City council members discussed some ongoing issues with parking meters in the city. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

City parking meters have been seeing some issues lately, and one council member brought some complaints he has been hearing from residents to the council.

Councilman Andrew Faulkner, R-Ward 6, said some parking meters do not currently take coins, forcing residents to have to use an app.

“It’s almost comical because I’d gotten two complaints in the last week so I came to city hall today to talk about it, and the meter ate my one quarter that I had so I had to download the app,” Faulkner said.

Jamestown announced it had entered into a contract with Passport Parking for cashless parking meter payment in 2022. The app is powered by Passport, a transportation software and payments company that manages cities’ parking and mobility infrastructures through its robust digital platform. To begin a session in the app, a user enters the respective zone number (posted on nearby signage and decals), parking space number and the desired amount of time for parking. Users can extend their parking, access parking history and receipts without needing to return to a parking meter.

The app itself, Faulkner said, took a while to download, and then included what Faulkner said was questionable math, as the first 30 minutes cost $0.58, rather than a quarter because of a $0.33 convenience fee.

After getting the alert that it had been longer than 30 minutes, Faulkner said he added an hour to the meter, which would have been another 50 cents in quarters, but on the app it reached $1.99.

“So, with the quarter that it ate, the $1.99, the $0.58, I’m at like over three dollars to be here, which should cost 75 cents,” Faulkner said. “I talked to Mark (Roetzer), and some of the meters, I think they’re all going to take quarters again eventually, we’re not going to do away with that. I had someone call me with a complaint that they were upset because they didn’t have a smartphone so they couldn’t have done it, and got a ticket.”

Roetzer, the city’s acting public works director, said most of the issue is happening with the newer meters that take credit cards. These meters have a backup battery that there has been trouble with recently, and Roetzer said a new batch has been ordered.

“Hopefully in the next few weeks we’re able to get those in and get those back out on the street,” Roetzer said.

It isn’t the first time the city has had issues with meters with backup batteries.

In 2023 new parking meters purchased with a state grant in 2021 began to malfunction as their batteries died out. Some of those meters were replaced with coin parking meters until new batteries could be ordered, though some of the meters weren’t able to handle the coin payments because of the way they were shaped. Three years later backup batteries in the parking meters are becoming a problem, again.

A question was raised as to whether that cost in the app that Faulkner said was correct on the app as well, as that amount seemed high. It was noted that the company is making more than the city on these meters as well with the convenience fee.

Corporation Counsel Elliot Raimondo said that if any members of the public have issues with the meters to report it to the Department of Public Works or the Corporation Counsel’s office, who will then bring it to the DPW.