I agree completely with John Moran’s (Herald, Aug. 17) and Judy Turner’s (Aug. 24) letters concerning the meters downtown.

I have had a retail business in downtown Durango for the last 31 years. I have heard more complaints about downtown parking this summer than in the 30 years prior!

If the customer actually parks and plugs the meter, he doesn’t stay very long, for as they say, “I’d need to take out a loan to park very long downtown!”

I have heard numerous tourist say, “I can’t believe the city is doing this to you downtown merchants. They are destroying your business with these meters!”

The Transit Center should have and could have been a parking garage, not plush offices. In Bozeman, Montana, where there is no sales tax, there are also no meters in the downtown district, and they are thriving.

There are many ways to collect enough taxes to run a city government without having downtown parking meters. I think the little-big town of Durango has been collecting meter money for so long that it is already spent on something before it is collected, so why not raise the price?

Because the city is running the small merchants out of downtown.

John Flick

Durango