Parking meters should be customer-friendly

Last week, we published a guest editorial urging city officials not to renew their contract with the city’s parking meter contractor.
While the writer of the editorial focused on privacy concerns about how the images captured by the parking meters’ cameras could potentially be misused, there’s a much more urgent concern.
And that is the fact that we hear more and more about people getting tickets even though they are parking after posted meter operating hours, and also about visitors frustrated by the meters just not working properly who then end up getting tickets.
This is no small matter.
The City of Royal Oak uses the same company’s meter system, and residents and visitors there have the same complaints. Worse, the meters have basically turned off visitors from parking anywhere near downtown.
That’s happening here as well. And businesses are suffering from this, too, if no one wants to come to them because of concerns with getting an unjustified ticket.
We couldn’t agree more that this meter system has to go. But we also urge city officials not to entirely do away with the concept of having parking meters.
We have said this before, but it’s worth pointing out: there is a perfectly fine system in place in the City of Ferndale, where the meters are actually customer-friendly.
It’s important that the city continue to generate its revenue streams, because one never knows when finances can take a downward shift. Heck, it’s happened plenty of times before, and only certain city officials here think that, somehow, Hamtramck is immune to this prospect.
We are talking about a hefty revenue source from parking meters for the city, averaging about $200,000 a year.
Keep parking meters here, but not this system.
Posted Aug. 30, 2024