By Megan Kelley

Review Writer

Lake Orion’s Downtown Development Authority Board of Directors met for their regularly scheduled meeting on Oct. 12 and heard two parking-related presentations.

First, Sheryl Collier and Rob Matthews from Municipal Parking Services discussed “safety sticks”, then Michael Jones from DG Energy and James Vogt from Eco-Green Energy gave their presentation on commercial charging stations.

Safety Sticks

Parking has consistently been brought up as one of the top issues in downtown Lake Orion; in fact, it’s currently listed as the second most important DDA priority this year, right after music/events.

Over the past several years, downtown Lake Orion has looked into many options for parking including parking meters and increased parking enforcement and has also implemented 15-minute parking spaces.

Municipal Parking Services offers a device called a Safety Stick. These Safety Sticks are devices that deter illegal parking and can remotely monitor any parking space.

“Think of it as an officer on the street. We can put this Safety Stick just about anywhere to monitor anything related to parking,” said Collier.

The device does all the work of parking enforcement, and violations are approved by village officials and sent out by mail. Photos are taken on the Safety Stick when a car parks, how long it stays and when it is moved. The tickets issued and mailed out by village officials would also include photos from the Safety Stick.

In May and June of this year, Municipal Parking Services did a trial run with one of their Safety Sticks at the 15-minute parking space just outside of Ed’s Broadway Gift and Costume near the Flint and Broadway streets intersection.

According to Municipal Parking Services, throughout the 19 days that the Safety Stick was in place, 195 cars parked in the 15-minute space and 31 stayed longer than 15 minutes.

Something notable about the system is that it is also provided at no cost. Equipment, installation, design and maintenance are all done in exchange for half of any violation revenue.

The Municipal Parking Services Safety Sticks are currently being used in Flint and Hamtramck and are about to be installed in Royal Oak, Collier said.

The Safety Sticks are also capable of being built upon should the village decide to implement paid parking in the future.

Commercial Charging Stations

Though electric vehicle charging stations have not been a consistent topic of discussion, they are something that could be useful in a downtown setting like Lake Orion.

Eco-Green Energy represents three major electric vehicle charging station manufacturers but only presented on the Enel X.

As more people opt to purchase electric vehicles — and as more car manufacturers continue to build on the growing green industry — the number of electric vehicles on the street will only increase as time goes on and for this reason, Jones and Vogt say charging stations are becoming more useful than ever.

The GM Orion Assembly plant is a leader in electric vehicle manufacturing, producing the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Cruise AV test vehicles. Coming in 2021, the plant is slated to produce the Bolt EUV.

The cost for one dual pump charging port would round out to a minimum of $6,000 and up to $18,000, said Vogt. However, these products also include a DTE rebate that would cut that cost quite a bit.

According to Orion Township Supervisor Chris Barnett, who also sits on the DDA board, there is only one publicly available charging port in the township at the General Motors plant, and several privately owned businesses also have ports for their own use.

“The GM plant in Orion is making all electric cars. To me, it was a little embarrassing, we’ve been talking about this for a while, that we’re building all electric cars in our plant, that’s in our township, that’s our biggest employer and there’s no place to plug them in in our whole township,” Barnett said.

Should the DDA move forward with this project, Eco-Green Energy would handle most of the logistics including dealing with DTE and getting downtown Lake Orion onto their project list.

Possible locations for these include the lot on Slater Street or one of the other lots in the downtown; however each port would need a 50 amp circuit.