Shocking Controversial Political Opinion

[aggienaut]

   What with the Great Health Care Debate in full swing, the role of government is receiving much philosophical attention (accompanied by hollering and raving). As such, I feel like it's about time I weighed in on this mighty subject. My opinion might shock and scandalize you.



   Let's talk about parking meters. Some cities will ticket you for using broken parking meters. I think this is selfish and mean spirited of them and contrary to what government should be doing.

   Parking meters are a community resource. It is logical for the city to "tax" them to provide for their upkeep, or even turn a profit off them to fund other community functions. However, when the city forbids their use solely because it's unable to collect a fee on them, the city is of course denying the use to the public of a commodity it wouldn't cost the city anything to allow the use of. Basically its like saying "If I can't have (some money from this) no one can (have the use of it)!!" ...which you'd tell the children on the playground is immature.
   So cities should not spitefully deny the public use of things just because the city can't extract money from them.

   And the City of Huntington Beach in particular can suck it.

   This is not an analogy to the health care debate. This is just about parking meters. :*



Relatively Unrelated Photo of the Day


Pelcat has nothing but icey stares for this kind of behaviour.



And now when this imports to facebook I'm going to do that thing where you tag a bunch of people who aren't in the note just so they'll read it, just to be saucy. Muahahaha.

Comments

[chandrielle.livejournal.com]

You should ask Lyd about the Newport Beach police taxing her Tic-Tacs sometime.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

O_o

[chandrielle.livejournal.com]

:D

[zellie-bean.livejournal.com]

I'm shocked and scandalized~!

I deal with parking meters on a daily basis (and sweep zones, whoo). The city of Savannah puts the money directly back in parking services so I'm okay with that since we need it desperately. They'll ticket you for a broken meter but you can call them and they'll dismiss the ticket. They also dismiss one ticket a year for residents and one for visitors if it's their first violation.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Sweep zones?

[zellie-bean.livejournal.com]

The street cleaner goes through the city each night cleaning different sides of the roads so there'll be signs that say "Wednesday 12am-4am sweep zone" so early early Weds morning if your car is in that area it gets ticked because the street cleaner can't do its job. It's a delightfully creepy vehicle :D

[shid.livejournal.com]

Tickets are issued for parking at a broken meter because if they were not, you could break the meter instead of paying for it.

Most municipalities will waive the ticket if you call, like zellie bean said.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Well then they should ticket you if they find your meter is broken but wasn't broken last time they went around. After all they are in theory going around all day and should notice when a meter was working two hours previous but now is not.

I singled out HB because I noticed once while I was up there any broken meter had a big red hood placed over it advising in bold lettering NOT to park there, you WILL be towed, etc etc. Bastards.

[memeworrywort.livejournal.com]

There's no way to accurately enforce this. Although I would like to agree with you, I can't. I'll dismiss your opinion as idealistic. Practically, it would be a waste of resources to enforce it on EVERY parking meter.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Really I think they just shouldn't ticket broken meters.

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

Love the pic! :D

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

She's always laying around looking adorable but for some reason most of the pictures I take of her don't turn out very good. /:

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

I remember one guy got a parking meter key. And then there were several. They were going around.

Lots of stuff got paid for in quarters and dimes, as I recall.

Took them an incredibly long time to change the locks on the meters.

Then there was the ubiquitous pay parking lot with the board with a bunch of slits on it, you'd fold up your two dollars and put it in the slit, the guy would come around and whoever hadn't paid, he'd attach a 55 gallon drum to your axle.

There were a couple of problems with this. One was that anyone and a pair of hemostats could get enough money off one of those boards to buy whatever it was that he wanted to buy, and the other one was when you came back and someone had done that and now you have a 55 gallon drum.

Fortunately, I had a pair of boltcutters. You never know when you might need a pair of boltcutters.



.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha nice.

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

Pele is upset about the whole parking meter thing.

And she wishes someone would fix the medical mess regarding fleas.

[fsk8ing-judge.livejournal.com]

Awww, pretty kitty . . .

And don't get me started on parking meters. Here, in Chicago, we pay $3.50 an hour by my workplace. It's insane. Here's a link you might enjoy skimming: http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/thinking-tech/chicagos-parking-meter-deal-privatization-or-privation/1189/

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

75 year lease! That's a damn long time to be locked into something!

[fsk8ing-judge.livejournal.com]

Typical Chicago insanity . . . I love the last line of the post I linked to you:
"The good news is that Chicago has shown the rest of the country and the world exactly how not to privatize large networks of parking meters."

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Haha that's looking on the bright side. (: