Dear Cheltenham Township Board of Commissioners,

I'm reaching out regarding the recently approved plan to form a relationship with Park Mobile. I appreciate that things are already in motion, but hope that some of these thoughts might provide a lens for scrutiny as you and your staff make specific decisions related to the implementation. Separately I hope these questions might prompt some reflection as to whether the contract is ultimately in the best interests of our residents.

Some concerns I hope you will consider:

• Concern 1: The lack of a physical payment option.
• Concern 2: The institutionalization of private corporations being asked to monitor the location and shopping habits of our residents. The risks are highlighted when you consider things like the 2021 data breach of ParkMobile.
• Concern 3: Practically requiring (or at the very least strongly encouraging) our residents and visitors to install unregulated, closed source software onto their devices in order to participate in public spaces.
• Concern 4: A bucket of general concerns related to private contracts in association with public services. I won't list these, and trust you all are thinking about long term impacts in terms of what contracts like this will mean for the ability for the township to develop these spaces, make decisions related to parking and zoning, costs associated with parking, etc.

These issues compound on one another, but as the approval has already been made I would like to just advocate for addressing the lack of physical payment options in the execution of this effort.

An Argument for Physical Payment

I understand the current plan is to have no mechanism for physical payment at all because (A) coin meters are expensive to monitor and (B) municipal meters / kiosks are expensive to maintain.

By removing a physical payment the township creates varying levels of friction for any resident who either:

1. Might not want Park Mobile to have access to their cell phone / GPS activity.
2. Does not have a mobile (or smart) phone.
3. Does not have an active data plan.
4. Has challenges interacting with mobile devices (e.g. due to physical ability).
5. Does not have a credit card or debit card.

This is the kind of friction that I entrust my government to avoid, in the name of equity and public access. I appreciate this friction will impact people differently, and for the majority of residents there may be no friction whatsoever, but we need policies and public infrastructure that does more than minimize friction for the majority. I understand there is a cost associated with maintaining municipal kiosks, but I'm sure we can all agree that there is a cost associated with effective public infrastructure!

It is worth noting that a Park Mobile based physical payment system does NOT address concerns for people who do not want their registered vehicle's location to be monitored by Park Mobile / who is concerned that another Park Mobile data breach might expose their location and private information to the world.

An Argument for No Payment

I am sure you have already considered this, but I wanted to just mention what a joy it has been to be able to simply park and patronize businesses over the past two and a half years without having to worry about paying for parking. During this time of non-enforcement I have not once had trouble finding a parking spot.

I know that free parking with two hour limits has associated and undesirable enforcement costs, but I also wonder how much enforcement would actually be required to ensure appropriate behavior. In particular, I wonder whether the threat / potential of a ticket might serve as a form of automated enforcement in itself and yield 99% of the desired results.

Thank you for considering these thoughts.