Proposal would include parking meters on village streets

By Megan Kelley
Staff Writer
LAKE ORION — The Lake Orion Village Council is once again discussing the addition of paid parking on the streets of downtown.
During its meeting on Nov. 27, the council received a presentation from Municipal Parking Service (MPS) on metered parking.
The presentation from MPS was relatively standard as far as how the metered parking would work. Essentially, parking sticks would be placed at on-street parking spaces where downtown visitors will pay to park in the space for the allotted time.
The parking sticks would also do a majority of the work as far as enforcement, taking the license plate numbers of a vehicle in violation and having the information sent to the Lake Orion Police Department, with police officers then issuing tickets.
Parking downtown has been an issue for years, so much so that Lake Orion’s Downtown Development Authority has not only created a parking lot on Slater Street several years ago, but is now undergoing the process of transforming the Lake Orion Lumber Yard into an additional parking lot.
One thing that the village has been reluctant to do though, is to implement paid parking, specifically on the streets.
Over the past several years, both the DDA and the village council have received a number of presentations on putting in paid parking but neither entities have ever gone through with the idea.
Putting in metered parking with MPS would come with no initial cost to the village, with MPS covering the initial installment and then capturing a percentage of both parking fees and money made from tickets issued.
According to MPS, installing the parking sticks would likely take one to two months to complete installation should the village decide to move forward with the process.
While a majority of council have been proponents for paid parking, Council President Pro-Tem Teresa Rutt has maintained her stance against paid parking. However, she too was in favor of presenting information to the community in order to potentially receive buy-in.
“I understand the logic of paid parking but I think in order for me to say, ‘Yeah, let’s start negotiating a contract,’ I need to hear from merchants and residents that there is some buy-in for it,” Rutt said. “I don’t want to sit here and say logically I see the numbers make sense but nobody wants it.”
Most of the council expressed their interest in receiving feedback from the community including residents and businesses before moving forward with anything.
With that in mind, council voted unanimously to authorize village Manager Darwin McClary to draft up a proposal and parking map with MPS in order to provide as much information as possible at a public forum that would be held at a later date.