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On Tuesday, March 8, 2016, Dr. Conger of Immediate Care sent me and my 16-year-old daughter to Bonner General Health’s Emergency Room to get care for her collapsed lung. After five-and-a-half hours of tests, an MRI, X-rays and surgery, she was finally taken to a room. Imagine my distress when I returned to my car and found a parking ticket under the wiper.

I went back in to the ER and found out that the street is posted for two-hour parking even though the average Emergency Room visit is three hours. How can this be justified?

Later, I checked to see if there was any way to find other parking and found there are three possible spaces if a person ignores the posted sign and drives through the ambulance entrance (providing there is no ambulance parked there).

The next day, I talked to the administration office at the hospital and found out there has never been a problem with parking on the street in front of the Emergency Room, except the problem I had just encountered. I am writing this letter to formally register a complaint about the practice of issuing parking tickets to people suffering distress in the Emergency Room.

If it is really deemed necessary to have a parking restriction on an otherwise empty street, there should be a parking validation for people in the Emergency Room.

ROBIN M. JELINEK

Sandpoint