Beam me up, Scotty - resistance is futile

SALISBURY area board organised a very constructive debate on Salisbury’s parking charges last week.
The trouble was, only about 50 people turned up. And several of those were city or Wiltshire councillors.
Four years ago, when we faced a massive hike in our charges, a protest petition organised by the Journal amassed 7,000 signatures.
It led to an admission by Wiltshire leader Jane Scott that her administration had “let the city down”.
So what’s changed? The new proposals include a whopping £9 all-day rate and a derisory 10p change to some (not all) central short-stay tariffs when our businesses have been begging for serious reductions to revive the city’s fortunes.
So why the low turnout?
As the board chairman Ricky Rogers rightly put it, people have ceased to believe that anything they say will make any difference. The public’s mood, as in so many political matters, is one of sullen acceptance of our own impotence.
“Resistance is futile,” as those nasty old Borg were fond of saying in Star Trek. “Your culture will adapt to service us.”
Of those at the meeting, 55 per cent admitted they hadn’t even bothered to fill in Wiltshire’s parking review questionnaire. And these were the public-spirited few who had taken the trouble to turn up!
One commonly expressed view was: “If Wiltshire really wants our views, why didn’t they ask us first, rather than presenting us with a package for the whole county and expecting us to pick it apart?”
Others pointed out that the questions were phrased in such a way that they couldn’t give the answers they wished to. They called it “cynical” and “patronising”.
We didn’t even get round to talking about parking meters and the big increase in takings that the council expects when it gets rid of convenient 15-minute and 45-minute slots and raises the price of half-hour stays.
We know our city contributes more than half the parking revenue of the county, and is the only place that makes a profit.
And the feeling of the meeting was that while Wiltshire insists on any changes to its regime being ‘cost neutral’ it’s not going to forgo this nice little earner.
Making people in other towns pay more doesn’t seem to be on its agenda. But why should Salisbury folk subsidise the rest of the county?
We’re a low-wage economy and most users of the car parks are locals, not tourists, who tend to arrive in coaches.
Someone at the meeting suggested free parking countywide, funded by an increase in council tax. Would that be an idea worth exploring?
Another asked: “What about a cut-price parking season ticket for local people?” Worth a try?