Will Pay and Display Be the Only Way?

Like it or not, you could be seeing more of the “pay and display” parking machines now found along portions of Clayton and Broad streets.

The 16 machines accept credit cards, bills and coins, then spit out a receipt indicating exactly how much time you have to park. You then put the ticket on your dashboard so the parking enforcement officials can see it.

The Athens Downtown Development Authority Board, which manages parking downtown, will soon make a recommendation to the Mayor and Commission about purchasing more machines.

Mayor Nancy Denson said Tuesday, at the monthly meeting of the ADDA, that she wants to “open the discussion” about the machines to learn if shoppers and merchants think they’re a good idea.

She has heard complaints, she said, about the mechanized meters, which are located between several parking spaces. She just wants to know if installing more is a good idea.

Commissioner Mike Hamby, who’s also a member of the ADDA board, said the pay-and-display meters offer one advantage. Someone coming downtown at night can pay for four hours of parking at once, instead of having to leave whatever activity he or she is doing to move the car and feed the meter.

Laura Miller, who directs parking operations for the ADDA, said the computerized meters can also generate reports on parking activities. Since , and the hours of enfocement increased, the pay-and-display meters have received an additional $550.

The ADDA board didn’t discuss making a recommendation further.

In other business, ACC Police Officer Sgt. Derek Scott , who works downtown, said he and other officers have noticed an uptick in the number of homeless people who are milling around downtown. For the past eight weeks or so, people who are new to the officers have been gathering on the corners of College Avenue and Clayton Street.

“I don’t know where they are coming from or why,” Scott said. He said the officers try to build a rapport with familiar homeless people, to learn their backgrounds and stories and to direct them to community resources when doing so seems a good idea.