Budget
DC Council: Don't choose parking meters over people
It was very disappointing to hear DC Councilmembers support rolling back parking meter rates and opposing a graduated RPP fee in the midst of large proposed cuts to transit and affordable housing programs.
Photo by izik on Flickr.
The Coalition for Smarter Growth has created a petition for DC residents to contact their Councilmembers and ask them to prioritize reasonable revenues, forward-thinking parking and transportation policies, and essential affordable housing funds.
The Council is meeting tomorrow to talk again about the budget and voting next Wednesday, May 25. We have to act right now if we want to have an effect. Please sign the petition and ask your friends to do the same.
The petition asks members to:
- Support the Committee on Public Works and Transportation report calling for graduated Residential Parking Permit fees;
- Oppose Councilmember Evans' rollback of parking meter rates;
- Support Mayor Gray's income tax increase on households earning more than $200,000 a year;
- Restore Housing Production Trust Fund money, and;
- Provide the needed funds to ensure Metro doesn't have to cut service on weekends.
Depleting parking meter revenues while slashing funds for essential transit and affordable housing programs will hurt all of us. Speak up now to ensure the city budget continues to build a more livable and inclusive city.
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington. He has had a lifelong interest in great cities and great communities. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
 | Alex Posorske is the Managing Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. Before joining CSG, he managed two top tier Congressional races, organized key constituencies in the 2008 presidential primaries, built grassroots operations in numerous regions throughout the country. Alex has a B.A. in Journalism from Webster University in St. Louis, Mo. |
Comments
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by xmal on May 18, 2011 4:04 pm
by David Alpert on May 18, 2011 4:11 pm
by MW on May 18, 2011 4:15 pm
by TGEoA on May 18, 2011 5:22 pm
by Glenn on May 18, 2011 5:34 pm
by цarьchitect on May 18, 2011 5:52 pm
by snowpeas on May 18, 2011 6:09 pm
The so called "smart growth" crowd would you have ride the horse hard and put away wet. When it turns up lame they would kill it and grill it and serve it to those living in affordable housing.
by TGEoA on May 18, 2011 6:34 pm
It's kind of sad GGWs lack of seriousness. It really sets back important dialogue and policy work. Under Graham there was never really serious adoption of mark-to-market of curbside parking. Graham was only interested in using meter fees to fund his earmarking slush fund or to execute his pay-to-play schemes especially with developers. Performance Parking Zones where just vehicles to play politics in Adams Morgan and Mt. Pleasant, same with the Circulator. Now having built now really political or policy ground game, making mountains out of molehills is all that is left. It's unfortunate. I liked Klein, but he was playing with stimulus money, never got a chance to do real policy. GGW should really use this opportunity to learn lessons and do some growing up.
by W Jordan on May 18, 2011 6:41 pm
Parking is important: it effects the entire streetscape and can have a dramatic impact on traffic. If it requires drivers to carry bags of quarters, performance parking should go hand-in-hand with meters that take cards.
Taxation and safety nets are both important, especially in a city with such a dramatic gap between rich and poor. Not only is cutting the safety net bad for the economy in times when it's stressed, but it shows an overall lack of concern for the poor and an inability to balance the needs of the rich against those of the poor.
by OctaviusIII on May 18, 2011 6:48 pm
I noted here that converting to $2 before credit card meters could be a disaster. No one carries that many quarters and it's not like the old days where porn stores were all around where you could easily load up on quarters. I think performance parking would have gone much easier without that initial headache.
Anyway, I'm going to email Jack, Phil and Catania and try to visit them in the next couple days.
by Tom Coumaris on May 18, 2011 7:57 pm
Instead, the city chose to do it half-assed, as usual: It jacked up the rates but decided to rely upon a hodgepodge of meter-payment options, so much so that you never really knew how you would pay for your meter (depending on where you where in the city). Included in this hodgepodge was the misguided decision not to replace the coin meters.
by Anon on May 18, 2011 8:37 pm
Perhaps more remarkable is a petition that lumps all these issues together. I feel differently about meters, RPPs, and income tax increases for the "rich".
by ah on May 18, 2011 8:42 pm
Bottom line: 60% budget growth in 8 years. A 2012 budget that is larger than ANY budget in the history of DC, when cities and states elsewhere are all making very substaintial cuts. Sound sustainable? Didn't think so.
Raising taxes is a one time fix in this type of environment. What happens next year when spending continues to grow? Raise taxes again? At some point, we have to face the reality of the situation. I wish my Councilmember, Tommy Wells, would wake up and smell the coffee. Alpert too.
by W6 Rezzie on May 18, 2011 8:48 pm
Talking about a big budget and how cuts need to be made without saying anything substantive about how and where those cuts is ineffectual. David is trying to point this out by saying the cuts and policies proposed don't actually fix any of the bigger issues that are plaguing the budget.
by Canaan on May 18, 2011 9:42 pm
Furthermore, it betrays a sad (bit common) lack of fiscal savvy to assume--as you do--that the current once-a-century recession is the new normal. There's always the possibility that, at some point, we'll return to aneroid of economic growth. If we don't, our society will have bigger fish to fry than minor increases in marginal tax rates.
by oboe on May 18, 2011 10:10 pm
Thanks for highlighting this issue, David. Don't let individuals like W Jordan get to you.
by Jake on May 18, 2011 10:36 pm
The budget grew in part by 60% is the city was coming out of the control board error with changed the budget baseline. The other reason the budget grew is the city and nation choose a bubble approach to economic development. Again, parking fees under Graham was a slush fund issue had little to do with real sustainable services.
Given that my neighborhood is in a performance parking zone and I've seen the reports and etc., I have a pretty good idea about the difference between good policy and implementation and the political dog and pony show GGW is defending. In Columbia Heights we actually need policies to work theory and the politics of pet projects is not good enough.
I've invited Alpert several times to come to Columbia Heights and seriously engage on this issues both while I served on the ANC and as a lay person. I've seen the intersection of GGW/SmartGrowth and pay-to-play development politics and it's not pretty. The GGW wants the residents of CH to sacrifice by adopting new policies, but the GGW crew does not want to take the social or political risk necessary to make the policies really work.
Not interested in seeing CH pimped. There needs to be some accountability.
by W Jordan on May 19, 2011 7:16 am
economic productivity is a product of the availability of cheap oil that we can compete for. When demand for oil goes up globally, the price goes up. When we pay too much for oil, we go into a recession. When we come out of the recession, the price of oil will go back up, and past a certain point will re-crash the economy. We reach that point more quickly now because we use oil inefficiently and now that China, India, and all the other developing countries are using lots of oil there is way more demand, pushing up the price. Plus also oil production has flat-lined globally. The American enconomy will never recover past even below the point that crashed us last time without major improvements in how efficiently oil is used. That will require massive investment in better technologies, changes in land-use patterns, etc.
by Lee on May 19, 2011 7:23 am
Just to repeat, growth will either return, in which case concentrating on short-term deficits will be irrelevant; or it won't, in which case, as I said, we've got bigger fish to fry.
On a further note, while your prognosis is reasonable, we don't know the sort of timeline we're talking about. It could be we're a couple of years from the collapse off the cheap oil economy--or it could be 100 years.
As Keynes said, "Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent."
by oboe on May 19, 2011 9:21 am
Raising taxes is one thing, but Wells is actually proposing lowering parking rates. How does that make fiscal sense?
by Jasper on May 19, 2011 9:43 am
What is good for the government's budget is not necessarily good for neighborhoods or businesses or all subsets of each area. Growth that depends primarily on rising real estate values is actually counterproductive if the desire is health sustainable neighborhoods with real diversity and social stability. I for one don't want to see a heavy return to an economy that depends on a housing bubble, but many seem to be looking for a return to the bubble for growth.
by W Jordan on May 19, 2011 1:28 pm
"There's only so much oil in the ground."
and
The very simple way to fix the American economy, believe it or not, is for the U.S. government to get the money it needs from the people that have the most of it, namely the richest, say, 2-3% of it's citizens. STOP clinging to the theory that those folks create jobs- they are just hoarding the money, period. If all you young Republicans who aspire to be filthy rich but are not there yet would stop panicking at the very mention of "tax increase" and let the government get some cash from them that's got plenty, all would be well. It is in fact just that simple! Let the government get what it needs to stimulate the economy by investing in infrastructure, education, etc., because the rich are not going to let any of their money "trickle down". The rich are sure not going to invest in anything helpful other than themselves, and that is no lie.
Seriously- forget about parking fees and focus on what is important- the rich are hoarding, nobody on this blog is rich b y the standard I am talking about so we should all be in agreement- tax the rich because why- THEY HAVE THE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
by KevinM on May 19, 2011 3:05 pm
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