Owen Courrèges
“Citizens of New Orleans, as your mayor, I am mindful of the ever-increasing cost-of-living in our fair city. Wages are not keeping pace, and many of our most economically vulnerable workers feel that they can no longer afford to live here.”
“For too long, your elected leaders have not only ignored this problem, but abetted it. Today, I pledge to ensure that we do better by our citizens – that we make their lives easier, not more difficult.”
You can file the above under “Things Mayor Landrieu Will Never Say.” Under his watch, the cost of pretty much everything has skyrocketed. Taxes, water rates, fees – they’re all higher. If Landrieu has the slightest notion of how this has affected the lives of the people he serves, he hasn’t been inclined to show it.
This callous attitude was certainly on display when Landrieu unveiled his 2016 budget, in which he proposes that parking meter rates be drastically increased and hours be extended. Hourly rates in the French Quarter will double from $1.50 per hour to $3 per hour. Rates will increase by a third everywhere else, to $2.00 per hour. Metering hours will be extended an additional four hours to 10 p.m.
The city will certainly be happy with the revenue implications of this. Landrieu is predicting an additional $2.4 million collected from meters and another $1.9 million in parking citations.
Those citations, by the way, would come by way of hiring more meter maids. I’m sure New Orleanians will be pleased to know that more meter maids, members of a much-lauded profession, will be added to the city payrolls.
In any case, Landrieu contends that most of the burden of these changes will be felt by tourists, not residents. On that point, there is some disagreement. Nick Detrich, a French Quarter restaurant owner, told WGNO News that “[i]n reality it’s more service industry people that are driving down to the French Quarter to park and work because they can’t afford to live down here either.”
The rate increase in the Quarter is massive. By comparison, central Manhattan’s meter rate is $3.50 per hour, only 50 cents above what Landrieu is proposing for the Quarter. It’s enough to discourage those in the service industry from paying the rates, potentially leading them to either take taxis (which is expensive) or park further out (which is unsafe).
The rate increase for the remainder of the city is more modest, but the increased metering hours will certainly be as annoying as it is unnecessary. Most metered parking in the rest of the city sees a major drop off in demand in the evenings. It certainly won’t be good for restaurants.
It would be one thing if the city was facing a budget crunch and seeking alternatives to even less politically-palatable tax or fee increases, but in fact the exact opposite is the case. This year the city received $60 million more in revenue than it had originally projected, and Landrieu’s 2016 budget is an exercise in extravagance.
Landrieu argues that “carefully saved pennies” has left the city feeling flush, yet ordinary citizens are still hurting. They’re tired of this nickel-and-dime nonsense coming from city hall.
New Orleans is, after all, a city where more than 70% of citizens spend at least a third of their income on housing alone. After paying for the other basic necessities of life, oftentimes little remains. The last thing we need are more regressive fees and fines.
It may well be that Landrieu would have been justified in seeking a modest increase in meter rates, but this isn’t modest at all. And New Orleans is not so large or dense a city to where we need to have meter rates that rank among the nation’s highest.
It might be a small thing, but these changes to metered parking are yet another factor making New Orleans an increasingly unaffordable place to live for all but the reasonably affluent. One might even start to suspect that, just perhaps, it’s all by design.
But that’s crazy, right?
Owen Courrèges, a New Orleans attorney and resident of the Garden District, offers his opinions for UptownMessenger.com on Mondays. He has previously written for the Reason Public Policy Foundation.
Thank you, Owen, for writing about this. My husband is a server and he, like everyone else he works with, parks in or around the Quarter. To crunch the numbers – currently he parks at 3 pm and pays for 3 hours of parking. He pays $3.35 for 2 hours. At 5 pm (while working) he has to remember to add money to the meter, so that’s another $1.85. (He pays the $.35 service charge each time he uses the app, not much but it does add up.) His parking for the night is $5.20. An acceptable cost for the convenience of not having to wait for the streetcar that may never come or won’t stop at your stop because it’s too full.
Now let’s try it with the proposed hike – 7 hours of metered parking at $3 an hour = $21 plus 4 services charges at $.35 for a grand total of $22.40. This is not an acceptable cost and it could be nearly half of some workers’ wages.
It is also extremely likely that he will collect a ton of parking tickets because, as anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant knows, it’s very hard to take a personal minute in the middle of dinner service. You have to access the app to add time to your parking meter. With the way it’s set up now you have to wait for it to expire because the limit is 2 hours. All of this takes time service industry workers do not have. Many restaurants don’t even allow you to look at your phone during your shift and doing so can be cause for termination.
So imagine you’re in the middle of service. You’re running your ass off cooking, washing, serving or whatever. You realize your parking expired 10 minutes ago and you quickly, surreptitiously, pay for more parking and say a little prayer. This goes on until 10pm. At 12.30 am you wearily walk all the way to your car only to find a parking ticket placed there during the 10 minutes you couldn’t get to the app. You have no recourse. This scenario will play itself out every night for hundreds of service industry workers. Not cool, Mr. Mayor, not cool.
New Orleans is becoming less affordable for the citizens that are not reasonably affluent. I wonder and have been wondering for quite some time if it is by design. The reasonable affluent certainly don’t give the city it’s flavor and culture. Maybe those in power want New Orleans to become Metairie with a French Quarter.
Is that why I can never find an open spot in the quarter? Metered spots, especially in the FQ, should not be used for all day parking. I think the only real justification for meters is to force a turn over of short term spots in high demand areas.
Deux,
I don’t think the metered spots are normally used for “all day parking.” Rather, I think many in the service industry use them after normal parking hours when there’s usually a shift change and demand slackens. Since the hours don’t go late, they only have to pay for a short period, if at all.
If the city needs money, why not ticket the drivers who do not use turn signals? Or how about a round of tickets for every person who parks and blocks the sidewalk????
Or, enforce existing laws and impose fines for violations like placing signs on public property instead of spending city money by having Park and Parkways pick them up? These offenders publish their names and numbers on their litter. How hard can it be to fine them?
The mayor wields enormous power as the CEO of a multi-line monopoly that charges what it wants. How else should he behave?
PaoliBulldog,
That might be a good reason for us to consider measures to restrain the power of the mayor. Centralized authority does not seem to be serving us well.
Leftists require an ever-increasing source of revenue to fund their utopian experiments and layers of bureaucracy. The French Quarter is the next logical place to redistribute wealth from, as the money would seemingly be coming from wealthy residents, tourists, and all those privileged/irresponsible enough to drive an automobile. The effects on the service industry may be a bit of friendly fire.
Turlet,
I think you overestimate the people involved here. They’re limousine liberals — meaning that they like pretending to care about those less fortunate, but ultimately they don’t.
It’s like what’s happened with the obscene cost-of-living in San Francisco; sure, they preach about providing a strong social safety net and requiring affordable housing, but even with that, very few people who aren’t rich can really live there. They can’t be unaware of this.
The forces of supply and demand seem to be what made San Francisco so expensive, but the Democrats were busy raising taxes in tandem with that trend. The same seems to be true in New Orleans. The black populations of both cities decreased as taxes and the cost of living went up. My takeaway is that political Democrats definitely want their favored classes of people to prosper via a tilted playing field, but not if it gets in the way of increasing taxes. For example, aside from the meter increases, Landrieu’s supposed deal with the firefighters is contingent on voters approving a property tax increase which isn’t part of the homestead exemption.
One solution: Turn the Riverfront streetcar from a theme park ride for tourists into mass transit for the people of New Orleans. Extend the line up to the Irish Channel and down to the Bywater. Build a parking garage at each end. Make the parking free, or cheap, or bundle the parking and streetcar fares. Then people could ride the streetcar to the Quarter for work or shopping without being gouged for parking, and car traffic in the Quarter would be reduced.
Maneki,
I’m not sure all that would be cost-effective, but I’ve often said that the Riverfront Streetcar needs to be more than just a tourist attraction. Surely extending the tracks a short distance into Uptown would not be too expensive (at least to the Walmart near Jackson). Of course, that would mean that tourists would be dumped off in the River Garden, and I doubt the powers-that-be would be happy about that.
I think the streetcar extension ending in River Garden would definitely spur redevelopment along the riverfront by the abandoned power plant. That’s a billion dollar development proposal. The direct and indirect economic impact in jobs, real estate etc make the cost benefit work.
A better streetcar addition would be just to connect the St. Charles and Loyola lines via Howard. It’s on .25 miles and would create a strait route to the dome.
Your Mayor looks and sounds like a real arrogant prik. Why on earth is there a white mayor in a predominently black neighbourhood anyway – the new orleans i see on tv looks happy and vibrant but just the same old underlying politics – how to screw the local – Move him On. – Gold Coast Meter Maids in Australia –
Turlet,
I disagree about San Fran. It wasn’t just “supply and demand,” it was that as demand rose the city continued to artificially restrict supply. The control on land use in that area is extreme. Had the real estate market been unfettered, it would be a far different story.
You’re correct about leaders in both cities wanting continual increases in taxes and fees, and ultimately that feeds into the same thing — the desire to have a city full of nothing but wealthy pretentious types. It’s basically this season of South Park writ large.
I was surprised to hear that service industry workers are using the meters for several hours because I had always understood that the maximum time allowed is 2 hours – this was told to me years ago by a meter maid, and I took her at her word. She stated that a car could be ticketed after two hours, even if the meter was not expired due to money being added. Is this not correct?
If adding money to a meter for more than 2 hours is permissible, then you and sprisslandia certainly raise a valid point about taxing those who can least afford it.
Another, more philosophical objection that I have to raising the meter rates stems from the purpose of parking meters. They are supposed to turn over parking spaces in areas of high demand for public parking, not be used as revenue makers. (The same can be said for the revenue-generating traffic cameras, installed under the guise of traffic safety.) After all, parking meters are on public property, which the public is generally free to use, subject to reasonable regulation, rationally related to addressing a particular issue. When viewed in this light, the two-hour restriction per meter solves the problem of turnover, and the amount charged for use of that public space should simply cover the cost of enforcement.
Our government (at all levels) needs to recognize the difference between taxes and fees. Taxes fill the general coffers and pay for government services. Taxpayer approval is typically required for assessment of taxes. Fees, on the other hand, are supposed to generate funds to cover specific costs of a program, and are typically assessed without taxpayer approval. Government bypasses taxpayer approval when it increases fees to the level that they become fundraisers for the general coffers. The constitutionality of this practice may be questionable.
Parking is already a problem throughout the urban core of the city and the Quarter is probably one of the most intensely used spots in the city. We could not possibly provide enough parking for everyone to drive in a personal vehicle without constructing an absurd number of parking garages. Public parking is limited and there is obviously a great demand, thus the price SHOULD go up. Can you find parking in any of the private lots for cheaper than $3 / hour?
If you actually care about the “low-wage workers” in the Quarter, then you should advocate for increasing wages and benefits (i.e. healthcare etc.) or for improved mass transportation.