City residents report parking meter issues in city
Trending
Issues with parking meters in the city are being reported to the City Council.
Councilman Russ Bonfiglio, R-At Large, brought the issue before the council recently, saying there have been ongoing problems with city parking meters, specifically in front of Pace's.
"For some reason these meters aren't working correctly," Bonfiglio said. "There was a little bit of a yelling match in front of Pace's. One of them was brought back and was supposedly fixed and it wasn't. There's been a big problem with parking meters not working. I'm not blaming anybody, it's a mechanical thing and they don't always work."
Councilman Jeremy Engquist added to that, saying he has received complaints that the credit card portion of the parking meters does not always work and that the city's new app is not user friendly. He said it takes a substantial amount of time to park and then there are also convenience fees associated with it, noting that some of these issues have been brought before council a few months back.
Mayor Kim Ecklund said problems with specific parking meters cannot be addressed without a specific location and time of the event.
"They can't investigate it without an actual meter location," Ecklund said. "I'm not saying the complaints are not valid, I'm not saying it's not an issue, but you really need documentation to look at what you're referring to."
There is a phone number on the side of the meters, which Mark Roetzer, city public works director, said is a parking meter hotline that people can call and leave a message if they do not get an answer. Meters also have specific meter numbers as well.
"All that information does help us troubleshoot them," Ecklund said. "Not getting into too much detail about the parking meters, the current parking meter vendor is going out of business and is not serving, so we have some trouble getting some parts."
More information can be shared on that when they have more, she added.