The 100 digital parking meters that were installed downtown last year and haven't worked since have been back in the news.
First the president of the Canadian company that put them there, Fred Mitschele, turned up in April after a long absence to tell the City Council that the parking meters would be up and working by Memorial Day. If anyone had a peculiar sense of deja vu, it's only because last year Mitschele told City Council members the exact same thing. They would be up and running, he said, by Memorial Day 2007.
They weren't, of course, which is why we're going through this whole silly exercise again. Anyway, a short while after that, Niagara Falls Reporter Senior Editor Rebecca Hudson needed to stop at the Third Street Post Office to drop the day's mail. A conscientious and law-abiding person, she had figured out the complex procedure required to make the things work, when they're actually working, quite on her own. When she got to the last button, the machine's readout informed her that she could pay her $25 fine now or later.
Of course, she hadn't been fined. She hadn't done anything wrong. Nearby, she saw some "workers" noodling about with one of the other meters. She asked what she should do and was told not to worry, since the damn things didn't work.
Next came Council Chairman Sam Fruscione, whose 2006 vote was largely responsible for having the hideous, robotic money-taking machines installed in the first place. Now he would move to have them removed, he said. This prompted an angry response from Mitschele, who blamed Mayor Paul Dyster for the current mess. Mitschele said that his company has, at the city's request, "shouldered much of the bad publicity" over malfunctioning meters "in order to not embarrass the effectiveness of the administration."
In what has become something of a running punchline here this spring, Dyster said he was "caught by surprise" by the whole thing.
Anyway, the Council sympathized with Mitschele, as they should sympathize with anyone trying to do business in Niagara Falls, and voted to allow the non-working, robotic parking meter experiment to continue here for another six months, at least.
Which doesn't change the fact that they never should have been installed in the first place.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | May 27 2008 |