To the editor:

While reading The Journal regarding area plans approved by the New Ulm City Council, I ran across downtown plans which I see problems with. One problem is changing the downtown parking from angled to parallel parking, which gives us fewer parking spaces and causes problems with some of us who have never been proficient at parallel parking anyway. I am 71 years old and have lived in New Ulm since I was 4 years old. I need to drive into the disabled parking space when available to be able to get near a downtown establishment I wish to go into and parallel parking will keep many people from going downtown to eat, shop, have hair done, etc.

Also, changing from the one-way travel in the downtown area and going back to the two-way we previously had along with making the street area smaller and letting bicycles travel through also brings back many more problems. More accidents and less safe for cars and pedestrian first off. Then, when the mall was built, the people making the plans totally forgot that business exist and run with products delivered to them by trucks and vans, such as food, clothing supplies, etc. The deliveries previously made through alleys and such to the back of the businesses were no longer able to access those businesses in that way. If you ever drive through the downtown area during business and delivery hours, you would be aware of various trucks and van parking in a driving lane behind the cars parked there making deliveries to the front of the downtown businesses out of necessity because someone didn’t think of that park when previous plans were made.

Also, in this instance we are lucky to have one-way lanes because at least we can get into the other lane to go around and keep traffic running smoothly without any traffic jams. When looking to the future, try looking past the first to see how things were previously, as to reasons something was changed, to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. I mean no offense to anyone, but do think knowledge and awareness of these situation are lacking in some of these plans which I think warrant further review before going forward and messing up.

Also mentioned was housing where it was said a large percentage of people 65 years and older are still living in their homes because they wish to remain independent making it sound like that’s bad and we should all be stuck in some facility making room for other people. I will possibly respond further to this in another letter to avoid getting nasty here, but right now I see many house being bought by people who rent out some, but leave others to deteriorate, possibly using as write-offs on taxes? This should be looked into as there are large mount of empty houses here that could be affordable housing for many people. I really hope that people in charge of our community’s future take a serious look at all aspect of things before proceeding ahead gung-ho and have to look back later and day “oops”!

Bonnie Howk

New Ulm