Kudos to downtown business owner Peggy Schauffler for speaking up against the parking enforcement in Keene in her recent letter to the editor to the Keene Sentinel.  In the letter she describes the constant negative feedback she receives from customers regarding Keene’s parking enforcement.  She indicates that people tell her they are less likely to shop downtown due to the parking enforcement and she herself says she refused to shop downtown prior to starting a business there!
If the city council wanted to do something good for the downtown, they should eliminate the parking department entirely and let business and downtown property owners decide for themselves how to handle parking. Â Of course, don’t expect a single city councilor to put that idea on the table. Â If we’re lucky, they’ll stop the proposed increase, but that won’t bring people back downtown who refuse to shop there TODAY.
Here’s Peggy’s letter:
“I hate coming to Keene!” I looked up as a customer walked through the door.
I said, knowing the root of the problem, “What’s the problem?”
They replied “I have never been in a city before where the meter people are so unfriendly.”
Conversations on meter readers is a continual topic in my store, and I have yet to hear one that is pleasant. Let’s face it, some people never really meet anyone in the town but the meter people and these people are setting the atmosphere for the whole town and it doesn’t sound good.
Last year I traveled to Portsmouth for a “show table” for one of my suppliers. While there, our driver wanted us to try a restaurant he was familiar with, so we all went out to eat. As we came out from eating, our driver noticed that the meter person was giving him a ticket. He ran quickly out to the car and said “Oh we are just leaving. I don’t suppose you can disregard that ticket?” The meter person said sure, no problem.
Our driver, having experienced the meter people in Keene, just stared with his mouth open as the meter person of Portmouth tore the ticket up. When our driver got his wits again he replied, “Boy that would never have happened in Keene!”
With a thoughtful expression, the meter person said, “Yes, I have heard about the meter people in Keene!”
Now there are a lot of things I would like to tell people about the city of Keene and it is not about the meter people and how unpleasant they are. Before I owned a store in Keene I myself refused to shop in downtown Keene for one reason: the meter people. To know that their unpleasantness is traveling to surrounding towns and across town borders is very distressing.
I for one supported the “Robin Hooders,” because I felt it was a practical way of trying to get a point across without a big fight. I would think if the city of Keene spent all the money in Keene finding a more friendly parking program and more parking space, instead of spending it on prosecuting the Robin Hooders, and buying chips for the meters that report cars at the meter that haven’t paid, business would be better off for everyone.
I am concerned that instead of creating a thriving downtown Keene that downtown shopping is being adversely affected. More than a third of my customers report that they do not come in more often for one of these three reasons:
1. Because there is little parking that can get them to the store, have lunch, and return to the car in the time they have or without worry the whole time they eat of hurrying so they don’t get a ticket.
2. Just having to deal with the meter situation and meter people.
3. Because our side street can be 3 feet high with ice and snow between the meters and the sidewalks are icy all winter, which make dangerous conditions.
Peggy Schauffler
