The Appalachian would like to express its displeasure with the latest revamp of parking regulations for Saturdays in downtown Boone.

We understand the idea that a car parked for more than two hours in a downtown space limits the number of people that can use that space and, in conjunction, customers for nearby restaurants and businesses.

However, The Appalachian is not convinced that the difficulties caused by these limits or any other regulations on parking downtown will be worth any benefit to businesses we can reasonably foresee.

In 2009, the Boone Town Council passed legislation forbidding tailgaters from parking on King Street and Depot Street on ASU home football game days.

The idea was that discouraging tailgaters from taking up spaces for several hours at a time would allow more fluid traffic to and from the downtown area, thus increasing the amount of people that would shop and eat downtown on a given home game day.

McLaurin Parking developed a plan to implement the policy, which included “parking ambassadors” and metered spaces to separate motorists depending on how they intended to spend their Saturdays.

When this plan was first implemented the day of the 2009 football home opener against McNeese State, several local businesses actually reported a decrease in business compared to other Saturdays.

To their credit, the town and McLaurin have since analyzed and amended their plans, including replacing what were apparently confusing cones with about 20 signs in a two-block area downtown.

Steve McLaurin of McLaurin Parking was quoted in the Sept. 29 edition of The Appalachian as saying, “We’re trying to reach the balance of making it easy for people to park, accepting people that are coming for the football game, but parking them in the off-street areas while the normal business in Boone is enabled.”

While we can appreciate what appear to be good intentions, we feel this quote illustrates the key issue in the philosophy behind Saturday parking regulations: “…normal business in Boone…”

The fact is, game day Saturdays are not a time for normal business in Boone.

In fact, The Appalachian would argue that almost nothing is normal in Boone on a game-day Saturday.

A university that otherwise strives to keep students on campus kicks most of them out of spaces they pay for in favor of parking for alumni on these days.

A bus system that is otherwise fairly reliable struggles to keep a regular stop schedule on these days.

While students are not generally happy with having to find other parking arrangements or catching a bus an hour earlier than we normally would, we adapt to these changes because we realize they are simply a part of life in Boone.

Instead of doing the same, the town has repeatedly experimented with different strategies to try and insulate King Street from the Saturday shenanigans.

Strategies in the past have not appeared to achieve the desired results, which are themselves relatively ambiguous, and we feel there is little reason to believe this new strategy will satisfy complaints from downtown businesses.

In the meantime, those who frequent King Street more often than the occasional Saturday (students in particular) must try to keep up with an ever-changing set of regulations.

The Appalachian appreciates the endeavors of local leaders to protect local businesses and preserve a major part of what makes the town unique, but we wish they would not do so by attempting to ignore another defining feature of Boone.