No action on misuse of handicapped parking

Misuse of handicapped parking placards is both rampant and well-known. Inconsiderate physically-fit 20-, 30- and 40-somethings illegally use these placards to save a few steps at the expense of those of us who really need to save those steps.

Recently, I saw a husband and wife older than me (I'm 80) walking, with difficulty, from a faraway parking space because their handicapped space was occupied by a 30-something woman who, with her children, went into the supermarket. She saved a few steps while teaching her kids a life lesson that the rules don't apply to them.

The problems don't stop there. Many handicapped parking spaces are in disrepair. End spaces have sunken pavement and act like magnets to water from higher, drier adjacent spaces. We have to step in those pools of water to get in and out of our cars. In winter, that water freezes and the spaces are either unusable or one can fall on the ice as I did last year.

Also, many spaces on the end of a row are impossible to use when the parking lot plow pushes loads of snow onto them, taking up enough space to make them useless to us. Complain to the store and they tell you to contact the property management.

I called the village administration recently about one space in particular and was treated in an annoyingly condescending way like I was just another geezer who had nothing better to do than waste his valuable time. After a brief conversation, I realized the only things inconsequential were this empty suit and his inane, unenlightened "suggestions" as to how I should hound the store management into solving the problem. That "advice" would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. It appears that office is overstaffed by at least one person.

Len Brauer

Palatine