On Tuesday, Woodstock municipal manager Eric Duffy told the board of village trustees that the parking meters installed throughout the village streets will likely have to be replaced within a year.
“Someone has brought to my attention that the company we use for our parking meters has gone out of business. This means that any internal parts we would need in order to keep those machines up and running will be unavailable. I know this is a touchy subject, but it is important to begin the discussion of what we want to do with these meters. Do we want to replace them? Install more kiosks? We need to start discussing now so in a year, we have a plan in place to either buy from a new vendor, upgrade to a higher tech option, or transition to an app-based system,” Duffy said.
In January of 2021, the board installed new parking meters after voting on the specific model in 2020. One hundred and sixty-six failing parking meters were replaced with single- and multi-space pay stations purchased through Integrated Technical Systems (ITS) of Wallingford, Conn. The company supplied and installed the meters at a total cost of $122,164. The meters allowed for both coins and card to be used.
Kiosks were also installed at that time that allowed for the use of a mobile parking app. These machines came from The Luke Cosmos Multi-Space Pay Station, manufactured by T2 Systems in Indianapolis, Ind.
At this week’s meeting, the trustees discussed whether to transition entirely to kiosks, to try to use the meters as long as possible, or to move to a digital app-based program. Duffy said he could not confirm how much time remained before the meters ceased to work. “It could be six months or ten years, there is just no way of knowing,” Duffy said.
For more on this, please see our October 16 edition of the Vermont Standard.
