How ludicrous is it that new parking meters installed in 2021 have stopped working already?

That’s the situation, though, after a solar charging mechanism in the meters stopped working once the fall and winter months hit. Now, the batteries in the meters have died out and need to be replaced. There’s only one place to get the new batteries — and that doesn’t solve the problem of the meters not charging when the sun’s not out. In case the manufacturer hasn’t noticed, there are a lot of winter days in Western New York where the sun doesn’t shine.

Some of the new meters have been retrofitted to work with coins, others have to use the city’s parking application to pay the meter. And, some people are getting parking tickets due to the faulty meters.

City officials say anyone who gets a ticket they believe is in error due to a faulty meter should call the Public Works Department at 716-483-7545. How does one prove the ticket came from a faulty meter or from not feeding a meter? That’s a good question — and in our opinion that means there are people who have likely been paying parking fines they didn’t actually incur because they had no way to know the meters were faulty. That’s especially true of those who are visiting from out of town. Unexplained parking tickets are bad for business downtown.

In Tucson, Ariz., too much sunlight has burned out screens on parking meters. There, parking attendants taped paper signs on malfunctioning meters in 2022 telling drivers to pay with a mobile app rather than cash or credit. While we have a different sun-based problem, the solution remains the same. Malfunctioning meters in Jamestown should come with some warning to drivers while the city sorts this mess out. And people certainly shouldn’t be given tickets if they park in a space where the city has installed a now-faulty meter.

Lastly, part of the city’s sorting out process should probably result in the installation of parking meters that work in the winter.