City Hall to have real-time access to parking meter online software

In order to ensure there is transparency, the Georgetown Council will be granted ‘real time’ online access to monitor the daily operations of the parking meter project. This is according to Mayor Patricia Chase-Green.

Chase-Green during a special meeting of the council on Wednesday rubbished claims that the contract with Smart City Solutions is an exploitive deal.

According to her, the software platform will be entirely digital which means not a single dollar of revenue may enter the system without being electronically and automatically accounted for.

“The concessionaire mandates that the city will have real time access to this centralised software platform. To quote from the contract ‘read only access provision by the concessionaire to the city of the password protected, internet based web portal, which displays regularly update performance data of the meter parking operation. This eliminates any possibility of hiding revenue and assures the transparency for the benefit of the city” the City Mayor related.

Mayor Chase-Green said the concessionaire conducted a parking map, traffic and feasibility study having arrived at rates she feels are practicable, affordable and applicable to Guyana.

“On the subject of parking tariffs and fines, I would rather note that the structure must make sense, this is to say that if the tariff is too low, people will continue to park in parking spaces for long period of time and this will very much limit the benefits of the parking meter platform in terms of its benefits to mobility and parking space availability” the mayor said.

She added that “as to the fine’s structure, it is not meant to be money-maker but a means of incentive to the public to pay for parking, as prescribed and the two must make sense…a driver intended to park all day will have little incentive to pay for parking up front and may rather risk getting a fine, which is not so much more than the fee to have been paid in the first place, this will undermine the entire system.”

The special meeting on Wednesday was aimed at reviewing several terms and conditions of the contract for Smart City Solutions with proposed amendments.

However, the Councillors of the Georgetown municipality shared mix reviews about the mayor and City council’s pushing ahead with the controversial parking meter contract.