Welcome to Downtown Wichita. That’ll be $2. Would you prefer cash, card or app?

“Downtown is everybody’s neighborhood.”

That’s the oft-repeated mantra used by Wichita government to justify hundreds of millions of public dollars that have been spent to subsidize the vision and profits of an exclusive downtown development club.

It will be impossible for anybody to ever say that again with a straight face.

Starting in January, the city of Wichita will begin charging for parking in nearly all public lots and garages downtown.

They might as well put out signs saying “Welcome to Downtown Wichita. Go away.”

If there’s one constant in this city government, it’s this: No matter who’s in charge, they have this uncanny ability to obtain expert advice, appoint steering committees, host focus groups and still ultimately render the worst possible decision for the greatest number of Wichitans.

The paid parking plan is another in a long, long string of downtown missteps.

The streets will be lined with high-tech parking meters that can accept cash, cards and payment apps. And you, the average citizen, will get the privilege of paying for the equipment to charge you for what you now get for free.

Enforcing the new mandate will be an army of mercenaries working for a private company called The Car Park. They’ll be granted the city’s governmental authority to enforce the law and equipped with the latest technology for reading license plates and spitting out tickets faster than previously possible. You get to pay for that, too.

Oh, and by the way, the City Council increased fines for expired-meter violations from $10 to $35 earlier this year.

It’s a plan years in the making.

I covered a meeting of the Parking and Multi-Modal Plan Steering Committee seven years ago, and watched a Denver consultant solemnly explain to the assembled city and private-sector potentates that Wichita’s problem is that it doesn’t charge enough for parking.

I remember thinking at the time, “Who hired this guy?”

The only advantage Wichita’s downtown has over larger and (let’s face it) more attractive cities like Denver is that it’s easy to get to and there’s plenty of parking when you do.

But everything our city government’s doing seems designed to negate those advantages.

The ongoing program of re-striping streets from four traffic lanes to two was a start. Paid parking will only make it worse.

About the only people I’ve seen supporting these changes are revenue-chasing city officials and their hired consultants, a small cadre of militant bicyclists who think the traffic world should revolve around them, and people who make enough money to not really care what it costs to park.

I’m certain the average Wichitan isn’t going to like this.

What the city doesn’t seem to realize is we have choices. There are plenty of bars, restaurants and shops to the east, west, north and south of downtown that we can patronize without having to deal with city government and its privatized parking police.

The scheme flies in the face of everything we’ve ever been promised from Downtown Wichita.

Multi-million-dollar tax breaks, $1-an-acre land and direct public subsidies to developers are supposed to be creating a “village” atmosphere where residents can come, spend time and wander, sampling restaurants, pubs and funky shops.

People don’t do that as much when the parking meter is ticking away.

Now, we’re being told paid parking will increase “churn” among the prime parking spots in front of the businesses.

But if people get in the habit of coming downtown to go to a specific store or restaurant, and then leaving right away, that’s the economics of a strip mall, not a village.

The city also says it needs to charge more for parking to offset the cost of maintaining the parking lots.

Setting aside that we pay taxes to support such municipal infrastructure, the financial benefits from paid parking appear to be years down the road.

The city is currently making about $1 million to $1.5 million a year on parking. That’s projected to rise to $3.3 million with the expansion of paid parking.

During a five-year ramp-up period, City Hall will be paying The Car Park between $2.1 million and $2.32 million per year to manage public parking, including $460,000 a year to pay the company back for buying the new meters and enforcement equipment.

So for the first five years, it looks like basically a wash.

In year six, The Car Park’s management fee will drop to the low, low price of only $958,000.

With prices like these, how can you afford not to exploit your citizens?

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