At last nights Select Board meeting, the board voted 5-0 to pause the downtown parking kiosks at the Upper Haven (CVS lot) and 5-0 at the Brande Court lot. They also slated a review of the program overall and a potential January 2025 return date.
Numerous local business owners kicked off public comment expressing their concerns with the towns implementation and rollout of the parking kiosks. They cited walk-in traffic significantly down and declining sales over the same period last year as the driving factor for requesting the board to pause or remove the kiosks all together.
Board member Melissa Murphy noted that the kiosks themselves are not intended to work with the towns plan for one hour of free parking. She also spoke with both Bridget, the parking enforcement officer as well as Deputy Chief Amendola on the parking concerns. Mark Dockser stated that if the board agreed to the motion of pausing the kiosks, there should be an expectation of how to explore it going forward as opposed to stopping it and “washing” the boards hand of it.
Chair Carlo Bacci wanted to see where the town would be on the “laundry list” of items that need attention and revisit it in January. Vice-Chair Karen Herrick wanted to see if the board could form a sub-committee to see if the laundry list Carlo mentioned was completed but ultimately the board decided to not go in that direction.
Board member Chris Haley recused himself from the overall discussion due to being an abutter to the Brande Court lot but returned to vote on the Upper Haven lot. Chris cited that the Select Board, Town Meeting and the PARC Committee all voted on the kiosks previously (in 2022) because of the data they had at the time and that he was voting on the CVS kiosks tonight with the data presented at the October 8, 2024 meeting.
The board set a date for the town to complete their research on how a re-vamped rollout would look with a deadline of January 15th, 2025. During future agendas, the board also added to their next meeting, a public hearing on changing the enforcement times in the parking lots.
