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Wednesday, October 8, 2008 |
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Making change for the meters |
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Written by -- Associate news editor Mick Kearns
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Wednesday, 23 July 2008 |
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Absolute nonsense.
It’s not the parking meters, or even the general decrepit state of most of the buildings and the downtown core itself. It may not even be the pawn shops, needle- and urine-filled alleyways, or hookers that keep shoppers away. Wait a minute, didn’t we banish the hookers from the downtown to the residential areas surrounding the downtown?
Never mind.
However, it may have something to do with the drunks, bums, panhandlers and junkies.
Either way, the meters are going, although that doesn’t mean a parking free-for-all. Not on your taxpaying life.
What they are going to do is take out the parking meters (at a cost to taxpayers) and install a ticket dispenser on every block (at a cost to taxpayers). Only they may have to put two dispensers on every block, one on each side of the road, because if you think people didn’t want to put a measly quarter in a meter right in front of their vehicle, they certainly aren’t going to walk to the lights and cross the road to get a ticket, and then walk back to their vehicle. And if they cross to get a ticket between traffic and get hit by a car, is the city going to be sued for not putting a ticket dispenser on both sides of the road?
But parking will be free for the first two hours, and after that if you don’t have a ticket you will get a fine, which research suggests should be increased to $25 from the current $20. To keep track of time-limit violators, the city will hire three new staff. If they get paid $20 per hour (as city staff don’t come cheap) add in benefits etc., this could come to about $150,000 to $200,000 a year - you guessed it -- at a cost to taxpayers.
But, wait a minute. Research suggests that the parking-fine increase should result in enough income for the city to cover the cost of the extra staff. Hogwash.
When I got my first job my dad only had one thing to say to me: “Don’t rely on overtime or bonuses to pay the bills.” And now I would like to pass this piece of advice on to our city council, because they are hoping the extra parking fines (bonuses, overtime) will pay the bills.
With the new system violators will not get two warnings as they did before. Now they will get a ticket straight away. What a clever idea. Although I did love the two warning system. It could also be applied to other violations in our city.
“Hey, what do you think you are doing putting that graffiti on the side of my store? I’m going to have you arrested.”
“But you can’t. You have to catch me three times before you can do anything about it.”
“You’re right, you got me there. By the way, there is only one ‘G’ in Pigg.”
But there’s more. With parking meters spread along the block, so is the money. Now with one spot per block holding the money from all the parking meters, this now becomes a much tastier target for the petty criminals.
There are two solutions here.
Leave the parking meters, but get rid of the silly two-warning system. If you don’t pay you get a ticket, period. Twenty-five dollars is fine, no pun intended. Or, get rid of the parking meters altogether. But solution two won’t work because the city isn’t willing to do without the revenue from the meters. After all, those junkets to China need to be paid for somehow.
-- Features editor Mick Kearns
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 07 September 2008 )
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At $20 an hour, a yearly salary would be $41,600 net... even with exorbitant benefit usage, that only comes to around $100,000 a year for the both of 'em. Sure, that's a chunk of change, but even discounting the increased revenue due to having no warning-tickets and the increase to $25, $100,000 is a drop of water in an ocean compared to the annual operating budget of the municipality.