The Town of Watertown provided the following announcement:
During the week of January 19-22, installation of new parking meters will begin, replacing all of the existing meters, both on-street and in municipal parking lots—the Watertown Square Municipal Lot and the Wells Avenue Lot in Coolidge Square.
Credit cards can now be used to pay for parking. In the near future, mobile payment by cell phone will also be accepted. New parking fee is $1.00 per hour except in the Wells Avenue Lot and along Nichols Avenue, where
the fee will be $.50 per hour.
Credit card transactions and in the future mobile payment will have a $1.00 minimum fee and a service fee of 25 cents. Parking payment is required Monday through Saturday except holidays, from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
So much for the quick stop where you could put in 10 cents or 25 cents just to drop off something without getting a ticket.
Now the minimum charge is $1.25
I didn’t like it when other towns did it and it’s why I stopped doing business in those places.
So much for the simpler life of Watertown.
The way I read it is the $1.25 minimum is for credit cards. The meters take coins and you should still be able to put in one or two. I will check with the Town.
We are adding to the woes of businesses in town. I hope coins can be used for the quick stops, but it’s not worth it to pay so much to go to the post office or other locations that won’t be long time stops. I’ll be going to the Newton Nonantum P.O. as they have a parking lot that provides 2 hr. free parking for the area businesses. Their businesses seem to be quite stable where ours are failing.
Also . . . the time that you have to pay the fee seems to have been increased from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. . . .
These are the policies of the 2016 public works committee head by Aaron Dushku and Susan Falkoff finally coming to fruition. Just look back to their 2016 meeting reports. Goal was always to raise revenue through new electronic parking meters. These previously elected counselors never were in touch with the small business community and low-inc0me family as they would rather raise minimum wage while simultaneously raising the cost of living on people in order to fund pet projects https://www.watertown-ma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/19825/2016-07-26-Public-Works-Committee-Report_parkingMeters?bidId= When will Watertown vote to get rid of the Council – Manager form of government that has zero accountability to taxpayers. The fact that some very plugged in residents were not aware of these efforts years ago is proof this is an outdated model.