Collingswood Parking Kiosks out for Bid

After months of well-documented aggravation, it seems borough leaders have had enough.

"We’re beginning the next chapter of our parking kiosks," Mayor James Maley announced at the monthly meeting of the Collingswood borough commissioners on Monday.

After having worked "for a couple years" with kiosk manufacturer Metric on "problems with modems, with problems with control panels, problems with power, and with them being unable to repair them," Maley said, Collingswood is putting the job out for bid.

If Metric doesn't make good, Maley said, Collingswood is prepared to sue the company "to recover what it has cost us and what we have lost."

The mayor did not put a dollar figure on those losses at the meeting, although in its 2012 municipal budget, Collingswood expected to raise $131,000 in parking revenues (up 44 percent, or $47,000, from the $74,000 they produced in 2011). 

Final parking revenues reported in the 2013 municipal budget were $133,510.

Borough commissioners passed unanimously a resolution to solicit requests for proposal from alternative parking vendors at the meeting.

"We hope to have proposals in this month," Maley said. "We tried one other company’s machine for a month or so and had no issues whatsoever."

After the meeting, Collingswood Police Chief Richard Sarlo echoed Maley's stated frustrations with the failures of the Metric parking units. 

For a while, the borough has taken a lenient stance on parking meter enforcement, given the unreliability of the current devices.

Even just before the commissioners meeting Monday, Sarlo said, he'd encountered a couple on the street who was stymied by the kiosks, and told them "parking's on me tonight.

"They’re not working properly, and it seems like we're out there every day," he said. 

"After trying to deal with the company to rectify the situation, things have not improved."