BANGOR, Maine — Faced with public opposition from one councilor, a City Council committee on Tuesday shut down discussion regarding a proposal to charge for certain on-street parking spaces in order to provide city staffers and committees more time to prepare a response.
The committee decision came after Community and Economic Development Director Tanya Emery requested the discussion item be removed from the agenda, telling members she and her staff had received “new information in the last 24 hours” that they had not had time to contend with.
“It’s not something we can prioritize today to have staff time to respond to,” she said.
The Business and Economic Development Committee’s decision follows Councilor Ben Sprague’s announcement Monday that he opposes a plan to charge for certain downtown parking spaces as a means to end the practice of “car shuffling.”
His announcement, published the same day by the Bangor Daily News, included five alternatives that Sprague said he would prefer the city try before installing meter kiosks in the downtown area.
Upon questioning from the committee, Emery said Sprague’s proposal was the new information.
She told the committee she and her staff had received word last week from Sprague that he was going to bring the items up for discussion during Tuesday’s committee meeting, but they did not expect him to release the items to the BDN.
“It was, to be very frank, a surprise to me to see it in the newspaper this morning,” she said.
Emery, who is a member of the Downtown Parking Advisory Committee, which is recommending paid parking, told the BDN she was not prepared to comment after Tuesday’s meeting. She also did not return a request for comment on Sprague’s opposition proposal made Monday afternoon.
Sprague, who is not a member of either committee, responded that he did not mean to throw off the process and that he would take responsibility if the publication in the BDN “caught people off guard.”
He also said he considered the release of his ideas to the BDN “just the realm of public discussion.”
“I’m just a little bit surprised that the reason would be that it showed up yesterday, because I did send the information nearly a week ago,” he said during Tuesday’s committee meeting.
Meanwhile, Councilor Gibran Graham, who is chairman of the city’s Downtown Parking Advisory Committee, defended the committee’s work, saying there had been “exhaustive research” and a lot of preparation putting the recommendation together.
Graham said many of Sprague’s proposals had already been considered by the committee and rejected, though Emery said Sprague’s proposal to increase parking fines was new.
Sprague responded that his intent was not to disparage the work of the committee, but to disagree with its findings.
“I wanted to delay the implementation of paid parking,” he said. “I didn’t necessarily want to delay discussion on it.”
While Sprague said he shared his proposal with City Manager Cathy Conlow as well as Emery and her staff last week, Graham said Sprague did not share it with the parking committee.
Graham said he would call a meeting of the parking committee to properly respond to Sprague’s opposition. Sprague said he would be happy to attend that meeting.
The parking committee has recommended charging $1 per hour for 179 on-street spaces downtown as a means to end “car shuffling.”
According to Graham, car shuffling is the practice in which employees of downtown businesses leave their cars in on-street spaces for the allotted time and then re-park before receiving a ticket.
Sprague’s opposition proposal calls for the city to try programs such as increased fines and changing up the routes of parking attendants to catch violators before the city goes to paid parking, which he said he is open to if his proposals fail.
City officials estimate start-up costs for the meter system would be $114,915, which they project the city will make back in six to seven months.
In the first year, they project a net revenue of $155,000 followed by an annual net revenue of $270,000 each subsequent year. That compares with a budgeted loss of $77,000 currently.
City officials hope to use the projected revenue to pay for future parking structures and lots downtown, fearing there will eventually be too few spaces to meet the needs of the growing downtown area.
Sprague has argued there are still plenty of parking spaces in the downtown area that are usually open and only require people to walk a little farther.
In the midst of Tuesday’s debate, Councilor David Nealley suggested a formal survey of downtown merchants and landlords regarding the paid-parking proposal.
“So many times we’ve moved forward as a council only to find out later that what we did has enough of a stir out in the community that it makes sense to actually get their feedback,” he said.
Follow Evan Belanger on Twitter at @evanbelanger.