When is city council going to take notice once and for all about the problems patrons and owners are encountering daily with this ongoing problem of parking.
I, as a downtown business owner for the past 10 years, get very frustrated hearing daily that customers have to hurry as they have eight or 12 minutes left on their parking meter.
All we hear is how inexpensive it is here compared to Vancouver and Toronto, etc. However, we do not have a population base of three million-plus.
I propose that there be free parking on Saturdays and reduce the fees of use as well as parking fines.
Too often I have witnessed a wide open street and my customer ( from out of town ) gets a ticket for going more than 10 minutes.
I regularly pay those tickets for them and try to make excuses so they will return without bypassing the downtown core. If you look in the downtown core from 28th Avenue to 32nd Avenue and from 27th Street to 35th Street, there are more than 50-plus commercial vacancies and that number grows every month.
I encourage the mayor and council to actually address this concern and open their eyes. Otherwise, they will have lots of commercial space to open a city office at every corner.
Randy Smith
Vernon
