Parking Authority Thieves?

No Coin - No Park?

Did you know that if you have to go to the Sarnia General Hospital, there is no place to pay to park, unless, and only unless, you have some coin in your pocket. Yes folks that does mean that loonies, toonies, and goonies will be sadly ticketed because there is no place to park for longer than 2 hours without dropping in coins at the municiple parking lot, located directly across the street from the hospital.

Think about this one...A family member awakens at four thirty in the morning and is in serious pain. You jump into the vehicle and rush them to the Sarnia General Hospital. On the south side of George Street you see the parking lot is almost empty. "Great", you say to yourself as you wheel in after dropping off your family member at the emergency entrance. At the box where the parking lot attendent used to be is now a box with slots. No humans around, no stores open, and this box requires you to fork over coins. You reach into your pocket and guess what? Yep, no coin.

Now what do you do?

A woman mentioned that you "just take a chance on getting a ticket." Yes, you can try that, or even you can park on the street at the spots where there used to be meters, but now there are signs that state: 2 hr Parking.


Try this on for size...


You see that at this early hour there is nobody around. Hey, there wasn't anyone inside the emergency waiting to be served. This could mean that you won't be very long, as per usual, so why not take a chance and simply park on the street? "Surely we won't be longer than two hours," you say to yourself and park.

While inside the hospital you get the news that it is more serious than you first believed. The doctor is making appointments for blood tests, Xrays, ultra sounds, and who knows what, so now what do you do?

You have two choices:

1. You set the alarm on your watch and run out every one hour and fifty-seven minutes with the coin for the meter, or you move the vehicle to another spot, thus rotating the chalked tires that the Meter Maid drew on almost two hours ago.

2. You stay with your loved one for moral support, as well you do not want to hear what the doctors have to say about the many tests as they are perfomed.

What is wrong with leaving the human taking the cash at the booth in the parking lot, as we have enjoyed for years?

What is wrong with taking those two hour warning signs out. They took out the meters and installed the damn signs.

There is a third choice with the above...charge the Parking Authority with Grand Larceny. But you may just be better off writing your councilperson haha.

Good luck, and as they say at Timmies: "have a nice day eh."

greg