Parking situation needs rectified

To the editor:

To the town of Fairfield, parents who have children at Pence Elementary and the Fairfield Middle School and pick them up, the superintendent, the city council, the mayor and local law enforcement.

I live on South Sixth Street and am seriously upset by the parking problem that occurs EVERY school day by the people picking up their children from the north end of the building. Please know that I am not speaking to all of you, just those of you who insist repeatedly on parking at Sixth and school on the west side of the street facing south. Can you not park legally and walk across the street with your child??? Are you truly unaware of the problem you are causing or do you just not care???

For those of you who don?t get around the Pence area, I will give a little background; in an attempt to educate you regarding our problem. Several years ago, in an attempt to correct the very problem that is STILL occurring, the city council made the street school one way. Regardless to say, this did help but failed to resolve the problem. The problem is that MANY people insist on parking on the west side of the street ILLEGALLY. Cars then park directly across the street LEGALLY. This poses a serious risk to traffic traveling in either direction. I can?t tell you how many times we have nearly had a head on collision because we just cannot see if anything is coming down the center of the road. Now think about cars traveling that are essentially blind to a child walking out in a blind spot, caused by these people who refuse to park legally. So, I am writing this letter to make others in our town aware of the severity of this problem. I am also going to spend a good chunk of the summer circulating a petition; in hopes that we can resolve this problem once and for all before school starts. I am also going to request an open forum with the city council to work on possible solutions to this particular problem. I personally would like to see Sixth made one way (going South) from Harrison to Fillmore during school days/hours. This would alleviate the problem in its entirety. I would also like to know why the local law enforcement isn?t doing more to ticket these repeat offenders. Is the superintendent aware this problem exists? It took a child being hit by a car in front of the high school to get Broadway in order to get it made one way; let?s work together to eliminate this problem on Sixth before a child gets hit by a car!

? Shannon Murphy, Fairfield