On April 10 my wife Lisa and I made plans to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary by driving from our Warwick home to Newburgh so we could patronize Broadway’s shops and lunch at one of its waterfront restaurants.
Post-arrival we had no choice but to cancel both plans because Newburgh’s newfangled parking kiosks don’t accept cash — you must either download an app to a smartphone I don’t own or want, or shoulder a fat surcharge for paying with a credit card. The one Newburgh merchant we talked to briefly before taking our $100 worth of business to Beacon confirmed every customer he has complains they can no longer use coinage for parking, which seems additionally absurd given how many Newburgh locals of limited means surely lack smart phones or credit cards.
We also left town much worried we would be sent a parking ticket for entering our plate number at a kiosk before realizing we couldn’t pay with quarters or bills and aborting the transaction. The phone number for the city collector’s office only exacerbated our concern by being an “unmonitored” line where you can’t leave messages and must keep calling back unless you have time to visit in person during business hours.
Simply put, any other Orange County city pondering cashless parking kiosks and “unmonitored” service numbers is guaranteed to lose its merchants lots of business!
Gregg Merksamer
Warwick