Portland Mayor Wilson recently reversed his decision to extend downtown paid parking hours.
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Downtown Portland is pressing pause on late-night parking fees just a month after the Mayor used executive authority to roll them out. But the city had already spent money updating signs — and we wanted to know exactly how much.
To roll out the extended pay-to-park hours quickly, PBOT placed stickers on existing parking signs instead of replacing them and updated the Parking Kitty app and meters to match.
The bureau also sent postcards to nearby addresses and issued press releases to thousands of subscribers.
Now, PBOT said it is updating the software again to reverse the change downtown and in the Central Eastside by Oct. 15.
The rollout — covering stickers, labor, and notifications — cost about $100,000.
“The revenue from demand for on-street parking at night in Portland’s popular downtown area has covered the cost of the change already,” said Dylan Rivera, PBOT spokesperson.
Technically, the city broke even in this case.
The push to pause this 10 p.m. extension came from City Councilor Eric Zimmerman in District 4. The parking fee increase went to Council, and he voted against it. But the move to extend hours to 10 p.m. never came before Council; it was added by the Mayor’s office in the FY 2025-26 budget.
“We are so happy that the mayor took our advice and paused this extension of going from 7:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m.,” Zimmerman said. “It’s something that he has the authority at the administrative level to do, but I think most Portlanders thought that this type of action would rest at the city council’s level.”
Zimmerman said he called for this change because downtown Portland isn’t recovering at the same rate as other downtowns.
“I don’t think that we should be doing anything that stops that recovery, hinders that recovery or makes somebody think, ‘Instead of going to a movie theater in downtown Portland, I’m going to go to a movie theater in Bridgeport Village,'” he said. “So that’s the real calculation that people are making.”
Soon, Zimmerman said he’ll be introducing ordinances to restore council’s authority on this issue.
“The debate about hours is a good debate to have, but the power in that decision making should be at council,” he said.
With the program on pause, the 10 p.m. stickers will remain in place for now, while the app, meters, media and a Mayor’s press release provide updated information and prevent payments beyond 7 p.m.
PBOT said they don’t know how long the pause will last, but Zimmerman has an idea.
“I think this pause should be for years,’ he said. “I think we’ve got a while until we see Portland is really hitting its stride. Again, this is not about a temporary pause. This is about a permanent pause.”
