Letter to Editor - Seafood “Parking Ticket” Festival!!

To The Editor:

I have been faithfully attending all of Cedar Key`s festivals for many years, coming from Tarpon Springs, and it has always been a beautiful and fun experience, until this year. It did start out as usual, beautiful whether, wonderful arts and craft exhibits and great food and music, but this time all of what I experienced for that day went down the drain when I got back to my car to find a parking ticket!!!

Let me say it again, A PARKING TICKET! Who in their RIGHT MIND would give out a PARKING TICKET when such a popular event is going on? With THOUSANDS OF VISITORS attending the festival AND as small as Cedar Key is, which has limited amounts of parking spaces available, again, what police officer, in their right mind, would give out parking tickets? Let me go further up the ladder of authority, why didn`t the CITY COMMISSIONERS AND MAYOR tell the police department not to issue parking tickets as long as it was NOT detrimental to public safety, which where I parked was NOT???

Does the city want to discourage tourist from coming to these events? That is exactly what it is going to do! I will no longer suggest to anyone about going to these festivals again! The sad thing about it, is I did have people with me who have never been to Cedar Key and I wanted them to see and enjoy what Cedar Key has to offer. Let me tell you, they did SEE what Cedar Key has to offer and it was all muddled up when they saw that a freaken parking ticket was issued at such a popular festival, NOT a good first impression!

Isn`t that called TOURIST TRAP and oh yeah, GREED too!

SHAME ON YOU CEDAR KEY FOR ALLOWING YOUR POLICE OFFICERS TO DISGRACE YOUR REPUTATION!

Needless to say, it will be last time I come to another festival and I`m sure there will be others who feel the same way because there were other cars that received tickets also. The most funny thing about it is the brilliant police officer issuing parking tickets also gave a ticket to an official Levy County Department vehicle which was parked just ahead of me, too funny! Keep up the "not so" good job Cedar Key Police Department & City Mayor/Commissioners.