  • Every Sunday in the public parking structures
  • During the annual downtown holiday parade starting at 6:00 PM (both on-street and in the structures.

These free parking options will be available at least through June 30, 2025.

Just crumbs thrown to the peons to get us to shut up. Our local businesses will continue to suffer under the boot of the high costs of parking and reduced hours of free parking that we used to enjoy.

If you are unhappy with this less than token response to the public outcry, email the City Council with this slogan in the subject line: One hour is not enough!


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The link for emailing the city council is incorrect.

Try this email address: slocitycouncil@slocity.org


Free parking for locals.


9

Thanks for checking that, when I submitted the article I had the correct email but somehow it was printed wrong.


1

Yeah, soak the rich tourists…!


Yes, I’m being facetious…


1

I will admit I don’t understand all of the local history and politics, but I do think it might be useful to understand my position as a local consumer (from Morro Bay): the parking situation is bad enough that I recently wrote someone at what I thought was a city address recently and then got sent to what I think was an actual city account because I’m completely done with this crap. (The response was far from satisfactory.) Here’s my simple position:


Parking is hard to come by to begin with in the downtown Higuera/Monterey/Marsh area and I only have so much patience for playing the game of going around in circles on one-way streets just to nab a space. Add in the new cost of parking, the hassle of figuring out how to actually pay for it and the bigger issue of figuring out how long to pay for it (in advance) when we don’t know how long we are going to be shopping (should we somehow know exactly where we want to go, where that is, how long it takes to get there from the spot we found, how long we will be in those stores, what our route will be and then how long it will take to get back to that parking spot–or should we be able to park and wander around to see what the area has to offer without any particular agenda or knowledge, find interesting shops and spend our money?) and I just quit.


The answer for us is simple–we are done with this game and won’t be shopping in that area again, which is too bad for local businesses who might have attracted our dollars if but for these strange and apparently arbitrary limitations. We would prefer to spend our money on locally-based businesses and enjoy that cultural and economic dynamic, but when that is made extremely difficult to achieve we will simply stop. And I’m guessing that’s how most people will respond, whether they can specifically think about it or articulate it in those terms or not.


I cannot imagine how this parking fee scenario (not to mention the bizarre physical parking and access setup works with very few parking spots on the streets near the shops and confusing color coding and lanes) helps anyone–certainly not the shop owners we would prefer to be supporting with our business.


30

Parking downtown is a JOKE! The people making the decisions have never been in business where they depend on parking for their success. Vote ‘em out!


17

I agree, combined with all of this green paint and physical bike lane barriers City planning and public works staff have created a circus.


10

It’s a balance. The City of SLO abandoned residents long ago in favor of a Disneyland Main Street model for tourists, connected developers, and pension fund revenue. Fun fact, the City of SLO has more employees per capita than any other city in the state. And the corruption is insane, it’s like Adam Hill is the City’s mayor.


29

That’s an interesting fact, the per capita employees; what is the source? (I sound like I’m being quippy, I don’t mean to, I’m actually interested in where that data comes from)


4

Now I’m being quippy, did you just make up that “fact”?


0

parking is only a subset of the city failing

this county has built beyond it’s means due to Rich Conservatives and Democrats for decades.


then wineries came in the 90s and stole the water.


Now all water along the Salinas is cancerous with PFAs and PFoS.


get your RO system ASAP unless you like dying at age 60. stop using Roundup. buy local organic sustainable farms. IE, Rocky Canyon, Tally; forget politics here about Tally; etc. local mushroom growers. Cheese, J and R butcher. Please, Support J and R if you aren’t some Rich snob, then piss off and go gentrify another place and ruin their economy.


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