Item 9.5 on the regular city council agenda for April 8, 2014 adds to the conflict over parking for the new ball park.
The item is a proposed amendment to an existing ordinance. It would add the Sunset Heights area to a list of restricted parking areas, ostensibly to preserve parking for the area’s residents.
If my recollection is correct Sunset Heights is the only area of town to vote for the mayoral candidate that lost by a 3 to 1 margin.
If I read the amendment correctly the residents will be required to obtain parking permits from the city for the privilege of parking near their homes. Normally those permits cost $30 per year each.
Keep out
One of the problems with this is that potential visitors will not be able to park in the area if I am correct.
No good deed goes unpunished.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
If they have a second car, will the additional permit go for $200 like the ones in the ballpark district? I would think they’d make some kind of deal with UTEP like they have in the past where they have shuttles taking people downtown from the parkking areas around UTEP and/or eventually something has to be torn down to make way for another parking garage. The question is…what property will be sacrificed?
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The city is already planning to run free shuttles to help move people from parking lots and other locations to the ballpark on game days. Add that to the other unbudgeted costs which the taxpayers will incur to subsidize the operation of a for-profit business just so it could be located downtown. Let’s see how city management squeezes the ballpark transportation costs into a city operating budget that already exceeds projected revenues. Like a lot of other costs, they will be hidden in ways that you cannot calculate the true total cost of the ballpark to taxpayers.
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These kinds of increases in the cost of living in El Paso are like being nibbled to death by ducks.
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The number of homes and people living in Sunset Heights has not changed in decades as far as I know. So the city wants to change parking from public to restricted to accommodate Woody World crowding them out? Is that correct?
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Parking in some of these areas should absolutely be restricted to residents, but residents should not have to pay for permits. Residents who have lived there for years didn’t cause this parking problem. This is not going to help property values and quality of life in the neighborhoods that are affected.
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THEY Never had enough parking for a baseball stadium AND the library, museum, Plaza Theater, Convention Center and Abe Chavez Theater. There are not enough spaces in garages, lots or on the street.
The day this went down with all the basball caps on city council:
(so here I go. . ..)
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so.
I told you so. . . . .
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and here I go again “Where is the marketing study?”
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Just because you CAN build something downtown does not mean that it SHOULD be built downtown.
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And how about organizations like the El Paso County Historical Society that are headquartered in Sunset Heights and depend on street parking. Whenever they have a meeting or open house everyone will get a ticket. That’s terrible public relations.
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