My family lives downtown. We don’t have a driveway. And honestly? I’m excited about the proposed residential parking program.
I hope folks can zoom out and see the bigger picture, because a lot of the online commentary is focused on the $100 fee for a second resident sticker (the first one is still free).
Guys. That’s about $8 a month.
We regularly park blocks from our own house while visitors treat our street like a parking lot—sometimes for weeks at a time. Newport has 3,816 residential on-street parking spaces, yet over 16,000 parking stickers were issued last year.
The city has been over-issuing residential stickers, and this program promises to reduce that—something residents should absolutely expect and monitor.
Equally important, anyone who lives downtown knows enforcement hasn’t been great. If this new technology improves the city’s ability to actually enforce the program, that alone is a win.
Is this proposal perfect? Nope. I don’t love that it’s based on individuals instead of households. Many rentals downtown have too many cars, and that should be capped.
It also doesn’t address day visitors, who clog our residential streets. Where we live, residential parking should be enforced 24/7, year-round—especially when paid lots are just a block away and reasonably priced.
But what this does give us is something we don’t have right now: a starting point.
I know people are focused on the $100 fee for a second car. But for those of us who live downtown and deal with this every single day, $100 a year isn’t the real issue. Losing access to our own streets is.
We love where we live. But parking is slowly chipping away at quality of life for families downtown.
Is this proposal the final answer? No. But instead of knee-jerk reactions online, I hope residents think of this as opening a door to solutions that will improve our lives.
Doing nothing guarantees nothing changes. And that means, eventually, families like ours move on, out of Newport.
Sometimes progress starts with an imperfect step—but it’s still a step forward.
Olga Enger
Extension Street
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