Rehoboth considering season-long Meterless Monday

Depending on how the numbers look during future budget discussions, Meterless Monday may be a summer-long program for Rehoboth Beach in 2021.

This past summer, at the request of downtown businesses struggling to attract customers during the week, the city instituted Meterless Monday, 4 to 10 p.m., for the final eight weeks of the parking meter season.

By all reports it was very successful and it’s easy to market, said Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce President Carol Everhart during a special commissioner meeting Dec. 15.

From installing pedestrian barriers to instituting outdoor dining rules, commissioners, senior city staff and members of the public have been discussing how the city would respond to COVID-19 for months. Most recently, the discussion turned to business-friendly incentives the city could continue given that COVID-related restrictions are expected to still be in place when tourist season returns this year.

The majority of the discussion was about the Meterless Monday program.

City Manager Sharon Lynn said the city lost an estimated $60,000 in parking meter revenue, or $7,500 per day, from the program last year.

Every commissioner said they were in favor of the program, but they also had questions about its impact on next year’s budget and if Monday was the best day for the program to be running.

Commissioner Patrick Gossett said he counted 15 Mondays during the 2021 parking season, which would equate to approximately $113,000 for the whole season.

Commissioners went as far as making and seconding a motion to institute the program, but ultimately they decided to wait until Lynn could provide a better look at how the loss of revenue could affect the city’s budget.

Commissioners also discussed the possibility of allowing businesses to delay paying their business license fees until tourist revenue started coming back in. Lynn said the bills had already been sent and some businesses have already paid.

Commissioners agreed it was too late to implement this incentive. However, Commissioner Edward Chrzanowski said if a specific business is going to have a problem, the city would work with them to figure something out.

Commissioners are expected to begin discussing next year’s budget during a special meeting Monday, Jan. 4. Mayor Stan Mills tasked Lynn with having Meterless Monday information ready for that meeting so it could be discussed and then possibly acted on during the commissioners’ next COVID-related meeting, which is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 5.

Outdoor dining post-pandemic will likely be limited

Commissioners also began discussing outdoor dining in a post-pandemic world, and if it exists, options will likely be limited.

Lynn said she and city staff had serious safety concerns with outdoor dining on public property when a normal amount of pedestrians and vehicles are in town. Her recommendation to the commissioners was, at most, an outdoor dining program that would include tables up against the facade of a building.

“We all love outdoor dining, but post-pandemic is a different situation,” said Lynn.

Police Chief Keith Banks agreed with Lynn. He said a lot of the cities with outdoor dining shut down the streets where it is taking place. That’s not going to happen on Rehoboth Avenue, he said.

Mills said he was definitely against the idea of street cafes or parklets in city parking spots. He said the most important thing to him was the creation of a formula to figure out spacing if the city moved forward with an outdoor dining program, and also, that it be clear the program may not be fair for all businesses because the city sidewalks aren’t a uniform width from block to block.

The formula would be applied fairly, but each business has a different situation, said Mills.