With the passage of the City of Kingston’s budget for 2025, few fees are as likely to be bemoaned in the course of the everyday lives of city residents as those related to parking.
Leaving a vehicle double-parked on the last block of Wall Street while running inside Vincenzo’s to grab a slice? Obstructing crosswalks in Midtown or blocking driveways on the Strand near the bottom of Broadway? Leaving your ride up on the sidewalk in Ponckhockie?
Beginning on January 1, these roadway infractions will earn the motorist a $50 fine, up from $20 for similar infractions in 2024. Unpaid for 15 days, these parking tickets generate surcharges, doubling the penalty to $100.
Getting a parking ticket can be a distressing experience, but wadding them up and throwing them away is a strategy that will end badly. “Our parking policies indicate that if you do not pay three or more tickets,” said mayor Steve Noble, “you may have your car immobilized with a boot until you pay your parking tickets.”
The additional fee for immobilization? $50.
Vehicles parked on any street, highway or parking area in Kingston not indicated for the purpose of emergency parking during a snowstorm will be assumed abandoned and can be impounded.
“These incidents may occur during a snow emergency,” said Noble, “when a street needs to get cleared or during an event that for the safety of the residents, we require that there be no parked cars on the street.”
Blocking the path of a snow plow during a snow emergency can earn the owner of the vehicle a $125 towing charge.
Blocking a fire hydrant will result in a $100 fine.
One act of municipal generosity in the fee schedule for the new year is that the penalty for an expired parking meter remains at $25.
A list of private towing companies identified through the procurement process at the city level are entered onto a roster. Tow-truck companies are contacted on a rotating basis. Companies can charge anywhere below a maximum set in the city code.
The maximum for a tow on a weekend, at night, or on a holiday can cost the owner of the towed vehicle $120. Storage of the vehicle will cost an additional $40 a day if the owner can’t pick up their vehicle by the end of the following workday.
“Most cities do not have their own towing operation, as most cities do not have the need to tow that many cars,” noted the mayor.
Viewed from an adversarial perspective, towing, ticketing and immobilizing can seem manifestations of a revenue-hungry municipal government eager to encroach. Viewed from a municipal planning best-practices perspective, levying fines against the private property of an individual serves to prevent congestion, decreased access to businesses, and avoid environmental harm and inconveniences to travelers.
According to Contemporary Approaches to Parking Pricing, a federal transportation primer, parking meters aren’t the agent of a municipal shakedown. They are the realization of a philosophy which says vehicular traffic must be orderly.
“The cost for paid parking has remained unchanged for some time,” said Noble. “However, it is important to have a fee to park in areas where you want to turn over parking, which allows for people to find street parking near popular shops and restaurants.”
A 2011 average daily traffic (ADT) study measuring traffic at the I-587 intersection with Albany Avenue/Broadway intersection reported between 15,300 and 18,800 vehicles per day, with about four percent of peak-hour traffic being trucks.
If everyone parked and disengorged their vehicles at the same time, even a tenth of that traffic could paralyze all the shopping-district parking spaces in Kingston.
Mayor Noble believes the city’s parking price structure has allowed for prime on-street spots to encourage the desired turnover. “We recently applied for a grant to hire a consultant to do a parking management plan, which would look at the city and all of its business districts to determine best practices to further balance the need for parking while also encouraging people to use other means of transportation in and around the city,” he said.
The implementation of no-idling signs has been educating motorists of the undesirability of the practice. The mayor said that’s been a successful addition to the traffic-flow paradigm
“And with high gas prices,” Noble added, “I believe many people have come to their own conclusion that idling costs them actual dollars, so why do it?”
Parking meters have been part of the municipal landscape for 90 years after the first parking meter — the Park-o-meter #1 — was installed in Oklahoma City. With it, a new source of municipal revenue was born.
City of Kingston revenues generated in 2024 from parking violation fees, surcharges on those initial fees and immobilization boot fees were budgeted at $487,000. Expenses for running and staffing the department of parking violations were budgeted for 2024 at $157,712.
For the 2025 budget, $523,000 in revenues are anticipated from all parking-related fees and surcharges. Expenses for the department in 2025 are projected to total $164,212.
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