The council general manager has spent another difficult week guiding the city through parking meter teething problems, fielding criticism and dealing with community clashes. But while committed to a review, he stressed withdrawing meters was not an option.

"Strategically, it's critical that we have on-street paid parking because the CBD would just be choked," he said.

The clash this week between business leaders Phil Ryan and Andrew Reveley and the council's review panel was described as unfortunate, but their call for the meters to be shut down for three months was "impractical".

"A moratorium would mean people would slip back to old habits. When you went to switch them on again you'd have another 10 weeks of enormous pain and all-day parkers choking the CBD," he said.

Mr Ryan countered that the $2 fee hurt a lot of businesses and the shutdown was needed to gauge the impact. "If they'd gone in softly, had much cheaper meters with longer time periods to start with, it might not have bounced back to bite them so much," he said.

Mr Farmer said this approach had some merit. "The key from my perspective is, from time to time you will make errors, the issue is you need to rectify those."

A $2 flat fee, raising $500,000 in four months, was chosen for simplicity. "But in hindsight, that simplicity and ease of use wasn't enough to make up for what people saw as an unfair situation."

Mr Farmer said the council had deliberately waited three months before responding to concerns and putting in place a temporary pro rata system while the flat fee structure was being assessed.

"Research we'd done said it takes three or four months to settle down, then you get an idea of what's happening. We made a short-term change for which we got a kicking, but to me it was about listening to people's concerns and responding ... ."

Mr Farmer said people were warming to paid parking. "Driving around today, the city is pretty much full. But I admit we need to get it better. There will be a range of changes determined at the August meeting of council," he said.