Town Seeks Public Input on Parking Rate Hike, Longer Meter Hours

The Parking Committee has had their say – 40 pages worth – on the future of stationary vehicles in Brookline, and now it's the public's turn.

At their Thursday night meeting, the Brookline Transportation Board scheduled a Sept. 20 public hearing on raising meter rates and extending meter hours. A second meeting on the issues will follow in October.

The meetings come as the town considers installing additional "multispace parking meters," ATM-like boxes where drivers can use a credit card or cash to pay for a temporary parking permit to display on your dashboard. Officials prefer them, Transportation Administrator Todd Kirrane said, because they make it easier to raise rates across the board as well as locally during high-demand events such as Red Sox games. Once they can adjust rates remotely, via computer, the city will be able to execute a more nuanced parking strategy than the current $0.75 per hour flat rate.

The discussion was lent some urgency by the fact that the new meters are going to need plenty of signs, and those signs are going to need parking hours on them. Any multispace meters already installed, then, will need their relatively new signs replaced, Kirrane said. And that costs money. If new hours are set quickly, fewer signs will need replacing.

Members of the town's business community will also have an opportunity to discuss these topics in an "informal meeting" to be held some time in August. The gathering will involve a couple of board members – though not enough to constitute a quorum and thus make it an official public meeting – and be organized by local merchants. Members of the community will be able to attend as well.

Board member Bill Schwartz, who was co-chair of the committee that put the recommendations together, said the meters are part of a strategy to "do a better job with the resources we have."