Lansford discusses parking meter options

How many parking meters does Lansford Borough need?

Meters line the downtown business district in the borough, but many are nonfunctioning.

Council is considering everything from replacing the broken ones to getting rid of meters entirely.

But at the meeting on Wednesday, three separate proposals failed to get a majority.

One proposal would keep meters on both sides of Ridge Street. Council would make inquiries about what it would cost to replace all the current broken meters, council President Jared Soto said.

The second would be keep meters on both sides of the street but remove meters from sections of town which are not heavily occupied with traffic throughout the day.

The third would be to develop a parking policy where all meters on the north side of Ridge and all meters on Coal and Tunnel streets would be removed, and all on the south side of Ridge would remain, using the removed meters to replace the broken ones.

“For number 3, a parking policy would need to be developed which considers commercial and residential buildings,” Soto said.

Councilman Joe Butrie said he favors doing away with all the parking meters, because the problems they create don’t warrant the amount of money that the borough gets back from them.

“Get rid of them all, that way you don’t have a problem. You don’t have to worry about maintenance or anyone doing meter dumps,” he said.

Butrie said if the borough did away with parking meters on one side of Ridge Street, drivers would just park on the other side.

“People do not like public parking meters,” Butrie said.

Councilwoman Irma Leibensperger said she had trouble supporting any proposal that takes out existing parking meters.

Councilman John Turcmanovich brought an opportunity to council several months ago which may be another option. He found a municipality that was selling hundreds of meters. But council didn’t take action.

Bob Silver proposed getting rid of all meters with the exception of one block of Ridge Street, in the middle of the business district. But he then reversed course and said that council shouldn’t take action without doing more research on the cost, and possibly consulting with business owners.

“I think without a dollar and cents figure, talking like this is nuts. It might cost $20,000 to replace all these,” Silver said.