By Moses Nagamootoo
For weeks now we have heard the cries of this city against the implementation of metered parking in Georgetown. Admittedly, the fees for parking were unconscionably too high. Citizens boycotted the parking zones. For days there were only somber streets to show for what used to be a lively and even boisterous town.

The machines that were meant to symbolize the restoration of order, cleanliness and pride to our Garden City have instead been cynically dubbed “green monsters”.
The Georgetown Metered Parking By-laws, which came into effect on January 17, 2017 rendered otherwise oppressive measures legal. These include excessive immobilization or clamping fees, towing fees, impoundment fees and storage fees. It would cost $34,000 plus VAT to recover one vehicle, if subjected to all four stages of the enforcement process.

A further imposition of up to $100,000 would attend legal proceedings in a case where the vehicle owner is fined for a parking violation. The final touch of salt in the wound is in a case where, after six months, the impounded vehicle is sold at auction where the owner fails to re-possess same after notice of the intended auction is published.

TORRENT OF PROTEST
I am disappointed that in spite of the torrent of protests, the Georgetown Mayor has announced resumption of the project, from tomorrow.
What had started as a protest against the high fees and the clumsy clamping of vehicles at a time when citizens little understood how the metered parking system was working, developed into a full-blown objection to the agreement between City Hall and the meter company. The subsequent reduction of fees, when announced, became a palliative not a remedy for the distress the project had caused citizens who, less than one year ago, voted the City Elders into office.

I have read and reviewed all that has been said about the metered parking project and I am of the opinion that what was styled the Movement Against Parking Meter (MAPM) would have for all intent and purpose been a protest against the measures proposed and, more especially, the methods used to ram this project down the unwilling throat of citizens. City Hall might have lost an opportunity to redress what were legitimate concerns over those measures and methods, which could not have meant a rejection of meters per se.

OLD IDEA
Metered parking has been an old idea. In the 1990s, when I was Minister of Local Government, those ideas were canvassed by Mayor Jordan and, later, by Mayor Green. There were also talks then of introducing a container tax and a toll for vehicles entering the city. Those measures could not help the political fortune of the then PPP Government, and I gave a stiff back to the ideas.

Over the years the revenue base of the City became too narrow, totally inadequate, to meet the growing needs of Georgetown. Since then, the city has expanded, but the sources of its revenue remained general property rates and municipal market fees. The result was a breakdown of municipal services, resulting in periodic flooding, waste pile-ups that gave Georgetown the dubious title as a “Garbage City” and general malaise that elicited an equally putrid comment from a PPP Minister that he wished the city were afflicted with an epidemic.
The politics in that death-wish was unmistakable: only the opposition PNC would be blamed as they ran the city then. And they were allowed to do so for some 20 years because the PPP administration could not hold fresh municipal elections over that period.

Whilst the city was starved of adequate subvention especially during the Jagdeo years, billions were mis-directed to Government ministries, especially the Ministry of Housing, to undertake clean up operations that could have been done by City Council. The Jagdeoites did not want the burden of running the city. They were only interested in taking the benefits from hefty state allocations and dirty procurement services.

REVIEW AND RECONCILE
Metered parking has to be seen within that historic context of the neglect of the City of Georgetown and the callousness of our politicians. And whilst I do not justify the manner in which it was introduced and the unpopular measures taken, I still believe that there is a wide body of opinion that favours a well-structured, fee-paying, parking system.

I believe that the Agreement between City Hall and Smart City Solutions was intended to be a private-public partnership. Besides the M&CC and SCS, the MAPM, by whatever other name, should be brought into the contract process as an equity partner representing civil society. In doing so, consideration ought to be given to transparent negotiations for better terms, which could be achieved if the Agreement, last amended on 18th September, 2016, is reviewed

A review ought to look at:-
* the 20-year contract term, subject to renewal for another 20 years;
* the 20% of gross metered parking fees for the City initially for 2,500 parking spaces in the first 9 years and 25% for the remaining contract period and arrangements for parking garages;
* the 20% from clamping, towing and impounding and other revenues from enforcement services and even partial elimination of the stiff penalty measures;

BY-LAWS
The by-laws should be explained fully. Also, with urgency, the city must clearly mark out and publish all unmetered parking zones, lanes and parking spaces for mini-buses, taxis, motorcycles, schools, hospitals, private residences, bus stops, etc. It should also issue parking permits for regular users of such public places as the courts and police stations and exemption from paying in a metered parking space of ambulances and vehicles used by the fire brigade, police force, army, state and government services. Exemptions should include Judges, Magistrates and Members of Parliament.

The emphasis in making the metered parking system works should be on commercial parking zones. For this reason, it may be worth the symbolic gesture if the parking meters were to rest on Sunday, so that persons going to city Churches should not literally pay to pray.
If properly planned, designated parking spaces would have the effect of bringing order to the chaotic free-style parking, anywhere and anyhow. It cannot go unnoticed that after the meters were erected, many citizens voluntarily started to use parking spaces in business compound and in driveways. And even when fees were suspended, parking was being done in single files, in an orderly manner.

The parking meter system was supposed to achieve exactly this but on the basis of affordability. It was not expected that it would have been dragged into our city like a Trojan Horse with a horde of what President Granger described as “burdensome” measures concealed in it.
What we have seen so far is a protest, not an opposition. It could be if the reasonable request to review and reconcile is refused. This will up the demand to revoke the Agreement.
[The writer, a journalist and author, is Prime Minister of Guyana]