More changes coming to Salisbury parking meters

Parking is changing in Downtown Salisbury. The city is introducing new electronic parking meters and with that, the city has decided to extend the amount of time that you are allowed to stay parked in a space.

Salisbury Mayor Jake Day said, "So the time limit is changing from 2 hours to 3 hours. We'll see these old meter heads going out and these new electronic meters coming in. It's not a significant change but now we want people to know that they can park for that third hour."

That third hour is coming at a slight cost.

Tom Stevenson, Salisbury's Director of Field Operations said, "It's a dollar for the first hour, a dollar for the second hour and if you choose to stay for the third hour, we have moved it to three dollars."

Originally, the new parking ordinance proposed that people be able to park for up to four hours at a time, but local businesses expressed some concerns.

Mayor Jake Day said, "The businesses are concerned that being able to park four hours in the street might cause people to consume the spaces for too long so tonight we discussed backing that down to three hours so that's what the City Council is going to approve."

Mayor Jake Day added that they aren't doing this for money, they are simply doing it to better manage downtown parking.

"What we've seen over the last few years is a pretty dramatic increase in the number of cars parking downtown and more people visiting downtown so we're seeing a full garage, a full lot meaning lot one, and then full meters around downtown," Mayor Day said.

He said the hope is that this change will encourage more people to utilize street parking. "Managing parking, managing public parking is something that we still desperately need to do," Mayor Day said. 

These changes will take effect after Salisbury's free parking holiday ends on November 27th.