Asbury Ave. meters will be on year-round for now
OCEAN CITY — After a lengthy discussion and being asked to delay a vote to get a clear consensus from downtown merchants on the issue, Ocean City Council went ahead with new parking regulations that increased meter rates and extended paid meters downtown from seasonal to year-round.
The unanimous vote to approve the slate of changes came with a clear promise from council members that they would be willing to revise the new parking changes well before the most debated change — keeping the meters on between October and May — would go into effect.
Before the resolution came up for a public hearing, city Business Administrator George Savastano explained the ordinance to change parking downtown came about only because the Downtown Merchants Association asked the city to make the change as a way to improve parking there. He said neither the administration nor City Council had a stake in the change, and they only wanted to do the right thing, which was supporting the business community.
Downtown Merchants Association President Danielle Guerriero and former councilman Keith Hartzell both asked council to delay a vote for two weeks because the merchants would be gathering Tuesday for an election and that would give them time to get feedback from a lot of members about their support or opposition to having meters operational year-round.
Hartzell, who owns property downtown, said a lot of merchants were not aware of the change and the “huge election” would be a good time to get feedback. Delaying two weeks would give council time to learn more about a consensus downtown, he said.
Guerriero, who spoke up at the previous council meeting on behalf of the association in support of the changes, also said waiting for a response from more merchants than were first contacted about the change would be important. She, too, asked for council to delay.
Kevin Stauffer of Hooked on Breakfast at 916 Asbury Ave. was clearly against extending meters to year-round.
He said businesses in the offseason are just trying to stay afloat and that post-pandemic the off-seasons are continuing to get better.
“If we’re going up, why make a change that could make it go down? We’re selling a positive experience,” he said, just like the city. It’s more than just selling a meal.
He said customers would get a negative impression of the city if the first thing they see when the get out of the car in the offseason is a meter in effect. He said they’ll think, “‘What the hell? I gotta pay a meter now?’ The first thing getting out of their car they’re getting screwed. That’s not selling that positive experience.”
To put meters on year round “screws everybody,” he said.
Paula Popilock, owner of The Road to Living Well at 1028 Asbury Ave., said she wants a viable option on the table about what to do about parking on the avenue and wasn’t paying attention to the issue until she heard Guerriero speaking to Savastano about it.
She said there is a mix of people on the avenue including businesses, residents, shoppers and people who park there because it is inexpensive and go to the beach all day.
Popilock said it was “absurd” to have eight 15-minute spots between 10th and 11th streets and that policing doesn’t work because no one was enforcing the three-hour time limit on parking.
She wondered if something could be done about the ParkMobile app because it allows people to add more money to their meters remotely even if they’re out on the beach, meaning they don’t have to return to feed the meters.
Popilock said she was mixed about leaving the meters on during the winter because customers are doing the businesses a favor by shopping downtown, helping to keep them viable.
Caitlin Quirk, owner of Bowfish Kids at 956 Asbury Ave., asked council for two more weeks to give businesses more time to engage on the issue.
As a downtown merchant for seven years, she said parking has been brought up at pretty much every meeting but nothing has really been done.
“I was a big proponent of doing year-round parking to see if we can change that,” she said. “After speaking with a lot of people, there are a lot of concerns about dissuading year-round customers. I depend on them.”
Quirk said she has never seen enforcement in the downtown and if they want enforcement, they’ll need the revenue to support that.
She said there is technology that can be used to check license plates to see if vehicles have been parked for more than three hours, but also noted some of the parking issues revolve around residents and store owners and their employees.
Anthony Guerriero, who owns multiple businesses downtown, said he asks his employees to use the city parking lots instead of parking on the avenue to keep spaces freed up for customers, but he isn’t successful when he asks people who are living or staying in the downtown to park away from in front of the stores.
He said businesses have been successful in the offseason in part because of the support from the mayor and council and asked if they could request that banks downtown open their lots to parking when they are closed.
Mayor Jay Gillian said they have asked the banks about parking but they raise liability issues. He also said the 15-minute spots are there because businesses have asked for them.
“In the 13 years I’ve been here, we’ve looked at everything,” he said, and that no matter what they do, some people will be upset.
He said when he had a storefront downtown, nothing made him madder than seeing his own kids park in front of the store and that he doesn’t even have a designated parking spot for himself behind City Hall. Gillian noted that parking garages may be prohibitively expensive, but the city is keeping them in the parking study just to make sure they know all the facts about the potential of building one.
He said the downtown idea is to try a different approach with keeping the meters on year-round from October to May from Sixth to 14th streets on the avenue.
The mayor said business owners should lead by example by not parking on the avenue and making sure their employees don’t. Meters, he said, are meant to keep people from parking there all day.
The administration did not want to table the vote on the ordinance for two weeks because it would cut into the time needed to program the meters and get them on the street in time for them to be turned on again in mid-May.
City solicitor Dorothy McCrosson said it would not be easy to alter the current ordinance that was up for a vote because regulations were woven through different parts of the city codes.
Asked by Councilman Bobby Barr if council could come back and change the ordinance later, McCrosson said because the controversial part about year-round meters wouldn’t go into effect until October, council could approve the ordinance as written and then, after getting more feedback from the merchants, return with a newly drawn ordinance well before October.
Councilman Tom Rotondi, who represents the downtown as part of his Second Ward, said he wasn’t originally for the change. He said he listened to the merchants who asked them to implement the ordinance, but now some are changing their minds. He said he just wanted to do what was right for the downtown.
Councilman Terry Crowley Jr. said he thought the city should try the change because it could encourage more turnover downtown to allow more customers to support the merchants.
Council Vice President Karen Bergman said she lived downtown for 10 years and parking has always been a problem. She agreed with the mayor that a bigger disincentive than meters is heavy-handed enforcement that can leave a much worse impression on visitors than the cost of the meters.
She noted that all the parking lots would remain free in the offseason so it would help encourage workers and residents to use the lots instead of parking downtown and taking up the spaces in front of the stores.
Bergman said it is worth trying the change to get people moving to help businesses. She said council should approve the resolution, but if the consensus of the downtown is that they are against it, she would champion the revision before it takes effect in October.
Council voted 7-0 to approve the parking ordinance, which also increases fees in other places in town and raises the maximum amount that can be charged at the city’s paid lots from $20 to $25.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
