The Wichita City Council has come under intense scrutiny for eliminating free parking downtown after the city shared the news on its Facebook page on Saturday: “Beginning January 1, 2025, all public parking in the downtown area will convert to paid parking.”
Wichitans flooded the city’s Facebook post with more than a thousand angry comments. The anger continued at a series of heated in-person meetings hosted by the city.
A downtown small-business owner started a petition that had more than 5,200 signatures by Tuesday calling on the city to halt the plan and offer free parking areas.
It was a strong rebuke of a plan that received overwhelming support from the city’s elected officials over several years and as recently as June, when they voted 6-1 to hire a private contractor to implement the paid-parking plan.
Council members had approved the changes earlier this year, as part of a plan adopted in 2023 . On Jan. 9, they unanimously voted to designate all public parking downtown as metered parking, increase parking fines for any violations and deputize a fleet of private parking enforcers to issue parking tickets using automated license-plate readers.