If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — unless you’re Newport City Manager Colin Kennedy, who has apparently decided to “solve” a problem that never existed.
Kennedy is pushing a sweeping overhaul of Newport’s residential parking sticker program that critics say will punish year-round residents, nickel-and-dime families, and bury locals under red tape — all while pretending it’s about “fairness.”
Under the current system, residents pay a nominal $2 fee, get automatic renewals, and face no cap on the number of stickers. Sixteen thousand stickers have been issued without chaos, collapse, or rampant abuse.
And here’s the part City Hall keeps glossing over: the residential parking sticker isn’t just about neighborhood parking. It provides real, tangible benefits to Newport residents — including free parking at Easton’s Beach and three hours of free parking at metered spaces and city-owned parking lots. These are benefits residents already paid for through taxes and long-standing policy.
Enter Kennedy’s grand redesign.
The proposal would cap full-time residents at one free sticker and one additional sticker costing $100, while limiting households to just two stickers total if all vehicles are registered to the same person.
In real-world Newport, that’s insane.
Many families purchase vehicles for their teenage or college-age children but register them under the head of household for insurance and financing reasons. Under this plan, those additional vehicles — driven by full-time residents — suddenly lose access not just to neighborhood parking, but also to beach parking and free meter privileges they’ve always had.
Too bad. No sticker for you.
Short-term tenants, non-resident property owners, and even Salve Regina University students would also be hit with $100 fees per sticker, replacing a system that previously cost as little as $10 — or nothing at all.
Kennedy claims the changes will “simplify” the program. In reality, it blows it up into a bureaucratic obstacle course of new categories, documentation requirements, caps, and annual reapplications that residents have never needed before.
Even more jaw-dropping: during a City Council workshop on Wednesday night, Kennedy said on video that he personally believed Newport should be charging $200 for an additional residential sticker.
That’s not speculation. That’s on the record.
So let’s recap:
A program that worked is being dismantled. Residents are being charged hundreds of dollars. Families are being penalized for common, lawful vehicle registration practices. Longstanding benefits like beach parking and free meter access are being restricted. And enforcement will now include license-plate readers and expanded patrols roaming neighborhoods.
All to fix… what, exactly?
This is a solution in search of a problem — and another glaring example of how out of touch Kennedy has become with the issues that actually matter to Newporters.
The Newport City Council still has time to do the right thing.
They should junk this proposal immediately, preserve a parking program that already works, and seriously reconsider whether the City of Newport can afford leadership that keeps making everyday life harder for the people who live here year-round.
Because if $100 — or $200, if Kennedy had his way — parking stickers are the future, Newporters should be asking a much bigger question:
Who, exactly, is City Hall working for?
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