The Silver Spring Penguin

The county council on Tuesday voted unanimously to roll back parking-meter hours in Silver Spring, Montgomery Hills and Wheaton to 6:00 p.m.

Tuesday’s decision reversed an earlier vote to have drivers pay for on-street parking until 10:00 p.m. The extended hours would have raked in $767,000 from meters in Silver Spring, Montgomery Hills, Wheaton and Bethesda, council staffers estimated.

“This will not affect the ability of the parking districts to function,” council member Nancy Floreen (D-At large) told her colleagues.

“I’m relieved that the council reversed its prior decision,” Evan Glass, president of the South Silver Spring Neighborhood Association, told The Penguin via email.

“Residents and small businesses of South Silver Spring and other areas within the central business district don’t need more obstacles to living and working here,” Glass wrote. The area’s economic growth, he said, should not be taken for granted.

However, the meter rollback will delay payments on advances made to the parking districts, Floreen told the council.

Silver Spring received a $2.5 million loan for its parking district, of which $1.5 million has been repaid, Glenn Orlin, chief council staffer, explained Monday.

The Montgomery Hills district could have pocketed a surplus, Rick Siebert, with the department of public works, said Monday. Some of that surplus could have been used to pay for streetscape improvements, he added.

How the parking districts make their money, and how that money is spent, should be examined after the August recess, council president Marilyn Praisner (D-District 4) suggested.

Praisner also recommended looking into the demand for garage space versus on-street parking, as well as the visibility of on-street signs.

Updated Jul 31, 2007, at 12:40 p.m.