The Town of Oyster Bay has taken three more parking spaces for its own use. You will see them marked off in the lot on West Main Street opposite Verrelli's Market. The spots say they are for one hour parking and are for the Department of Human Resources. A local resident said they called and were told, they were for people visiting the town's human resources office, but unfortunately, they said that the people who use them do so all day long.

We called the town majority press office and were told the town has the right to put aside parking spaces for their use. We also learned that no car should be parked there more than 24 hours and any truck over half a ton capacity may not park there.

You may remember in last week's article about the Main Street Association meeting, when David Kappel, the mayor of Greenport spoke, Marie Knight, president of the Oyster Bay Civic Association asked how we can apply what he has done since we are not incorporated and, as she said, "We can't get things done."

She is a member of the parking committee that is trying to solve the parking issues in town. While the new plans for Townsend Square were made, we gained several spaces, now the town has taken three more. So we win a few and lose a few. The town appears to have set us back again. It's a tough fight to turn things around. We could say, with friends like that, who needs enemies.

Just to quote a story we carried in the Nov. 27, 2003 issue of this newspaper, we wrote:

Mr. Chris Robinson [of RMS Engineers] who quoted planner Robert Gibbs who said businesses in town can get $250,000 in income from each parking stall available to shoppers. "More stalls could be a half million yearly," he said. "Leaving a parking stall on the street free means a great deal financially to the merchants."

That says it all, doesn't it.

- DFK