Time To Give PARKatlanta The Boot?

Any given Friday and Saturday night, Little Five Points is bustling with activity.

Throngs folks from Atlanta and its surrounding suburbs come to the area for food, fun and music.

What they don't like: The parking or how it's enforced by PARKatlanta, the company the city contracted to collect fees. It explains why some visitors will opt to park blocks away in residential pockets of Inman Park and walk.

It's a complaint Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall has heard not only from patrons but businessowners, too.

Last year, , PARKatlanta came up in several conversations with shopkeepers.

Now, the city of Atlanta is considering extending parking enforcement hours at meters around the city. Some of these would include 24-hour zones.

At a recent meeting with the Poncey-Highland Neighborhood Association, Hall said he “thinks that makes no sense.”

Extending parking hours would be done in an effort to recoup approximately $4 million that the City will not receive as a result of an arbitrator’s ruling that PARKatlanta does not need to pay the City almost three-quarters of what it originally was contracted to pay. This came about after the City Council last year restricted the Milwaukee-based company’s operations with a moratorium on reduced hours and new meters.

Hall suggested ending the contract with PARKatlanta, which would cost about $8 million.

“You sometimes need to know when to cut and move on and get a better deal” he said.

Watch the full video above to hear his full comments.