CAMDEN — Another citizen-lead petition drive has surfaced in Camden, this time to ask the Select Board to place an article before voters at annual town meeting, June 9, that would halt the paid parking system that is due to debut May 22 on downtown streets.

Last week, a group of citizens submitted to the Camden Town Office a petition to place a police department-related article on the town meeting warrant: "To see if the Town will vote to direct the Select Board to employ a Town operated Police Department and a fulltime Chief of Police to manage the Camden Police Dept., and not to contract with the Knox County Sheriff's Dept. or any outside agency for the management of police services."

That petition is working its way through the municipal process, which is what Camden resident Alex Cohen hopes happens soon with the paid parking petition that he put into gear Friday morning, March 20.

Clipboards with a pen and petition language were placed at Village Variety (Stop 'n Go), Lord Camden Inn, Glendarragh Lavender, Zoot and Serendipity. Cohen said he modeled the petition on the police department petition. Cohen's petition says: "We the undersigned residents and registered voters of the Town of Camden respectfully petition the Select Board to take the necessary steps to ensure that the voters of Camden shall have a say in whether there is a paid parking program in town."

It continues: "We believe the Town of Camden is best served when the voice and desire of its residents are considered when substantive changes to our town are contemplated."

With that, the petition requests that the Select Board places the following article before voters June 9: "To see that the Town will vote to direct the Select Board to eliminate the paid parking program in Camden and to remove all parking meter kiosks."

That paid parking program was approved October 15, 2024 by a 3 to 2 Select Board vote. Then, the matter was sent to the Parking Work Group to draft implementation recommendations. Those recommendations were finalized in January 2025 and the town subsequently purchased and installed 30 paid parking payment collection kiosks last August, and set up the software on municipal computers.

The town then conducted a trial run of the system for two weeks in October 2025 before discontinuing it for the winter. Updates for the parking program are posted at the town's Police Department website page.

At the March 17 Select Board meeting, further modifications to the system were considered, with two accepted (restart the parking program May 22 and extend the hours at the Public Landing until 6 p.m.). After a long discussion, the Select Board voted 4 to 1 (Alison McKellar dissenting) at that meeting to explore other program options for residents, such as parking stickers.

The Budget Committee is also due to discuss the parking program at its Thursday, March 26 regularly scheduled meeting as it addresses revenues for the proposed 2026-2027 budget (also to be considered by town voters June 9).

Camden Communication and Outreach Coordinator Holly Anderson, who is also the Town Office liaison to the Parking Working Group, said she plans to provide additional parking program options to the Budget Committee, pursuant to the March 17 Select Board discussion so that committee has knowledge relevant to the fiscal impact by a resident permit(s).

Meanwhile, general opposition to any paid parking systems in Camden has simmered for months amongst some downtown business owners.

On February 28, Camden resident Alex Cohen created an online unofficial Survey Monkey poll and invited citizens to lend their opinions about a paid parking program in Camden. The results from 250 signatures in a matter of hours, "made it clear that there is significant town resident sentiment to chart a different path forward regarding paid parking in Camden," said Cohen, in a general group March 22 email.

That is what prompted him to craft a petition, he said.

"You can be for or against paid parking," said Cohen, in a conversation. "This is simply to give voters the opportunity to decide. If you do not vote for it, you essentially maintain the status quo. The petition's purpose is to allow the voters to decide whether they want paid parking or not."

Cohen believes that voters: "deserve a say in whether there is a paid parking program in their town. It is that simple."

To Glendarragh Lavender owner Lorie Costigan, the paid parking program creates new logistical hurdles for downtown businesses.

"As a leaseholder and tenant of downtown Camden for 16 years, and someone who pays business tax, I am not considered a Camden resident," she said. "So, to stock my store, which happens daily during the summer, I must pay an hourly fee. The solution will be to double park, as larger vehicles do. Local business owners are asked to keep the sidewalks clear, water curbside flowers, and to assist in snow removal and to clear slush from the pedestrian ramps. The parking parameters miss this sense of what it means to be a stakeholder and participant in the downtown community."

From her storefront on Main Street, she watches the traffic in and out of downtown Camden.

"Most of our regional customers will visit two to three stores and all under an hour," she said. "They use downtown Camden for the year-round hub it has been for more than a century."

She said the new kiosks and colored parking space grids painted last fall on the pavement confused people.

"Many questioned why the parking fees exist for an hour if the goal is to move more vehicles through the spaces," she said. "The majority of local customers know exactly what they want and combine stops to two or three businesses before leaving, all under an hour. 

"In the first months of paid parking, and on my daily interactions at the banks, other stores and my own, I witnessed visitors and locals alike flummoxed by the kiosks," she said. "Either they [parking kiosks] didn't accept the credit cards they had or they did not have a cellphone to access an app," she said, suggesting a pilot parking program might have started more slowly and steadily, and effectively, in town lots with single ingress/egress for ease of use.  

"Larger lots could have easily provided all-day, metered parking with something as simple to use as a swing arm that accepts apps or credit cards," she said.

The Town of Camden, on the other hand, regards the paid parking program as a method to relieve downtown parking pressure and produce revenue for the municipality.

Parking, or adequate lack of, has been under discussion in Camden for decades. For parking discussion purposes, the downtown comprises a radius around the harbor, and includes the smaller streets of Alden, Cross, Pearl, Union, Wood, Chestnut, Pleasant, Tannery Lane, Atlantic Ave., Free and Frye.

"Back in 1995, a Town Ad Hoc Parking Committee issued a study report stating that the Town was running a deficit of needed parking and should implement a seasonal 'Pay-to-Park' trial, expand employee parking areas, and strictly enforce the 2-hour time zone," according to the 2022 Parking Study.

In the late 1990s, when the town was bustling with the establishment of MBNA offices in the Knox Mill, there were ideas of building two-level parking decks to accommodate more traffic in Camden. That never came to fruition, nor the recommendations in a 2012 Downtown Master Plan calling for a paid parking system.

The 2022 Parking Study summarized the history of the parking debate in Camden, and added its own assessment and recommendations.

That Study was initiated by a committee comprising citizens and town staff and concluded that there was sufficient supply of parking downtown to meet then current demand, although there was an imbalance of over-use of public parking (Public Safety Building Parking lot, Knowlton Street lot, Camden Public Library lot, Mechanic and Washington Street lots, and Public Landing lot, albeit the latter has since been converted to a seasonal paid parking lot) versus private parking lots, as well as an over-use of on-street parking versus off-street parking.

The 2022 Study also noted insufficient two-hour parking availability from late morning through early afternoon, when parking occupancy exceeded 92 percent. Moreover, the Study said, "The Town has been unsuccessful in keeping employees out of the free on- and off-street, two-hour customer spaces."

The 2022 Study recommended seasonal paid parking with meters in two-hour parking zones and high-demand parking lots, from May 1 through Oct. 31.

Paid parking was subsequently implemented in Summer 2022 with two kiosks stationed at the Public Landing in Camden. Revenue from that parking program produced revenue in 2022-2023 of $86,909 and expenses of $18,780.

In 2024-2025, the revenue was $62,036, with $16,681 in expenses.

The 2022 Study was updated with the 2024 utilization survey, followed by a revenue-cost projections report. That report anticipated the paid parking program as presented in 2024 could generate more than $638,000 annually, including $531,238 from metered parking, $5,875 from permit fees, and $101,699 from parking citations.

The numbers provided in 2024 had presented capital expenditure costs for the program that included:

The purchase and installation of the 40 solar-powered parking payment kiosks was to cost $410,000. 

Fees to cover software, communication and credit card fees (5 percent of the credit card revenue) was estimated at approximately $94,940.

Staffing at $20 per hour was to be approximately $18,000.

The total initial cost of the first year was estimated to be $522,940, resulting in an operating income of $115,872.

But those numbers are no longer valid due to program parameter changes put into place for the abbreviated 2025 Paid Parking Program season, and additional changes for the 2026 season, said Anderson.

She said revisions to revenue projections are being drafted for presentation at the Budget Committee's March 26 meeting.

Municipal petition process

Cohen has acknowledged there is not much time to get the petition on the June Town Meeting warrant. He intends to help shepherd the paid parking program petition through the municipal process, but said there are many more, "concerned residents and business owners, who are taking on the mantle of this effort by seeking signatures within their circles of community."

He said he simply produced the petition and quietly spread the word. 

"I want to just recognize there are many others who are working hard behind the scenes to support the effort and that it’s not just me," he said.

A petition to get an article before voters must have the signaturesof a number of voters equal to at least 10 percent of the number of votes cast in the Town at the last gubernatorial election (2022), which was approximately 3,308.

The Camden Town Office said the timing of submission of a petition dictates when it can be reviewed by municipal officers and Select Board and if/when it can be put to voters.

"For reference, the police department petition submitted March 19 will be taken up by the Select Board at their regular meeting on Tuesday, April 21, when they meet to vote on the June Town Meeting warrant," said Communication Coordinator Anderson, in an emailed response to questions about citizen petition procedures. "For the process, once a petition is turned in to the town office, the Town Clerk goes through several steps to verify all the signatures. See the attached from Maine Municipal Association, page 13, for the next step in the process, which is 'Consideration of Merits of Petitions by the Municipal Officers.'"

For Cohen, the petition is a matter of going back to square one and allowing the voters to decide if they want a paid parking program, or not.

"We often vote on expenditures like whether to fund a new fire truck or a new snow grooming machine at the Snow Bowl," he said, adding that the town has voted on whether to allow a cannabis store downtown, had voted on zoning amendments, as well as the tannery proposals.  "It just stands to reason that we should also vote on whether we, as a community, want to spend several hundred thousand dollars on parking meter equipment and software and to operate not to mention the additional staffing cost to administer and issue parking fines."

With paid parking, he said: "The town just did unilaterally what they wanted. They bought 30 kiosks and put them anywhere in town, and that’s that. They chose not to put this to a town vote. "It might be true they had the right to do that, but just because you have the right doesn’t mean that it is the right thing to do."

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657