Parking: The Worry Never Seems to End

Ah, parking. While northern cities worry about organized shoplifting and children shooting up stores, we in sweet little Fernandina Beach worry about where to put our cars when we come downtown for a bite of lunch.

The worry never seems to end. At a city commission workshop Tuesday, commissioners and various citizens worried over the issue some more  and came up with – not much.

The fact is, there are X number of parking spaces in the downtown area and Y number of places where people want to park. X minus Y yields a solution most days, but human nature is not mathematically inclined.

One solution would be to charge a buck or two for parking in the choice places. Another might be to let people park for three hours in choice places but give them a parking ticket ($25 is the posted rate) if they stay longer. Requiring downtown workers to take a shuttle from Central Park is an idea (not one that gets many kudos.) There are parking garage advocates, until somebody fills them in on the cost of parking garages.

It was not one of those workshops that makes people say “Aha! That’s what we can do!” But keep your hopes up. There’ll be another one in a few months.