The Wichita City Council has come under intense scrutiny for eliminating free parking downtown after the city shared the news on its Facebook page on Saturday: “Beginning January 1, 2025, all public parking in the downtown area will convert to paid parking.” Wichitans flooded the city’s Facebook post with more than a thousand angry comments. The anger continued at a series of heated in-person meetings hosted by the city. A downtown small-business owner started a petition that had more than 5,200 signatures by Tuesday calling on the city to halt the plan and offer free parking areas. It was a strong rebuke of a plan that received overwhelming support from the city’s elected officials over several years and as recently as June, when they voted 6-1 to hire a private contractor to implement the paid-parking plan. Council members had approved the changes earlier this year, as part of a plan adopted in 2023. On Jan. 9, they unanimously voted to designate all public parking downtown as metered parking, increase parking fines for any violations and deputize a fleet of private parking enforcers to issue parking tickets using automated license-plate readers. But some of them appeared to be blindsided by the changes in response to the backlash. The City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to halt the purchasing of any equipment for the parking plan and to discuss it again in September along with options to change directions. Earlier in Tuesday’s meeting, Mayor Lily Wu called for a full briefing on the history of the parking plan during a public hearing on the city budget. Wu then attempted to invalidate the Jan. 9 vote. She said that she and other council members didn’t understand what they were voting on because the printed agenda packet she received from city staff did not include a charter ordinance change that allowed private parking officers to issue citations. The parking changes approved Jan. 9 were outlined in two ordinances — Ordinance No. 52-326, which designated all public parking downtown as regulated parking areas where meters would be installed and patrolled by private parking enforcers, and Charter Ordinance No. 239, which authorized independent contractors to be “parking control officers” and issue citations for violations of the new ordinance.
Source: Local News | Wichita Eagle