Taxus, I don’t think anyone thinks that pay-by-cell or annexation is a panacea to our high taxes. As Lyn mentioned earlier…the effort is an attempt to get a better grasp on how people use parking in Decatur, and perhaps make small adjustments accordingly going forward.

I kind of see it as similar to someone that instead of going out and just buying a new house because their current house feels “cramped”, reevaluates their space and the way they live, then they go ahead and reconfigure the furniture, add some new shelving and throw out all the crap they don’t use…and find they had plenty of space to begin with, they just weren’t using it as efficiently as possible. In the instance of parking, the city is attempting to improve parking without having to build more…(that was the city in 1960 when the city and Sqaure business owners wanted to tear down the courthouse to build a parking lot).

The fact that it may or may not pay for itself in the future is just potential icing on the cake. If it doesn’t end up providing any sort of useful info or service, I have faith that our leaders will scrap it.

“At 5 cents per minute, the meter takes 60 cents per hour. Then the math shows a payback in 333 hours or 55 days or about 3 months of use.”

But one could say that each new meter is taken out of service for three months, if the data is not productive. We won’t know that right away for sure, but I doubt the cost/effect will reduce our taxes.

The Governor has screwed us out of a sizeable tax subsidy. We need to be mindful therefore of how we spend our nickels.

Pay by cell, nor Annexation is no guarantee of Panacea.