90-minute parking limit helps downtown St. Petersburg businesses

Downtown parking

90-minute limit helps businesses

The letter writer on Feb. 28 who complained that the 90-minute parking restrictions in downtown St. Petersburg would drive away tourists has it backward. The purpose of short-time street parking limits is to make parking spaces continuously available for people who want to visit restaurants and retail stores in the area. If theatergoers tie up all the available street parking for hours at a time while they sit in a movie, where are the retail customers going to park?

Additionally, for movie patrons, the BayWalk garage is just a half block away. There are usually plenty of spaces, and the theater will stamp your ticket, so the parking is free.

As far as Tropicana Field is concerned, I know of no other stadium in the country where parking is so inexpensive. You can park right at the field for as low as $10 or for free with four in a car. You'll pay upwards of $35 to park near the stadium in Boston or Chicago, where incidentally, they have tight restrictions on street parking too.

Michael Ross, Pinellas Park

BayWalk garage a solution

Please tell your readers about the BayWalk parking garage. If attending a movie, it is free. Otherwise after 5 p.m. and on weekends there is a nominal fee. Street parking limits can be avoided by parking in the garage.

Downtown areas must have limitations. If there was unlimited parking time, there would be no parking available for someone wishing to visit BayWalk. Parking in downtown Tampa or Clearwater or any sizable metropolitan area is dicey, but St. Petersburg has plenty of garage space available.

B.J. Mitchell, St. Petersburg

New kind of cop hits streets Feb. 28, story

Tickets for barking, not just parking

Have you ever been subjected to almost nonstop barking day and night? I promise, it's not any fun. It is torture.

Those in power should understand that when people complain about a barking dog, it should not be classified as a "neighborhood dispute" or an "animal complaint." It is a complaint about an irresponsible dog owner.

Anyone who believes that frequent barking is classified as having to "sweat the small stuff" or dealing with a "nonemergency" is sadly mistaken.

When the essential character of your existence is transformed and the quality of your life is slashed, as they are when the sound of a barking dog is force-fed into your home, that is not "small stuff." That is a full-blown crisis. It is an emergency that warrants immediate action.

It is a threat to the health and well-being of our families and a violation of our right to the quiet enjoyment of our homes and property.

What we need are antibarking ordinances that can always be immediately enforced. The police should be able to hand out barking tickets while they are on patrol or in our neighborhoods, just like they do with parking tickets.

St. Petersburg has a system for antibarking that usually doesn't work at all and, on those very rare occasions that it does bring about some result, it virtually never does so in a timely fashion.

For more info, see BarkingDogs.net.

Barbara Lynne Shelby, St. Petersburg

Detroit worthy of historic designation | March 7, editorial

Owners of building disregard the past

The story is about the owners fighting the designation and threatened legal action.

Just two words are needed to describe the owners of this property: money and greed.

They are members of the "me" generation, thinking only of the present, disregarding the past and the future.

Like many people in the building business, they build, sell and move on, not giving one iota of thought of what they leave behind.

Donald F. Kelly, St. Petersburg

It's time to enforce higher standards

Three topics were in the news last week: students out of control, red light runners and law breakers evading the police.

Do the people want to just let things be? Why should a minority be allowed to dictate what the majority of those in the community want — a safe and lawful environment?

St. Petersburg seems to have a problem with letting the behavior of the few dictate how the rest of us will react. It is time to have community standards that are enforced.

"Hug a thug" is an ineffective antidote to bad behavior.

Barry Koestler, St. Petersburg