I worry about the mentality of some of our councillors when I read in Faulkner's corner, June 3, the concerns Bill and Larry Baldock have with the parking issues in the CBD.
I wonder if Bill thinks business owners, their employees and their customers are from a different planet. The people who work and earn an income and their customers deserve the same respect and privileges as they would receive in any other business area in Tauranga. This privilege is of course monitored free parking.
The working people are the city centres bread and butter and parking is just as important to them as anyone else and we have to trust their judgement and maybe allow them to park on the little used northern waterfront area for free. The CBD should not be the cash cow for the council who appear to be using the parking building debt for an excuse to extract money to spend on other projects. This debt should have been paid for many years ago instead of spending it on buses, walkways and cycle tracks throughout the city. The financial issues of the parking buildings are not the fault of the customers or businesses of the CBD.
The council could still charge for the parking buildings if they felt the need to continue to make money from parking and they could include Willow Street as well to keep the traffic moving for them selves if they think this is necessary. The rest of the CBD has to be 3 hours monitored free parking to be able to compete with the other shopping centres.
The other alternative, if the council is so short of funds, is to meter Mount Maunganui and Greerton and any other council owned shopping area. This could be difficult as recently the council was considering charging for on street parking at the Mount but apparently the Mainstreet manager took a petition around all of the businesses and because of the overwhelming opposition to this the council quickly dropped the idea. Again the question has to be asked what makes the CBD so different to anywhere else in Tauranga.
Bill Campbell, Papamoa.