Nashville Democratic Mayor David Briley has shelved a plan to privatize parking because he realized city residents have little love for it.
Briley announced this on his Facebook page late last week.
“It is clear to me that residents still have questions about the merits of this proposal. Residents need more time – and it is unfair to the public and to Council to rush this process,” Briley wrote.
“Worse yet, others are using misinformation to further confuse and scare people. It’s politics at its worst. For these reasons, I am hitting the pause button on this proposal.”
As The Tennessee Star reported, Briley’s plan to privatize on-street parking meters, which would include higher fines for parking violations, elimination of most free parking times, and expand meters into additional neighborhoods, is extremely unpopular.
Also, as reported, certain Nashville residents said city officials were rushing through the plan so they could get more money out of people’s wallets and help cover their past mistakes.
Nashville resident David F. Roberts, for instance, sent out a letter to thousands of his neighbors that bluntly said the plan will “screw us over” and “make our lives a lot more complicated and MORE EXPENSIVE!”
Roberts said the plan would spike parking prices up by 20 percent and cause a 100 percent increase in the cost of fines.
“This long-term contract would pay for the amount Mayor Briley and our elected Councilmen overspent the budget THIS fiscal year. Think about that—we’ll have to pay new costs for one third of a century to make up for one year of bad choices by them,” Roberts wrote.
“Under the new parking contract, Mayor Briley’s lack of responsibility is going to come right out of OUR paychecks. That’s not right,” Roberts wrote.
As the Nashville-based News Channel 5 reported, Briley intended “to award LAZ Parking a contract to privatize metered parking. It is a 30-year contract that would generate $300 million for the city.”
In his Facebook post, Briley still said “there is no reason why we should not at least be on par with our peer cities when it comes to technologies like on-street parking modernization. It’s smart city management.”
“Better yet, the proposal before the Metro Council would modernize our system while generating much-needed revenue for transit-related projects – all without ceding Metro’s control or selling anything,” Briley wrote.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
[…] Briley in June announced plans to shelve the parking scheme because he realized city residents had little love for it, The Tennessee Star reported. […]
[…] well. Briley announced in June that he was putting the parking meter privatization scheme on “pause.” Nevertheless, the funding from the “paused” plan has been included in the Mayor’s budget, […]
[…] Just two weeks ago, Briley said he was “hitting the pause button” on his plan to privatize parking meters, The Tennessee Star reported. […]
Briley is not a leader or a manager. Metro has no money because they have spent to much and Briley is pulling any idea out of the hat to try to raise money. Sometimes it seems for our Mayor the crazier the idea the better. We need to manage what we have and live within our means. Until Metro Government has a leader that governs for all the people we are in trouble and enough money to satisfy the wants of our present leaders will never be raised. Our growth has been in spite of our leaders. Our city and all of its people are the best thing we have going for us not our so called leaders, certainly not the Mayors office.
I would suggest that the struggling and costly growth is partly caused by the “leadership’s” adoption of west coast politics and policies. Growth for growth’s sake has been proven time and again to strangle cities like Nashville and the leaders strive to claim the credit for such reckless behavior. One has to look no further than Atlanta or Houston for prime examples. I assure you that most native and long-term Tennesseans do not want to go down that path.