Reader's view: City cashed in on parking tickets during ships festival

For the Tall Ships Festival, the city of Duluth welcomed thousands of visitors and pumped millions of dollars into the local economy. I wonder how many other visitors like me were victims of parking enforcement. Apparently, the city needed some of those dollars in city coffers.
As the ships approached the canal, people flocked to the lakeshore. Canal Park was jammed. The lot at Leif Erikson Park was overflowing with improperly parked cars, but there was not an officer in sight. On nearby residential streets, however, an employee busily enforced alternate side parking, a law in Duluth visitors knew nothing about. There was no snow removal going on, no street maintenance, and the only traffic was from the visitors trying to park. Suspending enforcement for a few hours would have seemed appropriate, but it may have been too tempting to write so many tickets so quickly.
Worse yet, the city makes the appeal-and-protest process opaque and inconvenient to visitors. I mailed in my appeal, received no reply, phoned twice and still got no reply. I kept getting violation notices in the mail until, finally, I was informed my ticket was canceled.
Still, I think it was disgusting for Duluth to promote this festival and then prey on visitors for not knowing which side of the street to park on.
Brock Robinson
Green Bay, Wis.