Athens Parking Meters

As most cities do, clientele of business and commerce in downtown areas near their square, they have put up parking meters or restricted time limits for parking. Now, as my old adage goes
"where the government can make money, they will". The city here recently met to clarify, not change, their ordinance pertaining to parking spaces in which their is a 2 hour limit. Why, you ask was this so important? Simple, they don't want people arguing over the tickets they are about to soon be getting. Paul Burton, City Administrator, stated according to Christin Ross of the Athens Daily Review the following, "since we're going to agressively enforce the ordinance, we needed to clarify it for the courts." Basically, to paraphrase him, we don't want anyone coming to court who will get out of the ticket, simply over the confusion of what and where one can park for two hours.
Now, I know from personal experience while living in Tylerand renting an office in the downtown square, you could put just enough money in to cover your two hours, and then by golly, somehow, you always got involved and caught up in the work you were doing, it would cost you a ticket. Now for visitors or people going in and transacting business 2 hours is plenty. However, if you rent or own an office or store place in the square, you were guranteed to be punished for doing so.
I had a boss in Tyler, who because he had to be on the move in the day, accumalatd 250 tickets in a short time. Why, simply because to go find parking elsewhere was inconvenient and too much distance to go back and forth from his car to his office. In a short time at all, he was reduced to being a criminal for his inability to run back and forth from his office to feed the meter. Now, you might say a little walk would have done him some good. Truth is, that wasn't his complaint, his complaint was he had to carry electronic equipment, papers and more into the downpours of rain we often had and it would ruin these objects. Water doesnt work well in printers, computers, computer paper, office papers, etc. For some reason, business is paying the cost, when they are the one's that bring greater revenue into a town. It seems that whenever someone makes a living in this country, the government finds a way to take more than their fair share. Parking limits, need to be, so everyone gets a chance to do business. I think however, workers and owners of business, if they have to park in front of their business and just get so busy they are unable to move within the two hour time alloted should be granted some sort of amnesty now and then. Why should they keep dishing out more money in penalties for just doing business in the square. Many Texas town squares have died, there are few shops, and stores that are in operation around them. This just could be, that business owners found a better location for themselves to park and their employees and at times even their customers. Go into the AllTel store on a busy day and you might be lucky to get out of their within 2 hours. That's all I have to say about that.

Dr. J.