Seta Berbari arrives at 7am to get her business, Seta’s Café in Dumaresq Street, ready to serve customers when the doors open at 8am.
The nearest all day car park is located opposite the Dumaresq Street cinemas, and it opens at 8am.
Ms Berbari, like many other business owners and operators in the Campbelltown town centre, has to park her car in a spot that offers timed parking.
So, unless she closes her shop and goes and moves her car from time to time, Ms Berbari will get fined by the Campbelltown Council parking rangers.
After being fined a few times, she had enough and approached Councillor Darcy Lound to discuss her predicament.
In Cr Lound, Ms Berbari, pictured above with the Labor councillor outside her business this morning, found more than a sympathetic ear.
Cr Lound raised the issue at the last council meeting, where he received support for his call to help local businesses already doing it tough after two years of the pandemic.
Council officers will now meet with local businesses to discuss their parking difficulties and prepare a report offering potential solutions.
Cr Darcy told the council that while parking strategies were being developed for the town centre, this was an issue that needed to be addressed urgently.
“We need to help our business people in the short term until longer term solutions come along as part of other parking strategies,’’ he said.
“It is critically important to support our local business, which are coming off a couple of tough years as it is, and now copping parking fines as well,’’ Cr Darcy said.
“As we know it is very hard to get staff at present, so there’s nobody to look after the shop if they go and move their car.’’
Seta Berbari agrees.
“I have been fined a couple of times recently, just because I can’t leave my business or close it while I go to move my car,’’ she told the South West Voice this morning.
Cr Lound thinks a short term solution would be a sticker system, similar to the one used for people with disability.
In the long term, he’d like to see council, which owns the carparks in the town centre, increase the number of parking spots available, for both shoppers and shopkeepers.
“Council has been doing a lot of talking about supporting and promoting business, but if we don’t support them in something as important as all day parking we’re letting them down,’’ Cr Darcy said.
“At the end of the day we’ve got to do better.’’
Campbelltown council has known about this for over 3 years . As anyone doing jury duty at courthouse has at least over a km walk to park legally .. And the great staff at council when this issue was raised, well bad luck they have to walk the 1km . Closest all day parking is at old showground. Was great my wife was fined for doing jury duty .