The two weeks that City Council members gave themselves to mull over spending $100,000 on high-tech parking enforcement equipment are almost up.

"I grew up in Washington, D.C., and I've never even thought for a second that parking was a problem in downtown Fredericksburg," said Paul Cymrot, owner of Riverby Books on Caroline Street.

To Cymrot, and to many others downtown, the idea of replacing parking officers on foot with a police SUV loaded with cameras and a computer doesn't jibe with the city's historic nature.

Former City Councilman Joe Wilson, who is constructing a building on Caroline Street, said he doesn't think the device is "tourist-friendly," and if the city is going to look at surveillance technology to solve any one problem, it should invest in red-light cameras.

Even the Downtown Retail Marketing Inc. merchants group--which has asked the city repeatedly to beef up its parking enforcement capabilities--has come out against AutoChalk.

Amid all the fear of a robot replacing human beings on the street, City Manager Phillip Rodenberg said there's no element of the AutoChalk system that isn't already used by government to solve other problems.

The system consists of a car equipped with a laptop, digital cameras and GPS technology--all things that are often celebrated as innovations when introduced to an old government task.

Snyder called the manufacturer of a company that is providing a different parking technology to Harrisonburg--handheld devices that can read license plates--and passed an estimate to council members.

But that view doesn't take into consideration the main benefit of AutoChalk, said Vice Mayor Kerry Devine. That is, that it would move the parking officers around the downtown streets faster, freeing up time for them to make rounds in other areas of the city where parking is a problem, without requiring more city employees.

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