Stratford shouldn’t imitate Woodstock

Re No parking meters in downtown Woodstock, Story, Aug. 29

As a Woodstock business operator (two shops) I often wonder about downtown parking and how it has affected the ability of shoppers to park and then shop.

The majority of spots on the main street, Dundas Street, are used by other business owners who move their vehicles every two hours (just as the mayor described himself doing in your article) which results in musical chairs every two hours with cars, lower work quality (as employees have to worry about being ticketed so they spend their time pondering the possibility of a ticket), employee absenteeism (as the employees take off every two hours for at least 10 minutes while they attempt to find more parking).

Recently the County of Oxford built a new administration building downtown and now the former municipal parking lot has turned into a parking lot for county staff, therefore limiting the amount of available parking space in the city core. As your article stated, another municipal lot that was claimed to be underused has been leased out to a hotel for their personal usage. That lot is full every day of the week. There was much discussion over this deal, and it isn’t good.

Hopefully Stratford doesn’t take Woodstock’s “lead.” Here we use a temp agency to enforce parking, and that person is not paid very well after many years of service to our city.

I’m glad to see that the mayor admitted to parking all over the place and moving his vehicle to avoid the ticket lady every couple of hours. That shows he isn’t too overly concerned about parking here or the businessses that have located downtown and the effect of zero parking for shoppers. I wonder why the mayor wouldn’t park in the spot marked “mayor” at City Hall? It’s his spot after all.

Jim Bender
Woodstock