Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The city council held a work session and regular meeting on June 23, 2026. Major actions included adoption of a new downtown parking ordinance (effective after a 90-day acclimation period), adoption of a blight property and derelict building tax classification ordinance, approval of consent agenda items (rehabilitated real estate tax credit amendment and a behavioral health grant), and reappointments to boards and commissions. Council also received presentations and public comments on short-term rental regulations, cemetery maintenance, street lighting, zoning special exceptions, and enforcement issues.
Thank you, everybody. Welcome to our public work session. And I want to acknowledge those who are watching us online. Thank you all for being here to the citizens of the city of Portsmouth. And also thank those citizens who are joining us in this meeting. Thank you all for being here. And now I will ask Miss White if she would please call the role. Yes, sir, Miss Bryant. Present. So Mr. Wright? Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, member of the city council. So over the past uh couple of meetings we've looked at and discussed uh parking, parking downtown, the parking ordinance. Uh earlier this week, um city manager sent out to you a draft of the ordinance for your review, capturing those main items that you mentioned, so parking on high street, uh six to eight, um no holidays, uh no weekends, um three dollar rate, first two hours free, and then for all other um parking facilities, surface lots and garages, uh two hours free, uh two dollars per hour. No event parking at this point, and only parking where there is only charging for parking where there is parking existing. So there's parking there, uh it's not there now, it's still not there now. So it's only for those places, uh high street and then existing parking site. Um, with that, um any comments that you may have in the review about the city attorney for it uh city in the city management. And one thing before you guys get into all means. Uh we do intend to do a 90-day uh acclimation and education cure before we actually start enforcing so that it gives us opportunity to uh kind of gather information as well as provide information to all of those patrons who will be parking in in our parking area, but it will also give us an opportunity to give them an opportunity. Well, it will give everybody an opportunity to acclimate to the new system and work out any bugs that we have with that as far as getting people involved and on and using and how to use it. We will give warnings, we will give, you know, let people know that hey, after October 1, this will be a violation, but between July 1 and uh and September 30, that will be just a uh acclamation period. So everybody have an opportunity to get broken in before we start getting real tickets for it. Kind of like what we did with the speed cameras, yes. There was there was a there was a uh grace period where by yeah, you used it. I do have a couple observations that I want to share. Yes, sir. Um so I and I want to say this in the right spirit. Uh we talked about um no event parking, which I I I'm gonna just say I don't agree with. I think that we should have event parking um as we witnessed this weekend, but we had a lot of folks downtown, and I didn't hear one person complain about parking, but I will tell you I did see a number of people going on to the QR code to see if they needed to set up for parking. So I did see a lot of people using because I spent a lot of time downtown on all three days. The reason why I'm saying what I'm saying about event parking because uh we continue and we desire to have more events downtown. If that is going to be our position, we're gonna be losing a lot of revenue, and I hear what y'all saying, everybody don't want to talk about revenue, but somebody's gotta pay for this stuff. And at the end of the day, I know but I know I know folks don't like to talk about spending money, but at the end of the day, you gotta pay for this stuff. Now give you an example. So my my son and his children were down in South Carolina at Myrtle Beach this weekend. Um big tourist area at Merrill Beach. I think he told me they paid 20 for parking every day for event parking. Um perspective, I know we're not Myrtle Beach, and I'm not trying to say we're Myrtle Beach, but at the end of the day, we as a city have to be reasonable and thoughtful about what we want to do as it relates to event parking, and for us to say that because we don't have enforcement, we're going to look away from it. I don't think that's the right approach. I don't think that sends the right message.