Soon, specially marked parking meters can help support the homeless community. It will also give you the needed amount of time for your parking spot. The Tucson city council proposed that 20 parking meters, them being “donation stations” would collect spare change. This includes debit and credit cards, just to help the homeless community in Tucson.

The IPS group, which is the cities smart-parking-meter vendor is offering to donate the solar powered credit card meters to support the homeless donation service. The city of Tucson’s parking management has decided to install the donation meters and paint them either a bright yellow or orange to distinguish them from the real parking meters. Since the motion hasn’t been approved by the city council, the location of the specialized meters have not been determined yet.

Parking Meters Proposed by Local Businessman

John Jacobs is a local business man who established this proposal. He has worked with many companies including the University of Arizona to conduct a way to help the homeless community. He says that the proposal is still in progress. Although they don’t know what organization will execute the collected funds, Jacobs believes the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona should conduct the program. The program will charge half a cent for every dollar collected. But, if paid by credit or debit cards, there would be an added 1.9 percent charge to every transaction. The main objective according to Jacobs is to gain 97 cents per dollar.

But councilman Richard Fimbres is concerned about the proposition. He believes the city should have very little involvement. This will allow the business communities proposition to be taken care of by a nonprofit partner. Councilman Steve Kozachik also spoke about similar matters. He stated that if the businesses thought of the idea, the businesses should conduct it with very little city involvement. City officials have concluded that there will be a cost of $5,000 to install the meters and the outcome will range around $3,000.