My wife and I have gone downtown most weekends for over 32 years. We regularly enjoy the downtown bars and restaurants, and in our small way have contributed to their businesses. Often, having Happy Hour, dinner and even some shopping, we may spend up to four or five hours downtown.
Now, the city is considering firing up the parking meters in the evenings and weekends in its never-ending quest to extract every last dollar from us residents. Who wants to get up in the middle of a nice dinner to go shovel more quarters into a meter, or risk a $25 ticket? You may be parked blocks from where you end up for dinner. How many more people will park in the avenues to avoid several hours of meter cost?
Don’t even think about trying to force us to ride our bicycles downtown on a 10-degree February evening for dinner. Won’t happen.
I suggest the downtown merchants should fight tooth and nail against paid evening and weekend parking, as they are the ones who stand to lose a lot of customers and business. There are plenty of bars and restaurants available to us that are not downtown and do not have the cost and stress of parking meters.
Randy Ragle
Durango