as i was reading the mayor's recommended budget the
other night (god i can't believe my life has come to
this. if you told me in my twenties that i would some
day be reading the mayor's budget proposal and what's
more enjoying it i would have told you that you were
crazy) i noticed something that stuck in my brain.
if i recall correctly, as recently as 1998, parking
meters returned a reasonable revenue to the city
whereas in the past two years they have barely broken
even. when i square this with the fact stated in the
strib this morning that rates have not increased since
1992 i had to wonder.
what happened? I suppose the answer will come today in
budget hearings. my speculation is that we installed
all these wonderful new meters that barely pay for
themselves and that this was a decision that has cost
the taxpayers money in the short term.
now i don't know this for a fact and answers down here
are sometimes hard to find and require time and
persistence, the latter i have, the former i wish i
had more of, but i'm looking forward to the answer.
i'm a bit of a cool hand luke kinda guy. for those of
you who may forget or are not film buffs, the crime
that landed him in prison was the dastardly deed of
lopping off the heads of parking meters.
i've always felt that the city shoots itself in the
foot with its parking policies that seem to run
counter to the stated desire of reinvigorating
downtown. i mean was anybody fooled by the wonderful
parking ramp scam that try to convince us we were
getting free parking if we bought something. no, free
parking is what they provide at the malls!!
there are complaints of people parking all day long at
inexpensive meters downtown and yet i thought most
meters have two hour limits. are we enforcing those
laws, i wonder. seems to me we wmight be better off to
eliminate meters completely at this point since they
don't seem to pay for themselves, set up two, three,
four hour zones and patrol them on foot with monitors
carrying chalk and see what happens.
now there are probably problems i haven't thought of
with this sort of approach. indeed i feel a little
rushed to get this into print before a council hearing
but it might be something for members to mull over on
a friday afternoon as they sit before their tv's
watching the council in action.
one ancillary benefit to this approach especially if
monitors were on foot might be an on street presence
of people who can provide another set of eyes in
fighting crime.
i want to take this up more in the future but welcome
comments from members of this list.
tim connolly
ward 7
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