Parking in lot 12A, the metered parking across from the D.P. Culp Center, may have been costing users a little extra pocket change lately, as ETSU Parking Services has discovered five malfunctioning meters.Although the five are operational, Parking Services Director Vernon Bradley says meter numbers 1, 2, 10, 11 and 12 give the user about 48 minutes for a quarter, instead of the 60 minutes that are promised by the instructions on the meter.

As faulty meters have been discovered, parking attendants have stopped issuing citations for those spots, Bradley said.

“Whenever one [meter] went down and was identified, we stopped giving citations until we could either do a temporary fix, like we did now, or even replace them,” Bradley said.

The “temporary fix” did not occur until after a fifth defective meter was discovered on Thursday, Feb. 4.

“There was an incident that occurred yesterday [Feb. 4] where a person received a citation for one of the meters that wasn’t one of the four that were identified,” Bradley said, “so she brought it to the attention of one of the attendants.”

That incident added meter number 10 to the list, which prompted Parking Services to check further into the issue. Meter number 10 was removed and taken to a campus locksmith for an explanation on the inner workings, Bradley said.

The locksmith was unable to find a fix for the meters, leaving Bradley and the Parking Services staff to decide what to do in the meantime before installing all new meters sometime this summer, which has already been approved, Bradley said.

“To have someone come in at this point and service the meters for that expense and then to turn around and purchase new meters in the next couple of months wouldn’t be cost effective,” he said.

To make the five malfunctioning meters accurate, they decided to change their appearance by covering up the space between the 48- and 60-minute marks and the “quarter for 25 cents” instruction.

“We have covered it up, so now they only shows a nickel for 12 minutes and a dime for 24 minutes,” Bradley said. “The other 14 you can get 60 minutes, but at least you will be able to see those particular meters that you only have 48 minutes.”

Although the parking attendants have not been issuing citations for the five flawed meters, Bradley says they will issue warnings for two days before beginning to ticket the violators of those spaces.

“Since we are looking at replacing them in the near future and since they are operational so that anyone who looks at it will identify that that meters only gives 48 [minutes] versus the other 60 [minutes], we are comfortable with that right now until we purchase the new meters.”

Bradley and his staff have many options when choosing replacements for the 17-year-old meters, such as some that can take credit cards, and even ID Bucs.

That technology could cost ETSU about $14,000 for 30 new meters and would cost about $3,000 a year to operate, Bradley said.

The operating costs would be about half of the nearly $6,000 ETSU collects from the meters each year.

Installing a model similar to what exists now would cost about $9,000.

Parking Services is also considering putting a notice on the new meters informing users that they are enforced between 7:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., although Bradley says students and faculty should be aware of these rules, which are listed in the “Parking and Traffic Regulations” pamphlet.

Until the new meters are installed, parking attendants will be checking lot 12A about once every two weeks for any further problems.

“We want to be fair,” Bradley said. “Honestly, we are out there to enforce the rules and regulations . If something isn’t right we are going to take steps to correct it.

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