That crashed and burned.

The Santa Barbara City Council on Wednesday rejected a city staff proposal to overhaul fees to park on city streets and in surface lots and garages.

In fact, the council moved in the opposite direction, opting to increase the amount of time people can park for free in city lots and garages from 75 minutes to 90 minutes.

The council members said the fee increases and elimination of much of the free parking time would hurt local residents and further devastate downtown businesses, which are already struggling to stay alive. They also said the proposal was too much, too complex and insensitive to many people in the community.

The proposal for some council members smacked in the face of equity and was tone deaf to much of the city’s population and the financial hardships they face.

Councilwoman Alejandra Gutierrez pushed back on the city staff’s contention that all motorists could easily afford to pay the new fees, or that they were trying to “gamify” the system.

“If we are going to talk about equity, let’s look around,” Guiterrez said, waving her arms at the people in the council hearing room. “Are we representing the entire city?”

She said many economically disadvantaged people live in the downtown area and would be hurt by the fees.

“There are people and families living in the downtown area that most of the time you don’t see them,” Gutierrez said. “You don’t hear from them. They are struggling day by day. They love to live in the city. So, when we want to talk about being equitable, we really need to start by being very realistic.”

The vote was 5-1, with Councilwoman Meagan Harmon absent. Although Harmon left before the vote to tend to a personal matter, she expressed her strong opposition to the proposal before she departed. Councilman Oscar Gutierrez cast the sole no vote, but only because he wanted free parking everywhere to encourage people to go downtown.

The meeting illustrated a sharp disconnect between city staff and the direction of the City Council. Sarah Clark, the downtown parking and plaza manager, spoke bluntly in her 40-minute presentation, trying to convince the council that most motorists were taking advantage of downtown’s free 75-minute parking in lots and city streets.

She said that roughly “55%” of transactions in city lots were “free transactions,” in that people entered and left the lots before 75 minutes. She said coupled with the people who park for 75 minutes or less on city streets, “roughly 70% of people who drive downtown pay nothing.”

“It wouldn’t work for any business to give away 70% of their products or services for free,” Clark said.

She said the goal of the fee increases was to “modernize” the city’s parking system and “stop them from racing back to their cars in order to get out from under the wire.”

However, that didn’t land well with the council.

Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon pointed to the inconsistency of charging people who park for more than 15 minutes at the same time the city is trying to encourage people to come downtown and support local businesses.

She noted that the city is in the process of overhauling De la Guerra Plaza and attempting to turn it into a community gathering place, but that the fee increases would conflict with the city’s overall goals.

“Increasing fees really hurts our downtown,” Sneddon said. “I don’t think of our downtown just as a mall or as a money-making venture. It’s our backyard. It’s our civic center. It needs to be accessible for all who live here.”

She also said the staff presentation seemed to represent only “people in a certain income bracket.”

The City of Santa Barbara Public Works staff wanted to charge people to park downtown on a “pay-by-plate” basis, using a mobile payment app, a website or a self-serve kiosk. Those fees would generate an estimated $2.5 million. The first 15 minutes would be free, and it would cost $1.50 every hour after that. There would be no daily maximum.

In addition, in surface parking lots, the city wanted to reduce the 75-minute free period to 15 minutes free, and charge $1.50 for every 30 minutes after that. There would be no daily maximum.

In parking garages, the city wanted to drop the free time from 75 minutes to 60 minutes, and charge $2 for every hour after that. For garages, there would be a $10 maximum.

The city also wanted to offer $70 monthly parking permits to downtown employees to park in the city garages, to reduce the number of people parking on city streets. The current monthly rate is $145 to $165.

Sneddon led the effort to put the brakes on the parking proposal. She took exception to the fact that city staff was trying to pay for infrastructure improvements at the lots through parking fees. The downtown parking fund is known as an “enterprise fund,” which means it is supposed to support itself through revenues. But Sneddon said that needs to change.

“We have a structural problem with downtown parking being an enterprise fund,” Sneddon said.

She also raised concerns about equity.

“I think of downtown as a park,” Sneddon said. I want it to be accessible, welcoming, free. We do updates to De la Guerra Plaza and then we are going to make people pay to passively enjoy space in our civic plaza downtown?”

She said De la Guerra Plaza is a play for protests and rallies.

“Free speech,” she said, “that’s where people gather. That’s where people can be.”

She also said “not everyone has an expendable income to pay for parking.”

Sneddon then said that city staff should not be pushing the idea that people can take buses downtown because it’s not a viable option.

“We just don’t have the system set-up yet,” Sneddon said. “I think we could get there. I think we absolutely should have accessible shuttles that run throughout the hillside, that run up and down downtown on a trolley. We don’t have it.”

Jenna Berg, a local resident who works at a business downtown, urged the City Council to resist the fee increases and instead seek to bring “joy” to the downtown. She said only 15 minutes of free parking would be “irritating” and discourage people from going downtown.

“I want to put adult teeter-totters on State Street,” Berg said. “Maybe some swings. Let’s think about how we can bring joy back to downtown.”