8,083 Reasons to Fix Parking in Red Bank

A downtown business owner stood at the microphone before the borough council earlier this year and recounted instances of coming to Red Bank in the morning and leaving at night with a fistful of parking tickets.

It would have been easy to dismiss the notion as hyperbole, the complaints of someone who had forgotten or didn’t care to drop a few quarters in the meter when he got to work. Even when calls of support came from the audience like shouts of “testify” coming from a Baptist congregation following a reading from the Gospel, it seemed only like the bitter expression of someone who had tired of coming back to his car only to find a slip of paper tucked in under the wiper blade.

Perhaps he had a point.

In 2010, Red Bank issued 8,083 parking tickets.

Consider that number, obtained via Open Public Records Act request, for a moment. Red Bank is a town that covers less than two square miles. The only places you’ll find meters throughout the borough are in its downtown and its few parking lots, an area completely traversable in a pleasant 20-minute stroll. Currently, the borough’s dedicated parking enforcement unit employs three attendants – two recent hires are retired police officers – who as a collective have given out tickets at a sometimes-staggering pace.

The revenue the tickets bring in to the borough, combined with what it makes from its meters, is immense. It’s something that Red Bank needs, or at least is something it’s officials have come to rely on.

It’s clear that parking in Red Bank will never be free – or, barring construction of a parking garage, plentiful – but recent threats from business owners and visitors about not coming back is changing the way Red Bank considers how the business of parking should be handled.

A Change in Approach

Gary Watson is Red Bank’s director of the public works. Parking enforcement, which falls under the public works umbrella, is something Watson has overseen for the past three years or so.

For the first time, since he’s been in charge at least, the borough’s parking attendants, the ones writing those thousands of tickets, are trying something new: looking for an alternative. With complaints not only centering on the frequency with which tickets are written, but also alleging run-ins with sometimes-arrogant and angry parking enforcement officials, the need for a friendlier, if not more understanding kind of meter maid, has been brought up.

“Nobody wants to get a ticket,” Watson said in a telephone interview. “We want to do what’s best for everyone. We’re trying to open up some dialogue.”

Watson said his three enforcement attendants – the department is not connected at all with the Red Bank Police Department – will often wait a bit before writing a ticket or, if they’ve identified whose car it is, will seek out owners inside of a shop or restaurants to let them know they need to feed the meter. Call it a proactive way to still get paid.

It wasn’t just the number of tickets found on his windshield that set Bistro in Red Bank owner George Lyristis off, or led him to write up a list of ways the borough could improve the downtown for its businesses, but they way in which they were delivered.

He said he’s sure visitors have been driven off by their previous encounters with parking enforcement attendants. Before the economy turned, negative reactions could have been ignored, if for no other reason than Red Bank was the hottest destination, by a wide margin, in the area.

“There’s a way of handling yourself in those situations. In my restaurant, my waiters are my mouthpiece. When the waiter is nasty it reflects badly on my restaurant,” he said following his appearance before council. “When visitors come into town and they’re dealing with a person who is nasty and confrontational, that speaks for the town. They (parking enforcers) represent the town.”

Councilman Ed Zipprich starting working with public works a few months ago and helped the department tackle the winter-long issue of storm-preparedness and snow removal. With spring here, Zipprich has turned his attention to the parking problem. He acknowledges that one doest exist, but is quick to say that fixes are available and that Red Bank is actively seeking them out.

A pleasant disposition is a start.

“There have been complaints in the community and we’re trying to be proactive about responding to them,” he said. “The new parking attendants are more customer-service oriented. It makes things better and it encourages people to come back.”

Hand Over Fist

At the Red Bank Senior Center last week, borough officials presented their proposed 2011 budget to the public. Business Administrator Stanley Sickles folded his hands together and, with an easy-to-follow budget presentation projected onto a screen beside him, took a moment to discuss the borough’s financial struggles.

Despite cuts made by the Red Bank’s fiscally conservative departments, the town’s residents will likely face a small tax increase when the budget is finally approved this month, he said. Pension and health benefits continue to rise, he pointed out, and there’s the expensive problem of snow removal caused by record-setting storms this past winter to contend with.

With department heads on the lookout for more cuts before the end of the month, Councilman Mike DuPont assured the gathered crowd, the borough introduced a tentative budget of $19.9 million, with a tax levy of $11.5 million.

Though officials were quick to cite the hurdles responsible for the increase in the budget, any real details about the borough’s revenue, one of the things that helps keep tax increases modest and budgets under the Gov. Chris Christie-imposed 2 percent cap, were omitted from a slideshow printout of the presentation.

When it comes to earning Red Bank money, parking is a big deal.

The borough earned $720,895 in parking fees last year through the use of its meters and sales of permits and parking cards and is anticipating making close to a million dollars this year. Red Bank’s municipal court generated $716,576 in 2010 from fines and other court costs. Though parking tickets aren’t responsible for that entire total, at $38 a pop they do account for a large chunk of it.

That’s more than $1.4 million combined, or, if you’re keeping score at home, more than seven percent of the borough’s total budget.

Even with free parking at nights and on Sunday, and with free holiday parking used to entice shoppers downtown leading up the Christmas, and even with having to pay to staff an actual parking department, the borough has more than managed to make its money.

Looking for Parking Innovation

No one is even considering the prospect of free parking, but there are ways to ease the frustration some feel when parking in Red Bank. Some of those frustrations likely start with the zero-flashing meters standing watch over every single parking space downtown.

In a world of credit cards and E-ZPass, change is an antiquated.

But, Watson said the meters aren’t old. In the past few years Red Bank replaced all of its coin meters with, well, coin meters, but ones that offer an alternative method of payment. Those only marginally noticeable credit card-type slots on the front of the meters accept Smart Cards, an electronic meter payment system that allows you to clock in and out, using only as much time you need, in effect saving you money.

But, the people who know of and use the Smart Cards are few, Zipprich said, and the merchants who carry them are few and far between. One of the problems is the price tag. The cards are prepaid and currently the only one available in Red Bank costs $25. The prospect of facing a $38 ticket that might not get issued isn’t as daunting when the alternative is shelling out nearly as much for a card just to park on a borough street for an hour.

“It’s important to lower the dollar amount on the cards,” he said. “A lot of our visitors go in to merchants and ask for change. Instead (the merchants) can say ‘here’s a $10 smart card.’

“I don’t think a $10 lift is as difficult as a $25 lift when you’re asking someone to buy these cards.”

Though the focus is on Smart Cards, the council and the parking bureau have just recently started discussing bigger-picture ideas. It might turn out that the Smart Card route is ineffective, or that there’s newer technology out there that can pay for itself and still earn Red Bank money.

Zipprich said the key to any new system is that it be self-sustaining. The borough must be able to pay for an upgrade without incurring significant debt for a significant period of time.

Watson said it’s just about making things easier.

“We’re looking to try and improve service and make it more convenient. We’re trying to see what’s out there and to see what’s best for here,” he said. “I’m sure as the process goes – it needs to take its normal process – when we find something that works and we’ll explore it more.”

2010 Parking Tickets by Month

• Jan. 697
• Feb. 503
• March 883
• April 679
• May 841
• June 706
• July 885
• Aug. 1016
• Sep. 644
• Oct. 602
• Nov. 304
• Dec. 323