Spare Change: Extending Newport's pay-to-park season just another attempt to gouge locals

Oddnendz collected while wondering if anyone’s March Madness bracket is still viable.

• In a city that enjoys gouging residents and tourists alike, you wonder what took Newport officials so long to make free parking nearly extinct in busy spots.

The City Council is eager to approve a law that would expand pay-to-park times. Meters would operate longer each year and longer each day.

So, the meter season would run from March 1 to Nov. 30 annually. It currently goes from May 1 to Halloween. So locals and guests enjoy the luxury of free parking for six months.

Well, it took a couple of decades but there’s no way city leaders are going to let anyone get away with that kind of benefit.

Council members Dave Carlin and Charlie Holder were the only two to appreciate that this is a hidden tax.

First, Newport is a great place to live. But buying houses and renting apartments are increasingly becoming dreams of futility on the Island.

The middle class has eroded with much of the poor in public housing and the rich by the water — in second homes as they “summer” in Newport.

The rest wonder how to survive as prices balloon.

When meters first arrived they were billed as “a trial program.”

Bahaha!

Next thing, the city manager was building meter money into the proposed budget. And here we go again.

Parking in Newport: Newport's free parking season may become shorter. Here's why.

The next stop will be year-round meters. Why not 24 hours a day? When will Broadway be in play?

I’ll concede that the current meter policy does create turnover. But as Holder pointed out the new plan allows free parking for the three cold and snowy months.

When did we become this? Newport now hails a glut of new hotels with a celebration befitting Mardi Gras.

Do the city leaders embrace a local couple fighting to keep their diner afloat? By no means. Some in City Hall perform cartwheels that a chain mini-mart is shoving the couple to unemployment.

Maybe it comes back to what a long-ago city official half-joked about people visiting and moving to Newport: “Don’t come here. Just send money.”

Getting around: A quick guide to Newport's draft Transportation Master Plan

• Sad to hear that Kevin Kinsella has passed. Kevin worked for 18 years in The Newport Daily News circulation department.

We had many a great chat about sports, music and current events in those days. Kevin was a quick study and a good conversationalist.

Kevin experienced much sadness in his 67 years. His first wife, Hilary, died young in 2007. Kevin, a longtime diabetic, lost one leg and eventually another to the insidious illness.

Kevin later found love a second time. And his last job was selling tickets on the ferry in Jamestown.

He settled into a quiet life in West Greenwich and seemed to enjoy his final years.

On Prudence Island: For 40 years Prudence Island has quietly served as the center of coastal research in RI

• I don’t like baseball’s new pitch clock. I love it.

I wonder how the fidgety take-forever Nomar Garciaparra would have fared hitting in 2023. With a meltdown, I’m sure.

• Once Frosty Freez reopens every April 1, it’s a quick sprint to summer.

• Life is better when “Succession” is back. Few play nastiness like Brian Cox.

• “Creed 3” is fun escapism even though the premise is ridiculous.

• As a kid I was briefly obsessed with Southern California. I’m not sure why. I never had the complexion for non-stop sun.

Iraq War anniversary: Newport veterans reflect on service, society and the legacy of the Iraq War

Joel Selvin’s “Hollywood Eden” examines that area’s music scene with the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean setting the pace.

And we see the toll it took on Brian Wilson and Jan Berry. A very good read.

• By the way, the book notes that when Phil Spector turned into a virtual recluse in 1966, he lived in a villa once owned by Doris Duke.

Would love to have witnessed a meeting between those two.

• It’s gotten to the point where reporters covering school shootings are recounting their own childhood stories of surviving school attacks.

• Keep in mind that many will be horrified by the massacre in Nashville. And almost as many will think, “Great. Another school shooting. Now that Communist Biden will come after our guns.”

• This has been the most entertaining NCAA hoops tourney in years.

Jim Gillis is a Daily News columnist. Send him email at jimgillis13@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Newport residents gouged once again with pay-to-park increases