Village announces scrapping of some meter regulations

Will reinstate Saturday paid parking

By MARTIN WILBUR

Mount Kisco’s updated parking meter regulations that were proposed this spring and temporarily paused will soon go into effect with a couple of changes, village officials recently announced.

The village has scrapped the two additional hours from 6 to 8 p.m., when the public would have had to pay for on-street meter and municipal lot parking. The hours of meter operation will remain 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

However, starting the week of Aug. 4, Saturday meter hours will resume for all street and lot meters except for the North Moger parking lot, which will remain free for the entire weekend and holidays. All parking will be free on Sundays and holidays.

Village Manager Edward Brancati said the new rate of 75 cents an hour will change immediately after Labor Day. Instead of motorists needing to pay 25 cents for every 30 minutes, they will need to pay 25 cents for 20 minutes. 

The roughly four-week delay in the new rates was needed to allow the village time to recalibrate the meters and pay stations, Brancati said.

“We have everything else ready to go but we are still waiting on the delivery of components that need to be installed in each of the parking meters,” he said.

In May, the Village Board unveiled its proposal to update the parking rates and regulations, which was met with some resistance by the Mount Kisco Chamber of Commerce and several downtown merchants. There was consensus in the business community that the extra quarter an hour for parking would have a negligible impact, but there was opposition to the two extra hours in the early evening the public would have to pay and the resumption of Saturday hours.

Village officials met with the business community in hopes of finding a solution that would increase revenue for the municipality but avoid negatively impacting merchants and the public. This spring Mayor J. Michael Cindrich estimated that since COVID-19, parking revenues have been down about $200,000 to $250,000 a year, largely because of the decline in parking permits.

Brancati said Saturday meter hours is something that the village had done for years, but was eliminated with the onset of the pandemic to help businesses.

“Charges for parking on Saturdays, which is something we did forever and then took away, made it free on Saturdays from just before or around and in response to COVID,” Brancati said. “But it is something we’re going to reinstate.”

New EV charging rates

The board also announced that once additional electric vehicle charging stations are installed in the village’s municipal lots later this year, the rates for those spaces as well as the penalties will increase.

Brancati said it is expected that sometime this fall Mount Kisco will install 27 EV stations with 40 Level 2 ports to be split among the village’s municipal lots. EV spots will then rise to $1.50 an hour. Some stations will have a single port while others will be capable of charging two cars at a time.

That extra charge will offset the charges for electricity, maintenance on the units and soft costs, Brancati said. Installation of the 40 ports is estimated to cost the village between $30,000 and $40,000. Westchester County will pay for more than half of the cost while there will be a NYSERDA program and rebates from Con Edison that will reduce the price tag further, he said.

Another change will see Mount Kisco’s parking enforcement personnel issue tickets to any vehicle that is parked in a space at an EV charging station that is not an electric vehicle. Penalties would be up to $25.

“It is meant for charging electric vehicles — that’s it,” Brancati said. “We think the fine is not insignificant but appropriate.”

There will be no penalty for an electric vehicle that isn’t charging but the drivers of those cars will still have to pay $1.50 an hour to legally park. Electric vehicles are also permitted to park in the regular spaces for what will soon be 75 cents an hour if they are not charging.