Where is the Parking Department?

I'm not with the parking department, but I have some familiarity with this issue. Electronic/card transactions, because of the large fees assessed by the banks, are economically unfeasible at smaller amounts. For that reason, city policy, for good reason, is to assess a minimum charge in return for the convenience of using a card at meters. If you want to park for shorter time periods, you'll need to pack quarters for the kiosks. If you want to complain, complain to the banks.

That's all well and good. But, the parking department needs to post that fact at the payment kiosks. Why not be upfront about the charge?

I'd chime in, but I'm confused by your message. Can you clarify whether you used the regular garage system with ticket (which records your time and then you pay when you leave) or some sort of standalone kiosk that's in a special part of the JAM garage? The garages in the city have you take a ticket, which you then pay when you exit for the time you were in the garage. The individual street parking spaces you pay for at a kiosk on the street by entering your space number; those kiosks do state minimum purchase for card transactions.

Correction: Actually at the street parking kiosks, if you use a card I believe you can hit the yellow button to add chosen time. If you just hit green it defaults to the max amount (2 hours, $2).

I believe the credit card charge rate is indeed noted on the kiosks.

There' a third parking choice: The lower level, short-term parking in the garage on Jackson St. It was that kiosk I used.
Could i have missed something? Possibly. I'll check next time I'm in the neighborhood.

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