To the members of the Fort Collins City Council:

I am currently a student at Rocky Mountain High School, and I firmly believe that street parking in Old Town should remain free. I am writing to share my perspective as a student in order to bring attention to how paid street parking will affect teenagers and students, as our voices frequently go unheard.

Old Town is such an important space for the Fort Collins community, especially for teenagers and young people. In our world today, there is a lack of third spaces where spending money is not required or pressured onto teenagers and students who are just looking for a community space to spend time studying, hanging out with friends, or other activities. As a student who has grown up in Fort Collins, Old Town was always that third space for me. Old Town was a space where I was able to spend time in and feel close to my community without being required or pressured to spend money to simply exist in that space.

For teenagers, even a cost that might not seem like a lot of money can make all the difference. As a student, I have experienced firsthand the way that the cost of certain spaces can influence our desire to visit. Something as simple as paying for parking can make community spaces seem unattractive to teenagers and students, and make our community feel uninviting and uninclusive. What makes Old Town feel so inviting and have a strong sense of community is the way that it is so accessible to everyone in Fort Collins, and having to pay simply to visit Old Town would impact this feeling of accessibility and ease, especially for teenagers and students.

Another aspect that gives Old Town its special sense of community is all of the small businesses that come together to make it locally run. For tourists and locals, the convenience of being able to park your car on the street directly in front of these small business shops to browse without having to worry about paying for parking is what makes these businesses thrive. Parking meters and apps can be confusing and frustrating, and visitors don’t want to have to deal with them when they are just wanting to quickly and easily check out a shop. Removing this ease of visiting these shops will deter tourists as well as locals from these small businesses we have in Old Town, reducing customers that they heavily rely on in order to stay open.

Many of us students and teenagers have jobs or required activities that take place in Old Town, and having to pay for parking just to attend these activities would be highly inconvenient and frustrating for us. For example, I am an unpaid student intern at Clark & Enersen, which requires me to frequently attend their Old Town office. I utilize the street parking when going into the office, and if it was not free, I would have to pay just to be able to attend my internship meetings. It’s important to realize that most teenagers that work are working part-time minimum wage jobs, and so even mere dollars are important to us. Having to pay to park in order to get to our jobs and activities would be upsetting for us.

Many decisions about our city and community are made without consideration of how they will affect the teenagers in our community, and I’d like to change that. As a teenager myself, I hope that my voice provides a unique but important perspective on why paid street parking in Old Town would be harmful to our community. We should keep the streets as they are, in order to keep the spirit of Fort Collins and Old Town alive, with our spaces inclusive and accessible to all.