To the Editor:

$110 a year! That’s what it now costs to park in much of downtown Potsdam via the Village’s Parking Permit scheme. 

Who will this policy effect? Tourists will naturally cling to the remaining free parking spots, so it seems this policy will raze the already besieged wallets of Potsdam’s taxpayers. 

Who is this policy intended to benefit? Local businesses? I spoke with several of Potsdam’s small business owners/employees today; the new parking policy was uniformly derided. A common complaint was that it will be an unnecessary subtraction from customers’ disposable incomes (especially those of Potsdam’s cash strapped college students) and from employee’s already inflation-strained salaries. One older lady told me with frustration in her voice about how she’s taken to parking far far away from the shop where she works for fear of being ticketed. 

Today I saw many cars in the newly minted ‘permit only’ spots, all without permits. They had to park there! There simply isn’t enough free parking to go around anymore. 

To enforce these rules, Potsdam’s new parking enforcement officer has been issued a fittingly wasp-like yellow uniform. He carries a handheld digital parking enforcement tool, which by itself cost taxpayers $3,000 dollars to purchase and will cost them thousands more to operate over the coming years. The parking officer has mercifully been only issuing warnings to people parked in ‘permit only’ spots for the moment, but he will soon be ordered to issue citizens of Potsdam tickets as punishment for the heinous crime of attempting to support their local economy. 

People might resist this bizarre new policy; they might continue to park where they have always parked in order to work their jobs and buy their food. If the Village cracks down on them, I hope the people organize, just as they successfully organized against last year’s exorbitant “Kiosk parking” fiasco. Hopefully, hundreds of wasted dollars and man hours later, parking will go back to the free and perfectly fine way it was before. 

Alternatively, the permit spots might sit mostly empty. Residents might learn new rhythms to cope with half their parking being stripped away from them and avoid downtown altogether. Walmart, after all, has round-the-clock free parking.

Either way, this is all a tremendous waste of resources. 

If the Village wants a project to work on, could it please repair the broken swing bench (and pick up the litter) on Fall Island?

Silas Smith
Malone and formerly of Norwood