parking meterA leftover from Mayor Shirley Franklin’s administration – the seven-year PARKatlanta contract to police the city’s parking meters – is almost over and current Mayor Kasim Reed has said it likely won’t be renewed.

During a public hearing last night at city hall, several dozen residents were in attendance to make their feelings known, while hundreds more sent responses by email, according to a report in Atlanta magazine. What the replacement will be for PARKatlanta, which handed out a whopping 203,000 citations last year, is unknown.

Reed has mulled over handing enforcement back to the police, while some residents said a private company (PARKatlanta is operated by Milwaukee-based Duncan Solutions) shouldn’t have a business model trying to make a profit of citations. Sixty percent of PARKatlanta’s revenue comes from citations.

The next two PARKatlanta meetings will be held Dec. 10 at 6:30 p.m. at Inman Middle School and Jan. 28 at 6:30 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Sr. Community Resources Complex.

Collin Kelley is the executive editor of Atlanta Intown, Georgia Voice, and the Rough Draft newsletter. He has been a journalist for nearly four decades and is also an award-winning poet and novelist.