Finance Committee Recommends No Credit Card Use for Parking

Last week, when Phoenixville Borough Council to $1 per hour after council voted to change them to $0.50 per hour, it sent the parking issue back to committee to consider.

On Tuesday, the finance committee voted 3-1 to recommend that council instruct staff to disable the credit card use from downtown kiosks. In January, the borough collected $1,900 from credit card transactions at kiosks in borough lots. However, $700 of that went to credit card transaction fees. Committee Chairwoman Dana Dugan, and members Richard Kirkner and Kendrick Buckwalter voted for the change, and committee member Marc Reber voted against it.

“I hate it when I hit a parking meter that I don’t have quarters for, so I just left quarters in the glove box and pop them in,” Buckwalter said. “The only time I expect to use a credit card with parking is in Philadelphia.” 

In the contract with the vendor, when a credit card is used, the borough pays a transaction charge in addition to a percentage charge. To change the software in the system, the cost is $375 total across all meters. Borough Manager Jean Krack said he’d like to make one software change—one that would include credit card acceptance and possibly changing the price—rather than two separate ones, which would double that $375 charge.

Finance Manager Steve Nease said disabling credit card use shouldn’t be an issue in the software. In addition to quarters, parking kiosks in the borough take lower coin denominations, though not pennies, Nease said.

Reber brought up a point he heard from constituents, that at times the kiosks are full of coins and won’t accept any. Then, kiosk users could choose to use a credit card.

Nease explained that now, the kiosks are emptied on a regular basis. The software also shows how much change the meters contain at a certain time, so Nease can see when they’re getting full.

The committee briefly discussed changing the signs to read $0.25 per 15 minutes, rather than $1 an hour, but no action was taken on that. Nease said the signs may have been worded that way because of the credit card acceptance, as the card minimum was $1.

In other parking news, Nease presented a list of expenditures, revenue and projections. While a $10,000 shortfall in revenue is projected, Nease said unpaid violations would more than make up for that.

He anticipated that $14,000 per quarter, or $56,000, would be garnered from unpaid tickets. Most of those are from February, and could be aggressively pursued. For tickets issued before February, the borough could still send reminders asking people to pay the tickets.

Nease outlined a list of potential expenses for the committee to decide on. Totaling $31,000 in one list and $24,000 in another, the first list included an additional meter in lot four (the Taylor Alley lot), lighting the meters, ordering more parking permits and citations, reprogramming the meters, ordering replacement parts for the meters and converting the meters to electric. Currently, the old citations from the disbanded parking authority are being used. Citations are expensive, Nease told the committee, costing $0.12 each as they’re printed on water-resistant paper.

The committee recommended council approval for all of the expenses except the additional meter in Taylor Alley. The total cost of the recommended items is $24,092.

The other $24,000 in potential costs included handheld devices for the police force. This would aid them in catching parking violators throughout the borough, not just downtown, as more officers would have them.

Yearly, parking violations in other parts of town account for $90,000 to $100,000 in revenue, Nease said, and if more officers had the handheld devices those could be in the same system with downtown parking. The committee decided to hold off on that expense.