New Missoula Parking Director and Why the Meters are Called ‘Luke’

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The City of Missoula announced on Wednesday that Jodi Pilgrim has been appointed as the new Director of Parking Services.

KGVO News reached out to Pilgrim on Wednesday about her history with the Parking Services Division.

As of January 2, Jodi Pilgrim will be the New Parking Services Director

“Back in 2015, right before Ann Guest retired and right before the new multispace meters went out on the streets, I started out as an admin and took a lot of phone calls and learned a lot really fast about how important it is to engage with the public when we're making a big change,” began Pilgrim.

Pilgrim said she thoroughly enjoys working in the Parking Division, and has been looking forward to the opportunity of leading the department.

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Pilgrim said She Wants to be a real 'Hands-On' Director

“I love the things that we've been working towards for the past two years with our parking plan and our technology upgrades that are coming up too,” she said. “I want to own it, I want to be the one that pushes it all through, so I applied and everyone on the interview panel agreed that it is my time and that I should be doing it, and so here I am. On January 2, I’ll be starting as the director.”

Pilgrim shared a humorous story about how the multi-space parking devices were named ‘Luke’. It all started with an iconic Paul Newman movie.

Do You Know Why the Multi Space Meters are Called 'Luke'?

“Have you ever seen the movie ‘Cool Hand Luke’?” she asked. “It starts with him cutting off the heads of the single space meters, and that is where they came up with the name for the Luke meter. Because most organizations that were adopting this technology were getting rid of their single headed meters.”

If you remember, the old parking meters were sold to the public and were snapped up quickly.