When SFist reported last week on a controversial ballot measure intended to protect the interests of motorists, the piece generated a lot of discussion, very little of it in support of the proposal. And now those haters might have yet another reason to hate, as it turns out that well-disliked tech entrepreneur Sean Parker has been one of the measure's biggest backers.
As we told you last week, the "Restoring Transportation Balance in San Francisco" proposal includes language intended to block the enforcement of parking meters on "any City and County holiday listed on sfgov.org," and to keep them from ever being enforced on any Sundays, "or outside the hours of 9:00am to 6:00 p.m."
It also proposes to freeze parking fees, parking tickets, and parking permits for the next five years, to make it a great deal more difficult for the city to add new parking meters, to build more neighborhood parking garages, and to add more drivers to the SFMTA board. (You can read the whole text here.)
As RTB spokesperson Jason Clark told SFist last week, "People are getting fed up that a 'transit first' policy means making people who use a car so miserable that they have to use other, less desirable options."
Apparently one of the most fed up and miserable people is Napster co-founder Sean Parker, who, according to Matier and Ross, donated $49,000 to the motorist protection cause.
You know Sean Parker! He's that Internet Rich Person who may or may not have crapped all over nature in an effort to throw a super-nerdy sci-fi/ fantasy themed wedding, and was played by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network. He also thinks his critics are Nazis, reportedly screwed up 10th Street in New York while working on his home there, gave "upwards of half a million dollars to GOP candidates," last quarter, and just bought Ellen DeGeneres' LA house for $55 million.
With homes in places like LA and New York, it sure is nice to see Parker continuing to take an interest in local politics! But, sadly, we can only speculate on his concern over this specific issue, as efforts to reach both Parker and a spokesperson for the RTB to explain the mogul's motives behind the donation were unsuccessful at publication time.
As reported last week, the measure, which needed 9,702 signatures to qualify for the November ballot, ended up with 17,593. Assuming the allegations of signature fraud prove unfounded, it's likely you'll be voting on the billionaire-backed measure this fall.