Councilors Formally Receive Downtown Parking Plan Tuesday

An existing downtown parking meter. (WHAV News file photograph.)

Parking meter in a downtown parking lot, off Essex Street.

The first step in implementing a compromise plan to raise downtown parking fees and add Saturday hours takes place Tuesday.

Haverhill city councilors are expected to place on file for two weeks a proposal to add a city councilor to the Central Business District Parking Commission and set limits on the actions the commission may take.

“Any initial rate change by the commission shall be limited no(t) to exceed $1 per hour for any parking fee and $20 per month for any parking permit,” the draft ordinance reads. Sources said, however, commissioners may raise rates from the current 50 cents per hour to 75 cents per hour. Further, commissioners are directed not to raise rates until meters are adjusted to allow lower 15-minute increments and pay-by-phone and merchant validation payment methods.

The city council’s Administration and Finance Committee agreed Aug. 26 to recommend delegating the council’s authority to the city’s parking commission. While councilors would have option of striking down any increases, any such action would be inhibited by the inability of three councilors to cast votes. Councilors Melinda E. Barrett, Thomas J. Sullivan and Michael S. McGonagle own businesses in the affected are and are prohibiting from voting.

Collected parking funds may be used only for “development, management, operation, maintenance and improvements in all municipal parking lots, streets, ways, highways and roads with(in) the central business district.”

The plan would set uniform hours of 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. for both street parking and parking lots and add Saturday parking fees for the first time. No additional rate increases would be allowed for at least two years.

With the addition of a city councilor, the parking commission would expand from six to seven members.

5 thoughts on “Councilors Formally Receive Downtown Parking Plan Tuesday

  1. Melinda Barrett, Tom Sullivan and Mike McGonagle …
    Why aren’t ANY of you speaking out against all this???? You ALL know the significant negative affects this parking tax has on business owners and people who live and visit downtown. Yet NONE of you say anything about it!! Why is that?? You say things privately, but refuse to make public statements. People didn’t vote for the three of you to sit by and be quite about this.

    You may not be allowed to vote, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion and make public the negative affects, especially the Gesstapo like tactics the mayor has employed to silence business owners who dare speak out against this.

  2. “Collected parking funds may be used only for “development, management, operation, maintenance and improvements in all municipal parking lots, streets, ways, highways and roads with(in) the central business district.”

    DOUBLE DIPPING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    City taxpayers have ALREADY paid for this!!!! Taxpayers pay for it every year in the payment of their property taxes.
    Remember back before there were any parking taxes? All these items got done then, and certainly get done no better now after all the money Taxman Forentini is collecting from this revenue source he’d created.

  3. Raise fees all you want! BUT, just remember — you are not penalizing me, because I can find any business I want without paying for parking — but you ARE penalizing the businesses who have invested their life’s savings in the downtown area. Don’t know what the City is going to do about this….. probably will merely ignore those who feel as I do and increase fees anyway.