Haarlem residents are allowed to speak out about the introduction of paid parking. The coalition parties in the municipal council are changing tack, but reluctantly. They rejected the referendum request six months ago, but the judge ruled that this was not properly substantiated. The coalition now votes in favor. “To increase confidence in politics,” PvdA faction leader Maarten Wiedemeijer explains the change.
The two applicants for the parking referendum, Frans de Goede and Wim Kleist, look at each other in surprise when the first and largest party, the PvdA, declares that it will now vote in favor of the referendum. “I didn’t expect this,” De Goede said afterwards.
The majority of the municipal council is and remains in favor of introducing paid parking. “There is simply a housing crisis, there is a climate crisis,” says Meryem Çimen of D66. “The problem remains, the car must be pushed back,” says PvdA member Maarten Wiedemeijer. “But there’s a difference between being right and being proven right.”
Reluctantly
To avoid legal wrangling, the PvdA, D66, GroenLinks, CDA and AP reluctantly agree. GroenLinks party leader Jasper Drost in particular remains adamant: “We will not compromise on our values. This is why people voted for us.”
The basis for the change is the judge’s decision. It ruled that the municipality did not provide decisive arguments to reject the referendum. The reason given was that citizens are not allowed to vote on rates, that paid parking was already part of an established mobility policy and that too many cars are parked on sidewalks. This makes the city less accessible for the disabled and a referendum is contrary to the UN accessibility treaty. The judge disagreed.
No excuses
The largest opposition party VVD would have liked to see the city council apologize for rejecting the referendum at the end of March. “The municipality was in his shirt,” concluded Peter van Kessel of the VVD. “There were 1,200 objections, a historic number. You should have listened to them,” says Moussa Aynan of Jouw Haarlem. “You have wrongly taken away the right of the people of Haarlem to have a referendum.”
But the parties that are in favor of paid parking do not believe that anything has gone wrong, because this was already included in the adopted Mobility Policy from 2021. Also that no more support studies would be conducted, in which residents of the neighborhoods in question were previously allowed to indicate whether they thought there was a parking problem.
That was exactly what upset many Haarlem residents in the Leidsebuurt and the Indische Buurt. Less than a year ago, they had indicated in such a survey that there were still sufficient parking spaces in their streets.
To trust
“But the signal is now loud and clear,” is the conclusion of D66 councilor Çimen. “We should not continue to litigate against fellow citizens for years. Perhaps the referendum will help to focus the conversation with the city on the content again.” Increasing that confidence in politics is a great thing for her. “We must stop sowing distrust.”
The referendum may therefore be held. This will be finalized in the city council in two weeks. Now the referendum applicants, Frans de Goede and Wim Kleist, must collect four thousand signatures. This is necessary to get the process started.