Vandalized parking meters in downtown Tulsa costly to the city

About 700 parking meters in downtown Tulsa are out of service because of vandalism. <br><br>The vandals are knocking them off faster than city workers can get them repaired. Often, the meters are beyond

Thursday, February 12th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

About 700 parking meters in downtown Tulsa are out of service because of vandalism.

The vandals are knocking them off faster than city workers can get them repaired. Often, the meters are beyond repair, so workers take parts from two or three damaged meters to get one back in service. It's a numbers game and the city is losing.

A tight budget makes it even more difficult to buy replacements. Mark Brown: "There is no revenue source at this time identified. We do have half our meters missing in our downtown so we're gonna have to work on identifying a source."

Replacement meters are about $350 each, .so that's about a quarter of a million dollars if they replaced them all.