Parking Fee Holiday Coming to Port Jefferson

To the delight of merchants and visitors alike, Port Jefferson Village has decided to suspend parking fees from Nov. 15 until March 15 this winter. Business owners hope the suspension of the fee will help get people into town and stay longer to shop, eat and spend more this winter.

"That will be nice," said Joey Shih about the parking fee holiday.

Shih and his wife, Ting were visiting Port Jefferson on Monday afternoon from New York City.

Both are former Stony Brook University students who used to come into town often when they lived here. Shih said that he had never had a problem with the meters before but appreciated the fact that the fee was being eliminated, at least temporarily.

Business owners were a little more enthusiastic about the parking fee holiday.

"It will be a great help to the town," said Waleska Stefanvelli, assistant manager of the . "We can use all the help we can get."

Stefanvelli said that she's seen people with bags in hand after shopping, furious about getting a parking ticket after a day of shopping.

"They're screaming that they'll never come back again," she said.

Mayor Garant said at Monday's that parking fees year to date generated $302,854, slightly less that last year when the village took in $318,912 during the same time frame.

According to the mayor, the average revenue taken in by the town is about $1,175 a day from the parking meters. That calculates to about $ 141,000 of lost revenue for the town over the winter while the parking fee suspension is in effect.

A business owner at the Monday meeting appreciated the parking holiday but expressed concern about parking meters overall saying that as soon as people step out of their cars they get hit with a fee, making it hard to attract visitors to come down to Port Jefferson outside of special events like the recent .

Stefanvelli agrees saying that in general people are only making quick trips into town, which means they aren't visiting the shops and restaurants and spending money.

"People are not staying in town," she said. "They stop for take out but they used to have time to shop, eat, have ice cream, buy a bottle of wine."

Suspending the parking fees will come just in time for a few planned winter celebrations including a over Thanksgiving holiday weekend and the popular the first weekend in December.