Love: It's Not a Four-Letter Word

The Bible, although admittedly I haven't read it, teaches us to love thy neighbor. With love comes respect for one another and, hopefully, our town. It is then with great sadness that I once again was told that someone vandalized the town's only parking meter.

The parking meter project was started five years ago as part of a pilot project to raise money for pot hole repairs on main street. We figured only out-of-towners would use it, sort of a tourism tax, if you will.

But, as we all know, parking is limited on Saturdays and sometimes those two spaces are much desired. Some people have refused to plug the meter and have received tickets that have never been paid by anyone.

Controversy followed last year when the Lang's Chinese Food restaurant, a fixture in this town for eighty-seven years, shut down due to loss of business supposedly caused by the parking meter in front of their property.

There's a long list of suspects that even include certain members of the police force who hate checking the meter every day and who have been ordered to stake it out for days on end. But enough is enough. You destroy the meter, you destroy the town.

Let's stand behind the meter and love one another.