Patti Culliton, a city employee, makes changes to downtown parking meters. All two-hour parking meters downtown will be changed to three hours. Also, two-hour parking meters on the outskirts of the downtown will be changed to 12 hours along with almost all of the surface lot meters except the upper deck of the Main Street parking lot. P-J photos by Dennis Phillips

Time changes are happening to most of the parking meters in downtown Jamestown.

On Wednesday, Patti Culliton, city employee, told The Post-Journal that all two-hour parking meters downtown will be changed to three hours. Also, two-hour parking meters on the outskirts of the downtown will be changed to 12 hours along with almost all of the surface lot meters except the upper deck of the Main Street parking lot. She said all of the 12-hour meters on the outskirts of the downtown will not change. She added all parking meters will be reprogrammed as well.

Culliton said the city has a grand total of 1,024 parking meters, with 601 two-hour parking meters being changed to three hours. She hopes to have the conversion done by Tuesday, but said, at times, it is challenging to do in the winter elements. She added that around 47 percent of the meters have been converted as of Wednesday afternoon.

“It is a lot of cold metal to metal,” she said. “It is sometimes hard to line it up (the tool changing the times) when you’re shaking from the cold.”

Jeff Lehman, city public works director, said the changes go along with the recommendations from the ad hoc Parking Advisory Committee. In November 2017, the committee presented its recommendations to the Jamestown City Council for improving parking in the central business district of the city. Members of the committee, which first met in July 2016, included downtown business owners, city administrators and officials from the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation and Reg Lenna Center for the Arts.

Solutions presented included converting all two-hour meters to three-hour meters; changing non-lease surface lot meters to 12 hours; convert the outskirts of the central business district, Fifth and Sixth streets, to 12-hour meters; and keeping all current exceptions, which includes 30-minute meters, loading/unloading zones and handicapped spaces.

One of the recommendations from the committee was to eliminate all of the free courtesy zones. However, the free courtesy zones will not be changed and will remain at two hours.

“The idea is to have all-day parkers on the outskirts walk into the downtown. It will be an incentive to have people walking into the downtown and it will free up more parking downtown,” Lehman said.

See Friday’s edition of The Post-Journal for complete coverage.