Waitaki District Mayor Mel Tavendale and councillors voted to retain free parking, pending further development of a parking strategy.
Mrs Tavendale said councillors had "gauged the temperature" from community feedback around the implementation of new parking rules.
And they had heard concerns about parking and accessibility — particularly for seniors — and as a result had also provided free parking for those aged over 80 years old.
"We’ve had a report at my request and when looking at the confusion on the 15 minutes as a trial period for free parking and the feedback out in the community and concerns about accessibility and what needs to be done ... this is a wider conversation around parking strategy," she said.
New parking meters were installed in December to replace broken and obsolete ones, but the Waitaki District Council’s rollout of the new rules around parking was described as "messy" by one councillor.
For now, one-hour free parking will remain in the Oamaru CBD, but drivers will need to enter their plate number into a parking meter to activate it.
Drivers are also required to activate a meter or the parking app within 15 minutes regardless of their planned stay time.
Cr Jim Hopkins asked for clarification on the "free parking grace periods" in response to an Age Concern letter about the "high anxiety" experienced by seniors unsure how to use the present parking meter system.
"They [seniors] have a fear of a $70 parking ticket.
"Some of them are not going into town and there are incidences of people receiving a ticket less than 15 minutes after they parked, even though the council had been promoting a 15-minute grace period," Cr Hopkins said.
Cr Courtney Linwood asked what provisions were available for those who did not have contactless bank card options.
Crs Sven Thelning, Dan Lewis and Jeremy Holding all asked how the council could correct misinformation being circulated about the council’s parking strategy.
Council regulatory and compliance manager Andrew Bardsley said since implementation of the new parking meters at the end of last year, the council had issued 55 infringement notices at $70 each for failing to activate the parking machine, although some recipients had written to the council and received a waiver.
He said the 15-minute grace period was designed to allow people to pull into a park, organise themselves, get the parking app ready, top it up or unload the car and find a parking meter, but it was not a free-parking period.
Mr Bardsley said revenue from the meters had been on the rise.
"After Covid we went through phases of free parking for six months, two hours’ free parking for a short time and then one-hour free parking to help with recovery and bringing people back into the CBD.
"People are utilising one-hour free parking and since the new machines were installed, week-on-week the usage has increased significantly. "So, on average per week 1600 people are activating the parking meters for the one hour free and then people are paying additional to that."
Mr Bardsley said the public had other options such as free parking areas, or they could go to their bank to receive a paywave card.
1"We understand some people don’t want to pay for things, so the majority who are not here for more than an hour don’t have to pay," he said.
Parking would also remain free until 10am and after 5.30pm Monday to Friday, until 10am and after 1pm on Saturday, and all day on Sunday and public holidays.
Meters could be paid for using contactless cards, payment-enabled phones, or the PayMyPark App.
Drivers could use any meter to enter their plate number within 15 minutes of parking.
This gave people a choice between the touchscreen meters at street level or the phone-enabled virtual meters.
Mr Bardsley said "misinformation" on social media had caused a lot of concern for seniors and some people who had commented had not used the parking machines.
Cr Brent Cowles said on social media after the meeting the parking rollout had been "messy" and the issues the current council were dealing with had "built up over multiple councils and multiple years".
Cr Cowles said criticism of decisions online was "absolutely fair" but "personal attacks on individual staff " were not.
