Amen

Look, I recognize I'm on a James Shanley kick right now. But I'll stop talking about the guy when he stops making sense.

Here's his letter in today's Daily News.

Letter: Time to stop subsidizing parking in Port

To the editor:

Former City Councilor Ralph Ayers was spot-on in his recent letter to the editor regarding paid parking.

Bluntly put, we do not have free parking in Newburyport. We have subsidized parking. The streets, municipal parking lots and, in an indirect way, the NRA property, are all owned by the taxpayers of Newburyport. Three or so decades ago we as a community chose, rightly, to bear the cost of the terminus of a transportation system: the automobile. Now is not then, and we cannot, must not, continue to give away and bear the cost of the inherent value of our shared municipal property. The time for change is now.

One need not look too far afield to find sister communities that require payment for use of their streets and lots. Portsmouth, N.H., Rockport and Northampton all have paid parking, and none have tumbleweeds rolling down Main Street. As anyone who has visited these communities knows, the opposite is vibrantly true. I firmly believe that paid parking is responsible citizenship, and even more importantly, creates parking space turn-over, which promotes local, sustainable economic activity. This is critical for our current and future prosperity.

The time has come for us to fairly assign the cost of automobile storage to the proper party: the user. Newburyport taxpayers can no longer absorb that cost. Our needs are many and great. The technology of paid parking is sophisticated, flexible and visually unobtrusive. The time for paid parking is now. Let us work together to do what must be done.

JAMES G. SHANLEY
Ward 3 councilor
Newburyport

I actually had started to put together a post praising Ralph Ayers for his letter but got distracted by something else. But kudos to both him and Shanley for raising this very important point.

Guess what: our parking isn't free.

In fact, it's worse than not free. It's costing us money. You could argue that dollars spent on upkeep and maintenance could be better spent on our kids and seniors. But the clear and indisputable argument is this city is leaving money on the table by not charging for parking.

This has got to stop. Even if we never construct another parking space in the downtown, we should be charging those folks who use the ones we have just as we charge people to use the compost facility, play high school football, or install a hot water heater. (Seriously, I had to get a permit to install a new hot water heater.)

So let's hold off on blaming state funding formulas, unions and salaries for a second and take a long look in the mirror. We're not doing everything we can to raise revenue for the city until we start charging for parking. We only have ourselves to blame for that one.