Parking changes coming to downtown
POTTSTOWN >> Borough council has authorized the advertisement of a change to parking rates that will, among other things, reduce free parking on High and King streets and raise hourly rates by 43 percent.
During a meeting full of news Monday night, council without comment or discussion voted unanimously to authorize Solicitor Charles D. Garner Jr. to advertise changes to the “master traffic ordinance.”
On High and King Streets, which current have three hours of free parking, the change would allow only one hour of free parking, and 50 cents per hour thereafter.
The hourly rate will also be increased in the borough-owned lots from 35 cents an hour to 50 cents an hour, a 43 percent hike.
The changes will also enable the use of a phone app called ParkMobile to not only pay for parking in town, but also to reserve parking spaces.
The changes are largely the same as those last discussed publicly last June and were recommended by a committee that included police, downtown merchants and Peggy Lee-Clark, the head of Pottstown Area Industrial Development, the borough’s economic development arm.
Keller has noted that signing a contract with ParkMobile, which will also allow people to reserve parking as well as pay for it, “costs the borough nothing. There is no cost to the borough.”
The reason the nine-member parking committee decided to reduce the three-free hours of street parking to one, said Keller, is to encourage turnover.
“Frankly, one of the biggest problems is the merchants themselves taking up their customer parking in front of their stores,” said Keller.
The parking kiosks in the borough lots will remain in place, although they may be phased out in later years of the new method of paying for
parking takes hold, Keller said.
The vote Monday also authorized the elimination of the coin drop boxes still in some of the borough lots, such as the one behind Trinity Reformed Church on King Street.
The new rules and fees will apply in the borough’s parking lots seven days a week, from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.
However, according to Keller, the transfer of parking payments will not yet apply to those who hold parking permits.
“The changes to permit parking payment options will also require an ordinance change prior to its implementation,” and that is “temporarily on hold” until the other changes are put into place, he said.
The last time a comprehensive look was taken at downtown parking rules was 2002. Rates were last changed in 2013.