SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – Some San Diego City Councilmembers who voted to charge for parking at Balboa Park have changed their minds.
They want to either delay or eliminate paid parking altogether.
But, as we reported, Mayor Todd Gloria's office told ABC 10News it’s too late.
"If I knew that this was how this, the city would be implementing the program this haphazardly and with this little communication to residents, I would not have voted for this,” Councilmember Kent Lee, who represents District 6, said.
Lee was one of the six Councilmembers who voted to move paid parking at Balboa Park forward.
But now that the signs are up, people are buying passes, and the machines are charging Lee and fellow Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who also voted for the paid parking, are asking Mayor Todd Gloria to put a pause on it.
"It just seems obvious that if we're not going to be enforcing and we're not ready with all these components, that at the very minimum our residents shouldn't have to pay, and I don't think that's a hard ask," Lee said.
ABC 10News has been covering the Balboa Park paid parking for a while, from it being a proposal, to it passing, to the recent pushback.
This week, Mayor Todd Gloria responded with his own memo to the Councilmembers' memo, addressing those concerns.
In a memo, the Mayor wrote in part, "your proposal to suspend paid parking for residents two days into the new program would have immediate and serious fiscal consequences."
The Mayor also called the new parking system a win, and his office on Friday told ABC 10News more than 1500 people have registered for parking passes and been approved.
"What I heard from the memo, to be frank, was an unwillingness to acknowledge when things aren't going well and, to make changes to that,” Lee said/
We asked the other members of the City Council about their paid parking vote and whether they stand by it. Some had told ABC 10News that they stand by their original vote, and others haven’t gotten back to us.
"So you'll see for me in the weeks ahead that I'm encouraging colleagues to also explore changes that we should be making to the program that better adapt what we're hearing from residents in specific,” Lee said.
