Continuing its tradition of a holiday break on parking, Butler officials again are offering free parking at meters in the city, meaning the tier garage and surface lots, from mid-December through Christmas. The idea is to encourage people to come downtown and shop or eat dinner — supporting local merchants. It’s a nice gesture that is also done in other places.

It’s a nice Christmas gift for people shopping or doing other business in Butler and it’s a welcome holiday season break for those people who work in Butler and feed meters rather than buying a monthly parking permit.

One problem with Butler’s parking-fee holiday has to do with parking on Main Street, where the 2-hour time limit is still being enforced — and where parking violations result in a $20 ticket.

To some people, that sends more of a Scrooge-like message than one encouraing people to do their holiday shopping in downtown Butler.

Granted, there are valid reasons for the two-hour limit on Main Street. For years, there have been complaints that some business owners and people who work in those stores and offices were parking their cars on Main Street and leaving them there for much of the day. As a result, there were not many open spaces for people who came downtown for shopping, eating a meal or other business. Ticketing cars parked for more than two hours on Main Street is a reasonable way to curb the abuses of certain business owners or downtown workers. But for those not abusing Main Street parking, but hit with a $20 ticket, it’s a costly turnoff and says “Butler does not want your business.”

In some cities, downtown businesses often have the ability to validate parking garage tickets or provide vouchers that let their customers park for free. Maybe Butler should consider such a program, at least during the holiday shopping season. If a person leaves his or her car on Main Street for more than two hours and gets a $20 parking ticket, why not let a receipt from a downtown business for $20 or more serve as parking validation or as a way to cancel out the parking fine? Instead of paying the city $20 for a parking violation, the holiday shopper is showing that they have spend an equal or higher amount supporting downtown merchants.

The details of this system could be worked out for next year. Maybe the receipt could be put in the parking-fine envelope under their car’s windsield wiper. Or it might be better to have the meter maids attach a preprinted note explaining the fine-elimination policy and that people getting tickets could stop by the police station for a few minutes to prove that they spent money downtown, which would eliminate the $20 fine.

If only a few people with tickets stop by the station on a daily basis for a few weeks leading up to Christmas, it might not be a big headache for the city police department. But if records show meter maids issue lots of Main Street tickets for this period, it could be a problem.

An alternative change would be to reduce Main Street fines to $5 for the holiday period. But even lowering the ticket price to $5 still sends a message that some people see as negative.

However it works, the idea should be to encourage people to shop downtown for the holidays without risking a painful $20 ticket for leaving their car parked on Main Street for more than two hours.

The parking meter holiday is a nice tradition and something that should help downtown merchants. A more creative approach to Main Street parking issues would remove the lump-of-coal impression created by a $20 ticket.