$250,000 burning a hole in city's pockets. Let's get some parking meters!

It's ironic that the city has never given much support to promoting businesses downtown. Now, all of a sudden, they are jumping at the chance to install some new, state-of-the-art parking meters that will take credit and debit cards. No word if they will also accept the Lone Star card.

Forget about the city's budget problems, all of a sudden they found $250,000 to splurge in the parking meter fund. Maybe they figure that if you install the meters, they will come.

Here's what the agenda background info back in June of this year looked like.

From the City of Laredo's agenda for June 17th, 2013

The pilot project will entail the installation of 50 new state-of-the-art single parking meters and 25 vehicle detection sensors to reset meters at locations selected by the Parking Meter Division. The pilot project will be in place for a period ofthree (3) months and is scheduled to start approximately in August 2013 and end October 2013.

 

 The City will bare no cost during the implementation of the three (3) month pilot project. The new parking meters include GPRS Wireless communication, solar and battery power; live monitoring for maintenance, audit and enforcement purposes.

Parking meter payment options will be coins and credit cards with future capabilities for pay by cell, tokens, and smart cards. The pilot project will evaluate the revenue of collections comparing current meters with new parking meter options.

The Parking Meter Fund currently has funding to upgrade approximately 300 parking meters including AutoTRAX license and merchant fees should the City decide to proceed with awarding contract to IPS Group after the pilot project.

 

FINANCIAL: $250,000 is available in the Parking Meter Fund.

RECOMMENDATION: STAFF:Staff recommends to proceed with the single parking meter pilot project.