Uncle Irvin is a library freak and uses the facility almost weekly.

Last week, I got a $35 parking ticket for parking a few feet from the curb on State Street in front of the library, but I didn't block anyone or cause a dangerous condition. Uncle Irvin is handicapped and has a handicapped zone shield, but there are no handicapped zones at the library and post office side of State Street.

I was in the library around ten minutes and returned to my car to find a $35 Welcome to Kennett Square ticket.

Uncle Irvin was wrong to have parked the way I did, and the ticket was legitimate. I paid it promptly. The point here is that the lack of free parking in the borough, near the center of town where the shops and restaurants are clustered, drives everyone out of town. That's a fact, and it has been that way in the borough for years, because the citizens who serve on Borough Council are myopic and scared to pay for free parking and pass the cost on to borough taxpayers -- even though the costs of free parking would come back to the borough and property owners four-fold, because of the increase in value of commercial real estate.

Merchants would do more business, and that would justify increased rents and values.

This whole brouhaha about the proposed moving of the library is solely because the library has inadequate space to build an addition, and to provide adequate free parking, not just the five parking spaces the borough provides for both the post office and library.

In spite of reality, Borough Council now wants to build a bigger parking garage so they can provide more paid parking, and continue the no-free-parking cycle that will prevent Kennett Square from prospering.