Out with the old: Altoona planning to remove parking meters downtown
City planning to remove parking meters downtown
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The Altoona Parking Authority plans to remove the city's parking meters once signs indicating the designated enforcement for specific areas are available to be posted.
The proposal to yank the meters came from parking operations manager Dave Curtis during Tuesday's authority board meeting. Curtis was hired about seven weeks ago as a city employee to take over parking operations from Metropolis, a firm the authority board voted to terminate in May, citing dissatisfaction with several issues.
The city has about 25 parking meters downtown, according to Curtis. Of those, roughly one-third are broken, he said, noting the keys he has are unable to collect coins from the remaining meters, which are also decades-old and "in terrible shape."
Because the meters are so old, officials can't order replacement parts for them anymore, and the authority board has already used its extra meters for spare parts, Curtis said.
"We just don't have any options," he said of removing the meters. "We don't have a way to collect."
In addition, the process of collecting from the broken meters, wrapping rolls of coins and then having city Manager Chris McGuire deposit them at a bank is time intensive for staff, Curtis said.
Bob Gattrell, the city's parking enforcement officer, said officials recently collected about $147 in quarters from the broken meters, which were unsecured and closed shut with duct tape.
"That's the only thing between the outside and the money," Gattrell said, referring to the tape.
Curtis said he talked with many constituents about removing the meters, namely Tom and Joe's owner George Batrus, who reportedly spoke in favor of the idea.
Gattrell said there are a couple options in place in terms of how officials will monitor parking enforcement violations without parking meters. But a lot of details still need to be decided, he said.
"That's something that will be determined here shortly," Gattrell said. "I'm not sure the exact way we want to go with it yet."
Curtis said there are a couple blocks with meters that have regulations on the books but no signs posted at the site indicating what they are.
In many areas, the city offers up to two hours of free parking, Curtis said, adding there are some areas where parking is restricted to an hour or a 30-minute timeframe.
"My understanding is (city) council has some legislation they are looking at to vote on changing that," Curtis said.
For now, officials will just enforce the posted regulations, he said.
"We would not take meters off without having some sort of sign," Curtis said. "We would not do that because we don't want to create a trap for people where we're enforcing and they wouldn't know. We feel strongly about avoiding those kinds of traps."
In other business, the authority board approved purchasing a series of miscellaneous equipment requests, including parking tickets at a rate of $500 for 1,000 tickets.
Metropolis stopped issuing tickets on their way out, Curtis said, noting he and Gattrell have not issued a single parking ticket since they were hired. In Gattrell's case, that was about three weeks ago.
Officials have the capacity to issue tickets if they see something egregious, like parking on a sidewalk, but they need the additional ticket books to begin issuing them regularly, Curtis said.
Gattrell said they have about 20 tickets on hand currently. But those tickets still have the Metropolis sticker on the bottom of them, he said.
"I tried just peeling them off, but that didn't work," Gattrell said.
The city is also still trying to acquire about $68,700 in American Rescue Plan Act funding from Metropolis, which must be spent by Dec. 31, board solicitor Amanda Seelye said.
During the meeting, Curtis received a text message from Metropolis senior manager Jessica Bilko, who reportedly confirmed the funding has not been returned to the city and stated she's working with an accountant to get it released as soon as possible.
Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520.