Increasing parking fees will drive customers away | Letters | Nov. 5

Published 4:22 pm Thursday, November 4, 2010

Mayor Bob Scales and our City Council seem determined to put our downtown out of business. After three years of the most difficult economy since the Great Depression and now, when faced with the specter of a main street dug deep with trenches and piled high with dirt and asphalt, what sense is there in placing one more obstacle in the way of recovery?

Mayor Scales was quoted as saying, “Parking tickets may go down if people stop violating parking (rules), and hopefully it has that effect.” If he were not away from the island every day, he might know that a shortage of parking is not a problem we’ve had recently. The effect he hopes for is a near certainty, because people will simply stay away and our commercial center will take another hit.

Already we have a parking enforcement officer issuing citations right up to and after 6 p.m. for overstaying the limit in the face of an abundance of parking spaces. Now, because the city is broke, we should hire an additional officer to more efficiently nail both our local citizens and visitors who have the audacity to spend more than two hours in our downtown?

Our merchants have plenty of competition in Seattle, on the web and at the big box stores with big paved free parking lots. At a time when everyone else is thinking sustainability, our City Council is happy to drive people out so they can drive to a more welcoming emporium owned by investors who live very far away and care not a whit about this community.

John Hays, owner

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