Downtown Paso Robles currently has four designated parking lots reserved for employees and business owners, but that could soon be changing.
Each person is required to pay a fee of $5 a month to park in the lots. But with the downtown paid parking program eliminated, the city council is taking another look at employee parking.
At Tuesday night's city council meeting, members recommended eliminating the program, with the cost of keeping the program exceeding yearly revenue.
At the next city council meeting on Dec. 17, there will be a public hearing where business owners and other community members can voice their opinions about what the city should do with the four designated lots.
Complaints of employees taking up too many prime parking spots downtown led to the implementation of the paid parking program in 2019, with kiosks and two hours of free parking. It then transitioned to $1 an hour before being eliminated altogether earlier this year.
Now, many downtown workers are no longer using the four designated parking lots.
“I don't use the employee parking so I can't say that it's very necessary, but I really don't think that it's necessary to charge the employees when the parking is being used by everybody," said Renee Meznarich, Hotel Cheval Guest Services Manager.
Some business owners downtown say they encourage their employees to use the designated lots to free up spaces for potential customers.
“I do think that the employees do use that lot and getting rid of it would just congest downtown with more employees, and then it would be the problem all over again," said Carla Cary, Spare Time Books owner.
Some owners say with more hotels under construction in Paso Robles, they'd like to see the city plan for more people downtown.
“We are already encouraging so many tourists to come, which is great for the businesses, but we need to address the additional parking issues that we're going to have," said Dora Cary, Orange Dot Quilts owner.
“I think that it would be a really great idea to think about putting a parking structure somewhere, but also not necessarily just for employees," Meznarich added. "Maybe a designated area in the parking structure for employees.”
