By re-implementing escalated parking fines downtown, city officials effectively could trigger a decline in retail activity all because some merchants are upset about fellow businesses’ employees using available spaces right outside their neighboring front doors.
The city has no need to get involved in an isolated problem, a small one, among a minority of businesses when a simple solution exists: merchants following the common practice of making it a condition of employment to park in specified areas.
Larger retailers such as Target and WalMart do it all the time. Why is it such an unreasonable request when businesses throughout the world, large and small, require it every day?
Bringing back these fines, nullified for the past five years, would merely create a bigger problem at a time when retailers cannot afford to run risks with the bottom line. Businesses actually could see fewer customers walk through the doors when the prices of purchases start to multiply through unnecessary parking fines.
It is not exactly a shopper-friendly message the city would send by intimidating the loyal customer base.
Local tax coffers, meanwhile, are largely dependent on the success or failure of the local economy. If fewer people shop downtown, fewer tax dollars are generated to fund local services.
They are driving away shoppers. And for what benefit to taxpayers?
None – zippo – zilch.
City leaders acknowledge the initiative is revenue neutral, while it appears they have not taken into account the inevitability that the higher fines could result in fewer tickets issued. The number of tickets likely would drop because of the recession, for one, so fewer people are shopping, and $35 makes the point stick to the affected individual a lot faster than $20, especially in bad times.
City officials also justified their proposed fine hike – the only way they can avoid an eye-popping, completely unjustifiable loss from the endeavor – by comparing the new dollar figures to other communities with parking enforcement.
They apparently have not considered the fact, however, that those other municipalities used in the comparison – Monterey, Santa Cruz, Salinas and San Juan Bautista – have a much greater per capita tourist influence than downtown Hollister has at the moment. Hollister’s new fines will even surpass the penalties in two of those cities, Santa Cruz and Salinas.
This is not a situation locally, like in those places, where the local government has the option of milking tourists for a few extra dollars on their way out of town. For the most part here, they would be milking their own constituents, who still live and vote here, and with no return in revenue. By itself, that should prompt council members to consider the political consequences and drop the idea off the edge of a cliff.
Council members appear to be buying into this misguided perception portrayed by the Hollister Downtown Association in representing its members, including the merchants who are particularly distressed about parking and have pushed the initiative.
If they have any doubts, council members should consider the startling vacancy rate downtown, especially among several of the district’s key corners and locations. If they consider the current parking constraints a “problem,” then how in the world will the city have the capability of handling the significant growth in economic development downtown for which leaders are striving?
Council members should let the private sector handle this minor, private-sector issue instead of putting a burden on local citizens. They should encourage the HDA to set an appropriate set of guidelines for downtown merchants that would solve the small problem without creating a much bigger one.
At the top of that list should be a recommendation to require, as a condition of employment, that workers park in specified areas such as the Briggs Building parking garage or a certain number of blocks off of San Benito Street and/or the street on which the merchant does business.
