$50 Parking Fines?

Our Mayor and 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 Winslow Way main street dug deep with trenches and piled high with dirt and asphalt, do they really think it prudent to raise parking fines from $20 to $50?  This strikes us as one more obstacle deliberately placed 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 at his job on the other side of the Sound most days, 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 after their first ticket 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 pm for overstaying the limit in spite of an abundance of unoccupied parking spaces.  Now, because the City is broke, should we hire an additional officer to more efficiently nail both our local citizens and visitors who have the temerity to spend more than 2 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 and compel them to drive to a more welcoming emporium owned by investors who live very far away and care not a whit about this community.

Post Script, April 2011
The city council changed the time limit on our main street, Winslow Way (but not on other downtown streets), from 2 hours to 3 hours and retained the $50 fine.  We think this is an incomplete solution.