Maitland councillor Arch Humphery was straight to the point when he said he didn’t have too much sympathy for people who were fined for exceeding parking time limits in central Maitland.
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In fact, he believes parking in the CBD needs to be more heavily policed to free up parking spaces and encourage more people to shop in the city.
His comments follow a report that 82 per cent of all financial penalties issued by council this financial year were parking fines.
Central Maitland has had to reinvent itself in recent years to compete with major shopping centres in the city’s east and west, and many shoppers will say it’s headed in the right direction.
Cr Humphery believes people who overstay the parking time limits in central Maitland are just making it harder for the city’s traders to do business. And he’s right.
If people driving into the city can’t get a park close to where they want to shop or do business they’re likely to go somewhere else.
And with proposed work on The Levee project likely to cause disruptions throughout the centre, making it easier for people to find a park will be even more imperative.
It was also disappointing to learn that some motorists were still parking illegally in spaces reserved for people with disabled parking permits.
Seventy-seven-year-old Tarro resident Audry Convery, who has a disabled parking permit, believes it is because “people these days just don’t really care”.
There are no excuses for illegally parking in disabled parking bays because they are clearly marked.
They are there for the convenience of people with a disability – not people just ducking into the shops for a few minutes.