According to the Seattle Department of Transportation, the new parking restrictions– the

According to the Seattle Department of Transportation, the new parking restrictions– the ones that added an hour to the parking blackout on Georgetown’s main drag and had business owners fuming last week– are necessary to help accommodate the growing number of cars bombing down Airport Way South. No surprise there. What’s interesting is that the city doesn’t have a protocol for alerting neighbors and merchants before changing the rules. (New signs were put up mid-day last Wednesday shocking some of the locals and prompting the leader of the neighborhood business association to throw up her arms– and consider moving to Portland.)Traffic engineer Wayne Wentz admits SDOT could’ve “done a better job notifying more people that this change was going to be made.”But he says the city is not unsympathetic to the parking needs of Georgetown’s burgeoning business district.”We’re not done with Georgetown,” he says. “We don’t ignore them. We like them down there.”