Rising fuel costs have pushed the Salt Lake City 2009 budget into the red by nearly $1 million, causing city leaders to consider reducing free meter parking nights and weekends. Local businesses, however, railed against this, saying it would scare business away and hurt the downtown image. The council relented and is considering scaling back funding for programs like citywide tree planting. City Weekly asked Shaantai Leary, of the downtown East Coast Subs what she thought.
I like the idea of free parking on Saturdays but to cut environmental programs—that doesn’t make sense. It seems stupid to cut down environmental programs. There has to be something else they can do, like maybe reducing [free parking] from two hours to one hour.