June 11, 2004, 04:30 AM

Parking meter proposal raises ire of downtown restauranteurs

By Owen Courrèges

News24 Houston has the scoop on the response from downtown restaurants to the recent proposal in the city council to begin charging for parking in downtown after-hours. Needless to say, they're quite upset:

...Michael Massa, owner of downtown's Massa Restaurant, says the city's plan to charge for parking meters after 6 p.m. through 2 a.m. and on weekends will drive business away.

“In a nutshell, the restaurant association and downtown businesses are concerned that this is just not the right time to start charging for meters. Charging after 6 p.m. is our main concern right now,” said Massa. “We compete with the suburbs, which — everywhere there's free parking in the suburbs,” said Massa.

Conservative Councilman Michael Berry, who favors the parking proposal, has done little to allay these concerns. Indeed, he seems to simply brush them aside:

“We want to hear from the restaurants. And obviously they have some reasons to be concerned. What I would tell you is, the changes that we're considering — we have not yet voted on — are designed to improve traffic flow and improve the commercial environment downtown,” said City Council member Michael Berry.

I would like to reiterate what Kevin Whited said before. As conservatives, we should be supporting efforts by the government to do more with less. If there are improvements to infrastructure that need to be made in downtown, then they should be done through more judicious spending habits, and not through opening new revenue streams. After all, in the end all the traffic improvements in the world wouldn't make up for the revenue losses to downtown businesses if this parking proposal is implemented.

This is simply a bad plan, Mr. Berry. The founding editors of Chronically Biased both agree.

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