A Lackawanna County community is out thousands of dollars because of neglected parking meters.
Dunmore Borough Councilman Paul Nardozzi said he noticed a problem when he parked at the same spot in the business district three weeks in a row, and all three times, the same meter was not working.
"So I decided to check the business district to check all the meters, and out of the 67 meters we have, 47 of them were inoperable," said Nardozzi.
He said many of them weren't working because they were full of change, and hadn't been emptied in five to six weeks.
Borough officials said this all happened because of a move that was actually meant to save money. A police officer's shift was eliminated, which meant a shuffling of officers schedules around. With all the shuffling, no one noticed the meter money was not collected.
Nardozzi said the borough lost about $2,000 because of the oversight. Fifteen-hundred dollars was lost because people couldn't put money in the meters and another $500 was lost because tickets couldn't be written.
Joe Meighan of Dunmore said there is a lot the borough could do with $2,000. "Particularly when they're laying people off. It's a busy downtown area," he said.
The mayor of Dunmore agrees. "Two thousand dollars is a major amount of money for us to miss and not have for our budget," said Mayor Patrick Loughney.
Officials said the solution is to assign a DPW worker and a police officer to collect the money on a weekly basis. Mayor Loughney said this will probably come up at Monday's council meeting, along with Dunmore's 2010 budget.
Dunmore Borough Councilman Paul Nardozzi said he noticed a problem when he parked at the same spot in the business district three weeks in a row, and all three times, the same meter was not working.
"So I decided to check the business district to check all the meters, and out of the 67 meters we have, 47 of them were inoperable," said Nardozzi.
He said many of them weren't working because they were full of change, and hadn't been emptied in five to six weeks.
Borough officials said this all happened because of a move that was actually meant to save money. A police officer's shift was eliminated, which meant a shuffling of officers schedules around. With all the shuffling, no one noticed the meter money was not collected.
Nardozzi said the borough lost about $2,000 because of the oversight. Fifteen-hundred dollars was lost because people couldn't put money in the meters and another $500 was lost because tickets couldn't be written.
Joe Meighan of Dunmore said there is a lot the borough could do with $2,000. "Particularly when they're laying people off. It's a busy downtown area," he said.
The mayor of Dunmore agrees. "Two thousand dollars is a major amount of money for us to miss and not have for our budget," said Mayor Patrick Loughney.
Officials said the solution is to assign a DPW worker and a police officer to collect the money on a weekly basis. Mayor Loughney said this will probably come up at Monday's council meeting, along with Dunmore's 2010 budget.
