Decision To Implement Selective Installation Of Meters, Is Common Council’s, We’re Told.

This morn­ing I con­tin­ued in my attempt to bring atten­tion and par­i­ty to the unfair roll-out of the Pay-sta­tions on Main street in the City of Poughkeepsie.

I called the Mayor’s office, a woman who said she was sit­ting in for the Mayor’s Secretary took my call, she was pleas­ant and help­ful. I gave her the rea­son for my call and she promised she would have the rel­e­vant per­son return my call.

About twen­ty min­utes lat­er I received a call from the City’s Administrator, Milo Bunyi. Mister Bunyi appeared con­cerned and empa­thet­ic with my argu­ments about the way the pay sta­tions have been installed.

Much to my dis­may the Administrator informed me that the deci­sion to stop the instal­la­tion of meters at Main and White was the deci­sion of the Common Council. In fact he indi­cat­ed that the Administration want­ed to install more pay sta­tions in anoth­er heav­i­ly used area, which would allow them to low­er park­ing rates and the Council would have none of it.

It appears that pol­i­tics is at play in mat­ters as sim­ple as where park­ing meters are placed.

The Idea of park­ing meters for rev­enue in Cities and towns is in no way a new or nov­el idea. The pay sta­tions will not be removed by the City, let’s be rea­son­able . My con­tention is this, since the city has decid­ed to imple­ment a pay to park sys­tem, it should be done in a just and equi­table manner.

In this pic­ture we are look­ing East along Main street from the 500 Block, up to the 600 and beyond .One does not need to be a rock­et sci­en­tist to under­stand what area has free park­ing . Clearly in the dis­tance past the lights at Main and White there are vehi­cles parked freely . From the point of where the pho­to­graph was tak­en on the 500 Block there are no parked vehi­cles. The rea­son is that there are park­ing meters there.

The idea of selec­tive place­ment of these pay sta­tions, gives an unfair advan­tage to busi­ness own­ers in areas where there are no meters. I again call on the City to either pur­chase more meters and install them, or roll back the pay for park until this mat­ter can be prop­er­ly hashed out and re-imple­ment­ed in an equi­table and just fashion.