Editorial: The heavy hand of meter regulation in White River Junction

A driver pulls into a parking space in the town square parking lot in White River Junction, Vt., on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. Hartford plans to install parking kiosks that will collect fees for a total of 211 parking spaces in town, including those in the lot, using about $145,000 of the town’s American Rescue Plan Act funds. (Valley News - Alex Driehaus)

A driver pulls into a parking space in the town square parking lot in White River Junction, Vt., on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. Hartford plans to install parking kiosks that will collect fees for a total of 211 parking spaces in town, including those in the lot, using about $145,000 of the town’s American Rescue Plan Act funds. (Valley News - Alex Driehaus) Alex Driehaus

Published: 10-11-2024 10:01 PM

Modified: 10-13-2024 2:34 PM


Hartford’s love-hate relationship with parking meters has been a 50-year affair, as our colleague Christina Dolan chronicled in last weekend’s Valley News.

The lovers — business owners, planners and elected officials prominent among them — are once again in the ascendant: Metered parking will return to White River Junction next spring or summer for the first time since 1975, following a unanimous vote by the Selectboard earlier this month to spend $145,000 in federal money to buy a system that will regulate a total of 211 downtown parking spaces.

This decision may well have caught many of the meter-haters off-guard, inasmuch as voters at Town Meeting in 2020 rejected spending $160,000 in local option tax revenue to install meters. And it wasn’t close: 906 in favor, 2,088 opposed. That’s landslide territory.

So how did the Selectboard justify ignoring the popular will? Chairman Michael Hoyt suggested that the message voters sent to the town in 2020 was unclear: They could have been protesting the funding source rather than rejecting metering itself. This rationale strikes us as disingenuous at the very least. Since neither revenue source would have had a direct impact on tax bills, it’s hard to imagine that many voters in 2020 were objecting to where the money was coming from. And if there was ambiguity, the board certainly could have made further efforts to ascertain voters’ opinions before charging ahead.

More likely in our view is that the Selectboard simply decided that those pesky voters could not be allowed to obstruct the March of Progress. And maybe they have a case. White River Junction’s remarkable revitalization has continued apace since 2020, and parking is even harder to find now than it was then. The metering system is intended to create more parking turnover, making it easier for shoppers and other visitors to find a space.

“A parking meter can encourage folks to move their vehicles more often, thus allowing others to make use of limited parking spaces,” according to Town Manager John Haverstock. Indeed, the town already imposes a two-hour parking limit on most spaces downtown but is unable to enforce it without meters, town officials say.

So the town will contract with ISP Group, headquartered in San Diego, to purchase and install 16 fee-collecting parking kiosks throughout downtown that will accept coins, cash and credit cards and be compatible with several smartphone apps.

The metering and enforcement system is the same one used in Hanover, which has 500 municipal parking spaces. It generates more than $1 million in annual revenue from permits, meter payments and fines in that community, a fact that may also have caught the eye of the Hartford Selectboard.

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At the same time, we are bound to note that Hanover’s downtown scene is hardly vibrant in comparison with White River Junction’s. Anecdotally, at least, a fair number of people avoid going there if they can because they regard the parking situation to be a hassle. It’s a fair question whether retail businesses also are leery of opening in Hanover in part because of parking.

Perhaps White River Junction is sufficiently lively to avoid this deterrent effect, but it’s not a sure thing by any means. And while two hours seems to be a reasonable limit, there are many possible scenarios where it would be inconvenient at the very least to have to move your vehicle: a leisurely lunch with friends; a lengthy board meeting; a theater matinee; a funeral service or a wedding, to name a few.

To our way of thinking, the heavy hand of meter regulation and enforcement also somehow contradicts both the current ethos of White River Junction and its free-wheeling history. Town planners promise to do extensive public outreach before the metering system goes online; that’s a good idea, as our experience has been that people generally hate being charged for something that has been free for a long time.