Well, duh.

A guy came in with a clipboard the other day, another petition. I prepared myself to say, I can't sign this because I don't know enough about it...

Then he told me it was about charging for the Mirror Pond Parking.

I signed it immediately, and I noticed that every other business I knew of, every business on my block, had signed it.

It's a, well duh, moment.

I've said it before and I'll say it again and I'll keep saying it: we need to provide downtown employees with FREE parking, or, at the least, a very minimum rate. It can be a bit off the beaten track, a block or two away, but it needs to be very, very affordable.

Think of it this way. If you are a part time, minimum wage employee, your take-home pay per month may be less than 500.00 per month. Parking, at the cheapest, is 45.00 a month, or nearly 10% of your paycheck. To someone only making a little over 100.00 a week, 45.00 is a chunk of change.

Of course, there will always be the idiots that would rather wrack up 22.00 tickets, but no amount of carrot or stick will change their behavior, so you're just punishing the rest of us.

And worst of all, you're punishing the customers.