The Jim Thorpe Police Department is hopeful state gaming money will help it bring parking kiosks to the downtown area as soon as next year.

During a borough workshop Thursday night, Chief Joe Schatz asked council for approval of a resolution related to a Local Share Account grant application for kiosk funding.Council will take official action next week and the grant application is due by the end of the month."We're looking to get $79,000, which would allow us to get seven parking kiosks, the handheld device to run tickets and custom signs to point motorists to the kiosks," Schatz said.The kiosks would replace the current coin meters downtown. Instead of accepting only quarters, the kiosks would also accept dollar bills, credit and debit cards.Customers could also add time from their mobile phones."You'll park, pay for whatever time you think you need and then it prints out a ticket that you'll put on your dash," Schatz said. "The nice thing is if you're on a train ride downtown or something and you see you're about to run out, you can add time right from your phone."The kiosks would be solar powered but also have a battery backup, Schatz said.Mayor Michael Sofranko said there's a good chance the grant application will be successful as the gaming money is supposed to be used to help tourist agencies and serve people visiting tourist areas."Chief has spent a lot of time putting this application together," Sofranko said. "A lot of people don't realize the time that goes into writing these grants. These kiosks would really bring us up to modern times."Jim Thorpe asked Carbon County officials if they'd also like to look at kiosks so that all of the downtown area would be uniform.Sofranko and Schatz said Thursday that as of yet, commissioners have only said they'd look into it.Jim Thorpe expects to hear back on the grant application in the first quarter of 2017.