Parking wardens when issuing fines
Fellow councillor Max Brough was also horrified.
‘‘Cash money is legal tender in this country, so we have an obligation to accept that as a form of payment and not try to avoid it,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s my view – we have to be accepting legal tender.’’
Brough said he feared the council bought a lemon of a system in 2012 which was now coming to the end of its useful life, and there was no budget to replace it.
Meanwhile, West found a home for some of that rejected shrapnel.
‘‘I was struggling to get a coin in, so I gave the machine a bit of a tap and $5 fell out in coins – and there was no way of putting back in three extra coins that I got, so I just gave it away to one of the guys sitting on the side of the road.’’
Council group manager for community and customer services Teresa Turner said that while it expected to have some issues due to the age of the machines, it was frustrated with the number of faults and the time it was taking to fix them.
‘‘This has been an ongoing issue for several months, with one of the payment options being unavailable the most common problem,’’ Turner said.
‘‘Contractors are instructed to fix the machines immediately.’’
Turner accepted that motorists were frustrated, and said the council did consider fine cancellation requests, on a case-by-case basis.
‘‘But it’s worth remembering that credit card payments at the machine and the Paymypark app, which allows you to pay via your smartphone, are also available.’’
Problems with the machines have not affected the council’s parking revenue, which is tracking ahead of last year.
Excluding leased carparks, between January 1 and April 30 parking revenue was $523,000, compared to $470,000 for the same period in 2022.