Another item on tonight’s Decatur City Commission meeting agenda: a change order of approximately $13,000 to include three more multi-space pay stations along Ponce where previously, single space meters were originally planned. The change order letter from Asst. City Manager Lyn Menne also states that after months of planning, the new parking meters are scheduled to be installed next week, June 23rd – 26th.
There’s also been talk around here of late about the start of Saturday parking enforcement.
Decatur has long had stated metered times on Saturday, but hasn’t enforced those limits. Menne tells DM that when that occurs, the city may start out just enforcing the 2 hour limit, but not ticketing. Menne says the city is still gathering information on how spaces are being used on Saturday and the approach to Saturday enforcement is “still a work in progress but whatever we do will involve a lot of public notice before tickets are issued. Our goal is not to ticket. Our goal is keep the best, most convenient on-street spaces turning over so customers have a reasonable expectation of finding a parking space.”
I’ll be so happy to give up hoarding quarters.
But now I’ll start eating way too many gumballs.
Shouldn’t we outsource this to Park Atlanta so that DPD can work on preventing all the real crime?
DPD doesn’t have anything directly to do with parking meters. They are enforced by the PALS, who work for the Decatur Development Authority under a Memorandum of Understanding with DPD.
Fine. Ruin my point with your trivial “details”. Still, the potential comedic value of the people on this blog bitc*ing about Park Atlanta-like ticketing and enforcement is priceless!
I took that point, but the comic relief was overridden, IMO, by your reference to DPD and ,for all I know, you might have been someone who didn’t know that DPD doesn’t write the meter tickets and were taking a shot at DPD.
Nope, I don’t take unnecessary shots at DPD. I sometimes need them to drive me home after I’ve had too much to drink at Trackside, after all.
They should start a Park Decatur, and the tickets they write could go directly to funding CSD, so all the ferrners (that’s people who live in unincorporated DeKalb) who swoop in to enjoy all that the City has to offer, can support the schools they want to get annexed into.
Decaturish is reporting that the contract for the parking meters is a little more than $328,000.
It is not clear as to how many spaces this covers. Decaturish says 35 multi space meters and 50 single space ones.
The cost seems high but maybe not if the multi space meters cover a lit of spaces.
Does anyone know what the expected payback is or how much the city receives in meter revenue on an annual basis?
Don’t know the meter revenue particularly, but the COD budget, which can be found online, would have it.
Thanks for the reminder Steve.
I must admit that the numbers were not what I expected – much better in fact.
The budget shows annual parking meter revenue of approximately $575,000 except for last year where the revised estimate is $490,000.
So while $328,000 to replace working parking meters still seems like a lot of money to me, it is not nearly as bad as I feared and at least the revenue from the meters covers the expenditure and has the potential of being a net positive cash flow over time with the ability to perhaps capture additional income via the more user friendly payment system…