But the days of free parking in the city are over, Cr Michael Guest said yesterday.
The council was responding to a furious reaction from business owners at a meeting on Thursday, and numerous complaints about the new strategy, which includes 153 new pay-and-display machines, each costing $7595, and increased charges.
The 736 time-restricted parks in the city dropped to between 50 and 60, with metered spaces rising from 1380 to 1770.
More problems emerged yesterday morning, as workers were spotted removing Vodafone and Telecom signs from the new machines.
That turned out to be the result of a complaint about whether the signs needed resource consent, and the discovery that they did, but had none.
And an attempt to use the texting function of a parking machine yesterday failed, with a message sent back from Telecom reading: "I'm sorry, Txt-a-Park for this parking provider is currently unavailable to Telecom NZ subscribers. Please use coins instead."
The pay-and-display parking machines were provided by Auckland-based company Global Integrated Solutions.
Business development manager Keith Robinson said Telecom had not been "fully commissioned" to take text payment, but he expected that would happen within the next week.
Vodafone could be used for text payment, he said.
Cr Guest yesterday spoke at a media briefing in response to a multitude of questions.
He said the council was "addressing some anomalies" in the strategy, but few people had suggested the council return to the status quo.
Asked who people should contact if they had concerns, he said they should ring himself, their councillor, or city environment general manager Tony Avery.
He had visited 12 businesses yesterday to hear their concerns.
While there would be changes, "it doesn't necessarily follow that every hole-in-the wall coffee shop gets a free park".
"But we've got to get the balance right. We haven't got the balance right yet. It doesn't mean we're going to get back to free parking."
Asked which consultant had been used for the work, after he said at Thursday's meeting "experts" had got some parts of the strategy wrong, Cr Guest said he was unwilling to name them.
However, Mr Avery said consultants were used mainly for project management, and much of the detail had been carried out by council staff.
Cr Guest said he did not expect the criticism the council had received.
According to a poll of ODT online readers over the parking changes, more than 80% say the DCC has not got it right.
