New parking meters are coming to Mill Valley.
The City Council voted Monday to approve the Police Department’s proposal to remove meters in four city downtown lots and replace them with kiosks where residents and visitors can use coins, a credit card or tap to pay.
Residents can also obtain a “resident shopper vehicle permit,” or RVSP, for an annual $75 fee to park at no extra cost for the allotted time.
The plan also involves leasing 110 new meters with the same payment options for use on city streets.
The city’s parking rates, $1.50 an hour in municipal lots and $2.50 an hour on streets, will not change.
Of the 440 parking meters in the city, 122 are working, police Capt. Lindsay Haynes told the council.
In 2022, the city bought refurbished electronic meters that had been in San Francisco. Within two years, “issues” emerged, Haynes said.
“At some point, we took six of the meters from the field from different spots that were dead,” she said. “And it turns out that five of the six had fried motherboards at that point, leading us to believe that this is why our meters are slowly dying. … They’re no longer working.”
Earlier this year, the department experimented with installing a kiosk at the City Hall lot as a possible solution, Haynes said.
For more than 50 years starting in 1949, Mill Valley used coin-fed, windup mechanical meters. In the early 2000s, those were replaced by meters with batteries. In 2012, the city installed its first electronic meters. Those were upgraded in 2017, and replaced in 2022 — with the meters that are now failing.
“During the kiosk trial period, staff collected and responded to approximately 25 complaints,” a staff report said. “Complaints ranged from not understanding how to use the kiosk, not liking the kiosk, lack of ease of use, expressing that the kiosk was positioned too far away from their vehicle, frustration there was a line to use the kiosk, and that it was less convenient than individual meters.”
The Police Department said it acknowledged and understood these concerns, but also noted the advantages of kiosks over the meters. They required less maintenance, had more payment options and were more environmentally friendly.
Haynes said the department plans to place two kiosks in the City Hall lot, two in the Depot Plaza lot, three in the municipal lot behind Piazza D’Angelo’s restaurant and one kiosk in the Mill Creek Plaza lot. The lots will have signs instructing how visitors can text to pay.
The parking revenue would allow the city to increase its parking enforcement staff from two to three full-time officers and possibly add another two part-time officers, City Manager Todd Cusimano said.
The new kiosks and meters will be leased for three years, Haynes said, in anticipation of new parking payment technologies.
Several councilmembers said they expected to hear complaints after people were ticketed. They said a public education would be needed.
“In terms of parking enforcement, do we have the ability to take down license plates and give a warning the first time?” said Vice Mayor Max Perrey. “Is that something we can do?”
“You want to educate. You want to be thoughtful,” said Cusimano. “And, hey, we have the RSVP program if you go down there all the time, right? And it’s cheaper.”
Haynes said the department would like to have the new meters in place before the end of the year.
