Aerial view of Jesup Green, with Saugatuck River at the left of the frame and the Westport Library at the bottom. Plans call for more parking spaces to be built in front of the library.
Aerial view of Jesup Green, with Saugatuck River at left of the frame and the Westport Library at the bottom. Plans call for more parking spaces to be built in front of the library.

To the editor:

At 8:30 or 9 p.m. on May 7, buried at the end of a long and varied agenda, the RTM will confront the vital issue of downtown parking.

As inconvenient as that timing may be, I urge those who are not pleased or who may not even be aware of the ill-conceived plan — to reconfigure Parker Harding, eliminating 40 spaces and all full-size spaces, and to convert angled parking to perpendicular parking, without providing a loading space, and to relocate the 40 spaces lost to Jesup Green, with attendant loss of open space and mature trees — to attend that meeting.

There are available alternatives, including a deck on the Baldwin lot, the practicality and cost of which have not yet even been studied.

It would be a horrendous and irrevocable mistake to endorse the plan currently on the table without even having done the work required to examine an alternative plan, which would locate parking closer to Main Street, perhaps in numbers more than sufficient to compensate for any loss on Parker Harding, thus allowing for a more efficient redesign of Parker Harding and avoiding environmental loss and damage to Jesup Green.

So, take a nap on the 7th if you have to in order to show up at Town Hall at 8 or 9 p.m., and add your voice to that of those who seek to prevent our elected representatives from making a mistake which will have consequences for years to come, without even having done the work required to seek a better alternative.

Larry Weisman

Westport

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