Rockville Will Start Charging For Parking On Nights And Saturdays

ROCKVILLE, Md. (WUSA) -- You might want to tack on a few more dollars to your going out budget if you plan to visit Rockville. Starting Monday, visitors will have to pay for parking well into the night.

Beth Swibel loves to visit Rockville's Town Square on weekends when parking is free. "It was very nice that we didn't have to pay on Saturday," she says.

Starting Monday, visitors will have to pay for parking until 10 p.m. on weekdays, and they'll also be charged to park on Saturdays.

"We'll probably think twice now if we're going to go out to dinner," Swibel says.

In Bethesda, visitors don't have to pay to park in public garages on Saturday or Sunday. The same rings true in Silver Spring; no one has to pay to park on weekends.

Carlos Aulestia owns Toy Kingdom; he is afraid parking fees will drive his business away.

"We do our business, like 30 percent, on the evenings and weekends. They assume we are going to lose 30 or 40 percent of those people. If I lose 30 to 40 percent of my business on the weekends, basically it would put me out of business," Carlos says.

Rockville Mayor Susan Hoffmann says the idea is to have visitors pay for the garages, not taxpayers. She's meeting with store owners personally on Monday to see if anything can be done.

Hoffmann says, "They have some proposals that they would like to recommend, and I am very interested in hearing what they have to say."

Ton Kongjan at Tai Pavilion says he has a few ideas, "Instead of one hour, one dollar per one hour, it's going to be one dollar per all Saturday and one dollar after 7 p.m."

As for visitors, many say the addition fee won't stop them from coming.

Rain Zohav says, "I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to ask people to pay for parking."

Marion Bort says, "I think people will get used to it."

Because many of the garages are being paid for by taxpayers, people who live in Rockville are allowed a limited number of free parking passes.