BANGOR, Maine — A City Council committee on Tuesday put a stop to work on a plan to charge for certain downtown parking spaces, voting 3-2 against advising city staff to continue research for the proposal.

The plan, recommended by the Downtown Parking Advisory Committee, called for the installation of meter kiosks in order to charge $1 per hour for 179 spaces on main thoroughfares downtown.

Proponents said the plan would put a stop to “car shuffling” in which employees of downtown businesses use up the best parking spaces by staying in a space for the allotted amount of time and then re-parking before getting ticketed.

They also said it would help generate revenue to provide for a future parking garage or parking expansions downtown.

All nine councilors attended the meeting of the five-member Business and Economic Development Committee with Councilors Patricia Blanchette, Nelson Durgin, Pauline Civiello and Ben Sprague expressing opposition to the proposal.

“I almost feel like we’re punishing the wrong people, so to speak,” Civiello said. “If the problem is car shuffling by the people that work there, we’re penalizing the people that want to go have a cup of coffee.”

Committee member Sean Faircloth, who did not stay for the whole meeting and was replaced by Civiello before the vote, said only that he was interested in a license plate reader system, one of the alternatives to metered parking.

He was not immediately available after the meeting to say whether he would have supported the meter proposal.

Meanwhile, Councilors Gibran Graham and Josh Plourde voiced the only support for the plan, Plourde calling it “probably the only path to generate revenue to pay for such a garage or future expansion [of downtown parking].”

Graham, who chairs the parking committee, said he was dismayed at the idea that the proposal would penalize anybody.

“What we are doing is we are valuing our spaces, we are valuing what people already value,” he said. “They want to be there for the convenience, and that’s what we are doing. We are charging for that convenience.”

The proposal would have left 748 free spaces outside the main thoroughfares downtown.

The final vote saw committee members Plourde and Graham voting in favor, while David Nealley, Joe Baldacci and stand-in member Civiello voted against.

Baldacci, who chairs the committee, said he did not believe metered parking would be as detrimental to the downtown as some feared, but he would not vote to move forward a measure knowing it is not supported by a majority of the council.

“We need to have further discussion about different parking options,” he said, adding that the parking committee should not dissolve but should remain to discuss those options.

Despite his opposition vote, Nealley said the addition of parking meters may still be coming as the downtown continues to grow.

“It almost seems like we are just delaying the inevitable,” he said.

Blanchette and Durgin, both said they are not opposed to charging for some spaces, but they objected to charging for spaces along Main and Central streets, where most downtown businesses are located.

“I’ve heard from a number of merchants downtown and none of them have said, yes, let’s have the meter’s back,” said Durgin, who served on the committee that removed Bangor’s original parking meters approximately 40 years ago.

Sprague, who publicly announced opposition to the proposal last month, said he is not completely opposed to meters, but he considered them “a fairly dramatic step” before attempting simpler solutions such as increased fines, better signage to the public parking garage and changing the routes of parking patrol officers.

“It’s a solution in search of a problem, in my mind,” he said.

Graham argued that people who are car shuffling are not getting tickets to begin with.

“We need to be able to turn spaces over more frequently,” he said.

Three local residents addressed the committee, all speaking out against the paid-parking plan.

Follow Evan Belanger on Twitter at @evanbelanger.