STONE HARBOR – At the Aug. 1 meeting of Stone Harbor Council, Council President Frank Dallahan said there were “over 900 parking tickets written in July.” The actual number is not yet in from the joint municipal court in Avalon but is expected to be over 1,000.
In June, Stone Harbor issued 893 parking tickets. In May, the number was 569. Social media has been busy with complaints and threats not to shop at Stone Harbor businesses.
The problem lies in the implementation of a new parking app from ParkMobile as the way to pay for parking in the borough. The app has been successfully implemented in other towns in the county and expectations were that there would be little difficulty integrating it into Stone Harbor. Those expectations were wrong.
The issues that have been identified are being chipped away at by the borough. Some just represent a lost opportunity.
Unlike Sea Isle City, Stone Harbor did not elect to overlap its meter and kiosk system with the ParkMobile app for the first year. Going cold turkey has presented problems for individuals who do not have smartphones or who are technologically challenged when it comes to downloading the app and entering the needed payment information. The opportunity to overlap is gone.
Signage is the next problem and one the borough is addressing. People need signs that explain what they need to do and that provide them with the location information the app will want once it is installed and operational on a phone.
Other problems range from not realizing that the app will not notify you that your time is running out unless you permit the notification to not realizing you have a license plate embedded in the app that is not the plate of the car you are driving that day.
Regardless of the issues, this has been a remarkably bumpy road for a borough that prides itself on being a welcoming location for visitors.
At the Aug. 1 meeting, Dallahan reviewed some of the measures being taken to ameliorate the problem. Signage is being increased. A potential new method of payment for drivers over 60 years of age is under consideration. The large banner that the borough purchased, which was going to run across 96th Street as a reminder to use the app, will not be installed. No reason was given. Dallahan had already announced at an earlier meeting that one police officer would patrol the business district as an “ambassador” aiming to help those having difficulty with the app.
While the borough wrestles with the unintended consequences of the ParkMobile implementation, the joint municipal court that serves Stone Harbor and Avalon is swamped with calls and activity related to the hundreds of tickets that have been written. The court, based in Avalon, is bringing on a part-time employee at 20 hours per week to handle the overflow of calls from those individuals ticketed in Stone Harbor.
With August here, time remaining to rectify the problems for this summer season is running out. Some in social media scoff at the problem, asking why Stone Harbor drivers should be having so much more difficulty adjusting to the ParkMobile app than drivers in other towns, none of whom saw a spike in tickets that would match the magnitude of that in Stone Harbor.
Regardless of the reasons, almost 2,400 parking tickets issued to residents and visitors is not the welcome to Stone Harbor that borough officials would prefer to see. The fact that a problem existed was clear in May, with a 1,600% increase in tickets issued over May 2022. Efforts to address it have had no discernible impact in the following two months.
Borough Administrator Manny Parada said at the meeting that new signage was going up in the next week. Whether that will help salvage part of August is not yet clear. If not, the problem will rectify itself by simply running its course. Paid parking in Stone Harbor is only in effect from May 1 to Oct. 1.
Parking meters earned the borough $431,951 in fiscal year 2022. That is one number that is expected to be higher at the close of 2023.
Contact the author, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.
