DEAR EDITOR:
I recently went to downtown Warren for a what I hoped would be a carefree day doing some errands and having lunch with a dear friend of mine. She had been downtown earlier in the morning visiting her son in his law office. I met up with her a few hours later for lunch at a new diner on Courthouse Square.
Upon leaving the eatery, we discovered that she had a parking ticket. We had only been in the diner for 40 minutes. We went back into this business to ask the owner what was going on. His knowledge of the parking situation in downtown Warren seems to be vast. He explained that if this parking system was working as it should be, my friend would never have been given a ticket. Seems that the way it is run now, if where you are parked is noted by the parking service for one trip downtown, and they notice you downtown a second time that day, you get a ticket. It's regardless of whether during both visits you were not parked for anywhere near the two-hour limit.
This business owner explained to me that the parking service no longer uses computers to take note of when cars are logged, and that the parking service people only spend half the day on the streets. The rest of their time is spent sitting in the city-owned parking deck. It was explained that perhaps if they did rounds all day long, as they should, that maybe they would notice that your car was only parked for 20 minutes earlier in the day and that your second visit is perhaps not ticket worthy.
This business owner tells me that this current company servicing the parking contract is not doing it as they should or living up to the spirit of the contract or how a previous company was expected to run it. Why does this company get away with not honoring their contract to the letter of its intentions? Why are they given tax money to alienate people who actually want to come downtown? When will council and administration look into this and fix this issue?
Helen Hader
Youngstown