HAMPTON BEACH MUNICIPAL PARKING LOT EXTORTION

STOP EXTORTING HAMPTON:

PARKING SHOULD WELCOME VISITORS—NOT DRIVE THEM AWAY

Every summer, Hampton Beach SHOULD be a place where families and friends can come to spend the day, support local businesses, eat, shop and enjoy everything our community has to offer.

So why is the Town of Hampton making it harder and more expensive for people to park?

When the municipal parking lot charges in some cases twice what private lots charge—and even twice or more what the Hampton Beach Village District charges—what exactly is the Town accomplishing?

It certainly isn't helping the small businesses along Hampton Beach.

It is an economic squeeze that looks and feels like extortion.

And guess what? People are taking their business elsewhere.

Hampton doesn't need fewer day-trippers. Our local restaurants, shops, arcades, vendors and other small businesses need people with money in their pockets to spend. Every additional dollar a visitor is forced to spend simply to park is a dollar they don't have available to spend with a local business.

How is that “supporting small business”?

The Board of Selectmen cannot claim to support Hampton's small businesses while simultaneously condoning a municipal parking structure that extracts excessive fees from the very visitors those businesses depend upon.

If you really want to support small business, make it easier—not more expensive—for people to come to Hampton.

Lower the parking rates.

Make Hampton affordable.

Encourage people to stay longer and spend more locally.

And stop treating visitors like a revenue source to be harvested.

This is also part of a much larger question about the relationship between Hampton's government and the people who fund it. When taxpayers believe they are being treated unequally through property taxation while visitors are being hit with excessive municipal parking charges, the message from Town Hall becomes painfully clear:

Government gets more. The people get less.

That's not how you build a healthy community.

That's not how you protect small businesses.

That's not how you make Hampton welcoming.

And that's certainly not how you earn the trust of taxpayers and visitors.

Hampton should be competing for visitors—not pricing them out.

The Board of Selectmen has the authority to change this.

**STOP EXTORTING TAXPAYERS.

STOP EXTORTING VISITORS.

STOP SQUEEZING SMALL BUSINESSES.**

Put the money back in people's pockets—and let Hampton Beach businesses earn it.