Doubled-Headed Parking Meters Could be on Horizon as Downtown Commission Meets

An existing downtown parking meter. (WHAV News file photograph.)

Mayor James J. Fiorentini’s newly reconstituted Central Business District Parking Commission meets Thursday night with an eye toward improving the eight-year-old downtown paid parking program.

Last month, the mayor appointed Nomsa Ncube, Josiah Morrow and City Councilor William J. Macek to the parking advisory group. At this tonight’s City Council meeting, he will ask the Council to confirm his appointment of John Tynan and reappointments of Karl Brunelle and Joseph Romatelli. Brunelle is to be the commission’s chairman. Additional non-voting members are the city’s highway superintendent, engineer, planning director and police chief or his designee.

The newly constituted panel is scheduled to meet for the first time Thursday, March 12, at 6 p.m. in City Hall, room 301.

City Council would review and consider any changes to the paid parking program that are eventually proposed by the mayor and parking commission.

Fiorentini recently resubmitted to the council a 2018 parking study that includes recommendations for improving the paid parking program, including allowing free parking for a few hours each morning in various downtown parking lots, standardizing paid parking hours and rules so they are easier to understand and replacing and modernizing existing meters with more user-friendly dual-headed machines.

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