The Silver Spring Penguin

Changes that extend parking-meter hours in some Silver Spring neighborhoods should be nixed, according to a county council resolution introduced Tuesday morning.

The resolution, which councilmember Valerie Ervin (D-5) proposed and councilmember Roger Berliner (D-1) backed, asks that parking-meter hours be rolled back to 6:00 p.m.

A measure approved in May would have jacked hours up to 10:00 p.m., effective July 1, 2007, in Montgomery Hills, Fenton Village and South Silver Spring. The same measure increased hourly parking rates in Montgomery Hills, from 15 cents to 25 cents.

The extended hours, said Ervin, would give downtown shops and restaurants an unfair business advantage. Garage parking there is free after 6:00 p.m. and on weekends, thanks to a multi-year agreement with the area’s developer.

“I am very concerned that this inequity will hurt the many new and existing small businesses and restaurants in South Silver Spring, which rely heavily on on-street and surface-lot parking to serve their customers,” Ervin wrote to her colleagues.

Ervin also worried that longer meter hours would mean trouble for residents who leave their rides on the street overnight.

“Extending hours until 10:00 p.m. requires residents to constantly monitor their vehicles after work and increases their cost of living in our downtown neighborhoods,” she wrote.

The added hours could raise more than $460,000 in Fenton Village and South Silver Spring, according to a council staff memo. That money, the memo reads, could be used to pay off Silver Spring’s debt for facility renovations and elevator improvements.

In Montgomery Hills, extended hours and increased rates could bag $37,000. Some of that money could go to a mass transit fund, while the rest would go into the parking district’s rainy day fund, the memo says.

A public hearing before the full county council is scheduled for Thursday, July 26, at 7:30 p.m.