Maine Street parking wars continue

THERE ARE SEVERAL businesses inside the WCU Building across from Second String Music. Several of the employees park on Maine Street and ignore the two-hour parking limit signs.

10:30 am Wednesday morning.

It's frustrating. We'd like as many spots as possible open on Maine Street for customer parking, not for employees. To make it even more maddening, count how many vehicles on Maine Street have PDQ passes. Yep - they pay big bucks for indoor parking at the Fifth Street parking facility. Yet they feel the need to park half a block closer to their office and take up a space on Maine. Why?

There are 14 vehicles parked on the south side of Maine Street right now (10:30 a.m.). Eight have PDQ stickers. EIGHT. There is one parking spot open.

Ooops. That spot just got taken, and the woman who got out of the car isn't happy with me lurking around and taking pictures. And ... she has a PDQ pass in her windshield. Lovely. That means nine of the 15 vehicles parked in front of the WCU Building are owned by people who work in the building.

A parking ticket is a whopping $5 fine so is no deterrent for this behavior and there isn't a real parking enforcement officer anyway. That needs to change, and we have started working on it.

Two things can't happen. We can't confront repeat offenders - they know who they are, and nothing we can do or say will get them to be less lazy or more considerate.

And we can't rely on the Quincy Police Department to send an officer down here every day to write parking tickets. They have way more important things to do.

Then again, Sheryl and I just paid our property taxes and we are not afraid to let the city know this is an issue, and we'd like to deal with it.

Stay tuned - we are working with QPD and we think we may have a solution to combating the day-long parking problem. In the meantime, we are watching carefully and keeping track of the many repeat offenders.