Time to get rid of downtown Belleville’s ‘vintage’ parking meters? Aldermen to decide
Parking-meter revenue in Belleville has dropped from $64,000 to less than $10,000 in the past 10 years, partly because of the “open secret” that police largely stopped issuing tickets for violations in the early 2010s to make downtown a friendlier place to dine and shop.
Two weeks ago, the City Council’s Traffic Committee voted 4 to 1 to recommend that the city remove all parking meters in downtown Belleville and let cars park for free ... legally.
The full City Council will vote on a proposed ordinance change at its Monday night meeting.
“It’s actually been a longstanding issue that our parking meters are way out of date, and some of them are broken, and they can’t be repaired,” said Ward 7 Alderman Phil Elmore, who chairs the Traffic Committee.
Elmore estimates that the coin-operated meters were installed at least 50 years ago. It’s getting harder and harder to find “vintage” parts for them, said Jason Poole, director of public works.
The city could purchase and install new digital meters or kiosk systems, Elmore said, but that would be costly.
City officials met with members of the Belleville Main Street Committee of Greater Belleville Chamber of Commerce and discussed the value of being able to advertise “free parking” for customers of downtown shops and restaurants, according to Elmore.
“(The parking meters) aren’t particularly attractive,” he said. “So aesthetically it’s a plus to remove them. It’s nice for marketing, and we’re avoiding a huge expense to replace them.”
On East and West Main streets, which don’t have meters, signs alert people to a one-hour parking limit from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Traffic Committee is recommending that this be extended to two hours from Sixth Street east to Oak Street.
The committee has five members. Ward 1 Alderwoman Lillian Schneider voted against recommending the changes to the full City Council, but not because she opposes the idea of removing parking meters or extending the time limit.
Schneider said committee members were asked to vote without basic facts, such as the number of parking meters, where they’re located, how much it will cost to remove them, how much it will cost to replace time-limit signs and who will be in charge of enforcing the new limit.
“We need to have all our ducks in a row,” she said.
Schneider also wants more information on agreements with organizations and businesses that have reserved parking spots in city-owned lots.
500 parking meters
The city has about 500 parking meters along streets other than Main and in four parking lots in downtown Belleville. That figure surprised Poole, who estimated 60 to 80 before he drove around and counted them on Friday.
Poole said the parking meters would be removed by Street Department employees by cutting the poles to ground level and filling in holes with concrete instead of digging out bases.
“It’s not going to happen overnight, but we’ll get it done,” he said.
The city of Belleville closed its parking department in 2010 to save money and turned enforcement over to the police department, which began assigning part-time community service officers to collect coins and respond to citizen complaints about violations.
The officers generally adopted a policy of issuing warnings instead of tickets. That represented a shift from enforcement by parking-meter attendants, who drove around actively looking for expired meters, marking car tires with chalk and issuing tickets.
In 2017, the late Mayor Mark Eckert and former Police Chief Bill Clay, now director of human resources, defended the kinder, gentler policy as good for business, despite reduced revenue.
Clay gave a hypothetical example of friends or family members spending $150 for an evening of dining and shopping in downtown Belleville then walking to their car to find a $10 parking ticket on the windshield.
“I’m greeted with a wonderful thank you from Belleville of a (ticket) on top of all I’ve done,” Clay said at the time. “That’s really going to make me want to come back here, is it not?”
Revenue fluctuations
The city collected $64,342 in parking-meter revenue for the fiscal year 2013-14, according to Jamie Maitret, director of finance.
Here are subsequent collections:
- $59,323 in 2014-15
- $63,688 in 2015-16
- $44,242 in 2016-17
- $29,131 in 2017-18
- $25,441 in 2018-19
- $34,880 in 2019-20
- $10,400 in 2020-21
- $8,109 in 2021-22
- $4,092 in 2022-23
- $8,531 in 2023-24 (to date).
Fluctuations in parking-meter revenue likely result from several factors, including lower enforcement levels and malfunctioning meters, but also business openings and closings, street festivals and the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered restaurants and shops for months at a time in 2020 and 2021.
Assistant Police Chief Mark Heffernan has another theory for the overall reduction in revenue.
“It could be as simple as people not putting money in the meters,” he said. “People don’t carry cash anymore. They don’t have coins in their cars. The quarter system to park is a thing of the past, it seems to me.”
Heffernan noted that many communities are going to digital kiosk systems that allow people to pay with credit or debit cards.
Lincoln Theater co-owner Dave Schoenborn, who heads the Belleville Main Street Committee, has noticed some parking meters in downtown Belleville damaged to the point of being dangerous, prompting him to report them to the Street Department.
Schoenborn said time limits are needed to keep office workers and people showing up for jury duty at the courthouse from parking all day in spaces intended for customers of Main Street businesses.
As for the parking meters, he agrees that they should be removed.
“It makes sense to me, and it makes sense to all the other (downtown merchants) that I’ve talked to,” he said.
This story was originally published November 20, 2023 at 6:30 AM.
