For many residents in the Bay Area, parking meters are an accepted way of life.  But they're a new thing in the Marin County town of San Anselmo.

For the first time in its history, the town has instituted paid parking on its main commercial street. That, in itself, would be enough to make people angry, but it is the system they chose for payment that has a lot of people frustrated.

Drawing traffic to San Anselmo Avenue is the goal of any of the small businesses that line the street. The problem comes when the cars actually try to stop there.

"I miss the two-hour parking so much, I will say," said one frustrated woman, as she tried to enter her information into the meter kiosk.

Welcome to downtown San Anselmo where the privilege to park now costs $1.50 per hour. The new metering system began on June 2, and the reaction has been nearly universal.

"It's terrible for our town," said Frank Gomez, owner of Wink Optics, an eyeglass boutique on San Anselmo Avenue.  

He, like most of the other merchants, hates the meter, and he especially hates the reaction it gets from his customers.

"The town said that the businesses were for this," he said.  "Now, we have community members in Marin boycotting downtown San Anselmo, to shop and dine and stay, because of the kiosks. They're hard to use, they didn't think about our elders, they didn't think about people less fortunate that don't have credit cards. They don't even accept coins because it was too much work."

The system is from a company called Park Mobile. There are a number of ways to pay, but they all require a phone and/or a credit card, things that aren't always popular with the area's large elderly population.  

"I think Park Mobile knows this is a challenge, so they put a sticker on the side (of the kiosk)," said Sara Robinson. "There's no phone number on it, so, well — Actually, there is. I'm sorry, but it's so tiny I forgot it was even there."

Robinson is a local age and disability advocate who helped craft the city's accessibility policy. She said, aside from the credit card, the system requires people to know their license plate number and which "zone" they happen to be parked in when trying to pay at the single kiosk on each block.  

She doesn't believe the system was designed with the town's clientele in mind.

"When a town creates a policy, they have to think about what possible barriers there are to certain parts of the population. When I'm thinking about this particular parking system, I'm looking at all ages, all abilities, will this work for them?" said Robinson. "They will get rather frustrated. Well, we've seen them get frustrated. One person in our council meeting said that somebody was in tears and the store owner came out to help her, and she just said it's not even worth it. I'm going to leave."

The downtown is in an uproar over the meters, and residents and merchants plan to give town leaders an earful at a meeting next Tuesday morning before the town's Economic Development Committee. As of Tuesday, the merchants said no agenda for the meeting had been posted but they expect to be on it.

"This is level 10! DEFCON FIVE!" said Gomez. "We need to get rid of these meters and get these businesses back on track."  

But does he think they would actually do that?  

"With the amount of people that are going to show up next Tuesday morning at 8:45am, if they don't, it's going to be a big stain on the town of San Anselmo."

Ironically, the city established the paid parking after merchants complained that the previous free, two-hour parking limit wasn't being enforced. The meter system was installed to pay for a parking enforcement officer, but they say no officer was ever hired.