Our parking meters are going away, but I’d like to suggest a positive use for some of them: let local charitable organizations “adopt” them to collect donations for their causes.
It might work like this: The Concord Museum has one or two bright blue meters around town dedicated to it, with a small sign that says, “Put your spare change to good use…” The library has red meters that benefit them. The Scholarship Fund of Concord & Carlisle has green meters (disclaimer, I’m a Trustee of The SFCC). Etc.
The city of Denver maintained a few meters in this manner for a homeless fund after it decided to remove its parking meters, and I believe it was quite successful (there may be other, even better ideas from other communities we could learn from. Let’s take a look).
Let’s make some lemonade from our parking meter lemons.
Joe Laurin
Southfield Road