Cheryl Creson only has to look out the window of her barbershop at East Main toward the parking lot between the street and Safeway to get upset.

Parking spaces make her angry. Not the one’s marked “three-hour parking,” but the 28 stenciled in gray with the hated words “permit parking.”

Creson said that the City of Auburn and the Auburn Downtown Association send an awful message with those spaces and the $25 fines that await.

“Most of us don’t mind buying a permit because it doesn’t matter what town you’re living in, you still have to get a parking permit,” Creson said. “But when you pull into this parking lot and every single spot as you come in says, ‘permit parking,’ it’s as if someone were saying, ‘Get lost, keep going, keep going, keep going.’

“And when they get to the end there, they just keep going, ’cause they’re so pissed off because there’s no friggin’ place to park there,” she said. “It’s just rude. It’s the rudest thing any town can ever do to the businesses, the customers and the taxpayers.”

The parking program, the product of a partnership between the City and the ADA, dates to 2005 when complaints that merchants and employees were parking too close to businesses reached the ears of ADA’s leadership. Merchants also fretted that downtown residents were taking up all the parking on Main Street.

Recognizing that downtown construction was going to make things worse before it made them better, the ADA and the City decided to permit parking spaces. They moved those spaces away from the stores, but not so far away to be inconvenient. That way residents and merchants would be guaranteed a space, and Main Street businesses would be left with the remaining parking spaces.

Three types of parking permits were made available at different prices in the downtown: red ($50 a month) for commuter parking at the Transit Center; green ($20 a month) on the temporary commuter lots east of the Transit center; and blue ($10) for public parking. The $10 permits are available between Main Street and Safeway and in the mural parking lot across East Main Street. Money collected through the permit program supports the ADA operations.

The two- and three-hour limits proved controversial. But when the City hired a second parking enforcement officer and he began issuing citations, tempers flared.

Creson claims that Rottles Clothing & Shoes started the problem by complaining that merchants were parking in the spaces right behind their store.

“They had a parking permit, but they chose to park right in front of their door with their junky cars,” Creson said. “Rather than anybody going out saying ‘Hey, move your eyesore and can’t you park a couple feet away … they didn’t say anything to them. People in this town are so afraid of offending someone. Everybody’s so fricking politically correct, it’s sickening.”

Creson said she has approached the City numerous times about the parking problem without result.

John Rottle, a board member of the ADA and its past treasurer, said all he was trying to do was free up parking behind his clothing store for his customers. For the most part, he said, the parking program has worked. What bothers him is that the three-hour signs look like the permit-only signs and confuse people. He said merchants, employees and downtown residents use less than half of the designated permit-parking stalls at any given time.

Shelley Fawcett, owner of the Rainbow Cafe at 112 E. Main St., said that the seven stalls facing Safeway’s north wall are usually empty. She also believes the three-hour-time limit is not generous enough.

“What do we have in downtown Auburn?” Fawcett asked. “We have Nelson’s Jewelry, we have Rottles, and we have hair and nail salons. You can have your hair and nails done and that will eat up two hours in no time, leaving you an hour go to lunch or Nelson’s or Rottles. This is not encouraging people to stay down here.”

“Not enough normal parking,” said David Wilson, manager of Quality Rentals at 252 E. Main. “There’s permit parking, but people park in that when they are not supposed to and people park in the three-hour parking and stay. It seems like when the officer comes through to do tickets, it’s only in the evening or it’s Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. He’ll issue some tickets, but not when it’s heavily trafficked.

“They should get rid of some of the permit parking and just open it up for more people to park in, because that seems to be the problem anyway.”

Colleen Barry, who opened up the Kitsch-en restaurant at 141 A Place SE. a couple doors east of the Rainbow Cafe a year ago, said she doesn’t hear many complaints from her customers.

“I did get a ticket when my daughter parked there not realizing it. Maybe they should restripe it, do it all in yellow so you can see the lettering,” Barry suggested.

“If they are going to continue with permit parking, it should be more plainly marked where it is,” said Norm Shawstad, as he sat in the Kitsch-en on Tuesday. “And why don’t they make a few of them all-day parking?”

In a recent letter, Rottle asked the City to revisit the program again and make a couple of changes. He said the ADA board has discussed and approved the elimination of seven of the designated permit-only spaces in the lot.

“Furthermore, the possibility exists that a subsequent request for eliminating additional spaces may be elicited if deemed necessary by resident merchants and the board,” Rottle wrote.

Mayor Pete Lewis said the City is willing to make changes but will implement what the ADA board decides, not the complaints of disgruntled merchants.

“Years before when I was on Council we had some studies done, and all the studies say that we have more than sufficient parking in downtown. At any given time there’s 73-percent parking availability in downtown,” Lewis said. “The problem is that the parking is not right next to the stores. It’s one, two, three blocks back.

“I have asked the ADA to come down to the City now with a program that all the merchants feel would work for them. When they come together and meet and decide as a board and write out a letter to the City that this is what they want, that is exactly what we are going to do. We have now done it twice. This is going to be the third time. What I’m saying is tell us what you want. The problem is when we implement what they want, some of them don’t like it.”

ADA Executive Director Kathleen Keator said she is still new to the community but admits there are problems.

“You’ve got signage that looks the same, and you can get three different types of parking with three different prices,” she said. “This is a certainly an area that we are communicating about. This is a problem the ADA has to solve, not the City and not the police department.”