No more free parking on Sundays in Sacramento? City Hall wants to suck us dry | Opinion

Sunday has long been a day in Sacramento for rest, worship — and free parking.

Now, civic leaders are ruining the relaxed rhythm of Sacramento’s Sundays by charging drivers to park in hundreds of spots across Midtown and downtown that were previously free.

Opinion

It’s yet another bass-ackwards example of the city saying it wants to revitalize the city, but creating policies that achieve the exact opposite.

Sacramento has a $66 million budget deficit this year, so in the new, $1.6 billion budget for the fiscal year 2024-2025, Sacramento drivers will have to pay for parking on Sundays at all downtown and midtown parking meters and 300 on-street spots in the central city that are currently free. Electric vehicles will also have to pay to charge up in city garages.

Oh, and “senior” special events will have an upcharge of $5 to $10, so dig a little deeper into those already-thin wallets, folks.

The city currently maintains around 4,000 parking spots overall in the urban core and Old Sacramento, and according to the city auditor’s office, by charging on Sundays too, they could make an additional $1 million every year — plus an additional $300,000 in expected revenue from parking tickets.

Mind you, this is another charge on top of extending paid parking hours from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. that the city implemented just a few years ago. And that didn’t even work, by the way: Part of the city’s parking revenue was supposed to help pay for our (far-too-high) portion of the Golden 1 Center’s $534.6 million price tag, of which we’re on the hook for $225 million. But falling parking numbers during the pandemic “forced” the city to partially shift that burden onto Sacramento’s general fund instead — meaning there’s less money all around for children’s programs, public transportation, homeless services, you name it.

I’m no anti-tax libertarian, but this really is the sort of governmental overreach that makes me want to march through the streets. Or maybe park my car on the lawn at City Hall. (Heck, it wouldn’t even be the first time this year the city’s put me in handcuffs, next time might as well be for something actually illegal.)

So let’s all just forget about doing anything fun in the city this summer because it’s clear they don’t actually want people to come; there will also be increased fees for sports field rentals, swim programs, covered picnic park areas and room rentals at community centers.

Can anyone point to a free activity other than twiddling my thumbs on my own porch? Nevermind. I’d probably get cited for loitering.

City of Sacramento officials keep telling everyone they want people to come (and spend money), but in practice, they are doing everything possible to make sure everyone stays home.

City Manager Howard Chan, specifically, seems to have made it his personal mission to suck residents dry, like an overpaid vampire. He’s apparently incapable of saying “no” to the Sacramento Police Department, which — yet again — was allocated a record-high budget, in addition to being paid for empty positions and an annual $10 million budgeted for overtime expenses.

Do you know who else has empty positions this year? The city police department’s internal affairs division. Several positions there have been cut to balance the budget, specifically the ones tasked with investigating officer wrongdoing.

So not only are we paying more for parking and fewer city amenities, but the city is actively counting on the revenue that more parking tickets will bring, all while cutting oversight to the very positions that write them.

That doesn’t seem like a recipe for overreach or disaster at all.

And what about all the city’s talk of boosting the downtown economy? Free parking on the weekend encourages the kind of spending that downtown businesses have been begging for these past four years, while they’ve suffered through a decimating pandemic. They’ve even replaced a beloved coffee shop with robots.

Gov. Gavin Newsom even got in on it, by mandating state workers return to their offices at least two days per week in order to boost Sacramento’s city revenues. Now, those state workers (who already don’t get paid enough to schlep downtown with California’s outrageous gas prices) are going to have to pony up even more just to park.

Get punished for staying home, get punished for going to work — there’s no winning for anyone here, except maybe for City Manager Chan, who is on his sixth raise. Or is it his seventh? There’s been too many to keep track of.

The cognitive dissonance in City Hall is truly something to behold. I just wish I could afford to park down there so I could tell them.