The gist of the story is that the author feels like parking tickets are hurting downtown businesses.
I absolutely could not take the author seriously after she wrote “I’ve had a few in my day — probably 10 a year since I moved here in 1989”. She has received approximately 200 parking tickets in downtown Victoria. What the hell? Did you not know you need to put money in the meter? It’s not that hard to get back to the car before time runs out. Do you not own a watch?
She even complains about one ticket she got when she parked, then went into a store with a sale without putting money in the meter. Well, duh, I think you deserve that one.
The whole point of the parking meters is to keep people flowing. You come to downtown, you do your shopping, then you leave. Without the meters people would park their car and leave it there all day thereby clogging downtown. No customers could get to the shops.
Personally I don’t see anything wrong with the current system. I’ve lived in Victoria since 1993 and I have had two parking tickets that I can recall, neither at parking meters. Both were in Robbins controlled lots. Something tells me that Jody Paterson is doing it all wrong. It is ridiculous that one person could accumulate that many tickets.