You’ve circled the block three times, burning gas and wasting time, stymied by traffic cones blocking empty parking spaces up and down the street. You’re late for a doctor’s appointment, lunch date or workout. Or you’ve got a disability and need close-in parking. Maybe you’re picking up granny. Your blood finally reaches boiling point when a van full of spandex-clad bike riders rolls in. Their driver moves the cones and takes the public spaces you can’t have.

Whose streets are they, anyway?

On a good day — or bad day if you own a business — up to 18 of the area’s 32 parking places are blocked by The Oxford and DoubleTree hotels for use by their guests’ oversized vehicles. Most times, the rig is a luxury “sag wagon” and deluxe catering rig for out-of-town bike tourists, or the tour bus for a rock band that just made a small fortune playing for an hour at the Les Schwab Amphitheater, where you paid eight bucks for a beer.

It’s ironic that The Oxford begged — and received — dozens of subsidized parking places in the adjacent parking garage but can still take more than half of the street parking spots on Lava Road and the 100 block of NW Minnesota. Of course, the hotels will argue that big rigs won’t fit in the garage, but they will fit in nearby privately owned parking lots. Why not put them there? Simple economics, coupled with a disregard for local businesses and their customers.

You and I are allowed two hours free parking in those spots. Stay one minute over the limit and you’re subject to a fine of $22. City policy allows hotels to pay just $10 per space for an entire day and night (which The Oxford turns around and resells for $20, according to what the hotel told me). Locals effectively subsidize the hotel and their guests. Adding insult to injury, those spaces often languish unoccupied for most of a day until the concert is over or bike riders are chauffeured into town after their ride on Century Drive.

When customers can’t park near a business they want to patronize, they may go to the malls, big-box stores or Old Mill chain stores. Some will spend their dollars online.

What if those spaces were used by patrons of local businesses? In a typical eight-hour day, each spot might be used by up to 10 downtown visitors who dine, shop or visit their insurance agent, all the while spending money in local businesses. At just $10 per visitor, that’s $2,000 a day that could be ringing cash registers in downtown shops and restaurants, paying local salaries, taxes and being recycled at more local businesses.

Public street parking should be for customers: old ladies and differently abled folk, those fearful of the dark, smelly parking garage or pushing a baby stroller. Like a velvet rope at an exclusive club, orange cones keep some out, let others in. If you’re a lowly taxpayer, your name isn’t on the bouncer’s clipboard.

With the stroke of a pen, the City Council can give citizens back their streets. They can stop handing out parking permits like dollar bills at a strip club. They can demonstrate their support for local businesses and their customers, requiring hotels to rent space in privately owned parking lots or move them farther from the heart of Bend’s historic commercial district.

While it may be legal, it’s not right to let chain hotels create roadblocks to local business in favor their guests, who spend little money downtown. Except at The Oxford and DoubleTree, that is.

— Scott Linden lives in Bend and produces television programming on hunting and fishing.