Bedford Hires ITS To Install New Parking Meters

BEDFORD, N.Y.— The Bedford Town Board voted unanimously Tuesday to award a contract of $107,025 to Integrated Technical Systems to purchase and install parking pay stations in three commuter lots.

Joe Yorlano, director of sales for ITS, demonstrated the new machine before the board and audience at Tuesday’s meeting.

Currently, Bedford’s multiple-space parking meters do not accept credit cards and issue a refund slip if there is not enough change. Yorlano said the ITS system can do online credit card processing in real time, which takes four to five seconds per transaction over a wireless or cellular connection.

Real-time processing “takes the steps out of it, which helps you get to the cars faster to generate more violations,” Yorlano said. That means traffic enforcers can collect more revenue for the town.

Town Comptroller Ed Ritter told the board that the financial office sent out 19 requests for bids and got two responses: one from Bentec, the digital payment technology systems integrator the town currently uses, and the other from ITS.

Ritter said Integrated Technical Systems had a better price structure and a better tech support system in place. Some of the money to pay for installation of the new meters, he said, will come from $85,000 in capital funds, and the rest will be within the town’s maintenance budget over the next five years.

The current machines, Ritter added, are 8 years old, and keeping this older technology would ultimately necessitate more time and money for repairs than it would take to install new machines.

“In the long run it’s going to be easier for people to use the machines and to get their parking spaces, and it sounds like we’ll also generate more revenue,” said board member Chris Burdick.

Yorlano said ITS can also address Bedford’s current issues with slow local service and support, as the company has about 15 service technicians and will usually have a response time of 24 hours or less.

Other features the town has the option to adopt include a system that allows the user to pay by phone or online using a handheld device. Users can also receive texts to their phones when their meters are about to expire, a system currently used in White Plains.

“This is amazing. Does it do dishes?” joked Supervisor Lee V.A. Roberts.

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