Photo by yonas1.

Kelly DiNardo, the owner of Past Tense yoga studio in Mt. Pleasant, wanted to offer a free yoga class to her clientele inside nearby Lamont Park while her almost-two-years-old studio is closed for repainting.

“This would have been our fourth free class,” said DiNardo. “We did two right before we opened [in July 2009] and then our goal was to do one free one for our anniversary each year. It’s a nice thank you to our students and the Mt. Pleasant/Columbia Heights community, which has been incredibly welcoming and supportive.”

Sounds great — but what’s with, well, the future-in-past tense? Turns out the permit for Lamont has gotten a lot more expensive: the yoga studio used to be able to reserve the space for free, but the District’s Department of Parks and Recreation is now charging $140 ($75 of which is refundable after the event) for the permit DiNardo would need to secure the space inside the park.

“That fee and paying instructors to teach and assist the class means we just can’t do it,” DiNardo lamented, noting that she had gotten permit fees waived several times in the past, and “had no idea about this policy change until we went to get a permit for this year.” Upset about the new fee, DiNardo took her case to Councilmember Jim Graham’s office — and, after a nudge from one of Graham’s staffers, word came down from DPR Director Jesus Aguirre.

“Unfortunately, we are no longer in a position to waive the permit fee,” Aguirre crisply told DiNardo via email.

So, what’s really the deal?

“The D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation has always had the right to charge fees for use of DPR property,” DPR spokesperson John Stokes told DCist. “In the past, when there was more money available, the permit fees were not always instituted.”

But no longer. “With the current economic climate, the DPR charges for permit fees,” Stokes said. Put another way: one can safely chalk this up to the general belt-tightening that is ruling the day inside the District’s government. (In the department’s defense, you can hardly miss the “all may use, but all must pay” message on the permitting portion of DPR’s website.)

Of course, there’s not a whole lot preventing DiNardo from trying to secure the space without the permit — though that would require a different kind of squatting than that involved in the yoga routine.

“I did think about doing the class without the permit,” says DiNardo. “We’re not going to next week. I’d like to try and work with D.C. Council and D.C. Parks to get the policy changed first. If we can’t work within the system, well … we’ll see.”